Miss Jenness glanced aside. Captain O’Shea stood between her and the passage to the deck. Then she looked at him, and knew that he meant what he said. Her lips parted, her breath was short and quick, and she moved not for a long moment. It was a clash of strong wills, but the woman realized that she was beaten. It meant death to O’Shea should he be discovered in the act of setting fire to the ship, but he was fighting for more than his own skin. The issue appealed to him as curiously impersonal. His own safety had become a trifling matter. He was merely an instrument in the hands of fate, an agent commissioned to help thwart the tragic destiny that overhung the vessel and her people. The girl was an episode; not so much a personality as a cog of the mysterious, evil mechanism devised by the blond beast Vonderholtz. “I think I will go to my room,” said Miss Jenness. “Thank you. ’Tis wiser,” softly replied O’Shea. So fatuously confident was Vonderholtz that his plans were invulnerable that he had taken no precautions to have the first-cabin quarters patrolled and inspected beyond the exits. He had herded the passengers like a flock of sheep and concerned himself no further about them. They could start no uprising by themselves, and unarmed. Captain O’Shea felt confident that the men in possession of the ship could get the fire under control. At any rate, it must burn itself out within the steel walls of the deck-house. State-rooms and halls might be gutted, but he quoted his favorite adage that one cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs. For his part, he would rather burn and sink the ship than meekly to surrender to this mob of pirates. Thereupon he scratched a match and touched off the fire. Wetted down with alcohol, the newspapers blazed up fiercely and the flames licked the paintwork of shelves and panels. Smoke drove into the halls in thick gusts. The passengers, some of them genuinely frightened, shouted lustily, and there was much confusion. O’Shea was delighted. His conflagration was a success. The sentries at the doorways and the men on deck ran in pell-mell and dashed out again to find hose and buckets. They bawled orders to one another and were bewildered by the smoke which billowed into the passages. Before the hose lines had been dragged in and while the fire was unchecked, a bulky figure in blue overalls, his face blackened as with coal-dust, emerged from a state-room, peered cautiously into the smoke, and with tread surprisingly agile for his weight and years, ran straight toward the crowd of men in the large hall outside the blazing library. The smoke effectually curtained his dash for the deck. The doorways had been left unguarded. Those whom he shoved out of his way mistook him for one of Vonderholtz’s crew.