er the first glass, though Lund went on lowering
the bottle without apparent effect.

"So yo're a bit of a sailor?" the giant asked presently. "An' a scholar.
You can navigate, I make no doubt?"

"I hope to get a chance to learn on the trip," answered Rainey. "I know
the general principles, but I've never tried to use a sextant. I'm going
to get the skipper to help me out. Or Carlsen."

"Carlsen! What in hell does a doctor know about navigation?" demanded
Lund.

Rainey told him what the girl had said, and the giant grunted.

"I have my doubts whether they'll ever help ye," he said. "Wish I could.
But it 'ud be hard without my eyes. An' I've got no sextant an' no book
o' tables. It's too bad."

His disappointment seemed keen, and Rainey could not fathom it. Why had
both Lund and Carlsen seemed to lay stress on this matter? Why was the
doctor relieved and Lund disappointed at his ignorance?

As they came out of the stateroom together, later, Lund reeking of the
liquor he had absorbed, though remaining perfectly sober, his hand laid
on Rainey's shoulder, perhaps for guidance but with a show of
familiarity, Rainey saw the girl looking at him with a glance in which
contempt showed unveiled. It was plain that his intimacy with Lund was
not going to advance him in her favor.

CHAPTER III

TARGET PRACTISE

The _Karluk_ was an eighty-five-ton schooner, Gloster Fisherman type,
with a length of ninety and a beam of twenty-five feet. Her enormous
stretch of canvas, spread to the limit on all possible occasions by
Captain Simms, was offset by the pendulum of lead that made up her keel,
and she could slide through the seas at twelve knots on her best point
of sailing--reaching--the wind abaft her beam.

After Rainey had demonstrated at the wheel that he had the mastery of
her and had shown that he possessed sea-legs, a fair amount of seacraft
and, what the sailors did not possess, initiative, Captain Simms
appointed him second mate.

"We don't carry one as a rule," the skipper said. "But it'll give you a
rating and the right to eat in the cabin." He had not brought up the
subject of Rainey's kidnapping, and Rainey let it go. There was no use
arguing about the inevitable. The rating and the cabin fare seemed
offered as an apology, and he was willing to accept it.

Carlsen acted as first mate, and Rainey had to acknowledge him
efficient. He fancied the man must have been a ship's surgeon, and so
picked up his s