n, booing
and bellowing back from the cliffs in a hundred echoes came a
voice--the blast of a ship's syren.

"Huroop, Hirrip, Hurop, Haar--Haar--Haar!"

Ginnell's arm fell. Harman, forgetting everything, turned, dashed into
the cabin behind him, climbed on the upper bunk, and stuck his head
through the port-hole.

Then he dashed back into the saloon.

"It's the _Port of Amsterdam_," cried Harman, "It's the salvage ship,
she's there droppin' her anchor; we're done, we're dished--and we
foolin' like this and they crawlin' up on us."

"And you said she'd only do eight knots!" cried Blood.

Ginnell flung the revolver on the floor. Every trace of the recent
occurrence had vanished, and the three men thought no more of one
another than a man thinks of petty matters in the face of dissolution.
Gunderman was outside, that was enough for them.

"Boys," said Ginnell, "ain't there no way out with them dollars?
S'pose we howk them ashore?"

"Cliffs two hundred foot high," said Harman, "not a chanst. We're
dished."

Said Blood: "There's only one thing left. We'll walk the dollars down
to the boat and row off with them. Of course we'll be stopped; still,
there's the chance that Gunderman may be drunk or something. It's one
chance in a hundred billion--it's the only one."

But Gunderman was not drunk, nor were his boat party; and the
court-martial he held on the beach in broken English and with the sack
of coin beside him as chief witness would form a bright page of
literature had one time to record it.

Ginnell, as owner of the _Heart of Ireland_, received the whole brunt
of the storm; there was no hearing for him when, true to himself, he
tried to cast the onus of the business on Blood and Harman. He was
told to get out and be thankful he was not brought back to 'Frisco in
irons, and he obeyed instructions, rowing off to the schooner, he and
Harman and Blood, a melancholy party with the exception of Blood, who
was talking to Harman with extreme animation on the subject of beam
engines.

On deck it was Blood who gave orders for hauling up the anchor and
setting sail. He had recaptured the revolver.

THE DERELICT _NEPTUNE_*

From "Spun Gold," BY MORGAN ROBERTSON

*Reprinted by courtesy of Harper & Brothers.

Across the Atlantic Ocean from the Gulf of Guinea to Cape St. Roque
moves a great body of water--the Main Equatorial Current--which can be
considered the motive power, or mainspring, of the wh