"Maseden!" he cried. "You know our friend, then?"

"I--I heard his name before--on the ship," came the faltered answer.

"Well, you heard more than _I_ did.... Are you the mysterious English-speaking _vaquero_ who lived in the forecastle?" and the questioner bent a puzzled face sideways to try and discern the other man's features.

"Yes," said Maseden promptly. "There need be no mystery about it now. I got into trouble in Cartagena, shot the president-elect, and escaped in the disguise of a Spanish cowboy."

"Gee!" exclaimed Sturgess.

For some reason best known to himself he displayed no further curiosity in the matter, though he might well have wondered how Madge Forbes had come to identify that picturesque-looking person, Ramon Aliones, with the American whose exploits had set all Cartagena agog the day before the _Southern Cross_ sailed.

There was an uncomfortable pause, which Maseden broke by a laugh.

"So you see, Mr. Sturgess, I owed you a good turn, though you never guessed it. By your kindness in letting me carry your bag and share your boat I got away from my pursuers without attracting attention."

"Gee!" said Sturgess again.

His comment probably denoted bewilderment. It may also have shown that the speaker had just ascertained something which supplied food for thought. In the half light Maseden allowed himself to smile, because the conceit instantly leaped into his mind that his fellow-countryman might have been told of that amazing marriage, and was now engaged in fitting together certain pieces of the puzzle.

If, for instance, Sturgess suspected that Madge Forbes was the lady who figured in that extraordinary episode, he must realize that in paying her such marked attention during the voyage he had placed himself, if not her, in a somewhat equivocal position.

"I had reason to believe that the captain recognized me," went on Maseden. "Probably that is how Miss Forbes came to hear my name."

"Miss Forbes!"

There was no mistaking the new note of surprise, even of annoyance, in Sturgess's voice. He was gathering information at a rapid rate, and evidently found some difficulty in assimilating it.

"Yes," broke in Nina Forbes. "That is my sister's name, and my own. Mr.

Gray was our stepfather. We passed as his daughters while traveling. The arrangement prevented all sorts of misunderstandings. In any event, it concerned none but ourselves. I only mentioned the fact casually to Mr.

Maseden a few minutes ago."

Some men might have caught a rebuke in the girl's words. Not so Sturgess.

"I'm tickled to death at hearing it, anyhow," he said cheerfully. "The one thing I couldn't understand was how you two girls could be that poor chap's daughters.... Well, now we're all properly introduced, let's talk as though we really knew one another. Has any one the beginning of a notion as to the time."

Then Maseden remembered that he was wearing a watch which he had wound that morning. He produced it, and was able to discern the hands.

"A quarter past two," he announced.

A silence fell on them. Somehow the intimate and homely fact that one of the little company possessed a watch which had not stopped served rather to enhance than allay the sense of peril and abandonment which their brief talk had dispelled for the moment. A soldier who took part in that glorious but terrible retreat from Mons confessed afterwards that his spirit quailed once, and that was when he read the route names on a London suburban omnibus lying disabled and abandoned by the roadside.

The Marble Arch, Edgware Road, Maida Vale and Cricklewood--what had these familiar localities to do with the crash of shell-fire and the spattering of bullets on the _pave_? Similarly, the forlorn castaways on Hanover Island felt that a watch was an absurdly civilized thing among the loud-voiced savageries of wind and wave.

The moonlight died away, too, with a suddenness that was almost unnerving. True, the moon had only vanished behind a cloud-bank. But her face was veiled effectually, and the growing darkness soon showed that she would not be visible again that night.

They tried to sleep, but the effort failed. Lack of food was a more serious matter now than mere physical exhaustion. All four were young and vigorous enough to withstand fatigue, and to wake up refreshed after the brief repose they had already enjoyed.

But they were stiff and cramped, and their blood was beginning to yield to a deadly chill. Though they huddled together as closely as possible, there was no resisting the steady encroachment of the bitter cold.

At last Maseden counseled that they all stand up, and, despite the urgent need of conserving their energies, obtain some measure of warmth by stretching their limbs and breathing deeply.

He even suggested that they should sing, but the effort to start a popular chorus was such a lamentable failure that they laughed dismally.

Then he tried story telling. He judged, and quite rightly, that the majority of his hearers would be deeply interested in a recital of his own recent adventures.

Greatly daring, he left out no detail, and, in a darkness which was almost tangible because of its density, he was well aware how alert was every ear to catch the true version of an extraordinary marriage.

No one interrupted. They just listened intently. Once, when he asked if he was wearying them by a too exact description of events at the ranch after his escape, Nina Forbes said quietly:

"Please tell us everything, Mr. Maseden. I have never heard anything half so interesting. You have caused me to forget where I am, and I can give you no higher praise."

At last he made an end, dwelling purposely on the light note of his troubles with the Spanish sailor who claimed a vested right in him after the incident of the falling block.

Sturgess put a direct question or two.

"You don't seem to have any sort of a notion as to who the lady was?" he began.

"I only know that her Christian name was Madeleine," answered Maseden readily. "She was about to sign the register when the idea of getting out of the Castle dawned on me, and, from that instant, I thought of nothing else. I hadn't much time, you know. The plan had to be concocted and carried out almost in the same breath. And there was no room for failure. The least slip, either in time or method, and I was a dead man."

"Madeleine!" mused Sturgess aloud. "She was English, or American, I suppose?"

"American, I imagine. Undoubtedly one or the other."

"And that fat Steinbaum was the marriage broker! I know Steinbaum--a thug, if ever there was one.... What are you going to do about it, Mr.

Maseden?"

"Do about what?"

"Well, if you win clear from this present rather doubtful proposition--and we're backing you in that for all we're worth, ain't we, girls?--you're tied up to a wife whom you don't know, and I guess the one place in which you're likely to find her is off the map for you for keeps."

"I'm not versed in the law," laughed Maseden, "but it will be a queer thing if I should be compelled to regard myself as married to a lady whom I have seen, certainly, but do not want."

"How do you know you don't want her?"

"I know nothing whatsoever about her."

"That's just it. That's where you may be hipped. She may be a peach, the finest ever. Suppose, for the sake of argument, one of these two, Miss Madge or Miss Nina--"

"The lady's name happened to be Madeleine," put in Madge instantly. "If the ceremony was meant to be valid she would undoubtedly sign her right name."

"Just so. You missed my point."

Maseden thought it advisable to come to the rescue. He had conveyed to the one vitally interested listener that her secret was safe for the time, and this should suffice.

"I am inclined to think that I shall be proof against my nominal wife's charms, no matter how great they may be," he said emphatically. "There is a romantic side to the affair, I admit, but I cannot blind myself to the fact that it possesses a prosaic one as well. Association with a skunk like Steinbaum is hardly the best of credentials, in the first place. Secondly, one asks what motive any woman could have in wishing to marry a man condemned to die. I'm not flattering myself that my personal qualifications carried much weight.

"Admittedly, the lady wanted to wed because I was about to disappear. I give her the credit of believing that she would never have gone through with the farce if she had the least reason to think that I would not be dead within the next half hour. But the fact remains that she was callous and calculating--whether to serve her own ends or some other person's is immaterial.... No, Mr. Sturgess; when, if ever, I choose a wife, it is long odds against her name being Madeleine."