e escape through the entrance before
it passed whirling and murmuring and its bell sounds all joyous. Da!
It was what you call the squeak close, that."

"Wait a moment," I said--stilling Larry with a gesture. "Do I
understand you to say that you were within this place?"

Marakinoff actually beamed upon me.

"Da, Dr. Goodwin," he said, "I went in when that which comes from it
went out!"

I gaped at him, stricken dumb; into Larry's bellicose attitude crept a
suggestion of grudging respect; Olaf, trembling, watched silently.

"Dr. Goodwin and my impetuous young friend, you," went on Marakinoff
after a moment's silence and I wondered vaguely why he did not include
Huldricksson in his address--"it is time that we have an
understanding. I have a proposal to make to you also. It is this; we
are what you call a bad boat, and all of us are in it. Da! We need all
hands, is it not so? Let us put together our knowledge and our brains
and resources--and even a poonch of a mule is a resource," he looked
wickedly at O'Keefe, "and pull our boat into quiet waters again. After
that--"

"All very well, Marakinoff," interjected Larry, "but I don't feel very
safe in any boat with somebody capable of shooting me through the
back."

Marakinoff waved a deprecatory hand.

"It was natural that," he said, "logical, da! Here is a very great
secret, perhaps many secrets to my country invaluable--" He paused,
shaken by some overpowering emotion; the veins in his forehead grew
congested, the cold eyes blazed and the guttural voice harshened.

"I do not apologize and I do not explain," rasped Marakinoff. "But I
will tell you, da! Here is my country sweating blood in an experiment
to liberate the world. And here are the other nations ringing us like
wolves and waiting to spring at our throats at the least sign of
weakness. And here are you, Lieutenant O'Keefe of the English wolves,
and you Dr. Goodwin of the Yankee pack--and here in this place may be
that will enable my country to win its war for the worker. What are
the lives of you two and this sailor to that? Less than the flies I
crush with my hand, less than midges in the sunbeam!"

He suddenly gripped himself.

"But that is not now the important thing," he resumed, almost coldly.
"Not that nor my shooting. Let us squarely the situation face. My
proposal is so: that we join interests, and what you call see it
through together; find our way through this place and those secrets
lea