e him in his
excitement.

"You know which house? Let's go there. Maybe we can hear what they're
saying. Can we get under it?"

She nodded.

"Let's try, Anina," he said eagerly. "You steer us slow right under it,
just as if you were going past. If there's nobody in sight you can stop
underneath, can't you? Maybe we can hear what they're saying."

"I try," the girl said simply.

"I'll lay still," encouraged Mercer. "Nobody will bother about you. Just
sneak in and see what happens. If anybody sees you, keep going."

He was all excitement, and in spite of Anina's protests wriggled about
continually, trying to see where they were.

The house that the girl had pointed out lay only a few hundred yards
ahead. It was one of the largest of the wooden buildings--sixty or seventy
feet long at least--single story, with a high sloping thatched roof.

It was raised on a platform some six feet above the water, which, in
front, had a little flight of wooden steps leading down to the surface.
There was a hundred feet of open water on all sides of the building. The
boat, moving slowly, slipped through the water almost without a sound.

"Where are we now?" Mercer whispered impatiently. "Aren't we there yet?"

The girl put a finger to her lips. "Almost there. Quiet now."

She steered straight for the house. There was no one in sight, either
about the house itself or about those in its immediate vicinity. A moment
more and the boat slid beneath the building into semidarkness.

Anina shut the power off and stood up. The floor of the house was just
above her head. In front of her, near the center of the building, she saw
the side walls of an inner inclosure some twenty feet square. These walls
came down to the surface, making a room like a basement to the dwelling. A
broad doorway, with a sliding door that now stood open, gave ingress.

The boat had now almost lost headway. Anina nosed its bow into this
doorway, and grasping one of the pilings near at hand, brought it to rest.

Mercer, at a signal from her, climbed cautiously to his feet, still
holding the little light-ray cylinder in his hand.

"What's that in there?" he whispered.

Beyond the doorway, through which the bow of the boat projected, there was
complete darkness.

"Lower room," Anina whispered back. "Store things in there. And boat
landing, too."

"Let's go in and see."

Mercer started toward the bow of the boat. Six feet or more of it was
inside the doorway