THE MAN WHO WAS LOST.

“Man overboard!”

Nick Carter—known to the captain and crew of the tramp steamerCherokee as Sykes, the bos’n—heard this shout, taken up by man after man, as he lay stretched out on the foc’s’le head, in the early morning, just as the ship nosed her way into San Juan harbor, on the northern coast of Porto Rico.

The thrilling warning that somebody has fallen into the sea, which always sends a shock through both crew and passengers whenever heard, does not permit any ordinary person to remain quietly dozing.

The famous detective was one of the first to rush over to the side of the ship when the alarm had been given.

Close by him were his two assistants, Chick and Patsy Garvan, who, in the rôles of common sailors, had come down to Porto Rico to help him get back the fortune in jewels which had been stolen from Stephen Reed, the well-known New York millionaire.

“Who is it, chief?” asked Patsy, forcing his way to the front.

“I haven’t heard.”

“One of the crew, I suppose?” hazarded Chick.

“No doubt. There is only one passenger on board now, Paul Clayton. It isn’t he, for there he is, behind you.”

Meanwhile, under orders from Captain Bill Lawton himself, two life rings, each with some thirty fathoms of line attached, had been hurled over in the direction of where the drowning man might be expected to be.

It was too dark to make out plainly anything in the water, but a sharp lookout was kept for an hour, until the vessel reached her anchorage and the “mud hooks” were let go.

“Well, we couldn’t do any better,” grunted Captain Lawton, through his shaggy mustache, as he and his big, two-fisted first mate, Van Cross, stood together on the bridge. “We might have a roll call of the crew. I don’t know who it was went over. I reckon it wasn’t anybody who might have become President of the United States, nor nothing like that.”

The saturnine skipper gave vent to a husky “Haw-haw!” at his own joke, and Van Cross joined in with an equally raucous guffaw.

Nick Carter was the only person on board theCherokee who thought of a certain possibility which would attach more importance to the falling off the vessel of the man than its commander had supposed.

“Patsy!” whispered Nick. “Go to Mr. Clayton’s cabin and see if that suit case of his, containing the Reed jewelry, is safe.”

“I can’t see it unless Clayton is there,” objected Patsy.

“Naturally. But he is there. I saw him go down just now. You may tell him I sent you to inquire.”

“Who shall I say? Sykes?”

“Of course. I have no other name on theCherokee.”

As Patsy Garvan disappeared to obey his chief, although without understanding what it all meant, Nick Carter beckoned to Chick, and the two went down a forward hatch.

“What’s the idea, chief?” asked Chick.

“I want to see that the prisoners are secure, Chick. It has always been difficult to keep John Garrison Rayne behind the bars—except when he is inside the stone walls of a State’s prison—and I have not much faith in the place they have him in on theCherokee.”

“The same about his man French, I suppose?”

“French is an insignificant scoundrel,” returned Nick. “He is entirely under Rayne’s influence. I dare say he regrets that he ever was