e that rows a boat yonder.
Well, my lad, thinking's no good this night, nor can you get the
bluejackets by whistling. We haven't all served our time in a Queen's
ship, Dolly, and we're just plain seamen; but we'll try and speak a
word to Edmond Czerny by-and-bye, or I'll never speak another. Now,
help me with your young eyes, will you, and tell me if that's a ship's
gig yonder, or if it isn't----"

He said that it was a ship's gig, and he pointed out that which I had
not seen before--a steam yacht lying off to the east of us and waiting
for some of her crew to go aboard. Edmond Czerny would be on deck
there, I thought, watching the hounds he had sent to the work; and if
that spectacle of death and destruction did not gratify him, then
nothing would in all the world. And surely such a sight even he had not
beheld in all his years. That shimmering molten sea, the island
catching the reflected lights and making its own pictures of them; the
distant forests, whose trees lifted fiery branches and leaves of flame;
the mist-clouds raining blood and gold, the burning steamer, the great
arena of fire-flecked sea and the small-boats swimming upon it--what
more of delight or devilry could Ken's Island give this vulture of the
deep?

So much the night would show us as Providence willed and good hearts
might determine.

Now, I have told you that little Dolly Venn had served in the Naval
Reserve and knew more of gunnery than the most of us. To this, I bear
witness, we owed much that night.

"You've got a skipper's part, Dolly, lad," said I, "and yon gig begins
the trouble, if my eyes don't deceive me. Why, she's coming in here,
lad, straight to this very door, just as fast as oars can bring her.
And there's more to follow--a fleet of them, as any lubber could tell
you."

"'Tis like a fete and gala on the old stinking Liffey," says Peter
Bligh, peering with me across the busy sea. "A dozen boats, and every
one of them full. I'd give something to see Mister Jacob to-night;
indeed, and I would, captain. We are over few for such an 'out and
home' as this."

It was rare to see Peter Bligh serious, but he had the right to be that
night, and I was the last to blame him. Consider our situation and ask
what others would have felt, placed as we were--four willing men upon a
bit of craggy rock rising sheer out of a thousand fathom sea, and
commanded to hold the gate for our lives and for another life more
precious against all the riff-