Arthur Train

“ The sun sank lower as they descended the other side of the ridge. Somewhere along the western shore of Mount Desert the Cormorant should be nosing her way, leaving a creaming wake to mark her course among the islands. But the doctor, straining his eye, could not see her anywhere. Perhaps some shoulder of mountain or dorsal of island concealed her. What if there were something the matter with her engine! He knew nothing of such things. Suppose she had not even started! Tom Alexander's only son might die! ”

“ Sometimes in the morning, when his pain had left him, he felt ecstatic with the joy of it—of even his life—and he would stretch his arms and go singing down the beach to his weir, or call Regna to help him with his traps.
As the years went on he came to know every nook and corner of the coast for fifty miles in both directions. Each little bay, each tiny inlet, each twinkling channel, had some hidden secret known only to him. Here he had lost a trap; there he had caught a miraculous net of fish; over on that sand spit he had found that the ducks liked to pause in their southward flight ”

“ A few small birds flickered among the alders, and now and again a rabbit first hesitated and then jumped regretfully across the road before them, but as a whole, nature was resting. Broad awake in the lazy afternoon sunlight she was luxuriating after her summer, and drowsily lying without even drawing breath. The air had that warmth and yet that freshness that at once sends a glow to the heart and thrills the senses. ”

“ What use the deer in their thousand-acre park? The swimming pool, the tennis courts, the bowling alleys, the yachts and motor boats—without the boy? Ashley had never had a child of his own, and he groaned aloud as he thought of little Tom Alexander writhing on his cot beside the sunlit sea. Of course, he'd go—go a thousand miles to save the boy, or any boy for that matter, if only there was a way to do so. It was a lucky thing the Cormorant, Alexander's new two-hundred-and-twenty-foot steam yacht, had been finished in time to go into commission that spring. Without her—Ashley bit his lips ”

“ Some day, when he should be dead, the islands would no longer present a barrier to vessels voyaging north and south. He had been a good navigator in his day, one of the best on the coast. Sometimes, if it had not been for the wife and child, he felt that he might have gone back to a seafaring life. But he did not complain. Life seemed good to him, and he labored on simply to live.
Spurling had come home early that afternoon. ”

“ Then they heard the splashing of a small propeller and the chug-chug of a launch. Ashley and the young doctor climbed out of the buckboard with their valises and stood waiting in the wet grass.
“Hello! Where are you?” came from the water.
“Here!” answered Ashley, climbing across the rocks to the water's edge.
“Careful! Wait a moment, sir!” admonished the second officer in charge of the launch. “Those rocks are covered with sea-weed and are slippery.”
“I can't wait for that!” retorted Ashley, sharply. “There's a boy's life at stake!” ”

“ The launch had already been lowered almost to the surface of the water, the blue flame under her boiler flaring grotesquely upon the face of the sailor trying to start her engine. Inside the saloon Ashley, who was bending busily over the silent form of Spurling, heard the bell to stop and lifted a tense face.
“Good job we tackled this fellow when we did. Worst case of perforation I ever saw. How he lived long enough to-night to reach the yacht I don't know. He must have a constitution of iron. An ordinary man would have died of one of those earlier attacks years ago.” ”

“ If he should run her on the rocks or get her aground—her owner's son would surely die. He looked mutely at the doctor.
“It's our only chance, captain,” said the latter. “If we don't take it, it will be morning before we reach Eagle Island.”
“Come up on the bridge!” answered Larsen, putting his arm around Spurling and lifting him to his feet. Ashley followed close behind. He could see that the man was dying—it did not take a surgeon to appreciate that. When once they were through the islands he would attend to him. Meanwhile the man must suffer—for the sake of the boy. ”

“ It'll take me a day to drive, and the trains are just as bad. How shall I get to you?”
“That's all right,” came back his friend's voice. “The Cormorant is here with steam up, ready to start—I'll send her for you. It's three o'clock now—and Freemont says if you operate by nine to-night you may be able to save the boy's life. You'd just about make it.”
“Held on a minute!”
Ashley's mind flashed quickly down the coast. If the Cormorant could be brought to the other side of Mount Desert he could drive across the island while she was on her way, meet her, and save nearly fifteen miles by sea. ”

“ We ought to be picking up the black buoy by the first of the Wise Men. But the whole bay is so jam full of islands, and shoal water, I daresn't go by a single buoy marked on the chart without makin' sure where I am— Hi! There! What's that!”
“Island ahead, sir!” yelled the forward watch.
The captain sprang to the indicator and threw it across to “Full Speed Reverse.” The engine groaned, the yacht heeled over, the propeller rattled in a frenzy as they gripped the water and shot backwards.
“Steady!” said the captain, throwing the indicator to “Stop.” ”

“ The captain shook his head.
“We draw fourteen feet. This string of islands and shoal water stretches eastward twenty-three miles. There is no passage through them for a boat of our draught. We've got to go 'round them and back halfway again to make Pemetic Reach. If there was a channel through we could make Eagle Island in fifty-five minutes from here. It's just as if a wall that you couldn't climb lay in front of you, with the house just on the other side.”
“Then every minute we lie here means that we lose that much time!” Ashley's heart sank. “Poor Tom!” ”

“ Their own course lay eastward four miles without guidance through the blackness. Regna clambered into the dory and her father shoved it off and swung himself in over the bow. Then he lifted the oars into the rowlocks and pulled swiftly around the point. Darkness and light to him were both alike. He could have smelt his way along the coast in a fog. The next instant, half blinded, they were in the focus of the Cormorant's search-light.
“A yacht!” cried Regna, covering her eyes with her hands.
III
“It's a boat all right!” ”