"Point-blank," he said. "It stunned me. But I'll soon be as fit as a fiddle."

Orace had found a bucket, and in this he fetched water from the sea. Algy heaved himself and plunged his head in the pail for three or four long douches, coming up for breath in between. The salt water stung his wound painfully, but his head was rapidly clearing.

While they tied a handkerchief round his head he told the story, and it was much as the girl had surmised,

"So, like a little hero," he concluded ruefully, "I walked up and said 'Hands up!' in the approved manner. And then I got this."

"Did you recognize anybody?"

"It was too dark to see their faces — I didn't even see the jolly old pea-shooter they used on me. But one of them was short and fat, which must have been the Sausage-meat Sultan, and I'm blowed if another hadn't got something doocid like the height and shape of Uncle Hans!"

"How many were there?"

"Three or four — they stood in a group, so I can't be quite certain."

He was struggling to his feet, and he stood leaning against the wall of the hut. The shock must have been worse than he admitted, for his face was white and drawn.

"How do you feel now?" she asked.

"Fine," he said. "I feel as if the top of my head's breaking off, but otherwise I'm absolutely O. K. Let's get along — the string's where I dropped it, round in front. Lead on!"

Orace had faded away to fetch the rope, and in a moment he returned with a heavy coil of it slung over his shoulder.

"Don't chew fink ya better go 'ome?" he asked. "Yer carn't be yupter much after this."

The honourable wound which Mr. Lomas-Coper had received in the Cause had immediately destroyed Grace's animosity toward him. In another second Orace would call him "sir."

"No, I don't," said Algy strongly, and roughly he shook off their hands. "I'm going through with this now. Blast it, those unmitigated blighters shot me up! I've jolly well gotto meet them again, and I shall be fearfully vindictive about it. The cold water'll do me no end of good, and by the time we're aboard the lugger I'll be ready for anything."

"Well, I'm glad jer not worse 'urt, sir," said Orace in a tone of encouragement. "But if I might jus' take yerrarm while yer gettin'yer bref, so ter speak…”

The girt also was not unwilling to let Algy have his own way: in the grimness of her purpose she was as incapable of sparing anyone else as she was of sparing herself.

"But we ought to get Carn," she said.

"I went to look for the sleuth just before I started back," Algy answered. "He hasn't returned. We'll have to do without him."

The hope of legal reenforcements seemed to be receding, thought Patricia, as they set off toward the Pill Box. It appeared that she had been mistaken about Carn's knowledge, for if he had been planning to make his coup that night he must have been on the spot by that time. And, since he was not, the management of the bunfight was left entirely to the three of them.

In the Pill Box it was Algy who decided that the safest way to fix their rope was to pass it round a section of the wall, by way of two embrasures, tying it on the outside; though the actual work was left to Orace, as a man with some nautical experience. A change had come over Algy, sobering down his bubbling vapidness and turning him into a sensible man. It had been done by the bullet which had so nearly smashed him out of the adventure altogether — the fool had been stung by a hard fact, and it had brought out into the open the character which for years he had taken such pains to conceal. Automatically he rose from the ranks to a commission, with Pat as his only superior: Orace accepted the transformation philosophically.

They paid out the rope hand over hand, prone on the turf (by Grace's advice) so as not to be visible from below, for the moonlight was strengthening. The rope itself ran down in a kind of big groove in the rock, so that as they descended they would be almost hidden in the shadow.

"It should be long enough," said Algy. "I allowed plenty." He was peeling off his raincoat, and stood in bathing costume like the other two. "Who goes first?"

"Final orders," said Patricia — "tuck the artillery up in your belts and mind it doesn't clank against the rock; don't make one millionth of a splash swimming; and don't talk — you know how sound travels over water. Now, good luck to everyone! Follow your leader…”

Before either of the men could stop her she had twisted over the edge with the rope in her hands, and was sliding down, bracing herself off the cliff wall with her feet.

She was strong and without fear, and the rope was longer than it need have been. She still had hold of it when her feet grounded on the pebbly beach with the water lapping round her knees.

She stepped back and waved her arm.

Algy stood beside her in a minute, and Orace joined them after a similar interval. Without a word they waded in and pushed off. All three were strong swimmers, but one of them had a dud leg and another was still recovering from the effects of that glancing bullet across his skull. Before them lay two miles of sea, and at the end of it a desperately daring hazard.

The water was ideally calm and not too chilly for the distance. Patricia, who was like a fish in the water, hung a length behind the others, so that she could see if either of them crocked up. She turned over on her side and nestled her ear into the water, ploughing on with long, easy, noiseless strokes.

At that particular moment Mr. Central Detective Inspector Carn and his posse were plodding wearily through the darkness toward Baycombe, their car having broken down with twelve miles still to go, and the prospects of getting a lift on that lonely road, at the hour of the night, being exactly nil.

To fall one hundred and sixty feet takes just a shade over three seconds, but it seems a lot longer. Simon Templar knew this very vividly, for he seemed to live through three aeons between the instant of sickening breathlessness when he felt the cut-away flooring giving way under his weight, through the four odd pulsebeats of hurtling down and down into darkness, till he struck water with a stinging splash.

He sank like a plummet, and struck out mightily for the surface. He must have gone deep, for by the time his head came up his heart was pounding furiously and his chest felt as if it were about to cave in under the pressure. He drew a giant's breath, and choked at the end of it, for, unsuspecting, he had let himself be sucked under again. The undertow was terrific. He kicked out with all his strength, and as he rose again, gasping and spitting, his hand touched stone and got a grip on it instinctively. In spite of his experience, he still misjudged the power of the current: his hold was all but broken as soon as he obtained it, and his arm was nearly jerked from its socket with the strain. With an exertion of every bit of force he could rally, he drew himself up with his shoulder muscles, thrashing the water with his legs, until he got the fingers of his other hand crooked over that providential ledge. There he hung, panting, with the sinews of his arms taut and creaking, while he shook the water out of his eyes and tried to get his bearings.

Already he had been swept some distance from where he had fallen — it must have been a longish way, reckoning by the force of the stream as measured by the pull on his arms. The blackness was not complete, fortunately. His eyes were already used to the darkness, and so he was able to take in the surroundings comparatively well by the faint phosphorescent light which filtered up, apparently, from the surface, of the water.

He had been dropped into some sort of subterranean river. His handhold was a rough projection in the rock wall of the cavern through which the stream ran. The cave was no more than a dozen' feet wide, but the vaulted roof arched over a good twenty-five feet from the surface: during the centuries of its mill-race career the river must have worn itself deeper and deeper into its bed. "Mill-race" was a good description. The superficial smoothness of the water was no guide to the murderous speed and power of the current. The Saint wondered what beneficent deity had placed that shelf of rock directly under his flailing hand, for without it he would undoubtedly have been dragged down and drowned in a few minutes. Even now he wasn't out of the wood: the agonizing twinges of overworked muscle were throbbing up and down his arms, and though he had fingers of steel they wouldn't stand up to that gruelling tension indefinitely.