"I wouldn't do it, sir." "Leckricity's liable to strike you, sir."

"There's a storm comin', sir, and you won't get back, like th' mate did." "You can see just as well from 'ere."

But the two clambered into the half-seen dinghy and pushed off. The moment they dipped oars into water, the mystery was partially explained.

Every stroke they made created bright phosphorescent rings in the lifeless sea. Their blades drove through the water in a flame. The navvies cried out at this phenomenon. A sufficient disturbance of the sea beyond the schooner would almost explain the strange light dancing through the rigging. But what made that disturbance?

Reflections of the shining spars made a wavering path over the weed-strewn water, and up this path the dinghy moved amid its own flashing fires. It formed a queer spectacle, a glowworm creeping up on a bonfire.

The fact that the two boys had just traversed the Sargasso lanes a few hours before aided them greatly now in finding their way to the schooner. Presently they were skirting the drift of seaweed where Madden had come so near losing his life. As they rowed, the flashing of the water about their oars only half convinced Madden that a similar cause underlay the bizarre illumination on the schooner. The American's mind clung to the idea that there was somebody on board the _Minnie B_, a madman, possibly, who in some unknown way produced this amazing light.

He groped for some theory to account for a maniac on a deserted schooner in these desolate seas. No doubt if a solitary man were left in these terrible painted seas he would go insane. Madden regretted that he had not searched the _Minnie B_ more thoroughly when he had the opportunity.

Similar thoughts evidenly played in Greer's mind, for presently he puffed out, between oar strokes: "Did you bring along a pistol, sir?"

"No, but there are two of us."

"They say they are tremendously stout, sir."

"We can use our oars; they'd made good clubs."

"I'm with you, sir."

By this time they had entered a long S-shaped rift that Madden recalled led straight to the schooner. By glancing over his shoulder, the American saw its two curving strokes drawn in pale light against the dark field of seaweed. As they drew nearer, wild notions of what they might encounter played through Madden's mind. What would be the outcome of this fantastic adventure?

The dinghy was moving down the middle of the long "S" when a dull noise from the schooner caused both oarsmen to look around. Such an extraordinary sight met their eyes that they ceased rowing completely, and stood up in the boat to stare at their goal.

The _Minnie B_ no longer lay at rest. Some strange and mighty convulsion was taking place in the schooner. The lights still played about the vessel, but her whole prow rose slowly out of the sea, while she settled heavily by the stern. The most unexpected thing in the world was happening.

The _Minnie B_ was foundering!

In the ghastly light, her masts and rigging swung in a slow drunken reel. Presently she settled back to normal with a heavy crushing sound as the water in her hold rushed forward. She seemed some mighty leviathan weltering in agony. She lay on even keel for four or five minutes while a hissing and spewing of air compressed in her hull told she was slowly settling.

In the ghostly light the foundering vessel gave a strange impression of clinging desperately to her life. She seemed striving to remain upright.

Her hissing and sucking might have been a living gasp for breath. Very slowly she rolled over, and came the noise of many waters cascading down over her upflung keel. Her masts crashed, yards broke, rigging popped in the wildest confusion as they dashed into the sea. Great phosphorescent waves dashed through the prone rigging and over the hull in liquid fire.

A sea of quicksilver leaped up to lick her down. With great bubbling and sucking and groaning, the _Minnie B_ fought for her last gasp of life. For several minutes she lay thus, on her side, every detail clearly delineated as liquid fire roared down her open hatches. At last, as she filled with water, the schooner straightened with a mighty effort, a last stand between sea and sky, then sank slowly out of sight in a scene of wild and ill-starred beauty. Her mainpeak disappeared in a shining maelstrom. The convulsed water flashed and hissed, and the circling waves here torches into the dead seaweed and moved the black fields to a whispered sighing.

Toward the south the waves moved with great velocity and brilliance.

Indeed something seemed to be rushing away from the wreck, clad in long winding sheets of flame. It might have been a continuation of the waves in that direction, or it might have been some dolphin or shark flying from the roaring vessel.

In ghastly mystification, the two watchers stared at the last weird gleams that marked the foundered schooner. The waves reached the dinghy, raised it and dropped it with a slow gurgling, then died away in firefly glimmers. The sea presented once more a dim gray surface. To Madden's mind there came, with a sharp sense of pathos, the picture of the little sunny-haired girl he had seen in the chart room.

"Sunk," murmured Greer in a strange tone, "sunk--when she was as dry as a chip."

"Heeled over," shivered Madden, "heeled over in a dead calm--God have mercy on us!"

CHAPTER XI

CARADOC SHOWS HIS METTLE

Heat, that grew more terrific as the dock drifted southward; hunger, that gnawed like rats at the empty stomachs of the crew; withering heat, aching hunger, growing despair--that was life on the floating dock.

Of all the crew only Gaskin remained in good condition. It would have required more than a hero to cook food and go hungry, but the crew made no such allowances. They berated the dignified Gaskin, they eyed each other's scant portions jealously. Their quarrels over food at last forced Madden to weigh each man's allowance to the fraction of an ounce.

The nerves of the crew frayed out in the heat. By night they slept amid tantalizing dreams of food; by day they sprawled in dreary silences under awnings which held heat like sweat boxes. The high metal walls of the dock caught the sun's rays and threw out a furnace heat. The men endured it in net undershirts clinging to dripping bodies; their eyes ached against the glare, their stomachs rebelled, their brains sickened with monotony and despair.

The men developed little personal traits that exasperated their mates unreasonably. Mulcher had a way of breathing aloud through his coarse lips that chafed Hogan's temper. For hours at a time the Irishman would stare at those flabby spewing lips, filled with a desire to maul them.

Yet before this isolation, he had never observed that Mulcher breathed aloud.

The only occupation the men had now was to stare at, listen to and criticise each other. All painting had ceased, for work consumes energy, and energy consumes food.

Caradoc Smith found peculiar and private grievance in the fact that Greer often whistled to himself in a windy undertone. The tune Farnol chose for these unfortunate performances was an American ragtime, that repeated the same strain over and over.

Caradoc strove not to listen to this dry whistling. Sometimes he left his awning and climbed up the walls through the sapping sun's rays to escape it, but his ears caught the faintly aspirated air at remarkable distances.

One day he said to Madden: "I don't see how you stand that Greer fellow's eternal whistling," and Leonard answered:

"Does Greer whistle?"

"Whistle! He whistles everlastingly, abominably--one of those confounded American rags. He's at it now--what is that thing?"

Madden had to listen very carefully before he caught the faint blowing between Farnol's lips. Presently he identified it.

"That's 'Winona, Sweet Indian Maid.'"

This reply seemed to arouse an irrational anger in the Briton.

"'Winona, Sweet Indian Maid'--_sweet_ Indian Maid!" he snorted.

"Did an Indian write such a nightmare? Is it a war song? Do they murder each other by it, or with it?"

Madden grinned with fagged appreciation, thinking the remark meant for humor, but Caradoc grimly chewed his blond mustache.

It was noon, three days later when Caradoc's endurance broke down.

"Greer!" he snapped with all his pent-up irritation in his voice, "will you never stop mouthing that beastly tune?"

The stolid fellow looked around in the blankest surprise. "Tune?"

"No, groaning, wheezing! You spew it out all day long! What do you think you are? A tree frog, a locust, a katydid? Doesn't your mouth get tired?

Does that hideous tinkle go through your hollow head all day long?"

The Englishman's long face was a dusky red. He had not intended to be insulting when he first spoke, but all the sarcastic and abusive epithets that he had _thought_ during the long super-heated days of nerve-racked listening, now rushed out like steam from a boiler.

Farnol stared straight at the nervous fellow. "Are you insane?" he asked in wondering contempt,

"A wonder I'm not--with that diabolical wheezy spewing boring in my brain--you never stop a minute--over and over----"