In a few minutes he and Gates were safely in the cabin--Gates having
dived nimbly out of our canvas fort; while Tommy, oozing rage, had
walked erect, shaking his fist at the _Orchid_ and calling me pretty
much every kind of a lizard that crawls the earth.

Perhaps the mad that this aroused was good for me. I had charged into an
enemy's face once or twice under a certain amount of unpleasant fire and
most uncomfortable sensations. A fellow's _savoir faire_ is far from
being faultless on such occasions, but if he's mad--damn mad--he gets
along rather well, and Tommy's insulting words turned the trick for me.

We had luffed a bit to let the _Orchid_ draw out ahead, and now all I
seemed to see was her slowly nearing rail; twenty feet away, fifteen,
ten. My rifle had been laid aside, and I felt to see that my automatic
was snugly nested in its holster. Five feet, four, three--we were about
to touch! With a bound I cleared my shelter just as the rails were
within spanning distance, and vaulted over.

CHAPTER XI

A STRANGE FIND

My feet had no more than touched the new deck when I became electrified
with a glorious feeling of possession, of mastery. Immediately I seemed
to know just what to do, where to go; and my first move was another
headlong rush at the companionway door, bursting it in with a kick and
springing quickly aside--ready, listening; being for the time shielded
from a fusillade of expected shots. And, because these were not
forthcoming, I felt momentarily confused.

Yet in times of white hot action it is impulse that succeeds. This door
ahead of me was the only way below, except perhaps a hatch, offering
greater danger, somewhere forward; it was the only way, therefore,
through which Sylvia might be brought up to safety. She was now below,
and I would reach her if it were my last journey! Three bounds down the
stairs took me into the cabin, my pistol forward, my nerves on
hair-trigger, ready for anything that moved.

Silence!--that sickish silence which permeates places of death! No human
sound could be detected--no sound of any kind, except an uncanny
creaking beneath the floor where the old masts rested in their steps,
and a gentle swish of water outside the hull.

There were two doors from the cabin, each opening into a separate,
though parallel, passageway that doubtless led forward to about the same
general arrangements we had on the _Whim_--one past three staterooms,
through a galley a