maneuver sent him sprawling.

This time the puffing and foaming and insanely-badgered man
did not try at once to rise. Instead, his hand whipped back
to his thigh.

"My clumsy friend," Brice was saying, pleasantly, "I'm afraid
you'll never win that watch. Shall we call it a day and quit?
Or--"

He broke off with an exclamation of genuine wrath. For, with
astonishing swiftness, the big hand had flown to the hip of
the ragged trousers, had plucked a short-bladed fishing knife
from its sheath, and had hurled it, dexterously, with the
strength of a catapult, straight at his smiling adversary's
throat.

The sub-tropic beach comber and the picaroon acquire nasty
tricks with knives, and have an uncanny skill at their use.

Brice twisted to one side, with a sharp suddenness that all
but threw his back out of joint. The knife whizzed through
the still air like a great hornet. The breath of its passage
fanned Gavin's averted face, as he wrenched his head out of
its path.

The collie had watched the supposed gambols of the two men
with keen, but impersonal, interest. But here at last was
something he could understand. Instinct teaches practically
every dog the sinister nature of a thrown object. The man on