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which by the grace of Divine Providence wrought such ruin in the stranger’s running gear that the one crew of rascals was enabled to escape fit retribution at the hands of the other. The peak of her great foresail fell and in a moment her cut halyards were swept into a snarl that needed time and daylight for untangling.

So the Rose of Devon slipped past the ketch, whose men were striving to clear the rigging and come about in pursuit, and having once evaded her erstwhile chase, the old ship ran away in the night. With her lights out and all the sail spread that she could carry, and favoured by clouds and fog, she made good her escape; but there was grumbling forward and grumbling aft, and there was a dead man to heave over the side.

It served Philip Marsham better than he knew that he had fought a duel on the yardarm; for dark though the night had been, there had happened little that escaped the Old One’s eye; and bitter though Tom Jordan’s temper and angry his mood, he was always one to give credit where he believed it due.

When he wiped the blood from the dirk, Phil remembered with gratitude the good smith, Colin Samson. Then he thought of the old lady and gentleman at the inn, and of Nell Entick, and bluff Sir John. He would have been glad enough to be out of the Rose of Devon and away, but for better or worse he had cast his lot in the ship, and though he little liked the lawless turn her affairs had taken, a man cannot run away by night from a ship on the high seas.

All hands stood watch till dawn as a tribute to the war of one pirate upon another, and not until the sun had risen and shown no sail in sight did the Old One himself go into the great cabin.