dramatics; thought that he, Griswold, was—a philosopher! Yes, Ferdy thought that he was going to be taken back to the world of men (and women) in the Gorgon! Ha, ha! That was delectable. Ferdy had visions of safety—undoubtedly of other Amandas. That would add to the bitterness of the cup when he drained it—perhaps in an hour, probably in two hours. Griswold didn't know yet; all he knew was that he was going to kill Handsome Ferdy, kill him here on this desolate and forbidding Island of Flang.
And how beautifully everything had befallen! No one would ever know what had happened to the schooner. No one would ever know that Ferdy Chantrell had even set foot on the island. And no living soul would ever know that he himself, Cuthbert Griswold, had met Chantrell there and killed him. Not a soul was there to see, not a sign would remain, and the Island of Flang could never tell.
"A joke!" thought the schemer. "Ha, ha! He is yet to learn what a grim joke it really is!"
Never once, however, did the thought flicker athwart the dark brain of Cuthbert Griswold that he himself might learn that, too.
3. The Murder
They stood upon the very summit of the isle—Griswold, Chantrell and the wolf-dog, Pluto.
"Queer place, this Flang," said Griswold.
"Yes," thought the other, "but no more queer than you are yourself. Now, why did we come up to this summit? Maybe my imagination is playing me tricks; but I'll be mighty glad when I am once more back in the world of men."
A covert watch upon Cuthbert Griswold as he stood there would have enhanced those vague and sinister misgivings that the victim tried, butin vain, to banish. This visit to the summit of Flang had been no mere whim on Griswold's part. He had come with a definite object in view. This would be one murder that would never out. Though alone with his victim on an uninhabited isle in the midst of a deserted sea, he would take no chances, would make sure that the sea was deserted. One could never tell. Ships had a strange way of suddenly appearing in the most unlikely places and at the most unlikely times.
Slowly, covertly his eye made the circuit of the distant horizon. Not a spot visible anywhere. The sea was deserted indeed. And he was alone with his victim, alone with Handsome Ferdy—who soon would be a thing the very antithesis of handsome, a thing from which an Amanda would recoil in horror. Alone, alone! Ha, ha, he had now made sure that the secret could never out. Why did he wait? The wolf-dog, the dark rocks—they could never tell.
"But not here," said Griswold. "I am going to fling him into the sea, feed him to the fishes. Why should I drag him over there when he can walk to the spot himself?"
"I wonder," Chantrell said, "how far it is out to that skyline."
"About sixteen nautical miles," Griswold told him, "nineteen statute; we are at a height of just about two hundred feet."
"Only nineteen miles? I thought it was much farther than that."
"Oh, no. At a height of fifty feet, one can see out only nine miles, statute; one hundred feet, thirteen miles; three hundred feet, twenty-three; four hundred, only twenty-six miles;
"I didn't know that. But how still," said Chantrell, gazing curiously about him, "it has become! I wasn't aware of the change until this mo-
