e no reply other than: "Wait here a minute, Brent. I
have something to show you."

* * * * *

He had not told the officer of his mission nor of his experience, but
he did so now. And he placed before him the wildly improbable
statement of the late Captain Wilkins.

"Something is there," surmised Captain Brent, "just awash,
probably--no superstructure visible. Your _Minnie R._ hit the same
thing."

"Something is there," Thorpe agreed. "I wish I knew what."

"This stuff has got to you, has it?" asked Brent as he returned the
papers of Captain Wilkins. He was quite evidently amused at the
thought.

"You weren't on the ship," said Thorpe, simply. "There was nothing to
see--nothing to tell. But I know...."

He followed Brent to the wireless room.

"Can you get the _Nagasaki_?" Brent asked.

"They know we are coming, sir," said the operator. "We seem to be the
only one anywhere near."

He handed the captain another message. "Something odd about that," he
said.

"_U. S. S. Bennington_," the captain read aloud. "We are still afloat.
On even keel now, but low in water. No water coming in. Engines full
speed ahead, but we make no headway. Apparently aground. _Nagasaki
Maru._"

"Why, that's impossible," Brent exclaimed impatiently. "What kind of
foolishness--" He left the question uncompleted. The radio man was
writing rapidly. Some message was coming at top speed. Both Brent and
Thorpe leaned over the man's shoulder to read as he wrote.

"_Bennington_ help," the pencil was writing, "sinking fast--decks
almost awash--we are being--"

In breathless silence they watched the pencil, poised above the paper
while the operator listened tensely to the silent night.

* * * * *

Again his ear received the wild jumble of dots and dashes sent by a
frenzied hand in that far-off room. His pencil automatically set down
the words. "Help--help--" it wrote before Thorpe's spellbound gaze,
"the eyes--the eyes--it is attack--"

And again the black night held only the rush and roar of torn waters
where the destroyer raced quivering through the darkness. The message,
as the waiting men well knew, would never be completed.

"A derelict!" Robert Thorpe exclaimed with unconscious scorn. But
Captain Brent was already at a communication tube.

"Chief? Captain Brent. Give her everything you've got. Drive the
_Bennington_ faster than she ever went before."

The slim shi