man mumbled an "Aye, aye, sir." Retreating footsteps were just
audible.

Neither speaker had been visible to Lanyard. By putting out a hand he
could have touched the helmsman, but his body made not even the shadow
of a silhouette against the sky. The fog was rendering the night the
simple and unqualified negation of light.

And in that time of Stygian gloom violence was done swiftly, surely,
and without mercy; with pity, yes, and with regret. Lanyard was sorry
for the man at the wheel. But what was to be done could not be done in
any other way.

The surprise aided him, for the fellow offered barely a show of
opposition. His astounded faculties had no more than recognised the
call for resistance when he was powerless in Lanyard's hands. Swung
bodily away from the wheel, he went over the rail to the forward deck
like a bag of sugar. Immediately Lanyard turned to the binnacle.

Sensitive fingers located the key-hole in the pedestal, the one key
saved from the ring which Mr. Swain had so unfortunately and
unaccountably lost opened the door--the key, of course, that Mr. Swain
had used under Lanyard's eyes when demonstrating the functions of the
binnacle to Liane Delorme.

Thrusting a hand into the opening, Lanyard groped for the adjustable
magnets in their racks, and one by one removed and dropped them to the
grating at the foot of the binnacle.

He worked with hands amazingly nimble and sure, and was closing and
relocking the door when Mr. Collison tumbled up the ladder with his
flash-light. So when the second mate arrived upon the bridge, Lanyard
was waiting for him; and in consequence of a second act of deplorable
violence, Mr. Collison returned to the deck backwards and lay quite
still while Lanyard returned to the wheel.

Collecting the abstracted magnets he carried them to the rail, cast
them into the sea and threw in the key to the little door to keep them
company. Then, back at the binnacle, he unscrewed the brass caps of the
cylindrical brass tube which housed the Flinders bar, removed that
also, replaced the caps, and consigned the bar to the sea in its turn.

By choice he would have made a good job of it and abolished the
quadrantal correctors as well; but he judged he had done mischief
enough to secure his ends, as it was. The compass ought now to be just
as constant to the magnetic pole as a humming-bird to one especial
rose.

Guiding himself by a hand that lightly touched the rail, Lanyard
regained