"Instauration! Never knew of such a thing in our navy. If I ever get out of here I'll go in trade somewhere."

"In South America?"

"I had British Honduras in mind, or Canada. I'd like to keep in the Empire."

A noise below interrupted the conversation. The two youths looked down.

The deck plan of the tug lay flat and empty save for the inert form of Gaskin. The noise came from inside the cabin and arose to a shouting. It was a drunken ribald sound. A suspicion flashed on Leonard's mind.

"Those pigs below are wasting the stores," he declared.

"They ought to be stopped."

"I couldn't stop them without a fight. They were about to court martial me when they happened to think of something else."

Caradoc stared down in the direction of the noise, "I might talk them into sense if Greer isn't drunk and wanting to fight again."

"He said he never drank--I don't know."

Caradoc nodded, "I'll go down and send them forward," he asserted with conviction, and started to climb out of the barrel.

Madden looked at the Englishman with a certain apprehension, "Caradoc, if you go down there where they are drinking, won't you----"

"No, I'm not going to drink."

"It will be a temptation."

"I have myself in hand now. This talk has done me good. No, I'm all right." He swung out of the barrel and started down the ratlines.

Leonard watched him anxiously, not at all sure of the outcome of his mission, not at all sure that the hot smell of rum in the galley would not again overcome his resistance.

The sun was just dipping into the sea and its last light spread out of the west to the zenith like a huge red-gold fan. Purplish shadows had already begun to dim the tug and dock and ocean.

Fifteen or twenty degrees above the sunset shone a pale crescent moon in the burnished sky. The sight of the moon somehow cheered Madden. He recalled a childish superstition that it was good luck to see the new moon clear. At any rate, as the sky darkened, the clear new moon brought Leonard comfort and renewed hope.

With a grateful feeling of the providence of an Almighty that hung out moon and stars, the youth glanced around the darkening horizon and presently observed a tiny light far to the south. He stared at it quite surprised, and then he chanced to see a star just above it. It was the reflection of Sirius in Canis Major.

The beam of a star must lead any thoughtful soul into endless reveries.

Beneath its calm and infinite light, all human troubles fade to the brief complaining of a child in the night. Death becomes a small, unfeared thing, and life itself, the trail of a finger writing an unknown message upon water.

Filled with such musings, the American noted with surprise that the light on the sea which he had fancied to be the reflection of Sirius was moving. It was not the reflection of a star.

It was a light moving in the gathering darkness.

What sort of light could it be? A Will o' the Wisp? A Jack o' Lantern, some phosphoric phenomenon rising in the exhalations of rotting seaweed?

Ten minutes before, his excited imagination would have conjured up hydras and dragons; now he scrutinized the mysterious illumination unexcitedly. It winked out occasionally, then presently reappeared. But it did not move in an aimless fashion, after the manner of gaseous or electrical phenomena. It pursued a straight line toward the _Vulcan_. That was why Madden had not observed its movement sooner.

Although it had crept only a little way down from the horizon, the wondering boy could discern its progress plainly among the dark masses of seaweed that blotched the graying water. The light was moving toward the _Vulcan_ and at a high rate of speed.

As he watched it, the enigmatical light suddenly disappeared. The youth blinked his eyes, looked again. It was gone. Then he became a little uncertain whether or not he had ever observed any such phenomenon. He glanced down on the dark deck and could faintly discern the form of the cook.

"Gaskin!" he called sharply, "Gaskin!"

To his surprise the drunken fellow stirred and made some mumbling reply.

"Get up. I want to know whether or not you can see anything."

Came a sluggish stirring from below, and then Gaskin's voice, in which deference struggled with a bad headache, "Yes, sor, I can see hever'thing as usual, sor."

"I thought I saw a light to the south. Just take a look in that quarter, will you?"

The dopy cook scuffled to his feet and stumbled over to the rail, hung there, peering intently southward. At that moment, there burst out of the sea a brilliant illumination that fairly blinded Madden. Shocked into spasmodic action, the American jumped from barrel to ratlines.

He hardly knew how he got down, as much of a fall as a climb. Strange fearsome thoughts chased through his head. The men were right about something attacking the _Minnie B_. Now the same thing had attacked the _Vulcan_. The _Vulcan_ would be sunk. He must rush the men out of the galley into the small boat. He must race back to the dock.

The dock apparently was safe. What the startling apparition was, he had no time to speculate. When he touched the deck he sprinted for the cabin.

As he passed Gaskin the light vanished as mysteriously as it had appeared, and left the tug in inky darkness.

Madden heard the cook give a deferential cough and then say, "Yes, sor, Hi saw it, Mr. Madden, saw it quite plainly, sor."

A moment before Leonard reached the cabin door, someone flung the shutter open violently and shouted his name in the utmost alarm.

"Mister Madden! Mister Madden! Come quick, sir!"

The American lunged through the dark aperture straight into the fellow's arms. In the darkness he could not make out who it was.

"Don't be afraid! Did you see it? Where are the rest of the men?"

"In the galley, sir, with him!" stammered the sailor,

"Are they in a funk?" gasped Madden, feeling that he himself was in one.

"Oh, they are that, sir."

"Why don't they come on out? We must get 'em out!"

"They're with him, sir, 'fraid to touch 'im!"

"With who?"

"Mr. Caradoc, sir."

"Afraid to touch him--why, what's the matter?"

"'E's dead, sir."

A feeling as if ice water had been dashed over his body shivered through Leonard. The black cabin seemed to swing under his feet. His arms dropped down and he stood perfectly still staring into the blackness from whence came the sailor's voice.