aboard, if you're ready."

For the first time since embarking upon the strange seas of
advertising in his quest of the Adventure of Life, Average Jones now
met the experience of grilling physical toil. All that day and all
the night the two men swung at the oars; swung until every muscle in
the young Easterner's back had turned to live nerve-fiber, and the
flesh had begun to strip from the palms of his hands. Even so, the
hardy captain had done most of the work. Aided by the current, they
turned the shoulder of the Cocopah range as the dawn shone lurid in
the east, and the captain swung the boat's head to the southern
shore of the lake. Meantime, between spells at the oars, Average
Jones had outlined the case in full to Funcke. He could have found
no better coadjutor:

By nature and equipment every really expert hunter and tracker is
a detective. The subtleties of the trail sharpen both physical
and mental sensibility. Captain Funcke was, by instinct, a
student of that continuous logic which constitutes the science of
the chase, whether the prize of pursuit be a mountain sheep's
horns or the scholar's need of praise for the interpreting of some
half-obliterated inscription on a pre-Hittite tomb. After long
and silent consideration the captain gave his views.

"It isn't bunco. It's a hold-up. If Richford had wanted to stick
young Hoff, he'd never have brought him here. There isn't 'color'
enough within eighty miles to gild a cigar band. It looks to me
like the scheme is this: They get him off in the mountains, out of
sight of the lake, so he'll have no landmark to go by. Then they
scare him into signing co-partnership papers, and make him turn