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178 strakes foamed with white lips. He was planning what he would do with clear-minded decision. He would watch those two at the work which they were doing, and if that gave him no hold he would arrest them both on the face-value of that photograph which he carried. In all probability he could frighten the whole affair out of Ducane. And if he could not; if he failed, and broke and spoiled it all, what did that matter? There were more things spoiled in this world than a man's work. But Ducane would turn King's evidence and sell every soul of them all to ransom his coward's skin. Concerning Jennifer's part in this his beliefs were unshipped and astray, and a heavier wrath held him than the dark wild wrath of the sea. For it was the impotent anger of a strong soul struck in the dark and blindly struggling to hit back again. Since he had cleared himself of the old truths he had forsworn his God with light lips and trampled the great threat of the afterward under a reckless heel. Jennifer had stripped that sheltering harness off him and left him naked to the doctrine of Retribution; not in words, but in the knowledge that he had lost the power to do the good thing so far as he could see it. Under her pure eyes he had tried—sometimes—to crawl up to the good. And now she had taken that which she gave and made a hideous thing of it, thrusting his unbelief out into belief savage and more bitter still. He had banished the gods of his youth; but out of the storm they mocked at him, gibbering in the lightning and chuckling in the wind.

From the black cloud-breasts the lightning jetted in great, ragged handfuls, and once Forsyth saw Dick's face clear in the yellow gleam of it. He sucked in his breath as he looked, and for a moment he forgot the lesser death which reached long arms at him over the gunwale and whistled shrill derision in his ears. For the man who knelt gripping the sheets and staring into the night with the water streaming off him was surely testing a greater death. That face would be merciless to the utter need of woman or man. And it would be worse than merciless; it would laugh.

Out of the south-west the storm smote fully. It struck the little boat sheer on the quarter, heeling her over until