That dart struck a tender spot. I would be the last one to quit under a threat or under fire, and Norton knew it. The prospect of a rattling final fight was most alluring. Fighting pirates, I reasoned with myself, especially when they had declared war on you, was altogether different from preying on them, which I had given my word I would not do. It would be at least six or eight months before my beloved Kate could secure her pardon and meet me in Bombay, where we had planned to be married, and that, I figured, would give me time to accept the “defi” of the King of the Pirates, if he moved as rapidly as we might expect. “Far from running away from a fight of that kind,” I told Norton, “I should much rather run into it. We will cruise around a while to see whether the Chinkies really mean to give us battle. But it is the sport of it that I want and nothing else, for if it comes off it will be a great fight. There must be no more looting.” Norton apparently considered that he had shaken my decision to quit preying on the pirates, wherein he was mistaken, and hoped to be able to induce me to abandon it entirely. At any rate we were of one mind in hunting for a scrap with the Chinkies, just for the fun of it, and harmony was restored. We loafed around in the path of the pirates below Great Natuna Island but nothing happened for ten days or two weeks and it began to look as though they were not seeking us very earnestly. We saw several junks which we could easily have stood up and robbed, but I would not permit it. Late one evening, just as the galloping night was closing in, an enormous junk appeared suddenly from behind an island and came sailing down a narrow strait through which we were just crawling. Instead of hurrying along through the dangerous passage, as she would have done had she been an honest trader, she began to shorten sail after she had passed us. That aroused our suspicions and we determined to look her over. She appeared to carry only a small crew, but when we came together it seemed to me for a moment that she had more Chinamen on board than I had ever seen before at one time. We increased our speed a little and drew up alongside to get a good look at her. We were almost on an even keel with her when she swung suddenly to starboard and would have smashed into our bow if we had not gone full speed astern without losing a second. As she passed under our short bowsprit she threw a grappling iron which caught on our port bow, and we let it stay there.