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Both men looked at me in amazement. "We still have the compass and the sun,"

said Olson. "They may be after getting the compass some night; but they's too

many of us around in the daytime fer 'em to get the sun."

It was then that one of the men stuck his head up through the hatchway and

seeing me, asked permission to come on deck and get a breath of fresh air. I

recognized him as Benson, the man who, Wilson had said, reported having seen

Lys with von Schoenvorts two nights before. I motioned him on deck and then

called him to one side, asking if he had seen anything out of the way or unusual

during his trick on watch the night before. The fellow scratched his head a

moment and said, "No," and then as though it was an afterthought, he told me

that he had seen the girl in the crew's room about midnight talking with the

German commander, but as there hadn't seemed to him to be any harm in that,

he hadn't said anything about it. Telling him never to fail to report to me

anything in the slightest out of the ordinary routine of the ship, I dismissed him.

Several of the other men now asked permission to come on deck, and soon all but

those actually engaged in some necessary duty were standing around smoking

and talking, all in the best of spirits. I took advantage of the absence of the men

upon the deck to go below for my breakfast, which the cook was already

preparing upon the electric stove. Lys, followed by Nobs, appeared as I entered

the centrale. She met me with a pleasant "Good morning!" which I am afraid I

replied to in a tone that was rather constrained and surly.

Will you breakfast with me?" I suddenly asked the girl, determined to commence

a probe of my own along the lines which duty demanded.

She nodded a sweet acceptance of my invitation, and together we sat down at the

little table of the officers' mess.

"You slept well last night?" I asked.

"All night," she replied. "I am a splendid sleeper."

Her manner was so straightforward and honest that I could not bring myself to

believe in her duplicity; yet--Thinking to surprise her into a betrayal of her guilt, I

blurted out: "The chronometer and sextant were both destroyed last night; there

is a traitor among us." But she never turned a hair by way of evidencing guilty

knowledge of the catastrophe.

Who could it have been?" she cried. "The Germans would be crazy to do it, for

their lives are as much at stake as ours."

The Land That Time Forgot