us, it will
delude them the more if we keep straight on."

"O truth, many are thy arts!" said he. "But if, my Soothsayer, the
wolf's cunning be a match for that of the lamb? What then?"

"Then you may want your match, and your knife too," said I.

He shivered a little.

"My Hollander," said he, "if I fall, say to my lady 'twas for her; and I
pray you give her the gem in my bonnet. Say to her its brightness was
dimmer than the remembrance of her eyes; and its price meaner than the
dewdrop on her lip. Bring her to see me where I lie; and compose my
face to greet her. Tell me, my Dutchman, doth a cannon ball give short
shrift, or were it easier to die by the steel?"

"A peace to your nonsense," said I. "You have more sonnets to write
before we need think of laying you out."

He was comforted at this, and we resumed our watch in silence.

The night grew very dark, and at every gust our masts stooped further
before the wind. The _Misericorde_ hissed her way through the water,
and still our pilot turned not his helm an inch right or left.

Presently, Ludar came up to where we stood. I could see his eyes flash
even in the dark.

"Go forward now," said he to me. "Should we both be running as we were,
and as I think we are our courses ought to meet not far hence. Send the
maiden to me--I need her to take the helm while we three stand to the
guns. Pray Heaven we win clear; if not, it will go hard with you,
friend, in the prow. Let go your pistol at first sight of them, and, if
you can, come abaft to join us before we strike."

I could tell by the tone in which he spoke that he took in every inch of
our peril, and trembled, not for himself, but for some one else.

The maiden was loth to quit her post; for she, too, knew the risk of it
and claimed it as her right. But when I told her the Captain had so
ordered, and required her at the helm, she obeyed without another word.

Then followed a quarter of an hour that seemed like a lifetime. As I
stood craning my neck forward, gazing under my hands seaward, there
crowded into my memory visions of all my past life. I seemed to see the
home of my boyhood, and looked again into my mother's face. And I stood
once more before my case in the shop outside Temple Bar, and listened to
Peter Stoupe humming his psalm-tune, and heard my types click into the
stick. I marched once more at the head of my clubs to Finsbury Fields,
and there I saw Captain Merriman--drat him