invested in some land up the
river and I'm going up to have a look at it."

The stranger had made up his mind. He looked round to make sure he was
not observed or overheard.

"There's a little cabin on the foredeck of the Cormorant," he said.
"It isn't used nowadays. Nobody on board. Move fast."

He wheeled and was gone.

Payne and Higgins slipped swiftly through the jungle to the farther
side of the key where the Cormorant lay moored. A rush into the water
and they were on the starboard side of the boat and hidden from the
shore. In another moment they were over the low rail onto the deck and
crawling into the lower cabin and forward beneath the wheelhouse.

"Whew!" Higgins sniffed at the strange odor that greeted them. "What
is it--arsenic?"

"Shut the door. Good! Things are working fine."

"It's a darn funny way to go looking at land."

"But it's a way, and that's what we're after."

"Smells like a morgue in here."

"Ssh!"

With his eyes at a crack in the door Roger saw the crew coming aboard.
The engineer was in the lead; behind him came the captain, a tall man
of vicious appearance, and a half-naked mulatto deckhand.

"Hard eggs, those two; that engineer doesn't belong in their company."

"Nope; he doesn't belong here at all," whispered Higgins. "He tries to
look the part and doesn't quite make it. Wonder what his game is?"

"There goes the Swastika."

A sharp whistle announced the departure of the larger boat. Presently
there came floating over the water, over the key, the quaint, plaintive
sound of untrained voices enthusiastically raised in song. Roger
smiled grimly as he pressed his ear to the crack and caught the faint
words:

"Shall we gather at the river?
The beautiful, the beautiful river----"

Granger's voice was distinguished above the rest; he was on the job; he
was leading his shorn flock back from the gates of Paradise to the tune
of a hymn. At Flora City, Granger, being through with this flock,
would quit it; and ere its members, obstructed time after time in their
efforts to reach the Colony, would disperse, Granger, in a new field,
would be laying his snares for fresh victims.

In a few minutes the hull of the Cormorant began to throb with the
drive of her powerful engines. With no word of command she slid
silently away from her mooring to the deep channel and began to drive
her way upstream at a speed that caused Roger and Higgins to look at
one another.