Albert Walter Tolman

Jim was the first to recover his breath.

"Well!" he ejaculated. "Here we are! And mighty fortunate! We'll neither of us ever have a closer shave."

He looked southwest, where the ledge was breaking white through the gloom, and shook his head. Percy, shivering with excitement, said nothing; but he felt as thankful as his mate. They stood close together on the circular top, holding on to the crossed bails, waist-high. Between them rose the whistle, thirty inches tall. Every time they sank in the trough it emitted its dismal bellow.

To leeward the dory wallowed at the end of her painter, almost full of water.

"Split her bow when we struck," said Spurling. "Just as well not to be in her. At any rate, we're not drifting."

Their position, however, was none too secure. The buoy had a rise and fall of seven feet. Unsteadied by keel or rudder, it bobbed unexpectedly this way and that. The boys were obliged to cling fast to keep their footing on the narrow, slippery top.

A sudden jump of the rolling can wrenched Percy's right hand from its hold. But for his left, he would have been flung into the sea.

"That won't do," said Spurling.

Producing a coil of line, he took three or four turns round Percy's waist, and lashed him fast to the bails. He did the same for himself.

"Guess we'll stick on now," he remarked.

"Where did you get that rope?" asked Percy.

"It's all that's left of the ground-line. Thought it might come in handy, so I jammed it inside my oil-coat before I jumped. Never can tell when you'll need a few feet for something or other."

The screech of the buoy, recurring regularly, set their ears ringing.

"We've got to choke that off!" exclaimed Spurling, finally. "We'll go crazy, sure, if we have to listen to it all night."

"How'll you do it? Jam something into the mouth of the whistle?"

"Might smother it that way, but I know an easier one."

He pushed his handkerchief into the curved end of the intake tube just as the bellowing buoy reached its lowest point. The next time it sank there was no sound.

"Can't sing out unless it fills up with air," remarked Spurling. "It's human, so far!"

"Is it all right to shut the signal off altogether? Mightn't some vessel strike the shoal if she doesn't hear it?"

"Not much chance of that to-night! Everything'll give Cashe's a wide berth in a norther. But I'll let it scream a few times every ten minutes. That'll be often enough to warn off any craft within hearing."

THEY STOOD CLOSE TOGETHER ON THE CIRCULAR TOP, HOLDING ON TO THE CROSSED BAILS, WAIST-HIGH

The last red embers of the sunset died out, and from horizon to horizon the sky was ablaze with stars. Even the boys, wet, hungry, and exhausted, could not be blind to such magnificence.

"Good evening to study astronomy, Perce!"

"Never saw a finer! But I'd want a steadier foundation than this for my telescope."

As on the previous night, the sea was aglow with phosphorescence. Every wave was crested with silver. Buoy and tugging dory kept the water alive with light as they rose and fell. Leeward the long shoal broke in glittering foam.

Spurling gazed silently down into the eddying tide.

"Runs fast, doesn't it?" said Percy.

"Yes; it's the ebb out of Fundy. Comes piling down over Cashe's at a two-knot rate. When the flood begins it'll run just as hard the other way. That's what makes the shoal so dangerous. There's only from four to seven fathoms over the ledge at low water, and that's little enough in a storm."

"Were you ever down here before?"

"No; but I've heard Uncle Tom Sprowl tell about the place dozens of times. Once, in particular, he was here in a schooner, hand-lining. It was almost calm, just a light east wind blowing, when they anchored an eighth of a mile to weather of the shoal. Pretty soon the decks were alive with fish. It kept breezing on all the time, and the ledge broke higher and higher; but they were having such good luck they hated to leave. So they hung to it till it got too rough for a small boat, and the breaker was twenty or thirty feet high. There was a big cod or haddock on every line, when all of a sudden the cable parted and they began to blow down on the ledge. It took some lively work to save the schooner and themselves. They got sail on her just in time to skin by the end of the breaker. Uncle Tom's been out in some pretty bad storms, but he's always said the time he parted his cable on Cashe's was the closest shave he ever had. See that shark!"

Ten yards off, just under the surface, appeared the glittering outlines of a great fish. It moved leisurely, its projecting fin making a silver ripple.

"Twelve feet, if he's an inch! I'd hate to fall overboard while he's around."

"Think he's a man-eater?"

"Don't know! But I'd rather let somebody else find out. There's another! I've heard fishermen say the sea round here's alive with 'em. I haven't a doubt but those two fellows that chased us to-day are somewhere about. Once they get after a boat, they'll follow it till the cows come home. Guess I'll let Ole Bull give us a few notes!"

He pulled his handkerchief out of the intake tube. Presently the voice of the whistle was echoing across the sea. After a half-dozen screeches Spurling stopped up the tube again.

"That'll do for now! We'll give him another chance in ten minutes."

Up and down went the buoy, pitching and reeling dizzily. An occasional wave-crest buried the boys to the waist.

"No place for a man with a weak stomach, hey, Perce," said Spurling. "You couldn't have stood this two months ago."

Percy was gazing intently southward.

"What's that white spot?" he asked, suddenly, pointing to a glittering patch fifty or sixty yards square.

"School of herring! Now look out for some fun! Something's liable to be after 'em any minute."

Hardly had the words left Jim's mouth when a great white streak moved rapidly toward the schooling fish.

"Whale!" shouted Spurling, excitedly. "Watch out!"

With a tremendous rush the huge, gleaming body shot suddenly clear of the water. For an instant it hung suspended, ten feet above the surface. Then, with a mighty splash, it dropped back, right amid the herring. The glittering school dispersed in a thousand directions, and the monster moved slowly off to the south.

"Biggest whale I ever saw," observed Jim. "Fully seventy feet long! Well, he's had one good meal. Wish we could say the same! Hungry, old man?"

"Yes; but more thirsty."

"Stick to it! Somebody's likely to show up at any time to-morrow and take us off."

"But if they don't—"

"We'll have to hang on till they do."

Percy could hardly stand upright. His joints ached. His eyelids sagged heavily for want of sleep. He would have given anything if he could have lain down. But that was impossible. Something of his father's doggedness enabled him to set his teeth and stand clinging to the bails.

Their plight was bad enough, but it might have been much worse. Percy shivered a bit as he looked at the wallowing dory and the breaker beyond it.

The buoy could not drift. It could not founder. It afforded them a safe refuge from wind and sea; but it could not give them food or drink.

Particularly drink. Every atom in Percy's body, every corpuscle in his blood, seemed to be crying out for water. It did not seem as if he could endure it. He was almost desperate enough to quench his thirst from the sea. But, no! Men who did that went crazy. He moistened his dry lips with his tongue. If only he could have had a full dipper from the spring behind the camp! And he had turned up his nose because it was brackish!

"Wish I had some of Filippo's hot biscuits!" said Jim. "I can taste 'em now."

"Don't, Jim! It makes me feel worse. How long can a man stand it without eating and drinking?"

"There was a fisherman out of Bass Harbor, last October, who went in a power-boat to Clay Bank after hake. His engine played out and he got blown off by a northwester. For over five days he didn't have a thing to eat or drink. Then he got back to Mount Desert Rock. That's the longest I ever heard of."

Five days! And they had not yet gone two. Percy became silent again.

The night dragged painfully. With mortal slowness the Great Bear circled the Pole Star. Jim was acquainted with the principal constellations, and he ran them over for Percy's benefit. Gradually, however, their conversation lagged. You cannot feel much interest in astronomy when your eyes feel as if they were being pressed down by leaden weights and your stomach is absolutely empty.

Percy's body drooped over the bails. Though the position was horribly uncomfortable, he had all he could do to prevent himself from going to sleep, even despite the occasional screeches of the whistle. With an immense effort he stiffened himself upright. Jim was gazing down into the water.

"It's going to moderate before long," he remarked, casually.

Percy came wide awake in an instant.

"How can you tell? It's blowing as hard as ever."

"I know that. But the tide doesn't run so strong against the buoy. Just as it always makes up before the wind comes, so it begins to go down before the wind lessens. I believe the gale'll blow itself out by the middle of the forenoon."

The news seemed too good to be true; but it dispelled Percy's drowsiness. He pried his eyes open and stared around.

The waves were still running high and breaking in fiery sparkles. The silver sharks unwearyingly kept their silent vigil about the rocking buoy. Up the eastern horizon was stealing a faint pallor, harbinger of the approaching dawn.

Lighter and lighter it grew. The gulls, which had been floating on the water all night, began to take wing and fill the air with their grating cries. The phosphorescence died out of the sea. Another day had begun.

Raising his right hand, Spurling turned its open palm toward the north.

"What did I tell you?" he exclaimed. "The wind is going down."

Even Percy could see that it was not blowing so hard. The water, too, had grown much smoother, and the roar of the breaker was not so loud.

"It'll be calm as a mill-pond in a few hours," remarked Jim. "By noon there ought to be some fishermen out here. They always start from Portland on the end of a norther, and run for this buoy to make their grounds from. All we've got to do now is to hold on and wait."

He pulled in the dory and looked her carefully over.

"Bow split open, as I thought," said he. "But apart from that she isn't damaged any. A little work'll make her as good as new. And in the stern is that box with the piston-rod in it. I'd have hated to lose that, after all this fuss. Things might have turned out a good deal worse, eh, Perce? But the next time I'll know enough to hang up at Seal Island."

Jim's cheerfulness was contagious. Percy felt better. Though he was still tormented by hunger and thirst, the thought that relief might soon come gave him courage to endure them. Jim let the dory slip back to the end of her painter.

"Might as well take an Indian breakfast."

He buckled his belt a hole tighter.

"Not a sail in sight yet! We could lie down in the dory and go to sleep, if she wasn't full of water. But, as things are, we'll have to make ourselves as comfortable as we can right here. Let's hope it won't be for long!"

The gale weakened to a brisk breeze. The sea fell rapidly to a long, lazy swell, on which the buoy rocked drowsily. The warm sun inclined the boys to sleep; but they fought it off and scanned the horizon with eager eyes. Seven o'clock. Eight. Nine. Ten. And still no sign of a sail.

At half past ten a smoke-feather rose in the east.

"Yarmouth boat on her way to Boston," said Jim. "She'll pass too far north to see us."

He was right. The steamer's course kept her on the horizon, several miles off. Before long she vanished to the west. Half past eleven went by, and no fishermen appeared. Percy began to fear that Jim was mistaken, after all.

"Here comes our packet," remarked Spurling, quietly.

A tiny saw-tooth of canvas was rising out of the sea, miles northwest. As it grew larger it developed into a schooner under full sail, heading straight for the buoy.

"She sees us," said Jim.

Percy felt like dancing for joy. Nearer and nearer came the schooner. The boys could see her crew staring curiously at them from along her rail. Fifty yards off she shot up into the wind and prepared to launch a boat. They could read the name on her starboard bow.

"The Grade King," spelled Spurling. "I know her. She's a Harpswell vessel. Come out to seine herring. Bet she left Portland early this morning. Her captain's Silas Greenlaw; he used to sail with Uncle Tom. He'll use us O. K."

A dory with two men in it came rowing toward the buoy.

"How long've you fellows been hanging on here?" shouted a red-sweatered, gray-haired man in the stern.

"Since six last night. We blew down from Tarpaulin Island in the norther. Don't you know me, Captain Greenlaw?"

"Why, it's Jim Spurling, Tom Sprowl's nephew!" exclaimed the astonished captain. "So the gale blew you down from Tarpaulin, eh? Well, all I've got to say is that you were confounded lucky to hit the buoy and not the breaker. How long since you've had anything to eat or drink?"

"Forty-six hours since we've had a swallow of water, and about twenty since we finished our last hard bread."

"Well, well! You must be hungry and thirsty! Come right aboard and we'll see what we can do for you."

Gladly the boys cut the lashings that bound them to the bails. The whistle gave a screech of farewell as they tumbled stiffly into the boat. The solid deck of the Gracie felt good beneath their feet.

"You can have all the water you want, boys; but you'd better go light on food at first," cautioned the captain.

It seemed to Percy as if he could never get enough to drink. Gradually, however, his thirst was quenched. He began to realize that he had not slept for two days and a half.

"I'd like to carry you right back to the island," said Captain Greenlaw, "for your friends must be worrying. But there are lots of herring here, and I've got to get a load first. That may take two or three days. I'll land you at Tarpaulin on my way home. Better turn in and sleep."

The boys were shortly wrapped in a heavy, dreamless slumber. It seemed to them as if they had just closed their eyes when they were shaken awake again.

"Here's the cutter!" exclaimed the captain. "They got a wireless to hunt you up. Going to run in to Rockland, and can land you at Tarpaulin this evening. What do you say?"

Tired though they were, Jim and Percy were only too glad of a chance to get home speedily. So they were transferred to the Pollux, and their leaking dory hoisted aboard. Swung in hammocks in the seamen's quarters, they were soon slumbering dreamlessly again.

At eight that night the Pollux stopped off the island. The dory, made sound and tight by the ship's carpenter, was dropped overboard, and the boys rowed into Sprowl's Cove.

Their appearance transformed the gloom that overhung Camp Spurling into the wildest joy. Budge, Throppy, and Filippo burst out of the cabin and raced headlong down the beach, waking the echoes with their shouts of welcome. Even before the dory grounded they tumbled aboard and flung their arms about the castaways. No brothers, reunited after deadly peril, could have given one another a warmer greeting.

Jim freed his hands at last, stooped, and picked up a package which he tossed out on the gravel. There was a suspicious moisture in his eyes.

"There's the piston-rod!" said he in a rather choky voice. "I guess we'll get our set all right day after to-morrow."