that there was no time for any to save himself; and of a hundred other
strange, stirring and pitiful ventures such as make up the inevitable
peril and incorrigible romance of the ocean. In a pause Billy Edwards
said musingly:

"Well, there was the _Laughing Lass_."

"How did you happen to hit on her?" asked Barnett quickly.

"Why not, sir? It naturally came into my head. She was last seen
somewhere about this part of the world, wasn't she?" After a moment's
hesitation he added: "From something I heard ashore I judge we've a
commission to keep a watch out for her as well as to destroy derelicts."

"What about the _Laughing Lass_?" asked McGuire, the paymaster, a
New Englander, who had been in the service but a short time.

"Good Lord! don't you remember the _Laughing Lass_ mystery and the
disappearance of Doctor Schermerhorn?"

"Karl Augustus Schermerhorn, the man whose experiments to identify
telepathy with the Marconi wireless waves made such a furore in the
papers?"

"Oh, that was only a by-product of his mind. He was an original
investigator in every line of physics and chemistry, besides most of the
natural sciences," said Barnett. "The government is particularly
interested in him because of his contributions to aërial photography."

"And he was lost with the _Laughing Lass_?"