e could have driven a bullet
through his opponent's body; a twist the other way--and he moaned and
ground his teeth and frenziedly strove to regain what he had lost.
Suddenly he let go, snatched his left hand clear, and throttled Gregory
against the wall. Gregory, suffocating, his eyes starting from their
sockets, his mouth dribbling blood and froth, struggled with supreme
desperation for the pistol. Getting it in the very nick of time, and
eluding Horble's right hand, he fired twice through the armpit down.

Horble sank at the first shot, and received the second kneeling. Then he
toppled backward, and lay in a twitching heap against the drawers below
the bunk, groaning and coughing. Gregory, with averted face, gave him
another shot behind the ear, and another through the mouth, and then
went out, sick and faint, shutting the stateroom door behind him. He sat
for a long time beside the table, absolutely spent, and still holding
the revolver in his hand. He was shaking in a chill, though the
temperature was over eighty, and the cabin, when he had first entered
it, had seemed to him overpoweringly hot and stifling. He warmed himself
with a nip of gin. He looked over his clothes for a trace of blood, and
was thankful to find none. He took off his coat; he examined the soles
of his shoes. No blood! Thank God, no blood!

He went on deck and cast the revolver overboard, standing at the
taffrail and watching it sink. Even in the time he had been below the
wind had risen; it was blowing great guns to seaward, and the lagoon
itself was white and broken as far as the eye could reach. Aboard his
own schooner they were busy housing the topmasts, and the yeo-heave-yeo
of straining voices warned him that Cracroft was hoisting in the boats
and making everything snug.

Gregory leaned against the wheel and tried to think. To throw Horble's
body overboard would be to accomplish nothing. The blood, the shot
holes, the disordered cabin, would all betray him. To scuttle the
schooner with a stick of dynamite was a better plan, but that involved
returning to the _Northern Light_, with the possibility of Madge coming
off in the interval and discovering the murder for herself. No, the risk
of that appalled him. Besides, whatever happened, he had another reason
for keeping the truth from Madge. The fact of Horble's death, even if
she thought it accidental, would shock her to the core. It was
inconceivable that she would feel anything but horro