ust be a porthole in the cabin."

"Too late. She will have killed herself by then. We must act at once."

He reflected for a moment, then suddenly began to run along the deck
and, reaching the hatch of the companion-way, jumped to the bottom.
The gangway began with a wider landing where the sentry sat playing
cards and drinking.

They rose. One of them commanded:

"Halt! No passage here!"

"All hands on deck! Every man to his post," shouted Simon, repeating
Rolleston's words. "At the double! And no quarter! The gold! The rain
of gold has started again!"

The men leapt to their feet and made off up the companion. Simon
darted down the gangway, ran into one of the two women, whom his
shouts had attracted, and flung the same words at her:

"The gold! The rain of gold! Where's the chief?"

"In his cabin," she replied. "Tell him!"

And she made off in her turn.

The other woman, who held the cord, hesitated. Simon felled her with a
blow on the point of the chin. Then, without troubling about Lord
Bakefield, he rushed to the cabin. At that moment, Rolleston opened
the door, shouting:

"What's up? The gold?"

Simon laid hold of the door to prevent his closing it and saw Isabel,
at the back of the cabin, alive.

"Who are you?" asked the villain, uneasily.

"Simon Dubosc."

There was a pause, a respite before the struggle which Simon believed
inevitable. But Rolleston fell back, with haggard eyes:

"M. Dubosc? . . . M. Dubosc? . . . The one who was killed just now?"

"The same," said a voice in the gangway. "And it was I who killed him,
I, Antonio, the friend of Badiarinos whom you murdered."

"Ah!" groaned Rolleston, collapsing. "I'm done for!"

He was paralysed by his drunkenness, by his state of stupor and even
more obviously by his natural cowardice. Without offering the least
resistance, he allowed himself to be knocked down and disarmed by
Antonio, while Simon and Isabel rushed into each other's arms.

"My father?" murmured the girl.

"He's alive. Don't be afraid."

Together they went to release him. The old lord was at the end of his
forces. It was all that he could do to kiss his daughter and press
Simon's hand. Isabel too was on the verge of swooning; shaken with a
nervous tremor, she fell into Simon's arms, faltering:

"Oh, Simon, you were just in time. I should have killed myself! . . .
Oh, what degradation! . . . How shall I ever forget?"

Great as was her distress, she had nevertheless