'There seems to have been no trouble aboard this vessel,' he continued, 'until the mutiny took place. That should signify that the men, taking them all round, were steady as sailors go. No doubt they'd got something in the Nova Scotia way in their captain. He appears to have been one of those captains who, after draining the blood out of men's veins, runs gunpowder in, then applies the fuse. Everybody's aghast at the bloody business, but it's one man's doing.' 'You believe that they would not use violence towards Miss Vanderholt?' 'Until I knew, I could never persuade myself that they'd make away with her. They are men. I dare say they were demons whilst they fought, and thought of the cause of their fighting. I'll not believe that, as English seamen, they'd kill the poor lady.' 'She's a living witness against them.' 'They'll have heaped oath upon oath upon her, sir. Likely as not they'll put her aboard something passing, themselves going away and waiting for the next ship.' 'God grant it!' exclaimed Captain Parry. 'It's the first bit of hope that's come to me since we fell in with the schooner.' CHAPTER IX. THE DISCOVERY. The wind that evening freshened out of the north-west glare of sunset. The sky thickened, and some small wings of scud flew south-east, bronzed by the western splendour dimming fast. The sea ran in a cloudy green, but without weight, in the light tropic surge. At sundown Mr. Blundell hailed the royal yard, and the answer, hoarse in tone as a seagull's scream, was: 'Nothing in sight, sir.' The mate ordered the man to come down on deck, and half an hour later, when darkness was on the face of the deep, and the last red scar had died out of the starless sky, the _Mowbray_ was slopping softly through the creaming waters, under her mainsail and standing jib. It was like being hove-to; but she had way, and when Captain Parry looked over the taffrail, he saw the cold, green lights of the sea revolving and sliding off in the short spread of yeast the nimble clipper carried with her. It drew down a night ghastly with the pallor of the hidden moon. At about nine o'clock they burnt a flare; the crimson flames rose quivering, and the smoke drove, black as a thunder-cloud, betwixt the masts to leeward. The little ship stood out against the night fire-tinctured. She looked, with her glowing yellow masts and fiery shrouds, to be built of flame. The night came in walls of blackness to this wild and beautiful vision, and the noise of the sea, and the sense of the infinity of the deep, that was running and seething out of sight, filled the glowing picture with an entrancing spirit of mystery. You would have said that she owed her life and light to the sea-gods.