foremast intact to the cross-trees and a tangle of rigging, yards,
canvas and tackle awash against the face of the cliff. Something--a
swathed human figure, perhaps--was lashed in the fore-top.

The skipper was the first to venture a passage from the edge of the
cliff to the foremast. He made it with several life-lines around his
waist. He reached the bundle lashed to the cross-trees and, clinging
with hands and feet, looked into the face of an unconscious but living
woman. So he hung for a long half-minute, staring. Then, hoisting
himself up to a more secure position, he pulled a flask of brandy from
his pocket.

So Black Dennis Nolan brought back to consciousness the person who was
to be the undoing of his great plans!




CHAPTER VI

THE GIRL FROM THE CROSS-TREES


Clinging to the cross-trees, with the winter seas smoking over the
slanted deck beneath him and the whole wrenched fabric of the ship
quaking at every sloshing blow, Black Dennis Nolan pressed the mouth of
the flask to the girl's colorless lips. A lurch of the hull sent the
brandy streaming over her face; but in a second and better-timed attempt
he succeeded in forcing a little of it between her teeth. He pulled the
glove from her left hand--a glove of brown leather lined with gray fur