Shamefacedly, but sullenly, the men listened to the stern rebuke of their commander. When they had left him reluctantly--and their ears must have tingled to his opinions of their superstitions--Everson redoubled his precautions for the safety of the stranger. The lieutenant was morally certain that at the first opportunity that should offer, an "accident" would befall the man from the sea. Abruptly as it had struck, the storm of wind subsided. It was succeeded by a torrential downpour of rain. The cruiser was left tossing on a choppy sea. Dead ahead to the south was land--what land, no one on the ship could say. A scant five miles away it loomed up before them through the mists and the driving rain, a long and towering coastline, the peaks of its frowning cliffs almost touching the low-rolling clouds. In this, the first respite from many hours of perils, Lieutenant Everson at once set about the task of repairing his crippled ship. Then the crown was placed upon the work of calamity. * * * * * Lashed no longer by the flail of the tempest, the _Minnetonka_ was laid to. Hope returned to those who rode upon her. Those who gathered on her decks were almost gay again. For the first time in many days the two Sardanians came up from their cabin. The Lady Memene had proved a poor sailor, and in her deathly illness that came of the buffeting of the ship, Minos never had left her side, but had nursed her with all the tenderness of a woman. The king remembered well a time, not long before, when he had lain near death, and her soft hands had soothed him, and her care had kept the spark of life within him. It was nearly noon. Chatting of their experiences in the storm, and laughing at their appearance in the oilskins which they wore against the rain, a little group gathered on the forward deck of the cruiser. Almost it seemed that the hand of fate collected and placed them there. Polaris Janess and Rose Emer, the Sardanians, old Zenas Wright, and Ensign Willis Brooks, a happy-go-lucky youth of large dimensions and an inexhaustible supply of good spirits, who was the second in command on the _Minnetonka_, made up the party. Presently Lieutenant Everson, his repair work well under way, came up from below and joined the others. Dr. Marsey might have been with them also, but the kindly physician delayed below to attend one of the engineers who lay ill of a fever. Before he had finished his ministrations, the stroke fell which was so strangely to alter the life course of every one of that party, and the good doctor was too late to be numbered among them. Almost on the heels of Everson the red-haired stranger ascended the companionway. With his armor on as usual, but dangling his helmet and his mask from his hand, he clanked across the deck, all unheedful of the anathemas that the sailors mouthed as he stalked past them.