ay; and the water widened between
them and her damning evidences. On the other hand, they were drawing
nearer to the ship of war, which might very well prove to be their
prison and a hangman's cart to bear them to the gallows--of which they
had not yet learned either whence she came or whither she was bound; and
the doubt weighed upon their heart like mountains.

It was Wicks who did the talking. The sound was small in Carthew's ears,
like the voices of men miles away, but the meaning of each word struck
home to him like a bullet. "What did you say your ship was?" inquired
Wicks.

"Tempest, don't you know?" returned the officer.

Don't you know? What could that mean? Perhaps nothing: perhaps that the
ships had met already. Wicks took his courage in both hands. "Where is
she bound?" he asked.

"O, we're just looking in at all these miserable islands here," said the
officer. "Then we bear up for San Francisco."

"O, yes, you're from China ways, like us?" pursued Wicks.

"Hong Kong," said the officer, and spat over the side.

Hong Kong. Then the game was up; as soon as they set foot on board,
they would be seized; the wreck would be examined, the blood found, the
lagoon perhaps dredged, and the bodies of the dead would reappear to
testify. An impulse almost incontrollable bade Carthew rise from the
thwart, shriek out aloud, and leap overboard; it seemed so vain a thing
to dissemble longer, to dally with the inevitable, to spin out some
hundred seconds more of agonised suspense, with shame and death thus
visibly approaching. But the indomitable Wicks persevered. His face
was like a skull, his voice scarce recognisable; the dullest of men and
officers (it seemed) must have remarked that telltale countenance and
broken utterance. And still he persevered, bent upon certitude.

"Nice place, Hong Kong?" he said.

"I'm sure I don't know," said the officer. "Only a day and a half there;
called for orders and came straight on here. Never heard of such a
beastly cruise." And he went on describing and lamenting the untoward
fortunes of the Tempest.

But Wicks and Carthew heeded him no longer. They lay back on the gunnel,
breathing deep, sunk in a stupor of the body: the mind within still
nimbly and agreeably at work, measuring the past danger, exulting in the
present relief, numbering with ecstasy their ultimate chances of escape.
For the voyage in the man-of-war they were now safe; yet a few more days
of peril, activity,