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Rh down like a nail under a punch. But she likely had to come. The ice'd be chasing her off the grounds, and Scott won't fool around doing nothing."

Dick gave no answer. He was watching that light which flared skyward and sank and struggled up again like the fluctuating pulse of a sick man. It represented forty or more human lives, and one of those lives might be Grange's Andree. That thought quickened the desire for capture in him, and quickened his imagination also. Suppose Andree were aboard, how would she meet him? Once he had seen her afraid, and he did not want to see that again. He could not think of Andree as crying piteously for mercy. He would not think of it. Rather on this night of wild storm and flying spray could he think of her breasting it; laughing, with her curls blown out and her long coat wrapped round her. There were the same reckless elements in her as in himself. She would defy him; or she would fling herself on him in her all-forgetting love. But she would not cry to him for mercy. He dared not think of that.

He watched the light die and leap up again and pitch sideways with almost the intensity of belief that it was Andree herself battling her wild, lonely way out there against the storm. Baxter spoke again.

"I reckon it is the 'Rocket,' safe enough. See her clear that point? He's a cast-iron sailor, is Scott, and he'll bring her in straight as a bullet with destruction all around him. There's not another man in the fleet would dare it on a night like this. My! She's coming."

"Can I go aboard her with you in the morning, Sergeant?"

"Eh? Why—were you thinkin' he might have Andree? It's one chance in a hundred, Heriot."

"More than that. If she went out intending to board a boat she'd do it. And there'd not be more than three or four that didn't mean to winter. There is a good chance that she's on the 'Rocket.’"

"Well; it's possible. Anything is possible in this world, I guess. But I won't have you along, Heriot. Maybe I can get her ashore friendly-like. That would be better than doin' the thing in public, I reckon."