the point. What does the sense of possession amount to beside
the sense of seeking and finding? Cleigh here thinks he is having a thrill
when he signs a check. It is to laugh!"

"Have you ever killed a man?" It was one of those questions that leap
forth irresistibly. Jane was a bit frightened at her temerity.

Cunningham drank his coffee deliberately.

"Yes."

"Oh!"

Jane shrank back a little.

"But never willfully," Cunningham added--"always in self-defence, and
never a white man."

There was a peculiar phase about the man's singular beauty. Animated, it
was youthful; in grim repose, it was sad and old.

"Death!" said Jane in a kind of awed whisper. "I have watched many die,
and I cannot get over the terror of it. Here is a man with all the
faculties, physical and mental; a human being, loving, hating, working,
sleeping; and in an instant he is nothing!"

"A Chinaman once said that the thought of death is as futile as water in
the hand. By the way, Cleigh--and you too, captain--give the wireless a
wide berth. There's death there."

Jane saw the fire opals leap into the dark eyes.

CHAPTER XIII

The third day out they were well below Formosa, which had been turned on a
wide arc. The sea was blue now, quiescent, waveless; there was only the
eternal roll. Still Jane could not help comparing the sea with the
situation--the devil was slumbering. What if he waked?

Time after time she tried to force her thoughts into the reality of this
remarkable cruise, but it was impossible. Romance was always smothering
her, edging her off, when she approached the sinister. Perhaps if she had
heard ribald songs, seen evidence of drunkenness; if the crew had loitered
about and been lacking in respect, she would have been able to grasp the
actuality; but so far the idea persisted that this could not be anything
more than a pleasure cruise. Piracy? Where was it?

So she measured her actions accordingly, read, played the phonograph, went
here and there over the yacht, often taking her stand in the bow and
peering down the cutwater to watch the antics of some humorous porpoise or
to follow the smother of spray where the flying fish broke. In fact, she
conducted herself exactly as she would have done on board a passenger
ship. There were moments when she was honestly bored.

Piracy! This was an established fact. Cunningham and his men had stepped
outside the pale of law in running off with the _Wanderer_. But piracy