Copley Banks and Sharkey were left face to face, the one because he had drunk the least, the other because no amount of liquor would ever shake his iron nerve or warm his sluggish blood.  Behind him stood the watchful steward, for ever filling up his waning glass.  From without came the low lapping of the tide, and from over the water a sailor’s chanty from the barque.  In the windless tropical night the words came clearly to their ears:—­

     A trader sailed from Stepney Town,
   Wake her up!  Shake her up!  Try her with the mainsail! 
     A trader sailed from Stepney Town
   With a keg full of gold and a velvet gown. 
     Ho, the bully Rover Jack,
   Waiting with his yard aback
     Out upon the Lowland Sea.

The two boon companions sat listening in silence.  Then Copley Banks glanced at the steward, and the man took a coil of rope from the shot-rack behind him.

“Captain Sharkey,” said Copley Banks, “do you remember the Duchess of Cornwall, hailing from London, which you took and sank three years ago off the Statira Shoal?”

“Curse me if I can bear their names in mind,” said Sharkey.  “We did as many as ten ships a week about that time.”

“There were a mother and two sons among the passengers.  Maybe that will bring it back to your mind.”

Captain Sharkey leant back in thought, with his huge thin beak of a nose jutting upwards.  Then he burst suddenly into a high treble, neighing laugh.  He remembered it, he said, and he added details to prove it.  “But burn me if it had not slipped from my mind!” he cried.  “How came you to think of it?”

“It was of interest to me,” said Copley Banks, “for the woman was my wife, and the lads were my only sons.”

Sharkey stared across at his companion, and saw that the smouldering fire which lurked always in his eyes had burned up into a lurid flame.  He read their menace, and he clapped his hands to his empty belt.  Then he turned to seize a weapon, but the bight of a rope was cast round him, and in an instant his arms were bound to his side.  He fought like a wild cat, and screamed for help.  “Ned!” he yelled.  “Ned!  Wake up!  Here’s damned villainy!  Help, Ned!—­help!”

But the three men were far too deeply sunk in their swinish sleep for any voice to wake them.  Round and round went the rope, until Sharkey was swathed like a mummy from ankle to neck.  They propped him stiff and helpless against a powder barrel, and they gagged him with a handkerchief, but his filmy, red-rimmed eyes still looked curses at them.  The dumb man chattered in his exultation, and Sharkey winced for the first time when he saw the empty mouth before him.  He understood that vengeance, slow and patient, had dogged him long, and clutched him at last.