Some premonition, the prompting of a sixth sense, made him swing aside in the nick of time, and the smashing blow that had been aimed at his head whizzed past his ear and clanged on the engine casing. Orace whirled and leapt, but his feet slipped on the oily grating, and he sprawled headlong. His blunderbuss was underneath the borrowed overalls, and he had no time to fumble for it before his opponent had pounced on him and caught his throat in a deadly grip. Except the thrill of a sporting burglary—such as a raid upon the home of a famous detective with the said detective in residence and, for preference, entertaining a select party of his fellow-sleuths—there is no thrill to be compared to the thrill of a refined form of piracy. So Patricia realised as she stole down the dimly lighted alleyway aft in search of the galley. There she was, on the Tiger’s ship, with only two assistants, one of whom was temporarily _hors de combat_, and the odds against them were five to one, at a conservative estimate. The very forlornness of the adventure took away half its terrors, for with everything to lose—and as good as lost at the first slip—there was nothing to gain by footling and fiddling over the job. The only earthly chance of success was to blind recklessly ahead and chance the consequences. To funk the bold game would be fatal. The bold game was the only one which offered the vaguest possibility of success—a plan such as they had set themselves to carry out could only hope to succeed if it were executed in the same spirit of consummate cheek and hell-for-leather daring as that in which it had been conceived. And that was what Patricia Holm intended to do, starting in at that very instant. Even so, sir and madam—that was the determination which was glowing like hot steel in Patricia’s brain. Orace had gone off to deal with an engineer, and Orace could look after himself as well as anybody. Having laid out the engineer, he would repair to the _rendez-vous_, and when the girl failed to put in an appearance, after a reasonable time, he would set out in search of her—incidentally disposing of any Tiger Cubs whom he encountered on the way. And, therefore, in a little while, there would be two vengeful people creeping about the ship and striking shrewd, secret blows at the enemy—here one moment, there the next, coming and going like wraiths, and leaving no more evidence of their passage than a Tiger Cub sleeping peacefully in the scuppers here and there. The girl guessed that Orace was still troubled with fears for her safety and doubts of her ability to pull her weight in the undertaking, and so, to save bothersome argument, she was going to take the bit between her teeth and leave him to fall into line behind— and, once she was started, he would have no option but to do exactly that, for the pace would be too hectic to allow any intervals for discussion.