swept the water from his eyes, and with pale, stern face went
about the bloody business of a hero. . . . Again, this
adventurer was Clement J. Cleggett!

Cleggett turned from the window.

"I'll do it," he cried. "I'll do it!"

He grasped a cutlass.

"Pirates!" he cried, swinging it about his head. "That's the
thing--pirates and the China Seas!"

And with one frightful sweep of his blade he disemboweled a sofa
cushion; the second blow clove his typewriting machine clean to
the tattoo marks upon its breast; the third decapitated a
sectional bookcase.

But what is a sectional bookcase to a man with $500,000 in his
pocket and the Seven Seas before him?


CHAPTER III

A SCHOONER, A SKIPPER, AND A SKULL

It was a few days later, when a goodly number of the late Uncle
Tom's easily negotiable securities had been converted into cash,
and the cash deposited in the bank, that Cleggett bought the
Jasper B.