's
express order that Mrs. Goring should not show herself prematurely, and
he mentioned it softly. The elder woman smiled at him and replied:

"It matters nothing now, Captain. The trap is sprung."

Barry and Gordon looked again at the wreck, and the force of those quiet
words was made apparent, for in that hushed, breathless moment Leyden
sprang up and stood on the ruined deck of the _Barang_. His face was
alight with greed, and as he turned and the sunlight played upon him,
triumph flashed in his eyes. He stayed to signal another message of
self-praise to Natalie, and then for the first time he saw Mrs. Goring
on board his own vessel. The swift change in his aspect was terrible.
Fury replaced the smooth satisfaction of a few seconds before, and he
seemed on the point of springing into his launch again to visit his fury
on the woman. But cupidity proved too strong. He turned again to enter
the wrecked companionway, for somewhere beneath those shattered timbers
lay, to his belief, fifteen bags of the gold dust that he had
jeopardized his immortal soul to get.

His men alongside evinced lively signs of uneasiness in the silent,
gruesome creek, and they held the launch off at the length of a boathook
as if afraid of closer contact. Their eyes were raised to follow their
master, and then it was that the watchers on the schooner saw Houten's
launch slide out from her nook and, gathering speed, shoot swiftly over
and run aboard the other launch. Leyden's men uttered one chorused,
uncertain growl of alarm, then they found themselves under the rifles
and bayonets of twice their number of capable, stolid Dutch sailors.

They were silenced; but the one sound they had made recalled Leyden in
haste from the shattered companionway, startled and increasingly
suspicious. He glared at the strange launch, almost on a level with
himself, owing to the listing over of the brigantine and the burning
down of her bulwarks; and he turned white with fear and passion at sight
of Houten, big, imperturbable, motionless, gazing up at him with beady
eyes glittering from out of his placid, fat face.

With the instinct and movements of the rat he had been compared to,
Leyden flashed around as if to seek an outlet that need not be won over
such a barrier as Houten. He sprang across the deck, and a cry of
jubilation burst from his lips. There was no boat there; no foes to bar
his way except the river. But at the next step he stopped in new fear;
f