with us, and are acquainted like me and you with Colonel Bishop.  If ye’re counting on pulling Bishop’s heartstrings, ye’re a bigger fool, Ogle, than I’ve always thought you was with anything but guns.  There’s no heaving to for such a matter as that unless you wants to make quite sure of our being sunk.  Though we had a cargo of Bishop’s nieces it wouldn’t make him hold his hand.  Why, as I was just telling his lordship here, who thought like you that having Miss Bishop aboard would make us safe, not for his mother would that filthy slaver forgo what’s due to him.  And if ye’ weren’t a fool, Ogle, you wouldn’t need me to tell you this.  We’ve got to fight, my lads....”

“How can we fight, man?” Ogle stormed at him, furiously battling the conviction which Wolverstone’s argument was imposing upon his listeners.  “You may be right, and you may be wrong.  We’ve got to chance it.  It’s our only chance....”

The rest of his words were drowned in the shouts of the hands insisting that the girl be given up to be held as a hostage.  And then louder than before roared a gun away to leeward, and away on their starboard beam they saw the spray flung up by the shot, which had gone wide.

“They are within range,” cried Ogle.  And leaning from the rail, “Put down the helm,” he commanded.

Pitt, at his post beside the helmsman, turned intrepidly to face the excited gunner.

“Since when have you commanded on the main deck, Ogle?  I take my orders from the Captain.”

“You’ll take this order from me, or, by God, you’ll....”

“Wait!” Blood bade him, interrupting, and he set a restraining hand upon the gunner’s arm.  “There is, I think, a better way.”

He looked over his shoulder, aft, at the advancing ships, the foremost of which was now a bare quarter of a mile away.  His glance swept in passing over Miss Bishop and Lord Julian standing side by side some paces behind him.  He observed her pale and tense, with parted lips and startled eyes that were fixed upon him, an anxious witness of this deciding of her fate.  He was thinking swiftly, reckoning the chances if by pistolling Ogle he were to provoke a mutiny.  That some of the men would rally to him, he was sure.  But he was no less sure that the main body would oppose him, and prevail in spite of all that he could do, taking the chance that holding Miss Bishop to ransom seemed to afford them.  And if they did that, one way or the other, Miss Bishop would be lost.  For even if Bishop yielded to their demand, they would retain her as a hostage.

Meanwhile Ogle was growing impatient.  His arm still gripped by Blood, he thrust his face into the Captain’s.

“What better way?” he demanded.  “There is none better.  I’ll not be bubbled by what Wolverstone has said.  He may be right, and he may be wrong.  We’ll test it.  It’s our only chance, I’ve said, and we must take it.”