“I must teach you to forget it, Joan,” I said; “the homelands of England will help you to blot out these memories. It is too early yet to say exactly what course we must take; we have so much to learn and the time is short. But we are homeward bound now, and never again will there be a home for me where little Joan is not. That is what I have to say to you to-night. There will be sunshine to-morrow, Joan, and we will see the new day together. The world could give me no greater happiness.” She did not answer me. I knew that she was thinking of the sorrow of her own life, and telling herself that she could never be my wife until the mystery of her birth and infancy were mine to judge. And this was the malice of it—that the men who could solve that mystery were criminals both, fleeing from justice, and as likely to seek a meeting with me as to vaunt before the world the story of their crimes. CHAPTER XXXI. THE END OF THE DIAMOND SHIP. _Dr. Fabos turns his Eyes toward England._ I suppose that I slept a few hours at the dead of night; but certainly I was awake again shortly after the sun had risen, and upon the bridge with Larry, as curious a man as any in the southern hemisphere that morning. Remember in what a situation I had left the Diamond Ship, the problems that remained unsolved upon her decks, the distress of her crew, the trials and judgments that awaited them ashore, the sure death prepared for them upon the high seas. All this the fog had veiled from our reckoning last night; but the day dawned clear and sunny; the curtain had been lifted; the whole picture stood there asking our pity, and in some measure our gratitude. Had we any longer a duty toward the honest men yonder—if honest men there could by any possibility be; or did other claims call us imperiously back to England and our homes, to tell the story where all the world might hear it? These were the questions which Larry and I discussed together, as we stood on the bridge that sunny morning and focussed our glasses upon the distant ship. Should we abandon her or return? Frankly, I knew not where our duty lay. The problem presented possibilities so awful that I shrank from them. “There are women aboard there, Larry,” I would say. And he would answer as often:— “There are men aboard here, sir, with wives and little children waiting for them at home.” “We could stand by them, Larry,” I put it to him. “If they come to reason, we should do all that is humanly possible for their wounded, and those who are deserving our pity.” “You cannot stand by them, sir—you have not a pound of coal to waste. Mr. Benson says he will have all his work cut out to get us to the Azores as it is. We shall look pretty if we imitate them and drift about here till Doomsday. And we haven’t any music on board, sir. We must go dancing to our own complaints. Have you thought of that, doctor?”