Page:Ralph Paine--The praying skipper.djvu/85

Rh fearing recognition. A runaway from New London the day before the race, his college town was the last place on earth in which he wished to be seen. As he neared New York he braced himself for the meeting with his mother, blindly fearing that she would be sorely disappointed in him. But the Mohican had been delayed by heavy weather along the coast and a smothering fog off Sandy Hook, and could not be expected to reach her dock before seven o'clock of the following morning.

Hastings felt as if he were cast away on a desert island. He yearned for his mother now, but she was somewhere out in the fog, and he was alone in New York, alone through the long night before the race, with all its smarting, thrilling memories. Long after midnight, unable to coax drowsiness, his thoughts went homing back to the Quarters as he knew the place in these last hours.

He could hear the call of the robin at daybreak in the tree by his window, the call that had aroused him to face the issues of two races when he was Number Five.