black clouds that lay before them. "Going to be
lots worse."

Poking his head into the wheel-house, he bellowed above the storm:
"How's she go?"

"Seen worse'n 'er," the skipper shouted back.

"Ought to be at the spot we started for in half an hour--that island on
the old chart."

"Never was no island," the skipper roared.

"Maybe not."

"Supposin' we get there, what then?"

"Don't know yet."

The skipper stared at Curlie for a full moment as if attempting to
determine whether he were insane, then turned in silence to his wheel.

The wind blew the door shut and Curlie resumed his long-legged,
short-legged march.

He had done three turns around the deck when his eyes caught a small
figure crumpled up on the pile of ropes forward.

"Hello," he cried, "you out here?"

Gladys did not answer at once. She was straining her eyes as if to see
some object which might be hovering above the jagged, sea-swept skyline.

"No," said Curlie, as if in answer to a question, "you couldn't see the
plane. You couldn't see it fifty fathoms away and then it would flash by
you like a carrier pigeon. No use if you did see it. Couldn't do
anything. But there's one chance in a million of their coming into our
line of vision, so it's no use watching. Only chance is a radiophone
message giving their location."

"But I--I want to. I--I ought to do something." For the first time he
noticed how white and drawn her face was.

"All right," he said in a quiet voice, "you just sit where you are and
I'll sit here beside you and you tell me one or two things. That will
help."

"Tell--tell what?"

"Tell me this: Did your brother have the original of that old map?"

"Yes," her tone was already quieting down, "yes, he did, or Alfred
Brightwood did. His father is very rich and he has a hobby of collecting
very old editions of books. He pays terrible prices for them. He bought
an old, old copy of 'Marco Polo's Travels'; paid fifteen thousand
dollars for it. And inside its cover Alfred found that old map with the
curious writing on the back of it.

"He thought right away that it might hide some great secret, so he had
it photographed and sent the photo to Vincent. Vincent got a great
scholar to read the writing for him. He never told me what the writing
was; said that no one but he and Alfred should know; that it was a great
secret and that girls couldn't keep secrets, so I was not to know.

"But they can keep secrets!" she exploded, b