en Zachary edged and squeezed himself out again into a
freer part of the hold.

[Illustration]

Zachary measured with his fuse from the crate cave, where he evidently
intended hiding the gunpowder, to the farthest point away from it and
nearest the ladder, for the treacherous young man wanted all the time
he could get to escape from the doomed _Mirabelle_. Time to climb the
ladder, reach the ship's side, and perhaps row away to a safe
distance.

The fuse proved to be rather shorter than Zachary Heigh wished. His
candle stub, set on a crate, was burning very low and he had only a
few more moments in which--that night at any rate--to decide where he
would hide the lighting end of the fuse. Just before the candle went
out, Zachary's fuse coil reached a group of molasses barrels, and here
the young man decided that the fuse, when the time came, would be
hidden and lit. He made a mark in white chalk behind one of the
barrels and then hurriedly began coiling up the fuse as he turned
toward the ladder.

[Illustration]

At that moment the candle end, drowned in a pool of its own melted
tallow, guttered, blinked, and went out. The utter blackness of the
hold rushed over Zachary and the fly who clutched at the threads of
the sailor's coarse shirt. Zachary was only a young boy, scarcely
older than Chris himself, and the fly could almost feel the quickening
of Zachary's heartbeat at the sudden flood of dark, the sense of the
late hour, and the rat-infested hold. Zachary moved quickly in the
pitch-black, his hands outstretched to feel the ladder, his breath
coming and going rapidly through his parted lips. The heat of the
airless place, the heavy smells of the cargo itself, oppressed and
weighed on both Zachary and his unsuspected companion. The _Mirabelle_
was moving slowly forward in calm tropic seas, scarcely making headway
on an almost breathless night. Down in the hold the ladder eluded
Zachary's reaching fingers, and the creaking of the ship was all that
was to be heard except for the faint sound of Zachary's breathing.

Then all at once, as sometimes happens in a roomful of talking people,
there came a moment of total silence. For a second there was a space
in the creaking of the ship, the pad of rats, or the slight shift and
reshift of boxes. And in that second, just as Zachary's fingers
touched the ladder, to Zachary and to Chris on his shoulder, came the
distinct sound of another man's breathing.

CHAPTER 2