that point where they mysteriously cease to register and one has
to wait a minute or two to pick up the throb again.

For years he had lived more or less in the open, which attunes the human
ear to sounds that generally pass unnoticed. All at once he was sure that
he had heard the tinkle of glass, but he waited. The tinkle was repeated.
Instinct led him at once to the forward passage, and one glance down this
was sufficient. From the thought of a drunken orgy--the thing he had been
fearing since the beginning of this mad voyage--his thought leaped to
Jane. Thus his subsequent acts were indirectly in her defense.

"What the devil are you up to there?" he called.

The unexpectedness of the challenge disconcerted the men. They had enough
loot. A quick retreat, and Dennison would have had nothing to do but close
the dry-stores door. But middle twenties are belligerent rather than
discreet.

"What you got to say about it?" jeered one of the men, shifting his brace
of bottles to the arms of another and squaring off.

Dennison rushed them, and the melee began. It was a strenuous affair
while it lasted. When a strong man is full of anger and bitter
disappointment, when six young fellows are bored to distraction, nothing
is quite so satisfying as an exchange of fisticuffs. Dennison had the
advantage of being able to hit right and left, at random, while his
opponents were not always sure that a blow landed where it was directed.

Naturally the racket drew Cleigh to the scene, and he arrived in time to
see a champagne bottle descend upon the head of his son. Dennison went
down.

Cleigh, boiling with impotent fury, had gone to bed, not to sleep but to
plan; some way round the rogue, to trip him and regain the treasures that
meant so much to him. Like father, like son. When he saw what was going on
in the passage he saw also that here was something that linked up with his
mood. Of course it was to defend the son; but without the bitter rage and
the need of physical expression he would have gone for the hidden revolver
and settled the affair with that. Instead he flew at the men with the
savageness of a gray wolf. He was a tower of a man, for all his sixty
years; and he had mauled three of the crew severely before Cunningham
arrived.

Why had the mutinous six offered battle? Why hadn't they retreated with
good sense at the start? Originally all they had wanted was the wine. Why
stop to fight when the wine was theirs? In the