ng open the big lens Tommy struck a match, which blew out. His
second was blown out by a hiss of air that preceded the flow of gas, and
the professor jumbled matters by trying his hand. But these efforts
scarcely took more time than the telling, and when the powerful streak
of light finally pierced the darkness the very first thing it showed us
was a white sail.

"I shouldn't have worried about night catching us, sir, if I'd thought
of this before," Gates laughed. "And there's plenty of extra acetylene
tanks, too, so she carn't get away now!"

"You'll have to haul down some sail, though," I replied, seeing that the
_Orchid_ lay nearly abeam of us.

"No quicker said than done, sir."

He went to direct this, while we held our light squarely on the fleeing
outlaw. Nobody was astir about her deck; indeed, so undisturbed did she
appear that the sailor standing statue-like at her wheel might have been
the only living thing aboard.

I breathed fast with thinking that maybe Sylvia might come up, and my
senses were so alert, my mind, eyes, ears so intently reaching toward
her, that now I heard what was indeed a most unexpected sound: a piano.
Grasping Tommy's arm I whispered this to him, and he nodded, saying in a
low tone:

"Yes, I hear it plainly. Reminds me of Monsieur's master musician
playing a rhapsody in the dark, d'you remember? Listen! Gods, it's '_De
puis le jour_,' from Louise!" Yet in the next breath he added: "Cheerful
girl you have, Jack,--she's switched off from her love song to Chopin's
funeral march!"

I dolefully smiled to myself, not at the funeral march but at the
realization that dreams are only dreams and nothing more, that Gates's
common sense had come nearer hitting the mark than all of our
professor's psychology; for I had seen no piano in that cabin, and five
minutes ago I would have sworn its interior was as well known to me as
the _Whim_. But an instant later my smile had given way to a cry of
rage, as a little streak of fire spat from one of the portholes and the
big lens of our searchlight, with a bang, shattered into a thousand
pieces.

"The nerve of it," Tommy yelled, violently shaking his hand that had
been resting on the brass frame. "Damn his hide, he nearly shot off my
finger!"

"Are you hit?" I asked quickly.

"Hell, no; but my hand feels like a pincushion! Say, he knows how to
shoot, though! I'll give him that much!"

"Those people are prepared for all that comes, I tell you,"