“What do you make of it, Captain Larry?” I asked that ruddy-faced, unemotional officer, who had come to my side during the talk. “This is no course for tramps, is it? You would not expect to meet a liner so near the shore.” “Certainly not, sir. If she were a copper ship to Port Nolloth, she wouldn’t be doing ten knots. Yonder boat’s doing fifteen.” “And her course is due south.” “Is due south, sir.” “Would you be surprised to hear that she was putting in to St. Helena Bay?” “After what you have told me, sir, nothing would surprise me. It’s wonder enough to find any ship here at all, sir.” I admitted it to be so. There are no more pleasing moments in our lives than those confirming the truth of some great idea which we have deduced from a certain set of circumstances. There, upon the far sea, one of the links of the chain of my conjecture stood revealed. I had been less than human if my heart had not quickened at the spectacle. “Captain,” I said, “the men understand, I think, that our object is to find out why that ship visits St. Helena Bay, and where she is bound when she quits it? The rest I leave to you—and the engines. If our purpose is discovered, it will be immediately frustrated. I trust to your good sense that nothing of the kind shall happen.” “Nothing of the kind will happen, sir,” he said quietly; “we are going dead slow already. Mr. Benson has his instructions.” I listened to the beat of our powerful engines, and, as he said, they were going dead slow. Scarce a haze of smoke loomed above our ugly squat funnel. The men began to talk in low whispers, still watching the black cloud upon the horizon. That we were following a strange ship and did not wish to be discovered had been made known to them all. This in itself was sufficient to whet a seaman’s appetite for adventure; but when, on the top of it, Captain Larry called them immediately to gun drill, then, I say, they braced themselves up as true, handy men with honest work before them. This drill we had studied together since we left Ushant behind us. It had been in my mind since the day I bought the ship of Yarrow, and stipulated for machine guns fore and aft and a fitted torpedo tube, that the aggressor might, in due time, become the aggrieved. For this I took with me no fewer than five able seamen who had served their time in the Naval Reserve and passed thence with credit. “He who treads upon a snake should wear thick boots.” The old saying had become my watchword, and not forgetting that we set out to spy upon some of the most dangerous and cunning of the world’s criminals, I made ready for that emergency. The night would tell me the truth. Who could wonder if I waited for the night as a man for the rewards which months of dreaming had promised him? CHAPTER IX. THE NIGHT IS NOT SILENT. _The Justification of Dr. Fabos._