vaded by
one daring stroke the spirit of his own signed agreement. He had most
carefully and minutely arranged for the flotation of the company at the
time when Matheson would be on the high seas and out of touch with
London news.

The "Starlight" was a well-found yacht, capable of weathering any North
Sea gale. She had oil-engines to supplement her sailing power. She was
provisioned for a month. Rough weather would not drive her back to
harbour. She could fight through any wind or sea to Norway. Nothing had
been overlooked to carry Larssen's scheme to perfect success.

Save only the hand of Providence.... Fate....

For such a man as Lars Larssen there is no other antagonist he need
fear.

But Fate, with its little finger, can squeeze him to nothingness.

Out in the North Sea, wallowing sullenly in the trough of the waves, her
masts gone by the board and her deck awash, lay the derelict schooner
"Valkyrie" of Bergen. She would have been at the bottom of the sea had
it not been for her cargo of Norway pine, keeping her painfully afloat
against her will. Fate, with its little finger, moved this uncharted
peril right in the track of the "Starlight," beating close-reefed
through the buffeting waves on the night of May 1st, while Larssen, in
his London home, satisfied that his plans had foreseen every human
eventuality, slept the easy sleep of the successful.

CHAPTER XXXV

INTERVENTION

The "Starlight" struck the sodden derelict shortly before midnight, with
a crash that jarred the yacht to her innermost fibres.

She struck it full abeam, like a motor-car smashing in the dark into an
unlighted farm-waggon drawn across a country lane. Bows crumpled up;
bowsprit snapped away; foremast, loosed from its stay, and forced back
by the pressure of a half-gale on the close-hauled foresail, carried
over to port in a tangle of rope and wire and canvas.

Thrown back on her haunches, the "Starlight" gasped and shivered and
began to settle by the head from the rush of water into the forecastle.

"All on deck with lifebelts!"

A seaman rushed through the saloons, throwing wide the cabin doors, and
shouting the captain's order.

Up above, men were ripping the canvas covers off the life-boats,
flinging oilskins and rugs and provisions into them, slewing round the
davits, hauling on the fall-ropes--a furious medley of energies.

Matheson rushed to his wife's cabin, helped her on with some clothes,
tied her lifebelt,