"Good old Kittlewake," he murmured, "you sure were built for rough service!"
But now he had reached his stateroom door. With a lurch he threw open the door, with a second he fell through, a third slammed it shut.
One second his eyes roved about the place; the next his lips parted as something bumped against his foot.
Stooping, he lifted up a long affair the size and shape of a round cedar fencepost. It was this he had brought aboard just before sailing. It had been shaken down and had been rolling about the floor.
Having examined its wrapping carefully, he shook it once or twice.
"Guess you're all right," he muttered. "And you had better be! A whole lot depends on you in a pinch."
His eyes roved about the room. At length, snatching a blanket from his berth, he tore it into strips. Then, throwing back his mattress, he placed the postlike affair beneath it and lashed it firmly to the springs.
"There!" he exclaimed with much satisfaction, "you'll be safe until needed, if you are needed, and—and you never can tell."
The end of the seaplane's last flirt with death and destruction came suddenly and without warning. Overcome as he was by constant watching, dead for sleep and famished for food, Vincent Ardmore had all but fallen asleep in his seat on the fuselage when a hoarse snort from one of the motors, followed quickly by a rattling grate from the other, startled him into complete wakefulness.