ed my axe-handle from the floor and dashed out after the robbers.

The five men were with the boat at the water's edge. Two were sitting
at the oars in readiness, two were on the beach raising Jake's trunk to
the fifth man who was standing in the stern of the boat.

I sprang upon them. I hit one, with a sickening crash, over the head.
He let go his hold of the trunk and toppled limply against the side of
the boat, as the trunk splashed into the shallow water.

I staggered with the impetus, and from the impact of my blow let my
club drop from my jarred hand. Before I could recover, the big
man,--who had been helping to raise the trunk,--bore down on me. He
caught me by the throat in a horrible grip, and tried to press me
backward; but, with a short-arm blow, I smashed him over the mouth with
telling force, cutting my knuckles in a splutter of blood and broken
teeth.

His grip loosened. He shouted to his fellows for assistance as he
sprang at me once more.

But, somewhere in the darkness behind me, a pistol-shot rang out and
the big man staggered, letting out a howl of pain, as his arm dropped
limp to his side.

He darted for the boat and threw himself into it, seized a spare oar
and pushed off frantically.

"Pull,--pull like hell," he yelled.

They needed no second bidding, for they shot out into the Bay as if a
thousand devils were after them.

I turned to ascertain who my deliverer could be; and there, on the
beach, only a few yards away, stood Mary Grant with a
serviceable-looking revolver held firmly in her right hand.

"What? You! Mary,--Mary," I cried in an agony of thought at the awful
risk she had run.

"Are you all right, George?" she inquired anxiously.

"Right as rain," I answered, hurrying to her side.

"Did they get Jake's trunk away?"

"No! The low thieves! It is lying there in the water. Do you think
you could help me up with it?"

She caught up the trunk at one end, while I took the other. And we
carried it back between us to Jake's cabin.

Poor old Jake! I could hardly smother a smile as I saw the dejected
figure he presented. His grey hair was drooping over his forehead,
every line in his face showed a droop, and his long, white moustache
drooped like the tusks of a walrus, or like the American comic
journals' representations of the whiskers of ancient and fossilised
members of the British peerage.

He was sitting bound, as the robbers had left him.

I cut him free a