hoved her away from him. Then it kind of struck him he
had to get in or swim."

Lewson's expression grew very grim. "That's the thing that hurts the
most--to go away before I got even with that man," he said. "Still, I
may get over it if I try to think of him with his nose smashed hard to
starboard."

Wyllard made a sign of impatience. He felt that, after all, there was
perhaps something to be said for Smirnoff's point of view.

"There is just one plan open to us, and that's to drive her across to
the eastward as fast as we can," he said. "We might, perhaps, pick up
an Alaska C.C. factory before the provisions quite run out if this
breeze and the gear hold up. Failing that, we must try for one of the
Western Aleutians."

The others concurred in this, and very fortunately the breeze kept to
the west and south, for Wyllard had very grave doubts as to whether he
could have thrashed the schooner to windward through a steep head sea.
Indeed, on looking back on that voyage and remembering the state of the
vessel, it seemed to him that he and his companions had only escaped as
by a miracle. In any case, they hove her to one misty evening in a
deep inlet behind a promontory, and Wyllard, who sculled up it alone in
the growing darkness, badly startled the agent of an A.C.C. factory
when he appeared, ragged, haggard, and wet with rain, in the doorway of
a big, stove-warmed room.

The agent, however, was, as he admitted, out for business, and when
Wyllard produced a wad of paper money stained by wet and perspiration
he appeared quite willing to part with certain provisions. He was also
told that no questions would be answered, and when he had given Wyllard
supper the latter sculled away in the darkness leaving him none the
wiser. Half an hour later the schooner slipped out to sea again.

The rest was by comparison easy. They had the coast of Alaska and
British Columbia close aboard, and they crept southwards in fine
weather, once running off their course when the smoke of a steamer
crept up above the horizon. Then they ran for the northern tongue of
Vancouver Island in a strong breeze of wind, and Wyllard, who had
already decided that the vessel would scarcely fetch five hundred
dollars and that it would be better if all trace of her disappeared,
pulled his wheel over suddenly as she was scraping by a surf-swept reef.

In another minute she was on hard and fast, and they had scarcely got
the boat over when the m