e way.

The deck was empty, slippery with the wet of the mist. He was suddenly
aware that one of the ports, in the neighborhood of the stateroom he
had entered, was ajar. Nervously he halted, gasping as a long,
trembling hand, at the extremity of a spectral wrist, plucked at his
sleeve. Blanched as an arm of the adolescent moon, it fumbled weakly
at his clutching fingers--and was swiftly withdrawn!

The staring eyes of a white, gibbous face sank back from the hole.
Below the nose the face seemed not to exist.

Its horror wrapped an icy cord about his heart. He plunged his arm to
the shoulder through the round opening, struck a yielding, warm body;
descending claws steeled about his wrist and deliberately forced him
back.

The brass-bound glass squeezed on his fingers. He wrenched them free,
crushed, throbbing, and warmly wet. The anguish seemed to extend to
his elbow. Then, suddenly, the gruff, seasoned voice of Captain Jones
descended from space behind him. "Sparks, come to my cabin."

Peter followed the brutish shoulders to the forward companionway,
endeavoring to clarify his thoughts. Mild confusion prevailed when
Captain Jones closed and locked the door of his spacious stateroom
behind them and dropped heavily into one of the cumbersome teak chairs.

He was a hardened, brawny chunk of a man, choleric in aspect and
temperament, brutal in method, bluntly decisive in opinion. Iron was
his metal. "Starboard Jones" was one of the few living men who had
successfully run the Jap blockade into Vladivostok during that bloody
tiff between the black bear and the island panther.

Reddened sockets displayed keen, blue eyes in a background of perpetual
fire. His large, swollen nose had a vinous tint, acquiring
purplishness in cold weather. Tiny red veins, as numerous as the
cracks in Satsuma-ware, spread across both cheeks in a carmine filigree.

His cabin was ornamented chiefly by hand-tinted photographs from the
yoshiwaras of Nagasaki, of simpering, coy geishas. Souvenirs of their
trade, glittering fans, nicked teacups, flimsy sandals, adorned the
available shelf room. Cigars as brawny and black as if their maker had
striven to emulate the captain's own bulk were scattered among papers
on his narrow desk.

He reached clumsily for one of these brown cylinders now, neglecting to
remove his glance of gloating austerity from the operator's tense face.

"Haven't seen much of you lately, Sparks," he observed