cept
with Rodman's assistance. The only chance lay in convincing him, and
that must be done at any cost. This was no time for selecting methods.

"I don't have to tell a syllable of your plans," he contended,
desperately. "They will go with me without asking the reason. I have
only to see them. You have my life in your hands: you can go with me.
You can disarm me, and keep me in view every moment of the time. You
can kill me at the first false move. You can----"

"Cut out the tommy-rot," interrupted Rodman, with fierce bluntness. "I
can do better than that, and you know it. My word on this ship goes
the same as if I were an admiral. I can say to the captain that you
assaulted me, and it will be my testimony against yours. I can have
you put in irons, and thrown down in the hold, and, by God, I'm going
to do it!" The man moved toward the cabin bell, and halted with his
finger near the button. "Now, damn you! my platform is _Vegas y
Libertad_, and I'm not the sucker I may have seemed. If this is a
trick of yours, you aren't going to have the chance to turn it."

"Give me a moment," pleaded Saxon. He realized with desperation that
every word the other spoke was true, that he was helpless unless he
could be convincing.

"Listen, Rodman," he hurried on, ready to surrender everything else if
he could carry his own point. "For God's sake, listen to me! You
trusted me in the first place. I could have left the boat at any
point, and wired back!" He looked into the face of the other man so
steadily and with such hypnotic intensity that his own eyes were the
strongest argument of truth he could have put forward.

"You say I have distrusted you, that I have not admitted my identity
as Carter. I don't care a rap for my life. I'm not fighting for that
now. I have no designs on you or your designs. Let me put a
hypothetical question: Suppose you had come to a point where your
past life was nothing more to you than the life of another man--a man
you hated as your deadliest enemy; suppose you lived in a world that
was as different from the old one as though it had never existed;
suppose a woman had guided you into that new world, would you, or
would you not, turn your back on the old? Suppose you learned as
suddenly as I learned, from you, on deck, that that woman was in
danger, would you, or would you not, go to her?"

Men rarely find the most eloquent or convincing words when they stand
at sudden crises, but usually men's voice