nds
on you."

"We'll surrender," smiled Mr. Quinby. "Lead on MacDuff." And they
mounted to the rooms that Bert and Dick occupied together, a floor
higher up than Tom.

A flood of memories had swept over Bert at the unexpected meeting. Two
years had passed since they had been closely associated and many things
had happened since that time. Yet all the experiences of that memorable
summer stood out in his mind as clearly as the events of yesterday.

Mr. Quinby had been the owner of a fleet of vessels plying between San
Francisco and China. Needing a wireless operator on one of his ships, he
had applied to the Dean of the college and he had recommended Bert, who
was pursuing a course in electricity and making a specialty of wireless
telegraphy. Tom and Dick had made that trip with him, and it had been
replete with adventure from start to finish. At the very outset, they
had been attacked by a Malay running amuck, and only their quickness
and presence of mind had saved them from sudden death. Soon after
clearing the harbor, they had received the S.O.S. signal, and had been
able thereby to save the passengers of a burning ship. A typhoon had
caught them in its grip and threatened to send them all to Davy Jones.
His flesh crept yet as he recalled the tiger creeping along the deck of
the animal ship after breaking loose from his cage. And, traced on his
memory more deeply perhaps than anything else, was that summer evening
off the Chinese coast when they had been attacked by pirates. Sometimes
even yet in his dreams he saw the yellow faces of that fiendish band and
heard the blows of the iron bars on their shaven skulls, when old Mac
and his husky stokers had jumped into the fray.

How large a part he had played in that repulse he seldom allowed himself
to dwell upon in thought and never referred to it in speech. But the
country had rung with it, and his friends never tired of talking about
it. And none knew better than Mr. Quinby himself that he owed the safety
of his vessel and the lives of all on board to the quick wit of Bert in
sending the electric current from the dynamo into the wires and hurling
the screaming rascals back into their junks. His first words, after
they were settled comfortably in their chairs, showed of what he had
been thinking.

"Have you run up against any more pirates lately, Bert?" he asked.

"Not of the yellow kind," was the laughing response, "but it looks as
though we might meet some white