knew that cannon had an obvious sound which would give his secret away to the weakest mind.  Certainly luck had befriended him, and when it did so no longer he made out of the occasion all that could be made; for instance while the wind held good he had never missed opportunities to revictual, if he passed by a village its pigs and poultry were his, and whenever he passed by water he filled his tanks to the brim, and now that he could only do two knots he sailed all night with a man and a lantern before him:  thus in that week he did close on four hundred miles while another man would have anchored at night and have missed five or six hours out of the twenty-four.  Yet his men murmured.  Did he think the wind would last for ever, they said.  And Shard only smoked.  It was clear that he was thinking, and thinking hard.  “But what is he thinking about?” said Bill to Bad Jack.  And Bad Jack answered:  “He may think as hard as he likes but thinking won’t get us out of the Sahara if this wind were to drop.”

And towards the end of that week Shard went to his chart-room and laid a new course for his ship a little to the East and towards cultivation.  And one day towards evening they sighted a village, and twilight came and the wind dropped altogether.  Then the murmurs of the merry men grew to oaths and nearly to mutiny.  “Where were they now?” they asked, and were they being treated like poor honest men?

Shard quieted them by asking what they wished to do themselves and when no one had any better plan than going to the villagers and saying that they had been blown out of their course by a storm, Shard unfolded his scheme to them.  Long ago he had heard how they drove carts with oxen in Africa, oxen were very numerous in these parts wherever there was any cultivation, and for this reason when the wind had begun to drop he had laid his course for the village:  that night the moment it was dark they were to drive off fifty yoke of oxen; by midnight they must all be yoked to the bows and then away they would go at a good round gallop.

So fine a plan as this astonished the men and they all apologised for their want of faith in Shard, shaking hands with him every one and spitting on their hands before they did so in token of good will.

The raid that night succeeded admirably, but ingenious as Shard was on land, and a past-master at sea, yet it must be admitted that lack of experience in this class of seamanship led him to make a mistake, a slight one it is true, and one that a little practice would have prevented altogether:  the oxen could not gallop.  Shard swore at them, threatened them with his pistol, said they should have no food, and all to no avail:  that night and as long as they pulled the bad ship Desperate Lark they did one knot an hour and no more.  Shard’s failures like everything that came his way were used as stones in the edifice of his future success, he went at once to his chart-room and worked out all his calculations anew.