Off in the stern was a vague mass which proved to be a few yards of canvas carefully tented on the floor.  Some gimcrack belonging to the ship’s ornamentation had been freshly gilded and left to dry, protected by an old sail-cloth.  This, weighted down by a rusty marlinespike, spread couchwise along the taffrail, and offered to Jim just the bed he longed for.

He lay down, face to the sky, and gave himself up to thoughts that were very dark indeed.  He had been thrown down, unexpectedly and quite hard, and that was all there was to it.  Agatha, lovely but inexplicable maid, was not for him.  She had been deceptive—­yes, that was the word; and he had been a fool—­that was the plain truth.  He might as well face it at once.  He had been idiot enough to think he might win the girl.  Just because they had been tossed together in mid-ocean and she had clung to him.  The world wasn’t an ocean; it was a spiritual stock-exchange, where he who would win must bid very high indeed for the prizes of life.  And he had so little to bid!

Communing thus with his unhappiness, Jim utterly lost the sense of time.  The shameless vermilion sunset went into second mourning and thence to nun’s gray, before the figure on the sail-cloth moved.  Then, through senses only half awake, Jim heard a light sound, like a scratch-scratch on the hull of the yacht.  Chamberlain, no doubt, just rubbing the nose of his tender against the Sea Gull.  Jim was in no hurry to see Chamberlain, and remained where he was.  The Englishman would heave in sight soon enough.

But though Jim waited several minutes, with half an eye cocked on the stairway, nobody appeared.  The wind was still, the sea like glass; not a sound anywhere.  Struck by something of strangeness in the uncanny silence, Jim sat up and called “Ahoy, Chamberlain!” There was no answer.  But in the tense stillness there was a sound, and it came from below—­the sound of a man’s stealthy tread.

Jim sprang to his feet and made the companionway at a bound.  He listened an instant to make sure that he heard true, cleared the steps, and landed in the darkness of the ship’s saloon.  As he groped along, reaching for the door of the principal cabin, the blackness suddenly lighted a little, and a dim shadow shot out and up the stairway.  Jim’s physical senses were scarcely cognizant of the soft, quick passing, but his thumbs pricked.  He dashed after the shadow, up the stairs, out on deck, and aft.  There he was—­Chatelard, armed, facing his enemy once more, cool but not smiling, desperately at bay.  Below him, riding just under the stern of the yacht, was the tender whose scratch-scratch had awakened Jim.  A man, oars in hand, was holding the boat close to the Sea Gull.

Jim saw all this during the seconds between his turning at the stair-top and his throwing himself plump against the figure by the railing.  He was quick enough to pass the range of the weapon, whose shot rang out in the clear air, but he was not quick enough to get under the man’s guard.  Chatelard was ready for him, holding his weapon high.