“Well, there was the Laughing Lass.”

“How did you happen to hit on her?” asked Barnett quickly.

“Why not, sir?  It naturally came into my head.  She was last seen somewhere about this part of the world, wasn’t she?” After a moment’s hesitation he added:  “From something I heard ashore I judge we’ve a commission to keep a watch out for her as well as to destroy derelicts.”

“What about the Laughing Lass?” asked McGuire, the paymaster, a New Englander, who had been in the service but a short time.

“Good Lord! don’t you remember the Laughing Lass mystery and the disappearance of Doctor Schermerhorn?”

“Karl Augustus Schermerhorn, the man whose experiments to identify telepathy with the Marconi wireless waves made such a furore in the papers?”

“Oh, that was only a by-product of his mind.  He was an original investigator in every line of physics and chemistry, besides most of the natural sciences,” said Barnett.  “The government is particularly interested in him because of his contributions to aerial photography.”

“And he was lost with the Laughing Lass?”

“Nobody knows,” said Edwards.  “He left San Francisco two years ago on a hundred-foot schooner, with an assistant, a big brass-bound chest, and a ragamuffin crew.  A newspaper man named Slade, who dropped out of the world about the same time, is supposed to have gone along, too.  Their schooner was last sighted about 450 miles northeast of Oahu, in good shape, and bound westward.  That’s all the record of her that there is.”

“Was that Ralph Slade?” asked Barnett.

“Yes.  He was a free-lance writer and artist.”

“I knew him well,” said Barnett.  “He was in our mess in the Philippine campaign, on the North Dakota.  War correspondent then.  It’s strange that I never identified him before with the Slade of the Laughing Lass.”

“What was the object of the voyage?” asked Ives.

“They were supposed to be after buried treasure,” said Barnett.

“I’ve always thought it more likely that Doctor Schermerhorn was on a scientific expedition,” said Edwards.  “I knew the old boy, and he wasn’t the sort to care a hoot in Sheol for treasure, buried or unburied.”

“Every time a ship sets out from San Francisco without publishing to all the world just what her business is, all the world thinks it’s one of those wild-goose hunts,” observed Ives.

“Yes,” agreed Barnett.  “Flora and fauna of some unknown island would be much more in the Schermerhorn line of traffic.  Not unlikely that some of the festive natives collected the unfortunate professor.”

Various theories were advanced, withdrawn, refuted, defended, and the discussion carried them through the swift twilight into the darkness which had been hastened by a high-spreading canopy of storm-clouds.  Abruptly from the crow’s-nest came startling news for those desolate seas:  “Light—­ho!  Two points on the port bow.”