wn's_ redoubtable skipper. Ruth was the kernel of that
grudge.

And, oddly enough, he had a queer companion also wishing they might be
compelled to battle the Japanese. It was none other than Charley Bo
Yip, the cook.

Yip hated the Japanese with a furious hatred, if the garbled words that
dropped from his smiling lips were to be believed. He hated them
individually and nationally. And he sharpened, ostentatiously, a
meat-cleaver, and proclaimed his intention of procuring a Jap's head as
a trophy, should they have trouble.

"Me China boy, all same Melican," he told Martin, as he industriously
turned the grindstone beneath the cleaver's edge. "Me like all same
lepublic--me fight like devil all same time when China war. Now Jap he
come take China. No good. Me kill um Jap. Velly good. All same chop
um head, chop, chop!"

And Yip waved his cleaver over his head, and a seraphic smile lighted
his bland, unwarlike face.

At last, on the sixty-eighth day of the passage, Martin came on deck
for the morning watch and found the vessel bouncing along under
unaccustomed blue skies, and with a fair breeze. The boatswain went
below, swiggling himself very stiff with the fervent hope that no
bleeding Jonah would interrupt the course before the next eight bells,
and Ruth took up an expectant watch with the glasses handy. Captain
Dabney also kept the deck. Martin knew the landfall was expected.

At the middle of the watch, a squall sent Martin racing aloft to furl
the royal. It was then that his sea-sharpened sight raised the land.

His hail to the deck aroused the ship. By the time he had finished his
descent from aloft, all hands were at the rail, endeavoring each to
pick up the distant speck.

Four bells had gone while he was aloft, and he strode aft to take his
wheel. As he passed along the poop, he heard Ruth say--

"If the breeze holds, we'll be inside in a couple of hours."

Captain Dabney turned his old, sea-wise face to the wind. After a
moment, he shook his head.

"I feel fog," he said.

CHAPTER XIII

FIRE MOUNTAIN

Within the hour, Captain Dabney's words bore fruit. The spanking
ten-knot breeze dropped abruptly to a gentle four-knot power. Then in
the twinkling of an eye, as it were, the fog enveloped them.

Martin, at the wheel, was straining his eyes, trying to make out the
land ahead that he had seen from aloft. Abruptly before his eyes rose
a wall of opaque gray.

It was a ty