Slyne had drawn back a step. One of his hands fell on the haft of a flogging-hammer that some one had left lying loose on the casemate there. Had it not been for the proximity of the pilot, drowsing away the time till morning in the chart-house behind, he would most assuredly have attempted to knock the old man on the head with it. He felt sure that, but for Captain Dove, he could have managed Sallie now that Yoxall was out of the way. He stood gnawing savagely at his lower lip as she vanished along the deck in the darkness. He had taken no notice at all of her timid good-bye.

Captain Dove grinned spitefully at him through the gloom of the small hours. "You'd better be off below and pack up," the old man suggested. "You'll be going ashore as soon as we get pratique."

"But—I'll be back. Give me time to turn!" Slyne snarled at him. "A bargain's a bargain, and—I'll be back."

"You'd better not," Captain Dove advised in a very ominous voice, and went on his way below, leaving Slyne to his own aggrieved, embittered reflections.

To Jasper Slyne the past few days had been like a foretaste of purgatory. Captain Dove had interdicted all communication with Sallie, and had proved a most unpleasant companion himself throughout the unspeakably wearisome passage from the North-west African coast, a passage made at the poorest speed of the ship because coal was scarce and he was afraid to call anywhere by the way to fill up his bunkers. Amid the dire squalor and discomfort, the enforced inaction and loneliness of life under such conditions, Slyne's only solace had been the hope of finally winning Sallie, by fair means or foul. He who, in his time, had met and made love to so many charming adventuresses, who would not have thought any more about her had she been one of their sort, had become absolutely obsessed by ambitions to be fulfilled with her for his wife.

And now—he knew that neither force nor finesse would avail him against Captain Dove's ultimatum. He had not the cash to meet the old man's demands, and that was apparently the end of the matter.

Most men, in Slyne's place, would have owned themselves beaten then. But not so he. Thinking it all over again, he would admit to himself no more than that he was for the moment baffled by contrary circumstances; circumstances such as had been his lot for so long that he could contemplate them almost unmoved. It was his happy creed that in the very face of failure itself one may, as often as not, discern the inspiriting features of final success. The dark hour that heralds dawn he spent pacing the cluttered quarter-deck of the Olive Branch in the cold, his far-away eyes always fixed on the twinkling dock-lights, his almost bloodless lips straight and compressed under his black moustache, cudgelling his brains for some safe means of immediately obtaining the money he wanted.

He had not the cash to meet Captain Dove's demands. But neither was he so entirely penniless as Captain Dove supposed him. He had only a hundred dollars in hand, but he had twenty thousand francs at his credit in a French bank. Many a millionaire had risen to affluence from infinitely smaller beginnings.

But it would have been idle to offer Captain Dove any such trifling sum on account of the price he had set on Sallie. And, rack his own overworked wits as he would, Slyne could think of no safe plan for turning his modest capital over at a sufficient profit within the time at his disposal.

"The only possible way," he told himself finally, his teeth set, "the only possible way is to chance my luck at those cursÈd tables again. Although, God knows that's a risk I'd give up anything else to avoid. But—it's the only possible way now," he repeated vexedly, recalling the very excellent reasons he had for never showing his face in Monte Carlo again.

For, only a season or two before, he had figured throughout the CÔte d'Azur as accessory in an affaire with which the whole civilised world had afterwards rung, in spite of every effort to hush it up, an affaire whose tragic consequences had caused such a flutter of scandalised chagrin among the private police of three great European powers that he could never again cross their frontiers without fear. Since he knew very well that, if he were ever identified, he would deservedly disappear, without any further fuss, to spend the rest of his life as a nameless cypher, forgotten, among the living dead, entombed in some secure fortress. In that cosmopolitan underworld to which such as Slyne belong, occur many curious incidents not reported in the newspapers, and the citizens of Cosmopolis have nowhere consul or minister to protect them against unfortunate consequences.

Slyne had no illusions as to what his fate would be if he were recognised on the Riviera.

"But she's worth the stake," he told himself with dogged determination, "even though it is life and liberty as well as my last few francs. And—I'd just as soon be done with things if I can't capture Sallie from that old scoundrel."

He knew very well, of course, that his prospect of making a financial success at the tables was no less of a forlorn hope. But he had all a professional gambler's blind faith in the goddess of chance. And since he would not withdraw from the contest, he had no option but to play that losing hazard also.

Day had broken before he had completed his plans. And then Captain Dove reappeared, sleepy-eyed and unshaven, to interview the port-doctor.

As soon as that functionary had glanced at the forged Bill of Health put before him and seen the crew mustered to the tally it told, the yellow flag at the fore was hauled down and Captain Dove hailed a shore-boat, to which he had Slyne's baggage transferred, and curtly told Slyne to be off ashore.

Nor did Slyne delay to bid him farewell. Each was heartily sick of the sight of the other, and each had plans of his own to promote in a hurry. They separated without so much as a nod. Sallie was invisible. And Slyne, in the boat on his way to the Custom-house, only looked back once at the ports of the poop-cabin, to see, within the dingy brass frame of one, a face that seemed to be watching him very thankfully as he went, a horrible face, with blubber lips, almost inhumanly ugly, the face of Sallie's devoted attendant, the dumb black dwarf, Ambrizette.

A yawning Customs' searcher glanced at his baggage and passed it unopened. In return for which courtesy Slyne bestowed upon him a doubtful rix-dollar and a few words in fluent Italian concerning the Olive Branch—words which would not improve Captain Dove's prospects of an early departure from Genoa, but might, conversely, increase by a little his own scanty time-allowance in that desperate bout with fortune to which he had committed himself. He knew that Captain Dove was intent on coaling and sailing again without the loss of a minute that might be saved.

He had all his own movements mapped out in anticipation. He drove to an hotel at which he had stayed once before, and, after a Turkish bath and breakfast, went on to the CrÉdit Lyonnais office to cash his draft. Then he made a number of purchases in inconspicuous shops, where he had to spend a good deal of time in bargaining, looked in at the Motor-Car Mart & Exchange, where he saw a big touring-car over which he argued for some minutes with the salesman; and, after a belated but liberal lunch in a first-class restaurant, he turned back toward the sale-room.

A man in an elaborate chauffeur's uniform, and evidently English, stopped him in the street outside, to ask whether he would care to buy a gold cigarette-case, a bargain. Slyne looked him over, and sized him up at a glance.

"Stranded?" he asked, and the man nodded sulkily.

"Want a few days' work?"

The chauffeur's dissipated face brightened.

"Yes, sir," said he, "I do."

"Wait here, then," said Slyne, and went inside.

"Well," he asked the salesman, "have you thought it over? What's the last word?"

"Fifteen thousand lire, milor—not a soldo less," declared the dapper, frock-coated salesman, in a tone of final decision which Slyne's sharp ears judged unfeigned. "The car is worth twice as much. Indeed, I could not let it go at such a ruinous loss were it not—But, ecco! The owner himself. He would probably be very ill pleased to hear it was actually sold at that ridiculous price."

Slyne looked round at the grey-haired, portly, prosperous-looking individual threading his way through the agglomeration of cars in the background, and his half-parted lips snapped together again.

He wanted that particular car and had made up his mind to buy it, rash though such an investment might prove, but he had surmised from a lynx-like glance at the seller that he might be able to get it for even less than the salesman was authorised to accept. And, since his own pockets were so poorly lined for the expensive part he was playing, he, who despised chaffering, was yet bent on making the very best bargain he could.

"It's more than I've got about me," he told the salesman in a very audible voice, as the fat man in the fur coat halted indeterminately a few paces away. And at the words the new-comer's puffy face lighted up, as if with relief, behind the pince-nez he was wearing. He came forward and spoke.

"An Englishman, by Jove!" he remarked with a great semblance of geniality. "So am I. Very happy to meet you, sir. You're interested in my car?"

"Not at the price," Slyne returned, with an indifferent hauteur which he judged likely to be effective with one in the stranger's presumable plight. And the fat man's lips drooped visibly, the pouches under his uneasy eyes became more marked. He was obviously disappointed, and felt himself snubbed. He did not seem quite sure what to say or do next.

Slyne, congratulating himself on his talent for character reading, turned away, to look at a cheap runabout, as carelessly as though he had all time at his disposal, instead of being, as he was, in a fever of ill-restrained impatience. The salesman figuratively washed his hands of them both; he could already foresee a forced sale at a calamitous sacrifice. And so it fell out.

Slyne, cavalier to the verge of rudeness, finally bought the big scarlet car, which the other almost forced upon him, for about half its market value, and paid for it there and then, in the new French notes which had almost been burning a hole in his pocket since he had left the CrÉdit Lyonnais office—so eager was he to be off on his last forlorn hope of winning Sallie.

"If you had allowed me only a few hours longer, I could have got you twice that amount," said the disappointed salesman in a stage aside to the seller as he counted over his own diminished commission. But the fat man merely bestowed on him a look of contemptuous annoyance, and, having signed the receipt Slyne required, tucked away in an empty pocket-book the balance of the crisply-rustling bills he had just received.

Even then he did not appear to know what next to do with himself. For, having glanced at his watch, he gave vent to a grunt of disgust, and hung on his heel undecidedly, after making a move to go.

"It's only about a hundred miles to Monaco, isn't it?" Slyne asked the salesman; and was answered in the affirmative.

The fat man gasped and choked for a moment, and then spoke again, with more confidence: a change due, perhaps, to the improvement in his finances.

"Pardon me, sir," said he, "but—if you're going that way, I wonder—It would be a most tremendous favour to me, and I haven't haggled over giving you the best of our bargain. The train's just gone, and—"

Slyne, chin in air, once more looked him over appraisingly, as he stammered and hesitated; and was very much disposed to cut him adrift without more ado. But some indefinable impulse, some feeling that here was a bird of a feather very sadly astray, caused him to alter his mind. "I'll be glad to give you a lift," he said, more graciously, "if you're ready to start now. But I can't wait."

The fat man's face lighted up again. "My luck's on the mend at last!" he declared. "I'm in as great a hurry as you can be, sir. I'm more than obliged to you for your courtesy. May I offer you my card?"

Slyne glanced at the slip of pasteboard conferred upon him while the car was being shifted out of the showroom into the street, where his elaborate chauffeur was in waiting. And, "Jump in, Mr. Jobling," he requested with unconcealed coldness as he himself took the wheel, relegating the chauffeur to a back seat. It ruffled his self-satisfied mood of the moment more than a little to learn that the fat man in the fur coat was in fact a London solicitor. With the law in any shape or form Jasper Slyne wanted nothing whatever to do, and especially at such a juncture. He was already repenting his ill-timed politeness.

However, he could not very well rid himself of his passenger then. All he could do was to dash through the busy streets of Genoa in the dusk at a pace calculated to make the hair of any respectable and self-respecting solicitor stand on end. But, out of the corner of one eye, he observed that Mr. Jobling was wearing a blandly contented smile.

That gentleman did not seem so well pleased, however, as they turned up-hill into the Via Roma, and Slyne, understanding, relented a little again. "I have some baggage at the Isotta," he volunteered, and the cloud at once lifted from Mr. Jobling's brow.

Several assiduous porters stowed hastily in the tonneau, beside the ornamental chauffeur, the travel-worn trunks and suit-cases which Slyne had left there that morning, and stood at the salute till he drove away, when they no doubt returned to their lairs to count the profits of such politeness. He had, as usual, been very lavish with his small change. And his passenger was also impressed by his liberality.

Meanwhile the car was negotiating more carefully the lumpy patchwork with which the old Via Carlo Alberto is paved, and Mr. Jobling's puffy features spoke his discontent over its slow progress. But, once beyond Sampierdarena, clear of close traffic, on the open road to Savona, Slyne made more speed; and it was self-evident that he knew how to get the most out of his horse-power.

He looked, indeed,—if looks go for anything nowadays,—quite at home, very much in his element, lying lazily back in the driver's seat of the richly-appointed car which had been his companion's an hour before. It was late on a winter afternoon, and what wind there was had a chill in it, caught, no doubt, in crossing the Apennines. But Slyne also was wearing a heavy fur coat and had pulled on a pair of gauntlets at the hotel.

As the car rocked and swayed on its rapid way through the last outskirts of Savona, he was humming light-heartedly to himself the antique aria of The Man who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo.

"Been gambling a bit?" he presently asked his silent companion. And Mr. Jobling admitted the soft impeachment.

"And no luck," Slyne inferred amusedly. He could view with an equable eye the misfortunes of others as well as his own; especially since the stout solicitor's losses had brought his own way such a substantial profit as could be readily realised by the re-sale of his car.

"No luck at all," Mr. Jobling affirmed explosively, and the troubles fermenting in his mind at length found outlet in speech. "I wouldn't have believed anyone could have been so unlucky!" he declared with great bitterness; "and at such a critical moment. I want so little, too; I've no ambition to break the bank. It wasn't with any such foolish idea that I came to Monte Carlo. I wouldn't have had this happen for all the bank holds."

"Which isn't a great deal," commented Slyne. "I've broken the bank more than once myself, and lost twice as much the next evening."

"You play some system, perhaps?" his companion inquired, but Slyne shook his head reminiscently. "I've tried several myself, but none seemed to be of the slightest use. And now—It doesn't matter, of course. I didn't come to Monaco to make money; I'm not such a fool! But it's most infernally inconvenient ... may cost me my chance of a fortune ... practically within my grasp." His voice had died away to a mere mutter. Slyne was smiling in disdain.

"But I can't go on losing at the tables for ever," he exploded again. "My turn must come. I feel in better fettle this evening—as if my luck had changed. It's no doubt since I met you; I must thank you again for this lift. If I'd had to wait in Genoa for the slow train, I might have got back too late to take the tide at the flood. I'm a great believer, you know, in striking while the iron's hot."

"So am I," said Slyne dryly, and much amused by his monologue.

"I'm sure my luck's on the mend," Mr. Jobling went on, growing still more communicative under encouragement, "and the mere matter of winning a few thousand francs is nothing to what will follow—what must follow. I've made up my mind to win all along the line; and there's a great deal in the theory that, if you apply sufficient will-power to any project, its success is assured. I'm ab-so-lutely determined to win fifty thousand francs to-night, and then ... I fancy it was a mistake to come here at all.... But, of course, a man who never makes a mistake will never make anything.... I'll go straight back to London, and surely, among the five or six million people there....

"Look out! Good—God!"

Between his two excited ejaculations Slyne had outwitted calamity. Taking a rash curve at top speed, he had come to an unexpected rectangle in the roadway running almost parallel there with the shore below, and, rounding that corner safely with a quick wrench of the wheel, had almost crashed into a heavy, high-built ox-wagon which was backing blindly out from some steep, hidden side-lane. The hubs of the car's wheels had all but grazed the parapet of the roadway at Mr. Jobling's side, and Slyne, on the other, had barely escaped being brained by the timbers protruding from the rear of the wagon. The ornamental chauffeur was fast asleep in the tonneau behind.

Mr. Jobling lay back and gasped while Slyne held on as if nothing had happened, at the same breakneck pace. But neither spoke again for some time.

Through village after village they dashed, always at grave risk and yet without accident. The moon rose just before they reached Alassio. Slyne even managed to improve the pace a little then, and his passenger made no protest, but sat with eyes downcast, his lips always moving mutely.

"A slight overdraft on the future—it's no more than that," remarked Mr. Jobling a little later, as if he had been alone, and Slyne looked round at him for an instant, with nostrils curled in a faint, superior smile.

Slyne thought he could guess some part at least of the troubles afflicting his chance acquaintance, and was very little inclined to hear more about them. He was too busy considering his own plan of campaign, the blood in his own veins was running too briskly under the stimulus of that wild flight through the keen night air, to waste any time or thought on another man's worries. But—a fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind. "Cheer up!" said he suddenly. "Every one overdraws more or less on his luck, at one time or another. If that's all you've done, it's nothing to mope about."

Mr. Jobling sat up with a start, and stared at him. "That's all," he asserted, a little too hurried in his assurance. "I give you my word, sir...." And then he recollected himself and laughed uncomfortably, confused.

"I've been thinking aloud," said he. "But you mustn't take any notice of that. It's a bad habit of mine. And, as you say, we all overdraw on the future, from time to time. As a man of the world, sir, you'll understand what I mean to convey to you. And of course these little overdrafts are always met when they're due.

"What a fine night this is for a fast spin!"

"What's the nature of your present overdraft?" Slyne inquired perversely, safe in the certainty that the other could not resent that rudeness, and was again amused by Mr. Jobling's cough of discomfiture.

But, "Purely metaphorical," that gentleman countered cleverly. "We'll soon be in San Remo at this rate. I wouldn't wonder if we've established a record. It isn't every day there's such a car in the market."

"No, it isn't," Slyne agreed. "Nor a buyer for it." And conversation languished again.

But Slyne's spirits, none the less, were steadily rising as he drew nearer, mile by mile, to the chief temple of that goddess of chance to whom he looked to befriend him now—since it was not on his own behalf alone that he was seeking her shrine, since mischance must entail consequences so dire to Sallie as well as to him. The personal risk he was running lent added zest to the piquancy of his most unusual position as a champion of maidenhood in distress. And what Sallie's fate would be if his own luck failed him, he could picture in vivid detail from his own experience of a world most men know nothing about.

Within a few days the Olive Branch, with a supply of cheap coal and some makeshift repairs, would be gone from Genoa, leaving behind no trace but such bills as Captain Dove could escape without paying. She would enter Port Said and leave Suez in some effective disguise and under another assumed name which would last her through the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb; beyond which she would disappear, perhaps for good, into whatever strange world she might raise over the mysterious sea-rim which lies beyond "the Gate of the Place of Tears."

Captain Dove was an old man already. And even he could not for ever go on living such a life as he led. He had spoken of this trip East as his last, and it was his avowed object in it to turn Sallie to some account. Slyne, who, as you will perhaps suppose, was no squeamish moralist, sickened at thought of what time might still have in store for the girl.

"Just imagine her," said he to himself, "cooped up in some slat-eyed Chinaman's filthy yamen till she grows grey, or eating her heart out in some coffee-coloured sultan's clay palace, with nothing to comfort her but a crooked brass crown—and not even that by and by. It's damnable to think—But what's the use of thinking about it! I'm going to save her from all that—in spite of herself." And his selfishly sentimental mood of the moment once more gave place to a philosophic contentment with things as they were, and that in turn to an exhilarating anticipation of pleasures to come.

The lights of San Remo looked very alluring to him, who had for so long spent his nights at sea with no more companionable illuminant than a reeking kerosene lamp or the cold, aloof stars. He became jocular, in a lofty way, with the always impatient Jobling, and at the frontier was so patronisingly polite to the officials there that they let him pass almost at once, under the apparent impression that he was some personage of importance—a circumstance which lent him a little additional self-confidence.

From Menton Garavan in to Monte Carlo is only some seven miles. And for that short distance he sat silent, once more mentally reviewing the manifold chances of mischance ahead of him. While Mr. Jobling, beside him, continued to mumble and mutter at intervals of misfortune—no fault of his own—and fortune, that marvellous fortune which was to be his so soon, since he had made up his mind that it must.

"I'm absolutely determined," said Mr. Jobling, unconsciously raising his voice again. "Eh? What? Oh, yes. I beg your pardon. I have a room at the MÉtropole. Where are you going to put up?"

"I always stay at the Paris," Slyne lied easily. He had no inclination for any more of his companion's society, especially while he had no idea how he himself might be received at any hotel in the Principality.

"I'll walk on from here, then, if you'll allow me," suggested that gentleman. "And—er—by the way, you won't be mentioning to anyone the circumstances—er—about the car."

"We'll let it be understood that I bought it in London—last month," said Slyne, ready to be obliging since it would be for his own benefit; and, cutting short with a curt "Good night" some further profuse expressions of gratitude on the part of his passenger, glad, indeed, to be so well quit of him, drove on in more state, his sleepy chauffeur in the seat vacated by Mr. Jobling, to make his next move in that desperate game in which he was going to stake life and liberty also on the infinitesimal chance of returning triumphant to Genoa to claim Sallie from Captain Dove.

For, "If they spot me, I'll blow out my brains before they can lay hands on me," said he to himself as he drew up with an imperative honk-honk-honk! before the HÔtel de Paris.