to be in two places at one time and the same! An
impossibility? He wouldn't deny that. But Lanyard had never been one to
be discouraged by the grim, hard face of an impossibility. He had known
too many such to dissipate utterly, vanish into empty air, when
subjected to a bold and resolute assault. He wouldn't say die.

Never that while he could lift hand or invent stratagem, never that so
long as fools played their game into his hands, as this lot wished to
and did. What imbecility! What an escape had been his when, in that
time long since, he had made up his mind to have done with crime once
and for all time! But for that moment of clear vision and high resolve
he might be to-day even as these who had won such clear title to his
contempt, who stultified themselves with vain imaginings and the
everlasting concoction of schemes whose sheer intrinsic puerility
foredoomed them to farcical failure.

Lanyard trod the decks for hours at a time, searching the stars for an
answer to the question: What made the Law by whose decree man may
garner only punishment and disaster where he has husbanded in iniquity?
That Law implacable, inexorable in its ordained and methodic workings,
through which invariably it comes to pass that failure and remorse
shall canker in the heart even of success ill-gained....

But if he moralized it was with a cheerful countenance, and his sermons
were for himself alone. He kept his counsel and spoke all men fairly,
giving nowhere any manner of offense: for could he tell in what
unlikely guise might wait the instrument he needed wherewith to work
out his unfaltering purpose?

And all the while they were watching him and wondering what was in his
mind. Well, he gave no sign. Let them watch and wonder to their heart's
content; they must wait until the time he had appointed for the
rendering of his decision, when the Sybarite made her landfall.

Winds blew and fell, the sea rose and subsided, the Sybarite trudged on
into dull weather. The sky grew overcast; and Lanyard, daily scanning
the very heavens for a sign, accepted this for one, and prayed it might
hold. Nothing could be more calculated to nullify his efforts than to
have the landfall happen on a clear, calm night of stars.

He went to bed, the last night out, leaving a noisy gathering in the
saloon, and read himself drowsy. Then turning out his light he slept.
Sometime later he found himself instantaneously awake, and alert, with
a clear head