n I will have others do it for me.

"Now you know what to expect, and you also know that when I say a
thing I mean it. Now do what you like with me."

Burns looked at Schofield's tense white face. His eyes encountered
those flaming blue ones and dropped sullenly. Whether it was the
tremendous force of the threat or whether it was a guilty conscience
working, no one but himself knew, but his face grew gradually as
pallid as that of his captive. Suddenly he turned away.

"Boys," he called to the crew who were working near, "put Schofield in
the old storeroom. And one of you watch it all the time. He says he
will escape if he can, so I hold you responsible."

Code followed the men to a little shanty seemingly erected against the
foremast. It was of stout, heavy boards about long enough to allow a
cot being set up in it. It had formerly been used for storing
provisions and had never been taken down.

When the padlock snapped behind him Code took in his surroundings.
There were two windows in the little cubby, one looking forward and
the other to starboard. Neither was large enough to provide a means of
escape, he judged. At the foot of the cot was a plain wooden armchair,
both pieces of furniture being screwed to the floor. For exercise
there was a strip of bare deck planking about six feet long beside the
bed, where he might pace back and forth.

Both the cot and chair appeared to be new. "Had the room all ready for
me," said Code to himself.

The one remaining piece of furniture was a queer kind of book-shelf
nailed against the wall. It was fully five feet long and protruded a
foot out above his bed. In its thirty-odd pigeonholes was jammed a
collection of stuff that was evidently the accumulation of years.
There were scores of cheap paper-bound novels concerning either high
society or great detectives, old tobacco-boxes, broken pipes, string,
wrapping-paper, and all the what-not of a general depository.

With hours on his hands and nothing whatever to occupy him, Code began
to sort over the lurid literature with a view to his entertainment. He
hauled a great dusty bundle out of one pigeonhole, and found among the
novels some dusty exercise books.

He inspected them curiously. On the stiff board cover of one was
scrawled, "Log Schooner _M. C. Burns_; M. C. Burns, master."

The novels were forgotten with the appearance of this old relic. _The
M. C. Burns_ was the original Burns schooner when Nat's father was
st