“Ships?” repeated Crawford, catching swiftly at the more essential news despite his amazed wonder at the man’s talk of the Star Woman. “How d’ye know?” “Why, I saw them, as I saw the Star Woman. French ships o’ the line, English frigates--bah! Come up on deck and talk in the open air. Plague upon this stuffy cabin!” Moses Deakin shoved back his chair and rose. Crawford accompanied him to the ladder, still lost in marvel at what he had heard. At the ladder, Deakin motioned him to mount. Then, as Crawford’s back was turned, Moses Deakin threw up his arm and struck. The blow, sharp and light but deadly as an arrow, drove home to the base of the brain. Crawford fell against the ladder, then rolled down, paralyzed. So there, it seemed, the Star of Dreams had led but to an ill fortune. While these things chanced aboard the _Albemarle_, and the day dragged on, Frontin was heavily making his way back to his own ship. He did not regain the _Northstar_ until afternoon; and if there was dismay in his own heart, he brought stark consternation to those aboard her. It was a strangely diverse company that grouped around him to hear the tale he spat out between bites of food. The six Englishmen were hardy rascals who cared only that they should never see an English gaol again, following Crawford with blind infatuation. The eight Irishmen followed Crawford largely because Sir Phelim Burke did so, since they loved Phelim beyond measure. Only one of them could speak or write English. “I sighted her ship and got bearings on her,” concluded Frontin. “Can lead ye there in the dark, for she’s fast in shore ice; but what use? I saw that big bear of a man come up from below alone, roar at his men, and shake his fist toward us. The cap’n is trapped and gone.” Sir Phelim Burke uttered a low groan of despair, and turned to stare helplessly at the fog which clamped them in. They stood on the maindeck--there was no frost in the air, only the chill of melting ice. The _Northstar_, rigged in the fashion which another twenty years was to know as “schooner,” lay grappled to a small berg. She was a new ship of oak, and the ice-battering had not so much as started a butt in her. Yet Frontin, as he drearily climbed aboard, had noted something which started his brain to frantic work. Within the past half-hour fog had come down--heavy, cloaking mist that lay about them like an evil thing. Through it penetrated the groaning of the floes; even the berg beside them was filled with long heavings and shudderings and queer noises. The ice was all in movement, as it moved each day at high tide, now back and now forth, in a slow and regular motion with the varying trend of shore-currents and ice-drift. Blocked by the huge jam across the mouth of the straits, these outer masses were gradually disintegrating. “Say the word, Master Frontin,” spoke up one of the Englishmen, “and we be off with ye. We’ll not let the cap’n bide on yon ship without a fight.”