* * * * *

It was puzzling--inconceivable. Thorpe looked about him to note the
lifeboats snug and undisturbed in their places. No sign there of an
abandonment of the boat, but abandoned she was, as the silence told
only too plainly. And Thorpe, as he went below, had an uncanny feeling
of the crew's presence--as if they had been there, walked where he
walked, shouted and laughed a matter of a brief hour or two before.

The door of the captain's cabin was burst in, hanging drunkenly from
one hinge. The log-book was open; there were papers on a rude desk.
The bunk was empty where the blankets had been thrown hurriedly
aside. Thorpe could almost see the skipper of this mystery ship
leaping frantically from his bed at some sudden call or commotion. A
chair was smashed and broken, and the man who examined it curiously
wiped from his hands a disgusting slime that was smeared stickily on
the splintered fragments. There was a fetid stench within his
nostrils, and he passed up further examination of this room.

Forward in the fo'c'sle he felt again irresistibly the recent presence
of the crew. And again he found silence and emptiness and a disorder
that told of a fear-stricken flight. The odor that sickened and
nauseated the exploring man was everywhere. He was glad to gain the
freedom of the wind-swept deck and rid his lungs of the vile breath
within the vessel.

He stood silent and bewildered. There was not a living soul aboard the
ship--no sign of life. He started suddenly. A moaning, whimpering cry
came from forward on the deck!

Thorpe leaped across a disorder of tangled rope to race toward the
bow. He stopped short at sight of a battered cage. Again the moaning
came to him--there was something that still lived on board the
ill-fated ship.

* * * * *

He drew closer to see a great, huddled, furry mass that crouched and
cowered in a corner of the cage. A huge ape, Thorpe concluded, and it
moaned and whimpered absurdly like a human in abject fear.

Had this been the terror that drove the men into the sea? Had this ape
escaped and menaced the officers and crew? Thorpe dismissed the
thought he well knew was absurd. The stout wood bars of the cage were
broken. It had been partially crushed, and the chain that held it to
the deck was extended to its full length.

"Too much for me," the man said slowly, aloud; "entirely too much for
me! But I can't sail this old