The Ship of Shadows

CHAPTER I

Dr. Venable Has a Caller

WERE this to be the tale, simply, of how Eric Venable fell and rose again from the depths, much might be said of his voyage to Tientsin River. It would bear much dwelling upon; it would in itself make, from the Horatio-Algerian view point, an excellent moral tale. But it would delete all about Shinski and Marie, and the Shirvan diamond, and the burlap-wrapped parcel; it would have to touch upon Mrs. Ivanoff’s pistol with discretion; and of course it could say little about the poet Gerin’s company of shadows, or the devil Boris Kryalpin, or the ending of the Kum Chao. And these things, from a worldly and unmoral viewpoint, make up a glorious tale—a sordid and tragic and human tale, if you will, but a stirring and glorious one withal!

It is hard to speak of the downfall of a learned and respected man of God; doubly hard to speak of the piteous snare of drugs which had trapped Eric Venable. None the less, with his downfall began that tale of the Kum Chao and Garrity the magnificent—although such things were far from the mind of Venable as he sat in his gray house and waited for the hand of Fate to guide Mrs. Ivanoff to his doorstep.

Death stalked that gaunt gray house; it was no secret in the town. Everyone knew it now. Death, and stark tragedy, and utter ruination, gibbered on the shoulders of the man who sat in that house and faced his damnation with steely fortitude. In his darkened study sat Eric Venable and looked himself squarely in the eye. He scarcely recognized his face in the mirror. What was it the doctor had said—the doctor who had been his friend?

“You fool! You fool! I gave you that prescription temporarily—to help you to sleep and relax during that week your wife died. You kept on getting it filled, forging my name, for months. Heaven help you, Venable! I can’t. I give up—I’ve fought with you to the end. Heaven help you!”

In those last three words was grim and tragic irony, perhaps unintended. For the gaunt gray house was St. Brendan’s rectory, and Eric Venable was a servant of the Lord. A doctor of divinity, a doctor of philosophy, a man deeply learned and wisely read, Venable now faced the absolute destruction of his past life. He had come to ruin. The drug had cost him his parish, the respect of his people, the welfare of his soul—everything!

While filled with charity for the errant humans who sought his help, Eric Venable had ever been a savagely intolerant man in regard to things of his faith. To him there had been one denomination and one only; its tenets he had preached and followed narrowly, rigidly. Himself a man of iron, he had refused all compromise in theology. He was a fighter, a great battler in this arena. It gave him outlet for his furious energy. And now—was Heaven helping him or damning him?

He laughed savagely into the mirror. What was it the parish leaders had said?

“A younger man, Doctor!” They had evaded, but they had in a way spoken truth. “The parish needs a younger man. We have considered an assistant for you—”

Venable had given them his resignation on the spot. It was accepted.

Now he looked again in the mirror and scarce knew himself. The beetling, iron-cast features were gaunt, thinned down to skin and bone. Venable lowered his face in his hands, shrinking from the sight of himself as he was.

Somehow the dread secret had leaked out, reaching even to the higher councils of the church. And what had they said, those who sat so high? Venable thought of the letter, and groaned to himself. Vague but firmly impressed hints, eating into his soul like acid! He was suddenly shaken loose from all his foundations; he was rejected of men.

An acrid reek of smoke brought its unlovely odor to his nostrils. Out there in the yard lay in glowering ruin all the most sacred things of his past life—pictures, books, little loved things of the home. His home was gone, and on the morrow everything would be sold; but some things he had to burn.

His once rugged body was a whited sepulchre, a shaking wreck. Nobody wanted him—least of all the army. A year previously he had refused a chaplaincy, and now he could not have one for the begging. His church! Well, he would never be unfrocked, of course; but he could be delicately discouraged. Venable thought of the letters he had written, and the letters he had received; once again he laughed savagely, indomitably.

“You had it right, Tom Hood!” he muttered. “‘Alas, for the rarity of Christian charity!’ I’ve always denied that quotation, denied it vehemently, smashed it down with theological sophistry. But now—where is there a place to receive me? I’m fit for nothing. I’m conquered. I’ve nothing ahead but an empty future of degradation. I can’t let go of the cursed thing that has overcome me. I’ve no future.”

He started suddenly. Through the empty house of death thrilled the peal of the doorbell, the bell which now so seldom answered the touch of those who had once come there in friendship and love and respect. Who was coming here?

“More misery, I suppose,” reflected Venable, starting up. “More humiliation and shame to be heaped on my head! Very well. I deserve the worst that can come.”

He squared his massive shoulders, threw back his iron-gray head, went to the door.

HE was astonished at sight of the woman who stood outside. She was a stranger; her clothes vaguely conveyed to him the idea that she might be a foreigner, begging for some charity. He had many such callers, for he had been a prominent man in church and city.

Yet had he noticed details,—which he did not—he should have known that her clothes might be a trifle odd in cut, but were of very expensive material. It was her face that astonished him. There was sorrow in it, and the strength of sorrow, but it also held a firm resilience. Her face fairly conquered him; and it disturbed him with its inner element of appeal. It reached into him somehow—particularly the eyes.

It was a scarred face, the strong, though womanly, contours marred by a slight red weal across the left cheek which though not a disfigurement, was a distinct mar. Yet it could not spoil the fine, level poise of those eyes that so stirred Venable—eyes sea-gray like his own, deeper and steadier than his own just now.

“You are Doctor Venable?” Her voice was full and richly vigorous, expressive of an intense and womanly personality. “If you can spare me a few moments—”

Venable had not meant to admit her or anyone else, but somehow he found her entering, and found himself asking her to be seated in the empty study. Then he excused himself for a moment and went swiftly to the dining-room. On the table there was a whisky-bottle; he poured himself a drink, feeling need of the stimulant. Then he returned to the study, quite care less whether his breath betrayed the indulgence. He was past much of his shame by this time.

“You wish to see me, madam?” he inquired in ministerial accents.

“That is why I am here.” As she spoke, the woman opened a small handbag of metal studded with turquoise, and produced a letter which she extended to him. “If you will read this, Doctor Venable, you will better comprehend my mission. I have two other gentlemen to see in this city, and I shall have need of your services—”

Had she gone to anyone else first, thought Venable grimly, she would have heard some news about him!

He impatiently opened the letter, taking for granted that it was the usual begging epistle of doubtful credentials but with plausible appeal. Somewhat to his surprise, he saw that it had been written some months previously by one of the Eastern officials of his own church, and it was addressed to him personally. Written, he reflected, before his disgrace had become public property!

THE words that met his eyes formed a bitter comment upon what he had been, and what he now was. Indeed, he was thinking of this more than of the letter itself, as he read, so that the curious phrases and unusually strong indorsement of the woman were entirely lost upon him. Otherwise he would have realized that no ordinary charity-beggar could have drawn such a letter:

Reverend and dear brother:

⁠As one of the most outstanding ministers of the church, and a man of powerful influence among those who know you, I am appealing to you as a brother in Christ to give to the bearer of this letter every aid in money or influence at your command.

⁠Mrs. Ivanoff’s errand is not primarily concerned with the church itself; it is an errand of broad humanity, as you will realize when she makes you aware of its nature.

⁠I have told her that you can put her in touch with the two or three prominent men in your city whom she wishes to interview. She is securing the backing of a dozen or so men for her cause—all of them men of the largest affairs in the country. You will see for yourself that her cause is a large one, above dollars and cents. I esteem it an honor to send her to you with the strongest indorsement within my power to give.

Venable silently folded up the letter, replaced it in its envelope and returned it to the woman.

“I am very sorry, Mrs. Ivanoff,” he said bluntly, “that I am unable to serve you.”

The shock in her sea-gray eyes made him stagger a little mentally.

“Unable!” she said, her rich voice thrilling him. “Why, you—I have not yet told you my mission!”

Venable shrugged his shoulders.

“No matter,” he said. “If you had gone to anyone else in this city, you would not have come to me.”

A slight frown of puzzled wonder creased her brow. He noted that she was older than he had at first thought; her hair was streaked with gray.

“I do not understand,” she said slowly. “I was told that—that you—”

“Very likely,” broke in Venable, bitterness tincturing his voice. “And if you had come to anyone else in this city first, you would have been told that I am leaving here to-morrow in disgrace. You would have been told that I am a drug-fiend, that I have been cast out by society and all who knew me formerly, and that my influence would be useless to you.”

She did not seem startled by his disclosure. It seemed to him that he found a new depth to her eyes, a motherly solicitude in her voice.

“I am sorry, Doctor Venable,” she said. “I knew nothing of all this—if indeed you mean your words literally, which is hard to believe! However, that does not affect my errand here. If you will let me briefly sketch who I am and what I am doing—”

“No!” struck in Venable harshly, throwing out his hands in an emphatic gesture. His craggy features bristled in vehement negation; he glared at the woman with animosity that was unconcealed.

“No! I can’t be burdened with your troubles, madam; I can’t even stand up beneath my own! I don’t want to hear your story at all. There is nothing that I can do for you, in any case. You will do better in the community if you leave me alone.”

STILL Mrs. Ivanoff seemed to take no umbrage at his manner or words. Her eyes dwelt upon him in a quiet steadiness, a poised searching, as though they probed for the wounds under his harsh exterior.

“But perhaps,” she said softly, “I could help you, Doctor Venable.”

He broke into a bitter laugh.

“You help me?” His voice was acid with a sneer. “My dear madam, the good Lord Himself can’t help me!”

“That,” she said, “is blasphemy.”

A hint of iron in her voice carried the words to him with full force. He passed a hand across his brow.

“Blasphemy?” he muttered. “No—it is the truth! The truth.”

Mrs. Ivanoff rose. A placid dignity filled her manner.

“I would not force aid upon your unwilling spirit,” she said; “nor would I force

aid from you to my cause. You doubtless think you are suffering; but I, a mere woman, have suffered far more than your imagination can conceive. And I think that I am better qualified to speak of God’s goodness than are you.

“I am sorry, very sorry, that this unfortunate state of affairs has arisen between us. I am sorry for your sake, sir, not for my own. If—”

“Can’t you see that I want to be left alone?” said Venable brutally.

He was startled by the effect of his words. Mrs. Ivanoff’s face whitened, be came rigid; her eyes glittered with a flashing blaze of anger that reminded Venable of his younger days, when among the northern woodsmen he had fought and been fought in primitive, ungodly passion.

“I am not used to such bald discourtesy,” she said, and again her voice held the ring of steel, “—especially when I came here seeking Christian charity. Good-by.”

She passed him by, went to the door and was gone.

Venable slowly followed her to the front door and closed it. Now that it was too late, he regretted the gusty irritation that had mastered him, the ill temper, the vicious lack of decency. He now realized that she must have been no ordinary woman; the impression of her personality was strong upon him.

However, what was done was done. Shrugging his shoulders, he dismissed the matter for all time, as he thought, and returned to the dining-room. He poured himself another drink of whisky and downed it with a grimace. His only thought now was to dull his mind to grief and disaster, as soon as might be. He had given up hope, given up all things. Had he been a coward, he would have fallen to the temptation of suicide.

He thought how quickly, how terribly, he had succumbed; and he poured himself another drink. With the liquor, his mood changed.

“Where to go?” he asked himself. “Where is there a place that will receive me?”

Framed in the window he saw a strip of blue sky, and laughed.

“Out under the blue sky—in the north woods, on the sea! And chiefly, away from here and everywhere I am known! I have a little money. Out to the West, and the lumber-camps, and the sea, and the blue sky—first of all, San Francisco!”

He had taken three drinks, and was nearly drunk. His-brain and body were in a ferment. Ahead of him he could see only the path to hell—that was the effect of the drug. His moral fibers were being destroyed as though by quicklime.

 

CHAPTER II

Garrity the Magnificent

ERIC VENABLE came to a drowsy awakening through which he was chiefly conscious of a medley of odors. He found himself lying in a miserable room lighted by a sick-flamed jet of gas; the windows betrayed a gloomy day light, heavy with dark fog.

The odors were many, but were permeated by a general sweetishness which found vague recognition in the nostrils of Venable. Incense! Where, then, was he? A whisky-bottle stood on the table beside his unclean bed; beside the bottle was a small box. At this Venable clutched with eagerness, and was not disappointed.

A moment later he lay back and closed his eyes, all sense of his degradation gone, in the effort to place himself. He smiled inwardly at thought of his fruitless efforts to get the drug in San Francisco; it was not hard for everyone to get, of course, but it was hard for a man of his speech and mien to procure.

Then, somehow, had come a friend. He remembered this much, and no more. Struggling to pierce the veil, he opened his eyes and sat up. It must be morning, he reflected; there was a vile taste in his mouth; a cheap clock in the corner pointed to seven. Another bed, two chairs, and a suitcase, open and piled with a rumpled heap of clothes, completed the garniture of this choice abode, which was upstairs above a Japanese incense-factory.

Venable explored his pockets, found his old pipe and some loose tobacco, and began to smoke. He felt rather cheerful—be cause of the white powder working in his brain like optimistic maggots. He rose and glanced into a mirror; he must have been shaved the previous evening, for he looked fairly well. He had grown used to seeing his eyes like burning flames in black sockets, and the big-boned face of him like parchment stretched tight. As he turned from the glass, the door opened and a man entered.

“Ah! Good morning to ye, Parson!” exclaimed a rich and throaty voice, a voice compelling in its good humor yet vibrant with rough menace. “Looking like a fighting-cock, ye are!”

Disburdening himself of various bundles, which he set upon the table, the speaker held out a hand to Venable. He was a broad-beamed man, stockily built, wide of shoulder, with a coppery thatch of hair, a red mustache, and a broken-nosed, brick-hued face from which gleamed two blue eyes like stars.

Cloaking this ruddily resplendent figure was a suit of startling blue, a necktie of gay pink loosely knotted about a dirty collar, and chrome shoes. A gray derby was cocked jauntily over one large ear.

Venable, smiling hesitantly, gripped the proffered hand, as he was obviously expected to do.

“You must be my good Samaritan,” he said; “but I can’t remember—”

“Small blame to ye!” chuckled the other. “Garrity’s my name, Terence Garrity, and it’s glad I am to meet ye over again, Parson! ’Twas a wonderful night we had last night, and proud was I to have the company of such a man as yourself. We’ve money enough left for another of the same, praise be!”

Another of the same! Venable was unable to meet the suggestion, and so slurred the issue.

“This is your place?” he inquired.

“It is that, until I’m gone—which will be the Friday night. I’ve been out early the morn, as ye may see; here’s milk and some sandwiches and such, beside the fine clothes I got for ye last night.”

“Last night!” said Venable slowly, a flush rising to his brow. “Why, I must have been rather—er—”

“Ye were,” assented Garrity with a grin. Then a soberness fell upon him, and he laid one huge paw upon the shoulder of Venable.

“Parson, if I do say it meself, it’s lucky that ye fell into the hands o’ Terence Garrity! Because why, ye told me all about a number o’ things, Parson—all about ’em, ye did. Have no fear! I remember what happens in liquor, but I’ve a close tongue on me, and I’d have ye know that I think none the worse of ye, sir. What with your learning and all, you’re the wreck of a better man than ever Garrity was nor will be, and I love ye for it! So that’s done with, Parson; now, until I get off to sea again, what I have is yours. First, for our breakfast!”

VENABLE was humbled and speechless. The rags that clothed him were the remains of the old fishing-suit in which he had left home; from the parcels, Garrity disclosed a ready-made suit that fitted fairly and was sober in color. Yet Venable gave little heed to these outward things, or even to the excellent breakfast that soon lay outspread on the table.

Strong upon him was the sense of his position—he realized that for him the die had been cast beyond any withdrawal; he had gone down into the depths; he was bound there by the absolute misery of his existence; and for him life held only an aching emptiness. The thoughtless but true word used by Garrity—the word “wreck”—lingered bitterly with him. It ate into his brain like a corrosive acid.

How long a time had elapsed since he had left the gray house behind him, since he had set forth for San Francisco, he had no definite idea; a week, perhaps two weeks, he had lived entirely independent of time or calendar. The fact that he had fallen into the ways of vice and drink meant very little to him, after the first sting of shame drawn by Garrity’s words. He was no longer looking upward. But gradually, as he found that Garrity’s attitude was purely one of comradeship, he lost his sensitiveness. He regretted only that his brain was not yet numbed and deadened.

AS for Garrity himself, that genial soul lost no time in setting forth his position beyond mistake. He was a first-class engineer of some kind, Venable gathered vaguely—an engineer against whom there was a conspiracy of prohibition skippers, so that Garrity was forced to take any berth he could get. He was at present engaged with a small tramp steamer which would leave sometime Friday night for the China ports.

For the rest, Garrity put himself, his purse and his friends at the disposal of Eric Venable. He washed down his breakfast with a draft from the whisky bottle, and waxed eloquent.

“Twice I’ve been married,” he stated, “and neither time with any luck to speak of. The first was took with typhus a week after the weddin’, and the second was a slip of a Russian girl in Vladivostok, who was in trouble an’ needed to be an American citizeness, save the mark! So the consul married us, and I said good-by, and went my way—and the divil only knows what become of her, poor lass!”

Venable eyed him a long moment.

“Not every man would do a thing like that,” he said slowly. “Something fine about it—”

“Oh, I was drunk at the time!” Garrity laughed. Then his shrewd, twinkling eyes filled with gravity and a compassionate inquiry. “Tell me, now! Is it a parson ye are this blessed minute?”

“I suppose so—in name,” said Venable. He reached for the whisky. “I suppose so—yes. But not in act, mind—in name only. That’s all behind and done with.”

Garrity stared at him with an insistent gaze, wondering more than a little at the man. Venable drank, and a little color crept up into his cheeks of bleached iron. To the seaman, this anomaly of a man was beyond comprehension—a man anything but weak, indeed, of stronger fiber than most, yet now utterly abandoned to degradation. And a man, besides, of education and godliness! To the wondering Garrity it was a thing for pity and kindness. He had seen no lack of drug-users in his time, but seldom a man who had come so low from a place so high.

“Why did you ask me that?” demanded Venable suddenly. “Do you want to get divorced and married over again?”

“Not me!” said Garrity with a chuckle. “I’ll never marry again, Parson; far’s a wife’s concerned, I’m tied to Mary for life. That was the first, ye mind. The Russian lass—well, that was fifteen year ago and more—nothin’ more than a weddin’ to that, Parson. Still, she was a girl o’ fine spirit, unusual fine. I’ve often wondered what became of her.”

“She was a revolutionist?”

“Heaven knows—I don’t!” Garrity produced an evil black pipe and lighted it. “Not even her name! Well, Parson, let’s go see a picture-show!”

“What—this time of day?”

“Why not? I want to make the most o’ my opportunities. A week from now I’ll be watchin’ gauges and cursin’ firemen, poor devils! Will ye go out? We’ll get a bite o’ lunch and maybe meet one or two pals, spend the afternoon in a show—”

VENABLE’S will-power was practically nil, and he cared little what he did. The two men sallied forth together in the bright morning sunshine, an odd pair. Despite his condition and his ill-fitting black clothes, there clung to Venable some pathetic remnants of dignity, some vestige of untrodden years. He bulked high about Garrity, a gaunt scarecrow of a man, hell alight in his eyes, his face and mien derelict; and yet something held him apart from the street panhandlers. He would lose the barrier with time, but it was not yet lost.

They found a continuous movie-palace which was opening for the day, and bought seats. For two hours they sat, to emerge again into the blinding light of noon. Venable had with him his box of precious powders; but Garrity, out of whom the drink had died, was glum until they had entered a restaurant and secured something to eat. Venable again became conscious that he was living on the other man’s money, but to his ventured protest Garrity returned scorn.

“Nonsense! It’s glad I am of your company, Parson; and what’s mine is my friends’ while I have it. Would ye not accept a bit of hospitality in the spirit it’s given?”

Venable assented. He was beginning to go to pieces physically and mentally, although he did not realize it. He was moving in a haze of events, scarce conscious what was passing around him. After the noon meal there were a few drinks, and quite a number of men who drank amazing quantities of raw liquor and who talked loudly about things that had to do with the sea.

Quite vaguely, Venable gathered that his friend Garrity was being commiserated for being tied to the John Ferguson, which appeared to be the name of Garrity’s steamer. It seemed that the Ferguson was chartered to Japanese, who were sending general merchandise to Dairen and Tientsin by her. At the latter port she was to take over certain Japanese officers, and Garrity firmly announced his intention of leaving her on the spot if this were done.

“Thank the good Lord,” quoth he, “they’ll not be able to do me out o’ me wages, either! ’Twas at Tientsin I signed on, and it’s there I’ll end, most like!”

There was talk of ports from Africa to Falmouth, and it was not the sort of talk that Eric Venable had been used to hearing from traveled people. It went deeper, this talk; it reached into the hard ground-pan of life—tales of meat and drink, of women and men, of gross things and great things. Through all of it ran a strong and rank individualism—the deeds of such an one, the way a man had done such a thing, the impressions of the first person alone. It was primitive stuff. Venable did not understand it altogether, but he drank it in avidly none the less. It took him back to his younger days, when among the woodsmen he had gained the iron physique which still marked him out among men.

Afterward, Garrity dragged him forth to view San Francisco. They tramped Market Street, viewed the Fairmont and Palace hotels from the outside, and finally took a car out to Golden Gate Park. There they spent hours, ranging from the band concert to the animals, and toward the heel of the afternoon started for home again, worn out.

AS they neared the park gates they passed a jam of automobiles, held up by a car with a stalled engine. A woman in one of the automobiles caught sight of the two men as they went past, and she leaned forward, staring at them. Her face, although muffled in rich furs, showed itself as a strong, womanly face, starred by sea-gray eyes and slightly marked by a faint red weal across the left cheek.

Garrity sensed the stare, turned and saw the woman. He saw that she was devouring the figure of Venable with her gaze; so fiercely eager were her eyes that he knew his companion had been recognized.

“There’s a woman back there looking as if she knew ye,” he said to Venable, a moment later. “Want to stop? In an auto, she is.”

Venable shivered a trifle, then quickened his pace.

“No,” he answered. “Of course not! What did she look like?”

Garrity described her with some accuracy, but the image conveyed little to Venable’s mind. He had entirely forgotten the strange woman who had called upon him the day before he left home. His disclaimer drew a puzzled frown from Garrity.

On their way downtown the engineer was silent, occasionally giving Venable odd sidelong glances of which the latter was unconscious. Indeed, he hardly spoke until they were downtown, when he proffered a request.

“Will ye have a drink, and then step around to the shippin’ office with me? There’s a bit o’ paper there I’d like to have ye sign, if ye don’t mind. After that, supper! We’ll meet a couple o’ the boys to-night, I expect. To-morry’s Friday, and me last day, bad luck to it! Praise be, we’d not be leavin’ until after the midnight, which will take off the curse.”

Venable assented. Garrity took him to Pisco John’s, and they had not one drink but three of subtle Peruvian punch; after that, Venable’s recollections were very hazy. He went to a dingy little office with his companion, sat through a lot of talk, listened to some droned reading, and shakily affixed his signature to a paper.

He did remember meeting a queer man that night, a hulking fellow named Stormalong, or at least with that title—a black-browed giant who hailed Garrity as an old comrade. And there lingered in his brain something he heard Garrity telling this Stormalong:

“Mind ye, now, I don’t want to be seein’ him for a week out at least, maybe more! But I’ll want ye to handle him gentle. Mind that! If ye have no bowels o’ mercy, then by heaven I’ll make the old ship a livin’ hell for ye, man! I mean what I’m sayin’, Stormalong.”

The hulking giant gave Garrity a merry grin, and nodded as he lifted his glass.

“To the Parson’s health!” he cried. “Drink deep!”

Venable did not understand at all.

CHAPTER III

At Sea

VENABLE awoke to a racking headache, a violent nausea and a nerve-shattering need of morphia. His box of white powders was gone. This discovery startled him into immediate wakefulness.

He found his surroundings woefully strange. He was in a bunk that heaved oddly; everything around him seemed to be in the throes of an earthquake. Other men lay in other bunks; in the air was an odor of dirt and whisky and sweat. His bodily misery was acute, and was intensified a thousandfold by the jangle of his tortured nerves.

In vain he searched himself for the white powder. Satisfied that it was gone, he staggered from his bunk and stood for a moment gazing around. He was not a fool, and by the lamp swinging in gimbals he decided that he was aboard a ship; also he knew that he was extremely seasick.

Overcome by nausea, he opened a door before him and reeled out into a passage. He missed the companion ladder, the hatch of which was down, but finally wandered into the galley, where a yellow-skinned cook received him with much Oriental profanity. The cook, however, assisted him in relieving his anguished stomach, in the midst of which operation a rough voice broke in upon them.

“Damn my eyes, if it aint Parson! Hey, Parson! You git below with the change o’ watch, or I’ll be up to drag ye down! Give him some chow, John, so’s he can hold up his end with the black gang.”

Venable recognized the man Stormalong, and with a weak effort he inquired about Garrity.

“Garrity?” rejoined the other jeeringly. “He’s five hundred mile back in Frisco—where you’ll wish you was if you don’t buck up an’ git to work! ”

With this, Stormalong vanished. Venable was too weak and sick to give further heed to anything. How he had come aboard this ship, he neither knew nor cared. He begged the cook for morphine or opium, but the yellow man only shrugged his shoulders.

An hour later, scarce able to crawl for the sickness that was on him, Venable emerged on deck, painfully dragging himself aft. To his amazement he found there was no storm; the steamer was chugging through bright sunlight and sparkling waters; her decks seemed white and deserted, and all around was a horizon of long, rolling billows. She was not a large ship by any means, and Venable halted at sight of the stenciled name on boats and preservers—John Ferguson.

Why, that was Garrity’s ship, surely! Even in his racked condition, Venable remembered the name. And Garrity five hundred miles away, back in Frisco? How did it happen?

PUZZLING over this strange fact, Venable halted to stare around him. No one was in sight, and the ship seemed to be going her business of her own accord. Suddenly he was aware that a man had appeared and was approaching him—a rather small man, wearing a faded cap and faded blue clothes.

“What are you doing here?” said the stranger.

“Looking for the captain,” answered Venable feverishly. “Tell me—”

“I’m the skipper. Oh, you’re Parson, are you?” The other man gave him a keen, searching look. “Well, what d’you want?”

“I—I—for the love of heaven, give me some morphia!” begged Venable with piteous force. “I’m going to pieces—”

“Get below, you old fool,” snapped the skipper, “and clear out of this part of the ship! You’ll get all the stimulant you want in the boiler-room—”

“There’s been a mistake!” broke in Venable. “I—I never meant to be aboard here.”

“You, Stormalong!” The skipper lifted his voice to some one forward. “Get this bum for’ard where he belongs and keep him there! Tryin’ to tell me he was shanghaied, the dopy old fool! Clear him out, now.”

Stormalong appeared, gathered up the protesting but helpless Venable, and dragged him below again in short order.

Thus ended the primary stage of Venable’s sea-education. The secondary stage was one of horror, humiliation and utter torment. Every man aboard ship knew that he was a dope-victim; and every man knew that a dope-victim is the most degraded of men. Only Garrity knew that his friend was a victim of fate, and not of opium products.

To the mind of Venable, at least, the intolerable torture which he now faced consisted of two salient features: he was kept at work shoveling coal, and he could get neither drug nor liquor. For a while he was close to madness. Perhaps Shinski saved him from madness; perhaps it was the steel within himself that saved him. Some men can go through agonies of suffering and labor, and the more they endure, the more spring comes into the steel of their souls; others, made of iron instead of steel, go to pieces and must be slowly welded or not at all. In Venable’s case it was steel, and it was proven.

Shinski was a man in his watch. When Venable crawled into his bunk the second night of his deprivation and torment, he was groaning bitterly, half raving. Shinski came to him, an odd little man, tenderly pitiful, speaking accented English, and like an angel of mercy gave Venable a tiny bit of white powder.

There was something to Shinski. Usually silent, once or twice his voice leaped out across “glory-hole” discussions; then it became a flaming, vitriolic voice that burned and bit, the words terrific and pregnant. Twice he lectured the gentry of die watch on radical lines. Shinski was a Red, an anarch. Too tender-hearted to kill a cockroach, Shinski believed in slaughtering the privileged classes, and had done his share of the slaughtering; it was muttered that he had been through the worst of the Russian shambles, a crimsoned figure. Glory-hole gossip made of him a Robespierre, and probably with truth. His presence here was wholly a mystery. He was no opium-victim; yet he had found the powder for Venable.

WHEN Venable went to work again, it was quite obvious that the drug was uplifting him, and about six bells he collapsed. He said nothing, and how the secret became known was untold; but something happened to Shinski. He was shifted to the other watch, so that Venable saw no more of him.

At the end of a week Venable was reacting very well. His brain was clearing out. Stormalong drove him mercilessly, yet not with the brutal fury applied to the other men, for Parson, as he was now known, gave himself to the work and did not slack. Finding that he was indeed at sea and bound for Asia, Venable accepted the situation and made the best of it. Patching together the shreds of his vague memories, he could connect Terence Garrity with his presence here in a very slight manner; besides, was not Garrity his friend? It was inexplicable. How he had come aboard the ship, he could not understand.

Meantime his body throve under punishment and hearty food. The gaunt frame hardened and became a powerful machine, with a vigor it had lacked for years past. Saved only by a narrow margin from mental collapse, Venable had no time for any thought or theorizing. He worked, ate, slept, in a monotonous sequence that filled all his day. His brain lay unused, fallow.

Of this, a fortnight in all. It was not much, as time goes, certainly not enough to pull Eric Venable out of all temptation and make of him a new man; but it was sufficient to clean and renew him in mind and body. And when the time was past, came—Garrity.

It was noon. Stormalong ordered Venable on deck, without explanation, shortly before watches changed. Out in the sunlight, awaiting him, Parson found the copper-thatched Garrity.

“It’s me,” Garrity grinned, hand outstretched. “Ye need not stare so! It’s me.”

“Why!” Venable took the proffered hand, whereat Garrity’s starry blue eyes lighted up. “They told me that you were back in—”

“I know all about it,” intervened the other bluntly. “Listen, now! ’Twas me had ye brought aboard, Parson—had ye shanghaied, no less, and it was for your own good. Ye’ll not love me for it, but that’s the truth: I could not bear to leave ye, goin’ the way you was back there! I know that ye do not want a boost up, but none the less I gave it. Now, if ye hate me for it, I can’t help it none.”

Venable said nothing; he could find no words. A furious, gusty anger leaped up within him as he comprehended. He stood impassive, towering over the engineer, staring down into those stark blue eyes that glimmered from the brick-red face with its broken nose.

Gradually there smote into his brain some realization of the simple, lucid honesty that lay in Garrity’s eyes. A week previously, he might have sprung upon the other in furiously insane passion; now he merely stood and realized the truth. Accustomed to weighing men and their motives, accustomed to viewing the spiritual side of things as the average man sees the practical, he comprehended the real affection for him that was in this man’s heart. And suddenly—just as ship’s bell was striking—his gaunt lined features broke into a smile.

“Eight bells!” he said. “Run along, Garrity—we’ll have a chat to-night, eh? Confound you, you rascal! I believe I’m glad you brought me along with you!”

GARRITY hastened below, overjoyed. For a space Venable stood at the rail, gazing with wide eyes at the blue sky and the blue-gray whorls of water; in that moment it seemed to him that after all, God lived—that in the far, clean depths of sky and sea were typified the vast omniscience of the Creator, governing all things! The brief moment swiftly passed. Venable turned away, his lips set in renewed lines of bitterness. He could see no light ahead, no future, nothing! This was the mental result of the drug, of course.

So vanished the second phase of his seafaring; and now began the third phase. It was one of introspection, of self-battles. The old craving was terrible in its power; he felt all helpless, hopeless, careless of what happened.

He saw much of Garrity now, and was strengthened by the doglike affection of this man who had plucked him from the gutter. He was shamed at thought of what his life in that interlude had been. The sun and the salt air, the hard work, began to tell. Old forgotten oaths came to his lips. He doffed the sanctified mantle that had held him apart from worldly things these many years, being now a new man in a new environment. He could not crowd out of his soul the fact that he had once been called to be a priest of God; but it lay far in the background, not molesting him overmuch.

One night there was pandemonium below—a fight, a wild riot. Venable was caught in it, and he found himself fighting as in the old north-woods days of his youth. Some one laid him out, finally, all but splitting his skull with a firebar; and it was good for him—it helped greatly. It went to make up the combination of little things that were needed. Garrity looked on from afar and said nothing, but his eyes were happy as he observed the change in his friend.

The truth about Venable was that he had both won and lost from that voyage to Tientsin. He won much of himself back again; a share of his dead youth was resurrected and returned to him. He lost much of his unworldly, theological attitude, and gained in practical ways. To illustrate: the night they entered the river and were dodging up toward the Tientsin wharf, Venable had an argument with a Greek stoker; the Greek drew a knife, worn in defiance of American shipping law, and Venable half killed him with three blows. You may draw a large inference from this happening.

So, then, they tied up at the Tientsin wharf. The work was finished. All hands were paid off, and separated presumably for ever. Venable and Terence Garrity walked ashore and to the fate destined them.

IT was late afternoon, and both men had money. Garrity caught a jinrikisha and directed their course to a decent place that he knew, in the French Settlement just across Bristow Road. On their way they passed through Victoria Road and the British Settlement; Venable was astonished at the beauty of the city, at its ultra civilization. Because he had come to China, he had expected pigtails and pagodas on every hand.

“Don’t ye believe it!” said Garrity sagely. “The world’s the world, Parson, and ye can’t get away from it nohow—except only at sea, and there’s more damned rules an’ conventions there than ashore. Ye can’t get away from the world, for a fact!”

Two hours later, having bathed and dined, they sat together in their room. Garrity broached what was uppermost in his mind—their immediate future.

“I’m urgin’ nothin’ on ye, Parson. Say what’s in your brain; that’s all; say what ye want to do, where ye want to go—up, down or roundabout—and I’m with ye while I’m wanted! You’re your own boss now, me lad. If ye want to go to hell again, we’ll go together!”

VENABLE laughed. He was amused by the situation and by the man Garrity. The steel in him was cropping out now.

“I’ve been a tremendous fool,” he said shortly.

“Ye have. And will ye now be a fool again?”

Venable shook his head, a curious steadiness in his deep-set eyes. “I think not.”

“Praise be!” exclaimed Garrity. “What will ye do, now? Go back to preachin’, maybe?”

“No.” Venable stroked his gray hair. “I’m an old man, Garrity, older than my years! This trip has shown me things; this trip across the Pacific has brought back to me things I’ve lost since boyhood. I don’t know just what I’ll do, but for the present—”

He paused. Then, suddenly, he smiled. “Terence Garrity, six months ago I stood high in the world; out of all my friends and brethren, not one but gave me up as a hopeless degenerate. A man who picked me up on the street, at my lowest point, is my best friend on this earth—and as long as he’ll have me, I’ll stick with him and bid the world go hang!”

“Oh!” cried Garrity, shoving forth his fist delightedly. “God love ye, Parson—shake! I was afraid ye’d be done with me. And to-morry we’ll look up a job, eh?”

Venable nodded.

CHAPTER IV

How Boris Drew Chips

HAD anyone followed Mr. Shinski as he left the wharf and scene of his travail behind, early that evening, it would have been observed that for a stoker on a tramp steamer he acted in a very inconsistent fashion!

He went, first, to a Chinese hotel for officials and gentry in the French Settlement. Thence, an hour later, emerged a new Shinski, immaculate in whites, a suitcase in his hand. He took a cab to the Imperial Hotel, in the same quarter of the city, where he registered for a ten-dollar room. He inquired for mail, and a letter was given him.

Upon reading the letter, Shinski used the telephone briefly, then sank into a chair in the lobby, companioned by a fifty-cent cigar. It might have been noted that he chose a chair in a corner, away from other loungers.

Before the cigar was half smoked, a woman entered the lobby, Shinski rose to meet her, hand outstretched. Color suffused his pale features; his eyes burned luridly on hers.

“My dear Marie!” he murmured, speaking now in Russian.

“You are wonderful, Serge—as always!” Her voice held admiration, but nothing deeper. “You have actually managed it! We had given you up!”

He drew up a chair for her, laughing. His manner was excited, eager with suppressed exhilaration; the whole man seemed to be highly tensed, vibrating.

“Many people would be glad to leave America, but they cannot,” he answered, settling down in his own chair again. “I wanted to come here—and I am here. But in the name of the devil, how I have worked to get here! Well! Tell me quickly about everything! You have been successful?”

“Partly.”

Marie seemed to enjoy his impatience, as she drew off her gloves. She was a handsome woman, a magnificently hand some woman; her face was not in the least aristocratic, being rather coarse, but it was suffused with a dynamic force of character, a driving vitality. One would have put her age at thirty, her experience and ability at fifty. Yet there was nothing hard or harsh in her features. A mass of bronze hair lowered above her brow; her voice was rich and deep, an instrument entirely responsive to her wishes.

Her gloves removed, she turned a ring upon her left hand so that the bezel came outward. A gasp broke from Shinski. He leaned forward, stared at the glittering yellow diamond in its antique setting, then lifted his eyes to the poised gaze of the woman.

“The Shirvan diamond—then you have succeeded! But you must not display that in this place.”

MARIE nodded as she again turned the bezel of the ring inward—not, perhaps, without reluctance, since this was one of the historic jewels of the world, and a wonderful stone.

“We have succeeded very largely. Two of us alone failed; Arnheim was caught in Vladivostok and killed. Abe Gerin was recognized in Omsk—and is still there.”

“How did you manage it?” exclaimed Shinski, his eyes devouring her. “Getting the jewels through, I mean!”

“Largely by wit, my dear friend. The six of us separated in Moscow, after dividing the jewels, and came separately. Gerin, being Trotzky’s secretary, secured correct papers for us all. I kept the largest stones myself, so that the others had no temptation to abscond; the big money would come when we pooled again and sold the stuff. I now have the entire lot in my possession and keeping—Arnheim and Gerin had small lots, so that we lost little.

“We are now living separately, the others in the Japanese quarter, I in the British. Even here there is a violent feeling against anything that savors of Bolshevism, and the others are afraid to take chances. You and I had best arrange everything, for we are safe enough.”

“Exactly.” Shinski nodded energetically. “I now have my first papers as an American. Well! This is better than I had hoped for! You had my cable about the Ivanoff woman? The devil himself must have helped her! Getting money out of American millionaries is hard; I know, because I tried. Yet she must have succeeded, because she—”

Marie’s eyes dwelt upon him in a pitying comprehension.

“Don’t you realize the truth, my dear Serge?” she said quietly. “Such men demand proofs. You had none; you are a Russian, of peasant stock, and they were afraid of you. The Ivanoff, on the contrary, shows in her very person the caste to which she was born. She doubtless had letters from the Metropolitan of Moscow and others; American and allied diplomats would know her and vouch for her; the Russian aristocrats now in America would be wholly behind her endeavors. Naturally, she would succeed!”

Shinski’s eyes were red. “Class!” his voice bit out. “Again the aristocrat—”

“Be quiet!” Marie’s hand touched his arm, silenced him, quelled him, this little man with the fiery eyes and soul. “All that is done with, my friend. Before you left Russia, we agreed that the proletariat cause had cut its own throat; it is but a question of time, and for that reason we have turned individualist. Now that we have gotten out with our loot, it ill becomes us to use the old language on which we have turned our backs.”

Shinski shrugged his shoulders. “None the less, it is true! We are traitors to our ideals, but—”

“No but’s!” she intervened crisply. “As for me, I want no more revolution. I have worked twenty years in its cause, and I have seen it succeed, only to fail in a spasm of blood and ruin. I am sick of it! We shall reach Mexico and be rich—that is enough for me. In course of time we shall get into the United States; you and I can do so at any time, being citizens. You have not discovered what the Ivanoff woman is planning?”

SHINSKI gave her a caustic glance. “Since you have abandoned the cause, Marie, why not call her the Princess Irene?”

“Very well!” Marie laughed softly, gayly, and patted Shinski’s arm. One gathered that she regarded him rather in the light of an animal tamed and subservient to her will, that intimacy with him had bred in her something akin to good-natured contempt. Certainly there was no fear in her wide eyes.

“She has some mad scheme.” Shinski spoke in a voice softened, mollified. “I don’t know it, but I gathered that it dealt with religion. She’s that type of fool.”

Marie nodded. “I can tell you all about it,” she said calmly. “She has been raising American money for two objects: first, to rescue the Romanoff women, and second, to rescue many of the ancient relics of the Russian church.”

“Oh!” said Shinski, a sudden light in his eyes. “Then she has gone back into Russia! We shall send word of that—”

“Not at all! She has sent a good deal of money back, and expects the Romanoff women to be brought out by others working inside the country. A large trunk filled with relics has already been sent to her. That was where we overlooked something, my friend! We took the jewels and reliquaries, and threw aside the relics. Well, those relics are worth something! And this woman has them, together with many jewels that we were unable to obtain—some of the finest, in fact! She is now waiting for the Romanoff women—or at least, for the czar’s daughters. And they will not come.”

“Why not?” demanded Shinski.

“Because I sent warning.”

“You are consistent, you!” Shinski’s eyes were beginning to blaze again. “You talk about turning your back on everything—”

“Because I hate that woman!” cried Marie in a sudden gust of passion. “It was her dead husband who sent me to Siberia years ago, a girl! She stands for everything I have fought against, for everything I have suffered! If I had her here now, I would kill her!”

Shinski drew back from her, alarmed. “But her husband died before the war; she too has suffered—”

MARIE’S mood changed abruptly. With a gesture she dismissed the matter.

“She has chartered a ship and has kept it waiting for the Romanoffs.”

“Where? At Valdivostok?”

“No. Here—down the river at the Taku anchorage.”

“Ah! Then she herself—”

“Is here in town, at the Astor House.”

Shinski drew a long breath. For a moment he sat looking straight out before him, at nothing. His eyes were narrowed, filled with calculation, lurid with a cunning fury of thought. At last he spoke, his voice soft and low.

“How many are with her?”

“One—an old fool of a family servant.” Marie was watching him curiously. “Why? What is stirring in that clever head of yours?”

Shinski gave her a grin. He set his cigar-stub between his teeth, leaned forward and fastened his eyes upon hers.

“Listen, Marie! Because you and I are Americans, you think it easy to get away from here, to reach Mexico and America?

But I tell you it is not easy! The three with you are—”

“David Pinsky, Levi Deardorf, and the boy, young Marks.”

He nodded swiftly. “New York East Siders—fools who burst over to Russia and threw away their American citizens’ papers! Now, let me tell you, America is in fear of letting in the radicals! They don’t want us. South America also. Our one sure haven is Mexico, and there I have made all arrangements. But first we must get there; it will be hard, hard!”

“But why? There are ships—”

“And there are spies, of all countries; also there are customs officials! We can not travel on any public carrying steamer, unless we go separately and by stealth. This we cannot do, with three accompanying us—”

“If you mean,” she broke in coldly, “to desert Pinsky, Deardorf and Marks here, and to run away with the loot, I say no!”

“Nonsense! I meant nothing of the sort!” cried Shinski with an impatient gesture, although disappointment lurked in his eyes. “I mean that to reach Mexico, we must go via other countries, which is hardly possible; or else we must charter a ship—or obtain a ship—of our own. Ships are not easily chartered. The cost is terrific.”

“Well?” She regarded him steadily. “You propose—”

“The simplest thing imaginable. Tell me about this ship of the Ivanoff—her name, size and so forth.”

“She is called the Kum Chao, is Chinese-owned, and is a small steamer of two thousand tons—a coaster, I think, and an old ship. But surely you could not get—”

“It is simple, my dear!” Shinski looked cheerful. “There are difficulties, of course. The chief one is getting away without trouble; to effect that, we must manage the Ivanoff woman, let her smooth away every rocky spot, work hard for us! We must have a go-between, some one she will trust—one of the old aristocrats who will sell his soul for our money! The woman must be made to realize that the Romanoffs are beyond rescue, but that others need her help. She will thus get the millionaires some value for their money.”

SHE watched him intently, trying to pierce the veil of his crafty thought.

“Even if we succeeded, Serge, we could not make her think we are aristocrats.”

“Tut, tut! Am I a fool? She will not see us. Where is the man or woman to help us?”

“Ah!” The quick word broke from her. “Boris Kryalpin is at Port Arthur—I heard that he was playing the French tourist! You remember Boris? In the old diplomatic service, a noble; he was disgraced by Grand Duke Michael early in the war for selling information to the Germans, and the Czarina barely managed to save his life! He was organizing the German prisoners in Siberia when the Czechoslovaks cut him off from home, and he fled. He dares not go to any Allied country, and he is unable to get back into Russia now.”

“The very man for us, and a most accomplished liar!” exclaimed Shinski. “You must see him at once; leave to-night or in the morning, by the first ship! Before he sees the Ivanoff, I shall have her informed about the failure of her hopes; thus, she will jump at the chance that Boris will offer her—”

“Not so fast! How shall I handle Boris? What story shall I tell him?”

“Can you trust him with that Shirvan diamond?”

“If he is closely enough watched.”

Shinski grinned, and drew his chair closer. He was aflame now, aflame with creation and construction—his brain, developed along one particular line, was working like clockwork as he mapped out his scheme.

It was a good scheme, an excellent scheme in its own way. There was no mercy in it, and its merciless quality was odd to be engendered in a man who loved animals and all living things as did Shinski. But his brain was warped. To him, aristocrats were as lice. To him, the struggle of classes was the great and only thing in the world, responsible for all history and underlying all mundane events; everything that happened to him or to anyone else was viewed by Shinski through class-struggle glasses. He was perfectly sincere, and believed absolutely in this philosophy of his.

“You are sure Boris has no present connection with Moscow?” asked Shinski suddenly.

“I am sure of nothing; but I know of none,” answered Marie. “He has little money, I hear, and while he might be very glad to reach Moscow, he is at present cut off from everyone back there. He can turn to nobody, and will welcome our offer as a godsend.”

“Good! Then squander promises on him, but no more cash than you must. Get him here at the earliest possible moment, and cable me when you leave Port Arthur. I shall be busy.”

“By the way, arrange to look for Abe Gerin,” said Marie, at a stab of memory. “I sent money to insure his escape from Omsk, and if he gets out at all, he is due here shortly.”

“Then it must be very shortly,” Shinski snarled. “I have no time to waste! If he comes—”

“Then he is entitled to his share of the proceeds, whether he has lost his share of the loot or not.”

Shinski met the steady gaze of Marie, and nodded—as though he could not help himself.

CHAPTER V

Eric Venable, Second Officer

GARRITY the magnificent lost no time in setting out to find a job. He did not want a job for himself; he had just finished one bit of work, and had not the slightest ambition to sign on for another voyage anywhere until his money was gone. Being the man he was, however, he considered it best for all hands that he and Venable get a job right away, lest Venable’s determination weaken.

Cocaine and morphia are to be had at any street-corner or crossroads in China, as Garrity knew. He knew that the Japanese bought a large share of the Indian opium crop each year, shipped it to their Formosa factories and made it into active drug products. He knew that they poured it wholesale into China by mail, having the Chinese postal system under their thumb; and he knew that Venable was in the way of temptation so long as they remained ashore. Hence, for Venable’s sake, he made the heroic resolve to get back to sea at once.

However, he found that engineers—especially engineers who had a name for liquor—would have trouble in landing the proper berths, and Garrity had no notion of signing aboard any native craft. Besides, he wanted something good for Venable, and it was most indisputable that nobody would hire Venable if they saw him first.

It was a stiff problem, but like all such, there proved to be a solution. Garrity remembered the tramp steamer rocking out in the Taku anchorage, and in the course of gossip along the wharves, he found that she was something of a mystery ship. No one knew much about her, but she was supposed to be awaiting a crew, for some obscure reason, and was under a Russian charter.

All this looked promising to Garrity, and he went forthwith to see the owners—a reputable Chinese firm with an agency on Victoria Road. As it happened, Mrs. Ivanoff had requested the agency to keep an eye open for a crew, which she might want in a hurry. They gave Garrity her name, and Garrity betook himself to the Astor House.

He was admitted to the apartment of Mrs. Ivanoff by a bearded old man whom she later addressed as Paul, and who bore a grand manner. In five minutes Mrs. Ivanoff herself appeared, and Garrity stood aghast at sight of her. He remembered her instantly; he could not forget that rather wonderful face with its slight reddish mar on one cheek. To his untold amazement he recognized her as the woman whom he had observed in San Francisco, the woman who had recognized Venable!

SHE did not remember him, obviously, and he controlled himself in a moment. Doubtless, she had never even remarked him on the earlier occasion; she had then been all eyes for Venable. He mustered up courage and broached what was on his mind.

It was plain to him that the lady herself was in much agitation over something. In fact, she was extremely disturbed mentally, but in the end she was conquered by the twinkling eyes of Garrity, who presently had her undivided attention.

“I’ve a pal to land a berth for alongside me,” he continued earnestly. “In fact, it’s both of us or none, beggin’ your pardon! A gentleman entirely he is, and him havin’ a bad run o’ luck and all, I’m wantin’ to help him a bit. If ye could hand him somethin’ fair and decent, now—”

Mrs. Ivanoff smiled. “Perhaps I can make use of him, Mr. Garrity; and if your papers are in order, I shall be very glad to make use of you. Also I shall need other engineers and a mate. I have secured a captain and first officer—”

“Oh!” exclaimed Garrity with a relieved air. “I did not know ye wanted any officers, ma’am. This friend o’ mine, now, has a second officer’s license in steam, and barrin’ a bit o’ bad luck he’s had, is a good man for the place. We’d like to be together, and I thought that he might get anythin’ at all for this voyage; but if it’s a second officer ye lack, say the word!”

Mrs. Ivanoff rose. “Just at present, Mr. Garrity, I scarcely know what I shall want. I have had some very bad news to-day which may change all my plans. If you will leave your address with me, I can notify you should anything turn up in the near future. Of course, I would wish to interview your friend before engaging him; but I am really very uncertain about everything to-day.”

“Yes’m, women is that way, I hear.” Garrity laughed so engagingly that Mrs. Ivanoff smiled in response. “It’s mighty good of ye, ma’am, to bear us in mind, and proud we’ll be to sign on with ye if the luck turns that way. If I might write down me address, now—”

Garrity went home again, rather disconsolate on the whole, and wondering whether it would be to Venable’s advantage to be drawn into contact with this woman who so evidently knew him. This caused Garrity no little perplexity. However, he resolved to waste no time worrying, but to see what happened; he had no great anticipation that Mrs. Ivanoff would ever put to sea in the Kum Chao, for from her words he gathered that she was in trouble and very indefinite as to her plans.

His inspiration to paint Venable as a second officer had good grounds. He knew where he could pick up a second officer’s papers,—illegally,—and he took for granted that when Mrs. Ivanoff discovered the imposition she would shield Venable. Was she not a friend of the man’s? Obviously! Let him once land Venable in the mate’s berth, therefore, and things would some how take care of themselves.

So Garrity took himself back to the boarding-house, said nothing to Venable, and tried to pick up other berths—without success. He got into touch with Stormalong, who was likewise out of work, and tipped him off regarding the Kum Chao. Stormalong declared profanely that Mrs. Ivanoff’s ship did not look good to him, but he would wait and see. So Garrity opened his illegal negotiations regarding the second officer’s ticket for Venable, and rested on his oars.

LATE in the following afternoon, without the knowledge of Garrity but destined to exert a direct influence upon Garrity’s future, a gentleman named Boris Kryalpin arrived in the city via boat from Port Arthur. There also arrived, by rail and very furtively, a broken-bodied little man who walked with the aid of a crutch, a Russian refugee who spoke American and Yiddish, by the name of Abe Gerin. A most insignificant man, this Abe Gerin, who had deserted the sinking ship with the other rats, yet far above Shinski in mental caliber and moral fiber. He was a poet, and in his hurt body abode no petty meanness or trickery; something of the old Jewish greatness was in him. For the sake of an ideal, Abe Gerin had gone to Russia. His ideal was now destroyed, but he, alone from the entire group headed by Marie, had worked and fled without selfish aims. With his arrival in Tientsin, Shinski and the others were completely dwarfed. Marie alone could understand his unselfishness, and the clear devotion that was aflame within him.

Abe Gerin vanished from sight almost as soon as he reached the city, but Boris Kryalpin, in the guise of a Frenchman of means, went directly to the Astor House and sent a hastily scribbled note to Mrs. Ivanoff.

Ten minutes later Boris was gracefully bowing over that lady’s hand. He was a charmingly graceful man, was Boris—white teeth glinting under a smooth mustache, a swarthy face, a feline litheness in every movement, and the heart of a devil masquerading under the guise of a nobleman.

At the present moment Boris was the secret but accredited agent of Lenine, Trotzky & Co., a fact which would have given Mr. Shinski considerable alarm had he known it. Serge Shinski and his friends, Abe Gerin and Marie excepted, were mere rats who might prove deadly at a pinch; but Boris Kryalpin was a tiger, a man of infinite resource and craft, of no scruples or principles, and of a diabolic bravery.

Coming upon the errand of double treachery that had fetched him hither, Boris had to be coolly brave to look into the sea-gray eyes of the Princess Irene without faltering. But he did it.

“You do not remember me, Your Highness,” he said smoothly, “but I had the honor of being presented to you at an imperial reception four years ago.”

“Your face is not unfamiliar,” said Mrs. Ivanoff, her eyes searching him. “May I ask how you were informed of my presence here?”

“Through seeing you in Vladivostok recently. I was unable to approach you at the time, but followed you here. For six months, Your Highness, I have been located in this vicinity—upon much the same business as your own, I imagine. Of course, I know little of your business, but one is permitted to draw inferences, eh? And I had certain dear friends under the old régime.”

HE named a group of half a dozen nobles of the old empire. All were prominent names, names intimately known to the Princess Irene; the fate of all was now cloaked by the red shadow that gloomed above unhappy Russia.

“It has been my privilege,” he continued easily, “to assist this little group of friends in reaching a place of safety, and in caring for certain valuables, public and private, which they had rescued from the wreck. I have brought one of these to prove my story to you, should you need proof.”

He opened his hand, displaying there a blazing yellow diamond set in an antique ring. At sight of it Mrs. Ivanoff changed color.

“The Shirvan diamond—one of the historic jewels of a historic family!” pursued Boris. He paused an instant; then, as Mrs. Ivanoff remained silent, he continued his speech.

“These friends are now over the Mongolian border and within Chinese territory—are, indeed, close to Peking. They are safe, Your Highness. As you can understand, they are destitute; the money with which I worked is exhausted. To sell their jewels I am neither able nor willing. They are mine only in trust, and I have a conscience in such matters.

“I learned that you had chartered a ship; so I came to you in the confidence that you would extend us help in reaching America. They might be dependent upon the charity of the Allies, yes! They know you better than I, of course; yet I cannot doubt that you will help, if you can. They would not hesitate to appeal to you, I believe, and so in their name I have come to ask your aid.”

He waited, proudly erect, confident, frank.

PRINCESS IRENE saw no reason to distrust this man. She had learned the disastrous news that her efforts to save the Romanoff family were futile, that her intrigues had been discovered and her friends in Russia scattered. She had contrived to smuggle out a quantity of the most holy relics of old Russia, but to sail back to the United States empty-handed save for these relics would scarce justify her labors and expenditures—in her own eyes.

Now, as though providentially, she beheld the chance to give harborage to a lesser group of the persecuted ones. They were not the Romanoffs, true; no less were they stricken humanity in distress, gentlewomen and princes hounded like beasts, tortured and driven into an exile that was as heaven after the hell that Russia now was.

Mrs. Ivanoff, that strong-souled woman who had been a princess, did not hesitate. She must give up a portion of her great plan; yet she could rescue these few and take them in comfort to America. Of the man before her she scarcely thought at all. Her brain was busy with the little band of refugees trailing a weary way across outer China, toward her. In other days they had been her dear friends. Boris had chosen his names very carefully.

“When will they arrive?” she demanded.

“That depends largely upon you,” answered Boris. “They should reach Peking to-morrow. If you refuse them the aid of your ship; and secret passage to America, they will remain in Peking for the present.”

“Secret passage?” she repeated, frowning.

“Necessarily.” He made a graceful, assured gesture. “There are many others yet in Russia. I am working to bring them out, as well as these. Let it become known to the Bolshevik agents and spies that this party has reached safety, and escape will be tenfold harder for the others; every avenue will be watched.

“But, assured of your help, I go to-night to Peking, to meet the party. To-morrow night I return with them, still disguised, and will place them straight aboard your ship. You will be at sea by dawn, and until they reach America the secret will be kept. By that time, I have great hopes that a second party will be over the Mongolian frontier.”

“That will be a swift arrival in Peking,” she said slowly.

“I have made many arrangements, Your Highness. Do you think I have wasted my time?”

There was no doubt that the countenance of Boris expressed vigor, energy, sheer ability. No one ever denied him these qualities. At present he was in perfect control of himself; his face and manner formed an instrument entirely responsive to his brain. And his brain was clever—in fact, it was far more clever than either Shinski or the woman Marie could dream!

MRS. IVANOFF could not know that this man who stood before her in the guise of one who was exerting every self-sacrifice in order to save others, had in reality betrayed his country to the Huns, had betrayed his own caste to the Reds, and had betrayed his soul to the devil. She could not know that he was now playing a keen game, single-handed, with the intent to betray everyone and everything around him.

“Are you certain of your plan?” she asked presently. “If I arrange to sail to morrow night, it will cause me intolerable trouble and work. Unless you are very sure of your arrangements, I do not wish to attempt so early a departure.”

Boris bowed, with just the proper hint of deference and gallantry.

“Your Highness, I pledge you my word that if you can be ready to sail to-morrow night, I shall put the party aboard your ship at midnight.”

“Very well.” She rose, smiling a trifle sadly, and extended her hand. “It is agreed, then! I shall be ready to sail.”

With a burst of assumed joy, Boris fell to one knee and bent his lips to her hand, but at this she drew back.

“The old days are dead, my friend; the old rank is dead!” she said protestingly. “We who have survived the whirlwind are brothers and sisters in misfortune, no more. And the Princess Irene is dead, like the rest. I am Madame Ivanoff, whose family passed even before the great disaster, and whose life holds only the hope of doing a little good before the inevitable end comes to her as to all others. You are doing a noble work, and I respect you for it; good-by, and may God send you your deserts! Until you return—au revoir.”

Boris looked for a moment into her eyes, and turned a little pale.

When he had gone, Mrs. Ivanoff wrote a brief note and gave the envelope to the old servant Paul, who had attended her out of Russia and had served in her house all his life.

“Paul, we shall leave here to-morrow night, taking with us some of our friends who are on their way to safety. Take this note to Mr. Garrity, at the address in scribed. Make sure that he gets it—give it into his own hand and wait for an answer. I must see the port officials at once, and the captain whom I have engaged.”

CHAPTER VI

Li John, Mentor

TERENCE GARRITY was fortunately sober when Paul reached him with the note from Mrs. Ivanoff. He was sober of necessity, because if he drank, Venable might be tempted; in sublime ignorance that Venable’s iron will was now above temptation, he was conducting himself in the narrow path of caution for the sake of his friend. It was heroic, as any one who knew Garrity would admit.

Having read the brief note, Garrity looked up at Paul.

“So we’re sailin’ to-morry night! And she wants me aboard with the second officer, and is dependin’ on me to be raisin’ the rest o’ the crew! What’s happened, me lad?”

“Je ne comprends pas l’anglais,” said old Paul through his white beard.

“The divil!” Garrity turned to Venable, who was watching with an amused smile. “Did ye catch the dago stuff, Parson?”

Venable collected his long-dissipated French and gazed at the old servitor.

“You are French, old one? And your mistress also?”

“Pas de tout, monsieur,” answered Paul. “We are of Russia.”

Venable, who knew nothing about the Kum Chao except the very little that Garrity had vouchsafed him, translated his friend’s statement that they would be aboard at eight bells to-morrow afternoon. To this Paul bowed and departed.

“Who’s the old gentleman?” inquired Venable.

“Answers the door for the lady who owns the ship,” said Garrity, and reached for his cap. “Come along, now! She wrote that she was weighing anchor after midnight to-morry night, and wanted me to supply what crew and officers she lacked. We’ll need a full engine-room force, and you’ll be second mate of the hooker, Parson.”

“Second mate? Why, man, you’re mad! I am not—”

“Hush, now!” pleaded Garrity. “Can ye not run a bit bluff? If I get a fine quartermaster to stand at the wheel and tell ye what to do, and me down below at the engines, what more can ye ask? Never mind botherin’ me, now; do what I tell ye and trust to Garrity! Praise be, we’ll be goin’ to sea in a private yacht to-morry night, for the craft has naught but ballast in her, as I know well! Come with me, now, and we’ll snatch a bite o’ supper on our way. Stormalong we need, and need bad, him bein’ a friend; for I misdoubt that this is no pleasure voyage we’re goin’.”

“Won't there be trouble when the captain finds I’m an impostor?” demanded Venable, laughing despite himself at Garrity’s whimsical tone.

“There will,” said Garrity, “if he’s any sort o’ skipper, but chances are, he aint. There’s too big a demand for skippers these days, d’ye mind, to let good men be rustin’ out their souls in Asian ports—and that’s the truth! She’s got skipper an’ mate, says she; most like, she got ’em both together, same as us. Mark me, Parson! We’ll find them two birds of a feather—either marked by drink or somethin’ else, maybe with suspended licenses. Ye can’t tell! There’s queerer things in these parts than makin’ a second mate out o’ you overnight.”

BY this time the garrulous one was at the door, and Venable at his side, committed.

Nor did Eric Venable care a bit what chanced. The reckless mood of Garrity infected him to some extent, and upon him was his lost youth; he was in truth a gray headed man with the heart of a lad in him again. That was because he loved Garrity, perhaps.

The red-headed engineer, who knew the city well, had a fairly good idea of where to seek Stormalong. After a hasty meal at a restaurant they caught a yellow-board tram and were transported into the Japanese quarter. Here Garrity began to make the rounds of certain tea-houses conducted in the ancient and unmoral style of old Nippon—a style calculated to draw wandering sailormen even as a magnet.

They had tried two of these places without success, and were crossing the Kata-buki-gai in quest of a third, when in the light of a street-lamp they beheld a curious scene. They turned the corner of a side street, and came plump upon a gang of Japanese urchins who were clustered about a small man. The latter had his back against a wall, held a broken crutch in his hand, and was answering the jeers of the street-gang with a flood of English and Yiddish curses.

“That’s their way,” said Garrity sagely, starting for the boys. “Let ’em get a white man in a corner, and—”

Under his vitriolic tongue the gang scattered quickly. Venable went to the little man standing against the wall, supporting himself. He was astonished to find the man’s features inordinately beautiful, chiseled in contours as perfect as those of a Greek statue.

“You’re not hurt?” he demanded.

“I’m hurt, and badly hurt,” said the other, smiling suddenly at him. “But not by these little gangsters. I broke my crutch, and I can’t walk without it.”

“Take my arm,” said Venable, suiting action to word. The little man leaned upon him, betraying that his left leg was twisted and much out of shape, as though splints and wrappings lay underneath the coarse trousers. “Aren’t you an American?”

At the question, he felt the hand upon his arm give a quiver.

“I used to be,” said the other, his voice low and unhappy. “Now I am only—a Jew.”

“Give us your other arm, matey,” broke in Garrity. “Where bound?”

“To the Kosai-kwan, an inn just across the Asahi-gai.”

“Right-o!” said Garrity. “We’re bound for that same ourselves, so we’ll be proud to have your company, me friend! It’s a pity about that leg, or we’d have ye off to sea with us to-morry night, an’ good-by to Asia!”

“So you’re going to sea to-morrow night!” said the rescued one. Venable was struck by the refinement of his voice.

“Aye, with an old well-deck tramp layin’ downstream—the Kum Chao,” rattled Garrity. Once more Venable felt the hand quiver on his arm. He became curious as to this little man with the handsome face, this little man who called himself a Jew. “I’m pickin’ up a crew this minute, though I guess we’ll have to use Chinks and be satisfied.”

“That is odd,” said the other, smiling. “I expect to sail on that boat myself—but not as a member of the crew. I tell you this because we shall meet again, but I wish you to say nothing about it. You are good men, and you shall not be sorry for this action.”

GARRITY was amazed, but Venable looked down at the face of beauty, and spoke.

“I do not know who you are, my friend,” he said deeply, “but you look strangely like the pictures I have seen in magazines of a New York writer—a poet named Gerin. I have read much of his writings, and like them.”

“I am Gerin,” said the other, his voice stifled. “Listen! I have been in Russia, and I have seen hell there. It was torture that hurt my body—my soul has been hurt far worse! If you breathe my name once, it will ruin me; I am trusting you. This is my only hope of getting home to America again. My soul is very sick—”

“You have been foolish,” said Venable simply, guessing something of the man’s story. “You are a radical; I have read your writings and know. Like all the rest, you busy yourself with introspection until you are blinded to outside values. Forget all that, man! Wake up to the world around you! Who cares about your soul in the world? Get away from your individualism; make yourself part of the world again! That’s rough advice, but it’s true.”

They had reached the entrance to the tea-house or inn, and here Gerin halted. The talk was over Garrity’s head.

“Send me out two of the boys, if you will,” said Gerin. “Thank you, friends; I shall see you again, and I am glad of the meeting. There is a breath of life in you both—good men! Send me out two of the boys.”

They left him there, and went in together. When Garrity had dispatched two of the servants to aid Gerin, he turned to Venable.

“Divil take me if I understand all this, Parson! Is the man mad?”

“A little, perhaps,” answered Venable with his slow smile. “But no more so than most of us. Do you know, Garrity, I believe there is something queer about this ship of yours, and her business at sea?”

“You’re damn’ right!” assented Garrity fervently; then his mad cheerful genius came into the ascendant, and he laughed gayly. “Come along!” He grabbed Venable’s arm and thrust that gentleman before him. “I hear Stormalong deliverin’ a song inside—on with the game, and divil take the hindmost! But no drinks, mind that! Not one.”

THEY found the burly Stormalong, together with divers other gentry of the engineering profession, hard at work decreasing the visible supply of rice-wine. Unblushingly, Terence Garrity introduced his companion as “Second Officer Venable,” and when both men declined to drink, the roar of protest drowned Stormalong’s bellowed amazement at the title. A moment later Garrity was whispering in the ear of his confrère, who finally nodded sagely.

“I’ll sign on,” he rumbled with a grin at Venable. “I’ll sign, chief! About the quartermasters, now, I don’t know. Better ask these here lads for directions! My Lord, but this is sure goin’ to be one wild v’yage or I miss my guess! And in ballast, too! Have a drink, Parson!”

Venable declined sturdily, while Garrity consulted the others present regarding quartermasters of discretion. He met with success, being promised two Chinese brethren who could be relied upon for anything from barratry to murder—a recommendation which sounded alarming to Venable, but which satisfied the engineer thoroughly. This settled, they bade the company farewell, and departed.

“The hooker not bein’ under American registry, we’ll use Chinks for the crew,” chattered Garrity as they headed homeward. “They’re cheap, and good, besides bein’ here in plenty. Let ’em wait till to-morry.”

“When am I to take up my new duties?” demanded Venable.

“When there’s nothin’ else for ye to do, Parson! We’ll go aboard to-morry after noon, and if the owner’s there, all well an’ good. We have money, and can take care of advances to the Chink quartermasters; to-morry will be our busy day, what with outfittin’ you, and the like.”

THE following morning Venable obtained his sea-chest, outfit, and certificate as a second mate in steam—the latter a bare faced forgery but so well done that, as Garrity said, he could get by with it once, if he never tried it a second time.

The quartermasters also showed up as promised. They were named Li John and Li Ho—brothers, big, brawny north-country men of cheerful intelligence and great efficiency. Li John, who spoke fair English, was attached to Venable with full explanations. Garrity made advances to both men, and they promised to be on hand at three-thirty to go aboard.

“I’ve discovered,” said Garrity at lunch, “that it’s as I thought; the skipper an’ mate are two birds who still have their tickets by good luck, but nothin’ more. Cap’n Hewson and Mr. Jason they are, able to run a bluff and get past with our owner, but well seasoned with suspicion an’ general dislike. ’Twas them that ran the John Riarson onto one o’ the Saddle Islands and burned her, them claiming she was afire first; never proved, but looked bad. And more’n one other trick like that, too, so that them two birds play in luck when they draw a white owner. It’s a lively v’yage we’ll be havin’, and no mistake!”

At four that afternoon the hired launch that had brought them down the river set them all aboard the Kum Chao—Garrity, Venable, Stormalong and the two quartermasters. The steamer was a venerable little tramp, but the crew which Garrity had previously sent aboard was hard at work putting her in first-chop condition, so far as cleanliness was concerned. There was a forecastle forward, and a glory-hole aft; the white men of the crew—all of them officers—would occupy the quarters amidship, beneath the bridge.

Mrs. Ivanoff greeted them as they came over the rail. She was busy with comprador and supercargo, getting stores aboard; and with scarcely a glance at anyone save Garrity, she sent them to the cabin to await her coming.

Venable lagged after the others. When he joined them in the main cabin, he was frowning in perplexity; and Garrity watched him with uneasy eyes.

“That woman’s the owner?” he said. “I’ve seen her somewhere before—can’t remember where. A most striking face, full of personality and character!”

“Oh, she’s a good sort,” said Garrity hastily, “and knows what she wants, too! None of your backing and filling kind. Wonder where that lousy skipper and mate are?”

“Seen ’em uptown,” put in Stormalong, his voice husky with liquor. “Same place I was.”

“Then we go to sea to-night with all hands aft drunk, and the Lord have mercy on us!” was Garrity’s only comment. “Parson, you and I are sober; it’s us will take this hooker to sea; so mind what Li John there tells you! And you, John, you mind that wheel like a sharp un!”

“My savvy plenty,” said Li John, grinning. “My watchum second mate plenty.”

Venable laughed. At this moment Mrs. Ivanoff entered the cabin, and they rose.

IF Mrs. Ivanoff had not seen Venable before, she saw him now; she saw him and stood transfixed before him, staring in blank astonishment.

Still Venable could not place her, for a long moment. Now, as upon a previous occasion, the strong character in her face conquered and overpowered him; it held the strength of sorrow and a firm resiliency, while across the left cheek ran a slight red weal, a thin mar. In her eyes, however, dwelt the marvelous soul of the woman herself. Looking in those eyes Venable found himself remembering their fine, level poise. They were sea-gray eyes like his own, deep and steady like his own. Their probing gaze brought remembrance to him with a shock. This was the woman who had called upon him—the day before he had left home.

“You are—Doctor Venable!” she breathed.

“No, ma’am,” struck in Garrity hastily. “Second Officer Venable.”

“Be silent!” She threw the words at him without removing her gaze from Venable. The two words struck Garrity like a whiplash, stung him into obedience.

“I remember you now, madam.” Venable was suddenly pale. “And I remember my discourtesy. I regret it extremely—for, thank God, I am not now the man I was then! If I had known that you were——”

“Never mind all that,” she said quietly, her eyes still searching his face. “Yes, I can see that you are different. Surely you are not the second mate of whom Mr. Garrity spoke?”

A tide of color suffused Venable’s face. He could not lie to this woman—to those eyes.

“Yes,” he said. “I am the man, but—”

“Leave it to me, ma’am,” spoke up Garrity suddenly, stepping forward. “You’ve got a skipper and first officer that are drunk this blessed minute—and you can’t get no others. If Parson don’t handle your ship better than them, I’ll take the blame! Here’s his ticket, ma’am—and it’s better than theirs any day.”

She glanced at the certificate which he extended, then fastened her eyes upon his.

“You are a good friend to have, I think,” she said, so significantly that Garrity flushed to his hair-roots. “I shall leave this matter to you, as you suggest. Now—”

Stormalong and the two quartermasters were introduced, and Mrs. Ivanoff found them good. Ten minutes later the papers had been signed, and Venable was standing in the cabin where his box had been deposited, staring around. He felt bewildered, like a man in a dream. He was actually second officer of the Kum Chao, and how it had all happened he was not in the least certain!

He went out on deck and took charge of the ship, Li John at his elbow and Garrity hovering close about.

CHAPTER VII

The Kum Chao Puts to Sea

THAT night Venable got his first inkling of the status of those aboard the Kum Chao. And it was an inkling with dynamite attached.

When darkness fell, the ship was in trim for her voyage. Mrs. Ivanoff might have made money by carrying a cargo, but she had no time to make money. Long previously, she had had a small dining-saloon and passenger staterooms installed abaft the bridge-house; after dinner she retired to her own stateroom in this pseudo-imperial suite, ordering that she be called half an hour before midnight.

Garrity, satisfied as to the engine-room and anticipating a hard trick ahead, also sought his bunk; Venable was in charge of the ship, with a half-sobered Stormalong for company. He appealed to the latter to give him some idea of the apparatus on the bridge-deck, and Stormalong was in the proper mood to be surly.

“No use tellin’ you anything, Parson,” he growled. “What I was comin’ to, shipping aboard this hooker, I don’t know! A woman for an owner, and a parson for—oh, hell!”

Something in the man’s tone stirred Venable.

“My friend,” he said calmly, “that is the wrong way to begin. I need at least an appearance of respect from you if I am to have it from anyone else.” And he indicated Li John and Li Ho, who were examining the binnacle and steering-gear with professional interest, and putting the flag-locker in shape.

“Fine chance, you have!” sneered Stormalong. “An old man like you what never put foot aboard ship before, to lord it over decent sailormen—”

Venable took him by the collar with one hand, lifted him off his feet, and kicked him toward the port ladder. The amazed engineer, too astonished to resist, gripped the rails and tumbled to the deck without pronounced disaster.

“Stay down there until you can speak decently—or come on up if you want more,” said Venable. But Stormalong merely voiced an oath and disappeared in the darkness, to figure out what had happened to him.

It was after eleven when the two chief officers of the steamer came aboard. They came by launch, and were carried up the ladder. For them to come aboard in any other manner was entirely out of the question, since they were drunk and snoring. Venable viewed them with unassumed disgust. Mr. Jason was a thin, baldheaded person of uncertain age, with unlovely features; Captain Hewson was fat and flabby, gingery as to hair and whiskers, and apoplectic.

“What’ll I do with this fine pair?” he asked Stormalong, who had appeared out of nowhere to view proceedings.

“Any second officer what valued his ticket,” returned Stormalong without mention of the late unpleasantness, “would send ’em to bed with a bottle in each bunk and a jug o’ cold water to wake up on. But if it was me—”

“Ah!” said Venable with understanding. “I certainly do not value my certificate! You, Li John! Take everything from the pockets of these gentlemen and give it to me; then order your men to draw up buckets of water and give these two men a good bath. They need it. Then take them to their cabins and lock them in.”

“Good Lord!” gasped Stormalong. “Lookee, Parson; it’ll raise hell with authority aboard to do that.”

“Nonsense!” broke in Venable, taking the revolvers and valuables handed him by Li John. “If I’m going to run this ship, I’ll run it; and I’ll not have these two men parading their bestial conduct before the crew. Douse ’em good, boys, and lock ’em up.”

SO it was done according to order, and Venable entered the fact in the rough log which he had started on Garrity’s advice. He had scarcely finished the entry when Li John brought word that the captain wished to see him at once. Venable sought the skipper’s cabin, to meet a half sobered and wholly enraged captain mouthing oaths.

“That’s enough from you, Mr. Hewson,” he broke in quietly. “Another word and you’ll be put off this ship—and you’ll stay off. Another word, mind! You turn in and go to sleep, and you’ll be in something of a decent condition to take charge of this ship to-morrow morning. I’m the second officer, and I’m in charge. Another word, and off you go!”

Mr. Hewson bethought him of his soft job, and stood in staring silence. He had expected to deal with a woman, not with this lantern-jawed man who looked able to break him in two hands—and was! Venable shut the door, locked it and returned to the bridge.

That the ship was peculiar, he knew. He could figure out no relationship between Mrs. Ivanoff and the poet, Abe Gerin; the old servant Paul was aboard, although generally invisible. The ship carried no cargo, but her cabin stores were of the best. No money was being spared on her. She was a mystery.

Shortly before twelve Mrs. Ivanoff appeared on the bridge.

“The captain has come?” she inquired.

“He came with Mr. Jason—drunk,” said Venable. “I had them doused with water and locked in their cabins. Once we are at sea, they may be in condition to take charge.”

He heard her soft laugh, like a low ’cello note.

“I hope our passengers will be aboard soon,” she said without comment. “They are Russians, Mr. Venable—princes and nobles of old Russia. By the way, you might find this of some interest.”

She handed him a typewritten sheet, and left the bridge. Venable found the writing to be an exegesis of her work in America, giving the purpose of the funds which she had raised there. He read, and reread. When he remembered how Mrs. Ivanoff had called upon him, and what had passed at their first meeting, he flushed again and called himself a fool.

He understood now. This ship was to take to the land of freedom a party of folk who had lost rank and name and wealth in Russia; also, probably stored aboard, must be the relics and sacred things of which the paper spoke. What about the poet Gerin? Well, no matter; a strange man, that!

VENABLE laid the paper aside, wondering at the chance which had thus brought him again into touch with Mrs. Ivanoff. Seldom had he met a woman whose personality so thrilled him, so vibrated him, as did hers. As he thought thus, a low hail from the lookout apprised him that a boat with the passengers was coming alongside; he could hear the chugging of her engine, blending with the striking of eight bells, midnight, from the bells of other ships up and down the river. As he left the bridge, Venable met Garrity.

“Watches all arranged, sir,” said the engineer cheerily. “I’ll be down below, this watch.”

“Good,” assented Venable, and passed on to the head of the ladder.

There he found Mrs. Ivanoff, with a group of the crew; Stormalong stood to one side, watching. The launch was just coming to the ladder, below. As the two men at the landing made fast their boat hooks, a single figure passed them and came to the deck hastily. Venable noted the lithe agility of the man.

“Your Highness?”

“I am here, Boris Kryalpin,” said Mrs. Ivanoff, her voice calmly poised despite the excitement that must have been tearing at her soul. “All are safe?”

“All, madame,” answered Boris. “But I must see you alone for a moment before they come aboard. I have an important letter for your eyes alone, and also there is a man with the party whom I do not know; the others are afraid he is a spy.”

“Come to my stateroom,” broke in Mrs. Ivanoff. “Paul! A light.”

Few lights were showing about the ship, for Mrs. Ivanoff was desirous of attracting no more attention than need be, to her departure. Boris Kryalpin followed her aft, and was lost in the darkness. Below, the launch rocked at the landing.

“Any baggage to come up?” demanded Venable of those below.

“I have two trunks,” floated back the voice of a woman. “And there are some suitcases.”

“Send them up.” Venable ordered some of the yellow men down, but Li John intervened and took charge of slings already rigged. The two trunks were landed safely on deck, and the men brought up the suitcases.

Still there was no sign of Mrs. Ivanoff returning, and those in the launch had made no move to come aboard. Venable was just beginning to become uneasy, when the erect figure of Boris Kryalpin made its appearance.

“You are the captain?” he said to Venable.

“I am in command—the captain is asleep.”

“Oh! Madame Ivanoff has received news of a disturbing nature. She orders you to put to sea at once. Our friends are to be assigned to their cabins.”

“She is not going to see them?” asked Venable in some astonishment.

Boris shrugged his shoulders. “Evidently not, until morning. I do not inquire too closely into her actions, my friend, and I would advise you not to. If you do not object, I shall come to the bridge a little later and get acquainted.”

“By all means,” murmured Venable.

BORIS leaned over and spoke in Russian to those below; they came up the ladder quickly, as though they had been awaiting his instructions. Venable saw that there was but one woman; all seemed well wrapped against the cold of the evening. Besides Boris and the woman, there were four men in the party. One of them, Venable recognized as the poet Gerin.

The yellow steward took charge of the passengers at once. Ordering the ladder hoisted in, Venable took his way to the bridge, with Li John beside him. Another helmsman followed.

Getting a steamer under way, even a small and venerable tramp, is a matter of order and ceremony and formality. Venable was ignorant of these things, but fortunately Li Ho and Stormalong were on hand to assist. As Li John issued the necessary orders, Venable repeated them in a voice that carried through the ship; the bellow of Stormalong and the shrill tones of Li Ho sounded as echoes.

Under the instructions of his yellow mentor, Venable went to the engine-room bell, heard the cheery voice of Garrity in the tube—and the Kum Chao was heading out between the flat, marshy river-banks toward the gulf of Pechili and the open sea. Stormalong and Li Ho departed to their bunks. Venable stood in the wheel-house behind the two yellow men, and watched the gulf open out ahead in the starlight; he realized with a sense of fright that upon him hung the lives of all aboard, the life of the ship herself!

Then Boris Kryalpin appeared and introduced himself.

For a little he stood beside Venable, chatting lightly, yet making it very clear that he was in command of the party of refugees.

“I’ve been below,” he said at length. “It seems that our captain and first mate are rather careless characters. I’m glad that a man of your personality is now in charge. Do you expect to have any trouble with them in the morning?”

“No,” said Venable grimly, “I don’t. By the way, may I ask how it happens that a man such as Gerin, the poet, was included in your party? I’m interested in him.”

Boris stood motionless for a moment, as though startled.

“There are some things,” he answered slowly, “which will perhaps appear strange to you. I would suggest that after breakfast in the morning, before you return on duty, you come to Madame Ivanoff’s cabin; we must arrive at a mutual understanding, all of us. We shall have an informal meeting there.”

“Very well,” assented Venable.

Boris presently took his departure, humming a gay air under his breath. The steamer headed out into the wide gulf, churning steadily along at her best ten-knot gait, and her second officer kept very careful jottings of the changes of course as she made for the straits. Li John was frank to say that when the skipper took charge, an expert knowledge of navigation was going to be much needed unless the ship were to pile up either on the Port Arthur headland or the Miao-tao Islands.

SIX bells had just passed when a yellow man, the junior steward, came stumbling up the ladder, chattering as he came. Li John at once abandoned the wheel to his colleague, and turned to Venable.

“Him say one piecee dead man stop along deck below. Huh? You my look-see.”

“Dead man!” repeated Venable. “You—”

“Look-see,” snapped the quartermaster, starting for the ladder.

Venable followed. Under one of the boats in the waist, huddled in among the shadows, they found the body of old Paul, the servitor of Mrs. Ivanoff. The body was cold, and had obviously been dead for some time. Li John straightened up and pointed.

“Him stabbed in back, all-samee pig, huh? You savvy who catchum knife?”

Venable shook his head, shocked by the thing, staring blankly at the dead servant. He realized that he himself was helpless to act; there was nothing to tell of the assassin, or of the cause. Bidding Li John have the body cared for, he went to the engine-room and found Garrity, relating what had happened and asking advice.

“Whew!” whistled the red-headed one. “Didn’t I say there’d be the divil and all to pay this voyage? Tell ye what, Parson—leave this up to the skipper, see? He’ll come on watch ’fore long, him and the first; jot it down in your rough log and leave him to straighten things out—him and Mrs. Ivanoff betwixt ’em. And don’t say a blessed word about bein’ off the bridge, neither! You duck this thing, and let Cap’n Hewson handle it.”

It was good advice, and Venable followed it.

At four bells he sent Li John to unlock the doors of the captain and mate. They reached the bridge and said no word. Venable indicated the course, handed them his rough log, and received a nod in reply. Two officers were evidently still shaky as to his attitude, and he was content to leave matters so.

Upon reaching his own cabin, Venable found that the revolvers he had taken from Hewson and Jason were missing. So was the automatic which Garrity had bought for him in Tientsin.

CHAPTER VIII

Masks Off

VENABLE was wakened next morning, after a troubled sleep, by Garrity—who had also been summoned to the meeting in Mrs. Ivanoff’s cabin. Both men were in some perplexity over the cause of the summons.

“Any developments about Paul?” inquired Venable as they breakfasted in the mess cabin.

“Divil a one—the skipper seems to have ignored it,” said Garrity, wrinkling up his nose. “The body was sewed up an’ hove overboard. Parson, you look out for squalls! I dunno what’s up, but there’s queer doin’s aboard here, I’m thinkin’. And hang close to that gun I got ye.”

“It’s gone,” said Venable. “So are the two I took from the captain and mate.”

Garrity whistled, then was silent a moment.

“Damn’ queer!” he said. “It wasn’t their doin’s; the chink steward, most like. But lay low and say nothin’. I have two gats stowed away safe, if we got to use ’em; chances are, however, that there’s more to all this than we know. And remember, if that skipper gets his claws onto the fact that you aint no mate, he’ll trim ye right! He’s got sea law, mind. The old lady herself can’t save ye. I don’t like how things is turnin’ out, and that’s a fact, Parson! Remember, now, keep a still tongue and let me do the talkin’.”

Venable promised.

They started toward Mrs. Ivanoff’s quarters, but halted immediately in sheer astonishment. Approaching them was a man whose attire was strange, but whose face and figure were most unmistakable—those of the quondam stoker Shinski! He greeted them with a grin.

“Good morning, gents! I see dat you know me, huh?”

“Blast my eyes!” ejaculated Garrity. “If it aint Shinski! And look at the fancy clo’es on him!”

“Shinski, yes,” said the other, and gestured over his shoulder. “Come along—I was on de way to get you. We’re havin’ de meetin’ in de main parlor.”

“What the devil are you doing aboard here?” demanded Venable.

Shinski’s face changed. “I’m a passenger, Parson—and a gentleman, by de Lord! You remember dat!”

GARRITY sputtered in wrath, but at that instant appeared Abe Gerin, swinging along on his repaired crutch.

“Morning, good friends!” he cried out cheerfully. “I see you don’t know Serge Shinski in his real self! Come, come, let’s have no harsh faces, Mr. Garrity—you gentlemen are going to learn some astonishing things in a few moments; so save breath.”

Shinski turned upon him. “Where is Marie gone?”

The very beautiful face of Gerin set toward him like a mask, in which only the dark eyes lived and flamed.

“Marie?” he countered. “She is not to be present at the meeting. She is too filled with anger and old resentment to be impartial.”

Shinski threw up his arms. “Impartial!” he screamed. “Who in hell—”

“Shut up!” snapped Gerin. “None of your ranting now, Serge; I’m running this affair, and I mean to run it! You fool, do you want to quarrel with me now? With Boris Kryalpin aboard? Probably you don’t know that he’s an agent of Lenine at this minute—ah, that got to your thick head, eh? Well, if you want to match yourself against him, go ahead! But if you want me to handle him, you toe the line and say mighty little!”

Shinski, indeed, had changed countenance at mention of Boris and Lenine. He swallowed hard, but made no further comment. Abe Gerin motioned the stupefied Venable and Garrity to accompany him, and turned toward the newly installed saloon cabin. That cabin, intended to give comfort to the Romanoffs, now harbored the choicest collection of ignoble souls that had ever come out of Russia.

“Divil take it!” muttered Garrity. “What are these lads talkin’ about? Is it a madhouse we’re in, then?”

“Curb your tongue, old man,” said Venable, frowning anxiously.

Abe Gerin paused at the saloon door, waited until Shinski had. entered, then stopped Garrity and Venable.

“I must warn you,” he said in a low voice, “to restrain yourselves and say as little as possible. After this meeting, when you are on the bridge, Mr. Venable, I wish to see you alone. Until then, I beg of you, have patience. Enter!”

They obeyed him, wondering.

VENABLE saw Mrs. Ivanoff first of all, and at sight of her stricken face he felt a distinct shock. She looked ten years older; her face was set in stern, proud lines, and her sea-gray eyes were blazing like stars. Venable sensed a distinctly hostile atmosphere in the air.

Introductions followed. Boris Kryalpin was here, and upon every face except his was written determination, hatred or sullen suspicion. Pinsky and Deardorf were bearded, furtive men of middle age, their eyes snaky, their dirty fingers perpetually curling at their beards. Marks was a boy under twenty, with degenerate features, a limp cigarette hanging dead in the corner of his mouth, eyes lowering at everyone, and thickly crimson lips like a scarlet smear across the white of his face. Shinski was a notch above these, but imbued with their same low cunning and treachery.

When all save Boris Kryalpin were seated, the door was closed. Venable, having had a glimpse into things, marveled that Abe Gerin should make himself very inconspicuous in one corner, leaving the floor to Boris.

“We are assembled upon an errand of mutual explanation,” said Kryalpin, gracefully twirling his mustache, and dividing his attention between Venable, Mrs. Ivanoff and Gerin. “I regret, dear Madame Ivanoff, that I was forced to mislead you as to the character of your passengers. You may best judge of our character by the fact that, when I locked you in your cabin last night, we were forced to overcome the objections of that old fool who served you. He was buried this morning, I think.”

Boris paused, to let this statement sink in. Mrs. Ivanoff flinched perceptibly.

“Murderers and traitors!” she said, her voice low. “I know your characters—and too late, I know you, Boris Kryalpin! God will bring a vengeance upon you for this work. That is my last word to you.”

Shinski laughed, as did his companions. “God?” he said gutturally, and sneered. “We tried out God in Russia, huh? And where was he? Bah! You aristocrats—”

“Enough,” said Abe Gerin from his corner, and Shinski subsided.

“I am sorry that Marie is suffering from mal de mer and could not be present,” pursued Boris, speaking to Mrs. Ivanoff. “She has endured much from you and yours, that woman. She would be glad to see your death. But, my dear madame, you have served us well, and we do not expect to reward you so poorly.”

He turned now to Venable and Garrity.

“You are friends of comrade Abe Gerin, yonder, so you have been called in here that you might come to a proper understanding of things. In order that you make no regrettable errors, I would say that I have already interviewed Captain Hewson and his mate, and have reached a satisfactory basis of action with them.”

AT his statement, Venable saw Shinski dart a swift look at Abe Gerin, but the latter made no sign.

“Huh!” blurted out Garrity. “Bought ’em, ye have! They’d sell out to any divil that was loose from hell, them two birds would!”

Boris regarded him with narrowed eyes.

“I would advise you,” he said gently, “to moderate your language and views. You really are not needed aboard this ship, Mr. Garrity, because Comrade Marks is an excellent machinist, and your friend called Stormalong has already agreed to obey Captain Hewson’s orders—which are my orders. So be careful.”

Once more Shinski looked at Abe Gerin, alarm in his eyes. But Garrity, gulping down an oath, made no response. Venable said nothing at all.

Boris Kryalpin turned again to Mrs. Ivanoff, smiling thinly.

“Madame, I must inform you that we are not going to the United States. We all intend to go there eventually, but for the present there are slight objections to that course, and so we are going to Mexico instead. Comrade Shinski, I understand, has already made full arrangements for our reception there.”

Mrs. Ivanoff kept her eyes on his, keeping silence, but her eyes seemed to disturb the charming equanimity of Boris, who became less diplomatic and more direct in his next words.

“We have brought many beautiful jewels out of Russia—witness the Shirvan diamond, which is now, with the others, in the keeping of Marie,” he said, not with out a sigh. “You also have had some luck, madame, obtaining many relics whose value we overlooked, and no doubt a goodly share of glittering stones also. We know that they are aboard here, and of course could obtain them very speedily by making a search of the ship. However, we are delicate in such things, madame, and much prefer to arrive at a proper understanding with you.”

A touch of cold cruelty lighted up his face.

“You will do two things, madame,” he pursued. “You will keep to your cabin, except at certain hours of the day when you may take exercise on deck; and you will at once deliver to us all valuables now in your possession. On these conditions, we will guarantee that your life will be safe.”

“And if I refuse,” said Mrs. Ivanoff with contempt, “you will murder me?”

Boris smiled. “No, my former princess,” he answered. “But in that case, I think you will wish that we had murdered you!”

Garrity came to his feet, his hoarse voice breaking in upon the scene.

“Whatever you do, Par—Mr. Venable goes with me,” he said, tense with repression. “I stick with you. If ye’ll excuse me, ladies an’ gents, I’ll be off out o’ this. Mr. Venable can be makin’ any bargain he likes for me.”

GARRITY left the cabin, the bang of the door drowning the violent oaths that burst from him after he departed. Young Marks, who had been eying Garrity without love, had ventured a growling protest, but Abe Gerin stilled him immediately.

“I will answer for Mr. Garrity,” said Venable, his voice deeply poised. He was rather amazed at his own calmness, for he realized that he stood in actual danger, and that only careful stepping would save him from very disagreeable experiences. The fate of Paul was yet fresh before his mind.

Boris eyed him curiously, appraisingly, then nodded.

“Very well. And you, madame?”'

“I wish to know,” said Mrs. Ivanoff steadily, “just what disposition you intend to make of me and of this ship. I realize that I am helpless against you, but—”

“Have no fear, madame!” And Boris laughed smoothly. “Captain Hewson has undertaken to make certain changes in the ship en route to avoid recognition of her while at sea; and she will never reach land at all. You understand, even in Mexican ports one must proceed with great caution. Your ship will presumably have foundered shortly after leaving China.

“As for yourself, madame, you will remain with us until we have landed in Mexico, when you will be set at liberty. That is all. Will you now give us the valuables, or shall we have to seek them?”

Mrs. Ivanoff made a gesture of dismissal. “You shall have them,” she said, as she came to her feet. “If you fine gentry are now finished with me, I shall go to my own cabin.”

“Certainly, madame.” Boris bowed and opened the door for her. “We shall come presently for the—ah—valuables! They are to remain in the custody of Marie—whom you have not encountered. I believe that she is very anxious to meet Your Highness.”

Mrs. Ivanoff passed him without heeding his half-mocking, half-sneering words. But as she went, Venable saw that the red mark upon her cheek was standing out like fire, and her eyes met his for a moment. In her eyes of sea-gray he read a startling and thrilling message. It was as though she had called to him; her eyes seemed to smite into his brain with their clear, penetrating sweetness; yet there was a vibrant energy in them also—and above all, a personal appeal, a call, a wordless touching of soul. That one look left Eric Venable shaken and alarmed.

Boris turned now to Venable.

“I would suggest,” he said, “that you and Mr. Garrity obey the orders of Captain Hewson and make no protest. Do you think the advice good?”

Venable rose, shook himself, and a smile stole across his gaunt, sun-browned features.

“I think the advice is good,” he said, forcing a whimsical lightness into his manner. “As I understand it, the ship remains under the command of her officers; we have merely changed owners.”

“Exactly,” assented Boris. “As for compensation—”

The voice of Abe Gerin spoke up from the corner.

“I will myself arrange that with Mr. Venable,” he said. “We had best discuss it among ourselves first. With your permission, Mr. Venable, I shall come to the bridge shortly.”

Venable nodded assent, and turned to the door.

Once outside, he came to a halt at the rail, drawing the salt air into his lungs with great gulps. He felt in need of the clean sunlight and sea, of the clear heavens; he felt as though he had been smirched to the soul in that cabin, as though he had come into contact with vile and unclean things.

Yet very little time had passed. As he stood there, he heard eight bells sounding from forward. Mechanically he turned to take up his duty on the bridge. When he reached it, Mr. Jason gave him a rather sickly grin and indicated the course.

“We’re all in the know, I guess,” said the mate, “and no hard feelin’s, eh! All right. And if the skipper blusters, don’t you pay no heed. That’s just his way. No hard feelin’s!”

Venable merely nodded, for he could not trust himself to speak. He realized now why Garrity had left that cabin.

CHAPTER IX

Wheels Within Wheels

IT was an hour later that Abe Gerin climbed to the bridge, with much difficulty. He stood puffing for a moment, then jerked his head toward Li John, who was alone at the wheel.

“Shall we go outside?”

“No need,” answered Venable, understanding. “He’s one of the quartermasters, and is perfectly safe. He will obey me in everything.”

Gerin looked at him, and suddenly smiled.

“You’re a strange man! What makes other men follow you?”

“Do they? I suppose, then, it’s because I’m used to leading them. But what drew you into such company as you’re in, Gerin?”

“Fate.” The poet shrugged his shoulders and sat down on the bunk, producing a cigarette. “See here! You’re a man of education, it seems; and you’re certainly a man of action. Also you’re a man to trust—and you have read some of my verses.”

“And understood them,” added Venable with a dry smile.

“Sure. Well, all of that’s largely the reason why I’m here talking to you; also, the fact that Mr. Garrity, who seems a decent sort, and others aboard here appear to follow your guidance. Then, you’re the second mate of this ship—which means a good deal.”

Venable said nothing. He saw that Abe Gerin was being somewhat deluded by surface appearances—the story of what he had done to the skipper and mate seemed to have spread. However, he was very hazy as to Gerin’s position, and so he merely grunted an assent.

“I wish,” said Gerin, puffing at his cigarette and gazing at the horizon, “to explain the situation aboard here as I view it. It has a dozen different viewpoints, but I am interested only in my own—and I hope to interest you in it.”

“Well said,” replied Venable, and hesitated. Then impulsively: “But you’ll have a hard job interesting me in any murderous proposition such as that devil Kryalpin—”

“Forget it!” Gerin turned to face him. In the strangely beautiful features, the features which were abnormally beautiful, there blazed anger and determination.

“Here’s the lay of things! Kryalpin has bribed Captain Hewson and the first mate to throw in with him, absolutely. Marie—the woman whom you’ve not met—is the most wonderful woman I ever knew; she and I will hang together, for she’s the only one of this crowd who is ruled by principle. There you have two groups of us. The third, headed by Serge Shinski, takes in the other three men. Those three groups, composing all of us, are in reality bitterly antagonistic.”

“You forget Mrs. Ivanoff,” said Venable, his voice harsh.

“I don’t. I’m coming to that later. Now, you know well that the old stories of treasure-trove are changed in meaning to-day; gold is hard to take into any country on earth, unless its origin is clear. Also it’s bulky. So! We brought out of Russia, all of us, a very large treasure, consisting of the finest gems and jewels we could lay our hands-on; many of them are historic stones; all of them are very valuable. However, they take up small space, and are easily gotten into such a country as Mexico. That treasure is now in the keeping of Marie, whom all of us know to be absolutely trustworthy.”

“And Mrs. Ivanoff’s relics?” put in Venable again. Again Gerin waved down the query.

“I’ll come to all that later; let me finish expounding things first! Kryalpin is at this moment an official of the Lenine government—he thinks none of us knows it. He is planning to get hold of that treasure and ditch the rest of us.

“Shinski and his friends have the same object in mind. I am a cripple for the present, and easily dealt with, while Marie would be shot by them without hesitation. That covers two of the groups. As for Marie, she wants her share of the treasure, but would not cheat the others. As for me, I don’t care a tinker’s dam about the treasure, except for Marie’s sake; I intend to get the whole thing for her.”

“I think you’re a liar there,” said Venable calmly.

GERIN turned and looked at him, steadily. The eyes of the two men clinched.

“Let me tell you something, Venable; I got a few thousand dollars out of Russia—oh, I’m not painting myself any better than the others! It’s safe in New York. More than that, I don’t want. But I’ve known Marie for ten years, and I’ve loved her for ten years. She wont marry me, doesn’t love me; but she’s slaved like a dog for this damned revolution, and now she’s seen that it’s like an apple that looks good outside, but is rotten under the skin. She’s out of it, disillusioned, helpless, facing the world squarely. And I’m here to help her. That’s all, my friend.”

In the man’s eyes Venable read a deep sincerity; despite himself he was impelled to belief. The old Venable would have apologized—but the new Venable merely shrugged his shoulders, a sardonic set to his lips.

“Very well,” he responded without emotion. “We will take your integrity for granted until it is disproved by the facts. I have no particular interest in you or any of your friends, after that interview with Kryalpin this morning.”

“Oh, but you will have!” And Abe Gerin laughed confidently. “You see, Captain Hewson is very bitter because of your treatment of him last night, and Boris knows that you are a man to be reckoned with. Therefore you will be the first to die.”

“How do you know this?” demanded Venable, looking at him.

Gerin shrugged. “Know? My dear fellow, we are not in the world of legal evidence and facts that must be unquestioned. We are moving in a little world of our own—a world of shadows. I have always respected Walt Whitman for rescuing that fine word eidolons from obscurity; well, we are moving in a dream-world, if you like!

“A ship of shadows! ” he continued musingly. “There’s poetry in the title, my friend; there’s hard, sober fact in it also. Everyone aboard this ship, with the exception of yourself—and I’m not so sure about you—is merely a shadow, an image of some former entity. Even Hewson, rascal that he is, must be far gone before he would run counter to all the severe law of the sea and adopt the mad course with this ship that he has planned. All of us are alike in this—men and women without name or place, shadows fighting around the solid substance of wealth, contriving to get away with that wealth and to regain our former positions. None of us are cowards, Venable, and a person who is not a coward is always fighting, upward—either for an ideal or for self. We have lost our ideals, we Reds, and so we are in the fight selfishly.

“And remember this, Venable—whoever strikes first and hardest in this fight will win. The first blow will count for a great deal. We can’t wait to go on facts; we must go on intuition, and if we make a mis take, let the other fellow suffer! That’s the fighting law. I mean to come out of this mess with my life, and I mean Marie to come out of it with the loot; that’s my position.”

“And you mean that I shall ally myself with you.” Venable produced his pipe, filled it, and shook his head when he had lighted it. “I don’t care for allies, Gerin, and I don’t care to mix in such a fight for my own sake—”

“Not so fast!” cut in Gerin calmly. “I understand that when you came aboard here, it turned out that you and Mrs. Ivanoff had known each other—or knew each other.”

“How did you hear this?” demanded Venable.

“The steward; he was in Shinski’s pay, although he’s now in that of Boris, I think. So, you may do for the sake of Mrs. Ivanoff what you would not do for your own! No one but I has the brains to suspect that you might help Mrs. Ivanoff—a strong point! They all think she is entirely isolated, now that Paul is dead. They know that if she had a single friend aboard, she would be capable of anything. That is why she is kept guarded; they fear her! And she is a woman to be feared, I can tell you!”

VENABLE frowned. “You propose—”

“I propose that you and all who stick with you shall join me. I propose that both of us join Mrs. Ivanoff, on the basis of restoring the ship and relics to her if she will take care of getting us home safe. And by ‘home,’ I mean America. I am ashamed of having left America! Until I get there again I am a Jew; once there I am—”

“Oh!” exclaimed Venable, astonished despite his growing knowledge of the man. “You mean to turn traitor and join Mrs. Ivanoff! What guarantee have we that you would not in turn betray us?”

Gerin made an impatient gesture. “We put ourselves in your hands. Can’t you see I’m giving you the straight of it? If we win, Marie and I will be in your power. I know that you and Mrs. Ivanoff can be trusted; you two have the instinct of honor and the tradition of conscience deep-grounded in you—making a bargain, you would keep it, you two!”

“Thanks,” said Venable dryly. “Where does Marie stand in this? Is she a party to your proposals?”

“No. She doesn’t realize the situation yet—nor does anyone else. Good Lord, man! Can’t you see that I’m ahead of the others? Can’t you see that I’m striking first? That devil Boris is not to be caught napping every day, I tell you!”

“Who is to do your striking?” asked Venable. “If you think I’m going to murder people, or that Mrs. Ivanoff is either, you’re far wrong!”

“You’ll not refuse to fight if you’re attacked?” snapped the other.

“Of course not. But I have scruples about deliberately going in for sudden death!”

“I haven’t.” Gerin produced a fresh cigarette, lighted it, and scrutinized the long horizon for a moment as he puffed. Then he turned.

“Venable, I’ll handle the offensive. All I ask of you is to fight when attacked; or if you prefer, to obey the orders of Mrs. Ivanoff and to protect her and the ship! You’ll have to fight quick enough, if you want to live—I’ll guarantee as much! There’s the proposition in a nutshell, the basis of our agreement. What do you say?”

Venable sucked moodily at his pipe. What scheme was in the mind of Gerin, how the crippled poet meant to open the fight and get in the first blow, he neither knew nor cared. But he was fairly certain that the situation aboard here was exactly as Gerin had described it.

Since that conference in the cabin, since getting an insight into the manner of passengers this ship carried, Venable had been mentally staggered, not knowing which way to turn or what to do. Gerin, with his talk of shadows, had visualized the situation very accurately. Venable thought grimly that he was a shadow himself, as much as anyone!

That matter of treasure had provided a solid basis for murder and sudden death, although Venable refused to entertain such a suggestion very seriously. He was not close enough to it to realize its possibilities; it eluded his mental grasp. Thus thinking, he rose and went to the engine-room tube; Garrity answered him.

“Terence?” he said. “You remember Abe Gerin? He’s coming down to see you. Listen to what he says, and think it over. When we’re off duty, give me your opinion. That’s all.”

He turned to Gerin. His beetling, iron-cast features were set in lines of severity; sun-bronzed, he looked younger than when he had left his old home and parish and life all behind him. His graying hair was now close-cut, and from his rugged face looked out his gray eyes, steady with purpose and gravity.

“You go down to the engine-room and tell Garrity all you’ve told me,” he said simply. “Then see Mrs. Ivanoff and arrange for me to see her. If she and Garrity agree to your proposals, you can count me in.”

Gerin’s face wrinkled up; the abnormally beautiful features clouded into anxious lines.

“Man, that may mean the death of us all!” he countered slowly. “For you to see her at once is impossible—the others must never dream that you and she have anything in common! You cannot see her until I can arrange it—and it will take time and caution, just now when time means everything to us!”

“Very well,” answered Venable coldly. “You have my reply; take it or leave it.”

With a savage curse Gerin rose and took up his crutch.

“All right—you win! But I hope that your cursed delay doesn’t get all our throats cut!”

HE departed without further words. After he had gone, Venable suddenly came to the realization that Abe Gerin had not tried to bribe him. The thought gave him pause, gave him a new and steadier reliance upon this queer poet-man. He began to believe that Gerin was playing a straight game. Venable was slow to come to any such decision, but once arrived at it, he was wont to accept it without reserve.

The one thing that never occurred to him was that his position as second officer of the Kum Chao, with all that it implied, could have any direct bearing upon Gerin’s scheme of action. Yet upon this fact hung the fate of the Kum Chao and all aboard her.

Shortly before noon Venable saw the skipper for the first time. Captain Hewson came to the bridge, bearing his instruments, greeted Venable with frigid politeness, and after inspecting the compass and chart, made no comment. Venable, for his part, was glad to keep silence. He saw that the florid chops of the skipper were bristling with repressed rage, and he gave the other no opening.

“You need not bother to get out your instruments—if you have any,” volunteered the skipper as noon neared. “Mr. Jason and I will handle the navigation of this craft.”

“Very good, sir,” said Venable with an assumed humility that brought the purple into Captain Hewson’s face.

Venable wondered if this pursy, apoplectic, whisky-logged man could really be then scheming his murder, as Gerin had intimated. When the mate appeared, he wondered if this scrawny, bald vulture could be all evil smiles on the surface, and bold murder in his heart. Hard to think such things true! Perhaps, after all, Gerin had exaggerated. At any rate, Mrs. Ivanoff would know the truth. Venable did not understand the supreme confidence which he felt in that woman with the poised eyes; he did not understand why Gerin’s mention of her had swung him around to the poet’s viewpoint.

He messed with Garrity, but had no chance for a word alone, as the entire passenger-list also messed with the officers. Marie alone was not at the table, and Venable wondered what manner of woman she might be. She had been practically invisible when she came aboard.

THE meal over, Venable went direct to his own cabin. Here, inside of five minutes, Terence Garrity joined him, blue eyes twinkling shrewdly, tangled red mop of hair flying wild.

“Divil take it, it’s a wild mob we’re travelin’ with!” exclaimed the engineer when the door was shut.

“Gerin talked with you?” asked Venable.

“He did that.”

“What did you think of his yarn?”

Garrity pushed stubby fingers through his hair.

“To be honest with ye, Parson, I thought both this way an’ that way about him. None the less, it struck me that the bird was playin’ on the level with the both of us. His tale was one o’ them things that it’s hard to believe, but if ye don’t believe it, ye’ll be out o’ luck.”

Venable nodded. “I agree with you. What’s your verdict, then?”

“Faith, that’s up to you! I’d say, offhand, that if Mrs. Ivanoff wants to throw in with Gerin, well an’ good; if not, the same. In other words, I’m for the lady!”

“Whatever she says, goes with us,” stated Venable. “That suits me, Garrity. We’ll leave the decision up to her and take her orders. Gerin is to arrange for me to see her soon.”

“It’ll have to be soon, I’m thinkin’,” said Garrity. “That divil Boris Kryalpin was down messin’ around me this mornin’, and hard work I had to keep me two hands off’m him, the dirty scut! But Gerin chased him away, praise be. Well, bein’s everything is settled, I’m off to pass the time o’ day with the lady standin’ guard at Mrs. Ivanoff’s door. A glimpse of her I had, and I’ll stake me oath that she’s no hard-spoken female.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Venable. “That must be the woman Marie—the one Gerin spoke of.”

“More’n like,” assented the engineer, at the door.

Venable, his pipe alight, presently went out to the deck. He passed aft, not wishing to seek Mr. Jason’s company on the bridge, and came within sight of Mrs. Ivanoff’s cabin. There he was brought to an abrupt halt.

Twenty feet distant stood Garrity; and the man looked like one thunderstruck—mouth agape, position awkwardly fixed, face deathly white. Against the cabin door stood the woman Marie, staring at him. One hand was raised, as though in protest against his coming closer, and stupefaction sat in her eyes.

Venable, pausing, wondered at the wordless scene there before him. He was a little surprised by the aspect of Marie—a firm character sat in her face, and goodness. He had thought to find some wild termagant, some man-woman bred of the revolution. Then he reflected that Abe Gerin was not a shallow man, and would love deeply; besides, this woman Marie seemed to have served ideals all her life, and now that her ideals had been destroyed, she was not a participant in the wild, selfish scramble which had engulfed the others.

He saw Garrity say something in a low voice, and Marie shake her head. Then she answered, and the wind brought the words to Venable, carried her rich, womanly voice to his ears:

“Not now—not now! Later, perhaps. I—I cannot understand it—please leave me!”

Garrity turned, like a man suddenly stricken, and groped his way across the deck to where the tall, gaunt figure of Venable loomed. He looked up at his friend, his blue eyes stark and wide; then he brushed a hand across his brow.

“Divil take it!” he ejaculated, gripping the rail, amazement filling his voice.

“What’s the matter, man?” queried Venable, alarmed at his aspect.

Garrity blinked at him against the sun.

“D’ye mind, Parson, me tellin’ ye about the girl I married an’ never saw afterward—”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s her.”

Garrity jerked his head toward the figure of Marie, who stood watching them.

CHAPTER X

Gerin Strikes

THAT afternoon Captain Hewson—or rather Mr. Jason, who was the mouthpiece and active partner of the beefy skipper—fell to work upon the unhappy Kum Chao. There was much breaking out of paint; of which useful commodity, by some mystery which Boris Kryalpin or the skipper himself might have explained, there was a large supply aboard.

When Jason yielded the bridge to Venable, the skipper showed up and pushed the work savagely, revealing himself as a bullying bucko of the old type. The cargo-booms and derricks were stripped away and thrown into the hold; false rail and bulwarks were constructed that turned the craft from a well-deck tramp into one of the awning-deck species; a second funnel of wood, tin and canvas was stayed securely into position, and then, as a deft touch upon which the skipper prided himself hugely, was fed with smoke by a cunning pipe-line from the real funnel.

By means of much carpentry and spoiled canvas the entire shape of the superstructure amidships was altered, after which the painting was begun—every sign of the old Kum Chao being obliterated, and in her stead appearing the Porte Cochère of Marseilles. Mr. Hewson chose this name, as he explained to Venable, because he had once found it in a book and liked the tony sound of it.

All this was not done in an hour. By the time the painters got to work changing the white-and-red hull into black-and-gray, another day had passed. In that length of time Venable had made some discoveries.

The steward was in the pay of Boris. This was elucidated by Li John, whose brother Li Ho also asserted that old Paul had been murdered by Boris and Shinski together, and that the latter had wept bitter tears over the job. Further, the demeanor of the skipper and mate became so affable that Venable began to be seriously alarmed.

No opportunity had yet come to speak with Mrs. Ivanoff, apparently, and Abe Gerin was wearing a worried expression. On the third evening, however, when the painting of the hull was nearly completed, Gerin came to the bridge and told Venable that Mrs. Ivanoff would see him when he came off watch.

“I’ll be on guard at her door,” went on the poet with an ironic smile. “You’d better show up there about nine o’clock—two bells, isn’t it?—and slip in quietly. But leave the door ajar, because I want to hear what goes on. I’ve seen her, and she appears amiable; yet the woman is terrible of soul. She is capable of anything!”

“Very well,” assented Venable. “The skipper appears amiable, too, and I don’t like it. By the way, he’s changed our course altogether; we’re heading due south into the Eastern Sea, instead of east past Japan on a course for Honolulu. Look at the chart yourself.”

Gerin nodded carelessly. “Of course; he wants to get off the steamer-lanes until the work on the ship is done; then he’ll draw a line direct for Mexico. If he runs across any other ship, we sha’n’t be recognized. Well, we’d better arrange matters to-night, and I’ll attend to Mr. Hewson without delay. So long!”

VENABLE did not understand the poet’s unconcern over their course. He himself studied the pricked chart with a frown, for the Kum Chao seemed to be heading for Polynesia. To his landsman’s eye, with no thought of currents or leeway or drift, it seemed an absurdly easy thing to lay a course to any given point on that chart and follow it. But the ocean was very big, and Venable did not like the thought of heading aimlessly into the vastness of it as the skipper seemed to be doing. Also, the chart seemed thick with reefs and islands, most of which, to Venable’s great surprise, were assigned to Japan,

His surprise heightened as he looked farther. He had heard vaguely that Japan had taken all the German islands north of the equator; like most other people, he had paid little heed to it. But now he saw the large-scale chart outspread before him, and it seemed as though the Kum Chao were entering into a veritable Japanese world. From the Bonins down to the farthest Caroline, and away eastward through the Marshalls, stretched the great scimitar-sweep of Japan—the hilt at Asia, the point within fifteen hundred miles of Hawaii!

“Most astonishing!” murmured Venable, staring at the vast expanse of Micronesia which had passed from European hands to Asian. “An imaginative person would deduce a yellow peril from this chart, eh? And all closed to outside capital or enterprise, no doubt. Well, well, no matter! There comes Kryalpin, confound him!”

He nodded to Boris, who came to the bridge as he often did, and glanced at their course, Venable could pretend no liking for the man or his smooth courtesy, but Boris could be a charming individual at times, and seemed to exert this side of himself toward Venable. The latter liked it ill.

“Have you seen the Captain?” asked Boris casually. “No one seems to know where he is, and he’s not in his cabin.”

“No, he’s not been here,” answered Venable. “Last I saw of him, he was looking up some gold leaf for the new name on the stern. He’s probably below in the store-room.”

Kryalpin nodded and tendered Venable a cigarette, which the latter refused.

“You use a pipe, eh? By the way, I am very glad that you have decided to stick with us and obey orders. I’m afraid we’re going to have trouble with one or two of our friends; young Marks has taken a dislike to your friend Garrity, and Pinsky is advising that you be put out of the way. I thought I’d warn you. Those fellows are not to be trusted.”

“Thank you,” returned Venable, frowning a little. “Still, I fancy you’ve exaggerated; we’ve not mixed with any of your crowd, and they’d have no reason—”

“My dear fellow,” exclaimed Boris familiarly, “when an ill-gotten fortune is at stake, there is only one reason at bottom of everything; the fewer to divide the loot, the better! I have warned you; so look to it!”

WITH this admonition, Boris turned and left the bridge, Venable frowning after him in indecision and perplexity. What to make of this warning, he knew not; he decided to ask Garrity about it that night.

So, when he turned over the bridge and ship to Jason at eight that evening, Venable went direct to Garrity’s cabin. Darkness had fallen, earlier than usual; for the afternoon sky had been overcast, and the ship was rolling and lifting through heavy seas that boomed and battered upon her port counter.

As Eric Venable threw open the door of the tiny stateroom, a lurch of the deck sent him sidelong against the door-sash; at the same instant something crashed into the wood beside him. Instinctively he grappled with a dark figure that had up risen in front of him. A stunning blow broke the skin of his forehead. Venable clutched at the slungshot.

For the first time in years, passionate anger mastered him completely. The grunted oaths of his opponent told him this was not Garrity, but some one who had sought to murder Garrity by stealth and treachery. The blow, the touch of the coward’s weapon, maddened Venable. He threw out all his strength in a blind fierceness, a fury of surging muscles.

What happened next he could not tell. He was threshing about the stateroom with another man; that was all. Presently he found an electric torch flashing upon him, and knew that he was standing, trembling, with Garrity’s hand on him and Garrity’s voice in his ear.

“For the love o’ heaven, Parson!” cried the engineer excitedly. “Will ye not be content with killin’ the lad—”

“Killing!” echoed Venable. “He was waiting in here—”

“There’s a hell of a mess up for’ard,” thrust in Garrity. “Jason is—”

A dark shape appeared, crutch stamping to the roll of the ship, and Abe Gerin burst upon them in a blaze of energy. Garrity had extinguished the light.

“Venable—ah, I thought you’d be here! Get to the bridge—hurry! They’ve found that the Captain has disappeared, and the mate—”

“Quick!” snapped Garrity With a shove that sent Venable staggering away. “For’ard with ye, Parson! And take this along.”

Venable felt an automatic pushed into his coat pocket as he left.

Dazed, bewildered by what had taken place, he stumbled through the blackness, conscious of an uproar around him. At the bridge ladder he collided with Boris Kryalpin.

“Ah, Venable!” The voice of Boris was now steely, vibrant, and it lifted in a shout to the bridge above. “Here he is, Jason! Up with you, Venable—take charge of the ship! Captain Hewson has vanished.”

Venable did not stop to consider that Boris seemed actually in charge of the ship; he hastily gained the bridge, where Mr. Jason was dancing about and yelling frantic orders. He seized on Venable and gave him a push toward the wheel-house.

“Take charge!” he foamed. “Course is so’theast a quarter south—and git up a storm-apron—blowin’ hell’s bells ’fore morning. I’ll be back soon.”

He disappeared, with Boris, leaving Venable in charge of the ship.

ON the deck below was pandemonium, blackness, spindrift. The ship was bucking into a head-wind that pounded her with seas and kept her forward deck sluiced down continually, while Li Ho and another man at the wheel were kept at work to hold her steady.

From the confusion Venable gathered that search was being made for the missing Hewson. What had happened, he did not exactly know; things had broken too suddenly. But now, as though by some magic, his bewildered brain cleared. His hesitation was gone. He realized that he stood face to face with a dozen perils, and the knowledge steadied him, snapped his brain into cool precision.

Presently Li John made his appearance, and with much relief Venable ordered him to rig a storm-apron: The quartermaster summoned men from below. With them came Garrity, a cheerful whistle upon his lips.

“Praise be!”, exclaimed the engineer. “It’s all ravin’ maniacs they are, down there! D’ye mind, Venable, that whiskered chap Pinsky? He was in your cabin, waitin’ for ye—same as the boy Marks in mine. They’ve missed Marks already.”

“Missed him!” Venable stared. “You mean—they’ll find him—”

“Not much!” And Garrity chuckled. “Lord, what a grip ye have, Parson! We put him over the rail, Gerin and I.”

“What happened to Captain Hewson?” demanded Venable.

“Divil a bit does anyone know, or care, either—unless it’s Boris Kryalpin. Him an’ that bird Jason are fair wild! I see Mrs. Ivanoff out on deck, paradin’ around; she said for you to see her after the confusion quieted down a bit. They’ve been watching her pretty close, but Gerin had charge of her to-night, and I s’pose he let her drift around.”

“So Pinsky was waiting for me, eh?” said Venable slowly. “Garrity, I believe Kryalpin put them up to that murder-plot! Then he warned us. He didn’t care who got killed, so long as some one caught it. I believe Abe Gerin told the exact truth! Everybody aboard this ship is out to murder everybody else!”

“Pretty close to the mark, Parson,” assented Garrity. “Boris tried to buy up Stormalong, who was wise enough to say yes. I told him about things, and he says to tell you that he’ll throw in with us any old time.”

“All right.” Venable nodded. “Here’s some one now. Looks like Jason.”

The mate appeared, carrying a lantern and a strong whisky-breath. He squinted at the course, and nodded.

“Cap’n’s gone!” he said lugubriously. “Poor ol’ Hewson’s gone! Him an’ me has sailed together these seven year, too. And he owed me thirty dollars Mex! Aint it hell?”

“What d’ye mean?” snapped Garrity. “He’s not dead?”

“He’s gone; that’s all,” responded the mate in half-maudlin accents. “That’s what comes o’ having a woman owner aboard! Mr. Hewson aint aboard this hooker no more. That kid Marks, he’s gone too. I told the skipper to watch out for that crowd; so did Kryalpin. They’ve done him in, that’s what. It comes of them saints’ bones that’s aboard.”

Venable turned from the man.

“Take over the bridge,” he said curtly. “I’m going to turn in.”

“Aw right,” assented Jason, rubbing his hand over his bald, wet skull. “Aw right. It comes of them saints’ bones and a woman owner aboard! That’s what it does—”

Venable and Garrity left him mouthing words. The man was palpably knocked off his feet; he had had some affection for the beefy skipper, after all, perhaps. And he had drunk deep while below.

“You run along and see the missus,” said Garrity. “I’ll take a look-see for any more mousetraps in our cabins, and you can report afterward on what she says.”

“We’re safe enough now,” asserted Venable confidently. “Boris laid the trap for us, but the disappearance of Hewson has staggered him. He’ll go slow for the present and work in with Jason; he wont want more of the ship’s officers to turn up missing, for he figures on working the ship to the Mexican coast. So long!”

Venable swung away aft, toward the specially installed cabin of Mrs. Ivanoff, abaft the bridge-house. But Garrity paused by the ladder to gaze after him, and grinned as he gazed.

“Divil and all, if he aint comin’ out like a new man!” said the engineer reflectively. “That tone of him, now—and my Lord, what he done to Marks! Killed him with the two bare hands, praise be! Divil a cheep out of him about it, neither—he might be a bloody pirut for all a man knows, killin’ of ’em before breakfast. Hurray, says I!”

VENABLE passed on to Mrs. Ivanoff’s cabin, and came upon Abe Gerin.

“In with you!” Gerin jerked his head toward the door. “She expects you.”

Venable opened the door and stepped into the cabin. He disregarded Gerin’s prior instructions and closed the door behind him.

If he had anticipated a fateful interview, he was quite correct; but there was nothing prolonged or dramatic about it. Mrs. Ivanoff held out her hand, and smiled.

“I am glad to see you at last, Doctor Venable.”

“Please, not that!” Venable protested quietly. “The past is dead, madam.”

“Very well.” Her sea-gray eyes searched him curiously, strangely. “You’ve changed—and I’m glad! Gerin has made his position clear to you?”

“Gerin—and others. The Captain disappeared to-night. And Marks—”

“I know.” Her eyes shone out suddenly at him. “Gerin told me. Ah, that was wonderful! But you must not stay—it is dangerous. You are ready to act?”

“At your command, madam,” said Venable, standing very straight before her.

“To think what a man of iron you are now, and what you were when I first saw you!” she said softly; then she shrugged her shoulders. “Very well. I have assented to Gerin’s proposals. I have no commands, except that to-morrow you must be ready to act. Things will happen.”

“What?”

“I can’t say. You and Garrity must watch. And I wish you’d take this and put it in some place of safety—stow it away in one of the lifeboats, where no one would look.”

She held out to him a parcel wrapped in burlap and tied with twine.

“Don’t let Gerin see it—put it under your coat,” she pursued calmly. “It contains some private effects, and our cabins are liable to search at any moment. Thank you. Pass the word to those whom you can trust about to-morrow; early in the morning, I think, there will be trouble.”

Venable frowned at her, perplexed.

“But what makes you think—”

“Oh, I have been busy to-night!” She laughed out at him, an eager, thrilling laugh that went into his blood like wine. “They were right to be afraid of me, those gutter-rats! But you shall see to-morrow.”

Venable bowed and left her.

Outside, Gerin looked up at him with a twisted smile. “Ah! We work together, eh? Good. That is a woman in there! A wonder!”

“She says there’ll be trouble to-morrow,” said Venable. “What does she mean?”

“Lord knows!” The poet shrugged. “But we got in the first blow, eh? Nobody knows how Hewson disappeared—and nobody saw. I was careful about that! The old fool was slung under the stern, lettering—”

Venable’s face hardened into steel. “You—murdered him?”

“No,” said Gerin, “I didn’t. I simply knocked him off the sling and let the water do the rest. And by to-morrow night you’ll be in charge of this ship.”

Venable started to speak, then halted. He could not trust himself to explain to this assassin.

CHAPTER XI

The Storm Breaks

BEFORE he went off watch at four in the morning, Venable passed the word to Garrity and Stormalong, also to the two Chinese quartermasters—the word that trouble was on the way, and that they must stand by to obey his orders when the time came. Certain of the crew whom Li John and Li Ho could trust were to be told also. Others, however, a number of the stokers and the two stewards, were known to have been won over by Hewson and Boris Kryalpin. How far they would follow Boris was questionable.

The parcel wrapped in burlap Venable had placed under the tarpaulin of the after starboard boat, lacing up the covering again.

Venable slept untroubled, wakening in time for breakfast when the bell was rung at seven-twenty, after shipboard custom. He messed with Garrity.

“If trouble is brewin’,” said the latter, “’tis a bad mornin’ for the same! I seen that chap Deardorf down the passage, and green he was; I’ll be seasick me own self if this holds!”

There was no storm, but the Kum Chao was wallowing and bucking into a stiff wind and bad sea. On his way to the bridge, Venable saw that her foredeck was being continually swept by the seas, and she was laboring hard. Jason, looking very haggard and unkempt, hailed the relief with joy.

“I’m keepin’ her off two points,” he said, “to hit the seas easier. She’s goin’ to drop her screw yet, the old tinpot! Hear the blade race when she lifts up her hind end? Wish ye luck with her! You’ll have to shoot the sun this noon; now that skipper’s gone, you an’ me got to hang together.”

Venable found himself alone, except for the two men at the wheel, with vast relief. He did not like Jason or trust him, and he found himself on a tension this morning, waiting for Mrs. Ivanoff’s prediction to be fulfilled. But nothing happened. Garrity informed him by tube that all was quiet below.

Shortly before four bells, or ten o’clock, Venable looked down at what had been the well-deck, and saw Shinski and Boris walking there and talking. As he gazed idly upon them, he saw the woman Marie appear.

Instantly Venable knew from the repressed excitement of her face, her manner, that something had happened. He turned and spoke through the open window to Li John, at the wheel behind him.

“Send another man up here to mind the wheel. Summon your brother, the second engineer, and the others. The time is at hand.”

“Aye, aye, sah,” responded the British-trained Li John. “Number one piecee bobbery come quick, huh?”

VENABLE gave his attention to the three below him. Marie had halted the two men, and now the uplift of the wind carried her words clearly to the bridge.

“It’s gone!” Her voice was tensely shrill. “It’s gone, I say I”

“What’s gone?” demanded Shinski, who was livid with seasickness.

“Everything!” Marie’s voice rose in hot anger. “Some one has been in my room,—it was in my trunk,—and it’s been stolen! The jewels—”

The two men broke into oaths of amazement. Then, his eyes blazing, Boris Kryalpin whirled on Shinski, and his hand went to his coat.

“You, you rat!” snarled his voice. “You’ve—”

Shinski swerved away with a bleat of fright; but Kryalpin’s pocket vomited a splash of smoke, and a revolver cracked. Shinski flung up his arms and pitched down the deck as the ship rolled.

Marie had whipped out an automatic as Boris turned to her—but from some point aft, outside the range of vision of the paralyzed Venable, came another shot, thin against the wind. Boris dropped his weapon, put one hand to his head and fell.

Another shot, a third, cracked. Marie threw up her automatic and answered it, shooting aft; then she leaped aside and was gone. Below him, Venable saw Shinski’s body rolling in the scuppers, while Boris Kryalpin was half kneeling amid a rush of green water and holding to the rail-chains.

Venable turned to the helmsman. “Steady as she is!” he ordered, his voice quiet. Then he took out his automatic and went to the ladder, descending.

He wondered why nothing more had happened—why Garrity and the others had not appeared. But it had all chanced in the fraction of a minute, that scene of murder. When Venable came to the deck, he saw Li John just at the hood of the forecastle hatch, leaning over and calling to his mates below.

Venable faced aft, along the port rail. He had no intention of going below to the cabins, for with murder afoot that narrow passage would be a shambles. Everybody seemed to be shooting at everything in sight. Hell had broken loose with a vengeance!

So some one had stolen the jewels, eh? Marie had been foolish to come and blurt it out, thought Venable; that had precipitated the fracas. Each man thought the other man had been guilty—but who really had taken the stuff? Boris, beyond a doubt. He was head and shoulders above the rest of them in brains. And he had been swift enough to shoot down Shinski!

And now Venable heard another weapon’s report, and the bullet screamed in the wind overhead.

Out ahead of him popped, grotesquely and terribly, the figure of Abe Gerin—crutch gone, reeling brokenly across the passage and back again. Behind Gerin came a second figure, that of the bearded Deardorf, revolver in hand, aiming at the staggering Gerin.

“Down with that gun!” roared out Venable.

Deardorf saw him, hesitated, then rapped out an oath and lifted his weapon. Venable threw out his automatic and pulled the trigger. He aimed blindly, ignorantly. He was astonished to see Deardorf flung back against the rail as though by some invisible hand, drop his gun, and clap his hand to his left shoulder.

“Marie!” gasped out Gerin, half lying on the deck. “They—caught her—”

He pointed aft, and with a lurch of the ship rolled against the rail. Then, unexpectedly, a rush of feet sounded behind Venable, who turned to see Garrity and Stormalong, followed by half a dozen yellow men, streaming toward him. He passed Gerin and went on to the after-deck.

MARIE was there, struggling in the firm grip of Jason, while Pinsky was searching her. Garrity flung himself for ward, a cry of fury bursting from him; Venable found himself thrown against Jason, and swung his fist against the mate. He was answered by a smash that lifted him against the rail, and then clinched.

But for the wound which had stretched him half senseless on the fore-deck, Kryalpin would have won the ship in that moment. The stewards had gathered other yellow men of his party, and Jason was bellowing to them to come on—but they held back, irresolute. Then Li John and his brother turned to face the danger, Stormalong leaped at the threatening party, and they turned tail and vanished with howls of fright.

Small wonder, indeed! Venable had come to his full height, holding over his head the screaming figure of Jason, whose bald head was crimsoned; bending himself, he flung the hapless mate along the deck, sent him slithering and sliding over the white planks, to bring up with a crash against a section of the flimsy false super structure. Mr. Jason lay there silent and unmoving.

“Garrity!” Venable’s voice bit into the wind. “Go for’ard and seize Kryalpin—also Shinski, if he’s alive! Stormalong, grab that fellow Deardorf, and bring Abe Gerin here. What’s become of Pinsky?”

He stared about the deck, passing over the frightened, wondering gaze of Marie, who had shrunk against the rail. Pinsky had vanished.

Then Venable had his answer. His gaze caught a black thing in the ship’s wake—a head and arm that rose out of the water, made itself seen and was gone. Li John touched his arm, grinning.

“Misteh Gallity knockum off!”

Venable shrugged his shoulders, after another look at the tossing waters which showed no further trace of the Bolshevik.

“Shinski’s dead!” came Garrity’s voice, who appeared, leading two of his men, their hands busy with Boris Kryalpin. “This bird has a scratch across the skull, but he’ll be up to more divilment when he comes around, I’m thinking.”

Stormalong showed up in charge of Deardorf, and Abe Gerin was helped to the scene. He looked at Venable with a grim smile.

“Just in time, Venable! Thanks. My ankle’s been twisted up pretty badly, I guess. All the fish in the net? Where’s Jason?”

THE mate was disinterred from his canvas shroud, and found to be senseless but not particularly damaged. Marie was helping to support Gerin, whose face was blazing with an indomitable energy that mastered his pain.

“Now!” he cried out at Venable. “Finish it, man—finish it! Put them in a boat and be rid of the lot—”

“In this sea!” Venable shook his head. “I’m no murderer, Gerin. If it were calm water—”

Garrity pushed forward, laughing.

“Nonsense, Parson!” he roared. “It’s a grand idea, that! And in this bit sea they’ll come to no harm, more’s the pity! Jason’s a seaman. He’ll have a sail up and be scudding before the wind in no time.”

“I’ll not do it,” answered Venable. “It would be sheer murder. Take care of the hurt men and make them all prisoners; I’ll ask Mrs. Ivanoff what to do with ’em. Madam, are you injured?”

This to Marie, who dumbly shook her head. She was upholding Gerin; yet her eyes were fastened upon Garrity in fascination.

Venable turned his back upon all of them and passed to the saloon-deck ladder. His scuffle with Jason had opened the cut upon his forehead given him by Marks, and he wiped the trickle of blood away, absently, careless that it left a broad smear of red.

His refusal to dispose of the prisoners as Gerin had suggested was wholly from utilitarian reasons, for he had no particular pity on any of them. Jason was needed, and very much needed, as being the only navigator aboard—the only man able to extricate the ship from her present wanderings, and to take her safely to Honolulu or San Francisco. She was now rolling down toward Micronesia, and Venable thought of that much-spotted chart with a positive shiver.

When he reached Mrs. Ivanoff’s door, he knocked. She herself opened it to him, and beyond a slight widening of the eyes at his appearance, betrayed no astonishment.

“The ship is at your disposal, madam,” said Venable laconically.

“Ah!” she exclaimed. “I suspected as much, from the sounds, and was just coming up. You have not been shot, I hope—”

“No, no,” said Venable. “Merely a blow. It is most astonishing that none of us have been hurt; Gerin’s leg was injured a trifle, I think. Shinski is dead. In fact, Deardorf, Mr. Jason and Boris Kryalpin are all more or less hurt, and prisoners. David Pinsky went overboard. It seems that Gerin murdered Captain Hewson yesterday.”

MRS. IVANOFF nodded. She appeared to be quite composed, as though she had seen so many perils that her present situation was entirely without power to excite her. She indicated a samovar bubbling in a rack in one corner of the cabin.

“There is no hurry, Mr. Venable,” she said, “and—you know I am a Russian; let us have a cup of tea before we go on deck; I’m sure you look as though you needed it! And I want to know exactly how things stand before I take charge.”

Venable smiled. “You appear quite unconcerned before the most amazing changes of fortune!” he said. “I must congratulate you on your poise.”

“It is not poise,” she broke in. “It is because I have seen the great agony of Russia, and after that, all little things pall upon one. But come! Tell me what started affairs up above?”

She was busy with the samovar and tiny cups taken from a rack built in the corner.

Venable described to her how the battle had started. “And so far as I know,” he concluded, “the missing loot which began the affair has not yet been located. Whoever took it certainly precipitated events.”

“I took it,” she said, a slow laugh breaking in her motherly features. “I took it with precisely that intention!”

“Great Jehu!” murmured Venable, astounded.

In her eyes he saw a gayety, a sheer impulse to high spirits, that was new; there was a flame in her manner, a vibrant buoyancy of soul, an upburst of energy. For the first time he realized the strength of this woman, the abounding vigor beneath her placid surface.

And then, suddenly, she was turned half away from him in pretended business about the samovar; and he saw the rush of tears upon her cheeks. It was a moment before she was able to speak.

“I am a woman—I was not meant for such work,” she said, between low sobs. “I knew what would happen—I had to fight; but the killing of men—”

Venable towered above her, and placed his arm about her shoulders as he turned her face toward him. In his eyes was tenderness, and a great understanding; sympathy had melted the iron contours of his rugged features, until one saw that here was a man who had suffered greatly but well, and would be loved for his deep strength of endurance.

“Be patient, dear woman! I know how you feel. Like you, these many years I have been in the world but not of it—living my own little life in my own environment, out of contact with primitive things and emotions, coursing in a narrow path and unable to see beyond it; like you, I have been in touch only with the gentler side of life, dreaming of God and sufficient unto myself alone—thanking Heaven that I was not as other men were! And now it’s all changed.”

His deep voice filled the room with a thrum of music, and the woman gazed into his working features with eyes widened by this sudden baring of his inner self.

“Now I’ve been among men, I’ve plumbed the depths—I’ve become primitive again,” he went on. “And I’ve come to know more of God and man! It’s a fight, this world, a great fight. Uprightness is strength, and it must prove itself pitilessly. If we have a cause, we must fight for it—look at that pitiful man Abe Gerin! His whole fight here is for the woman Marie who loves him not, and he gives himself because he loves her—”

“I am very silly,” said Mrs. Ivanoff, breaking in upon his disjointed words, and striking the tears from her cheeks. “I thought no one could understand.”

SHE turned again to the samovar, and began to draw tea into the tiny cups. When she extended one of them to him, she was smiling again; between them had arisen a wordless warmth, a contact of the spirit, a comprehension. It was with a start of recollection that Venable came back to mundane things.

“We must go on deck—I had forgotten—”

“Oh!” The exclamation broke from Mrs. Ivanoff. “I too—”

Together they sought the deck, and the noonday sun burst upon them. The ship was rolling on her course, lifting to the long seas, smashing into the foaming rollers that swept her bows. Venable turned to the after-deck.

They came plump upon Abe Gerin, supported by Marie and Stormalong. The poet’s injured leg had been dressed, but fever sat in his flushed face.

“Gone!” he cried out at sight of them. “We cannot find the stuff; it’s gone.”

Mrs. Ivanoff smiled. “I know,” she said quietly. “I took it last night; you shall have the jewels again, my friends—and I must thank you for the success of our partnership. My dear Marie, I understand that in times past you have suffered because of those around me. Will you forgive the fault of those who are gone? Will you let the dead bury their dead?”

The outburst of passionate emotion that filled the face of Marie was quenched by the softness of the sea-gray eyes that compelled hers. Her lips quivered; and abruptly she caught the outstretched hand of Mrs. Ivanoff. Tears smothered the words in her throat.

“Where’s Garrity?” demanded Venable of the two men.

Abe Gerin poised himself upon Stormalong’s arm.

“Down lookin’ to his engines,” growled the second engineer, an anxious frown up on his burly face as he watched Venable. “Say! I was lookin’ for you. This guy—”

“The prisoners?” exclaimed Venable.

“Gone! ” cried out Gerin, flinging up his free arm and shaking his fist at the horizon. “Gone—by my orders! Undo it if you can!”

A gasp broke from Venable. “Murdered? If you’ve dared—”

“No,” broke in Stormalong. “He had ’em put in a boat—give ’em water an’ grub and charts. Jason was fit to take charge o’ things. They’ll be all right.”

Venable lifted his gaze to the empty horizon, and slowly conquered the anger that had gripped upon him. When he looked again at Abe Gerin, his eyes were cold and emotionless.

“So you did this, you fool!” he said bitingly. “After I had refused to allow it! And who’s to take charge of this ship?”

“You,” retorted the flushed poet. “You’re the second officer, aren’t you?”

“Oh, hell!” broke from Stormalong in sudden and dismayed comprehension.

Venable looked at them, then sought the startled gaze of Mrs. Ivanoff. Each of them, save Gerin, understood the situation perfectly, and was wordless before it.

“Put Gerin to bed,” said Venable, and turned. “And Stormalong! Send Garrity up to the bridge, will you?”

CHAPTER XII

The Yellow Schooner

GARRITY looked sheepish when he came to the bridge. He had been excited, carried away by the fight and the rush of events; also he had talked more than a little with that wife of his, Marie. When Boris Kryalpin and the others had been put into a boat and sent adrift, Garrity had been aflame with reckless enthusiasm, thinking naught of disobeying Venable. But now he had cooled down appreciably, and he began to understand that by parting with Jason, the Kum Chao had been turned into a blinded, brute thing.

“We shouldn’t ha’ done it,” he said, miserable before Venable’s lack of reproach. “I’m sorry, Parson—but I didn’t think. Say! Turn about, now, and be headin’ back! We could pick up them birds.”

Venable shook his head and pointed to the chart.

“We know exactly where we are, Garrity; Jason has kept everything shipshape, and we’ve been moving at a steady speed. As it is now, we can at least try to make some port where we can pick up a navigator. If we began to quarter the ocean, we would very likely fail to pick up the boat, and then we’d be miles off our course and helpless.”

Garrity nodded. He was nothing of a seaman himself—little more of one than was Venable, in fact—else he would have realized the sheer folly of not trying to pick up the boat. To him, as to Venable, the horizon looked terribly wide, and the compass was confusing.

“Then go ahead, and the saints be kind to us!” he said at length. “Where’ll we head for now?”

They went to the chart-table. Their last noted position was 132 E. by 29 N., and since the previous day they had held almost a straight course.

“Thank the Lord! ” said Garrity fervently. “We’ve been hittin’ nine and a half steady; you can work out where we are, easy enough, makin’ allowance for the sea we been buckin’. Take the log now—it’s one of them patent things—and average her up with this mornin’s reading. What’s that you’re pointin’ at?”

Venable’s finger had passed down the outflung string of the Ladrones, to come to rest at their southernmost tip.

“Guam!” he answered. “United States soil, Garrity—and all the help we want!”

“Ah! That’s better,” said Garrity briskly. “And not so far neither—a matter o’ three hundred miles.”

“Six hundred,” corrected Venable. “It’s a mere dot in the ocean.”

“Go to it!” retorted the engineer. “Go ahead, man—ye’re bound to be hittin’ something from the looks o’ that chart! If not Guam, then ye can get directions. Divil and all, I could sail a ship meself with charts like them, and islands all around to ask your way from! We’ll do fine, Parson; so go ahead and don’t be botherin’ Mrs. Ivanoff about it.”

VENABLE shrugged his shoulders. “Very well. But when you go down, see if anyone on board knows anything about navigation. It would help a lot.”

“I’ve already asked, with no luck,” and Garrity grinned. “It’s in your hands, me lad, and more power to ye! By the way, have ye observed Marie at all?”

“Your wife?”

“Well, the one I married—yes. It’s a wonderful woman she is, Parson; upon me word, ’twould amaze ye to talk with her a bit! And do ye know, she’s done with all that socialist stuff—poor girl, she’s had a hell of a time with them Bullsheviks and all! They all come to it, Parson—that is, if they got any real gumption, like she’s got. They all quit it and come back to earth.”

Venable regarded him, smiling queerly.

“So!” he said. Under his look, reading the thought in his eyes, Garrity flushed bright red. “So! It would be a strange thing, now—wouldn’t it?—if you two were—”

“Aw, hell!” uttered Garrity. “You ’tend to them charts, Parson! So long.”

The engineer fled hastily. Still smiling, Venable turned to his work, and fell sober. The immensity of sea and sky, the utter futility of all his knowledge, the appalling density of the coral reefs dotted on the chart, brought him to a grave doubt of himself and his task. He was afraid.

“Li John!” At his word, the Quartermaster turned to him. “Pick out the best men from each watch for the lookouts, and warn them to sing out at the first sign of reefs or islands. You will take charge of the ship when I’m off watch, and call me when you sight anything. You under stand?”

“My savvy plenty fine, sah,” answered the yellow man.

Venable went out on the bridge. As he stood there, gazing ahead, he saw Mrs. Ivanoff and Marie walk out on the fore-deck, talking together. Mrs. Ivanoff looked up at him and beckoned. Venable descended the ladder and joined them. He was more than glad to see that between them lay friendliness; both women were smiling as he came up.

“We were just speaking of you,” said Mrs. Ivanoff brightly. “I was telling Marie about the package wrapped in burlap that I gave you.”

“Oh!” Venable’s brows lifted. He was slightly perplexed. “Yes, of course. You want it back again?”

“If you please,” answered Mrs. Ivanoff, and laughed. “You see, all Marie’s jewels were in that package.”

Venable whistled in astonishment. Before his amazement both women smiled again.

“So that was it!” he ejaculated. “And you handed it over to me as though it were some paltry—”

Mrs. Ivanoff touched his arm. In her sea-gray eyes lay a swift appeal.

“It was no lack of trust, Mr. Venable. I was the only one who knew what was in that package, and I preferred to keep the secret to myself until the time came. Now the time has come, and I want to return what does not belong to me.”

“I see,” Venable nodded, and turned.

He halted, staring blankly along the starboard rail. His jaw fell.

“What’s the matter?” demanded Marie quickly.

“The matter? That boat—the after boat is gone!”

MRS. IVANOFF frowned suddenly. “The boat? Yes. That was the one they sent away the prisoners in.”

Venable made a tragic gesture—a motion of helplessness, of futility. He turned to them a face furrowed deeply.

“I opened up the cover of that boat,” he said, “and put the package under one of the thwarts, then laced it up again. And Gerin gave them that boat—”

Understanding broke upon them. Marie’s eyes flamed; her cheeks went white as she gazed at him. Then, under his grave gaze, the anger died from her face and left it miserable. Despair thickened her voice when she broke the silence.

“No use—no use! It seems that—that fate—that everything is in vain.”

She turned her back to them,, choking; but Mrs. Ivanoff put an arm about her shoulders, and caressed the masses of bronze hair.

“My dear! I am so sorry; I am sorry, for your sake! It was my fault entirely!”

“No!” Marie straightened and whirled, facing her. “Don’t say that; you are a noble woman, and I’m a—a poor miserable girl who has failed in everything—even in theft! It was not your fault at all. Oh, can’t you see that I’m not grieving for the loss!”

They stood silent before her, wondering. Perhaps Mrs. Ivanoff, who understood everything, comprehended what was passing in her heart; but Venable was astonished.

“I’m glad it’s gone!” cried out Marie passionately. “There was blood on each one of those stones; I had dreamed of their staining my soul—oh, I can’t tell you all of it! But now it’s gone, and I’m glad. It was like a bloody nemesis out of the old life, hanging over me always; could I have enjoyed that money, that blood-money, those thirty pieces of silver? No, I’m done with it all now—all the old life is behind me and done with! I’ve thrown away the best of my youth and have bartered my soul for a bubble that is broken.”

Tears suffused her eyes. Mrs. Ivanoff threw Venable a look, a swiftly commanding look that tacitly bade him begone; and he obeyed it. As he stumbled back up to the bridge, the two women disappeared toward the after-deck.

“Regeneration there,” thought Venable, marveling at it all. “Strange how it’s working out with her! Poor girl, she’s been one of the sincere ones, but now she’s badly shattered and in need of aid. And the aid comes to her from Mrs. Ivanoff—the type of aristocrat she had hated and plotted to overthrow! Very queer—mysterious, rather. Yes, mysterious! God’s still at work in the world.”

THE thought of the treasure, as such, did not move him in the least, had no appeal for him. He cared nothing about its disposition, except as it affected the others around him; and yet the guiding chance of this whole affair was very curious. Kryalpin, defeated and kicked adrift on the seas, had none the less won the great stake! Gerin, coolly murdering men in order to give Marie possession of the treasure, had deliberately but ignorantly turned over that treasure with his hatred; in venting his fear and vengeance upon Boris and the others, he had made them rich men—had let them depart with the jewels!

“It will go hard with Gerin when he learns the truth,” thought Venable, quite without pity. He could not forget how Captain Hewson had been murdered; poet-wise, Gerin had pictured the scene for him in a dozen words that lingered in his memory.

Later, when he stood in Gerin’s cabin and told the poet of the happenings, Gerin said nothing at all. He turned his beautiful face to the wall, and was silent.

It appeared that Mrs. Ivanoff had handed over to the ex-Bolshevists her own trunk containing relics and jewels, as stipulated at their first meeting, the morning after leaving Taku. The jewels had been given to Marie for safe-keeping, while the relics had been left undisturbed. Marie had kept these stones separate from the others, so that they had not been in the burlap package. She had now returned them with the relics to Mrs. Ivanoff.

IN the wheel-house, upon the following morning, Venable bent over figures and charts, hard at work. After hours of absorbed calculation, after much fruitless poring over Knight and Bowditch and other books found in the skipper’s cabin, he reached the odd but unassailable conclusion that the Kum Chao was at that precise moment smack in the center of Dolares Island, a speck of land midway between the Riukiu and Bonin groups. As he leaned back and considered this queer situation, there came a hail from the bows, repeated by Li John.

“Land ho, cap’n! Him catchum land! Two points to po’t!”

Flurried, Venable rang for half speed, then summoned Garrity up above for a consultation. On the rim of the wine-dark sea ahead, slightly to port, was a low-hung bluish break, a dot of land.

Garrity arrived on the run, and listened to Venable’s exposition, rubbing his broken nose the while. At length he broke into a grin, his star-blue eyes twinkling.

“Faith, Parson, ye’ve accomplished a miracle, no less! How ye did it is past me, but it’s done.”

“What do you mean?”

“Yonder is Dolares Island; that’s all!” Garrity pointed to the chart. “Your figures were right enough at a guess. Now lay your course sou’-sou’east by three-quarters east, and ye’ll fetch Guam—barrin’ accidents. More power to ye!”

VENABLE gave the course to the quartermaster; while he was doing so, Mrs. Ivanoff arrived. Garrity departed to his own place, while Venable pointed out their position to Mrs. Ivanoff. In reply to her questions he explained the odd relationship between Garrity and Marie, and detailed his own friendship with the engineer. Nor did he spare himself in the telling, but filled out the portrait of himself with strong, harsh strokes.

“We’re not unlike,” she answered softly, the rich timbre of her voice thrilling and vibrating within him. “We’ve each suffered; and now we’re traveling the same path toward the better things. I’ve doubted much—”

“By to-morrow night,” Venable said, smiling, “we’ll be through our worries, I trust.”

He pointed out their course to Guam. Dolares Island was already on the starboard horizon and dropping behind. But as he put down the chart, Li John turned to him from the wheel and jerked one hand aft and to port.

“Catchum ship, Cap’n!”

“A ship!”

Venable took the binoculars from the rack and stepped outside, Mrs. Ivanoff at his elbow. To the northwest was a dot against the horizon. Venable focused the glasses on her, and made out a ship crawling down the sea-rim after them.

“A small craft of some kind!” He handed the glasses to Mrs. Ivanoff.

“But faster than we, for she seems to be catching up with us,” was her comment. “Hm! She’s heading as though to speak us, too.”

“Good!” exclaimed Venable. “We’ll be able to verify our position from her and obtain the proper course to Guam. I think we’d better come down to half speed and let her catch us up if she wants to.”

MRS. IVANOFF returned the glasses, frowning a little.

“I—I’m silly,” she said hesitantly, “but I’m afraid of everything, Mr. Venable. After what has happened since leaving Tientsin, I can’t help feeling as though—”

“More trouble were coming?” Venable laughed. “Nonsense! We’re all right, I assure you; still, if you prefer, I’ll not slow down. By the way, how is Gerin?”

“I looked in on him just before coming up here,” she replied, her eyes on the crawling dot. “He seemed quite himself. Mr. Stormalong was fixing his crutch so he could use it again. Did you notice his face?”

“Yes. It’s very remarkable.” Venable took out his pipe and filled it. “The man himself is a strange mixture of good and bad; his devotion to Marie is a beautiful thing, while his actions are the exact contrary. Altogether complex! The man is a shadow like the rest of us, eh? Too much imagination for his own good.”

“He did much evil in Russia,” she said, her voice low and repressed. “And some good, also. Such a man can never find happiness; he cannot find his place in the world. I wonder what his conception of heaven can be?”

“What is yours?” asked Venable unexpectedly.

“Mine?” She hesitated, searching him with her eyes. “Ah—that is hard to say! One’s point of view changes at times..... Well, au revoir!”

He wondered what she had meant by those words, but could arrive at no answer. He was filled with a great reverence for her, an unmixed admiration. Something deeper was in this feeling, too—something he could not express or visualize. It was as though she had brought something into his empty life, filling the vacant spaces. Her eyes seemed always to be calling him, speaking to him of inward things. Such a woman, he pondered, would be an inspiration to the world, an inspiration to any man.

His thoughts ended there, for the dot on the sea-rim was coming closer now, and he could make out signals flying from her gaff. She was a schooner, but obviously under motor power, for she had no canvas spread.

Venable sought among the skipper’s books and papers for some explanation of the signals, and presently found a copy of the International code. After much study of the schooner’s signals, entirely strange to his eye, he made them out to indicate that she wanted to speak.

“Oh! You want to speak us, do you?” muttered Venable. He had previously summoned Terence Garrity to the tube, and repeated the signal. “Shall we stop or not?”

“If she’s faster than we are, let her run up!” returned Garrity with an oath.

So Venable paid no heed to the signal. As he examined the schooner through his glass, he made out that a group of men was busied about a large tarpaulin on her fore-deck. When the tarpaulin was re moved, a glittering object, to Venable’s gaze quite unfamiliar, was laid bare. The men working on the schooner’s deck seemed to be brown or yellow.

Suddenly an exclamation burst from Venable, staring amazedly through the glasses. From the after companion of the schooner a group of men had come up on her deck, one of them a Japanese, the other three white. And the white men were Mr. Jason, Boris Kryalpin and the wounded Deardorf!

Barely had Venable recognized them when the gun on the fore-deck of the schooner sent a white burst of smoke. Before the shot sounded, there was a terrific explosion somewhere in the bowels of the Kum Chao. Her engines stopped.

CHAPTER XIII

The Tiger Wins

THE Kum Chao wallowed in the trough of the seas, helpless, while down upon her bore the Japanese schooner. Aboard the latter a boat was being made ready for lowering; from her size, Venable was certain it was the same boat in which Boris and his friends had been sent adrift, the boat which had given them the treasure!

What were they now after, then? The remainder of the treasure, of course—the jewels and relics gained by Mrs. Ivanoff. They had been picked up by this schooner, and had no doubt bribed or lied her commander into pursuing the Kum Chao.

“Ho!” cried Garrity, panting as he leaped beside Venable. “Ho! The schooner ye were tellin’ me of, eh? Let’s have a look. Stormalong is keepin’ the others down. We’ll want a cool head and no talkin’ here, I’m thinkin’—”

He seized the glass from Venable’s hand and looked. Then he swore.

“Boris it is!” A sudden coolness came over him as he squinted. “The divils would not be satisfied with what they had, but wanted the rest! And the murderin’ Jap, yonder—when he found that the old ship was by way of bein’ an outlaw—”

“Man, he fired slap into us!” exclaimed Venable, finding his voice for the first time. “He fired into us without warning!”

“Don’t I know it?” said Garrity grimly. “The engines smashed and some o’ the Chinks kilt entirely! And a hole in her starboard bow where the shell burst.”

He laid down the glasses and looked at Venable; the rage had seeped out of him, and he was coldly self-possessed.

“We are up against it, me lad,” he said, his voice quiet. “Ye realize what they mean?”

Venable made a gesture of puzzled incomprehension. He could understand nothing of it.

“No, I don’t. That’s not a warship, of course; yet—”

“Oh, the Jap ships can go armed in these waters if they want. Listen, now! Boris has told ’em the story, or some kind of story; they’re out now to get what’s left of the loot, and to keep us from tellin’ any tales. And we’re helpless against ’em!”

Venable’s face hardened. “You don’t mean—they would murder us?”

“Just that.” Garrity was quite pale now. “To save his own neck, Boris must shut our mouths, d’ye see? And the Jap realized quick enough that he could be sinkin’ this ship with impunity; because why, if she shows up in any port like she is now, there’ll be a big inquiry with courts and what not. But if she doesn’t show up, she’s gone with all hands—and Mr. Jason’s neck is saved likewise!”

“But they’d not murder everyone aboard here—”

“Oh, ye think so!” Garrity’s voice held supreme scorn. “Wi’ thousands and thousands o’ dollars at stake? Ho!”

“What can we do, then?”

“Nothin’—nothin’ at all, divil take it! The Japs will want to loot this ship, too. Fine pickin’s for the likes of them, it is. Pirates, they are—and I’d prob’ly be the same in their boots!” he added morosely, staring at the other ship.

TO Venable it seemed very unreal and impossible, here under the blazing sun light that flooded all things with afternoon radiance. The sea was still heavy, so heavy that the two ships would doubtless be unable to come alongside; the water heaved in great masses of flinty blue-gray, reaching up to the horizon-rim like a vast bowl of tumbling billows, amid which the crippled Kum Chao rolled, a wounded leviathan. Toward her crept the schooner, menacingly silent.

Venable was vaguely consciouus that from below came the sounds of tumult—the Chinese crew was excited, shouting shrilly, but dominated by the bellow of Stormalong at the foot of the ladder.

“Mebbeso you fight?” suggested Li John, fingering the knife at his belt. “My thinkum China boys velly glad catchee number one fight, sah!”

The other helmsman nodded quick as sent. But Venable shook his head, and with a gesture dismissed them both. Now that he was forced to admit the incredible truth, he saw the sheer futility of resistance; such a course would be madness. The schooner had crippled the Kum Chao with a single shot. She could sink her as easily, if she so wished.

The two yellow men departed, looking rather disappointed. Mrs. Ivanoff made her appearance, her gray eyes blazing furiously. It was clear that those below fully appreciated the situation; she asked no questions, but turned to Garrity, her voice calm.

“Marie is asking for you. She is frightened.”

Garrity bobbed his red head and departed, wordless. Venable gave Mrs. Ivanoff a curious glance.

“Frightened, you say? I did not think it possible—that type of woman.”

“Things have happened to her lately,” responded Mrs. Ivanoff. Her cool gray eyes, despite the anger storming in their depths, gave him an odd sense of peace and tranquillity; he felt better poised, more sure of himself, to know that she was beside him.

“She has undergone a revolution within herself, I think,” continued Mrs. Ivanoff. “At any rate, she is much changed. And a woman has limits, you know; all of us have! We can endure just so much; then a seeming trifle will work a great change, somehow. I do not understand it myself.”

She looked at the schooner, and altered the subject abruptly.

“Well! I see Boris is back again. He will be merciless this time; he has us help less. He came back for the remainder of the jewels, of course—and to make sure that we should not escape to tell tales. That one shot made his intentions very clear.”

“We can do nothing,” said Venable.

“Exactly, at present. You have a revolver? Good. One never knows what the end will be, of course.”

“Gad, but you take it coolly!”

She looked at him, laughter dimpling in her face.

“Why not? Do you think I am beaten? Not until the end!”

“What can you do, then?’

She shrugged her shoulders. At this moment the engine-room tube whistled. Venable went to it, and heard the voice of Stormalong.

“All quiet below, sir. Three Chinks killed down here; engines temporarily crippled and a hole in her sta’board bow. She’s making water. Shall I order the hand pumps rigged?”

“If you please,” said Venable calmly.

HE rejoined Mrs. Ivanoff outside. The schooner was now close aboard and was losing way. The boat was overside, and men were in her; Deardorf and Mr. Jason were in the stern. At the schooner’s rail stood Boris Kryalpin, a neat bandage about his head giving him an air of rakish deviltry which quite suited him. He was just lifting a speaking trumpet.

“Hello, Mr. Venable! Good afternoon, madam,” his voice carried mockingly to them. “We are coming aboard. Lower your ladder. If you attempt any resistance you will be sunk.”

Venable made a gesture of assent. Boris, followed by the Japanese skipper and mate, descended into the waiting boat.

“We might as well go down,” said Venable. “Perhaps they will not bother you and Marie.”

“Bother!” repeated Mrs. Ivanoff, a wondering scorn in her tone. “Don’t you realize that they are devils and not men? Come.”

At the rail, where Li John had lowered the ladder, they gathered and watched the boat come creeping over the great swells—watched her, that is, when they could see her, for the Kum Chao rolled deep and wide, and only when the boat pointed over a crest and slid down toward them could they glimpse her. Each crest brought her nearer, closer.

The crew kept themselves elsewhere, no doubt in utter fright. Beside Mrs. Ivanoff stood Marie, with Garrity behind her; if she had been frightened, no fear sat now in her handsome face, and the wind blew tendrils of her bronze hair about her eyes unheeded. Abe Gerin stood and watched, saying nothing. His too-beautiful face was drawn into thin lines, perhaps from pain of his hurt leg; or perhaps because he knew well what mercy he would get from Boris Kryalpin and the wounded Deardorf. Once and again his eyes turned to Marie, and then they softened wondrously—although Marie was looking at the oncoming boat and not at him. Stormalong was at work below, while the two quartermasters either were aiding him or were hidden with the other yellow men.

As the crawling boat came close, Venable could see those aboard her plainly. Mr. Jason looked venomous, like some beaten-off vulture returning to its prey. Deardorf, bearded and stiff with his wound, was dirty and evil-eyed as ever. Boris Kryalpin was laughing at some jest with the Japanese captain, and he was very debonair and cheerful. The two yellow men who commanded the schooner were not prepossessing in looks; both were small, crafty-eyed, viperish fellows, and from the looks of their men Venable expected no good. Of these were six, at the boat’s oars. As many more were loafing at the fore-rail of the schooner.

The boat rounded in under the ladder at last, out of sight of those above. The oars were run in; two men with boathooks took hold and fended; and the boarders came up the ladder. Four of the yellow seamen followed, the others remaining to hold off the boat from smashing against the ship’s side.

FIRST over the rail was Boris Kryalpin, with a smile and a mocking bow; but behind the smile his mouth and eyes were cruel. The others followed him.

“Greetings, ladies and gentlemen!” he exclaimed. “You did us a better turn than you knew, when you sent us adrift into the arms of our friends! Allow me to introduce Captain Moto.”

The yellow skipper took off his cap and ducked his head, grinning wolfishly. Venable observed that Mr. Jason was watching Marie with some intentness, his scrawny features alight as though transfused by inward fires. No weapons were in sight, but coat pockets bulged very suggestively.

“Are you never satisfied?” responded Mrs. Ivanoff; whereat Boris looked slightly puzzled. “Could you not be content to leave us in peace?”

“Ah, no, gracious lady!” Kryalpin laughed gayly. “The seven devils having been driven forth, we have gathered seven other devils worse than ourselves—and have returned. My dear Marie, may I ask you to produce the glittering baubles which you so kindly rescued from the wreck of Russia for our benefit?”

Abe Gerin, who was watching the enemy with a close scrutiny, suddenly started and would have spoken; but Marie forestalled him.

“Liar and hypocrite!” flashed Marie, a fury of passion stirring in her rich voice, as she thought that she pierced Kryalpin’s craft. “I suppose you have not told your friends that the stuff is already in your possession, eh? Trying to cheat them as you cheated us!”

Surprise crossed the swarthily handsome features of Boris, to be followed by swift and cold anger.

“Come!” he snapped. “No evasions, my girl, or I’ll use the whip! You know well—”

“Evasions! ” she repeated shrilly. “When you had the stuff in the boat all this while? Do you take us for fools, not to know that you had it?”

Misconceived although her position was, Marie almost succeeded in her attempt to sow dissension. Captain Moto regarded Boris with narrow-eyed suspicion; Jason and Deardorf turned upon him likewise. Boris himself was flatly at a loss to understand Marie’s words.

Abe Gerin attempted to keep the situation under control. “Don’t look so bewildered, Kryalpin,” he jeered. “We know that you had the stuff in a burlap package—we discovered too late that you had taken it aboard the boat with you. So—”

With one accord the three castaways seemed to remember that burlap package. Deardorf was first at the rail, but with an oath Mr. Jason thrust him staggering away, and went down the ladder. Boris Kryalpin, leaning over, spoke softly.

“Bring it up, Mr. Jason—bring it up! Just as it is.”

Mr. Jason obeyed.

SO, then, the burlap package had never been touched! Venable glanced at the others, and in their faces found his own discomfiture reflected.

“Divil take it!” muttered Garrity in glum wrath. “If they’d only found the stuff, we’d ha’ been well rid of ’em after all, the dirty hounds! But now we’re in for it.”

Taking the burlap roll from Mr. Jason, Boris swiftly unwrapped it. He disclosed an inner wrapping of soft cloth, which when opened showed a mass of cotton studded with colored flames that glimmered and danced in the sunlight. A sharp breath came from Mr. Jason at the sight—but Boris calmly rolled up the treasure again and handed it to Captain Moto.

“You will take charge of this? Good. Deardorf, kindly keep your eye on Captain Moto, lest he be tempted to return suddenly to his schooner. And now—”

Kryalpin turned to Mrs. Ivanoff, a genuine amusement struggling with the cold cruelty of his eyes.

“So you actually sent us adrift with the treasure! I congratulate you, Your Highness, upon your generosity; it is really quite unexampled! And now, to complete the tally, let your noble spirit prompt you to hand over what remains. I presume that you have recovered it from the keeping of Marie? Naturally. Your collection of relics will not be of much interest to us, I admit, but you have some very good stones in the lot.”

At this point Captain Moto touched the arm of Boris and uttered a low word. Boris nodded in response, and the yellow skipper spoke rapidly to his mate. The latter and two of the men vanished into the boat alongside, and were presently seen rowing over toward the schooner again.

“I might say,” explained Boris coldly, “that my good friend Captain Moto wishes to take away a few mementoes of this charming steamer, and is sending for a few more of his men in order to make the work move lively. If you do not object—”

“What is your intention with regard to us?” demanded Mrs. Ivanoff suddenly.

Boris regarded her with a slow smile. “Ah—yourself particularly, or everyone? That is hard to say, Your Highness; for I have no intentions whatever! When I have taken what I want, the rest of you may go.” His insolent gaze swept from Venable to Garrity and Abe Gerin, then lighted on Marie. “As for you, Marie, I think that Mr. Jason will become answerable for your safety. You will have company, for Captain Moto may take Mrs. Ivanoff aboard in case I decide that she is a little too old for my taste—even though a princess.”

HIS words bit. Before anyone could answer him, however, Boris turned.

“Come along, Mr. Jason; you and I will get Mrs. Ivanoff’s valuables. Don’t bother to accompany us, Your Highness! Captain Moto, kindly send your two men with us, in case we decide to bring the whole trunk along; you may entertain the ladies while we are gone.”

He swung away, followed by Jason. The two Japanese seamen moved after them, at a nod from their skipper. At the after-deck, Boris halted to fling a word over his shoulder.

“Disarm them, Captain! It may not be necessary, but we must take no chances.”

Captain Moto smiled at the group facing him, while Deardorf drew a revolver.

“Please, your weapons!” said the yellow man, looking at Venable. The latter produced his automatic and threw it on the deck. Words were useless. Garrity followed suit.

“Please!” repeated the smiling skipper, looking at Abe Gerin. With a curse, the latter obeyed the behest.

Like Venable, the others were silent, repressing the surge of futile anger that was upon them all. The boat had reached the schooner now, and into her were dropping others of the yellow crew. The two ships had drawn closer together.

Deardorf and Captain Moto were alone with their captives, but the menace of that gun on the schooner’s fore-deck was more potent than many guards. Following the sneering implication of Kryalpin’s words, Mrs. Ivanoff and Marie had drawn together, and the arm of the older woman was about the shoulders of Marie as though in comforting protection.

The two yellow seamen again made their appearance, bearing between them Mrs. Ivanoff’s trunk, containing the relics and jewels which she had smuggled out of Russia. Behind them followed Boris Kryalpin and Mr. Jason, the latter grinning broadly. And at this instant came a wild clattering from the bowels of the ship—a heaving, throbbing clangor that set the whole hull to vibrating and shuddering, and all but drowned from hearing a faintly heard bellow of delight in the hoarse tones of Stormalong. The Kum Chao stirred, and began to move slowly through the water.

CHAPTER XIV

Mrs. Ivanoff Commands

“AINT that Stormalong a divil, now!” cried Garrity, awed. “Smashed up, them engines were, but Stormalong’s down there wi’ the Chinks, and he’s got ’em wheezing—”

Mrs. Ivanoff looked at him. Garrity met her eyes, and his own widened slightly, as though in those sea-gray orbs he read some covert message. He scratched his red head and then started off suddenly.

“I’ll be havin’ a look at them engines meself,” he said, and no one stopped him. But Boris Kryalpin gazed after him with a thin smile.

Captain Moto sputtered a word, and Kryalpin turned.

“What difference does it make?” he said with a shrug, and jerked his hand toward the sea. “She’s barely moving—barely got steerageway! Mr. Jason, you’d better close the hatch over the engine-room.”

Jason nodded and took a step away. Abe Gerin flung out at Kryalpin, a passionate heartbreak in his eyes.

“You devil! You’re shutting those men down there—”

Kryalpin reached out, unexpectedly, suddenly, with the swiftness of light. His hands clutched Gerin about the throat and lifted the lesser man. He shook Gerin bodily—and then the hand of Venable clamped down on his wrist.

“Stop that,” said Venable. His grip twisted into the flesh of Boris, whose hands loosened and relaxed. Abe Gerin, his crutch fallen, reeled to the rail and leaned there, his fingers searching at his throat as he coughed.

The Kum Chao had slowly come about; she was heading into the seas now, heading toward the schooner and the men-filled boat that was pulling toward her. No one noticed this, however. Jason had disappeared in the direction of the hatchway.

Boris Kryalpin and Venable looked into each other’s eyes. Venable was grim, silent, motionless; in his deeply lined face, in the beetling, haggard features, there was purpose indomitable. Yet his eyes were strangely serene and cool, deep-piercing—the eyes of one who has looked upon many things and learned much. Meeting those eyes, the bold impudence died out of the Russian’s face. Boris seemed to shiver a little, as though he read a strange fate in those eyes.

Then, mastering himself, he stepped back and sneered at Venable.

“You wish to get shot, my friend? Have a care! Now, step up to the bridge; we wish to look over things there, with your presence. Come, Captain Moto! Ah, here’s Mr. Jason returning—kindly assist Deardorf in taking care of these people, Mr. Jason; better keep them up in the bows, until Captain Moto’s men are all aboard. All ready, Mr. Venable.”

MR. JASON passed them, returning; he was gazing at Marie, and in his steady regard was a hungry anticipation. But Mrs. Ivanoff looked at Venable, and he read a smile in her eyes; utterly at a loss to understand the meaning of her smile, unable to do more than obey, he turned to the bridge-ladder, with Moto and Boris Kryalpin following him.

As he mounted to the bridge, Venable saw Mrs. Ivanoff and Marie walking together into the bows; Abe Gerin dragged himself behind, with recovered crutch, while Mr. Jason and Deardorf slowly followed. The latter, bearded and dirty, was chuckling some evil jest to the mate.

Venable stepped to the bridge and paused before the wheelhouse, glancing inside. As he came, he thought he had seen a movement here, as of some person whisking away from sight; but the place was empty. A loop had been slipped over one of the wheel spokes, so that the Kum Chao, under bare steerageway, was still heading toward the schooner. The latter’s boat, filled with little yellow men, was now close aboard.

The two ships were now much nearer to each other than at first, for the Kum Chao had not ceased her gradual progress toward the schooner. From down below, the reeling clangor of the racked engines filled the whole ship with strident groanings and clackings. She was reeling much less to the waves, and not without alarm did Venable’s startled senses take in the fact that she seemed lower than usual in the water. So, then—she was slowly sinking! Perhaps Stormalong was trying to work the steam-pumps, he thought, although he could not hear them going.

Yet in this thought he was very wrong.

Wondering why Mrs. Ivanoff had smiled in her eyes when she looked at him, Venable gazed down at the foredeck in a moody silence. Boris and Captain Moto had gone into the wheelhouse. The boat from the schooner was almost under the steamer’s ladder now; the schooner herself had lost nearly all way and was rolling idly up the seas and down again, as though waiting for the Kum Chao to crawl up be side her. A single man showed on her stern-deck, now toward the steamer. Obviously, every available man had been brought over to strip the prey.

Captain Moto came out beside Venable and shouted something in his own tongue. Venable looked down, at answering voices, and saw the two yellow seamen at the foot of the ladder. They exchanged a word with Captain Moto, and then began to ascend.

Only a few moments, an absurdly few moments, had passed since the engines had started and Garrity had gone below, to be shut down with Stormalong by Mr. Jason. Yet to Venable’s mind had intervened long ages of agony. And now, watching the two seamen coming up the ladder, he suddenly heard the laugh of Mr. Jason from the fore-deck.

VENABLE turned to that scene in the bows. He saw Jason speaking to Marie, saw the mate leer at her and reach out for her, saw Mrs. Ivanoff quietly come between them. An oath burst from Jason as he thrust her to one side, then caught Marie’s arm. And as he did this, Mrs. Ivanoff flashed out a small revolver and shot him through the body.

To Venable it seemed unreal, as though he were gazing at some stage rehearsal. Mr. Jason fell to the deck and rolled limply over. Deardorf, a wild and fearful cry breaking from him, threw up his automatic as if to shoot Mrs. Ivanoff—then Abe Gerin had clutched him about the shoulders, throwing him aside. Crippled poet and wounded Bolshevik, they twisted on the deck together.

Some instinctive warning, some half-caught panting of breath, caused Venable to turn around. He perceived Captain Moto coming at him from one side, Boris Kryalpin from the other—the yellow man empty-handed, the Russian with an automatic pistol. Even so, it came to Venable that Captain Moto was the more to be feared.

That instant was terrible and interminable. As it dragged its course, Venable realized that he had been fetched here to be murdered; he realized that all resistance was useless—that Mrs. Ivanoff had shot the mate to save Marie, yet it would be in vain. Even now, the schooner’s boat was alongside and her men were coming up the deck!

With this, befell action and a blurring of all things except what happened here at his side.

Boris was throwing up his pistol at Venable, a thin smile on his lips, when a silent figure came around the corner of the wheelhouse behind him—the quartermaster Li John, knife in hand! A warning cry from Captain Moto brought the Russian around in time to grapple with Li John.

Venable found the yellow skipper upon him, empty-handed but terrible. For, diving at Venable, Captain Moto drove his fingers into the white man’s throat and all but paralyzed him with a cunning strangling of the muscles.

Venable staggered back, clutching at those yellow hands. He was a little dazed by the swiftness of things, a little confused by all of it, unable to comprehend the situation in a clear light. The appearance of Li John had been bewildering.

PAIN wakened Venable, however; pain roused him and stabbed his brain into action, and ceased the aimless, panicky fumbling of his hands. He threw out all his strength into those hands. Coolness came upon him, and a deadly wrath that had no mercy. So quickly had events chanced that the two yellow seamen were still upon the ladder, ascending to the bridge. When they came, death would come also.

Thus thinking, Venable seized Captain Moto and tried to pluck him away, as one tries to snatch away some loathsome reptile that has suddenly seized and twined in a venomous embrace. Twice he strove in vain, while the saffron claws sank into his throat and had him gasping; then he gathered himself and plucked again. At this plucking, Captain Moto screamed out suddenly; his hands tore loose under the sheer strength that wrenched at him; Venable lifted him and hurled him into the air, so that the scream trailed off into space—hurled him clear of the bridge and over side, where he vanished.

Staggering from that mighty effort, and reacting to the pain that gripped his throat, Venable collapsed against the rail and clung there weakly. Down upon the foredeck still stood the two women together, Mrs. Ivanoff gazing up, revolver in hand. Abe Gerin was still rolling with Deardorf; but now Deardorf’s automatic cracked, with a queerly muffled report, then the two men lay quiet. As Venable still stared, he saw Deardorf raise himself to one elbow and lift his automatic toward Mrs. Ivanoff. Marie screamed, and Mrs. Ivanoff turned.

That was all Venable saw for the moment. One of the two approaching seamen had leaped to the aid of Boris Kryalpin, while the other fired point-blank at Venable; the bullet seared past his head, the explosion fanned him with a breath of fire. He flung himself sideways at the man, throwing up the weapon as he closed. The two, grappling, reeled into the wheelhouse, and the yellow seaman’s head smashed through the weather light. There was a rush of blood as the slithered glass sliced face and throat, and the man relaxed limply. Venable was dimly aware that his own arms had been badly gashed, sending a drip of crimson from his fingertips.

He remembered the quartermaster, and dropped into the tangle of bodies—just in time, too, for Li John had been hit over the head and lay senseless. Venable stamped with his foot on the wrist of Boris, as an automatic jerked up at him; the weapon fell and exploded, the cruel bullet raking upward through the body of the second seaman. Disarmed, Boris Kryalpin rolled over and gained his feet, snarled frenzied curses, caught Venable about the waist, tried to break the latter through the bridge rail where the canvas storm-apron shut them off from the world.

THE two men hung there, striking madly. As they hung, Venable saw over the shoulder of Boris—caught a glimpse of the deck below.

The mate of the schooner, with his men, had gained the deck of the Kum Chao. Three of the yellow seamen had advanced forward, the others were out of sight. But those three on the fore-deck had turned, were facing aft; Venable saw their revolvers cracking and heard the shots. Something was happening down there—what? At whom were they firing?

A shrill screaming filled the air, a shrill, strident rush of voices. Into Venable’s range of vision came half-naked yellow bodies; they were the Chinese of the crew, and the huge Stormalong was leading them, bellowing as he came. The three Japanese were engulfed, and knives streamed red down there. Farther, in the bows, stood Marie and Mrs. Ivanoff, the latter holding her smoking revolver; but Deardorf now lay with his arms flung out, dead.

Venable did not stop to wonder how Stormalong and Garrity had come from below—the Chinese had done that, of course. He had no chance to wonder about anything, for Kryalpin was at his throat, and the Russian was a tiger unleashed. The two reeled away from the rail, Boris trying to catch Venable off balance and thrust him down the ladder, but Venable bore forward again, back-heeled his opponent, and the grappled men shot headfirst into the wheelhouse. Boris landed on top. They lay there almost motionless. Venable had been partially stunned by the fall, and was unable to prevent the Russian getting a grip on his throat. His own hands, reddened with hot blood, drew Boris down close to him yet could not quell the fierce grip that strangled the life in his heart.

Almost motionless they lay, but every muscle in both bodies was working and tensed. Face to face—above him, Venable saw the snarling, tigerish features of the Russian, alight with the exulting confidence of triumph.

From somewhere below them, somewhere deep in the bowels of the ship, came a quick roar, a muffled, vibrant explosion that shook the entire vessel, followed at once by a lurching stagger as the Kum Chao dipped her nose into the seas and came up heavily. A bulkhead had blown out. The shell, passing through the engine-room, had exploded forward, and she was well down by the head now. With each sea, her stern lifted and the propeller raced madly, sending shuddering vibrations through the ship.

Venable realized that the ship was going down, realized that there was a mad chaos of fighting on the main-deck, and the reddened darkness before his eyes cleared away. The iron band about his throat clamped the tighter. Fire was in his lungs. His hands loosened from about the Russian, and groped out blindly and desperately for a weapon.

HIS left hand clenched upon a slim, heavy object—the ebony chart-ruler with which he had been laying out the course that morning. To strike with this thing would be futile; but Venable did not attempt to strike. He brought it up behind the neck of Boris Kryalpin, and his right hand closed upon the other end. His two hands slid up the black stem of wood and closed there, touching the neck of Boris, pressing the brass edge of the ebony into the Russian’s spine.

He felt the iron grasp dig deeper into his throat; the face of Boris came down closer to his own—their cheeks touched. Venable pressed home his fearful weapon, drew down and back with all his strength, threw up his face convulsively and forced the head of Boris back.

Suddenly fear came into Kryalpin—fear of the thing at the back of his neck, bending his spine! He loosened his death-grip on the throat of Venable and tried to tear himself clear. He caught at the wheel and dragged himself up; but Venable came with him.

Then the Russian tried to reach his feet, and this effort cost him life. For, in the effort, he lost his footing, lost his leverage—and Venable bent his head backward upon his body. The ruler fell to the deck and clattered. Boris, his neck broken, fell over it.

THE Kum Chao, with Garrity handling the emergency wheel in the stern, crowded down upon the Japanese schooner. The clangor of the engines ceased, leaving a sudden deathly hush upon the ship; the water had reached the fires, and presently the boilers would go. But still the steamer forged slowly ahead, and came down upon the schooner like a fate-driven thing. The one man aboard the schooner was working at the gun forward—running from gun to helm, unable to turn the schooner so that the gun could bear upon the sinking steamer. But when the two ships came rail to rail, and the lowered bows of the Kum Chao ground into the quarter of the schooner and slowly crept forward along her rail, both ships staggering and crunching in the seas—then the one man on the schooner began to fire.

He was too late. Other men, other yellow men, yellower than he, were flooding upon him with knives.

CHAPTER XV

Garrity Asks a Favor

THE schooner was heading into the south, her decks bathed scarlet in the glow of sunset. Behind her, débris littered the heaving seas—débris of the old Kum Chao.

In the stern of the schooner, gazing back upon that scene of wreckage and desolation, stood Venable, much bandaged about the arms and throat. There under the water had vanished the passions of men, assailed by the clean sea; there had gone down Jason and Abe Gerin and the others, good and bad intermingled. Venable breathed a prayer as he stood, his rugged face lined with sadness. That memory of Boris Kryalpin was to him like an evil dream. The prayer that he uttered was for himself.

A hand touched his arm, and he turned to meet the eyes of Mrs. Ivanoff.

Wordless, they stood—a mute communion that could find no paltry words wherein to express itself. Grave and starry-eyed, Mrs. Ivanoff lowered her gaze to Venable’s bandaged arms, and a slow tide of color came into her face.

“I hope—your injuries are not paining you—” she hesitated, lifting her eyes again.

“I’d forgotten them.” Venable smiled a little, and brought an answering hint of radiance to her features. “I did not dream, all the while, that you had any plan—that there was any salvation for us! It was so desperate, so hopeless—”

“That was why I had to do something,” she said simply. “Stormalong thought the engines could be made to do a little work—and they paid no attention to Li John, up on the bridge, until we were heading for the schooner. Well, no matter, it is all done with.”

GARRITY stood behind them, clearing his throat. They turned to meet his grin, and he ruffled up his red mop of hair in some confusion.

“Beg pardon,” he said, “but I’ve a bit favor to ask of ye, Parson! Ye mind, now, that when we reach Guam or wherever we’re goin’, there’s goin’ to be hard words said and no end of investigatin’ and all the likes o’ that. Well, we’ll come out clear enough—that is, all of us except may be Marie.”

“We’ll take care of her,” said Mrs. Ivanoff. But Garrity shook his head.

“If it’s all the same to ye, ma’am, I’d rather be doin’ that meself. I’ve had a talk with Marie, now, and—and—well, Parson, we thought that ye might stretch a point or two and sort o’ make up for all the time we’ve spent, the two of us.”

“What on earth are you driving at?” demanded Venable, astonished. But Mrs. Ivanoff caught his arm, laughter dimpling in her face.

“Don’t you see? Don’t be blind—I’ll go and help Marie get ready!”

“Wait a minute!” cried Garrity hastily, but she merely laughed at him and departed. The brick-red engineer turned to Venable with a gesture of helplessness.

“Aint that like a woman, now? I wasn’t meanin’ to be hasty in the matter, but she up an’ flies off the handle.”

“Look here!” exclaimed Venable. “What do you mean, old man? Not that you and Marie want to be—”

“Sure! Ye see, Parson, it was a consul married us before, and a long time ago; and now that you’re here and with us, why, if we were married right when we hit Guam, then Marie bein’ an American citizen that way—”

“Oh! Is that the only reason you have for marrying?” There was a twinkle in Venable’s eye. “Merely for the sake of expediency?”

“No!” blurted Garrity, flushing anew. “For the sake o’ bein’ married! And listen to me now, Parson; there’s another favor I want to be askin’ of ye.”

“Speak it out,” said Venable, laughing.

“Well, when you and Mrs. Ivanoff make up your minds,—you know!—Marie and me want to be in on the— Wait till I get through, will ye now? It’s like this: Marie has one o’ them Roosian jools,—the Shrivan diamond, she calls it, or some such name,—and she wants to be rid of the whole thing, in a way. The other stuff went down with Captain Moto, ye mind.

“Well, Marie says that she’s wanting to give this here diamond ring to Mrs. Ivanoff to go in with what the lady’s got in that trunk of hers up for’ard. So, nobody bein’ blind to the lay o’ the land, Parson, if you’ll marry us here and now, then let us help you and Mrs. Ivanoff get spliced at Guam—”

“For heaven’s sake, shut your mouth!” exclaimed Venable. “Mrs. Ivanoff is coming with Marie.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Garrity, and winked. “D’ye mind, Marie is goin’ to break some o’ the news to Mrs. Ivanoff, to help ye out, as it were. Now don’t be too sudden in the matter, Parson; but when ye do pop the question—”

Venable took a step forward, and Garrity, turning, fled hastily. He joined Marie, and they went forward together. But Venable, conscious only of the great impulse drumming in his brain, gazed across the deck at Mrs. Ivanoff.

She came to meet him, smiling.

The End

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