of that coast were shark infested.

He was still debating the problem when he became conscious of a change
about him. A sudden pall of black fell like balm on his startled face.
The light was no longer there. He found himself engulfed in a
relieving, fortifying darkness, a darkness that brought him to his feet
in the slowly moving boat. He was no longer visible to the rest of the
world. At a breath, almost, he had passed into eclipse.

His first frantic move was to tug and drag the floating body at his
feet to the back of the boat and roll it overboard. Then he waded
forward and one by one carefully lifted the cases of ammunition and
tumbled them over the side. One only he saved, a smaller wooden box
which he feverishly pried open with his knife and emptied into the sea.
Then he flung away the top boards, placing the empty box on the seat in
front of him. Then he fell on his hands and knees, fingering along the
boat bottom until he found the bullet-hole through which the water was
boiling up.

Once he had found it he began tearing at his clothes like a madman, for
the water was now alarmingly high. These rags and shreds of clothing
he twisted together and forced into the hole, tamping them firmly into
place with his revolver-barrel.

Then he caught up the empty wooden box from the boat seat and began to
bale. He baled solemnly, as though his very soul were in it. He was
oblivious of the strange scene silhouetted against the night behind
him, standing out as distinctly as though it were a picture thrown on a
sheet from a magic-lantern slide--a circle of light surrounding a
drifting and rusty-sided ship on which tumult had turned into sudden
silence. He was oblivious of his own wet clothing and his bruised body
and the dull ache in his leg wound of many months ago. He was intent
only on the fact that he was lowering the water in his surf-boat, that
he was slowly drifting further and further away from the enemies who
had interfered with his movements, and that under the faint spangle of
lights which he could still see in the offing on his right lay an
anchored liner, and that somewhere on that liner lay a man for whom he
was looking.

XIII

Once assured that his surf-boat would keep afloat, Blake took the oars
and began to row. But even as he swung the boat lumberingly about he
realized that he could make no headway with such a load, for almost a
foot of water still surged along its bottom. So he