ruptly as before. I saw the helmsman
straighten up and bring the wheel about with a vicious jerk.

He stood so for a moment, looking straight ahead, entirely oblivious
of us, and then seemed again to sink down within himself. It came to
me that his was the action of a man striving vainly against a
weariness unutterable. I swept the deck with my glasses. There was no
other sign of life. I turned to find the Portuguese staring intently
and with puzzled air at the sloop, now separated from us by a scant
half mile.

"Something veree wrong I think there, sair," he said in his curious
English. "The man on deck I know. He is captain and owner of the
Br-rwun'ild. His name Olaf Huldricksson, what you say--Norwegian. He
is eithair veree sick or veree tired--but I do not undweerstand where
is the crew and the starb'd boat is gone--"

He shouted an order to the engineer and as he did so the faint breeze
failed and the sails of the Brunhilda flapped down inert. We were now
nearly abreast and a scant hundred yards away. The engine of the
Suwarna died and the Tonga boys leaped to one of the boats.

"You Olaf Huldricksson!" shouted Da Costa. "What's a matter wit'
you?"

The man at the wheel turned toward us. He was a giant; his shoulders
enormous, thick chested, strength in every line of him, he towered
like a viking of old at the rudder bar of his shark ship.

I raised the glass again; his face sprang into the lens and never have
I seen a visage lined and marked as though by ages of unsleeping
misery as was that of Olaf Huldricksson!

The Tonga boys had the boat alongside and were waiting at the oars.
The little captain was dropping into it.

"Wait!" I cried. I ran into my cabin, grasped my emergency medical
kit and climbed down the rope ladder. The Tonga boys bent to the oars.
We reached the side and Da Costa and I each seized a lanyard dangling
from the stays and swung ourselves on board. Da Costa approached
Huldricksson softly.

"What's the matter, Olaf?" he began--and then was silent, looking down
at the wheel. The hands of Huldricksson were lashed fast to the spokes
by thongs of thin, strong cord; they were swollen and black and the
thongs had bitten into the sinewy wrists till they were hidden in the
outraged flesh, cutting so deeply that blood fell, slow drop by drop,
at his feet! We sprang toward him, reaching out hands to his fetters
to loose them. Even as we touched them, Huldricksson aimed a vicious
kick at m