ndered vaguely about the engineer below. Was the water
getting at the engines? He still felt the throb of them beneath his
feet. Well, that much was good anyway. And the skipper? Was he still at
the wheel? Must be, for the yacht continued to take the waves head-on.

Short and light as she was, the craft appeared to leap from wave-crest
to wave-crest. Now she missed the leap by a foot and the water drenched
her deck anew. And now she overstepped and came down with a solid impact
that set her shuddering from stern to keel.

"Good old _Kittlewake_," he murmured, "you sure were built for rough
service!"

But now he had reached his stateroom door. With a lurch he threw open
the door, with a second he fell through, a third slammed it shut.

One second his eyes roved about the place; the next his lips parted as
something bumped against his foot.

Stooping, he lifted up a long affair the size and shape of a round cedar
fencepost. It was this he had brought aboard just before sailing. It had
been shaken down and had been rolling about the floor.

Having examined its wrapping carefully, he shook it once or twice.

"Guess you're all right," he muttered. "And you had better be! A whole
lot depends on you in a pinch."

His eyes roved about the room. At length, snatching a blanket from his
berth, he tore it into strips. Then, throwing back his mattress, he
placed the postlike affair beneath it and lashed it firmly to the
springs.

"There!" he exclaimed with much satisfaction, "you'll be safe until
needed, if you _are_ needed, and--and you never can tell."

* * * * *

The end of the seaplane's last flirt with death and destruction came
suddenly and without warning. Overcome as he was by constant watching,
dead for sleep and famished for food, Vincent Ardmore had all but fallen
asleep in his seat on the fuselage when a hoarse snort from one of the
motors, followed quickly by a rattling grate from the other, startled
him into complete wakefulness.

The silence which followed these strange noises was appalling. It was
like the lull before a hurricane.

"Gas is gone," said Alfred. There was fear and defiance in his tone,
defiance of Nature which he believed had treated him badly "Have to go
down now."

"Go down!" Vincent shivered at the thought. Go down to what?

He glanced below, then a ray of hope lighted his face. The storm was
passing--had all but passed. The clouds beneath them were no