n
the darkness like this, not knowing when you will run your nose against
an enemy twice as large," said Flagg, as several of Number Eight's crew
met on the forecastle. "I tell you, it feels like war."

"Reminds me of a story I heard once," put in "Stump," lazily. He was
lounging over the rail with his back to us and his words came faintly.
The deck was shrouded in gloom, and the vague outlines of the
pilot-house, only a dozen feet away, was the length of our vision aft. A
soft, purling sound came from over the side where the waves lapped
against the steel hull. A shovel grated stridently now and then in the
fire room, and occasionally a block rattled or a halliard flapped
against the foremast overhead. The surroundings and the strange, weird
"feel" of the darkness were peculiarly impressive.

"I don't know whether we care to hear any story," observed "Hay."
"Better keep it until later, 'Stump.' The night's too wonderful to do
anything except lounge around and think. Whew! isn't it dark?"

"This story I was going to tell you requires a setting like this,"
replied "Stump." "It is about a ship that started from England years and
years ago. She had as passengers a lot of lunatics who were to be
experimented upon by a doctor about as crazy as they. He bought the
ship, fitted it up with a number of little iron cages, and set forth
with his queer cargo. Ten days out, the lunatics broke from their
quarters and captured the vessel. One of them, who had been a sea
captain in his time, took charge, and proceeded to carry out a little
idea of his own, which was to make sane people crazy."

"That was turning the tables with a vengeance," drawled "Dye," from his
perch on an upturned pail. "I wonder if he was any relation to
'Cutlets'?"

"A lineal ancestor, I'll bet a biscuit," chimed in "Hay." "Don't you
remember the quotation, 'By these acts you will know their forefathers,'
or something like that?"

"Well," resumed "Stump," "the crazy captain put the doctor and the crew
in the cages and began to feed them hardtack and berth-deck scouse and
salt-horse and--"

[Illustration: THE SEARCHLIGHT "SWEEPING BACK AND FORTH ACROSS THE
BLACK OF THE HORIZON"]

"Must have been a Government naval contractor in his time," murmured
"Morrie."

"I bet I know the rest," exclaimed the "Kid," coming up in time to grasp
the situation. "The captain set his prisoners to carrying coal from the
after hold forward and then back again, didn't he?"