dropped weakly to one side. The man who had struck him said quietly, "Loose the fool, Ed," and followed as Lanyard reeled away, striking him repeatedly.
For a giddy moment Lanyard was darkly conscious—as one dreams an evil dream—of blows raining mercilessly about his head and body, blows that drove him back athwartships toward a fate dark and terrible, a great void of blackness. He felt unutterably weary, and was weakened by a sensation of nausea. Beneath him his knees buckled. There fell one final blow, ruthless as the wrath of God.
He was falling backward into nothingness, into an everlasting gulf of night that yawned for him. …
As he shot under the guard rope and into space between the edge of the deck and the keel of the lifeboat, the spy rounded smartly on a heel and darted to the smoking-room door. His confederate was in the act of stepping across the raised threshold. He followed, closed the door.
The first officer, charging aft from the bridge, rounded the deck-house and pulled up with a grunt of surprise to find the deck completely deserted. …
The shock of icy immersion reanimated Lanyard.
He felt himself plunging headlong down, down, and down to inky depths unguessable. The sheer habit of an accustomed swimmer alone bade him hold his breath.
Then came a pause: he was no more descending; for a time of indeterminate duration, an age of anguish, he seemed to float without motion, suspended in frigid purgatory. Against his ribs something hammered like a racing engine. In his ears sounded a vast roaring, the deafening voices of a thousand waterfalls. His head
