l, exposed to the
countless vacillating and dangerous humours of a gang of ruffians who
had deliberately thrown off every restraint of law and order.

But, in speculating thus, I was reckoning without my hosts; I was
crediting O'Gorman and his satellites with scruples that they did not
possess. I had not yet fully gauged the villainy of which they were
capable.

Thus far, ever since we had borne up for the Horn, we had been favoured
with a fair wind, and plenty of it; but on the second day after the
occurrence of the above events the wind began to fail us, and by sunset
that night it had dwindled away until the brig had barely steerage-way,
while the surface of the ocean presented that streaky, oily appearance
that is usually the precursor of a flat calm. Meanwhile, during the
afternoon, a sail had hove in sight in the north-western board, steering
south-east; and when the sun went down in a clear haze of ruddy gold,
the sails of the stranger, reddened by the last beams of the luminary,
glowed against the clear opal tints of the north-western sky at a
distance of some eight miles, broad on our starboard bow.

The stranger was a barque-rigged vessel of some three hundred and fifty
tons or so: quite an ordinary, everyday-looking craft, with nothing
whatever of an alarming character in her aspect; yet she had not long
been in sight when it became quite apparent that O'Gorman and his crew
were greatly exercised at her appearance; and I was at first disposed to
imagine that their emotion arose from the circumstance of their being
fully aware that, in seizing the brig, as they had done, they had
committed an act of piracy, and that they now feared detection and its
attendant unpleasant consequences. But by sunset I had found occasion
to alter my opinion, for it had by then become evident that O'Gorman was
manoeuvring, not to avoid but to close with the stranger in such a
manner as to avoid arousing any suspicion as to his design!

No sooner did this intention of O'Gorman's become apparent than I began
to ask myself what could be his motive for such a course; and the only
satisfactory reply that I could find to such a question was that he
wished to ascertain whether her skipper had any provisions to spare,
and, if so, to endeavour to treat with him for their purchase--I had by
this time seen enough of O'Gorman to recognise that he was quite acute
enough to discern the advantage and safety which such a transaction
would