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212 He would liked to have reefed her entirely, but such a move was impossible as they wanted to get on. He had bared her as closely as he dared do already, so that they would not go fast even if the fair breeze did come, but in a storm they carried by far too much.

Dennis MacBride had his own kind of courage. He had been composed and cool enough when standing over the sleeping captain, with his knife ready for emergencies. He would have taken up his post in the gallery of a theatre or church with his explosive bomb in his hand, and risked his life with the others who were round him, and, by reason of his great strength and savage blood, rather courted a street row, and gloried in a fight.

But he was not a daring seaman, and would as likely as not lose his presence of mind if called to face a sudden conflict with the elements, while this cold poisoning appalled him not a little, although, like the women, he had aided in the preliminaries.

He had left these men robust and healthy, and, being of their own craft, with a certain feeling of comradeship, he had found them blue, livid and contorted corpses. If he had been awake and seen their death struggles he might have become used to the alteration, but, as it chanced, it was all too sudden and silent a change for even his iron nerves. The throwing of a bomb and the scattering of limbs fired his blood, for it looked like war. The stabbing of a traitor also was legitimate enough, for it was vengeance; but what class could this atrocity come under? He had not objected to it before it was done, but now that he had seen it, it frightened him, as did the doctor.

A large shower of falling meteors roused him from one of his short snatches of sleep, and for a long