sical laws. We are forced to the conclusion that he
made his escape through a secret passageway."

"A tunnel," said Barton Ward.

"With a concealed door opening into the hold," said Watson Bard.

"A ship with a secret tunnel!" cried Cleggett. "Who ever heard of the
like? Why, the thing is----"

But he broke off. He had been leaning against the starboard side of
the hold. Even as he spoke he felt the wall behind him moving. He
turned. A door was opening. It was built into the side of the Jasper
B. and the joints were cleverly concealed. He had inadvertently found,
with his elbow, the nailhead which was in reality the push button that
released the spring. The black entrance of a subterranean passage
yawned before him.

He stared in astonishment. The three detectives were pointing at the
tunnel with plump forefingers and bland, triumphant smiles.

"Nothing is impossible, my dear Cleggett," said Barnstable. "The
tunnel HAD to be there!"

"It explains everything," said Cleggett. "But a tunnel into MY ship!"

And, in truth, for a moment he felt disappointed in the Jasper B.

A tunnel is all very well leading from the basement of a house, or
extending backward from a cave; but Cleggett felt that it was scarcely
a dignified sort of arrangement, nautically speaking, for a ship to
have leading from its hold.

It seemed, somehow, to stamp the Jasper B. indelibly as a thing of the
land rather than as the gallant creature of piping winds and following
seas. Could the Jasper B., a bone in her teeth and her tackle humming,
ever again sail through Cleggett's dreams? For a moment, if the worst
must be known, he was almost disgusted with the Jasper B., considered
as a ship. For a moment he was willing to believe that Cap'n Abernethy
was nothing but a Long Island truck farmer, and NOT of a seafaring
family at all. For a moment he felt himself to be a copyreader again
on the New York Enterprise.

But only for a moment! The star of romance, clouded temporarily by
fact, rose serene and bright again in the wide heaven of the unusual
spirit, the barber's basin gleamed once more the helmet of Mambrino.
Cleggett began to see the matter in its proper light.

"A tunnel!" he cried, brightening, and looking at it with his legs
spread a little wide and his hands on his hips. "A tunnel! Eh, by gad!
Who could have prophesied a tunnel? Barnstable, never tell me again
there is no romance in real life! I tell you, Barnstable