When Foy and his party started down the canal in the boat Ramiro knew that his opportunity had come, and at once unmoored the big ship and followed.  The attempted stabbing of Foy was not done by his orders, as he wished the party to go unmolested and to be kept in sight.  That was a piece of private malice on the part of Black Meg, for it was she who was dressed as a man.  On various occasions in Leyden Foy had made remarks upon Meg’s character which she resented, and about her personal appearance, which she resented much more, and this was an attempt to pay off old scores that in the issue cost her a finger, a good knife, and a gold ring which had associations connected with her youth.

At first everything had gone well.  By one of the most daring and masterly manoeuvres that Ramiro had ever seen in his long and varied experience upon the seas, the little Swallow, with her crew of three men, had run the gauntlet of the fort which was warned and waiting for her; had sunk and sailed through the big Government boat and her crew of lubberly soldiers, many of whom, he was glad to reflect, were drowned; had crushed the officer, against whom he had a personal grudge, like an egg-shell, and won through to the open sea.  There he thought he was sure of her, for he took it for granted that she would run for the Norfolk coast, and knew that in the gale of wind which was blowing his larger and well-manned vessel could pull her down.  But then the ill-luck—­that ancient ill-luck which always dogged him when he began to interfere with the affairs of Lysbeth and her relatives—­declared itself.

Instead of attempting to cross the North Sea the little Swallow hugged the coast, where, for various nautical reasons connected with the wind, the water, and the build of their respective ships, she had the legs of him.  Next he lost her in the gut, and after that we know what happened.  There was no disguising it; it was a most dreadful fiasco.  To have one’s vessel boarded, the expensive vessel in which so large a proportion of the gains of his honourable company had been invested, not only boarded, but fired, and the watchman stabbed by a single naked devil of unknown sex or character was bad enough.  And then the end of it!

To have found the gold-laden ship, to have been gulled into attacking her, and—­and—­oh! he could scarcely bear to think of it!  There was but one consolation.  Although too late to save the others, even through the mist he had seen that wisp of smoke rising from the hold; yes, he, the experienced, had smelt a rat, and, warned by some half-divine intuition, had kept his distance with the result that he was still alive.