s a cessation of all sound, a silence as ominously
complete as that of a summer woodland when a hawk soars overhead. Even
the small light deep in the bottom of the first _lancha_ tied to the
landing-ladder had been suddenly quenched.

Blake, staring apprehensively out into the gloom, caught the sound of a
soft and feverish throbbing. His disturbed mind had just registered
the conclusion that this sound must be the throbbing of a passing
marine-engine, when the thought was annihilated by a second and more
startling occurrence.

Out across the blackness in front of him suddenly flashed a white saber
of light. For one moment it circled and wavered restlessly about,
feeling like a great finger along the gray surface of the water. Then
it smote full on Blake and the deck where he stood, blinding him with
its glare, picking out every object and every listening figure as
plainly as a calcium picks out a scene on the stage.

Without conscious thought Blake dropped lower behind the ship's rail.
He sank still lower, until he found himself down on his hands and knees
beside a rope coil. As he did so he heard the call of a challenging
Spanish voice, a murmur of voices, and then a repeated command.

There was no answer to this challenge. Then came another command and
then silence again. Then a faint thrill arrowed through Blake's
crouching body, for from somewhere close behind him a gun-shot rang out
and was repeated again and again. Blake knew, at that sound, that
Tankred or one of his men was firing straight into the dial of the
searchlight, that Tankred himself intended to defy what must surely be
an Ecuadorean gunboat. The detective was oppressed by the thought that
his own jealously nursed plan might at any moment get a knock on the
head.

At almost the same time the peevishly indignant Blake could hear the
tinkle of the engine-room bell below him and then the thrash of the
screw wings. The boat began to move forward, dangling the knocking and
rocking flotilla of _lanchas_ and surf-boats at her side, like a
deer-mouse making off with its young. Then came sharp cries of
protest, in Spanish, and more cries and curses in harbor-English, and a
second engine-room signal and a cessation of the screw thrashings.
This was followed by a shower of carbine-shots and the plaintive whine
of bullets above the upper-works, the crack and thud of lead against
the side-plates. At the same time Blake heard the scream of a
denim-