from the bay and stirred his window curtains; it was
salt in his nostrils.... And, staring out into the breathing night, he
saw a succession of pictures....

Stripped to a pair of cotton trousers, with a dripping cutlass in one
hand and a Colt's revolver in the other, an adventurer at the head of a
bunch of dogs as desperate as himself fought his way across the reeking
decks of a Chinese junk, to close in single combat with a gigantic
one-eyed pirate who stood by the helm with a ring of dead men about him
and a great two-handed sword upheaved.... This adventurer was--Clement
J. Cleggett! ...

Through the phosphorescent waters of a summer sea, reckless of cruising
sharks, a sailor's clasp knife in his teeth, glided noiselessly a
strong swimmer; he reached the side of a schooner yacht from which rose
the wild cries of beauty in distress, swarmed aboard with a muttered
prayer that was half a curse, swept the water from his eyes, and with
pale, stern face went about the bloody business of a hero.... Again,
this adventurer was Clement J. Cleggett!

Cleggett turned from the window.

"I'll do it," he cried. "I'll do it!"

He grasped a cutlass.

"Pirates!" he cried, swinging it about his head. "That's the
thing--pirates and the China Seas!"

And with one frightful sweep of his blade he disemboweled a sofa
cushion; the second blow clove his typewriting machine clean to the
tattoo marks upon its breast; the third decapitated a sectional
bookcase.

But what is a sectional bookcase to a man with $500,000 in his pocket
and the Seven Seas before him?

CHAPTER III

A SCHOONER, A SKIPPER, AND A SKULL

It was a few days later, when a goodly number of the late Uncle Tom's
easily negotiable securities had been converted into cash, and the cash
deposited in the bank, that Cleggett bought the Jasper B.

He discovered her near the town of Fairport, Long Island, one
afternoon. The vessel lay in one of the canals which reach inward from
the Great South Bay. She looked as if she might have been there for
some time. Evidently, at one period, the Jasper B. had played a part
in some catch-coin scheme of summer entertainment; a scheme that had
failed. Little trace of it remained except a rotting wooden platform,
roofless and built close to the canal, and a gangway arrangement from
this platform to the deck of the vessel.

The Jasper B. had seen better days; even a landsman could tell that.
But from the blunt bows to t