as being made clean within.... The Glow-worm could not be
silent, muttered constantly to the Chinese. "... You shall go back to
South America with me. I shall be very good to you.... Oh, do open some
wine, Boy! I am so very thirsty!" and on, until she saw the face of
Framtree, moodily watching. She sank into a chair shuddering, and
covered her face. "Don't look at me so horribly!" she cried. "Ask
Senorita Mallory about it--ask her about me."

He jerked up, but did not answer at once. The Glow-worm screamed at him
to speak.

Framtree crossed the cabin, and dropped his huge hand upon her shaking
shoulder.

"I have nothing to say, Senora.... It was a matter between you and
him.... But I'm glad to help you. It bowled me over a little, that's
all."

His voice was big in the hush that had fallen upon the cabin....
Framtree helped the Chinese carry forth the weighted body.... As it
paused for an instant on the gunwale, the searchlight from Jaffier's
gunboat flicked athwart the _Savonarola_--sinister tableaux in its
ghostly light.... Without a sound the Glow-worm fell backward to the
cabin floor, as if touched by the finger of the Destroying Angel.
Bedient worked upon her until consciousness was restored.

"What next in this terrible night?" Miss Mallory asked in an awed
voice, when Bedient rejoined her.

"Such an end has hung over him for more years than we have lived," he
said. "I call it rather wonderful--as it came about. Hundreds of men
will continue to live because of this death. It means an end of
war-making, the release of this turbulent spirit."

Bedient turned to the light. She saw the red stain upon the breast of
his coat.

He glanced down, and felt in the inner pocket. "It's the red chalk," he
said with a laugh. "It got crushed somehow, and it was oily. The
forecastle melted it."

...Plainly at this moment they both heard the sound of a steamer's
screw--ahead. But there were no lights. Bedient took the wheel and
brought the _Savonarola_ sheering away to the south of the sound, which
had stopped abruptly.

Nothing was seen, not even a denser shadow in the moonless dark.
Framtree joined them, and they waited expectantly for Jaffier's index
of light to pick up the mystery. Ten minutes passed before the gunboat,
following doggedly, and whipping her light over sea, suddenly uncovered
the dark from a big tramp steamer, aimed at the Inlet. For an instant
it was lost again, but the searchlight swept back, gro