The upper deck was deserted. She could hear the winch aft thrumming spasmodically, and thanked her stars that all hands would still be engaged in getting the gold aboard. But they couldn’t take very much longer over it, and before they were finished and bustling about getting up anchor she had got to corral the skipper and the Tiger and any of the more mature Cubs who happened to be loafing about up on the bridge. The bridge was built over a couple of big cabins. Certainly the Tiger would occupy one of those, and she marked them down for investigation later. But the first thing to do was to attack the bridge. The bridge companion faced her. She gained it in half a dozen paces and went up. There was a man leaning over the starboard rail. The moonlight revealed the dingy braid on his uniform and the peaked cap tilted back from his forehead. He was gazing out to sea, chewing his pipe and wrapped up in his thoughts. If details are to be insisted upon, he was speculating about the riotous time he would have in Cape Town when he was paid off for the voyage. There was, for instance, Mulatto Harry’s place down by the docks—an unsavoury-looking joint enough from the outside, but provided with a room furnished in Oriental magnificence, to which only the favoured ones who were well provided with hard cash were admitted. In that room were delights for which the soul of Mr. Maggs hungered—better liquor than was served to the proletariat in the filthy bar beyond which the proletariat never penetrated, and decorative little pipes from which curled up thin wisps of seductive smoke, and houris of a more subtle loveliness than that of the painted half-caste women who frequented the better-known dives. Mr. Maggs visioned the orgy which the Tiger’s money would purchase him; and, in his heavy and animal fashion, Mr. Maggs was a contented man, for he possessed the unlimited patience of the third-rate beast. And Mr. Maggs was solidly champing over his dream for the umpteenth time since the Tiger had found him in a dockside bar in Bristol, and made the offer of a princely salary _plus_ bonus, when something hard and round prodded Mr. Maggs in the spine and he heard a command which was not quite unfamiliar. “Hands up!” The order hissed out very softly, but there was a sibilant menace permeating its quietness which made the experienced Mr. Maggs obey without question. A hand dipped into his jacket pocket, and he felt his gun being deftly extracted. “Now you can turn round.” Mr. Maggs pivoted slowly, and his jaw dropped when he saw the girl. “You she-devil!” snarled Maggs, taking courage from the sight. “Sticking _me_ up! Well, honey——”