The iron sheathing on her keel and hull had not been strong enough in its rusted state to resist the hammerblow of the reef.  But it was heavy enough, together with her big metal steering apparatus, to counterbalance any buoyant qualities left in the wooden frame.

And. down she went, waddling like a fat and ponderous hen, into a twenty-foot nest of water.

Gavin had wasted no time in the impossible feat of baling her or of plugging her unpluggable leak.  As she went swayingly toward the bottom of the bay he slipped clear of her and struck out through the tepid water.

The mangrove swamp’s beach was a bare half-mile away.  And the man knew he could swim the intervening space. with ease.  Yet the tedious delay of it all irked him and fanned to a blind fury his rage against Milo.  Moreover, now, he could not hope to reach the hidden path before real darkness should set in.  And he did not relish the idea of traversing its blind mazes without a glimmer of daylight to guide him.

Yet he struck out, stubbornly, doggedly.  As he passed the tooth of coral that had wrecked his scow the reef gave him a painful farewell scrape on one kicking knee.  He swam on fuming at this latest annoyance.

Then to his ears came the steady purr of a motorboat.  It was close to him and coming closer.

“Boat ahoy!” he sang out treading water and raising himself as high as possible to peer about him through the dusk.

“Boat ahoy!” he called again, shouting to be heard above the motor’s hum.  “Man overboard!  Ten dollars if you’ll carry me to the mainland!”

And now he could see against the paler hue of the sky. the dark outlines of the boat’s prow.  It was bearing down on him.  Above the bow’s edge he could make out the vague silhouette of a head and upper body.

Then into his memory flashed something which the shock of his upsetting had completely banished.  He recalled the motorboat which had darted, arrow-like, out from around the southern edge of the mangrove swamp, and which he had been watching when his scow went to pieces on the reef.

If this were the same boat—­if its steersman chanced to be Milo Standish crossing to the key to learn if his murderplot had yet culminated—­so much the better!  Man to man, there between sea and sky in the gathering gloom, they could settle the account once and for all.

Perhaps Standish had recognized him.  Perhaps he merely took him for some capsized fisherman.  In either event. a swimming man is the most utterly defenseless of all creatures against attack from land or from boat.  And Gavin was not minded to let Standish finish his work with boat-hook or with oar.  If he and his foe were to meet it should be on even terms.

The boat had switched off power and was coming to a standstill.  Gavin dived.  He swam clean under the craft, lengthwise, coming up at its stern and farthest from that indistinct figure in the prow.