Holman. "I was talking to the old scientist at the time."

I whistled softly. If Soma was a henchman of Leith's it was clear to me
why the captain had shielded him the night he jerked the knife at me
when I dropped the pin upon his woolly head, but why Toni had been put
away was a mystery.

"Is it any good of attempting to convince the Professor?" I asked.

"Not a bit," snapped Holman. "The girls have been imploring him to turn
back this last three days while we were stuck in the cabin, but he won't
listen to them. He's a maniac, that's what he is. He doesn't know what
those two women are suffering through his darned foolishness, and if he
did know it wouldn't trouble him. If you want the real extract of
selfishness you must make a puncture in a scientific guy with a hobby,
and you can get as much as you want."

"Well, I'm going along to see what happens," I said. "If Leith refuses
to accept me I'm going just the same."

Holman gripped my hand--gripped it fiercely, then he left me hurriedly.

I tramped backward and forward as _The Waif_ sailed steadily through the
waves of glittering mercury. A few days before, when I was an occupant
of "The Rathole" in Levuka, life seemed to be empty and cold, but a
wonderful change had come in those few days. Although I had not spoken
to Edith Herndon more than half a dozen times, it appeared to me that it
was those few short conversations that had chased the loneliness and
morbid thoughts from my mind. Her very presence stimulated me in a
manner that I could not express, and as I stared out across the