Page:The Indian Drum (1917 original).pdf/288

270 "Ben Corvet like that? Did you ever see Ben Corvet?"

"Only his picture," Alan confessed. "But you looked queer when you first saw Burr."

"That was a trick of his eyes. Say, they did give me a start. Ben Corvet had just that sort of trick of looking through a man."

"And his eyes were like that?"

"Sure. But Ben Corvet couldn't be like that!"

Alan prepared to go on duty. He would not let himself be disappointed by the skipper's failure to identify old Burr; the skipper had known immediately at sight of the old man that he was the one whom Alan thought was Corvet, and he had found a definite resemblance. It might well have been only the impossibility of believing that Corvet could have become like this which had prevented fuller recognition. Mr. Sherrill, undoubtedly, would send some one more familiar with Benjamin Corvet and who might make proper allowances.

Alan went forward to his post as a blast from the steam whistle of the switching engine, announcing that the cars all were on board, was answered by a warning blast from the ferry. On the car decks the trains had been secured in place; and, because of the roughness of the weather, the wheels had been locked upon the tracks with additional chains as well as with the blocks and chains usually used. Orders now sounded from the bridge; the steel deck began to shake with the reverberations of the engines; the mooring lines were taken in; the rails upon the fantail of the ferry separated from the rails upon the wharf, and clear water showed between. Alan took up his slow pace as look-