itive
declaration that he was staring wide awake the whole damned night long.

Percival, unconvinced, boldly made his way to the lower deck and
discovered that two life buoys were missing from their supports, a
circumstance that put an end to the hope that he had dreamed it all. His
own affairs however now loomed large, taking precedence over the plight
of the men who had deliberately abandoned the ship. In any case, the
ship's officers had done everything that could be done in the matter.
He was genuinely astonished to learn that the act of the two men was
unknown to the Captain.

A hurried conference of the ship's officers and the commander of the
gun-crew resulted in a single but definite conclusion. The desperate,
even suicidal manner in which the men left the ship signified but one
thing: the absolute necessity of flight before an even more sinister
peril confronted them. Not a man on board doubted for an instant that
they had taken their chance in the waters as a part of a preconceived
plan, and they had taken it with all the devilish hardihood of fanatics.

The presence of the motor craft, so far out from port, lurking
with silent engine in the path of the steamship, could have but one
significance. It represented one of the carefully thought-out details in
a stupendous, far-reaching plot.

If there were signals between the motor boat and the two men aboard the
steamship, they were not observed by the lookouts. In all probability no
signals were given. The little craft was to be at a certain place at a
certain hour,--and she was there! The men who jumped knew that she would
be there. A black, tiny speck on the broad expanse of water, sheltered
by a night of almost stygian darkness, she lay outside the narrow radius
to which visual observation was confined, patiently waiting for the
Doraine to pass a designated point. There was to be no miscalculation on
the part of either the boat or the men who went over the side of the big
steamship into the seething waters.

The closest inquiry among the members of the crew failed to reveal
any one who had witnessed the leap of the men. Percival was positive,
however, that some one ran along the lower deck, but whether toward or
away from the spot where the men went over he had no means of knowing.
He offered the suggestion that there were three persons actually
involved, and that one of them, more than likely the victim of a
coin-flipping decision, had remained on board