down on the tray. The captain's glance
followed the movement and returned sternly to his face. The young man
pointed a finger once more upwards and squeezed out of his iron-bound
throat six consecutive words of further explanation. "Through the
skylight. The white pane."

The captain raised his eyebrows very much at this, while young Powell,
ashamed but desperate, nodded insistently several times. He meant to say
that: Yes. Yes. He had done that thing. He had been spying . . . The
captain's gaze became thoughtful. And, now the confession was over, the
iron-bound feeling of Powell's throat passed away giving place to a
general anxiety which from his breast seemed to extend to all the limbs
and organs of his body. His legs trembled a little, his vision was
confused, his mind became blankly expectant. But he was alert enough. At
a movement of Anthony he screamed in a strangled whisper.

"Don't, sir! Don't touch it."

The captain pushed aside Powell's extended arm, took up the glass and
raised it slowly against the lamplight. The liquid, of very pale amber
colour, was clear, and by a glance the captain seemed to call Powell's
attention to the fact. Powell tried to pronounce the word, "dissolved"
but he only thought of it with great energy which however failed to move
his lips. Only when Anthony had put down the glass and turned to him he
recovered such a complete command of his voice that he could keep it down
to a hurried, forcible whisper--a whisper that shook him.

"Doctored! I swear it! I have seen. Doctored! I have seen."

Not a feature of the captain's face moved. His was a calm to take one's
breath away. It did so to young Powell. Then for the first time Anthony
made himself heard to the point.

"You did! . . . Who was it?"

And Powell gasped freely at last. "A hand," he whispered fearfully, "a
hand and the arm--only the arm--like that."

He advanced his own, slow, stealthy, tremulous in faithful reproduction,
the tips of two fingers and the thumb pressed together and hovering above
the glass for an instant--then the swift jerk back, after the deed.

"Like that," he repeated growing excited. "From behind this." He
grasped the curtain and glaring at the silent Anthony flung it back
disclosing the forepart of the saloon. There was on one to be seen.

Powell had not expected to see anybody. "But," he said to me, "I knew
very well there was an ear listening and an eye glued to the