ie alongside another day."

Standing nodded. A man was moving down the gangway bearing a large,
grey, official-looking sack on his shoulders. He was a slight, dark man
with a curiously foreign cast about his features.

"The mail?" he enquired. And a curious sharpness flavoured his demand.
Then he added, with studied indifference. "One of your--dockside
loafers?"

Captain Hardy laughed. He continued to laugh as he watched the
unhandiness of the man staggering down the gangway under his burden.

"Yep. The mail," he said. "And I'd hate to set that feller to work on a
seaman's job. He's about as unhandy as a doped Chinaman. I'd say Masters
is playing safe keeping him from messing up the running gear while we're
discharging. Say, get a look at it."

A great laugh accompanied the old man's words as the foreign-looking
creature tripped on the gangway, and only saved himself from a bad fall
by precipitating his burden upon the quay. There was no responsive
laughter in Standing. And Bat Harker's features remained rigidly
unsmiling. Standing turned sharply.

"Maybe you can spare that boy to run those mails up to my office," he
said. "It's a good healthy pull up the hill for him, and my folks are
full to the neck with things. I'd be glad."

"Sure he can." Captain Hardy was only too delighted to be able to oblige
so important a customer of his company. He promptly shouted at the
landing officer.

"Ho, you! Masters! Just let that darn Dago tote them mails right up to
Mr. Standing's office. He ain't no sort of use out of hell down
here--anyway."

The mate's reply came back with an appreciative grin.

"Ay, sir," he cried, and forthwith hurled the order at the mail carrier
with a plentiful accompaniment of appropriate adjectives.

"Thanks," Standing turned away. His smiling luminous eyes were shining.
"I'll get right along up, Captain. There's liable to be things need
seeing to in that mail before you pull out. You'd best come along, too,
Bat," he added pointedly.

Standing hurried away. A sudden fierce passion was surging through his
veins. Nisson was right. He knew it--now. And in a fever of impatience
he was yearning to come to grips with those who would rob him of the
hopes in which his whole being was bound up.

CHAPTER III

IDEPSKI

The two men reached the office on the hillside minutes before the mail
carrier. They took the hill direct, passing hurriedly through the aisles
of scented woods which shado