d
grenades in the locker, there."

"You damned fool!" said Jamison angrily. "Stop being bloodthirsty and
use your head! You haven't even asked what I've done! I've done
something, anyhow. That bundle I chucked in the bow has a couple of
sheepmen's outfits in it. Lots of sheep raised around here. We'll put
'em on before we land. And like a good general, I arranged a method of
retreat before we left B. A. There'll be a naval vessel here in two or
three days. She's carrying a party of Government scientists. She'll
anchor in Punta Arenas harbor and announce a case of some infectious
disease on board. No shore leave, you see, and nobody from shore
permitted on board her. And she has one or two damned good analytical
chemists with a damned good laboratory on board her, too. It's a long
gamble, but if we can get hold of some of The Master's poison.... Do
you see?"

"Yes," said Bell heavily. "I see. But you haven't been through what
I've been through. What I've done, fighting that devil, has caused men
to be deserted after being enslaved. There's one place, Cuyaba...."

His face twitched. That place was in his dreams, now. That place and
others where human beings had watched their bodies go mad, and had
been carried about screaming with horror at the crimes those bodies
committed....

"I'm going to kill The Master," he rasped. "That's all."

He settled down to his grim watch for the city. All during the cloudy,
overcast day he strained his eyes ahead. Jamison could make nothing of
him. In the end he had to leave Bell to his moody waiting.

* * * * *

The morning passed, and midday, and a long afternoon. Three times Bell
came restlessly back to the engine and tried to coax more speed out of
it. But when darkness fell the town was still not in sight. They kept
on, then, steering by the stars with the motor putt-putt-putting
sturdily away in the stern. The water splashed and washed all about
them. The little boat rose, and fell, and rose and fell again.

"That's the town," said Bell grimly.

It was eleven at night, or later. Lights began to appear, very far
away, dancing miragelike on the edge of the water. They grew nearer
with almost infinite slowness. Two wide bands of many lights, with a
darker space in which a few much brighter lights showed clearly.
Presently a single red light appeared, the Punta Arenas harbor light,
twenty-five feet up on an iron pole. They passed it.

"Bell," sa