lime effrontery added to his
recent shocking experience, that the gaunt hands trembled beyond his
control, and it was several seconds before he succeeded.

Lanyard gave no sign, but his heart sank. He had exhausted his last
resource to gain time, he was now at his wits' ends. Only his star
could save him now....

Monk turned the keys, but all at once forgot his purpose, and with
hands stayed upon the lid of the box paused and cocked his ears
attentively to rumours of excitement and confusion on the deck. The
instinct of the seafaring man uppermost, Monk stiffened, grew rigid
from head to foot.

One heard hurried feet, outcries, a sudden jangle of the engine-room
telegraph...

"Monsieur! monsieur!" Liane implored. "Open that box!"

The words were on her lips when she was thrown off her feet by a
frightful shock which stopped the Sybarite dead in full career, before
the screw, reversed in obedience to the telegraph, could grip the water
and lessen her momentum. The woman cannoned against Monk, shouldering
him bodily aside. Instinctively snatching at the box, Monk succeeded
only in dragging it to the edge of the desk before a second shock,
accompanied by a grinding crash of steel and timbers, seemed to make
the yacht leap like a live thing stricken mortally. She heeled heavily
to starboard, the despatch-box went to the floor with a thump lost in
the greater din, Liane Delorme was propelled headlong into a corner,
Monk thrown to his knees, Phinuit lifted out of his chair and flung
sprawling into the arms of Lanyard, who, pinned down by the other's
weight in his own chair, felt this last slide backwards to starboard
and bring up against a partition with a bang that drove the breath out
of him in one enormous gust.

He retained, however, sufficient presence of mind neatly to disarm
Phinuit before that one guessed what he was about.

After that second blow, the Sybarite remained at a standstill, but the
continued beating of her engines caused her to quiver painfully from
trucks to keelson, as if in agonies of death such as those which had
marked the end of Popinot. Of a sudden the engines ceased, and there
was no more movement of any sort, only an appalling repose with silence
more dreadful still.

Lanyard had no means to measure how long that dumb suspense lasted
which was imposed by the stunned faculties of all on board. It seemed
interminable. Eventually he saw Monk pick himself up and, making
strange moaning noi