McKinnon. It was the instrument that he was attacking. For the heavy iron had struck with a crashing blow on the delicately poised responder, with its fragile and mysterious coherer, crushing the flimsy mechanism of glass and wood and metal as a mallet might crush a bird's egg. She felt McKinnon's mumbling and struggling body under her; but she gave it no thought. She only saw and knew that this maddened brute was beating the very heart out of their wireless apparatus, that with every blow he was crushing her last hopes. She dragged and wrenched McKinnon's revolver from his outstretched hand. But before she could so much as raise it, Ganley's second blow had fallen. This time it fell on the "key" itself, tearing the heavy metal lever free from its binding-post. He had just caught it up and flung it malignantly through the open cabin door, whirling out into the sea, when she fired.
Her first shot went wild. Before she had time for a second, Ganley had wheeled about and sprung on her through the smoke-filled air. The huge forty-four Colt seemed too heavy for her, beyond her strength, for she had no second chance of using it, of poising and adjusting and aiming it, as she knew she should have.
But she caught at him and clung to him, blindly, panting and screaming, wondering why
