l Burns know he would never
write in it again. He went to St. John's, as he had said, and
completed his business in time to return home the day of the race
instead of the day after.

The second race was never sailed, for Code Schofield received a
telegram from St. John's, offering him a big price for a quick
lighterage trip to Grande Mignon, St. John being accidentally out of
schooners and the trip urgent.

Though loath to lose the race by default, the money offered was too
good to pass by, and Code had made the trip and loaded up by
nightfall. It was then that he had met Michael Burns, and Burns had
expressed his desire to go home in the _May_ so as to watch her
actions in a moderate sea and gale.

Neither he nor the _May_ ever saw dry land again. Only Code of the
whole ship's company struggled ashore on the Wolves, bruised and half
dead from exposure.

The end of the old log before him was full of poignant tragedy to
Code, the tragedy of his own life, for it was the unwritten pages from
then on that should have told the story of a fiendishly planned
revenge upon him who was totally innocent of any wrong-doing. The
easy, weak, indulgence of the father had grown a crop of vicious and
cruel deeds in the son.

CHAPTER XXII

A RECOVERED TREASURE

For five days Code yawned or rushed through the greater part of Nat's
stock of lurid literature. It was the one thing that kept him from
falling into the black pit of brooding; sometimes he felt as though he
must go insane if he allowed himself to think. He had not the courage
to tear aside the veil of dull pain that covered his heart and look at
the bleeding reality. He was afraid of his own emotions.

It was impossible for him to go lower in the scale of physical
events.

Nat was about to triumph, and Code himself was forced to admit that
this triumph was mostly due to Nat's own wits. First he had stolen
Nellie Tanner (Code had thought a lot about that ring missing from
Nellie's hand), then he had attached the _Charming Lass_ in the
endeavor to take away from him the very means of his livelihood.

Then something had happened. Schofield did not know what it was, but
something evidently very serious, for the next thing he knew Nat had
crushed his pride and manhood under a brutal and technical charge of
murder.

But this was not all.

His victim escaping him with the schooner and the means of livelihood,
Burns had employed a traitor in the crew to poison t