The firing now became miscellaneous. No one paid any attention to any one
else

With a strangled cry the sailor cast the shirt from him

"Sorry not to have met you at the door," he said courteously





PART ONE

THE SEA RIDDLE




I

DESERT SEAS


The late afternoon sky flaunted its splendour of blue and gold like a
banner over the Pacific, across whose depths the trade wind droned in
measured cadence. On the ocean's wide expanse a hulk wallowed sluggishly,
the forgotten relict of a once brave and sightly ship, possibly the
Sphinx of some untold ocean tragedy, she lay black and forbidding in the
ordered procession of waves. Half a mile to the east of the derelict
hovered a ship's cutter, the turn of her crew's heads speaking