But, after all, it was not necessary. The key was to be found, and very soon.



CHAPTER X

"THAT'S MUTINY"

Exactly what occurred during Elsa Lee's visit to her brother-in-law's cabin I have never learned. He was sober, I know, and somewhat dazed, with no recollection whatever of the previous night, except a hazy idea that he had quarreled with Richardson.

Jones and I waited outside. He suggested that we have prayers over the bodies when we placed them in the boat, and I agreed to read the burial service from the Episcopal Prayer Book. The voices from Turner's cabin came steadily, Miss Lee's low tones, Turner's heavy bass only now and then. Once I heard her give a startled exclamation, and both Jones and I leaped to the door. But the next moment she was talking again quietly.

Ten minutes—fifteen—passed. I grew restless and took to wandering about the cabin. Mrs. Johns came to the door opposite, and asked to have tea sent down to the stewardess. I called the request up the companionway, unwilling to leave the cabin for a moment. When I came back, Jones was standing at the door of Vail's cabin, looking in. His face was pale.

"Look there!" he said hoarsely. "Look at the bell. He must have tried to push the button!"

I stared in. Williams had put the cabin to rights, as nearly as he could. The soaked mattress was gone, and a clean linen sheet was spread over the bunk. Poor Vail's clothing, as he had taken it off the night before, hung on a mahogany stand beside the bed, and above, almost concealed by his coat, was the bell. Jones's eyes were fixed on the darkish smear, over and around the bell, on the white paint.

I measured the height of the bell from the bed. It was well above, and to one side—a smear rather than a print, too indeterminate to be of any value, sinister, cruel.

"He didn't do that, Charlie," I said. "He couldn't have got up to it after—That is the murderer's mark. He leaned there, one hand against the wall, to look down at his work. And, without knowing it, he pressed the button that roused the two women."

He had not heard the story of Henrietta Sloane, and, as we waited, I told him. Some of the tension was relaxing. He tried, in his argumentative German way, to drag me into a discussion as to the foreordination of a death that resulted from an accidental ringing of a bell. But my ears were alert for the voices near by, and soon Miss Lee opened the door.

Turner was sitting on his bunk. He had made an attempt to shave, and had cut his chin severely. He was in a dressing-gown, and was holding a handkerchief to his face; he peered at me over it with red-rimmed eyes.

"This—this is horrible, Leslie," he said. "I can hardly believe it."

"It is true, Mr. Turner."

He took the handkerchief away and looked to see if the bleeding had stopped. I believe he intended to impress us both with his coolness, but it was an unfortunate attempt. His lips, relieved of the pressure, were twitching; his nerveless fingers could hardly refold the handkerchief.

"Wh-why was I not—called at once?" he demanded.

"I notified you. You were—you must have gone to sleep again."

"I don't believe you called me. You're—lying, aren't you?" He got up, steadying himself by the wall, and swaying dizzily to the motion of the ship. "You shut me off down here, and then run things your own damned way." He turned on Miss Lee. "Where's Helen?"

"In her room, Marsh. She has one of her headaches. Please don't disturb her."

"Where's Williams?" He turned to me.

"I can get him for you."

"Tell him to bring me a highball. My mouth's sticky." He ran his tongue over his dry lips. "And—take a message from me to Richardson—" He stopped, startled. Indeed, Miss Lee and I had both started. "To who's running the boat, anyhow? Singleton?"

"Mr. Singleton is a prisoner in the forward house," I said gravely.

The effect of this was astonishing. He stared at us both, and, finding corroboration in Miss Lee's face, his own took on an instant expression of relief. He dropped to the side of the bed, and his color came slowly back. He even smiled—a crafty grin that was inexpressibly horrible.

"Singleton!" he said. "Why do they—how do they know it was he?"

"He had quarreled with the captain last night, and he was on duty at the time of the when the thing happened. The man at the wheel claims to have seen him in the chartroom just before, and there was other evidence, I believe. The lookout saw him forward, with something—possibly the axe. Not decisive, of course, but enough to justify putting him in irons. Somebody did it, and the murderer is on board, Mr. Turner."

His grin had faded, but the crafty look in his pale-blue eyes remained.

"The chart-room was dark. How could the steersman—" He checked himself abruptly, and looked at us both quickly. "Where are—they?" he asked in a different tone.

"On deck."

"We can't keep them in this weather."

"We must," I said. "We will have to get to the nearest port as quickly as we can, and surrender ourselves and the bodies. This thing will have to be sifted to the bottom, Mr. Turner. The innocent must not suffer for the guilty, and every one on the ship is under suspicion."

He fell into a passion at that, insisting that the bodies be buried at once, asserting his ownership of the vessel as his authority, demanding to know what I, a forecastle hand, had to say about it, flinging up and down the small room, showering me with invective and threats, and shoving Miss Lee aside when she laid a calming hand on his arm. The cut on his chin was bleeding again, adding to his wild and sinister expression. He ended by demanding Williams.

I opened the door and called to Charlie Jones to send the butler, and stood by, waiting for the fresh explosion that was coming. Williams shakily confessed that there was no whiskey on board.

"Where is it?" Turner thundered.

Williams looked at me. He was in a state of inarticulate fright.

"I ordered it overboard," I said.

Turner whirled on me, incredulity and rage in his face.

"You!"

I put the best face I could on the matter, and eyed him steadily. "There has been too much drinking on this ship," I said. "If you doubt it, go up and look at the three bodies on the deck."

"What have you to do about it?" His eyes were narrowed; there was menace in every line of his face.

"With Schwartz gone, Captain Richardson dead, and Singleton in irons, the crew had no officers. They asked me to take charge."

"So! And you used your authority to meddle with what does not concern you The ship has an officer while I am on it. And there will be no mutiny."

He flung into the main cabin, and made for the forward companionway. I stepped back to allow Miss Lee to precede me. She was standing, her back to the dressing-stand, facing the door. She looked at me and made a helpless gesture with her hands, as if the situation were beyond her. Then I saw her look down. She took a quick step or two toward the door, and, stooping picked up some small object from almost under my foot. The incident would have passed without notice, had she not, in attempting to wrap it in her handkerchief, dropped it. I saw then that it was a key.

"Let me get it for you," I said. To my amazement, she put her foot over it.

"Please see what Mr. Turner is doing," she said. "It is the key to my jewel-case."

"Will you let me see it?"

"No."

"It is not the key to a jewel-case."

"It does not concern you what it is."

"It is the key to the storeroom door."

"You are stronger than I am. You look the brute. You can knock me away and get it."

I knew then, of course, that it was the storeroom key. But I could not take it by force. And so defiantly she faced me, so valiant was every line of her slight figure, that I was ashamed of my impulse to push her aside and take it. I loved her with every inch of my overgrown body, and I did the thing she knew I would do. I bowed and left the cabin. But I had no intention of losing the key. I could not take it by force, but she knew as well as I did what finding it there in Turner's room meant. Turner had locked me in. But I must be able to prove it—my wits against hers, and the advantage mine. I had the women under guard.

I went up on deck.

A curious spectacle revealed itself. Turner, purple with anger, was haranguing the men, who stood amidships, huddled together, but grim and determined withal. Burns, a little apart from the rest, was standing, sullen, his arms folded. As Turner ceased, he took a step forward.

"You are right, Mr. Turner," he said. "It's your ship, and it's up to you to say where she goes and how she goes, sir. But some one will hang for this, Mr. Turner,—some one that's on this deck now; and the bodies are going back with us—likewise the axe. There ain't going to be a mistake—the right man is going to swing."

"That's mutiny!"

"Yes, sir," Burns acknowledged, his face paling a little. "I guess you could call it that."

Turner swung on his heel and went below, where Jones, relieved of guard duty by Burns, reported him locked in his room, refusing admission to his wife and Miss Lee, both of whom had knocked on the door.

The trouble with Turner added to the general misery of the situation. Burns got our position at noon with more or less exactness, and the general working of the Ella went on well enough. But the situation was indescribable. Men started if a penknife dropped, and swore if a sail flapped. The call of the boatswain's pipe rasped their ears, and the preparation for stowing the bodies in the jolly-boat left them unnerved and sick. Some sort of a meal was cooked, but no one could eat; Williams brought up, untasted, the luncheon he had carried down to the after house.

At two o'clock all hands gathered amidships, and the bodies were carried forward to where the boat, lowered in its davits and braced, lay on the deck. It had been lined with canvas and tarpaulin, and a cover of similar material lay ready to be nailed in place. All the men were bareheaded. Many were in tears. Miss Lee came forward with us, and it was from her prayer-book that I, too moved for self-consciousness, read the burial-service.

"I am the resurrection and the life," I read huskily.

The figures at my feet, in their canvas shrouds, rolled gently with the rocking of the ship; the sun beat down on the decks, on the bare heads of the men, on the gilt edges of the prayer-book, gleaming in the light, on the last of the land-birds, drooping in the heat on the main cross-trees.

"... For man walketh in a vain shadow," I read, "and disquieteth himself in vain....

"O spare me a little, that I may recover my strength: before I go hence, and be no more seen."



CHAPTER XI

THE DEAD LINE

Mrs. Johns and the stewardess came up late in the afternoon. We had railed off a part of the deck around the forward companionway for them, and none of the crew except the man on guard was allowed inside the ropes. After a consultation, finding the ship very short-handed, and unwilling with the night coming on to trust any of the men, Burns and I decided to take over this duty ourselves, and, by stationing ourselves at the top of the companionway, to combine the duties of officer on watch and guard of the after house. To make the women doubly secure, we had Oleson nail all the windows closed, although they were merely portholes. Jones was no longer on guard below, and I had exchanged Singleton's worthless revolver for my own serviceable one.

Mrs. Johns, carefully dressed, surveyed the railed-off deck with raised eyebrows.

"For—us?" she asked, looking at me. The men were gathered about the wheel aft, and were out of ear-shot. Mrs. Sloane had dropped into a steamer-chair, and was lying back with closed eyes.

"Yes, Mrs. Johns."

"Where have you put them?"

I pointed to where the jolly-boat, on the port side of the ship, swung on its davits.

"And the mate, Mr. Singleton?"

"He is in the forward house."

"What did you do with the—the weapon?"

"Why do you ask that?"

"Morbid curiosity," she said, with a lightness of tone that rang false to my ears. "And then—naturally, I should like to be sure that it is safely overboard, so it will not be"—she shivered—"used again."

"It is not overboard, Mrs. Johns," I said gravely. "It is locked in a safe place, where it will remain until the police come to take it."

"You are rather theatrical, aren't you?" she scoffed, and turned away. But a second later she came back to me, and put her hand on my arm. "Tell me where it is," she begged. "You are making a mystery of it, and I detest mysteries."

I saw under her mask of lightness then: she wanted desperately to know where the axe was. Her eyes fell, under my gaze.

"I am sorry. There is no mystery. It is simply locked away for safe-keeping."

She bit her lip.

"Do you know what I think?" she said slowly. "I think you have hypnotized the crew, as you did me—at first. Why has no one remembered that you were in the after house last night, that you found poor Wilmer Vail, that you raised the alarm, that you discovered the captain and Karen? Why should I not call the men here and remind them of all that?"

"I do not believe you will. They know I was locked in the storeroom. The door—the lock—"

"You could have locked yourself in."

"You do not know what you are saying!"

But I had angered her, and she went on cruelly:—

"Who are you, anyhow? You are not a sailor. You came here and were taken on because you told a hard-luck story. How do we know that you came from a hospital? Men just out of prison look as you did. Do you know what we called you, the first two days out? We called you Elsa's jail-bird And now, because you have dominated the crew, we are in your hands!"

"Do Mrs. Turner and Miss Lee think that?"

"They feel as I do. This is a picked crew men the Turner line has employed for years."

"You are very brave, Mrs. Johns," I said. "If I were what you think I am, I would be a dangerous enemy."

"I am not afraid of you."

I thought fast. She was right. It had not occurred to me before, but it swept over me overwhelmingly.

"You are leaving me only one thing to do," I said. "I shall surrender myself to the men at once." I took out my revolver and held it out to her. "This rope is a dead-line. The crew know, and you will have no trouble; but you must stand guard here until some one else is sent."

She took the revolver without a word, and, somewhat dazed by this new turn of events, I went aft. The men were gathered there, and I surrendered myself. They listened in silence while I told them the situation. Burns, who had been trying to sleep, sat up and stared at me incredulously.

"It will leave you pretty short-handed, boys," I finished, "but you'd better fasten me up somewhere. But I want to be sure of one thing first: whatever happens, keep the guard for the women."

"We'd like to talk it over, Leslie," Burns said, after a word with the others.

I went forward a few feet, taking care to remain where they could see me, and very soon they called me. There had been a dispute, I believe. Adams and McNamara stood off from the others, their faces not unfriendly, but clearly differing from the decision. Charlie Jones, who, by reason of long service and a sort of pious control he had in the forecastle, was generally spokesman for the crew, took a step or two toward me.

"We'll not do it, boy," he said. "We think we know a man when we see one, as well as having occasion to know that you're white all through. And we're not inclined to set the talk of women against what we think best to do. So you stick to your job, and we're back of you."

In spite of myself, I choked up. I tried to tell them what their loyalty meant to me; but I could only hold out my hand, and, one by one, they came up and shook it solemnly.

"We think," McNamara said, when, last of all, he and Adams came up, "that it would be best, lad, if we put down in the log-book all that has happened last night and to-day, and this just now, too. It's fresh in our minds now, and it will be something to go by."

So Burns and I got the log-book from the captain's cabin. The axe was there, where we had placed it earlier in the day, lying on the white cover of the bed. The room was untouched, as the dead man had left it—a collar on the stand, brushes put down hastily, a half-smoked cigar which had burned a long scar on the wood before it had gone out. We went out silently, Burns carrying the book, I locking the door behind us.

Mrs. Johns, sitting near the companionway with the revolver on her knee, looked up and eyed me coolly.

"So they would not do it!"

"I am sorry to disappoint you—they would not."

She held up my revolver to me, and smiled cynically.

"Remember," she said, "I only said you were a possibility."

"Thank you; I shall remember."

By unanimous consent, the task of putting down what had happened was given to me. I have a copy of the log-book before me now, the one that was used at the trial. The men read it through before they signed it.

August thirteenth.

This morning, between two-thirty and three o'clock, three murders were committed on the yacht Ella. At the request of Mrs. Johns, one of the party on board, I had moved to the after house to sleep, putting my blanket and pillow in the storeroom and sleeping on the floor there. Mrs. Johns gave, as her reason, a fear of something going wrong, as there was trouble between Mr. Turner and the captain. I slept with a revolver beside me and with the door of the storeroom open.

At some time shortly before three o'clock I wakened with a feeling of suffocation, and found that the door was closed and locked on the outside. I suspected a joke among the crew, and set to work with my pen-knife to unscrew the lock. When I had two screws out, a woman screamed, and I broke down the door.

As the main cabin was dark, I saw no one and could not tell where the cry came from. I ran into Mr. Vail's cabin, next the storeroom, and called him. His door was standing open. I heard him breathing heavily. Then the breathing stopped. I struck a match, and found him dead. His head had been crushed in with an axe, the left hand cut off, and there were gashes on the right shoulder and the abdomen.

I knew the helmsman would be at the wheel, and ran up the after companionway to him and told him. Then I ran forward and called the first mate, Mr. Singleton, who was on duty. He had been drinking. I asked him to call the captain, but he did not. He got his revolver, and we hurried down the forward companion. The body of the captain was lying at the foot of the steps, his head on the lowest stair. He had been killed like Mr. Vail. His cap had been placed over his face.

The mate collapsed on the steps. I found the light switch and turned it on. There was no one in the cabin or in the chart-room. I ran to Mr. Turner's room, going through Mr. Vail's and through the bathroom. Mr. Turner was in bed, fully dressed. I could not rouse him. Like the mate, he had been drinking.

The mate had roused the crew, and they gathered in the chart-room. I told them what had happened, and that the murderer must be among us. I suggested that they stay together, and that they submit to being searched for weapons.

They went on deck in a body, and I roused the women and told them. Mrs. Turner asked me to tell the two maids, who slept in a cabin off the chartroom. I found their door unlocked, and, receiving no answer, opened it. Karen Hansen, the lady's-maid, was on the floor, dead, with her skull crushed in. The stewardess, Henrietta Sloane, was fainting in her bunk. An axe had been hurled through the doorway as the Hansen woman fell, and was found in the stewardess's bunk.

Dawn coming by that time, I suggested a guard at the two companionways, and this was done. The men were searched and all weapons taken from them. Mr. Singleton was under suspicion, it being known that he had threatened the captain's life, and Oleson, a lookout, claiming to have seen him forward where the axe was kept.

The crew insisted that Singleton be put in irons. He made no objection, and we locked him in his own room in the forward house. Owing to the loss of Schwartz, the second mate, already recorded in this log-book (see entry for August ninth), the death of the captain, and the imprisonment of the first mate, the ship was left without officers. Until Mr. Turner could make an arrangement, the crew nominated Burns, one of themselves, as mate, and asked me to assume command. I protested that I knew nothing of navigation, but agreed on its being represented that, as I was not one of them, there could be ill feeling.

The ship was searched, on the possibility of finding a stowaway in the hold. But nothing was found. I divided the men into two watches, Burns taking one and I the other. We nailed up the after companionway, and forbade any member of the crew to enter the after house. The forecastle was also locked, the men bringing their belongings on deck. The stewardess recovered and told her story, which, in her own writing, will be added to this record.

The bodies of the dead were brought on deck and sewed into canvas, and later, with appropriate services, placed in the jolly-boat, it being the intention, later on, to tow the boat behind us. Mr. Turner insisted that the bodies be buried at sea, and, on the crew opposing this, retired to his cabin, announcing that he considered the position of the men a mutiny.

Some feeling having arisen among the women of the party that I might know more of the crimes than was generally supposed, having been in the after house at the time they were committed, and having no references, I this afternoon voluntarily surrendered myself to Burns, acting first mate. The men, however, refused to accept this surrender, only two, Adams and McNamara, favoring it. I expect to give myself up to the police at the nearest port, until the matter is thoroughly probed.

The axe is locked in the captain's cabin.

(Signed) RALPH LESLIE. John Robert Burns Charles Klineordlinger (Jones) William McNamara Witnesses Carl L. Clarke Joseph Q. Adams John Oleson Tom MacKenzie Obadiah Williams



CHAPTER XII

THE FIRST MATE TALKS

Williams came up on deck late that afternoon, with a scared face, and announced that Mr. Turner had locked himself in his cabin, and was raving in delirium on the other side of the door. I sent Burns down having decided, in view of Mrs. Johns's accusation, to keep away from the living quarters of the family. Burns's report corroborated what Williams had said. Turner was in the grip of delirium tremens, and the Ella was without owner or officers.

Turner refused to open either door for us. As well as we could make out, he was moving rapidly but almost noiselessly up and down the room, muttering to himself, now and then throwing himself on the bed, only to get up at once. He rang his bell a dozen times, and summoned Williams, only, in reply to the butler's palpitating knock, to stand beyond the door and refuse to open it or to voice any request. The situation became so urgent that finally I was forced to go down, with no better success.

Mrs. Turner dragged herself across, on the state of affairs being reported to her, and, after two or three abortive attempts, succeeded in getting a reply from him.

"Marsh!" she called. "I want to talk to you. Let me in."

"They'll get us," he said craftily.

"Us? Who is with you?"

"Vail," he replied promptly. "He's here talking. He won't let me sleep."

"Tell him to give you the key and you will keep it for him so no one can get him," I prompted. I had had some experience with such cases in the hospital.

She tried it without any particular hope, but it succeeded immediately. He pushed the key out under the door, and almost at once we heard him throw himself on the bed, as if satisfied that the problem of his security was solved.

Mrs. Turner held the key out to me, but I would not take it.

"Give it to Williams," I said. "You must understand, Mrs. Turner, that I cannot take it."

She was a woman of few words, and after a glance at my determined face she turned to the butler.

"You will have to look after Mr. Turner, Williams. See that he is comfortable, and try to keep him in bed."

Williams put out a trembling hand, but, before he took the key, Turner's voice rose petulantly on the other side of the door.

"For God's sake, Wilmer," he cried plaintively, "get out and let me sleep I haven't slept for a month."

Williams gave a whoop of fear, and ran out of the cabin, crying that the ship was haunted and that Vail had come back. From that moment, I believe, the after house was the safest spot on the ship. To my knowledge, no member of the crew so much as passed it on the starboard side, where Vail's and Turner's cabins were situated. It was the one good turn the owner of the Ella did us on that hideous return journey; for, during most of the sixteen days that it took us to get back, he lay in his cabin, alternating the wild frenzy of delirium tremens with quieter moments when he glared at us with crafty, murderous eyes, and picked incessantly at the bandages that tied him down. Not an instant did he sleep, that we could discover; and always, day or night, Vail was with him, and they were quarreling. The four women took care of him as best they could. For a time they gave him the bromides I prepared, taking my medical knowledge without question. In the horror of the situation, curiosity had no place, and class distinctions were forgotten. That great leveler, a common trouble, put Henrietta Sloane, the stewardess, and the women of the party at the same table in the after house, where none ate, and placed the responsibility for the ship, although, I was nominally in command, on the shoulders of all the men. And there sprang up among them a sort of esprit de corps, curious under the circumstances, and partly explained, perhaps, by the belief that in imprisoning Singleton they had the murderer safely in hand. What they thought of Turner's possible connection with the crime, I do not know.

Personally, I was convinced that Turner was guilty. Perhaps, lulled into a false security by the incarceration of the two men, we unconsciously relaxed our vigilance. But by the first night the crew were somewhat calmer. Here and there a pipe was lighted, and a plug of tobacco went the rounds. The forecastle supper, served on deck, was eaten; and Charlie Jones, securing a permission that I thought it best to grant, went forward and painted a large black cross on the side of the jolly-boat, and below it the date, August 13, 1911. The crew watched in respectful silence.

The weather was in our favor, the wind on our quarter, a blue sky heaped with white cloud masses, with the sunset fringed with the deepest rose. The Ella made no great way, but sailed easily. Burns and I alternated at the forward companionway, and, although the men were divided into watches, the entire crew was on duty virtually all the time.

I find, on consulting the book in which I recorded, beginning with that day, the incidents of the return voyage, that two things happened that evening. One was my interview with Singleton; the other was my curious and depressing clash with Elsa Lee, on the deck that night.

Turner being quiet and Burns on watch at the beginning of the second dog watch, six o'clock, I went forward to the room where Singleton was imprisoned. Burns gave me the key, and advised me to take a weapon. I did not, however, nor was it needed.

The first mate was sitting on the edge of his bunk, in his attitude of the morning, his head in his hands. As I entered, he looked up and nodded. His color was still bad; he looked ill and nervous, as might have been expected after his condition the night before.

"For God's sake, Leslie," he said, "tell them to open the window. I'm choking!"

He was right: the room was stifling. I opened the door behind me, and stood in the doorway, against a rush for freedom. But he did not move. He sank back into his dejected attitude.

"Will you eat some soup, if I send it?"

He shook his head.

"Is there anything you care for?"

"Better let me starve; I'm gone, anyhow."

"Singleton," I said, "I wish you would tell me about last night. If you did it, we've got you. If you didn't, you'd better let me take your own account of what happened, while it's fresh in your mind. Or, better still, write it yourself."

He held out his right hand. I saw that it was shaking violently.

"Couldn't hold a pen," he said tersely. "Wouldn't be believed, anyhow."

The air being somewhat better, I closed and locked the door again, and, coming in, took out my notebook and pencil. He watched me craftily. "You can write it," he said, "if you'll give it to me to keep. I'm not going to put the rope around my own neck. If it's all right, my lawyers will use it. If it isn't—" He shrugged his shoulders.

I had never liked the man, and his tacit acknowledgment that he might incriminate himself made me eye him with shuddering distaste. But I took down his story, and reproduce it here, minus the technicalities and profanity with which it was interlarded.

Briefly, Singleton's watch began at midnight. The captain, who had been complaining of lumbago, had had the cook prepare him a mustard poultice, and had retired early. Burns was on watch from eight to twelve, and, on coming into the forward house at a quarter after eleven o'clock to eat his night lunch, reported to Singleton that the captain was in bed and that Mr. Turner had been asking for him. Singleton, therefore, took his cap and went on deck. This was about twenty minutes after eleven. He had had a drink or two earlier in the evening, and he took another in his cabin when he got his cap.

He found Turner in the chart-house, playing solitaire and drinking. He was alone, and he asked Singleton to join him. The first mate looked at his watch and accepted the invitation, but decided to look around the forward house to be sure the captain was asleep. He went on deck. He could hear Burns and the lookout talking. The forward house was dark. He listened outside the captain's door, and heard him breathing heavily, as if asleep. He stood there for a moment. He had an uneasy feeling that some one was watching him. He thought of Schwartz, and was uncomfortable. He did not feel the whiskey at all.

He struck a light and looked around. There was no one in sight. He could hear Charlie Jones in the forecastle drumming on his banjo, and Burns whistling the same tune as he went aft to strike the bell. (It was the duty of the officer on watch to strike the hour.) It was then half after eleven. As he passed the captain's door again, his foot struck something, and it fell to the floor. He was afraid the captain had been roused, and stood still until he heard him breathing regularly again. Then he stooped down. His foot had struck an axe upright against the captain's door, and had knocked it down.

The axe belonged on the outer wall of the forward house. It was a rule that it must not be removed from its place except in emergency, and the first mate carried it out and leaned it against the forward port corner of the after house when he went below. Later, on his watch, he carried it forward and put it where it belonged.

He found Turner waiting on deck, and together they descended to the chart-room. He was none too clear as to what followed. They drank together. Vail tried to get Turner to bed, and failed. He believed that Burns had called the captain. The captain had ordered him to the deck, and there had been a furious quarrel. He felt ill by that time, and, when he went on watch at midnight, Burns was uncertain about leaving him. He was not intoxicated, he maintained, until after half-past one. He was able to strike the bell without difficulty, and spoke, each time he went aft, to Charlie Jones, who was at the wheel.

After that, however, he suddenly felt strange. He thought he had been doped, and told the helmsman so. He asked Jones to strike the bell for him, and, going up on the forecastle head, lay down on the boards and fell asleep. He did not waken until he heard six bells struck—three o'clock. And, before he had fully roused, I had called him.

"Then," I said, "when the lookout saw you with the axe, you were replacing it?"

"Yes."

"The lookout says you were not on deck between two and three o'clock."

"How does he know? I was asleep."

"You had threatened to get the captain."

"I had a revolver; I didn't need to use an axe."

Much as I disliked the man, I was inclined to believe his story, although I thought he was keeping something back. I leaned forward.

"Singleton," I said, "if you didn't do it, and I want to think you did not,—who did?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"We have women aboard. We ought to know what precautions to take."

"I wasn't the only man on deck that night. Burns was about, and he had a quarrel with the Hansen woman. Jones was at the wheel, too. Why don't you lock up Jones?"

"We are all under suspicion," I admitted. "But you had threatened the captain."

"I never threatened the girl, or Mr. Vail."

I had no answer to this, and we both fell silent. Singleton was the first to speak:—

"How are you going to get back? The men can sail a course, but who is to lay it out? Turner? No Turner ever knew anything about a ship but what it made for him."

"Turner is sick. Look here, Singleton, you want to get back as much as we do, or more. Wouldn't you be willing to lay a course, if you were taken out once a day? Burns is doing it, but he doesn't pretend to know much about it, and—we have the bodies."

But he turned ugly again, and refused to help unless he was given his freedom, and that I knew the crew would not agree to.

"You'll be sick enough before you get back!" he snarled.



CHAPTER XIII

THE WHITE LIGHT

With the approach of night our vigilance was doubled. There was no thought of sleep among the crew, and, with the twilight, there was a distinct return of the terror of the morning.

Gathered around the wheel, the crew listened while Jones read evening prayer. Between the two houses, where the deck was roped off, Miss Lee was alone, pacing back and-forward, her head bent, her arms dropped listlessly.

The wind had gone, and the sails hung loose over our heads. I stood by the port rail. Although my back was toward Miss Lee, I was conscious of her every movement; and so I knew when she stooped under the rope and moved lightly toward the starboard rail.

Quick as she was, I was quicker. There was still light enough to see her face as she turned when I called to her:

"Miss Lee You must not leave the rope."

"Must not?"

"I am sorry to seem arbitrary. It is for your own safety."

I was crossing the deck toward her as I spoke. I knew what she was going to do. I believe, when she saw my face, that she read my knowledge in it. She turned back from the rail and faced me.

"Surely I may go to the rail!"

"It would be unwise, if for no other reason than discipline."

"Discipline! Are you trying to discipline me?"

"Miss Lee, you do not seem to understand," I said, as patiently as I could. "Just now I am in charge of the Ella. It does not matter how unfit I am—the fact remains. Nor does it concern me that your brother-in-law owns the ship. I am in charge of it, and, God willing, there will be no more crimes on it. You will go back to the part of the deck that is reserved for you, or you will go below and stay there."

She flushed with anger, and stood there with her head thrown back, eyeing me with a contempt that cut me to the quick. The next moment she wheeled and, raising her hand, flung toward the rail the key to the storeroom door. I caught her hand—too late.

But fate was on my side, after all. As I stood, still gripping her wrist, the key fell ringing almost at my feet. It had struck one of the lower yard braces. I stooped, and, picking it up, pocketed it.

She was dazed, I think. She made no effort to free her arm, but she put her other hand to her heart unexpectedly, and I saw that she was profoundly shocked. I led her, unprotesting, to a deck-chair, and put her down in it; and still she had not spoken: She lay back and closed her eyes. She was too strong to faint; she was superbly healthy. But she knew as well as I did what that key meant, and she had delivered it into my hands. As for me, I was driven hard that night; for, as I stood there looking down at her, she held out her hand to me, palm up.

"Please!" she said pleadingly. "What does it mean to you, Leslie? We were kind to you, weren't we? When you were ill, we took you on, my sister and I, and now you hate us."

"Hate you!"

"He didn't know what he was doing. He wasn't sane. No sane man kills—that way. He had a revolver, if he had wanted—Please give me that key!"

"Some one will suffer. Would you have the innocent suffer with the guilty?"

"If they cannot prove it against any one—"

"They may prove it against me."

"You!"

"I was in the after house," I said doggedly. "I was the one to raise an alarm and to find the bodies. You do not know anything about me. I am—'Elsa's jail-bird'!"

"Who told you that?"

"It does not matter—I know it. I told you the truth, Miss Elsa; I came here from the hospital. But I may have to fight for my life. Against the Turner money and influence, I have only—this key. Shall I give it to you?"

I held it out to her on the palm of my hand. It was melodramatic, probably; but I was very young, and by that time wildly in love with her. I thought, for a moment, that she would take it; but she only drew a deep breath and pushed my hand away.

"Keep it," she said. "I am ashamed."

We were silent after that, she staring out over the rail at the deepening sky; and, looking at her as one looks at a star, I thought she had forgotten my presence, so long she sat silent. The voices of the men aft died away gradually, as, one by one, they rolled themselves in blankets on the deck, not to sleep, but to rest and watch. The lookout, in his lonely perch high above the deck, called down guardedly to ask for company, and one of the crew went up.

When she turned to me again, it was to find my eyes fixed on her.

"You say you have neither money nor influence. And yet, you are a gentleman."

"I hope so."

"You know what I mean"—impatiently. "You are not a common sailor."

"I did not claim to be one."

"You are quite determined we shall not know anything about you?"

"There is nothing to know. I have given you my name, which is practically all I own in the world. I needed a chance to recover from an illness, and I was obliged to work. This offered the best opportunity to combine both."

"You are not getting much chance—to rest," she said, with a sigh, and got up. I went with her to the companionway, and opened the door. She turned and looked at me.

"Good-night."

"Good-night, Miss Lee."

"I—I feel very safe with you on guard," she said, and held out her hand. I took it in mine, with my heart leaping. It was as cold as ice.

That night, at four bells, I mustered the crew as silently as possible around the jollyboat, and we lowered it into the water. The possibility of a dead calm had convinced me that the sooner it was done the better. We arranged to tow the boat astern, and Charlie Jones suggested a white light in its bow, so we could be sure at night that it had not broken loose.

Accordingly, we attached to the bow of the jolly-boat a tailed block with an endless fall riven through it, so as to be able to haul in and refill the lantern. Five bells struck by the time we had arranged the towing-line.

We dropped the jolly-boat astern and made fast the rope. It gave me a curious feeling, that small boat rising and falling behind us, with its dead crew, and its rocking light, and, on its side above the water-line, the black cross—a curious feeling of pursuit, as if, across the water, they in the boat were following us. And, perhaps because the light varied, sometimes it seemed to drop behind, as if wearying of the chase, and again, in great leaps, to be overtaking us, to be almost upon us.

An open boat with a small white light and a black cross on the side.



CHAPTER XIV

FROM THE CROW'S NEST

The night passed without incident, except for one thing that we were unable to verify. At six bells, during the darkest hour of the night that precedes the early dawn of summer, Adams, from the crow's-nest, called down, in a panic, that there was something crawling on all fours on the deck below him.

Burns, on watch at the companionway, ran forward with his revolver, and narrowly escaped being brained—Adams at that moment flinging down a marlinespike that he had carried aloft with him.

I heard the crash and joined Burns, and together we went over the deck and, both houses. Everything was quiet: the crew in various attitudes of exhausted sleep, their chests and dittybags around them; Oleson at the wheel; and Singleton in his jail-room, breathing heavily.

Adams's nerve was completely gone, and, being now thoroughly awake, I joined him in the crow's-nest. Nothing could convince him that he had been the victim of a nervous hallucination. He stuck to his story firmly.

"It was on the forecastle-head first," he maintained. "I saw it gleaming."

"Gleaming?"

"Sort of shining," he explained. "It came up over the rail, and at first it stood up tall, like a white post."

"You didn't say before that it was white."

"It was shining," he said slowly, trying to put his idea into words. "Maybe not exactly white, but light-colored. It stood still for so long, I thought I must be mistaken—that it was a light on the rigging. Then I got to thinking that there wasn't no place for a light to come from just there."

That was true enough.

"First it was as tall as a man, or taller maybe," he went on. "Then it seemed about half that high and still in the same place. Then it got lower still, and it took to crawling along on its belly. It was then I yelled."

I looked down. The green starboard light threw a light over only a small part of the deck. The red light did no better. The masthead was possibly thirty feet above the hull, and served no illuminating purpose whatever. From the bridge forward the deck was practically dark.

"You yelled, and then what happened?"

His reply was vague—troubled.

"I'm not sure," he said slowly. "It seemed to fade away. The white got smaller—went to nothing, like a cloud blown away in a gale. I flung the spike."

I accepted the story with outward belief and a mental reservation. But I did not relish the idea of the spike Adams had thrown lying below on deck. No more formidable weapon short of an axe, could be devised. I said as much.

"I'm going down for it," I said; "if you're nervous, you'd better keep it by you. But don't drop it on everything that moves below. You almost got Burns."

I went down cautiously, and struck a match where Adams had indicated the spike. It was not there. Nor had Burns picked it up. A splintered board showed where it had struck, and a smaller indentation where it had rebounded; but the marlinespike was gone, and Burns had not seen it. We got a lantern and searched systematically, without result. Burns turned to me a face ghastly in the oil light.

"Somebody has it," he said, "and there will be more murder! Oh, my God, Leslie!"

"When you went back after the alarm, did you count the men?"

"No; Oleson said no one had come forward. They could not have passed without his seeing them. He has the binnacle lantern and two other lights."

"And no one came from the after house?"

"No one."

Eight bells rang out sharply. The watch changed. I took the revolver and Burns's position at the companionway, while Burns went aft. He lined up the men by the binnacle light, and went over them carefully. The marlinespike was not found; but he took from the cook a long meat-knife, and brought both negro and knife forward to me. The man was almost collapsing with terror. He maintained that he had taken the knife for self-protection, and we let him go with a warning.

Dawn brought me an hour's sleep, the first since my awakening in the storeroom. When I roused, Jones at the wheel had thrown an extra blanket over me, for the morning was cool and a fine rain was falling.

The men were scattered around in attitudes of dejection, one or two of them leaning over the rail, watching the jolly-boat, riding easily behind us. Jones heard me moving, and turned.

"Your friend below must be pretty bad, sir," he said. "Your lady-love has been asking for you. I wouldn't let them wake you."

"My—what?"

He waxed apologetic at once.

"That's just my foolishness, Leslie," he said. "No disrespect to the lady, I'm sure. If it ain't so, it ain't, and no harm done. If it is so, why, you needn't be ashamed, boy. 'The way of a man with a maid,' says the Book."

"You should have called me, Jones," I said sharply. "And no nonsense of that sort with the men."

He looked hurt, but made no reply beyond touching his cap. And, while I am mentioning that, I may speak of the changed attitude of the men toward me from the time they put me in charge. Whether the deference was to the office rather than the man, or whether in placing me in authority they had merely expressed a general feeling that I was with them rather than of them, I do not know. I am inclined to think the former. The result, in any case, was the same. They deferred to me whenever possible, brought large and small issues alike to me, served me my food alone, against my protestations, and, while navigating the ship on their own responsibility, took care to come to me for authority for everything.

Before I went below that morning, I suggested that some of the spare canvas be used to erect a shelter on the after deck, and this was done. The rain by that time was driving steadily—a summer rain without wind. The men seemed glad to have occupation, and, from that time on, the tent which they erected over the hatchway aft of the wheel was their living and eating quarters. It added something to their comfort: I was not so certain that it added to their security.

Tuner was violent that day. I found all four women awake and dressed, and Mrs. Turner, whose hour it was on duty, in a chair outside the door. The stewardess, her arm in a sling, was making tea over a spirit-lamp, and Elsa was helping her. Mrs. Johns was stretched on a divan, and on the table lay a small revolver.

Clearly, Elsa had told the incident of the key. I felt at once the atmosphere of antagonism. Mrs. Johns watched me coolly from under lowered eyelids. The stewardess openly scowled. And Mrs. Turner rose hastily, and glanced at Mrs. Johns, as if in doubt. Elsa had her back to me, and was busy with the cups.

"I'm afraid you've had a bad night," I said.

"A very bad night," Mrs. Turner replied stiffly.

"Delirium?"

"Very marked. He has talked of a white figure—we cannot quite make it out. It seems to be Wilmer—Mr. Vail."

She had not opened the door, but stood, nervously twisting her fingers, before it.

"The bromides had no effect?"

She glanced helplessly at the others. "None," she said, after a moment.

Elsa Lee wheeled suddenly and glanced scornfully at her sister.

"Why don't you tell him?" she demanded. "Why don't you say you didn't give the bromides?"

"Why not?"

Mrs. Johns raised herself on her elbow and looked at me.

"Why should we?" she asked. "How do we know what you are giving him? You are not friendly to him or to us. We know what you are trying to do—you are trying to save yourself, at any cost. You put a guard at the companionway. You rail off the deck for our safety. You drop the storeroom key in Mr. Turner's cabin, where Elsa will find it, and will be obliged to acknowledge she found it, and then take it from her by force, so you can show it later on and save yourself!"

Elsa turned on her quickly.

"I told you how he got it, Adele. I tried to throw it—"

"Oh, if you intend to protect him!"

"I am rather bewildered," I said slowly; "but, under the circumstances, I suppose you do not wish me to look after Mr. Turner?"

"We think not"—from Mrs. Turner.

"How will you manage alone?"

Mrs. Johns got up and lounged to the table. She wore a long satin negligee of some sort, draped with lace. It lay around her on the floor in gleaming lines of soft beauty. Her reddish hair was low on her neck, and she held a cigarette, negligently, in her teeth. All the women smoked, Mrs. Johns incessantly.

She laid one hand lightly on the revolver, and flicked the ash from her cigarette with the other.

"We have decided," she said insolently, "that, if the crew may establish a dead-line, so may we. Our dead-line is the foot of the companionway. One of us will be on watch always. I am an excellent shot."

"I do not doubt it." I faced her. "I am afraid you will suffer for air; otherwise, the arrangement is good. You relieve me of part of the responsibility for your safety. Tom will bring your food to the steps and leave it there."

"Thank you."

"With good luck, two weeks will see us in port; and then—"

"In port! You are taking us back?"

"Why not?"

She picked up the revolver and examined it absently. Then she glanced at me, and shrugged her shoulders. "How can we know? Perhaps this is a mutiny, and you are on your way to some God forsaken island. That's the usual thing among pirates, isn't it?"

"I have no answer to that, Mrs. Johns," I said quietly, and turned to where Elsa sat.

"I shall not come back unless you send for me," I said. "But I want you to know that my one object in life from now on is to get you back safely to land; that your safety comes first, and that the vigilance on deck in your interest will not be relaxed."

"Fine words!" the stewardess muttered.

The low mumbling from Turner's room had persisted steadily. Now it rose again in the sharp frenzy that had characterized it through the long night.

"Don't look at me like that, man!" he cried, and then "He's lost a hand! A hand!"

Mrs. Turner went quickly into the cabin, and the sounds ceased. I looked at Elsa, but she avoided my eyes. I turned heavily and went up the companionway.



CHAPTER XV

A KNOCKING IN THE HOLD

It rained heavily all that day. Late in the afternoon we got some wind, and all hands turned out to trim sail. Action was a relief, and the weather suited our disheartened state better than had the pitiless August sun, the glaring white of deck and canvas, and the heat.

The heavy drops splashed and broke on top of the jolly-boat, and, as the wind came up, it rode behind us like a live thing.

Our distress signal hung sodden, too wet to give more than a dejected response to the wind that tugged at it. Late in the afternoon we sighted a large steamer, and when, as darkness came on, she showed no indication of changing her course, Burns and I sent up a rocket and blew the fog horn steadily. She altered her course then and came towards us, and we ran up our code flags for immediate assistance; but she veered off shortly after, and went on her way. We made no further effort to attract her attention. Burns thought her a passenger steamer for the Bermudas, and, as her way was not ours, she could not have been of much assistance.

One or two of the men were already showing signs of strain. Oleson, the Swede, developed a chill, followed by fever and a mild delirium, and Adams complained of sore throat and nausea. Oleson's illness was genuine enough. Adams I suspected of malingering. He had told the men he would not go up to the crow's-nest again without a revolver, and this I would not permit.

Our original crew had numbered nine—with the cook and Williams, eleven. But the two Negroes were not seamen, and were frightened into a state bordering on collapse. Of the men actually useful, there were left only five: Clarke, McNamara, Charlie Jones, Burns, and myself; and I was a negligible quantity as regarded the working of the ship.

With Burns and myself on guard duty, the burden fell on Clarke, McNamara, and Jones. A suggestion of mine that we release Singleton was instantly vetoed by the men. It was arranged, finally, that Clarke and McNamara take alternate watches at the wheel, and Jones be given the lookout for the night, to be relieved by either Burns or myself.

I watched the weather anxiously. We were too short-handed to manage any sort of a gale; and yet, the urgency of our return made it unwise to shorten canvas too much. It was as well, perhaps, that I had so much to distract my mind from the situation in the after house.

The second of the series of curious incidents that complicated our return voyage occurred that night. I was on watch from eight bells midnight until four in the morning. Jones was in the crow's-nest, McNamara at the wheel. I was at the starboard forward corner of the after house, looking over the rail. I thought that I had seen the lights of a steamer.

The rain had ceased, but the night was still very dark. I heard a sort of rapping from the forward house, and took a step toward it, listening. Jones heard it, too, and called down to me, nervously, to see what was wrong.

I called up to him, cautiously, to come dawn and take my place while I investigated. I thought it was Singleton. When Jones had taken up his position at the companionway, I went forward. The knocking continued, and I traced it to Singleton's cabin. His window was open, being too small for danger, but barred across with strips of wood outside, like those in the after house. But he was at the door, hammering frantically. I called to him through the open window, but the only answer was renewed and louder pounding.

I ran around to his door, and felt for the key, which I carried.

"What is the matter?" I called.

"Who is it?"

"Leslie."

"For God's sake, open the door!"

I unlocked it and threw it open. He retreated before me, with his hands out, and huddled against the wall beside the window. I struck a match. His face was drawn and distorted, and he held his arm up as if to ward off a blow.

I lighted the lamp, for there were no electric lights in the forward house, and stared at him, amazed. Satisfied that I was really Leslie, he had stooped, and was fumbling under the window. When he straightened, he held something out to me in the palm of his shaking hand. I saw, with surprise, that it was a tobacco-pouch.

"Well?" I demanded.

"It was on the ledge," he said hoarsely. "I put it there myself. All the time I was pounding, I kept saying that, if it was still there, it was not true—I'd just fancied it. If the pouch was on the floor, I'd know."

"Know what?"

"It was there," he said, looking over his shoulder. "It's been there three times, looking in—all in white, and grinning at me."

"A man?"

"It—it hasn't got any face."

"How could it grin—at you if it hasn't any face?" I demanded impatiently. "Pull yourself together and tell me what you saw."

It was some time before he could tell a connected story, and, when he did, I was inclined to suspect that he had heard us talking the night before, had heard Adams's description of the intruder on the forecastle-head, and that, what with drink and terror, he had fancied the rest. And yet, I was not so sure.

"I was asleep, the first time," he said. "I don't know how long ago it was. I woke up cold, with the feeling that something was looking at me. I raised up in bed, and there was a thing at the window. It was looking in."

"What sort of a thing?"

"What I told you—white."

"A white head?"

"It wasn't a head. For God's sake, Leslie! I can't tell you any more than that. I saw it. That's enough. I saw it three times."

"It isn't enough for me," I said doggedly. "It hadn't any head or face, but it looked in! It's dark out there. How could you see?"

For reply, he leaned over and, turning down the lamp, blew it out. We sat in the smoking darkness, and slowly, out of the thick night, the window outlined itself. I could see it distinctly. But how, white and faceless, had it stared in at the window, or reached through the bars, as Singleton declared it had done, and waved a fingerless hand at us?

He was in a state of mental and physical collapse, and begged so pitifully not to be left, that at last I told him I would take him with me, on his promise to remain in a chair until dawn, and to go back without demur. He sat near me, amidships, huddled down among the cushions of one of the wicker chairs, not sleeping, but staring straight out, motionless.

With the first light of dawn Burns relieved me, and I went forward with Singleton. He dropped into his bunk, and was asleep almost immediately. Then, inch by inch, I went over the deck for footprints, for any clue to what, under happier circumstances, I should have considered a ghastly hoax. But the deck was slippery and sodden, the rail dripping, and between the davits where the jolly-boat had swung was stretched a line with a shirt of Burns's hung on it, absurdly enough, to dry. Poor Burns, promoted to the dignity of first mate, and trying to dress the part!

Oleson and Adams made no attempt to work that day; indeed, Oleson was not able. As I had promised, the breakfast for the after house was placed on the companion steps by Tom, the cook, whence it was removed by Mrs. Sloane. I saw nothing of either Elsa Lee or Mrs. Johns. Burns was inclined to resent the deadline the women had drawn below, and suggested that, since they were so anxious to take care of themselves, we give up guarding the after house and let them do it. We were short-handed enough, he urged, and, if they were going to take that attitude, let them manage. I did not argue, but my eyes traveled over the rail to where the jolly-boat rose to meet the fresh sea of the morning, and he colored. After that he made no comment.

Singleton awakened before noon, and ate his first meal since the murders. He looked better, and we had a long talk, I outside the window and he within. He held to his story of the night before, but was still vague as to just how the thing looked. Of what it was he seemed to have no doubt. It was the specter of either the captain or Vail; he excluded the woman, because she was shorter. As I stood outside, he measured on me the approximate height of the apparition—somewhere about five feet eight. He could see Burns's shirt, he admitted, but the thing had been close to the window.

I found myself convinced against my will, and that afternoon, alone, I made a second and more thorough examination of the forecastle and the hold. In the former I found nothing. Having been closed for over twenty-four hours, it was stifling and full of odors. The crew, abandoning it in haste, had left it in disorder. I made a systematic search, beginning forward and working back. I prodded in and under bunks, and moved the clothing that hung on every hook and swung, to the undoing of my nerves, with every swell. Much curious salvage I found under mattresses and beneath bunks: a rosary and a dozen filthy pictures under the same pillow; more than one bottle of whiskey; and even, where it had been dropped in the haste of flight, a bottle of cocaine. The bottle set me to thinking: had we a "coke" fiend on board, and, if we had, who was it?

The examination of the hold led to one curious and not easily explained discovery. The Ella was in gravel ballast, and my search there was difficult and nerve-racking. The creaking of the girders and floor-plates, the groaning overhead of the trestle-trees, and once an unexpected list that sent me careening, head first, against a ballast-tank, made my position distinctly disagreeable. And above all the incidental noises of a ship's hold was one that I could not place—a regular knocking, which kept time with the list of the boat.

I located it at last, approximately, at one of the ballast ports, but there was nothing to be seen. The port had been carefully barred and calked over. The sound was not loud. Down there among the other noises, I seemed to feel as well as hear it. I sent Burns down, and he came up, puzzled.

"It's outside," he said. "Something cracking against her ribs."

"You didn't notice it yesterday, did you?"

"No; but yesterday we were not listening for noises."

The knocking was on the port side. We went forward together, and, leaning well out, looked over the rail.

The missing marlinespike was swinging there, banging against the hull with every roll of the ship. It was fastened by a rope lanyard to a large bolt below the rail, and fastened with what Burns called a Blackwall hitch—a sailor's knot.



CHAPTER XVI

JONES STUMBLES OVER SOMETHING

I find, from my journal, that the next seven days passed without marked incident. Several times during that period we sighted vessels, all outward bound, and once we were within communicating distance of a steam cargo boat on her way to Venezuela. She lay to and sent her first mate over to see what could be done.

He was a slim little man with dark eyes and a small mustache above a cheerful mouth. He listened in silence to my story, and shuddered when I showed him the jolly-boat. But we were only a few days out by that time, and, after all, what could they do? He offered to spare us a hand, if it could be arranged; but, Adams having recovered by that time, we decided to get along as we were. A strange sight we must have presented to the tidy little officer in his uniform and black tie: a haggard, unshaven lot of men, none too clean, all suffering from strain and lack of sleep, with nerves ready to snap; a white yacht, motionless, her sails drooping,—for not a breath of air moved,—with unpolished brasses and dirty decks; in charge of all, a tall youth, unshaven like the rest, and gaunt from sickness, who hardly knew a nautical phrase, who shook the little officer's hand with a ferocity of welcome that made him change color, and whose uniform consisted of a pair of dirty khaki trousers and a khaki shirt, open at the neck; and behind us, wallowing in the trough of the sea as the Ella lay to, the jolly-boat, so miscalled, with its sinister cargo.

The Buenos Aires went on, leaving us a bit cheered, perhaps, but none the better off, except that she verified our bearings. The after house had taken no notice of the incident. None of the women had appeared, nor did they make any inquiry of the cook when he carried down their dinner that night. As entirely as possible, during the week that had passed, they had kept to themselves. Turner was better, I imagined; but, the few times when Elsa Lee appeared at the companion for a breath of air, I was off duty and missed her. I thought it was by design, and I was desperate for a sight of her.

Mrs. Johns came on deck once or twice while I was there, but she chose to ignore me. The stewardess, however, was not so partisan, and, the day before we met the Buenos Aires, she spent a little time on deck, leaning against the rail and watching me with alert black eyes.

"What are you going to do when you get to land, Mr. Captain Leslie?" she asked. "Are you going to put us all in prison?"

"That's as may be," I evaded. She was a pretty little woman, plump and dark, and she slid her hand along the rail until it touched mine. Whereon, I did the thing she was expecting, and put my fingers over hers. She flushed a little, and dimpled.

"You are human, aren't you?" she asked archly. "I am not afraid of you."

"No one is, I am sure."

"Silly! Why, they are all afraid of you, down there." She jerked her head toward the after house. "They want to offer you something, but none of them will do it."

"Offer me something?"

She came a little closer, so that her round shoulder touched mine.

"Why not? You need money, I take it. And that's the one thing they have—money."

I began to understand her.

"I see," I said slowly. "They want to bribe me."

She shrugged her shoulders.

"That is a nasty word. They might wish to buy—a key or two that you carry."

"The storeroom key, of course. But what other?"

She looked around—we were alone. A light breeze filled the sails and flicked the end of a scarf she wore against my face.

"The key to the captain's cabin," she said, very low.

That was what they wished to buy: the incriminating key to the storeroom, found on Turner's floor, and access to the axe, with its telltale prints on the handle.

The stewardess saw my face harden, and put her hand on my arm.

"Now I am afraid of you!" she cried: "When you look like that!"

"Mrs. Sloane," I said, "I do not know that you were asked to do this—I think not. But if you were, say for me what I am willing to say for myself: I shall tell what I know, and there is not money enough in the world to prevent my telling it straight. The right man is going to be punished, and the key to the storeroom will be given to the police, and to no one else."

"But—the other key?"

"That is not in my keeping."

"I do not believe you!"

"I am sorry," I said shortly. "As a matter of fact, Burns has that."

By the look of triumph in her eyes I knew I had told her what she wanted to know. She went below soon after, and I warned Burns that he would probably be approached in the same way.

"Not that I am afraid," I added. "But keep the little Sloane woman at a distance. She's quite capable of mesmerizing you with her eyes and robbing you with her hands at the same time."

"I'd rather you'd carry it," he said, "although I'm not afraid of the lady. It's not likely, after—"

He did not finish, but he glanced aft toward the jollyboat. Poor Burns! I believe he had really cared for the Danish girl. Perhaps I was foolish, but I refused to take the key from him; I felt sure he could be trusted.

The murders had been committed on the early morning of Wednesday, the 12th. It was on the following Tuesday that Mrs. Sloane and I had our little conversation on deck, and on Wednesday we came up with the Buenos Aires.

It was on Friday, therefore, two days after the cargo steamer had slid over the edge of the ocean, and left us, motionless, a painted ship upon a painted sea, that the incident happened that completed the demoralization of the crew.

For almost a week the lookouts had reported "All's well" in response to the striking of the ship's bell. The hysteria, as Burns and I dubbed it, of the white figure had died away as the men's nerves grew less irritated. Although we had found no absolute explanation of the marlinespike, an obvious one suggested itself. The men, although giving up their weapons without protest, had grumbled somewhat over being left without means of defense. It was entirely possible, we agreed, that the marlinespike had been so disposed, as some seaman's resort in time of need.

The cook, taking down the dinner on Friday evening, reported Mr. Turner up and about and partly dressed. The heat was frightful. All day we had had a following breeze, and it had been necessary to lengthen the towing-rope, dropping the jolly-boat well behind us. The men, saying little or nothing, dozed under their canvas; the helmsman drooped at the wheel. Under our feet the boards sent up simmering heat waves, and the brasses were too hot to touch.

At four o'clock Elsa Lee came on deck, and spoke to me for the first time in several days. She started when she saw me, and no wonder. In the frenzied caution of the day after the crimes, I had flung every razor overboard, and the result was as villainous a set of men as I have ever seen.

"Have you been ill again?" she asked.

I put my hand to my chin. "Not ill," I said; "merely unshaven."

"But you are pale, and your eyes are sunk in your head."

"We are very short-handed and—no one has slept much."

"Or eaten at all, I imagine," she said. "When do we get in?"

"I can hardly say. With this wind, perhaps Tuesday."

"Where?"

"Philadelphia."

"You intend to turn the yacht over to the police?"

"Yes, Miss Lee."

"Every one on it?"

"That is up to the police. They will probably not hold the women. You will be released, I imagine, on your own recognizance."

"And—Mr. Turner?"

"He will have to take his luck with the rest of us."

She asked me no further questions, but switched at once to what had brought her on deck.

"The cabin is unbearable," she said. "We are willing to take the risk of opening the after companion door."

But I could not allow this, and I tried to explain my reasons. The crew were quartered there, for one; for the other, whether they were willing to take the risk or not, I would not open it without placing a guard there, and we had no one to spare for the duty. I suggested that they use the part of the deck reserved for them, where it was fairly cool under the awning; and, after a dispute below, they agreed to this. Turner, very weak, came up the few steps slowly, but refused my proffered help. A little later, he called me from the rail and offered me a cigar. The change in him was startling.

We took advantage of their being on deck to open the windows and air the after house. But all were securely locked and barred before they went below again. It was the first time they had all been on deck together since the night of the 11th. It was a different crowd of people that sat there, looking over the rail and speaking in monosyllables: no bridge, no glasses clinking with ice, no elaborate toilets and carefully dressed hair, no flash of jewels, no light laughter following one of poor Vail's sallies.

At ten o'clock they went below, but not until I had quietly located every member of the crew. I had the watch from eight to twelve that night, and at half after ten Mrs. Johns came on deck again. She did not speak to me, but dropped into a steamer-chair and yawned, stretching out her arms. By the light of the companion lantern, I saw that she had put on one of the loose negligees she affected for undress, and her arms were bare except for a fall of lace.

At eight bells (midnight) Burns took my place. Charlie Jones was at the wheel, and McNamara in the crow's-nest. Mrs. Johns was dozing in her chair. The yacht was making perhaps four knots, and, far behind, the small white light of the jolly-boat showed where she rode.

I slept heavily, and at eight bells I rolled off my blanket and prepared to relieve Burns. I was stiff, weary, unrefreshed. The air was very still and we were hardly moving. I took a pail of water that stood near the rail, and, leaning far out, poured it over my head and shoulders. As I turned, dripping, Jones, relieved of the wheel, touched me on the arm.

"Go back to sleep, boy," he said kindly. "We need you, and we're goin' to need you more when we get ashore. You've been talkin' in your sleep till you plumb scared me."

But I was wide awake by that time, and he had had as little sleep as I had. I refused, and we went forward together, Jones to get coffee, which stood all night on the galley stove.

It was still dark. The dawn, even in the less than four weeks we had been out, came perceptibly later. At the port forward corner of the after house, Jones stumbled over something, and gave a sharp exclamation. The next moment he was on his knees, lighting a match.

Burns lay there on his face, unconscious, and bleeding profusely from a cut on the back of his head—but not dead.



CHAPTER XVII

THE AXE IS GONE

My first thought was of the after house. Jones, who had been fond of Burns, was working over him, muttering to himself. I felt his heart, which was beating slowly but regularly, and, convinced that he was not dying, ran down into the after house. The cabin was empty: evidently the guard around the pearl handled revolver had been given up on the false promise of peace. All the lights were going, however, and the heat was suffocating.

I ran to Miss Lee's door, and tried it. It was locked, but almost instantly she spoke from inside:

"What is it?"

"Nothing much. Can you come out?"

She came a moment later, and I asked her to call into each cabin to see if every one was safe. The result was reassuring—no one had been disturbed; and I was put to it to account to Miss Lee for my anxiety without telling her what had happened. I made some sort of excuse, which I have forgotten, except that she evidently did not believe it.

On deck, the men were gathered around Burns. There were ominous faces among them, and mutterings of hatred and revenge; for Burns had been popular—the best-liked man among them all. Jones, wrought to the highest pitch, had even shed a few shamefaced tears, and was obliterating the humiliating memory by an extra brusqueness of manner.

We carried the injured man aft, and with such implements as I had I cleaned and dressed the wound. It needed sewing, and it seemed best to do it before he regained consciousness. Jones and Adams went below to the forecastle, therefore, and brought up my amputating set, which contained, besides its knives, some curved needles and surgical silk, still in good condition.

I opened the case, and before the knives, the long surgeon's knives which were in use before the scalpel superseded them, they fell back, muttering and amazed.

I did not know that Elsa Lee also was watching until, having requested Jones, who had been a sailmaker, to thread the needles, his trembling hands refused their duty. I looked up, searching the group for a competent assistant, and saw the girl. She had dressed, and the light from the lantern beside me on the deck threw into relief her white figure among the dark ones. She came forward as my eyes fell on her.

"Let me try," she said; and, kneeling by the lantern, in a moment she held out the threaded needle. Her hand was quite steady. She made an able assistant, wiping clean the oozing edges of the wound so that I could see to clip the bleeding vessels, and working deftly with the silk and needles to keep me supplied. My old case yielded also a roll or so of bandage. By the time Burns was attempting an incoordinate movement or two, the operation was over and the instruments put out of sight.

His condition was good. The men carried him to the tent, where Jones sat beside him, and the other men stood outside, uneasy and watchful, looking in.

The operating-case, with its knives, came in for its share of scrutiny, and I felt that an explanation was due the men. To tell the truth, I had forgotten all about the case. Perhaps I swaggered just a bit as I went over to wash my hands. It was my first opportunity, and I was young, and the Girl was there.

"I see you looking at my case, boys," I said. "Perhaps I'm a little late explaining, but I guess after what you've seen you'll understand. The case belonged to my grandfather, who was a surgeon. He was in the war. That case was at Gettysburg."

"And because of your grandfather you brought it on shipboard!" Clarke said nastily.

"No. I'm a cub doctor myself. I'd been sick, and I needed the sea and a rest."

They were not so impressed as I had expected—or perhaps they had known all along. Sailors are a secretive lot.

"I'm thinking we'll all be getting a rest soon," a voice said. "What are you going to do with them knives?"

I had an inspiration. "I'm going to leave that to you men," I said. "You may throw them overboard, if you wish—but, if you do, take out the needles and the silk; we may need them."

There followed a savage but restrained argument among the men. Jones, from the tent, called out irritably:—

"Don't be fools, you fellows. This happened while Leslie was asleep. I'll swear he never moved after he lay down."

The crew reached a decision shortly after that, and came to me in a body.

"We think," Oleson said, "that we'll lock them in the captain's cabin, with the axe."

"Very well," I said. "Burns has the key around his neck."

Clarke, I think it was, went into the tent, and came out again directly.

"There's no key around his neck," he said gruffly.

"It may have slipped around under his back."

"It isn't there at all."

I ran into the tent, where Jones, having exhausted the resources of the injured man's clothing, was searching among the blankets on which he lay. There was no key. I went out to the men again, bewildered. The dawn had come, a pink and rosy dawn that promised another stifling day. It revealed the disarray of the deck—he basins, the old mahogany amputating-case with its lock plate of bone, the stained and reddened towels; and it showed the brooding and overcast faces of the men.

"Isn't it there?" I asked. "Our agreement was for me to carry the key to Singleton's cabin and Burns the captain's."

Miss Lee, by the rail, came forward slowly, and looked up at me.

"Isn't it possible," she said, "that, knowing where the key was, some one wished to get it, and so—" She indicated the tent and Burns.

I knew then. How dull I had been, and stupid! The men caught her meaning, too, and we tramped heavily forward, the girl and I leading.

The door into the captain's room was open, and the axe was gone from the bunk. The key, with the cord that Burns had worn around his neck, was in the door, the string torn and pulled as if it had been jerked away from the unconscious man. Later on we verified this by finding, on the back of Bums's neck an abraded line two inches or so in length.

It was a strong cord—the kind a sailor pins his faith to, and uses indiscriminately to hold his trousers or his knife.

I ordered a rigid search of the deck, but the axe was gone. Nor was it ever found. It had taken its bloody story many fathoms deep into the old Atlantic, and hidden it, where many crimes have been hidden, in the ooze and slime of the sea-bottom.

That day was memorable for more than the attack on Burns. It marked a complete revolution in my idea of the earlier crimes, and of the criminal.

Two things influenced my change of mental attitude. The attack on Burns was one. I did not believe that Turner had strength enough to fell so vigorous a man, even with the capstan bar which we found lying near by. Nor could he have jerked and broken the amberline. Mrs. Johns I eliminated for the same reason, of course. I could imagine her getting the key by subtlety, wheedling the impressionable young sailor into compliance. But force!

The second reason was the stronger.

Singleton, the mate, had become a tractable and almost amiable prisoner. Like Turner, he was ugly only when he was drinking, and there was not even enough liquor on the Ella to revive poor Burns. He spent his days devising, with bits of wire, a ring puzzle that he intended should make his fortune. And I believe he contrived, finally, a clever enough bit of foolery. He was anxious to talk, and complained bitterly of loneliness, using every excuse to hold Tom, the cook, when he carried him his meals. He had asked for a Bible, too, and read it now and then.

The morning of Bums's injury, I visited Singleton.

The new outrage, coming at a time when they were slowly recovering confidence, had turned the men surly. The loss of the axe, the handle of which I had told them would, under skillful eyes, reveal the murderer as accurately as a photograph, was a serious blow. Again arose the specter of the innocent suffering for the guilty. They went doggedly about their work, and wherever they gathered there was muttered talk of the white figure. There was grumbling, too, over their lack of weapons for defense.

The cook was a ringleader of the malcontents. Certain utensils were allowed him; but he was compelled at night to lock them in the galley, after either Burns's inspection or mine, and to turn over the key to one of us.

On the morning after the attack, therefore, Tom, carrying Singleton's breakfast to him, told him at length what had occurred in the night, and dilated on his lack of self-defense should an attack be directed toward him.

Singleton promptly offered to make him, out of wire, a key to the galley door, so that he could get what he wanted from it. The cook was to take an impression of the lock. In exchange, Tom was to fetch him, from a hiding place which Singleton designated in the forward house, a bottle of whiskey.

The cook was a shrewd mulatto, and he let Singleton make the key. It was after ten that morning when he brought it to me. I was trying to get the details of his injury from Burns, at the time, in the tent.

"I didn't see or hear anything, Leslie," Burns said feebly. "I don't even remember being hit. I felt there was some one behind me. That was all."

"There had been nothing suspicious earlier in the night?"

He lay thinking. He was still somewhat confused.

"No—I think not. Or—yes, I thought once I saw some one standing by the mainmast—behind it. It wasn't."

"How long was Mrs. Johns on deck?"

"Not long."

"Did she ask you to do something for her?"

Pale as he was, he colored; but he eyed me honestly.

"Yes. Don't ask me any more, Leslie. It had nothing to do with this."

"What did she ask you to do?" I persisted remorselessly.

"I don't want to talk; my head aches."

"Very well. Then I'll tell you what happened after I went off watch. No, I wasn't spying. I know the woman, that's all. She said you looked tired, and wouldn't it be all right if you sat down for a moment and talked to her."

"No; she said she was nervous."

"The same thing—only better. Then she persisted in talking of the crime, and finally she said she would like to see the axe. It wouldn't do any harm. She, wouldn't touch it."

He watched me uneasily.

"She didn't either," he said. "I'll swear to that, Leslie. She didn't go near the bunk. She covered her face with her hands, and leaned against the door. I thought she was going to faint."

"Against the door, of course! And got an impression of the key. The door opens in. She could take out the key, press it against a cake of wax or even a cake of soap in her hand, and slip it back into the lock again while you—What were you doing while she was doing all that?"

"She dropped her salts. I picked them up."

"Exactly! Well, the axe is gone."

He started up on his elbow.

"Gone!"

"Thrown overboard, probably. It is not in the cabin."

It was brutal, perhaps; but the situation was all of that. As Burns fell back, colorless, Tom, the cook, brought into the tent the wire key that Singleton had made.

That morning I took from inside of Singleton's mattress a bunch of keys, a long steel file, and the leg of one of his chairs, carefully unscrewed and wrapped at the end with wire a formidable club. One of the keys opened Singleton's door.

That was on Saturday. Early Monday morning we sighted land.



CHAPTER XVIII

A BAD COMBINATION

We picked up a pilot outside the Lewes breakwater a man of few words. I told him only the outlines of our story, and I believe he half discredited me at first. God knows, I was not a creditable object. When I took him aft and showed him the jolly-boat, he realized, at last, that he was face to face with a great tragedy, and paid it the tribute of throwing away his cigar.

He suggested our raising the yellow plague flag; and this we did, with a ready response from the quarantine officer. The quarantine officer came out in a power-boat, and mounted the ladder; and from that moment my command of the Ella ceased. Turner, immaculately dressed, pale, distinguished, member of the yacht club and partner in the Turner line, met him at the rail, and conducted him, with a sort of chastened affability, to the cabin.

Exhausted from lack of sleep, terrified with what had gone by and what was yet to come, unshaven and unkempt, the men gathered on the forecastle-head and waited.

The conference below lasted perhaps an hour. At the end of that time the quarantine officer came up and shouted a direction from below, as a result of which the jolly-boat was cut loose, and, towed by the tug, taken to the quarantine station. There was an argument, I believe, between Turner and the officer, as to allowing us to proceed up the river without waiting for the police. Turner prevailed, however, and, from the time we hoisted the yellow flag, we were on our way to the city, a tug panting beside us, urging the broad and comfortable lines of the old cargo boat to a semblance of speed.

The quarantine officer, a dapper little man, remained on the boat, and busied himself officiously, getting the names of the men, peering at Singleton through his barred window, and expressing disappointment at my lack of foresight in having the bloodstains cleared away.

"Every stain is a clue, my man, to the trained eye," he chirruped. "With an axe, too! What a brutal method! Brutal! Where is the axe?"

"Gone," I said patiently. "It was stolen out of the captain's cabin."

He eyed me over his glasses.

"That's very strange," he commented. "No stains, no axe! You fellows have been mighty careful to destroy the evidence, haven't you?"

All that long day we made our deliberate progress up the river. The luggage from the after house was carried up on deck by Adams and Clarke, and stood waiting for the customhouse.

Turner, his hands behind him, paced the deck hour by hour, his heavy face colorless. His wife, dark, repressed, with a look of being always on guard, watched him furtively. Mrs. Johns, dressed in black, talked to the doctor; and, from the notes he made, I knew she was telling the story of the tragedy. And here, there, and everywhere, efficient, normal, and so lovely that it hurt me to look at her, was Elsa. Williams, the butler, had emerged from his chrysalis of fright, and was ostentatiously looking after the family's comfort. No clearer indication could have been given of the new status of affairs than his changed attitude toward me. He came up to me, early in the afternoon, and demanded that I wash down the deck before the women came up.

I smiled down at him cheerfully.

"Williams," I said, "you are a coward—a mean, white-livered coward. You have skulked in the after house, behind women, when there was man's work to do. If I wash that deck, it will be with you as a mop."

He blustered something about speaking to Mr. Turner and seeing that I did the work I was brought on board to do, and, seeing Turner's eye on us, finished his speech with an ugly epithet. My nerves were strained to the utmost: lack of sleep and food had done their work. I was no longer in command of the Ella; I was a common sailor, ready to vent my spleen through my fists.

I knocked him down with my open hand.

It was a barbarous and a reckless thing to do. He picked himself up and limped away, muttering. Turner had watched the scene with his cold blue eyes, and the little doctor with his near-sighted ones.

"A dangerous man, that!" said the doctor.

"Dangerous and intelligent," replied Turner. "A bad combination!"

It was late that night when the Ella anchored in the river at Philadelphia. We were not allowed to land. The police took charge of ship, crew, and passengers. The men slept heavily on deck, except Burns, who developed a slight fever from his injury, and moved about restlessly.

It seemed to me that the vigilance of the officers was exerted largely to prevent an escape from the vessel, and not sufficiently for the safety of those on board. I spoke of this, and a guard was placed at the companionway again. Thus I saw Elsa Lee for the last time until the trial.

She was dressed, as she had been in the afternoon, in a dark cloth suit of some sort, and I did not see her until I had spoken to the officer in charge. She turned, at my voice, and called me to join her where she stood.

"We are back again, Leslie."

"Yes, Miss Lee."

"Back to—what? To live the whole thing over again in a courtroom! If only we could go away, anywhere, and try to forget!"

She had not expected any answer, and I had none ready. I was thinking—Heaven help me—that there were things I would not forget if I could: the lift of her lashes as she looked, up at me; the few words we had had together, the day she had told me the deck was not clean; the night I had touched her hand with my lips.

"We are to be released, I believe," she said, "on our own—some legal term; I forget it."

"Recognizance, probably."

"Yes. You do not know law as well as medicine?"

"I am sorry—no; and I know very little medicine."

"But you sewed up a wound!"

"As a matter of fact," I admitted, "that was my initial performance, and it is badly done. It—it puckers."

She turned on me a trifle impatiently.

"Why do you make such a secret of your identity?" she demanded. "Is it a pose? Or—have you a reason for concealing it?"

"It is not a pose; and I have nothing to be ashamed of, unless poverty—"

"Of course not. What do you mean by poverty?"

"The common garden variety sort. I have hardly a dollar in the world. As to my identity,—if it interests you at all, I graduated in medicine last June. I spent the last of the money that was to educate me in purchasing a dress suit to graduate in, and a supper by way of celebration. The dress suit helped me to my diploma. The supper gave me typhoid."

"So that was it!"

"Not jail, you see."

"And what are you going to do now?"

I glanced around to where a police officer stood behind us watchfully.

"Now? Why, now I go to jail in earnest."

"You have been very good to us," she said wistfully. "We have all been strained and nervous. Maybe you have not thought I noticed or—or appreciated what you were doing; but I have, always. You have given all of yourself for us. You have not slept or eaten. And now you are going to be imprisoned. It isn't just!"

I tried to speak lightly, to reassure her.

"Don't be unhappy about that," I said. "A nice, safe jail, where one may sleep and eat, and eat and sleep—oh, I shall be very comfortable! And if you wish to make me exceedingly happy, you will see that they let me have a razor."

But, to my surprise, she buried her face in her arms. I could not believe at first that she was crying. The policeman had wandered across to the other rail, and stood looking out at the city lights, his back to us. I put my hand out to touch her soft hair, then drew it back. I could not take advantage of her sympathy, of the hysterical excitement of that last night on the Ella. I put my hands in my pockets, and held them there, clenched, lest, in spite of my will, I reach out to take her in my arms.



CHAPTER XIX

I TAKE THE STAND

And now I come, with some hesitation, to the trial. Hesitation, because I relied on McWhirter to keep a record. And McWhirter, from his notes, appears to have been carried away at times by excitement, and either jotted down rows of unintelligible words, or waited until evening and made up his notes, like a woman's expense account, from a memory never noticeable for accuracy.

At dawn, the morning after we anchored, Charlie Jones roused me, grinning.

"Friend of yours over the rail, Leslie," he said. "Wants to take you ashore!"

I knew no one in Philadelphia except the chap who had taken me yachting once, and I felt pretty certain that he would not associate Leslie the football player with Leslie the sailor on the Ella. I went reluctantly to the rail, and looked down. Below me, just visible in the river mist of the early morning, was a small boat from which two men were looking up. One was McWhirter!

"Hello, old top," he cried. "Or is it you behind that beard?"

"It's I, all right, Mac," I said, somewhat huskily. What with seeing him again, his kindly face behind its glasses, the cheerful faith in me which was his contribution to our friendship,—even the way he shook his own hand in default of mine,—my throat tightened. Here, after all, was home and a friend.

He looked up at the rail, and motioned to a rope that hung there.

"Get your stuff and come with us for breakfast," he said. "You look as if you hadn't eaten since you left."

"I'm afraid I can't, Mac."

"They're not going to hold you, are they?"

"For a day or so, yes."

Mac's reply to this was a violent resume of the ancestry and present lost condition of the Philadelphia police, ending with a request that I jump over, and let them go to the place he had just designated as their abiding-place in eternity. On an officer lounging to the rail and looking down, however, he subsided into a low muttering.

The story of how McWhirter happened to be floating on the bosom of the Delaware River before five o'clock in the morning was a long one—it was months before I got it in full. Briefly, going home from the theater in New York the night before, he had bought an "extra" which had contained a brief account of the Ella's return. He seems to have gone into a frenzy of excitement at once. He borrowed a small car,—one scornfully designated as a "road louse,"—and assembled in it, in wild confusion, one suit of clothes for me, his own and much too small, one hypodermic case, an armful of newspapers with red scare-heads, a bottle of brandy, a bottle of digitalis, one police card, and one excited young lawyer, of the same vintage in law that Mac and I were in medicine. At the last moment, fearful that the police might not know who I was, he had flung in a scrapbook in which he had pasted—with a glue that was to make his fortune—records of my exploits on the football field!

A dozen miles from Philadelphia the little machine had turned over on a curve, knocking all the law and most of the enthusiasm out of Walters, the legal gentleman, and smashing the brandy-bottle. McWhirter had picked himself up, kicked viciously at the car, and, gathering up his impedimenta, had made the rest of the journey by foot and street-car.

His wrath at finding me a prisoner was unbounded; his scorn at Walters, the attorney, for not confounding the police with law enough to free me, was furious and contemptuous. He picked up the oars in sullen silence, and, leaning on them, called a loud and defiant farewell for the benefit of the officer.