his
surroundings. A man was leaning over, spreading out the rug that
ordinarily covered the lazaret opening. Martin recognized the fellow
as the same wooden-faced Jap who had choked him unconscious a few hours
before. Ichi, he discovered standing by his side, regarding him with
an ingratiating smile. But it was neither the ju-jitsu man nor Ichi
who fastened Martin's attention.

A large man sprawled in Captain Dabney's easy chair at the farther end
of the cabin table. The table was littered with the debris of a meal,
which Charley Bo Yip was phlegmatically and deftly clearing away, and
Martin stared across the board's disarray at Wild Bob Carew's
disdainful face. The erstwhile commander of the schooner _Dawn_, his
comrades' unscrupulous enemy, his own rival, was the same aloof,
superior rogue he remembered from the night in Spulvedo's dive.

As Martin looked, Carew engaged himself with filling and lighting his
pipe, and seemed to be totally unconscious of the disheveled young man
standing before him, with wrists manacled behind his back.

Martin was again surprised, as he had been that night in San Francisco,
with the incongruity of Wild Bob's appearance contrasted with his
activities. Was this splendid figure of a man the vicious outlaw of
wide and evil repute? The renegade thief? The persecutor of women?
The pitiless butcher of defenseless men? Were those fine, clean-cut
features but a mask that covered an abyss of black evil? Did that
broad forehead actually conceal the crafty, degenerate brain that
planned and executed the bloody and treacherous piracy upon their ship?

The haggardness of recent hardship was upon Carew's features, and a
week's, or more, stubble of yellow beard covered his cheeks, yet the
growth in nowise brutalized the handsome face. There was a long scar
on Carew's forehead, which glowed a vivid red as he sucked upon his
pipe; there was also a wide cross of court-plaster on a clipped spot on
top of the head. Martin suddenly realized that both disfigurements
were his handiwork; one was a memento of the fight on the Frisco
waterfront, the other the result of his blow the night before.

Carew suddenly lifted his eyes and met Martin's stare, and a cold
thrill tingled along Martin's spine. For there was a hot ferocity
lighting the man's eyes; there was a hot, yet calculated, hatred in the
level look.

Ichi's suave voice broke the uneasy silence.

"Mr. Blake, we have brought you up