on 'em."

"Sneak? What for? I've got a right to go up and look at the land I've
paid money on."

"Sure, so has that flock of suckers on the boat; but you don't see them
going, do you?"

"I wonder if the whole crowd demanded to be taken up----?"

"Pooh! They're sheep and Granger's got them hypnotized. You say one
word against the Colony and you'd be an outcast among 'em. No; we've
got to let them go."

Roger agreed.

"And we've got to pretend to go along to Flora City," he added. "I
don't like to sneak. It goes against my grain; but business is
business. Come on, Higgins. Next trip in a week, Mr. Granger? Good
enough. We're going to our stateroom and catch up some sleep. Wake us
at peril of your life."

He led the way swiftly to the stateroom, grasped his bag and Higgins',
locked the door and hurried aft out of sight of the people gathered
forward.

"Come on," he whispered throwing a leg over the railing.

Higgins, peering after him, saw the young man untying the rowboat which
was fastened to the dock beneath the Swastika's stern.

"You certainly see a lot of things and work fast, when you get
a-going," whispered the engineer as he let himself down into the boat.
"Now where to?"

"Just round that bunch of mangroves and out of sight of the Swastika's
decks. Grab that oar and paddle. Easy--but work fast!"

A minute or two of swift anxious paddling and they had whisked the boat
down the shore, round the mangrove promontory into the seclusion of a
tiny bay. And then:

"Hell!" said Higgins.

V

A clean-cut, solidly built man in a suit of greasy overalls was
standing on the shore of the bay, looking steadily up at the reddened
sky. Payne followed the direction of the man's gaze. Up against the
multi-hued red of the morning was a gently undulating streak of
dazzlingly snowy white. Roger had often seen white of the purest sort
in the untracked snows of northern forests, but never a white so pure,
so soft, so warm as this. And then he saw by the undulations of the
streak that it was a flock of long, graceful birds moving in single
file from west to east. Shimmering in the brassy dawn sun, they rode
like dream birds upon a vermilion sea, their slow movements so
graceful, so rhythmic as seemingly to represent no effort, as if the
birds merely floated along, their beauty and grace the ultimate
expression of the spirit of the scene. They flew with their delicate
necks bent back upon th