The Diamond Ship by Max Pemberton

_And Receive an Ultimatum from Them._

It is a human experience, I believe, that men's faculties often serve them best in moments of grave danger. In my own case, to be sure (but this may be a habit of the mind), I am often mastered by a strange lethargy during the hours of a common day. Events have been no other than a dreamy significance for me. I do not set them in a profitable sequence or take other than a general and an indifferent survey of that which is going on about me. But let a crisis of actual peril arrive and my mind is all awake, its judgment swift, its analysis rarely mistaken. Such a moment came to me upon the deck of the _White Wings_ when I discovered my little Joan at the taffrail of the Diamond Ship and knew that my errand had not been in vain. Instantly I detected the precise nature of the risk we ran and the causes which contributed to it. The situation, hitherto vague and objectless, became as plain as the simplest sum in a child's arithmetic book.