He waited. Once he thought he was going to scream. Why was the fellow so slow? Surely it had not taken him so long to come up that ladder of stone,--and he was the pioneer, he had cleared the slots of dirt and sand, he had made the hand holds safe, he had torn his finger-tips digging them out,--what made the fellow so slow? At last he made out a vague, slender object moving like the tentacle of an octopus above the ledge,--and then the bulky head and shoulders of the climber. "I surrender!" he called out. "I give up. If you had waited till I pulled myself together, I would have come down. I'm all in. I surrender." The man scrambled over the ledge and drew himself erect. His figure was dimly outlined against the moon-lit sky. He came a few steps inside the cave and stopped, evidently striving to pierce the darkness with his questing eyes. Courtney pushed himself away from the supporting wall and advanced slowly. "Here's my gun," he faltered, and the weapon clattered on the rocky floor at his feet. "Don't shoot! I am unarmed. My hands are up,--comrade." "Stand still," warned the other hoarsely. He was breathing heavily. "Don't move!" Courtney took another pull at the cigarette that hung limply between his sagging lips. He could be as brave, as cool as the other fellow! He would give them something to talk about when they related the story of his capture. He would-- Suddenly the man lunged forward...A pair of iron arms wrapped themselves about his waist. He went down with a crash. Even as the cry of surprise and indignation rose to his lips, his head struck and his mind became a blank. Slowly, as out of a fog, his senses came back. He was hazily aware of a light shining in his eyes, and of a dull pain somewhere. Things began to take shape before his whirling eyes. He strove to steady them, to concentrate on the bright thing that flitted back and forth before them. At last the blaze became stationary. Quite close at hand was a fire,--a bright, crackling fire whose flames danced merrily. Where was he? It was not like any other fire he had ever seen before....Then he saw a face. It gradually fashioned itself out of the gloom high above the flames. He blinked his eyes and stared. Somehow it was vaguely familiar, that face.... He lifted his head and peered intently. Then he raised himself on his elbow, all the while trying to fix that floating face in his mind. Suddenly his brain cleared. The full picture was revealed: A man standing over the blazing pile of box-wood, gazing down at him with great, unblinking eyes. The sloping roof of the cave, half lost in the thin cloud of smoke, almost touched the crown of the watcher's head,--and this watcher was in the garb of a sailor. Caleb Vick! Young Caleb Vick! For a long time the two looked into each other's eyes. Courtney's wavering and uncertain, Caleb's fixed and triumphant. "Is--is that you, Cale?" mumbled the former wonderingly. Young Vick nodded his head slowly.