“Half a sec!” Simon’s voice ripped out like a gunshot, and Bittle hesitated with his finger tightening on the trigger. “While I’m being so communicative, you might as well hear the rest of the yarn—it may help you, though I doubt it. Let me tell you your second mistake. I’ve got another stiff one ready to shoot at you! This is mostly Orace’s story, but he won’t mind my cribbing it. Orace, you know, hasn’t been wasting his time. Orace went below and laid out your engineer and put on his clothes. You spoke to him yourself, and never guessed—I’ll bet that makes you hop! Then I arrived, and also mistook Orace for the genuine article, and I’d nearly killed him before I found out my error. Orace and I knew enough about motors to obey the telegraph, and it was us what took this here _bateau_ out for you. After we’d finished I made Orace take off the overalls, so that you wouldn’t suspect anything; but the real engineer is still locked up below, and he must be pretty cramped and peevish by this time! But that’s not the whole yarn—not by a mile!” Bittle had lowered his gun as the Saint talked on, for it was dawning upon Bittle that the Saint had an even bigger trump card yet to play. Prince of bluffers though the Saint might be, Bittle could not believe that he could bluff for his life in such a casual manner. The Saint smiled all the time, and he was smiling in such a way as almost to invite the others to doubt his word, yet every now and then he handed them out one perfect gem of verifiable fact to shatter their illusions and force them back to credulity. He used his facts as pegs on which to hang the decorations with which his egotism compelled him to embellish the tale, but for all that those facts stuck out as stark and uncontrovertible as a forest of spears. And all the time Bittle could sense that the Saint, in his mild and lingering way, was working up to an even more devastating bombshell. What that bombshell was going to be Bittle could not divine, but the conviction was borne in upon him that a mine of some sort was going to be exploded somewhere in his vicinity. And therefore he waited for the Saint to have his say, for he was hoping to minimise his danger by letting the Saint forearm him against it. Simon was gazing through a porthole at the dark horizon, and something that he saw there seemed to please him. His smile trembled on the verge of laughter, as at some secret jest, and when he went on there was a trace of excitement creeping into his voice.