gleeful gleam in his almond eyes that he was spilling over with some
fresh, delectable ship's gossip.

For several days, I learned, he and the steward have been solving a
cabin mystery. A gallon can of wood alcohol, standing on a shelf in
the after-room, had lost quite a portion of its contents. They
compared notes and then made of themselves a Sherlock Holmes and a
Doctor Watson. First, they gauged the daily diminution of alcohol.
Next they gauged it several times daily, and learned that the
diminution, whenever it occurred, was first apparent immediately
after meal-time. This focussed their attention on two suspects--the
second mate and the carpenter, who alone sat in the after-room. The
rest was easy. Whenever Mr. Mellaire arrived ahead of the carpenter
more alcohol was missing. When they arrived and departed together,
the alcohol was undisturbed. The carpenter was never alone in the
room. The syllogism was complete. And now the steward stores the
alcohol under his bunk.

But wood alcohol is deadly poison. What a constitution this man of
fifty must have! Small wonder his eyes have been bloodshot. The
great wonder is that the stuff did not destroy him.

I have not whispered a word of this to Margaret; nor shall I whisper
it. I should like to put Mr. Pike on his guard; and yet I know that
the revealing of Mr. Mellaire's identity would precipitate another
killing. And still we drive south, close-hauled on the wind, toward
the inhospitable tip of the continent. To-day we are south of a line
drawn between the Straits of Magellan and the Falklands, and to-
morrow, if the breeze holds, we shall pick up the coast of Tierra del
Fuego close to the entrance of the Straits of Le Maire, through which