The _Dread's_ lookout had seen the fire, too, from several leagues' distance, and the frigate hurried off her course to inquire about it. The blazing sloop filled and sank during the night; it was dawn, the breeze still fitful and contrary, when Van Anda was found. His story told, the frigate beat to southward a while in the wrath of vengeance. In the evening a fore-and-aft mizzen was sighted, far south, and found again in the morning. At that sunrise the _Diana_--if it was she--cracked on all sail and by evening was hull down, though the _Dread_ was bearing all canvas, a mastiff groaning in pursuit of a greyhound. The _Dread_ found empty sea next morning and was obliged to put about for Boston. John Kenny asked: "Did this Dutchman speak of others?" "He spoke of a big red-haired man jabbering to himself in French, and a fat, short man they called Tom, and--and a gray-haired man with a broken nose and a great purple patch covering all the left side of his face. Sir, I asked myself, could that be anyone but Matthew Ledyard that was carpenter of the _Artemis_? No one of the_Schouven_went aboard the ketch except that one man who agreed to join them. Some must have remained aboard the--_Diana_. My God, sir, I had thought Ledyard loyal as any man could be----" "The devil with Ledyard. He described no others?" "No others." "Did he say if any of them was young?" "Sir, sir, I asked him that, and he said--he said no." Then neither Sam Tench nor Reuben was quick enough to catch the old man, who fell like a broken spar and struck his head against the doorframe, and for more than a month thereafter could not speak at all. Reuben walked in the mist, remembering. No stars; the May moon, not visible, lent a faint pallor to the enfolding vapor, or he imagined it, so that he walked in a darkness not complete. He could have followed this path through the back fields, he supposed, if he were wholly blind. He moved slowly, pausing many times, though not in need to assure himself of direction, remembering. The war went on of course, in its far-off way; it always had. It seems we snatched ourselves a helping of glory at some place called Ramillies; but that was very long ago, two years ago, 1706. Throughout the fighting weather of last year, one heard, my lord Marlborough had put in the time in the Low Countries doing nothing in particular....