t he remarked it now and drew his own
conclusions.

"They give rogue man arms and cutlass, captain; he go overboard too. I
see them pass from boat to boat. Ah, there he is, the bread and the
biscuit. They get breakfast and then come here, captain. What else you
look for? They not lie there all the days. They too much devil for
that. We few and little; they big and strong. Why shall they not take
the house? Some die, but other mans remain. Czerny he say to them,
'Great much price if you kill the English captain.' He know that all
his money is locked up down here. Why shall he not come, captain?"

I could not tell him why. My own glasses showed me the things he made
mention of and others beside. Arms, I saw, were being passed down from
the yacht to the small boats clustered about it. There was no sunlight
to glisten upon the bright barrels of the rifles, but I could
distinguish them nevertheless; and cutlasses were handed from boat to
boat--a good fifty of them I counted, and there were more to come. What
the meaning of it was a child might have told you. Truce prevailed
between master and man in their common desire of possession. The last
great attack was to be made upon us--the rock to be rushed. Even a
woman would have divined as much.

"Clair-de-Lune," said I, "the end is coming at last; and it won't be
very long. We're dealing with a remarkable man, and it is not to be
supposed that he'll sail away and leave us here without one good blow
for it. Aye, it's a great mind altogether, and there's the plain truth.
Who else but the cleverest would have thought of this place, and come
here like a human vulture to feed upon ships and men? There have been
many Edmond Czernys in the world; but this man I name chief among them,
and others will name him also. We set ourselves against a hand in a
million; stiff backs we need to wrestle with that; but we'll do it, old
comrade, we'll see it through yet!"

It was a wild boast, yet, God knows, a well meant one. Perhaps, if he
had pushed me to the confession, I would have told him that I was far
from believing my own prophecies, and that, in truth, I realized, as he
did, the perilous hazard of our position and all that defeat might mean
to us. Just as he knew, so did I know that before the night came down
dead men might lie on the rocks about me and be engulfed in that sea
which beat so gently upon the lonely shore; that living men from the
boats yonder would swarm in the galleries