aintly, the voice of Captain Dettmar shouting orders.

"How can he hear me with such a racket?" Duncan complained.

"He's doing it so the crew won't hear you," was Minnie's answer.

There was something in the quiet way she said it that caught her
husband's attention.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that he is not trying to pick us up," she went on in the same
composed voice. "He threw me overboard."

"You are not making a mistake?"

"How could I? I was at the main rigging, looking to see if any more
rain threatened. He must have left the wheel and crept behind me. I was
holding on to a stay with one hand. He gripped my hand free from behind
and threw me over. It's too bad you didn't know, or else you would have
staid aboard."

Duncan groaned, but said nothing for several minutes. The green light
changed the direction of its course.

"She's gone about," he announced. "You are right. He's deliberately
working around us and to windward. Up wind they can never hear me. But
here goes."

He called at minute intervals for a long time. The green light
disappeared, being replaced by the red, showing that the yacht had gone
about again.

"Minnie," he said finally, "it pains me to tell you, but you married a
fool. Only a fool would have gone overboard as I did."

"What chance have we of being picked up... by some other vessel, I
mean?" she asked.

"About one in ten thousand, or ten thousand million. Not a steamer route
nor trade route crosses this stretch of ocean. And there aren't any
whalers knocking about the South Seas. There might be a stray trading
schooner running across from Tutuwanga. But I happen to know that island
is visited only once a year. A chance in a million is ours."

"And we'll play that chance," she rejoined stoutly.

"You ARE a joy!" His hand lifted hers to his lips. "And Aunt Elizabeth
always wondered what I saw in you. Of course we'll play that chance. And
we'll win it, too. To happen otherwise would be unthinkable. Here goes."

He slipped the heavy pistol from his belt and let it sink into the sea.
The belt, however, he retained.

"Now you get inside the buoy and get some sleep. Duck under."

She ducked obediently, and came up inside the floating circle. He
fastened the straps for her, then, with the pistol belt, buckled himself
across one shoulder to the outside of the buoy.

"We're good for all day to-morrow," he said. "Thank God the water's
warm. It won't be a hardship for the firs