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 He half turned and saw a small negro boy wearing the Stanwicke livery. For an instant the round black face grinned up at him, white teeth gleaming. Then the thick lips framed the word "Come," and the boy passed on ahead of him, walking rapidly.

A few townspeople were abroad, citizens with their wives and children on the way to church. So quickly had the black boy delivered his message that Lachlan was sure the incident had passed unnoticed. He quickened his pace slightly, nodding or bowing now and then to someone that he knew, following his diminutive guide at a distance of about a hundred paces; and his heart beat faster when presently he made sure that the boy was leading him by a somewhat roundabout way towards the Stanwicke house.

It was not the house itself, however, that they finally approached, but the spacious wooded garden, the black boy leading the way at a brisk pace along the narrow lane fronting the garden wall.

Lachlan's thoughts sped back to the moment two evenings before when he had stopped in that lane and listened to a woman singing; but he had little leisure now for meditation. The black boy slackened his pace, halted, motioned to Lachlan to hurry. There was none to see them. The lane was little used and was now empty.

"Ober de wall, master," said the boy. "Me fust."

Lachlan cupped his hands and the little negro mounted and scrambled upward. For a moment he sat on the top of the wall, peering this way and that;

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 then, evidently satisfied, he nodded to Lachlan and immediately dropped out of sight within the garden.

Lachlan waited, listening intently. There flickered in his mind for an instant a doubt as to where this adventure would lead. Who had sent the black boy, and why? Who was waiting there in the shrubbery of the walled garden? It was perhaps a subtle forewarning of peril. Yet he crouched, sprang upward with outstretched hands, and in a moment was perched on the wall's summit.

He saw her instantly. She was seated en a cane bench in a little recess in the shrubbery, a book in her lap. She wore white with a green shawl about her shoulders. Lachlan knew now what he had only vaguely guessed at their first meeting in the dusk of evening—that her hair was of a most wonderful red gold in which the entangled sunlight worked miracles. He knew now also that her eyes were not gray but gray-green with yellow-tawny lights and very large, and that, in spite of those eyes and that hair, she was not fair-skinned but richly dark.

At that first meeting in the dusk he had been thrilled by her voice, by the grace of her slender form, by the poise of her head. But he had not really seen the brilliant beauty of her, beauty that could shine with its full radiance only when there was light to glorify her hair and reveal the sparkling depths of her eyes. Now, for the first time, he saw her.

It was not strange, perhaps, that he was unaware of the signal that her eyes flashed to him—that he sat

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 motionless, absorbed, until he was roused by a sudden imperious movement of her head which more plainly than words bade him descend.

He did so, with something less than his usual agility, since as he leaped downward a vine caught his foot and nearly threw him. He stumbled, then turned to find that she had risen and was moving towards him.

"I will read your thoughts, sir," she said in low, clear tones, full of a mock humility. "You are thinking what a monstrous unmaidenly thing it is that I have done in bringing you here over a back wall to a meeting with me in this secret place."

Lachlan smiled.

"It happened," he replied, "that when the black boy plucked my sleeve, I had been searching my brain to find a way in which I might come to you, and I had already decided to try the garden wall. It had served me once and might serve again."

She flushed. Perhaps the answer displeased her. It seemed to Lachlan that her tone was colder as she bade him take seat beside her.

"I brought you here," she said, "to offer my apologies, to make amends for my ungracious conduct on that occasion when you so gallantly came to my assistance, thinking me in distress. Believe me, sir, my scant courtesy then has troubled me ever since. I could not rest until I had spoken these words to you in person, and I knew no other way to accomplish it save this."

"It was nothing, Mam'selle," Lachlan said quickly.

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 "I interfered in what did not concern me and you sent me about my business. It is I that owe you thanks, since your intercession saved me, an unarmed man, from Captain Falcon's sword."

He hesitated, then continued, smiling: "It may interest you to know that since then I have squared my account with that gentleman."

She caught her breath.

"You mean?" she asked.

"It is a long story," said Lachlan, "and there is something else that I would tell you first, something of much importance to you. I think you are not the kind to swoon with excess of joy, so I come to the point quickly. Gilbert Barradell is alive, and within the week Almayne and I will go to him."

She rose with a stifled cry, her hand at her forehead, her bosom heaving. Cheeks aflame, eyes big with amazement, she stood before him, swaying slightly. She opened her lips to speak, but no words came; and suddenly her eyes, wider than ever now and wildly staring, were full of terror.

Those eyes looked past Lachlan and over his head where he sat on the bench leaning forward a little and looking eagerly up into her face. Suddenly his own eyes narrowed. Perhaps it was wholly the fear in her face that warned him; perhaps his keen ears had caught some slight sound behind him.

He gained his feet, but only for an instant. There was a crash, the world went black, he was falling, falling, falling an interminable distance.

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ACHLAN McDONALD sat in Captain Lance Falcon's cabin on the brig Good Fortune. Across the table sat Falcon, and between them stood the same silver wine pitcher that upon another occasion had served Lachlan as an effective weapon at close range. It was half full of red wine now, but Falcon, smiling grimly, picked it up and held it in his hand, testing its weight.

"Odds Fish!" he exclaimed, "the marvel is you did not kill me. 'Twas my hat saved my life. And your own head? How does it feel?"

"There was some pain," answered Lachlan soberly, "but it has passed. It must have been some hours ago that I was struck down."

Falcon poured wine for himself and pushed the pitcher towards Lachlan.

"It was on Sunday morning," he said, "and this is Monday forenoon. Meanwhile, you have enjoyed a long sleep here on my brig, and I rejoice to see that you have awakened refreshed and quite yourself again. When I bade my men bring you here to my cabin from your sleeping quarters in the hold, I did not know whether they would bring a live man or a dead one. On the whole, I hoped for the former, so I felicitate myself as well as my guest."

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 He sipped his wine; then, pushing back his chair, swung his booted legs up on the table. He was in high good humour evidently.

"You must admit," he said pleasantly, "that my little plan was skilfully conceived and that I worked fairly fast."

He paused as though expecting a reply, but Lachlan held his tongue. There was little for him to say. He knew only that he had awakened in the dim hold of a ship at sea; that presently two seamen had brought him food, which had not only assuaged his savage appetite but had also in large measure stilled the throbbing of his head; that, hours later, two other men had conducted him from the hold to the deck whence he could see far away to the right a long low line of forest marking the coast; that he had been led without delay to the ship's cabin beside the door of which stood Captain Lance Falcon.

He knew then what he already suspected—that he was a prisoner on Falcon's brig; and he was not deceived in the slightest by the elaborate courtesy with which Falcon had ushered him into the cabin to a seat at the same table where he had sat once before. His head still ached slightly, but his mind was very active, very clear. He knew as he took his seat that the man opposite him meant to kill him.

"It was a pretty plan," Falcon continued, "yet I owed something to luck. Perhaps you have not yet quite grasped all that has happened to you?"

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 He paused, his eyebrows lifted, and, at Lachlan's nod, proceeded briskly:

"Of course, it was necessary for me to lay hold of you at once. It was a clever game that you played as Don Ruy Ortiz and you played it well; aye, and fought well, too, they tell me, after you had put me to sleep. In truth, it grieves me to interfere with the designs of so promising a young man. But you learned too much here in this cabin that night, and, although you could hardly prove your tale, I thought it best to get my hands on you before you could go to the Governor with your story of Captain Lance Falcon as an agent of the Spaniards. In the nick of time, Mistress Jolie Stanwicke's black boy, who is in my pay, brought me word that at a certain hour yeu would be in the Stanwicke garden. This was a stgoke of fortune. It is a secluded secret place, safe from the public eye. I regretted the necessity of rough work in the lady's presence, but that could not be helped."

He refilled his glass and drained it; then, perceiving that Lachlan's glass stood empty, he leaned forward and filled it also.

"Drink, sir," he exclaimed with a gleam of strong white teeth under his thick, reddish-brown moustache. "Drink while you may! Since no travellers return from that mysterious country, we do not know whether or not they quaff wine there to the thrumming of the angels' harps."

He smiled more broadly. "Your pardon," he said,

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 "for the intrusion of an unpleasant thought. To continue my explanation of how you happened to become my guest—I have in my crew three Indians of the Mohawk nation who, long ago, while I lay in New York harbour, foreswore the forest for the sea, but who still retain their skill in woodcraft. They were the very men for my little enterprise, being expert in the laying of ambuscades and having the Indian faculty of moving soundlessly through shrubbery where an Englishman would make as much noise as a cow. Besides, I did not wish to appear in the affair myself, and I did not wish the lady to know that my men were concerned in it. She knows only that, while you sat talking with her in her garden, you were set upon by three Indians who leaped suddenly from the bushes. Being new to Charles Town, and thinking us even more barbarous than we really are, she had no difficulty in believing that your assailants were Indians of some tribe hostile to the Muskogee nation, of which I understand you are a chief."

Lachlan had followed the narrative with close attention. He frowned. The plan had been well made indeed. Yet there were details as to which he felt a certain curiosity.

"I congratulate you, Captain Falcon," he said steadily, "upon your strategy. You have been frank in telling me how the trap was set and sprung. One thing more. After your Mohawks had knocked me down, what happened then?"

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 "The lady rushed into the house, crying for help," Falcon answered at once, "but for some minutes she could find no one, and when she returned, you and my fellows had vanished. I had, of course, foreseen the difficulty of getting you through the streets to the river front in full daylight. Townspeople who saw my Mohawks pass perceived that they were carrying on their shoulders a small boat's mast and sail. None knew that under the folds of the sail a handsome youth was lying unconscious."

Lachlan nodded. The story was complete, and he detected no flaw in the execution of the plan, no mischance upon which he might hang some faint hope. Almayne might suspect what had become of him, but Falcon had covered his traeks well.

Falcon, eyeing him keenly, seemed to read his thoughts.

"You observe," he said gravely, "that the business of getting you away was managed exceedingly well. This was the difficult part and it is disposed of. The rest is both simple and safe. If I now decide to let my men drop you into the ocean, I can do so without fear of embarrassment later on."

Lachlan poured a glass of wine and swallowed it. His hand shook a little, sweat stood on his forehead. Falcon had lowered his legs from the table and sat upright, staring at him intently; and suddenly something in the man's eyes, some expression of hateful, triumphant expectation, stabbed Lachlan like a sword.

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 He had been near to failure. He had held himself in check until now; but now at last his tautened nerves threatened to give way. Falcon was waiting and watching for this, was expecting it. It was the look of expectancy in the man's eyes, the cool confident look of triumph and of faint scorn which stabbed and stung Lachlan like a knife or a whip.

A sudden hot anger blazed in him because this man had expected him to falter, anger which was all the hotter because he knew that for an instant he had faltered. He was afraid, but he knew now that fear would not master him, and with this knowledge a savage, reckless happiness surged in him.

He leaned across the table and struck Falcon across the mouth with the back of his hand.

"You call yourself a soldier," he said hoarsely. "If you have a soldier's pride, you will wipe out that stain before your seamen throw me to the sharks."

Falcon did not move. There was a fleck of blood upon his mouth, but the lips were smiling. At last he brought his open hand down upon the table with a crash.

"Well done, Lachlan McDonald!" he cried. "Well done, and well spoken, and a happy, happy thought—a flash of inspiration, no less! A thrust through the heart or lungs in fair fight is not murder, and it is a more gentlemanly way of killing a man than dropping him overboard."

He rose and, still smiling broadly, bowed; then

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 suddenly extended his long arm across the table and tapped Lachlan's chest with his forefinger.

"An hour from now, sir," he said, "I shall take great pleasure in placing my sword-point there."

Again his forefinger tapped Lachlan's chest above the heart.

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SPACE had been cleared on the brig's deck between the masts. Around it in a circle were gathered the vessel's crew—some fifty seamen, English for the most part, but many of them sunburned as dark as Spaniards. In the centre Captain Lance Falcon stood, his hand upon the hilt of his rapier, the point of which rested upon the deck in front of him. A little behind him stood Lachlan McDonald, pale but level-eyed and cool, in his right hand a rapier somewhat more slender than Lance Falcon's.

There was a silence broken only by the swish of the water, the creaking of rigging, the harsh cries of a few circling gulls. On every sun-tanned face in that crowding, eager circle was written a savage, joyous expectancy. Some were, some wore scarves of red or blue or yellow upon their heads, all were bare-armed and bare-chested, many had hoops of gold in their ears. There was scarcely one that had not a long knife in his belt, and some wore cutlasses and carried pistols thrust through their sashes. Even in harbour, where their commander enforced upon them certain rigid rules of deportment, the men of

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 Captain Falcon's crew were not pleasant-looking customers. When once they had gained the open sea they became in appearance and demeanour the seawolves that they were.

In that interval of silence Lachlan's black eyes swept round the circle of faces. He saw there what he might have seen in the faces of men gathered around a cockpit: no hint of mercy or compassion; only blood-lust flaming in hard, relentless eyes; the seething, passionate excitement of savage men about to witness that which their stern souls loved most to see. He expected nothing else, but his hand tightened upon his sword-hilt until the finger nails pressed deep into the flesh.

A mist swam before him. It cleared in an instant; but he no longer saw that fierce-eyed circle of ruthless, wolfish faces hungry for blood. He looked beyond them now and saw the blue sky, the bluer ocean, and the white gulls white as snow against the blue. The wind had dropped and the Atlantic was like a sleeping giant breathing gently. To the eastward a dense fog-bank lay upon the waters, a gray wall shutting off his view. He turned his head impatiently and looked to the west where he could still distinguish, low on the horizon, the purple line of woods that marked the coast.

Falcon raised his hand, although there was no need to command silence. He stood and coatless, his arms bare to the elbows, his white shirt open at the throat; a tall, broad-shouldered, immensely

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 powerful man, yet so perfectly proportioned that, for all its weight and bulk, his body had something of a tiger's grace. For a moment he held this pose; then in a deep booming voice he began to speak.

"Gentlemen of the brig Good Fortune," he said, "we have with us Mr. Lachlan McDonald of Charles Town. As some among you know, this is not his first visit to our hospitable vessel. It pleased him to favour us with his presence some nights ago, and upon that occasion he learned from me certain things which he is unfortunately not able to forget.

"I know that long-winded explanations are little to your taste. Suffice it, then, to say that, in consequence of this inconvenient knowledge that he has acquired, I am compelled to regard Mr. McDonald as an enemy and to deal with him as such. My poor imagination had hit upon no better scheme than the rude and simple plan of dropping him over the ship's side here in the open Atlantic. His genius and, I may add, his courage, have revealed a better way.

"We will fight, therefore, with the swords that we hold in our hands, within the circle of your sympathetic faces, no quarter asked or allowed. Fortunately the wind has lulled and the deck is fairly steady. I have given him the choice of the weapons on the brig, and he has found one that pleases his fancy. He has, it seems, some reputation with the rapier—a reputation not ill deserved, as he proved on this deck not many nights ago.

"It is altogether a happy solution of the problem,

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 gentlemen, and I beg you give him credit for it. No honest-minded man can apply the detestable word murder to the outcome of a fair fight, man to man and steel to steel; and this fight will be fair. I appoint you, Diccon Drews, and you, Richard Ludlow, to act as Mr. McDonald's seconds, and I give you authority to split with your cutlasses the head of any cowardly dog who hampers him in the work he has to do.

"Unfortunately, the entertainment with which we are about to provide you will be brief. In a few minutes we shall run into the fog-bank yonder, and before that happens Mr. McDonald and I must make an end. One word, and I am done. When he has run me through and you have consigned my carcass to the fishes, you will see to it that Mr. McDonald is conveyed with all honour to Charles Town to receive the felicitations of his friends."

A roar of exultant merriment greeted this conclusion. It told Lachlan more clearly than words that not one man in all that ship's company entertained the slightest doubt as to the outcome. They knew Falcon. They had followed him for months, some of them perhaps for years, and it was plain that they considered him a master-swordsman.

Lachlan's lips tightened. Except Mr. O'Sullivan, his teacher, he had not yet met his equal with the rapier; but the world was wide, his corner of it was small. Knowing his own powers, he was nevertheless aware that he faced an antagonist whose experience was far greater than his. Yet his hand was steady as

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 he placed himself on guard. Now, as always, the feel of the sword gave him courage.

Falcon had turned and was facing him, his weapon raised in salute. Lachlan, on guard, watched him closely—watched, waited—was struck with sudden wonder.

Gradually, yet swiftly, Falcon's countenance was undergoing an astonishing metamorphosis. The sneer was fading from his lips; the tan of his cheeks was deepening to a purplish-red; on his forehead the veins were swelling; into his eyes had crept a look of rapt, incredulous amazement.

He stood as though paralyzed, mouth open, eyes glaring; and those eyes looked past Lachlan, stared wildly, fixedly, as though they saw a ghost. In an instant Lachlan knew that this was no trick, no stratagem; yet, resisting the impulse to turn his head and glance behind him, he kept his own eyes fixed upon those of his adversary.

So for some seconds they stood, strangely rigid and immovable, like men suddenly frozen to stone. Then from some seaman in that part of the circle behind Falcon burst a hoarse cry:

"The Merry Amy! Black Lowther's ship!"

The spell was shattered. The circle of fierce faces, which a moment ago had awaited in tense, avid silence the first clash of the blades, was now a milling mass of men who surged this way and that, cursing, shouting, craning their necks, staring towards the east. Another moment, and the circle broke as most

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 of the seamen rushed to the rail. Lachlan, nearly swept off his feet in the tumult, turned.

Out from the heavy fog bank ahead and to the eastward had burst a great ship, a ship of towering masts and tapering spars, high-sided, her black hull pierced with gunports like a frigate. She flew no flag. Her wet, bellying sails shone like silver in the sun; her white decks were dotted with men running to and fro. She was sailing on a course that would bring her presently across the brig's bows; and even as Lachlan watched her, there came a puff of smoke from her forward deck, and a ball struck the sea ahead of the Good Fortune.

Close behind Lachlan a thunderous voice bellowed a command. Falcon stood there, his face aflame with excitement, his eyes blazing. Still grasping his sword, he shouted orders with his bull's voice, turning now forward and now aft; and almost in an instant Lachlan saw chaos magically transformed.

Hubbub ceased, confusion vanished. Men ran to the ropes; suddenly, with a mighty flapping of canvas, the brig swung round into the wind, careening so sharply that for a minute Lachlan, struggling to keep his footing, thought that she must capsize.

She righted herself, her sails filled, slowly she gathered headway, her stern now turned to the great ship that had come out of the fog. Lachlan, gazing aft, saw that the ship also was turning in a manœuvre as swift and daring as that in which Falcon had turned his brig. Beside him a harsh voice croaked

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 an oath—a one-eyed, earringed seaman, teeth bared in a snarling grin.

"By the Pit!" the man growled, "Black Lowther knows his business, too. Here's Hell's soup now!"

A hand fell on the seaman's shoulder and sent him spinning. It was Falcon. "Come aft, sir!" he snapped at Lachlan, and strode towards the stern, shouting orders as he went. Lachlan followed, saw Falcon snatch the wheel from the helmsman, stood by with thumping heart and parted lips as the tall man before him, oblivious of his presence, dealt with the peril that had burst upon him out of the fog.

He crowded sail on the brig until she was carrying every inch of canvas. He sent men aloft with buckets to wet the sails so that they would hold the wind. Meanwhile he prepared for battle. Lachlan saw that men were busy at the broadside guns, that ammunition was being brought from the magazine, that cutlasses, hangars, and pikes were stacked upon the deck.

Then, after half an hour of feverish activity, of ceaseless bellowing of orders, a strange stillness and silence fell. Lachlan knew that for the present all that could be done had been done, that the issue rested with fate.

Falcon turned to him then with a smile as bland as that of a courtier in a ballroom.

"You have most damnably good luck, Mr. McDonald," he said slowly. The smile became a laugh.

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 "D'ye know why we are put to all this pother?" he asked. "D'ye know who our friends are yonder?" He jerked his head towards the pursuing ship.

Lachlan shook his head.

"That ship," Falcon continued, "is named the Merry Amy and she is commanded by a gentleman of some fame upon the seas From his amiable disposition he is known as Black Lowther, and, like myself, he is a privateer of somewhat easy conscience who does not quite understand where privateering ends and piracy begins. Once, in the Gulf of Florida, I stole from him a prize that he had taken, and he swore by his favourite saint that he would cut off my ears and feed my heart to his pet dog. His ship being twice as large as the Good Fortune and carrying eighteen guns to our eight, he conceives that he has his opportunity now."

He ceased and stood silent a few moments, his hands gripping the wheel, his narrowed eyes fixed on the sea ahead. He glanced aloft, shouted an order, then turned again to Lachlan.

"It may happen after all, sir," he said calmly, "that I shall have to drown you like a rat instead of killing you like a gentleman. If I am forced to that necessity presently, you will please blame this inconvenient fellow, Lowther, who has interrupted our little affair."

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T WAS an hour after noon when the Merry Amy I burst like a phantom ship out of the fog and the chase of the Good Fortune began. Two hours later it was plain that the chase could have but one ending. Black Lowther's ship was gaining. At first, while the breeze held light, she had dropped a little behind; but the Good Fortune belied her name; luck, or fate, turned persistently against her. The fog bank to the eastward, in which Falcon had hoped to lose his pursuer, lifted and disappeared, and simultaneously the breeze freshened.

The Good Fortune sailed well in any wind. She gathered speed as the breeze increased, and Lachlan, standing beside Falcon at the wheel, marvelled at her swiftness as she leaped quivering through the seas.

"I think we shall win, Captain Falcon," he said presently.

The tall man smiled sourly. "A landsman's opinion," he replied. "In light airs we could outpace her. In a stiff wind the Merry Amy is the fastest vessel on the Western Ocean."

For a while he said no more, and Lachlan, watching the ship behind, soon saw that he spoke truth. Little by little the Merry Amy was creeping up.

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 Black Lowther, too, had crowded on all sail and he took in none as the breeze freshened. From truck to rail his ship was a towering mass of canvas. Beside Falcon, who still handled the wheel, now stood Diccon Drews, his second in command, a short, broad, hairy, tattooed ruffian, stripped to the waist, his sash bristling with pistols.

Lachlan, listening to the talk between them, learned something of the fine points of this deadly game—learned, too, what Falcon planned. They could never win back to Charles Town Harbour, he gathered; long before then they would be overhauled. But the game was not hopeless; there were several cards to play.

Lowther's tremendous press of canvas was straining his tall masts and tapering spars. Again and again Diccon Drews, a long glass pressed to his glowering eye, studied the Merry Amy's bellying sails, and any moment he hoped to see a topmast snap. Falcon, knowing Black Lowther's seamanship, dismissed this possibility, but turned his head at intervals to gauge the lessening distance between the two vessels.

Good shooting was impossible in such a sea, but a little later, when the range would be shorter, a lucky shot from the long gun at the Good Fortune's stern might give that slim foretopmast a fatal wound. It was one chance in a hundred; and even then with half a gale blowing the ship would outsail the brig. But the chase would last longer and there might be time to play the last card.

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 With a quickening pulse Lachlan learned what that last card would be. If they were not overhauled meantime, Falcon would head in for the coast opposite Edisto Inlet and either wreck his brig on the treacherous shoals at the inlet mouth or by some miracle of luck and seamanship drop anchor safe in Edisto River where his pursuer could not come.

An hour passed, and always the wind rose higher and the waves grew mightier, so that the Good Fortune plunged and leaped from wave to wave, burying her prow deep in the crested combers, her decks awash with brine and foam. She still carried all her canvas, but Lowther had shortened sail. Yet the Merry Amy still gained, was now within easy gunshot. For half an hour the long gun in the brig's stern had been sniping at the pursuer's spars. Shooting from that plunging deck was like shooting in the dark. Every shot had gone wild; and if a hit were ever made it would be due to chance and not to marksmanship. Nevertheless, Falcon held his gunners to their task, laughing, cursing, swearing that the next shot would do the work.

Above the roar of the wind Lachlan heard a hollow booming sound that seemed miles away. Lowther had opened fire with his bow-chaser. At the same moment there ran up to the tip of the Merry Amy's mainmast a small black square of bunting. At the sight a deepthroated shout burst from the Good Fortune's crew, and Falcon laughed grimly and bellowed an order forward, his bull's voice roaring above the wind.

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 Three minutes later, a black flag blazoned with white crossbones and skull climbed to the Good Fortune's main peak.

Falcon spoke over his shoulder to Lachlan standing just behind him.

"He is a brutish clodpole, this Black Lowther," he said, "but he has a certain wit. In these tame times the Black Roger is seldom flown because most rovers have grown too discreet to proclaim their profession. But when two gentlemen of that profession meet to settle a quarrel, it is fitting that they should meet under the good old flag."

He had scarcely finished when the gun at the brig's stern roared again. Suddenly Diccon Drews, who had been gazing at the Merry Amy through his glass, leaped into the air, clutching wildly at one of the pistols in his sash. He jerked it out and fired it above his head, then dashed it to the deck.

"A hit, by Judas! A hit!" he shouted. "Square in the foretopmast."

A great shout, exultant yet half incredulous, rose from the brig. To the unaided eye there was nothing to show that the man spoke truth, but almost instantly came the proof. On the deck of the Merry Amy there was a sudden activity. Yet swift as Lowther was to act, he was too late. Before he could shorten sail to relieve the strain, the wounded spar snapped with a report louder than the Merry Amy's cannon, swayed drunkenly and toppled to leeward, its ripped canvas fluttering and streaming in the wind.

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 Falcon's great voice boomed out above the gale and the yells of his men:

"Lance Falcon's luck, my bullies! It's's never failed us yet."

A seaman sailed the Merry Amy and the men who sailed with him were seamen. To clear the wreckage of that fallen topmast in so heavy a sea was no light task; yet within a few minutes it was done. Diccon Drews, watching through his glass a short thick man on the Merry Amy's deck who directed the work, bestowed various foul epithets upon Black Lowther that were eloquent, though indirect, compliments to his skill. Falcon gave him more candid praise. There were two men on the Western Ocean, he told Lachlan, whose handiwork that might have been. One was Captain Lowther of the ship, Merry Amy; the other was Captain Falcon of the Good Fortune, brig.

Then suddenly the easy nonchalance that had sat so well upon him vanished. With the frenzy of a madman he threw himself into his work, straining at the wheel, cursing with fearful blasphemies the gunners who still plied the stern gun as fast as they could ram each charge home, bellowing hoarse orders to the seamen forward and in the vessel's waist. And as Falcon's frown blackened and his vehemence increased, the leering smile on Diccon Drews' powder-blackened face widened until at last the hairy lieutenant's satisfaction found utterance.

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 Lord, and how to-day he couldn’t bear it any longer.

Then Paula talked with him very kindly and said he should have come immediately and told everything, and it was right that he had told her all now so frankly, and that he would not regret it. Then she said he could promise Jörgli ten francs, as soon as she had the cross in her hands again.

“Ten francs!” repeated Moni, full of astonishment, for he knew how Jörgli would have sold it for much less. Then Moni rose and said he would go right away that very day to Küblis, and if he got the cross he would bring it with him early the next morning. He ran along and was once more able to leap and jump, for he had a much lighter heart and the heavy burden no longer weighed him down to the ground.

When he reached home, he only put his goats in, told his grandmother he had an errand to do, and ran at once down to Küblis. He found Jörgli at home and told him without delay what he had done. At first the boy was very angry, but when he considered that all was known, he took out the cross and asked:

“Will she give me anything for it?”

“Yes, and now you can see, Jörgli,” said Moni, indignantly, “how by being honorable you will re-


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 "He knows there's a chance now," Drews growled in Lachlan's ear, "an' he's begun to fight."

But the chance was slender. To Lachlan there came within the next half-hour conviction that the race was lost.

The Merry Amy still gained—less rapidly than before, but steadily, surely. It was not only a race now but a battle, for Black Lowther was firing from his bow-chaser and from two of his forward ports; three guns against one, since only the long gun on the Good Fortune's after-deck could be brought to bear. As yet no material damage had been done, but already there were three great holes in the Good Fortune's sails. The Merry Amy's fire was more accurate than the brig's; being much larger, she was a steadier gun-platform. She out-pointed the brig, too, and while she gained, she crept slowly to windward. A little while more and Lowther would be able to train his port broadside on his adversary.

All on board the Good Fortune knew what that would mean. The brig would be hammered to pieces, smashed little by little into kindling wood by an overwhelming rain of iron.

A round shot struck the water just behind the Good Fortune, so close to her that Lachlan felt the spray on his cheek. Next moment, with a whining, humming hiss, a ball passed not six feet from Falcon where he stood at the wheel and, ranging diagonally forward across the deck, nicked a great chunk out of the port bulwark.

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 Lowther had changed his tactics. Hitherto he had been shooting at the Good Fortune's spars. Now, with the race as good as won, his target was the brig's deck. Diccon Drews croaked a savage imprecation. "We'll get it now," he growled. "He's started to hull us."

For a while, though both vessels fired steadily, there were no more hits. Then a cheer rose from the Good Fortune. One of her shots had gone home. It had struck the Merry Amy's deck squarely just as the ship plunged into a hollow between two waves, and it had worked havoc. Lachlan saw men running to and fro on the ship's forward deck, and Diccon Drews, peering through his glass just as the shot struck, swore savagely that the crew of the Merry Amy's forward gun had been wiped out.

"First blood!" roared Falcon. "By"

A rending crash drowned the oath. Behind and to the right of Lachlan the brig's bulwark had been ripped asunder. A splinter struck him between the shoulder blades, though without inflicting a wound, and he staggered and almost fell. Recovering himself, he sickened at what he saw. Forward in the waist of the ship, where the ball had ranged, five men were down and one of them lay sprawled across a guncarriage, blood spurting from the place where his arm had been.

Above the yells and groans of the wounded, Lachlan heard a whining, a humming. It was so loud, so near, that this time he was sure his end had come; but the ball passed him, passed Drews and Falcon

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 and the men of the after-gun and smashed into the Good Fortune's waist near the port rail as she rose on a billowing wave. Thence it ranged forward along the deck, its force almost spent, and Lachlan saw it and saw the devastation that it wrought.

Men went down before it like ninepins in some bowling game of the giants—man after man in swift succession until six men had fallen. Far forward the ball struck the carriage of one of the bow guns, knocked it sideways and, being deflected to the right, rolled across the deck, breaking another man's legs before it came to rest. Of the seven who had fallen only one man rose, and he ran screaming towards the cabin, his hand pressed to his side, crying that his back was broken. He slipped in a pool of blood, fell sprawling, and lay still; and behind him another fallen man stirred, reared slowly to his knees, toppled backward.

Falcon gripped Diccon Drews' arm, bade him take the wheel, then strode forward along the heaving deck. Lachlan followed, not knowing why. Close to the mainmast Falcon halted.

"Men," he roared, "a half-hour more and we can run for Edisto Inlet. It will be a half-hour of hell. Will you stand the gaff till then, or will you hoist the white flag?"

He quelled with his raised hand the shout that arose.

"Surrender'll mean life to most of you. Black Lowther wants me and Diccon Drews and half a

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 dozen others, but he'll let the rest of you go. We'll die, but most of you'll live."

He ceased, but no answer came.

"Which shall it be?" he bellowed. "The white flag or fight?"

From far forward a deep voice made reply. "To hell with Black Lowther!" boomed the words above the din of the gale, and the cheer that greeted them was half a cheer and half an unearthly laugh.

Falcon whirled and strode aft again, his eyes ablaze. In Lachlan's eyes, too, as he followed, a strange light flamed.

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