Leslie Chermside, having taken his seat in the launch, felt more at ease in his mind than he had done for many a day. Ever since he had been told of the suspicion that threatened him in respect of Levison's death, he had been reconciling himself to the loss of Violet. That dream of midsummer madness had from the first, he realized, from the nature of the circumstances, been doomed to a rude awakening, in spite of Aunt Sarah's generosity. The shattering of his ill-starred love idyll might be borne manfully, as an adequate punishment for his iniquity, and when time had healed his wound he might even rejoice in his expiation.

But with very different feelings had he viewed the possible revelation of his misdeed. That simply would not bear thinking about. That Violet should ever know that he had sought her out in order that her proud young beauty should be offered as an unwilling sacrifice to a licentious Eastern prince was an ever-present nightmare that set him trembling like a frightened child.

And now the strain was over. By his flight he had escaped the terrible disclosures which would have followed arrest, no matter what the verdict might have been. That Violet would resent his conduct and despise him for it he could not help. Even if Nugent kept his promise of trying to soften it down, the girl's displeasure was inevitable, but it would be as heaven to hell compared with the ignominy he would have incurred by full disclosure. And, to do him justice, he had not been wholly selfish in shrinking from that ignominy. He knew his sweetheart's pure faith in him, and he had been honestly anxious to spare her virginal soul the shock of discovering the loathsome thing from which her short-lived romance had sprung. It might even have been her death-wound—to find that she, the coldly-critical social queen, had surrendered, after so brief a wooing, to a miscreant who had set out to sell her into bondage.

Now, if his luck held, that hideous spectre of disgrace was laid for ever. He would go forth a lonely and a penniless man, to commence life afresh with what courage he could muster in some refuge for human derelicts beyond the seas. If he could not retrieve the past, he might at least lock it up in his own seared heart, as in a chamber of horrors to which he alone had access—to be a torment to himself alone.

So, as the launch cleft the calm sea, his troubled spirit caught something of the influence of the summer night, and he began to take an interest in his immediate prospects. Before he left London to come down to Ottermouth on his misguided mission, he had accompanied Nugent occasionally to the docks where the Cobra was fitting out, and he had made the acquaintance of Captain Brant. In those reckless days he had conceived a great antipathy to the crafty and cruel sailor, and he had reason to believe that the dislike was reciprocated. He wondered how much Nugent had told Brant of their original scheme, and whether he had informed him that he was the cause of its failure. If so, he was likely to be treated with scant courtesy during the voyage.

He was not long left in doubt as to the captain's attitude towards him when the launch had run alongside the steamer, and he had climbed the ladder to the deck. Brant met him as he stepped aboard, but ignored his presence, and called down to Bully Cheeseman and the two men who had remained in the launch—

"Now turn her right round and go back again to the same spot. You know what to do. You'll find Mr. Nugent waiting for you, I guess."

"Aye, aye, sir," came out of the darkness, and Leslie heard the tick-tack of the motor as the little craft sped for the shore. He could hardly believe his ears. Why should a second trip be necessary, and why should Nugent, who had declined to accompany him to the beach, be waiting there now, when his car had left The Hut shortly after his own departure?

"Good evening, captain," he said, forcing himself to speak civilly. "Is it not rather risky to hang about off shore now that I am aboard?"

Brant's baleful eyes blazed like coals of fire in the blackness of the darkened ship. "And who the h—ll are you, sir, to dictate to me what's a risk and what isn't?" the commander of the Cobra piped in his shrill falsetto. "I understand that it's your damned foolishness that's made all this jiggery-pokery necessary. A nice one to talk about risks, when we're taking them on your account. You just have patience, and amuse yourself till I have time to attend to you."

He swung on his heel and mounted the stairs to the bridge, where he entered into a low-voiced colloquy with one of his subordinates. Only a few words of it reached Leslie, but they were enough to show that a keen look-out was being kept for the approach of fishing or other small boats to the steamer. That was all in order. Being engaged in the punishable offence of assisting a fugitive from justice to escape arrest it was intelligible that the captain should be anxious to cover the traces of his misdemeanour. But why the delay? Why the return trip of the launch to the shore, where, so far as he was aware, she had fulfilled her mission in bringing him safely off?

He could find no satisfactory answers to the questions, and, giving up the attempt, he tried to accept the situation philosophically. Not knowing what accommodation had been allotted to him, he could not seek his cabin; so he put his handbag down on the deck and set to pacing to and fro. It was so dark that it was almost impossible to distinguish objects close at hand, and though the crew were evidently alert and at their stations, he could make nothing of them individually. The discipline was perfect.

He passed and repassed ghostlike figures on his promenade, sometimes singly and sometimes in groups, but they never spoke in so much as a whisper. The silence of the dead reigned over the ship.

He tired of walking at last, and, leaning over the stern-rail, let his eyes range towards the twinkling lights of distant Ottermouth. At this late hour they were momentarily growing fewer, only the larger residences on the hill behind the town showing up in bold relief, and the row of lodging-houses on the parade flanked by the more brilliant glow from the billiard-room of the club. The sight of the quiet haven which had yielded him a short and fickle respite renewed his remorse and filled him with regret. Such joys as the placid little pleasure-haunt had to offer were not for him. His proper place was on the scrap-heap of human failures.

The depression found vent in a sigh that was more than half a groan, and he was immediately surprised to hear it echoed near by. Turning sharply, he discerned the dim outline of a woman also leaning over the stern-rail within a few feet of him.

"Don't mind me," she said, noticing his start. "I expect I shouldn't have made any sound if you hadn't let on that you had the blues too. Sighing is pretty near as catching as yawning, I've been told, and now I know it's true."

Leslie could not see her features—only that she was tall and finely-built. He wondered who the woman could be, for he had not been informed by Nugent of the engagement of any female attendants.

"Perhaps your case is the same as my own—that you are not looking forward to the voyage with pleasure?" he said kindly.

Miss Nettle Jimpson uttered a short laugh. "At any rate, you are starting of your own free will," she said. "At least I suppose so, for I was watching you when you came aboard just now, and you didn't make any bones about it. It's different with me. That monkey-faced little devil on the bridge never gave me the option, but just shipped me like a bale of goods to suit his own convenience."

"But surely——" Leslie was beginning.

"Oh, don't make any mistake! I was a consenting party as soon as I heard the terms," Miss Jimpson cut him short, drawing a little nearer. "I'm an avaricious sort of beast, and the prospect of a quick haul tempted me to take Captain Brant's practical joke lying down. You see, I've got a young man in the navy, and it seemed a shorter cut to setting up housekeeping than serving behind the counter in a draper's shop. I acted on the spur of the moment, as I always do, and lucky for the captain I did, or he'd have got his ugly face scratched."

"May I ask what position you hold on board—for what duties you were engaged?" asked Leslie. The voluble young person puzzled him.

"Oh, I'm a kind of mix between a stewardess and a maid to the lady passenger, I believe, though that old rascal baited the hook by calling me a companion."

"The lady passenger?" Leslie repeated blankly.

"Yes, and that leads up to what I wanted to ask you. Why didn't she come out to the steamer with you? You see, if it's an elopement, it will smooth it down for me a lot. I'm that romantic I shall be really interested, instead of grizzling all the time till we get back. Some hitch in your young lady's getting off, I suppose, as the launch had to go back to fetch her? Brant has been like a cat on hot bricks ever since we sighted that little town yonder, lest something should go wrong. I hope it hasn't, for your sake. I should be sorry for anything in the shape of an angry parent to break the spell of love's young dream, having been there myself."

Leslie thought he understood. His dimly-seen companion at the stern-rail had been "shipped," as she called it, while the ship was lying in the London docks weeks before, when the original plot for the abduction of Violet Maynard held good. She had been informed of half the vile plot in which he had then been an accomplice—that the yacht belonged to him, and that it was being used for an elopement. She was still in that belief, the darker side of the story having been kept from her, and she was under the delusion that she would have a lady to wait on during the voyage.

But why, Leslie asked himself, had the delusion been fostered so long after Nugent, and through him, of course, Brant, had been aware of the breakdown of the conspiracy? Why, for the matter of that, was the woman on board at all, since there would be no unhappy captive for whom her services would be required? The obvious thing to have done would have been to put her ashore at Weymouth directly the wicked project was abandoned.

"There must be some mistake," he said. "I am sorry to spoil your romantic anticipations, but I am certainly not eloping with anybody. So far as I know, I am to be the only passenger."

"Then what's that old liar's game?" blurted Miss Jimpson. "Only this morning, when he had the cheek to keep me aboard, he said——"

"Only this morning," Leslie interrupted in dull amazement. "Do you mean that only to-day for the first time you made the acquaintance of Brant?"

"That is precisely what I do mean. I never saw him or his ship till this morning at eleven o'clock in the harbour at Weymouth. The yarn he pitched me then was that he was going to pick up a lady down along the coast, and that he wanted one of her own sex to keep her company. 'Tis true he did not say anything about an elopement. It was me who figured that out after you came aboard alone and the launch went back for the lady."

"Went back for the lady!" gasped Leslie, a lurid light beginning to dawn upon his dazed senses.

"Well, I expect it's one of my own sex; I don't suppose all the pretty frilly things Brant ordered and paid for, and which I brought on board, were for you or any other gentleman," was Miss Nettle Jimpson's pert rejoinder. "That's what gave me the elopement notion, don't you see—a girl running away on the quiet, and in too much of a pucker to bring her own trunks. And I'm right, after all! Here's the launch back again, and just listen to that!"

Leslie had been conscious of the clack of the electric motor for the last thirty seconds, but now, as it sounded close under the side of the steamer, slowing down at the foot of the accommodation ladder, it was supplemented by the clear tones of a woman's voice—the well-loved tones which he had never thought to hear again, and which rather than hear in that place he would gladly have died a hundred deaths.

For it was the voice of Violet Maynard, self-possessed and confident, assuring the crew of the launch that she was quite accustomed to climbing up the side of a yacht in the dark, and that she would need no help but that of her own hands to scale the dangling rope-ladder.

The truth in all its naked horror burst upon Leslie at last. The original object of the plot had been gained in spite of his own defection. Travers Nugent had been playing a deep and subtle part, and by some trick had prevailed on the girl to place herself in the power of her enemies. In another minute she would be hopelessly in the toils, and the Cobra, having gorged her prey, would be steaming at the full speed of her powerful engines on her long voyage to distant Sindkhote.

His memory flew back to the tinselled splendour of the Maharajah's palace, then to the satanic countenance of its owner, and to all the terrors that these implied for the girl in whose foul betrayal he was at any rate a link in the chain. He turned in despair to the odd young woman whose narrative was now quite intelligible.

"I don't know your name, but you sound honest and true, and I'm going to appeal to you," he whispered hoarsely. "They have lured that lady to the ship in ignorance that she is to be kidnapped abroad. I am going to try to prevent it, but I shall probably fail and be killed in the next few minutes. If so, I beseech you to be this poor girl's friend to the best of your power. The vessel is manned by reckless outlaws."

Without waiting for a reply, he sprang forward to the head of the accommodation ladder and shinned down it into the launch. There was not much sense in the forlorn hope—only a wild longing to do something, and to stake all, life itself, on the chance that he might prevail by surprise. If he could disable the crew of the launch before they realized that they were being attacked he might sheer off and get away in the darkness.

Violet was reaching for the rope rungs of the ladder as he half fell into the little craft, nearly knocking her down in his staggering onrush. Then, steadying himself, he sent his fists crashing right and left into the faces of two men who clutched at him, ducked to avoid a third, and in doing so tripped and fell headlong to the bottom of the boat.

Before he could recover himself a heavy knee was grinding into his chest, and the muzzle of a revolver made a cold circle on his forehead.

"What in thunder is all that racket about?" came down Captain Brant's squeaky hail from the bridge.

"It's the cove we brought off last trip making a bid for freedom, but I've fair downed him," went up Bully Cheeseman's reply. "Shall I shoot?"

"No," said Brant. "I want him for something better than that. I'll send a hand down with some rope. Then you can truss him up, and we'll hoist him aboard."