“No matter for that,” says Captain Manly, very sternly.  “Go to your cabin, as I bid you, and stay there till I tell you to come out again, and when we get to New York I’ll take pains to inform your step-father of how you have behaved.  I’ll have no such rioting as this aboard my ship.”

By this time, as you may suppose, the young lady was gone.  As for Sir John Malyoe, he stood in the light of a lantern, his face that had been so red now gone as white as ashes, and if a look could kill, to be sure he would have destroyed Barnaby True where he stood.

It was thus that the events of that memorable day came to a conclusion.  How little did any of the actors of the scene suspect that a portentous Fate was overhanging them, and was so soon to transform all their present circumstances into others that were to be perfectly different!

And how little did our hero suspect what was in store for him upon the morrow, as with hanging head he went to his cabin, and shutting the door upon himself, and flinging himself down upon his berth, there yielded himself over to the profoundest depths of humiliation and despair.

V

From his melancholy meditations Barnaby, by-and-by and in spite of himself, began dropping off into a loose slumber, disturbed by extravagant dreams of all sorts, in which Sir John Malyoe played some important and malignant part.

From one of these dreams he was aroused to meet a new and startling fate, by hearing the sudden and violent explosion of a pistol-shot ring out as though in his ears.  This was followed immediately by the sound of several other shots exchanged in rapid succession as coming from the deck above.  At the same instant a blow of such excessive violence shook the Belle Helen that the vessel heeled over before it, and Barnaby was at once aware that another craft—­whether by accident or with intention he did not know—­must have run afoul of them.

Upon this point, and as to whether or not the collision was designed, he was, however, not left a moment in doubt, for even as the Belle Helen righted to her true keel, there was the sound of many footsteps running across the deck and down into the great cabin.  Then proceeded a prodigious uproar of voices, together with the struggling of men’s bodies being tossed about, striking violently against the partitions and bulkheads.  At the same instant arose a screaming of women’s voices, and one voice, that of Sir John Malyoe, crying out as in the greatest extremity:  “You villains!  You damned villains!” and with that the sudden detonation of a pistol fired into the close space of the great cabin.