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In the half-gale out of the west I note the smell of the shoals, a suggestion of bilge in the brine, not altogether pleasant. I fancy a heavy sea stirs the slimy depths and brings their ooze uppermost. I had noticed this from an incoming liner's deck when off the lightship before, but charged it to the ship. Now I know it for a strange odor of the sea.

The liner's deck canted slowly to leeward, went over more and more, beyond what it had done yet, and a pretty little girl with dark curls riotous from under her red tam-o'-shanter, ran down, and brought up against us violently with both hands, laughing heartily. We laughed too. Looking seawards, I saw receding the broad green hill, snow-capped, which had lifted us and let us down.

"All right; Roy, come down as low as you dare," cried Peggy, catching her bundle of "mail." Roy threw over a couple of levers and turned a valve. Instantly the Golden Butterfly began to drop in long, beautiful arc. She shot by above the liner's bridge at a height of not more than fifteen feet.

The face got distinct, and when the liner's lofty side towered above the boat, Shillito, looking down, lifted his cap and bowed with ironical politeness. Barbara turned her head and tried for calm while she watched the tug. Lister had not gone. Barbara knew he would not go so long as he could see the boat, and standing up, with her hand on Cartwright's shoulder, she waved her handkerchief.

As you know, the information I gave you was accurate." Bors felt as if he'd been hit over the head. This was ridiculous! He'd hunted for the space-cruiser under the sea because the prediction of the liner's arrival was so uncannily correct. He'd helped plan and carry out the destruction of that warship because its existence and location were verified by a magnetometer.

Then they'd rush the landed liner, seize it, shoot down anybody who tried to oppose them, and seal up the ship. And then they'd take off. On the liner's rockets, which were carried for emergency landing only, but could be used for a single take-off. After one such use they'd be exhausted. And with the grid's controls smashed, nobody could even try to stop them. It wasn't a bad idea.

If he waited off Walden until a liner went down to the planet's great spaceport, he could try it. He would go into a close orbit around Walden which would bring him, very low, over the landing grid within an hour or so of the liner's landing. He'd turn the yacht end for end and apply full rocket power for deceleration. The yacht would drop like a stone into the landing grid.

Dick Rendal's hand still clutched the cord of the life-belt, but both bodies were under water, fast locked, when the liner's boat at length reached the spot. They were hauled on board, as on a long line you haul a fish with a crab fastened upon him; and were laid in the stern-sheets, where their grip was with some difficulty loosened. It may have happened in the struggle.

It was about a quarter of an hour after "two bells" had pealed out on board the Baroda that the visiting party stepped out on deck from the pilot-house of the Flying Fish, equipped for their excursion; and it was evident that the officer of the watch on the liner's bridge had received instructions to keep a sharp look-out for them, for immediately upon their appearance the steamer sheered in toward her consort until she had approached within easy hailing distance.

I got to the ship's side in time to see a liner's bulk glide by. She would have been invisible but for her strata of lights. She was just beyond our touch. A figure on her, high over us, came to her rail, distinct in the blur of the light of a cabin behind him, and shouted at us. I remember very well what he said, but it is forbidden to put down such words here.