Nine o'clock in the morning was a busy time in a mild way at the Ottermouth Railway Station. The budding resort was served by only a branch line with a single set of rails, and at this hour the first two trains of the day in each direction passed each other here.

Mr. Travers Nugent stood at the window of the booking office, waiting till the slide should be raised, and biting his long fair moustache in annoyance because out of the tail of his eye he had just discovered that the next intending passenger in the row behind him was Lieutenant Reginald Beauchamp. He had quite a poor opinion of the lieutenant's intelligence, but he was aware of his close acquaintance with the Mallorys, and there were reasons why he would have preferred to conceal his destination that day from the shrewd old civil servant.

However, the wooden slide was raised, and Nugent could not avoid asking for his ticket—a first-class return to Weymouth. It was not till he had picked up his change and passed on that he affected to notice his successor at the window.

"Ah, Beauchamp! Going my way I hope?" he said genially. "I am compelled to go to Weymouth for the day, to look up a sick relative. Beastly nuisance having to play the good Samaritan in such hot weather."

Reggie, before replying, planked down his money and asked for a return ticket to Plymouth. "No," he replied as he joined Nugent. "As you heard, I am going in the opposite direction. My little torpedo craft requires my attention."

"Sorry I'm not to have the pleasure of your company," said the elder man courteously. "Surely your leave isn't up yet?"

"No," Reggie replied. "I have another ten days to run, but I have to see about one or two little matters of shipping stores and ammunition. I hope to be back to-night or to-morrow morning."

On the platform the two separated, Reggie getting into the train which would take him to the western naval seaport, and Nugent crossing the line by the footbridge to the east-bound train.

"I trust that that nautical noodle will have forgotten all about our meeting by to-morrow," Nugent communed with himself as he chose a corner seat in an unoccupied compartment. "It would not be advisable for Mallory, with his wonderful faculty for piecing trifles together, to know that I had paid a flying visit to the port where Chermside's alleged yacht is fitting out."

He leaned back in his cushioned corner and further reflected that even if Mr. Mallory was informed by young Beauchamp that he had been to Weymouth no irremediable harm could come of it. It was even possible that the incident might be converted into an advantage. He had good reason not to despise Mr. Mallory's capabilities, but that astute old gentleman could not thwart his scheme without a fuller knowledge of it, and that could only be gained from Leslie Chermside, who in his present circumstance as Violet Maynard's accepted lover would probably prefer death to confession.

"My immediate policy must be to preserve the renegade's life at all hazards, while threatening it by means of the fair Louise," Nugent smiled contemptuously. "Though what Bhagwan Singh will do to him when he is delivered at Sindkhote is another matter," the arch plotter added under his breath as he unfolded his newspaper and resigned himself to the tedium of the journey.

He reached Weymouth at noon, and at once made his way into the old town, where he turned to the left down the one-sided street of shipping offices and public houses that faces the harbour. The brick and mortar side of the street had no interest for him. His gaze was always for the long row of vessels moored to the quay wall. He walked on, past the wharf where the red-funnelled Great Western boats lay, and came to a halt opposite a large 2,000 ton steam yacht. A handsomely appointed craft she was, with something of the snake in her long, low, graceful lines, and evidently built for speed as well as comfort. The heavy gilt lettering on her stern proclaimed to all and sundry that she was called the Cobra.

The gang plank was down, and Nugent stepped lightly across it on to the main deck, where his further progress was promptly barred by a bullet-headed ship's officer in a smart blue suit and a brass-banded cap.

"Here! you don't own the bally vessel," said this individual rudely. "Not quite so fast, if you please. What's your business?"

"I am a friend of Captain Brant's; if he is on board and if you will kindly have my card taken to him I have no doubt that he will see me," replied Nugent with his usual suave politeness.

The officer called a seaman, and, having dispatched him with the card, became roughly apologetic. "That's a horse of another colour," he growled. "Strict orders against strangers on this ship. Couldn't let you on if you were the skipper's own brother, and the skipper's the devil."

"My dear sir, I congratulate you on your discretion," rejoined Nugent affably. "I don't mind telling you that if you had let me on without orders you wouldn't have enjoyed your billet another hour. As it is, you will be like the nice little boy in the Sunday school who had a good mark put against his name."

The bullet-headed mate spat thoughtfully over the bulwarks, and then, as he realized the position, broke into an evil grin.

"I see," he chuckled. "You're the power behind the throne, eh? I guess if I'd known that I'd have given you a bit of stronger lip. What the blooming game is I don't want to know, but I can see it's going to be a funny sort of cruise."

The bluejacket, whose brutal features, Nugent observed with cynical satisfaction, were at curious variance with his trim, yacht-like attire, returned, and said that Captain Brant would receive the visitor at once. Nugent followed his conductor to a cabin under the bridge, the occupant of which, a little wisp of a man with an elongated, pear-shaped cranium, prominent teeth, and a yellow complexion, advanced with a strange, hopping gait to greet his guest.

"Ah!" he said with an uncanny hissing intake of breath, "I am charmed to see you, Mr. Nugent. The honour of your visit means that we are to get a move on us at last, I hope?"

"It points that way," replied Nugent guardedly as he took the seat offered him. "Your anxiety to be off means that you are having trouble with the crew, I am afraid, Brant?"

The repulsive captain twisted his features into a grimace that would have curdled milk, at the same time emitting a sound like the snarl of a wolf. "The maintenance of discipline among a lot of toughs like those I selected isn't child's play," he said. "It only wants a rule of three sum to find out how soon I shall have no crew at all if we are to lay idle here much longer. I've had to shoot one as dead as Queen Anne and crack the heads of four others for kicking over the traces."

The answer, delivered coolly and as a matter of course, seemed ludicrous coming from the undersized, deformed creature with the top-heavy head. But Nugent evidently knew his man, for he merely nodded comprehension and approval. "It is because you are such a holy terror, Brant, that I selected you for the job," he said. "There was bound to be trouble, at the start of a cruise for which the hands were induced to join by the promise of a rich reward, if any hitch occurred."

"It is entirely the delay that caused the ructions," the captain assented. "You see, they don't know whether they're on a treasure hunt or what, and they're in a hurry to finger the pieces. To keep 'em from letting their jaw tackle run in the pubs I didn't allow much shore liberty—none at all since I had to pump Black Jake, a fireman, full of lead for inciting to mutiny."

"But how about the—er—necessary formalities?" asked Nugent, genuinely interested in the drastic methods of his instrument.

Captain Brant uttered the unpleasant combination of croak and wheeze that did duty with him for a laugh. "You mean the inquest and funeral? We have no use for little extras like them on the Cobra. I'm the law on this ship. I took a kind of a trial trip out to sea for a couple of hours, and cremated Black Jake in his own furnace. That put the fear of the devil into the rest, and we're a happy family now. I wouldn't guarantee to hold 'em for more than a fortnight, though, tied up to this cursed quay. The officers are right enough. Bully Cheeseman, the chap who was at the gangway when you boarded us, is a fair scorcher. Twenty years ago he was suspected of being Jack the Ripper; and Wiley the second mate, as you know, has done time for manslaughter."

Travers Nugent gazed thoughtfully through the circular window of the deck-cabin at the teeming quay-side, and the array of public-houses across the road. He was not at all dissatisfied with the state of things prevailing on the Cobra. It had justified his choice of a skipper. If this frail little atomy with the body of an imp and the soul of a Thug, could isolate and hold in check a crew of cut-throats recruited from the slums of Limehouse, within sight of the drink-shops over the way, he was not likely to fail at the crucial moment.

And it was to expedite that crucial moment that Nugent had paid his surprise visit to the Cobra.

"I'm not finding fault, Brant," he said. "At least, not with you and your management of affairs. The blame rests on the mean-spirited cur who has kept the ship dallying here in port while he was going back on his bargain and playing a double game with me. However, you'll have him on board in a few days, I hope, and among your final instructions will be one to let him have a particularly warm time of it."

"I'll keel-haul the swine morning and evening if you like," growled Brant, "or give him a taste of the cat."

"Well, I don't want you to be tender with him," laughed Nugent, "so long as you leave enough of him for delivery to the consignee. But here is what I ran over to tell you. On receipt of a wire containing the one word 'Advance,' you will leave port and steam to the westward at such a speed as will take you abreast of Ottermouth after sundown. Don't bring the ship nearer inshore than three miles, but lay to till you see a blue light, and then a green, shown about half a mile to the west of the town."

"Just a moment. Let's fix it up accurate," interrupted the captain. "We mustn't have any such words as 'about' in a job of this kind. Point out the exact place on this ordnance map, please."

"There, at the foot of that cleft in the cliff marked Coldbrook Chine," said Nugent, placing his finger on the map section which Captain Brant spread before him on the cabin table. "I have chosen the spot because it is hidden from the coast-guard station by this jutting angle in the wall of cliff."

"The signal wouldn't be visible from the station?" croaked Brant.

"Quite impossible. When you see the blue and green lights, all you have to do is to send the electric launch, manned by three trustworthy and well-armed men, to the beach at the foot of the chine. The launch will pick up a passenger, and as soon as he has been put aboard the steamer, will return to the same spot and pick up another. On the second occasion I myself shall be there, and will hand your officer a sealed packet containing your final instructions. It is even possible that I may come aboard and hand them to you in person."

The weird little deformity laughed his horrible laugh. "Pleased to see you, I'm sure," he responded, when the convulsions in his throat had ceased. "You might be making the voyage with us, I reckon?"

"God forbid!" exclaimed Travers Nugent fervently.