"There is, I think, a better way." He looked over his shoulder, aft, at the advancing ships, the foremost of which was now a bare quarter of a mile away.

His glance swept in passing over Miss Bishop and Lord Julian standing side by side some paces behind him.

He observed her pale and tense, with parted lips and startled eyes that were fixed upon him, an anxious witness of this deciding of her fate.

He was thinking swiftly, reckoning the chances if by pistolling Ogle he were to provoke a mutiny.

That some of the men would rally to him, he was sure.