e rail could see a dusky and quietly moving figure, the faded blue of
a denim garment, the brown of bare arms, or the sinews of a straining
neck. Once he caught the whites of a pair of eyes turned up towards
the ship's deck. He could also see the running and wavering lines of
fire as the oars puddled and backed in the phosphorescent water under
the gloomy steel hull. Then he heard a low-toned argument in Spanish.
A moment later the flotilla of small boats had fastened to the ship's
side, like a litter of suckling pigs to a sow's breast. Every light
went out again, every light except a faint glow as a guide to the first
boat at the foot of the landing-ladder. Along this ladder Blake could
hear barefooted figures padding and grunting as cases and bales were
cautiously carried down and passed from boat to boat.

He swung nervously about as he felt a hand clutch his arm. He found
Tankred speaking quietly into his ear.

"There 'll be one boat over," that worthy was explaining. "One
boat--you take that--the last one! And you 'd better give the
_guinney_ a ten-dollar bill for his trouble!"

"All right! I 'm ready!" was Blake's low-toned reply as he started to
move forward with the other man.

"Not yet! Not yet!" was the other's irritable warning, as Blake felt
himself pushed back. "You stay where you are! We 've got a
half-hour's hard work ahead of us yet!"

As Blake leaned over the rail again, watching and listening, he began
to realize that the work was indeed hard, that there was some excuse
for Tankred's ill-temper. Most men, he acknowledged, would feel the
strain, where one misstep or one small mistake might undo the work of
months. Beyond that, however, Blake found little about which to
concern himself. Whether it was legal or illegal did not enter his
mind. That a few thousand tin-sworded soldiers should go armed or
unarmed was to him a matter of indifference. It was something not of
his world. It did not impinge on his own jealously guarded circle of
activity, on his own task of bringing a fugitive to justice. And as
his eyes strained through the gloom at the cluster of lights far ahead
in the roadstead he told himself that it was there that his true goal
lay, for it was there that the _Trunella_ must ride at anchor and
Binhart must be.

Then he looked wonderingly back at the flotilla under the rail, for he
realized that every movement and murmur of life there had come to a
sudden stop. It wa