my brother's speech chilled my
marrow.

"It _is_ a slim chance, but--hang it--a slim chance is better
than none."

So we hugged that sorry comfort to our hearts and fell again into
silence.

* * * * *

I remember that the folly, the fatuity of what we had done, oppressed
me like an iron band around the skull. Common sense told me that the
man who had decoyed us into Chinatown would not be satisfied with
robbery. And what were the lives of two "white devils" to the owner of
this den? Suffered to escape, we might inform the police. The logical
conclusion of my reflections is not worth recording.

"When that scoundrel emptied the till into his pocket he made up his
mind there and then never to come back," said Ajax in my ear. His
thoughts had been travelling along the same lines as mine, and at
about the same pace. I was convinced of this when he added slowly:
"Starvation may be their game. It would be the safest to play."

Then the mad, riotous desire to fight got hold of both of us. We began
to search for a weapon: anything--a stick, a stone, a bit of iron. But
we found nothing.

We had never carried pistols, and our pocket knives were hardly keen
or strong enough to sharpen a pencil.

Despair was again gripping me when Ajax touched my arm. We had
examined the filthy floor of the room very systematically, kneeling
side by side in the darkness and groping with eager fingers in the
dirty sand, for there was no floor.

"I have something," he murmured. Then he seized my right hand in his
left and guided it to some solid object lying deep in the sand.

The object proved to be a log. San Francisco is built on sand dunes,
and in early days the houses were log-cabins for the most part,
constructed of logs that two stout men could handle. After many
minutes of silent but most vigorous excavation we joyfully decided
that one of these very logs had come into our possession.

We worked steadily for about half an hour, pausing now and again to
listen. We were practically certain that the opium fiend had gone to
his pipe, and it was more than probable that the fat Mongol was no
longer on guard, knowing that we were safe in a strong-box to which he
alone held the key. Events proved we were wrong in both conjectures.

When the log was ready for use as a battering-ram we held a council of
war, which lasted about half a minute. If there is obviously only one
thing to be done, the sooner it is done t