lifted to a sea he saw about five miles to
leeward that a big steamer was coming up. In half an hour, unless she
changed her course, she would be up to the boat and could not fail to
see her.

In five minutes more Cressingham lay in the bottom of the boat unbound,
but dying fast, and Challoner was speaking to him.

"Cressingham, you are dying. You know that, don't you? And you know that
I am not lying when I tell you that there is a steamer within five miles
of us. In less than half an hour she will be up to us."

One black, swollen hand was raised feebly, and then fell back, and a
hoarse sound came from his throat.

"Well, now listen. I said I wanted to see you die--die as you are dying
now--with my face over yours, watching you die. And you die and I live.
I can live now, Cressingham, and perhaps the memory of those ten years
of death in life that I suffered through you will be easier to bear. And
yet there is one thing more that you must know--something that will make
it harder for you to meet your Maker, but easier for me.... Listen."
He knelt beside him and almost shrieked it: "I had no one in the whole
world to care for me when I was tried for my life but my wife--and you,
you fiend, you murderer--you killed her. She died six years ago--starved
and died."

Cressingham, with closed eyes, lay with his head supported on
Challoner's left arm. Presently a tremor shook his frame, a fleck of
foam bubbled from between his lips, and then the end.

With cold, merciless eyes the other regarded him, with clenched hands
and set teeth. Then he went for'ard and unbent the boat's kedge, and
with the same lashings that had bound the living man to the thwart he
lashed the kedge across the dead man's chest.

He stood up and looked at the approaching steamer, and then he raised
the body in his arms and dropped it over the side.

*****

A few days later the papers said that the steamer _Maungatapu_ had
picked up a man named Harry, who with Captain Cressingham, of the
_Belted Will_ had been blown out to sea from Port ------. It appeared
from the survivor's statement that during a heavy squall the same night
Captain Cressingham had fallen overboard, and his companion was unable
to rescue him.

"THE BEST ASSET IN A FOOL'S ESTATE"

A slight smile lit up the clear-cut, sombre face of Lawson from Safune,
as looking up from his boat at Etheridge's house he saw the glint of
many lights shining through the walls of the r