toward the stern. It
was his intention to go into the smoking-room and idle ostentatiously.
Perhaps he would enter into another argument with that Brazilian air
pilot who had so much confidence in Handley-Page wing-slots. Bell had,
in Washington, a small private plane that, he explained, had been
given him by a wealthy aunt, who hoped he would break his neck in it.
He considered that wing-slots interfered with stunting.

He had picked out the door with his eye when he espied a small figure
standing by the rail. It was Ortiz, the Argentine ex-Cabinet Minister,
staring off into the grayness, and seeming to listen with all his
ears.

Bell slowed up. The little stout man turned and nodded to him, and
then put out his hand.

"Senor Bell," he said quietly, "tell me. Do you hear airplane motors?"

Bell listened. The drip-drip-drip of condensed mist. The shuddering of
the ship with her motors going dead slow. The tinkling, muted notes of
the piano inside the saloon. The washing and hissing of the waves
overside. That was all.

"Why, no," said Bell. "I don't. Sound travels freakishly in fog,
though. One might be quite close and we couldn't hear it. But we're a
hundred and fifty miles off the Venezuelan coast, aren't we?"

* * * * *

Ortiz turned and faced him. Bell was shocked at the expression on the
small man's face. It was drained of all blood, and its look was
ghastly. But the rather fine dark eyes were steady.

"We are," agreed Ortiz, very steadily indeed, "but I--I have received
a radiogram that some airplane should fly near this ship, and it would
amuse me to hear it."

Bell frowned at the fog.

"I've done a good bit of flying," he observed, "and if I were flying
out at sea right now, I'd dodge this fog bank. It would be
practically suicide to try to alight in a mist like this."

Ortiz regarded him carefully. It seemed to Bell that sweat was coming
out upon the other man's forehead.

"You mean," he said quietly, "that an airplane could not land?"

"It might try," said Bell with a shrug. "But you couldn't judge your
height above the water. You might crash right into it and dive under.
Matter of fact, you probably would."

Ortiz's nostrils quivered a little.

"I told them," he said steadily, "I told them it was not wise to
risk...."

* * * * *

He stopped. He looked suddenly at his hands, clenched upon the rail. A
depth of pallor even grea