'We'll get that sail on,' exclaimed Gilbert, as he felt his way up the stairs, and Fagg said: 'We will so,' as he followed him after they had each jostled the other at the foot in a slight collision which their sightlessness had caused, and, a moment afterwards, Bella and Mrs. Pooley were left alone in the cabin. Yet they could hear, plainly enough, the words of approval bestowed on Gilbert and Fagg for their promptness, when the meaning of it was recognised by those on deck; and they caught, too, the orders bawled with great rapidity by Charke the instant he had received this extra assistance. Also, they heard him ordering one man to the starboard main braces and another to go forward and loose the jib. A moment later they heard something else as well. The cry of two or three voices together, the roar of Charke, and then his trumpet-tones, exclaiming: 'My God! he's overboard!' And Bella, with the image of one man alone in her mind, reeled backwards towards the sofa where Mrs. Pooley lay, and gradually slid, fainting, on to the cabin floor by her side. CHAPTER XVII 'FAREWELL, MY RIVAL' Had Bella known more about a ship and its intricacies she would have understood that, notwithstanding some one had undoubtedly gone overboard, the sailor, whoever he was, could not by any possibility have been one of those who had gone to help in squaring the yards. Instead, she would have been aware that such an accident could only have happened to some seaman who had either gone aloft or out on to the jib-boom. And, in fact, the latter was the case; the unfortunate fellow, a man named Brown, falling off the boom while endeavouring to set the flying jib, and being struck a moment later by the frame timbers forward as he fell. Yet the unhappy sailor seemed still to have some life left in him, as those who rushed to the port side could see, since, as he was passed by the ship, he was observed to rise to the surface--his head all shiny with blood--and to strike out manfully. But what could that avail, since, by the time the _Emperor_ could be brought to the wind and a life-buoy thrown overboard, he was half a mile astern? To lower the boats in time to save him would also have been an impossibility, even if it could have been done at all; and, moreover, the swift-coming instantaneous darkness of the equator was at hand, so that the man himself was, by now, almost invisible. 'Steer her course again,' Charke called out, therefore, to the man who was at the wheel, in a voice in which regret for the unfortunate sailor was mingled with a tone denoting some other sentiment that, perhaps, none would have been able to understand, even though they had been swift to observe it, as, in their excitement, none were. Then, at once, in a few moments, the _Emperor of the Moon_ was again heading towards where the Seychelles lay.