behold
his wonder-woman in at least one of her daring exploits. Shipwreck!
Perhaps she would be all but drowned. He hastened back to the pool
that had now acquired this high significance. The carpenters were still
puttering about on the scaffold. He saw that platforms for the cameras
had been built out from its side.

He noted, too, and was puzzled by an aeroplane propeller that had been
stationed close to one corner of the pool, just beyond the stern of
the little sailing-craft. Perhaps there would be an aeroplane wreck in
addition to a shipwreck. Now he had something besides food to think of.
And he wondered what the Montague girl could be doing in the company of
a really serious artist like Beulah Baxter. From her own story she
was going to get wet, but from what he knew of her she would be some
character not greatly missed from the cast if she should, as Baird had
suggested, dive and forget to come up. He supposed that Baird had meant
this to be humorous, the humour typical of a man who could profane a
great art with the atrocious Buckeye comedies, so called.

He put in the hours until nightfall in aimless wandering and idle
gazing, and was early at the pool-side where his heroine would do her
sensational acting. It was now a scene of thrilling activity. Immense
lights, both from the scaffolding and from a tower back of the
sailing-craft, flooded its deck and rigging from time to time as
adjustments were made. The rigging was slack and the deck was still
littered, intentionally so, he now perceived. The gallant little boat
had been cruelly buffeted by a gale. Two sailors in piratical dress
could be seen to emerge at intervals from the cabin.

Suddenly the gale was on with terrific force, the sea rose in great
waves, and the tiny ship rocked in a perilous manner. Great billows
of water swept its decks. Merton Gill stared in amazement at these
phenomena so dissonant with the quiet starlit night. Then he traced them
without difficulty to their various sources. The gale issued from the
swift revolutions of that aeroplane propeller he had noticed a while
ago. The flooding billows were spilled from the big tank at the top
of the scaffold and the boat rocked in obedience to the tugging of a
rope--tugged from the shore by a crew of helpers--that ran to the top of
its mast. Thus had the storm been produced.

A spidery, youngish man from one of the platforms built out from the
scaffold, now became sharply vocal through a