Page:Ballinger Price--The Happy Venture.djvu/174

158 the farm before it's dark and have it all cheerful for us when we come in—Kirk and I."

And then he plunged into the reek, and Felicia heard the quick beat of his steps die away down the wharf.

The harbor master was prompt in action, but not encouraging. He got off with Ken in his power boat in surprisingly short order. The coast guard, who had received a very urgent telephone message, launched the surf-boat, and tried vainly to pierce the blank wall of fog—now darkening to twilight—with their big searchlight. Lanterns, lost at once in the murk, began to issue from wharf-houses as men started on foot up the shore of the bay.

Ken, in the little hopeless motor-boat, sat straining his eyes beyond the dripping bow, till he saw nothing but flashes of light that did not exist. The Flying Dutchman—the Flying Dutchman—why had he not known that she must be a boat of ill omen? Joe Pasquale—drowned in February. "We got him, but we never did find his boat"—"cur'ous tide-racks 'round here—cur'ous tide-racks."

The harbor master was really saying that now, as he had said it before. Yes, the tide ran