d little idea, Pete," said Percival. "Are you going to write the
play?"

"Sure. My faithful old typewriter is aching to be thumped once
more,--and I've got half-a-dozen extra ribbons, thank God. Good for
two long novels and an epitaph. Just as soon as we can get the ship's
printing press and dining-room type ashore, I'll be ready to issue The
Trigger Island Transcript, w.t.f.--if you know what that means. I see
you don't. Weekly till forbidden."

"I've always wondered what those confounded letters meant down in the
corner of the half-inch advertisements," said Flattner. "It will be a
rotten-looking newspaper if it's anything like the sheet the Doraine
put out on the trip down. No two letters matched, and some of 'em were
always upside down. Why were they upside down, Pete? You're an old
newspaper man. Tell us."

"Because it's impossible to set 'em sideways. If it was possible, the
blamed printers could do it, you bet. When I was writing leaders on the
Saxville Citizen years ago there was a ruffian up in the composing-room
who used to set whole paragraphs of my best editorials in em quads, and
when I kicked,--Hello, isn't that a lantern, A. A.?"

They all scrambled to their feet and peered intently in the direction of
the wooded strip that lined the channel. This whilom conversation came
to an abrupt end. Ghostly forms suddenly took shape in front of other
huts, figures of men that were until then as logs in the shadows.
Far off in the road through the wood, a light bobbed, flashed and
disappeared intermittently, and finally emerged into the open and came
steadily forward. Detached knots of men down the line of huts, twos and
threes and fours, swiftly welded themselves into groups, and, hurrying
forward, swelled the crowd that congregated at the end of the "street."
Two hundred of them, tired but eager, awaited the arrival of the man
with the lantern.

These were the men who slept on shore, the unmarried men, those who
had no "feminine hearth," as Snipe put it dolefully one dark and windy
night. Since supper-time these men had been waiting and watching. But
few of them had gone to bed. Gentleman and roustabout, one and all, were
linked together by a common anxiety. News of the greatest import was
expected during the night.

A child was coming to the pathetic little widow of Cruise, the
radio-man.

Two messengers had gone down to the landing to wait for the report to be
shouted from the afterdeck of the Doraine,-