put down the oars
and began to bale again. He did not stop until the boat was emptied.
Then he carefully replugged the bullet-hole, took up the oars again,
and once more began to row.

He rowed, always keeping his bow towards the far-off spangle of lights
which showed where the _Trunella_ lay at anchor.

He rowed doggedly, determinedly. He rowed until his arms were tired
and his back ached. But still he did not stop. It occurred to him,
suddenly, that there might be a tide running against him, that with all
his labor he might be making no actual headway. Disturbed by this
thought, he fixed his attention on two almost convergent lights on
shore, rowing with renewed energy as he watched them. He had the
satisfaction of seeing these two lights slowly come together, and he
knew he was making some progress.

Still another thought came to him as he rowed doggedly on. And that
was the fear that at any moment, now, the quick equatorial morning
might dawn. He had no means of judging the time. To strike a light
was impossible, for his matches were water-soaked. Even his watch, he
found, had been stopped by its bath in sea-water. But he felt that
long hours had passed since midnight, that it must be close to the
break of morning. And the fear of being overtaken by daylight filled
him with a new and more frantic energy.

He rowed feverishly on, until the lights of the _Trunella_ stood high
above him and he could hear the lonely sound of her bells as the watch
was struck. Then he turned and studied the dark hull of the steamer as
she loomed up closer in front of him. He could see her only in
outline, at first, picked out here and there by a light. But there
seemed something disheartening, something intimidating, in her very
quietness, something suggestive of a plague-ship deserted by crew and
passengers alike. That dark and silent hull at which he stared seemed
to house untold possibilities of evil.

Yet Blake remembered that it also housed Binhart. And with that
thought in his mind he no longer cared to hesitate. He rowed in under
the shadowy counter, bumping about the rudder-post. Then he worked his
way forward, feeling quietly along her side-plates, foot by foot.

He had more than half circled the ship before he came to her
landing-ladder. The grilled platform at the bottom of this row of
steps stood nearly as high as his shoulders, as though the ladder-end
had been hauled up for the night.

Blake ba