Page:Rideout--Beached keels.djvu/22

8 frey!" he broke out with fervor, "’fore bunkin' in with that crowd, I'd ruther resk the whirlpools a-goin' back in the dark."

"Listen, though," said Archer.

The boat was surrounded by the darkness of the looming headlands. A single light from the shore pierced the pool deeply before them, a long, wavering blade of brightness in the still water. The silence had been suddenly broken by a small, sharp, metallic voice singing,—a phonograph squealing out the "Handicap March." "We 've got money to booyin!" it cried nasally. In this dark, forlorn harbor it seemed incredible. Strange echo of cheap New York, thought Archer, it told that rusticity and simple merriment were no more.

"They seem gay enough," he said aloud. The boatman, however, only gave a skeptical grunt.

On the beach, where the good salt air was lost in a stink of fish, the two men parted,—the Yankee, with his fee in his pocket, to pull stolidly out of this harbor which he hated; Archer, to go scrambling up a footpath which,