rect."

"I'm infernally afraid they are," snapped the youngster. "I wouldn't
care ten cents about the brute only that the girls are aboard. I felt
sorry when I saw him climb to his feet yesterday. If you hit him again
hit him with something that will crack his skull. He's a devil, Verslun,
and before we are much older we will find it out."

I laughed at his gloomy forebodings, and as Miss Barbara Herndon came on
deck at that moment he raced away and left me to my own meditations.

My thoughts were mixed. I had pleasant and unpleasant ones. If Leith
was the scoundrel that Holman suspected, the two girls were in danger,
and now as we neared the island where they would leave the yacht to
accompany their father, the clutch of fear was upon me. On _The Waif_ I
felt that I had some little power, but on land, more especially on the
lonely island toward which we were heading, that feeling of
protectorship which the sailorman has for his passengers would be lost.
If Leith knew the island, and it was evident that he had visited it
before, any villainy that he contemplated would be held in check till he
was ashore and in command of the expedition and I would be powerless.

I recognized that Holman's fears were without solid foundation. They
were transmitted through Barbara Herndon, but I also recognized that the
elder sister would hardly support the statements unless she had good
grounds for her anxiety. Her woman's intuition had branded Leith's
motives in bringing the Professor into the Islands as bad, and the
sallow-faced giant could not erase the impression. The actual reason for
trickery was a matter of speculation. Professor Herndon was wealthy; it
was his money that had fitted out the expedition, but how Leith expected
to benefit himself by treachery was more than I could tell. Still, try
as I would to fight off the impressions that Holman's tongue had fixed
within my mind, I was unable to alter the opinion I had formed of the
man the moment I met him. There was an atmosphere about the yacht that
was unexplainable. Try as I could to find legitimate grounds for fears I
could not. The Professor was a scientist who wished to study certain
things the whereabouts of which were known to Leith. Apparently the
Professor was satisfied with the bargain he had made. Leith, as the two
girls had informed Holman, had called upon their father at the Langham
Hotel in Wynyard Square, Sydney, and, after fascinating the old man with
his sto