ry of the Tower_, cannot steam
thirty and a quarter knots, but yet she can sail the waters. What
more does your ship? Can she soar above them, as the fowls of the air
soar?"

"_Lord, he thinks we're an aeroplane!... No, she can't...._"

"And can you dive, even as the fishes of the deep?"

"_No.... Those are submarines ... we aren't a submarine...._"

But Abel Keeling waited for no more. He gave an exulting chuckle.

"Oho, oho--thirty knots, and but on the face of the waters--no more than
that? Oho!... Now _my_ ship, the ship I see as a mother sees full-grown
the child she has but conceived--_my_ ship, I say--oho!--_my_ ship
shall.... Below there--trip that gun!"

The cry came suddenly and alertly, as a muffled sound came from below and
an ominous tremor shook the galleon.

"_By Jove, her guns are breaking loose below--that's her finish_--"

"Trip that gun, and double-breech the others!" Abel Keeling's voice rang
out, as if there had been any to obey him. He had braced himself within
the belfry frame; and then in the middle of the next order his voice
suddenly failed him. His ship-shape, that for the moment he had
forgotten, rode once more before his eyes. This was the end, and his
master-question, apprehension for the answer to which was now torturing
his face and well-nigh bursting his heart, was still unasked.

"Ho--he that spoke with me--the master," he cried in a voice that ran
high, "is he there?"

"_Yes, yes!_" came the other voice across the water, sick with suspense.
"_Oh, be quick!_"

There was a moment in which hoarse cries from many voices, a heavy thud
and rumble on wood, and a crash of timbers and a gurgle and a splash were
indescribably mingled; the gun under which Abel Keeling had lain had
snapped her rotten breechings and plunged down the deck, carrying Bligh's
unconscious form with it. The deck came up vertical, and for one instant
longer Abel Keeling clung to the belfry.

"I cannot see your face," he screamed, "but meseems your voice is a voice
I know. _What is your name_?"

In a torn sob the answer came across the water:

"_Keeling--Abel Keeling.... Oh, my God!_"

And Abel Keeling's cry of triumph, that mounted to a victorious "Huzza!"
was lost in the downward plunge of the _Mary of the Tower_, that left
the strait empty save for the sun's fiery blaze and the last smoke-like
evaporation of the mists.

ROOUM

For all I ever knew to the contrary, it was his own name; and som