Macdonald and Mrs. Mallory still talked. After a time she too vanished.

The big promoter leaned against the deck rail, where he was joined by
Selfridge. For a long time they talked in low voices. The little man had
most to say. His chief listened, but occasionally interrupted to ask a
sharp, incisive question.

Elliot, sitting farther forward with Strong, judged that Selfridge was
making a report of his trip. Once he caught a fragment of their talk,
enough to confirm this impression.

"Did Winton tell you that himself?" demanded the Scotchman.

The answer of his employee came in a murmur so low that the words were
lost. But the name used told Gordon a good deal. The Commissioner of the
General Land Office at Washington signed his letters Harold B. Winton.

Strong tossed the stub of his cigarette overboard and nodded
good-night. A glance at his watch told Elliot that it was past two
o'clock. He rose, stretched, and sauntered back to his stateroom.

The young man had just taken off his coat when there came the hurried
rush of trampling feet upon the hurricane deck above. Almost instantly
he heard a cry of alarm. Low voices, quick with suppressed excitement,
drifted back to him. He could hear the shuffling of footsteps and the
sound of heavy bodies moving.

Some one lifted a frightened shout. "Help! Help!" The call had come, he
thought, from Selfridge.

Gordon flung open the door of his room, raced along the deck, and took
the stairs three at a time. A huddle of men swayed and shifted heavily
in front of him. So close was the pack that the motion resembled the
writhing of some prehistoric monster rather than the movements of
individual human beings. In that half-light tossing arms and legs looked
like tentacles flung out in agony by the mammoth reptile. Its progress
was jerky and convulsive, sometimes tortuous, but it traveled slowly
toward the rail as if by the impulsion of an irresistible pressure.

Even as he ran toward the mass, Elliot noticed that the only sounds were
grunts, stertorous breathings, and the scraping of feet. The attackers
wanted no publicity. The attacked was too busy to waste breath in futile
cries. He was fighting for his life with all the stark energy nature and
his ancestors had given him.

Two men, separated from the crowd, lay on the deck farther aft. One was
on top of the other, his fingers clutching the gullet of his helpless
opponent. The agony of the man underneath found expressi