g in the form of a weapon I possessed, and the manner in which I
gripped it improvised it into a hilted dagger, although I remember
keeping it more for evidence against Meeker than for any other purpose.
If the sly rascal was still making a fool of Riggs, or denied that he had
been below, I felt that his crucifix would be proof against him which he
could not deny.

When I emerged from the hood of the companionway I found a high wind was
drenching the deck with spray and everything was black and wet and
slippery. The vessel was labouring, and, although there was nothing that
could be called a storm, she was bucking into head-swells that rattled
her from stem to stern, and the gusts of wind whipped the tips of the
waves across her fore-deck spitefully and without warning.

There were probably twenty feet of open well-deck between me and the foot
of the ladder leading to the saloon-deck, and, then, I had the dark
passageway to traverse for another thirty or forty feet aft before I
could gain my room.

I braced myself between the hood of the companion and a thrumming
ventilator and listened for some hostile sound. I was conscious of dim
forms all about me, although I could not see them, and I felt as if I had
blundered into a desperate game of hide-and-seek.

Thrusting my hands before me into the darkness, I stumbled toward the
ladder. As I was about to grasp it I encountered a wet jacket, and the
next instant I found myself gripped in a pair of arms. The fingers of my
enemy shut on the light fabric of my pajama-jacket. I struck at him with
the point of the crucifix and landed a glancing blow in his face, for the
knuckles of my hand brushed his jaw.

The sharp edge must have cut him, for he uttered a stifled groan, and as
he recoiled from me, partly from my blow and partly as the result of a
deep roll of the vessel, I wriggled out of my jacket and ran forward. In
my flight I bumped into ventilators, stumbled over a hatch-coaming and
pulled myself along the swaying rail-chains toward the bow of the vessel.
In the scuffle I had lost the crucifix, but I had also escaped from the
man who had grabbed me, and, while I was in a panic and did not know
where I was going, I hoped to be able to regain the ladder on the port
side and get back to my room once I had thrown my assailant off my track.

I reached the break of the forecastle head, but did not go into the bows,
because I knew I could not hope to escape from them if I did