clad figure that suddenly pitched from the landing-ladder into
the sea. Then came an answering volley, from somewhere close below
Blake. He could not tell whether it was from the boat-flotilla or from
the port-holes above it. But he knew that Tankred and his men were
returning the gunboat's fire.

Blake, by this time, was once more thinking lucidly. Some of the cases
in those surf-boats, he remembered, held giant-caps and dynamite, and
he knew what was likely to happen if a bullet struck them. He also
remembered that he was still exposed to the carbine fire from behind
the searchlight.

He stretched out, flat on the deck-boards, and wormed his way slowly
and ludicrously aft. He did not bring those uncouth vermiculations to
a stop until he was well back in the shelter of a rusty capstan, cut
off from the light by a lifeboat swinging on its davits. As he
clambered to his feet again he saw this light suddenly go out and then
reappear. As it did so he could make out a patrol-boat, gray and
low-bodied, slinking forward through the gloom. He could see that boat
crowded with men, men in uniform, and he could see that each man
carried a carbine. He could also see that it would surely cut across
the bow of his own steamer. A moment later he knew that Tankred
himself had seen this, for high above the crack and whine of the
shooting and the tumult of voices he could now hear Tankred's
blasphemous shouts.

"Cut loose those boats!" bellowed the frantic gun-runner. Then he
repeated the command, apparently in Spanish. And to this came an
answering babel of cries and expostulations and counter-cries. But
still the firing from behind the searchlight kept up. Blake could see
a half-naked seaman with a carpenter's ax skip monkey-like down the
landing-ladder. He saw the naked arm strike with the ax, the two hands
suddenly catch at the bare throat, and the figure fall back in a huddle
against the red-stained wooden steps.

Blake also saw, to his growing unrest, that the firing was increasing
in volume, that at the front of the ship sharp volley and
counter-volley was making a pandemonium of the very deck on which he
knelt. For by this time the patrol-boat with the carbineers had
reached the steamer's side and a boarding-ladder had been thrown across
her quarter. And Blake began to comprehend that he was in the most
undesirable of situations. He could hear the repeated clang of the
engine-room telegraph and Tankred's