nd all question, impossible. Nevertheless, when next we started up
and gripped our rifles and cried "Stand by!" it was not any alarm from
the sea that brought us to our feet, but a sudden shout from the house
below, a rifle-shot echoing in the depths, a woman's voice, and then
a man's rejoinder, a figure appearing without any warning at the
stairs-head, the figure of a huge man, vast and hulking, with long
yellow hair, and fists clenched and arms outstretched--a man who took
one scared look round him and then leaped wildly into the sea. Now
this, you may imagine, was the most surprising event of all that
eventful night. So quickly did it come upon us, so little did we look
for it, that when Kess Denton, the yellow man, stood at the open gate
and uttered a loud and piercing yell of defiance, not one among us
could lilt a rifle, not one thought of plan or action. There the fellow
was, laughing like a maniac. Why he came, whence he came, no man could
tell. But he leaped into the seas and the night engulfed him, and only
his mocking laugh told us that he lived.

"Kess Denton!" cried I, my head dazed and my words coming in a torrent;
"Kess Denton. Then there's mischief below, lads--mischief, I swear!"

Clair-de-Lune answered me--old Clair-de-Lune, standing in a blaze of
light; for they had switched on the lamps below, and the vein of the
reef stood out suddenly like some silver monster breathing on the
surface of the sea. Clair-de-Lune answered me, I say, and his words
were the most terrible I had heard since first I came to Ken's Island.

"The water is in!" he cried, "the water is in the house!"

I saw it as in a flash. This man we had neglected to hunt from the
caverns below, striking at us in the supreme moment, had opened trap or
window and let the sea pour in the labyrinth below. The water was
flooding Czerny's house.

"Now!" I cried, "you don't mean that Clair-de-Lune? Then what of the
engine-room? How will it fare with Captain Nepeen?"

Doctor Gray stood behind the old Frenchman, and, limping up to my side,
he leaned against the rock and began to speak of it very coolly.

"The water is in," he said, "but it will not flood the higher rooms,
for they are above sea-level. We are saving what provisions we can, and
the men below are all right. As for Nepeen, we must get him off in a
boat somehow. It is the water I am thinking of, captain; what are we
going to do for water?"

I sat upon the rock at his side and buri