Doubts and difficulties lay in each alternative, but he finally decided to sleep while he could, trusting to his life-long ability to awake fully and instantly at the slightest unaccustomed sound. He did not believe that Forbes and his men could steal upon him without waking him; and, in any event, he could not hope, alone and unarmed, to keep them off the ship.
So, after stringing several ropes across the gangway in the deepest shadows of the Queen’s deck, he slipped into his state-room, just across the corridor from Dorothy’s, and lay down, fully dressed, with an axe—his sole weapon, since he had given Dorothy Jackson’s pistol—close beside him. In an instant he was fast asleep.
He was aroused several hours later by a sound whose cause he had no difficulty in interpreting. Somebody had tripped over one of the ropes he had stretched, and had fallen. Instantly he was on his feet, axe in hand, and was cautiously opening his door. Stillness now reigned, but Howard had no doubt that murder was stalking close at hand.
With infinite precaution he stole from the room, noted that Dorothy’s door was still fast, and slipped like a shadow along the corridor. It took him half an hour to gain the other deck, scarcely fifty feet from where he had slept. But when he had done so, he was certain that no foes lurked in his rear.
The moon loomed huge in the cloudless sky as he peered from the door of the social hall. Before him the deck stretched away, silvery-white except where criss-crossed by the black shadows cast by the stanchions that supported the half-furled awnings, and by the narrow border of shadow cast by the awnings themselves.
Slowly he crept out into the black border and made his way forward, eager to front the danger, whatever it might be.
But all was still save for a very faint, rustling sound impossible to locate—a sound like dry leaves whisking through a November night; a sound that made Howard’s hair stir upon his head. At two o’clock in the morning courage is rare, and never perfect.
Still Howard crept on until he reached a spot where a broken boat-davit was twisted across a stanchion. By this he paused and stood listening.
Then, without warning, the attack came. From the cross-beam overhead something fell upon him with cruel force—something heavy, crushing, deadly; some live thing that wrapped him round and round.
