o the cockpit of the motorboat, and a moment later he
found Lucetta beside him, staring wildly and clinging to him as if he
were her only hope.

"Wha-what are they doing to us now?" she quavered, and as she spoke the
grumbling machinery in the depths below roared a louder note, and the
big motor-craft cut a careening half-circle in midstream, leaving the
birch-bark to dance and wabble in the converging area of the furrowing
bow wave. By this time Prime had shaken himself fully awake. The two
deck-hands who had pulled him and Lucetta aboard had disappeared, and
the big man who had been bullying Macdougal was at the wheel. There was
a single electric bulb in the centre of the cockpit awning, and by its
light Prime had his first good look at the big steersman.

"_Grider!_" he exploded, taking a step toward the man at the wheel; and
at that Miss Lucetta Millington drew herself up icily and turned her
back.

XX

WATSON GRIDER

PRIME had often made his fictional heroes "see red" in exceptionally
vigorous crises, and he was now able to verify the colorful figure of
speech in his own proper person. Like a submerging wave the recollection
of all that the heartless joke might have meant to a pair of helpless
victims--of all that it had actually entailed in hardships and peril and
sickness--rushed over him as he faced the handsome young giant at the
wheel of the motor-cruiser.

"So it _was_ you, after all!" he gritted. Then: "There are some few
things that won't keep, Grider. Put this boat ashore where we can have a
little more room. The account between us is too long to wait for
daylight!"

The barbarian's answer to this was a shout of derisive laughter, and he
made a show of putting the small steering-wheel between himself and his
belligerent passenger.

"Give me time, Don--just a little time to take it all in!" he gurgled.
"Oh, my sainted grandmother! what a perfectly ripping fling you must
have had, to make you turn loose all holds like this! And the
lady--won't you--won't you introduce me?"

Lucetta faced about, and, if a look could have crippled, the
motor-cruiser would have lost its steersman.

"Cousin Donald has tried to tell me about you, but the reality is worse
than he or anybody could put into words!" she broke out in indignant
scorn. "Of all the inhuman, dastardly things that have ever been done in
the name of a practical joke, yours