She was braced up for the expected stutter of explosion, and its failure to materialise was a physical shock. In that split second of panic she remembered the waterproof holster of which the Saint had spoken, and which she had forgotten to provide herself with. Her fire had produced no other sound than the snap of the cap—the prolonged immersion had damped the cordite charge, and the gun on which she was relying was no more use than a chunk of pig-iron. The man was rushing at her with outstretched arms. . . . Patricia had less than the twinkling of an eye in which to adjust herself to the sudden petrifying reversal of circumstances, but she achieved the feat. Hardly knowing what she did, she flung up her hand and hurled the useless automatic with all her strength. It struck the man squarely between the temples, and he went down in a heap. The girl stood tense and motionless, wondering if anyone had heard. Her heart was pounding furiously. That had nearly been a knock-out in the first round! But it seemed that none of the other Tiger Cubs had been near enough to notice anything, and gradually she got her breath back and found her pulse throttling down to normal again. The impetus of the man’s onslaught had carried him half-way out of the door, and she had to drag him back into the galley. She picked up the saucepan he had thrown and chucked it in after him. Then she pulled the door to and turned the key on the outside. The next move was undoubtedly towards the bridge. There would only be the skipper up there, unless Bittle or Bloem or perhaps the Tiger himself happened to have gone up to watch the loading from that point, and even against those odds the girl felt capable of keeping her wicket up, if she could only find a weapon. And once again her luck was in. As she went back up the alleyway, she observed a door standing ajar, and through it she glimpsed a row of rifles and cutlasses and revolvers ranged neatly in racks. The Tiger was carrying a good armoury. She went in and selected a couple of revolvers. Boxes of ammunition she found stacked up on the shelves below the gunracks. She loaded, and went out again, locking the door behind her and tying the key to her belt. That at least would worry the Tiger Cubs if it came to a straight fight. The girl padded down the alleyway forrard, her bare feet making no sound on the carpet. At the end, the alley she was following ran into another alley athwartships, and two doors faced her which she guessed would open into the saloon. On her right, a companion went upwards into darkness. She would have seen the sky at the top of it if it had led on to the deck, and so she deduced that it led up into the deckhouse. Climbing, she came, as she had expected, into another alley, shorter and narrower than the one she had left, but the companion continued its ascent, and thus she emerged on the upper deck. Crouching under the shadow of a boat, she saw that she was just astern of the bridge.