th you. No, thanks!"

* * * * *

Strom, or Burroughs, made no attempt to conceal his disappointment.
The recital of his wrongs had brought out the bitter lines of his
face, and the weariness of one who plays his game alone and can call
no one friend.

"I should have known better," he said quietly. "There was none more
loyal to the I.F.P. than I--when I still belonged to it. Yet, I
thought if I laid all my cards before you--You realize what this
means?"

"Yes," Quirl replied soberly. "It means you will never dare to let me
be ransomed nor to free me among your selected people. It
means--death!"

"Not death! I will parole you."

Quirl felt an overmastering surge of sympathy. He saw this pirate as
later historians have come to see him--a man of lofty and noble
purpose who was made the victim of shrewder, meaner minds in the most
despicable interplanetary imbroglio ever to disgrace a solar system.
The thought of his own fate, should he refuse the offer, did not
depress Quirl as much as the necessity of heaping more disappointment
on this deeply wronged "man without a planet."

"Captain," he said slowly, with deep regret. "You remember the I.F.P.
oath?" And at the other's flush he hurried on. "Knowing that oath you
know what my answer must be. Put me in irons or kill me!"

"I know," Strom added wistfully. "Would you--if I could just once more
shake the clean hand of a brave man and a gentleman--"

Quirl's hand shot out and gripped the long, powerful fingers of the
pirate captain.

* * * * *

Quirl was willing to compromise to the extent of not revealing
anything to the other passengers, for the privilege of being kept in
the prison hold rather than in solitary confinement. Here he would be
under the vigilant eye of a guard, with possibly less chance of
effecting an escape in some way, but he felt a great desire to be near
the girl Lenore, and to know that she was safe and in good spirits.

They fastened him by means of a light chain and hoop that locked
around his waist to a staple set in the floor near one wall. The other
prisoners regarded him as a hero, for since the day of the epic fight
the mate had kept away, and they had been treated with tolerable
decency. Quirl was able to cheer them up with predictions that the
most of them would be eligible to ransom. But as he looked at the pale
beauty of Lenore he felt grave misgivings, for he knew tha