"Men like that have no right to have wives and children," said Aunt Jannet Harvey, with vehemence past grammar. "If they have they'll be better without them. They ought to be scuttled." Nevertheless, Jean's suggestion remained in all their minds. Never was such a bright look-out as the Torchmen kept for the _Blackbirder_, as they dubbed the chase. The rigging was never free from anxious gazers. It looked as though a flight of great birds had lighted on the ship. Jean remarked on it to Aunt Jannet Harvey. "They're fine fellows and all of one mind. See how eager they are to catch her." "Ay, ay!" said Aunt Jannet. "They'll find her if she's to be found," and did not think it necessary to add that, through Captain Cathie, she had offered five pounds to the man who first sighted the other ship. Blair walked the deck strenuously, mostly alone, occasionally with one of the others. And the more he walked and the more he thought, the more averse he became to the idea of hanging. "We're doing right for right's sake in freeing these islanders," he said to Evans and Stuart one time. "If we hang those men I can't help feeling we're doing wrong for right's sake, and there we come to the old Jesuitical practice which we all condemn. We do a wrong in the belief that it will save future trouble. I don't believe we're justified. We've got to do what seems to us right now. The future is in God's hands. If trouble comes, He will show us how to meet it." "That, I think, is highest wisdom," said Stuart. "If the trouble comes, we shall meet it with clear consciences, and clear consciences make stout hearts." "I'm with you," said Evans. "I'd like to see them wiped out as much as Captain Cathie would, but I think we're on a higher plane in doing as you suggest. You feel sure of catching them?" "Hopeful--and determined to do it, if it can be done. They've got at most two days' start. Less, perhaps, for the village was still smoking. They're heavily laden, and we are making good way. We cut into a belt of calms and variables soon, and there we can take to steam. And then--they don't know they're being chased. We do." There was, however, this one element of doubt in the chase: would the raiders carry on due east, in order to get all possible out of the fairly steady westerly winds,--thereby lengthening the distance they had to cover, and having, after all, in the end, to encounter the possibly adverse winds of the coast,--or would they take their chance across the doubtful calm belt and make straight for the Peruvian coast? It was an even question, and the board on which the game had to be played was several thousand miles square. Blair and Cathie discussed the matter in all its bearings.