m backward and nail him, with a final thrust, to the stump of
the foremast, which had been broken off some eight feet above the deck.

But Loge, gathering his power, made a brilliant and desperate rally;
twice he grazed Cleggett, whose blade was too closely engaged; and then
suddenly broke ground again. This time Cleggett perceived that he had
been retreating in accordance with a preconceived program. He was
certain the man contemplated a trick, perhaps some foul stroke.

He rushed forward with a terrible thrust. Loge, whose last maneuver
had taken him within a yard of the hatchway opening into the hold,
grasped Cleggett's blade in his left hand, and at the same instant
flung his own sword, hilt first, full in Cleggett's face. As Cleggett,
struck in the mouth with the pommel, staggered back, Loge plunged feet
foremost into the hold. It was too unexpected, and too quickly done,
for a shot from Barnstable or any of Cleggett's men.

Cleggett, with the blood streaming from his mouth, recovered himself
and leaped through the aperture in the deck. He landed upon his feet
with a jar, and, shortening his sword in his hand, stared about him in
the gloom.

He saw no one.

An instant later Wilton Barnstable and Cap'n Abernethy were beside him.

"Gone!" said Cleggett simply.

Barnstable drew from his pocket a small electric lantern and swept the
beam in a circle about the hold. Again and again he raked the darkness
until the finger of light had rested upon every foot of the interior.

But Loge had vanished as completely as a snowflake that falls into a
tub of water.

CHAPTER XXV

THE SECRET OF THE VESSEL'S HOLD

"Idiot that I am," cried Cleggett, "not to have covered that hole!"
His chagrin was touching to behold.

"There, there, Cleggett," said Wilton Barnstable kindly, "do not
reproach yourself too bitterly."

"But to let him escape when I had him----" Cleggett finished the
sentence with a groan.

But Wilton Barnstable was thinking.

"Please have some lights brought down here if you will, Captain," he
said to Abernethy, "and ask Mr. Bard and Mr. Ward to come."

In a few minutes the interior of the hold was illuminated with
lanterns; it was as bright as day. But the detectives did not proceed
at once to a minute examination of the hold as Cleggett had supposed
they would.

Instead, they stood in the waist of the vessel and thought.

Visibly they thought. Wilton Barnstable thought.

Barton Ward