My feet had no more than touched the new deck when I became electrified with a glorious feeling of possession, of mastery. Immediately I seemed to know just what to do, where to go; and my first move was another headlong rush at the companionway door, bursting it in with a kick and springing quickly aside—ready, listening; being for the time shielded from a fusillade of expected shots. And, because these were not forthcoming, I felt momentarily confused.

Yet in times of white hot action it is impulse that succeeds. This door ahead of me was the only way below, except perhaps a hatch, offering greater danger, somewhere forward; it was the only way, therefore, through which Sylvia might be brought up to safety. She was now below, and I would reach her if it were my last journey! Three bounds down the stairs took me into the cabin, my pistol forward, my nerves on hair-trigger, ready for anything that moved.

Silence!—that sickish silence which permeates places of death! No human sound could be detected—no sound of any kind, except an uncanny creaking beneath the floor where the old masts rested in their steps, and a gentle swish of water outside the hull.

There were two doors from the cabin, each opening into a separate, though parallel, passageway that doubtless led forward to about the same general arrangements we had on the Whim—one past three staterooms, through a galley and into the sailors' quarters; the other, also past a stateroom or two, but opening to the ice-box room and galley. Both of these doors now swung slightly ajar, at a suspicious angle that almost without doubt told me where the men were crouched, and this rendered my position so inexcusably exposed that swift and vigorous action was the only choice. With finger tightening on the trigger I dashed at the nearer of these, giving it a kick that sent it banging against the wall. The passageway was empty, and thus encouraged I rushed the other door. Here, again, no foe had lain in ambush.

I was crouched now, sheltered by a strip of paneled wall between the two doorways. The staterooms on one side must come next, and after them the galley, with the forecastle beyond, and even beyond this, perhaps, some kind of a cuddy.

Where the men were hiding God only knew, but hiding they were with cocked weapons, firmly gripped knives at some point of vantage that had been carefully chosen—as they expected nothing less than half our crew. I could almost feel their nearness; so alert were my senses that I fancied I could smell their sweaty clothes.

Again action spelled success and, marking the first stateroom, I bounded into it covering the interior with a quick sweep of my automatic. Nothing! From this I sprang to the second room, showing myself in the passageway only long enough to cover the space. This, also, was empty.

A third was on this side before the galley should be reached. By my tactics of quick rushes I had doubtless made too fleeting a target to draw their fire, so I dashed at this third door. It was closed but yielded to my shoulder. As I entered, and became instantaneously aware that it contained no foe, my nerves were fired by the sound of rushing feet behind me.

Trapped! At such a time a man will ask an awful price for his life—when he is trapped by merciless villains to whom quarter is an unknown tongue! Springing behind the door, keeping only my pistol hand and eye beyond its thin partition, I waited with leveled weapon, ready to drop the first man who came in sight. He did not keep me long in suspense. It was Gates, while behind him pressed several anxious faces.

"Thank God, sir, you're not killed," he shouted.

I was glad to see him, there's no denying it!

"Mr. Thomas said he heard you call, so we came a-biling, sir!"

My mind was working rather fast; indeed, it seemed to be thinking at the rate of a thousand miles a minute—clear thinking, too—so even before Gates spoke the second time I had seen through Tommy's ruse. Bless his old scalp, I was a dog not to have taken him in the first place, now that things were nearer equal. But I said hastily:

"Look sharp, Gates, I haven't been farther than here! They're in the galley!—I'm rushing it!"

So I splintered the door and charged through, with the others tripping over my heels. Then my revolver swung across and covered a crouching form.

"Hands up," I commanded.

Although darker here, we could see a huge, partially clothed figure on the floor, reclining very much as The Wounded Gladiator. Leaning above him, with an arm passed beneath his shoulders, was another man.

"Hands up, you fool," I called again, ready to fire at the first suspicious move. The man lowered his burden and turned. It was Tommy.

"You'll forgive me, Jack," he grinned. "We thought I heard you call—and that was to be the signal, you know!"

We thought I heard you call!

"I know about that, you prince of liars. Who's this? But hold him!—we're going on through!"

"You needn't," he said. "I took a speedy trip down the other passageway while Gates went to you. There isn't a soul on board, except this poor devil who's got a crack on the bean."

"It isn't possible," I cried. For, indeed, it was not possible, and we hurried forward, leaving him as he was.

But a two-minute search revealed the truth of Tommy's words. There was not a sign of anyone. The yacht was as absolutely deserted as if it had been sailed by spirits—except, of course, the wretch in Tommy's charge.

"You're sure we've looked everywhere, Gates?" I asked, stunned at the disappearance of Sylvia and mystified by the whole affair.

"Everywhere, sir. To tell the truth, Mr. Jack, a minute ago it was as complete a mystery as I ever saw. But I understand it now. They've taken to the small boats and escaped, sir. They've just sailed in close to shore and done that during the night, sir; and all morning we've been chasing a boat with nobody on it. I should have noticed the small boats gone, if I hadn't been so sure the people were here."

I leaned against the wall too utterly disappointed to move, vaguely wondering if this were another dream from which I should awake and find the Orchid sailing out ahead of us. But it was no dream. In dreams one can not always know that one is dreaming, but there is never a doubt of knowing when one is awake.

"They couldn't be under the floor?" I asked, absurdly clinging to a straw of hope that Sylvia might be there.

"Lor' bless you, no, sir! I tell you, Mr. Jack, they just sailed as close as they dared to those islands, and skipped—the hull pack of 'em; first having headed the Orchid out as we found her. That's why everything was so quiet the larst part of the night—there warn't anyone here to make a noise!"

Passing back to the galley we saw half our crew, in a circle, looking down at the wounded man.

"Who is it, Tommy?" I asked. "Not the old scoundrel himself, by any good luck?"

"Stranger yet," he said, waving the others back and standing up, "It's your black giant of the Key West docks!"

"How the devil did he get here?" I cried, pushing between the men and also looking down at him. "How did he get here?" I asked again, but Tommy had gone.

Someone had put a cushion under his head. His eyes were open, gazing up with their former gentle expression; more sad now, I fancied, since the great human machine he had controlled was wounded.

"How did he get here?" I repeated my general question, this time straight at him.

His lips moved with a curious, rather horrible, inarticulate sound, and his glance swept our crew as though in search of a face. Then he seemed to give it up, and passed a hand slowly over his forehead. I was about to order him carried on deck when Tommy called through the galley portlight:

"Fetch your wounded, Jack! The professor's here with his outfit!"

As our men stooped to obey the big fellow surprised us by quietly arising; and, when cushions had been arranged in a shaded place above, he laid on them as obediently as a docile mastiff. Monsieur, very much in his element, became busy at once.

The Whim and the Orchid were still at grips—or rather were it more correct to say the Orchid was in the Whim's grip. Lines had been passed through the chocks of each, sails had been hauled down, and both yachts rode inertly side by side.

The part of our crew that had stayed behind to attend these matters now came over the rail like monkeys, grinning broadly and crowding up to shake hands with me—a wholly uncalled for proceeding which charmed me, nevertheless.

"Lie on your face," I heard Monsieur saying to the big black. He had become excessively busy and his fingers were feeling everywhere over the man's cranium, yet as tenderly as a woman's. "What struck you?" he asked.

"I've told you he can't talk," Tommy, who was also kneeling by him, explained.

"And I did not ask you," the professor snapped. "What if he can not! May I not see him make the effort?"

"But what's the use of having the poor beggar make the effort when you know he can't put it over? Why not get down to cases and cure him, instead of monkeying?"

"Down to cases! Cure him!" Monsieur sputtered. "How great a surgeon are you to direct me in this impertinent manner?"

Really, he was quite a great deal put out.

"You fellows cut it," I interposed. "While you're squabbling the chap might click it, and then what?"

"I'm not squabbling," Tommy looked up earnestly. "I'm only saying it's a rotten shame to put a blessÉ through a lot of unnecessary paces that hurt him, and I stick to it! But go ahead, professor!"

"I shall go ahead, have no fear of it! You think me cruel—but see: if I am aware something is wrong with a machine, how better to find out what than by trying to make it run?"

He turned again to his examination, while Tommy lit a cigarette and sat nearby, looking on. At last Monsieur gave a sigh, indicating that his diagnosis was ready. I waited until he, too, had lit a cigarette, then asked:

"Well, doctor, how serious?"

"Perhaps not serious, as there is no fracture. He has suffered a concussion over the third frontal convolution, resulting in an aphasia—aphemia we are sure of, and doubtless also agraphia——"

"Hold on! This isn't the University of Bucharest," Tommy cried. "If you insist on telling us, instead of putting this man to bed where he ought to be, tell it nursery-fashion!"

"Already I have said it for children," he witheringly replied.

"Then God help 'em!" This in a whisper from Gates, but with no thought of levity.

"Go ahead and cure the man," I implored. "We couldn't understand you, anyhow."

"But, yes, you will understand—I desire it! This blow has produced the aphemia. If he were not illiterate we could, by asking him to write, say if agraphia also is present. But he can not write, therefore we do not know whether he can or not; so, therefore, we only know that he can not speak."

"You know he can't write, too—you just said so!"

"Exactly, my boy Tommy, you have the correct idea. Yet we do not know it by the test."

"I begin to see what he's driving at, Jack. He knows he can't write because it's a known fact, but he doesn't know it by the scientifically known test known to him—and that's agraphia. If it isn't, it's near enough. Now, he knows he can talk because we all know he can, but no one knows it at present because he can't—and that's aphemia. Do I get you, Professor?"

"Yes, as you say, you get me. The motor area has suffered a concussion; perhaps a slight hemorrhage, perhaps not. It may pass in a few days, or longer. We will keep him quiet, with ice bags to the head and blood pressure low, and see what we shall see. A hundred years ago they would have bled him and made him well. But we shall see!"

"If he'd got well a hundred years ago by being bled, why not now?" I asked.

"He'd be too old now," Tommy whispered; but the professor, not hearing this, looked at me as though I had committed an unpardonable breach of etiquette, and again witheringly replied:

"We have more advanced methods."

Having thus been put in my place, he ordered his patient taken aboard the Whim and ran ahead to superintend the construction of a bed. Scientists are a curious lot, Tommy says, but I doubt if there is another like the professor. I hope not, for the sake of the sciences. But let that pass. In half an hour the big black was resting easily in the midst of paraphernalia especially designed, and Bilkins had been assigned the place as nurse.

I fancied, when this latter suggestion came up, that our old servant might not readily take to it. With twenty years of his life spent as major domo and general valet in my father's household, a sudden transformation into trained nurse for a dusky African must, peradventure, have been a shock.

But in this I was mistaken. The last forty hours of common peril, of a central interest, had lifted Bilkins from that pettiness usually burdensome in servants of his type. He was, as a matter of fact, cheerfully alert to take the job, accepting it with the same enthusiasm that Gates, and later the mate, had straddled the bowsprit. So I realized that Bilkins had doffed the uniform of servitude to put on one that fit a man. True, indeed, there is no such potent melting-pot as common peril! It had been the same in France—banker, lawyer, merchant, beggar-man, thief, perhaps—all one. Common peril, common necessity!—O thou molders of men!

When everything had been arranged, and a sailor put at our ice machine to supply packs for the wounded man's head, Tommy, the professor and I climbed back aboard the Orchid, this time to give her a thorough search. We held to the hope that there might be a note, or little clue, from the girl whose extremity had once led her to send the other message. Monsieur thought this most probable, and our hopes ran high.

Beginning with a writing desk in the cabin, we examined the book shelves and every nook and corner, then passed to the staterooms. These gave the same impression of having been swept clean—cupboards, presses, all were empty. Only in one drawer, delicately scented, was there a single item—a hairpin. Here, then, must be Sylvia's room, but otherwise it was devoid of any article. Equally unproductive did we find the galley, the crew's quarters, and a small cuddy forward.

Monsieur sat down and pursed his lips.

"They have anticipated our intention," he said, thoughtfully. "Doubtless the things were emptied into sheets, then either weighted and sunk, or taken in the boats. But she must have exerted her ingenuity. There absolutely must be some word left for us. Wait!"

Hurrying to the Whim he returned with his lens, while from the mate he had borrowed a caliper, a two-foot rule and a sail needle.

"Now we shall search scientifically," he cried. "Remember, that as no personal belonging remains, even the books being gone, we must infer they made a great effort to destroy everything that would leave a clue. They suspected the girl, too, and that made them doubly careful. What would she do then? Exactly as we would do—hide her message so the others could not discover it! Now, my boy Jack, you take the sail needle and probe cushions, pillows and mattresses! My boy Tommy, take my lens and look for places where the glue has been disturbed on furniture joints; I will measure the desk, piano, panels—everything—for a secret hiding place!"

"Well, I'll be darned," Tommy grinned. "You're some cop, professor!"

When each of us had finished and reported failure, Monsieur did not seem at all discouraged.

"Now we go to the second phase," he said. "Keep in mind, whenever you search for anything, that it may be under your nose. That is the place to look, not off at the clouds—and nothing is too insignificant to escape investigation. For see: I can write on a very thin piece of paper, roll it into a string, thread it into a bodkin, and weave it into a rug, curtain, quilt, and so forth; or press it lengthwise into a crack in the floor. A favorite way is to tie it to a real piece of string, and throw them carelessly into a wastebasket, thus making them appear to have been cut from a bundle. But there are a thousand ways! Now we proceed with this. Later we probe down gas jets, water spouts and outlets, empty lamp reservoirs, unscrew the backs of mirrors, search key holes, unravel carpets——"

"Heavens," I cried, seeing that in his zeal for doing this professionally he was making himself absurd; and Tommy burst into a hearty laugh, saying:

"Gezabo, there isn't a girl in a million who'd think of those places, and if she did she wouldn't credit us with enough sense to find 'em. Call off your bloodhounds! There's no message for us, that's a cinch! Let's get busy at once on something practical!"

"That's what I say," I chipped in. "It's only eleven o'clock, and we have eight good hours of daylight. Let's go back and call Gates for a conference, without losing a minute!"

"You may be right," he sighed, "but—well, let us go, as you say. With eight hours of light we can accomplish everything. Today may bring success!"