"That's wot I calls rotten luck," he soliloquized. "I might jest
as well of 'ad the whole bloomin' wad."


When Jane Clayton climbed to the deck of the Kincaid she found the
ship apparently deserted. There was no sign of those she sought
nor of any other aboard, and so she went about her search for her
husband and the child she hoped against hope to find there without
interruption.

Quickly she hastened to the cabin, which was half above and half
below deck. As she hurried down the short companion-ladder into
the main cabin, on either side of which were the smaller rooms
occupied by the officers, she failed to note the quick closing of
one of the doors before her. She passed the full length of the
main room, and then retracing her steps stopped before each door
to listen, furtively trying each latch.

All was silence, utter silence there, in which the throbbing of
her own frightened heart seemed to her overwrought imagination to
fill the ship with its thunderous alarm.

One by one the doors opened before her touch, only to reveal empty
interiors. In her absorption she did not note the sudden activity
upon the vessel, the purring of the engines, the throbbing of the
propeller. She had reached the last door upon the right now, and
as she pushed it open she was seized from within by a powerful,
dark-visaged man, and drawn hastily into the stuffy, ill-smelling
interior.