'Supposing this malady or pestilence, or whatever it is, should be followed by madness and death, as was the case with the negroes. And supposing also that, among those who are struck, our friend Lieutenant Bampfyld--the future Lord D'Abernon!--should be one. What happens? Bella'--for so he dared to call her in his thoughts and to himself--'Bella is deprived of him. Suppose, also, that the whole management of the ship falls into my hands; Pooley may be attacked, too--then--then--then----' But here his mental ramblings had to come to a conclusion, because, wild as his riotous thoughts were, his mind was clear enough to perceive that he was just as likely to be attacked by the blindness as was either Pooley or Bampfyld. While he saw very plainly that so, too, was Bella. And this pulled his meditations up with a jerk, since he could imagine nothing more horrible that could occur now than that the majority of all the men on board should remain sound and unstricken, and capable of working the _Emperor of the Moon_ safely into some port or other, while the beautiful girl whom he worshipped and adored so much should succumb to the hateful affliction. 'Oh, my God!' he almost moaned aloud, 'if--if she should be the next. If she should be taken and we left. How--how could I endure that?' And then, because he was a man with the best of impulses beneath all the gall which had arisen in his heart at losing the girl he had once hoped so much to win, he moaned once more: 'Not that--not that. Spare her, at least, Heaven! Spare her, even though I have to stand by and see him win her after all. Spare her! Spare her!' CHAPTER XIV STRUCK DOWN But still the days went on and no wind came--the one thing which, even now, after they had been becalmed for nearly a week, might have saved the ship from any fearful calamity that was at last, almost without a doubt, in store for her. For, according to their reckonings, taken regularly both by aid of the brilliant sun which still poured down its vertical rays upon them, and also by the use of a cherub log which they possessed, as well as the ordinary ones, the current had drifted them some three hundred miles north, so that they had consequently the northern coast of Madagascar on their port bow, as well as the Aldabra Islands, and with Galega, Providence and Farquhar Islands almost directly ahead of them.