denly caught
at, and with a grunt, held up before the padre.

The head was blunt. About the shaft, wound tightly with silk thread, ran
a thin roll of Chinese paper.

Dr. Earle nodded, took the arrow, and slitting with a pocket-knife,
freed and flattened out a painted scroll of complex characters. His keen
old eyes ran down the columns. His face, always cloudy now, grew darker
with perplexity.

"A message," he declared slowly. "I think a serious message." He sat
down on a pile of sacks, and spread the paper on his knee. "But the
characters are so elaborate--I can't make head or tail."

He beckoned Heywood, and together they scowled at the intricate and
meaningless symbols.

"All alike," complained the younger man. "Maddening." Then his face
lighted. "No, see here--lower left hand."

The last stroke of the brush, down in the corner, formed a loose "O. W."

"From Wutzler. Must mean something."

For all that, the painted lines remained a stubborn puzzle.

"Something, yes. But what?" The padre pulled out a cigar, and smoking
at top speed, spaced off each character with his thumb. "They are all
alike, and yet"--He clutched his white hair with big knuckles, and
tugged; replaced his mushroom helmet; held the paper at a new focus.
"Ah!" he said doubtfully; and at last, "Yes." For some time he read to
himself, nodding. "A Triad cipher."

"Well?" resumed Heywood, patiently.

The reader pointed with his cigar.

"Take only the left half of that word, and what have you?"

"'Lightning,'" read Heywood.

"The right half?"

"'Boat.'"

"Take," the padre ordered, "this one; left half?"

"'Lightning,'" repeated his pupil. "The right half--might be
'rice-scoop,' But that's nonsense."

"No," said the padre. "You have the secret. It's good Triad writing.
Subtract this twisted character 'Lightning' from each, and we've made
the crooked straight. The writer was afraid of being caught. Here's the
sense of his message, I take it." And he read off, slowly:--

"A Hakka boat on opposite shore; a green flag and a rice-scoop hoisted
at her mast; light a fire on the water-gate steps, and she will come
quickly, day or night.--O.W."

Heywood took the news coldly. He shook his head, and stood thinking.

"That won't help," he said curtly. "Never in the world."

With the aid of a convert, he unbarred the ponderous gate, and ventured
out on the highest slab of the landing-steps. Across the river, to be
sure, there lay--between a l