Sensitive fingers located the key-hole in the pedestal, the one key saved from the ring which Mr. Swain had so unfortunately and unaccountably lost opened the door—­the key, of course, that Mr. Swain had used under Lanyard’s eyes when demonstrating the functions of the binnacle to Liane Delorme.

Thrusting a hand into the opening, Lanyard groped for the adjustable magnets in their racks, and one by one removed and dropped them to the grating at the foot of the binnacle.

He worked with hands amazingly nimble and sure, and was closing and relocking the door when Mr. Collison tumbled up the ladder with his flash-light.  So when the second mate arrived upon the bridge, Lanyard was waiting for him; and in consequence of a second act of deplorable violence, Mr. Collison returned to the deck backwards and lay quite still while Lanyard returned to the wheel.

Collecting the abstracted magnets he carried them to the rail, cast them into the sea and threw in the key to the little door to keep them company.  Then, back at the binnacle, he unscrewed the brass caps of the cylindrical brass tube which housed the Flinders bar, removed that also, replaced the caps, and consigned the bar to the sea in its turn.

By choice he would have made a good job of it and abolished the quadrantal correctors as well; but he judged he had done mischief enough to secure his ends, as it was.  The compass ought now to be just as constant to the magnetic pole as a humming-bird to one especial rose.

Guiding himself by a hand that lightly touched the rail, Lanyard regained his chair, carefully composing himself in the position in which he had been resting when the lights went out.  His cigarette was still aglow; good Turkish has this virtue among many others, that left to itself it will burn on to the end of its roll.

The next instant, however, he was on his feet again.  A beam of light had swept across the saloon skylight, coming from below, the beam of a portable electric torch.  It might have been the signal for the first piercing scream of Liane Delorme.  A pistol shot with a vicious accent cut short the scream.  After a brief pause several more shots rippled in the saloon.  A man shouted angrily.  Then the torch-light found and steadied upon the mouth of the companionway.  Against that glare, a burly figure was instantaneously relieved, running up to the deck.  As it gained the topmost step a final report sounded in the saloon, and the figure checked, revolved slowly on a heel, tottered, and plunged headforemost down the steps again.

A moment later (incredible that the stipulated ten minutes should have passed so swiftly!) the lights came on, and with a still-fuming stump of cigarette between his fingers Lanyard went below.

His bewildered gaze discovered first Liane Delorme, drawn up rigidly—­she seemed for some reason to be standing tiptoe—­against the starboard partition, near her stateroom door.  Her fingers were clawing her cheeks, her eyes widely dilate with horror and fright, her mouth was agape, and from it issued, as by some mechanical impulse, shriek upon hollow shriek—­cries wholly flat and meaningless, having no character of any sort, mere automatic reflexes of hysteria.