joined. "We want to see some fighting."

"'Tis not fighting you-uns'll see," croaked the woman. "Old Mag tells
you, and she knows. Yo' fine, big ship will go down in the midst of the
seas and her crew with her. Better yo' luck if it happens befo' yo' git
back to her already."

"You don't mean that?" Whistler cried.

"I'm a-tellin' yo' so," said the queer old woman. "Old Mag knows mo'
than other folks. Oh, yes! She'll sink. Better yo' boys stay ashore."

"What do you know about 'the witch's warning'?" whispered Torry to
Whistler. "She thinks she's got second sight. Knows more than anybody
else. She's like one of the Seven Sutherland Sisters--she prophesies."

"Shucks!" chuckled Whistler in the same cautious tone, "they weren't
prophetesses; they sold hair restorer."

But to himself Whistler muttered:

"Maybe she does know more than we do. But how does she know it? There's
something awfully queer about this whole business."

CHAPTER XXI

THE EXPLANATION

Although Whistler was quite sure "Old Mag," as she called herself,
possessed no powers of divination, he knew she did have certain
knowledge that he considered she had no moral right to have.

Here she was, an ignorant old creature living on a well nigh uninhabited
island off an isolated coast, with some mysterious means of information
upon subjects that she should know nothing about.

She claimed not to have seen the other party of castaways; yet she knew
at once that Mr. MacMasters and his companions were from a craft that
had been blown up miles away from her cabin, and completely out of sight
and hearing of this island.

Whistler did not believe any fishing boat, or other craft, had brought
this information to Mag. There had been no vessel in sight when the
_Kennebunk's_ tender was blown up by the floating mine.

The scrap of a letter addressed to "Herr Franz Linder" he had found in
the cabin connected the old crone, in Whistler's mind, with the German
spy system. She was of Teutonic extraction herself.

Clearly the old woman was trying to befool her visitors. She probably
possessed some local celebrity as a witch or wise woman.

Whistler, however, was not ready to believe her any wiser than her
neighbors.

He thought out the matter back to the time the auxiliary steamer was
blown up in the channel between the islands. The wireless operator sent
out S O S messages till the very last. Small as the radius of the
instrument was, a station alo