“—­and,” finished Mr. Farnum, “you came in here and went to work to damage a sea-valve forward on this craft.  The valve shows, this morning, very plain traces of having been tampered with.”

Josh Owen was summoning all his courage, all his craft.  Instead of looking frightened, he glared boldly at his accuser.

“Who says I did such a thing?” he demanded, hotly.

“Benson and Hastings saw you at your rascally work, my man.”

“Humph!” snorted the ex-foreman.  “Who?  Those boys?”

“Yes.”

“Humph!  I wouldn’t believe those boys under oath, and you’ll make a huge mistake if you do, Mr. Farnum,” continued Josh Owen, hotly.

“Then you deny that you were here, and that you tampered with a sea-valve last night?” insisted the yard’s owner, looking his man keenly in the eyes.

“I’ll deny it with my dying breath,” asserted the former foreman, boldly.  “As for those lying boys—­”

“Do you believe this can lie?” inquired Mr. Farnum, passing the accused man a photograph print.

Josh Owen took the print, staring at it hard.  In an instant his eyes began to open as wide as it was possible for them to do.  A sickly, greenish pallor crept into the man’s face.  Beads of cold perspiration appeared on his forehead and temples.

“You see, your face shows up very clearly,” went on the yard’s owner, in the same cold, crushing voice.  “Moreover, it shows you right at one of the sea-valves, and in the very act of tapping with a hammer.  You didn’t know that Benson and Hastings are very fair photographers, did you?”

“I don’t care what they are,” cried Owen, in a passionate voice, as before the print to small bits.  “That isn’t a photograph of me, even if it does look like me, and I wasn’t here last night.  I—­”

“Any judge and jury will believe the evidence against you, my man,” cried Farnum, sternly.  “As for the boys, maybe you don’t like them, nor they you.  They’ve reason enough for not liking you.  Besides, they couldn’t photograph anything that wasn’t here to be photographed.”

“Then it was that flash—­” began Josh Owen.

He stopped instantly, biting his lips savagely.

“Yes, they took the picture by flashlight, and you’ve just admitted remembering the flash that interrupted your rascally labor,” exclaimed Mr. Farnum, triumphantly.  “As for the print you’ve just torn up, Owen, it doesn’t make any difference.  There are other copies of it.  Now, my fine fellow, you’ve been trapped just as nicely as the law requires, and, in addition, you know you’re guilty of the whole thing.  Now—­”

But Owen leaped up the spiral staircase, shouting: 

“I won’t be taken alive!  I—­”

Andrews, O’brien and another workman sprang forward to seize the fellow, but Mr. Farnum called them back.  Josh Owen got down from the platform deck, and out of the shed in a twinkling.