"And besides, sir," Gates now added, "no one would push his fingers into a girl's throat like----" "Stop," I cried, for I could not listen to more of this. If ever I wanted to kill it was then. I wanted to get my own fingers on that scoundrel's throat as he had dared touch hers; and in my heart I swore by all the gods, by all the stars and moons and other things in the heavens and under the sea, that I would strangle out his miserable life by inches, or leave my bones to bleach on the shore of her unknown island. Wherever it was, I would find it; wherever she was, I would find her!--and God help him when he came my way! It was a classy oath, and I felt a lot better for it. "Now, sir," Gates's voice began to tremble with passion as he held up a black thing that had been tucked under his coat, "this invention I took off our rudder post when I rowed 'round to see what they'd been up to. It's a dirty bomb, fixed to start us off for Davy Jones's Locker sometime tonight, sir!" "You're sure it can't start us off now?" I asked, taking it from his hands. "Not lest you get too familiar, sir. I've disconnected the clock part of it." "Have you any idea what those men looked like?" He solemnly shook his head. "You can't guess who they were, or why they wanted to blow us up?" I persisted. "Shall we notify the port, or what?" He stood a while silent before answering. "Mr. Jack, God knows who they are. It was too dark for me to get any satisfying squint at 'em; but I never saw 'em before--that I know. Three things are sure: they're either lunatics, or they've taken us for some mortal enemy, or----" "Well?" "Or I'm wrong in those two guesses, sir." "But you think they're from the _Orchid_, don't you?" "On another guess, I'd swear it, sir." "And you're positive you never saw the yacht till yesterday--in any port?" "Never, sir. I even made inquiry about her in Havana before we cleared to-day--that is, without exciting comment. A one-eyed stevedore said she drops in there maybe once or twice a year, but he didn't know from where. _I've_ never seen her, and I've sailed close to thirty year most everywhere in these waters during winter seasons!" "Well, I'm stumped," I admitted. "Let's take this to the professor and see what he makes of it." So we went down together. Monsieur, in his stateroom, sat bent over his counterfeit bill when I quietly shoved the bomb in front of him. He sprang up with a broadside of expletives that in the sunlight would have cast a wondrous rainbow. It was a way with the little professor, and we had learned to keep respectfully distant during such periods of effervescing energy. "Tied to our rudder post," I told him. He seemed to grasp the entire situation at once. I have never known such a genius for corraling facts! In an instant his mind apparently galloped completely around the boundary of our discovery, and then circled in. "You have made it harmless," was his first oral observation.