oolies until they disappeared behind a row of pine-trees on
the Presidio Reservation, going cityward. Wilbur was nowhere in sight.
For a longtime Hoang studied the Lifeboat Station narrowly, while he
made a great show of coiling a length of rope. The station was just out
of hailing distance. Nobody seemed stirring. The whole shore and back
land thereabout was deserted; the edge of the city was four miles
distant. Hoang returned to the forecastle-hatch and went below, groping
under his bunk in his ditty-box.

"Well, what is it?" exclaimed Moran a moment later, as the beach-comber
entered the cabin, and shut the door behind him.

Hoang did not answer; but she did not need to repeat the question. In an
instant Moran knew very well what he had come for.

"God!" she exclaimed under her breath, springing to her feet. "Why
didn't we think of this!"

Hoang slipped his knife from the sleeve of his blouse. For an instant
the old imperiousness, the old savage pride and anger, leaped again in
Moran's breast--then died away forever. She was no longer the same Moran
of that first fight on board the schooner, when the beach-combers had
plundered her of her "loot." Only a few weeks ago, and she would have
fought with Hoang without hesitation and without mercy; would have
wrenched a leg from the table and brained him where he stood. But she
had learned since to know what it meant to be dependent; to rely
for protection upon some one who was stronger than she; to know her
weakness; to know that she was at last a woman, and to be proud of it.

She did not fight; she had no thought of fighting. Instinctively she
cried aloud, "Mate--mate!--Oh, mate, where are you? Help me!" and
Hoang's knife nailed the words within her throat.

The "loot" was in a brass-bound chest under one of the cabin's bunks,
stowed in two gunny-bags. Hoang drew them out, knotted the two together,
and, slinging them over his shoulder, regained the deck.

He looked carefully at the angry sky and swelling seas, noting the
direction of the wind and set of the tide; then went forward and cast
the anchor-chains from the windlass in such a manner that the schooner
must inevitably wrench free with the first heavy strain. The dory was
still tugging at the line astern. Hoang dropped the sacks in the boat,
swung himself over the side, and rowed calmly toward the station's
wharf. If any notion of putting to sea with the schooner had entered the
obscure, perverted cunning of