Page:The Indian Drum (1917 original).pdf/289

Rh out from rail to rail across the bow, straining his eyes forward into the thickness of the snow-filled night.

Because of the severe cold, the watches had been shortened. Alan would be relieved from time to time to warm himself, and then he would return to duty again. Old Burr at the wheel would be relieved and would go on duty at the same hours as Alan himself. Benjamin Corvet! The fancy reiterated itself to him. Could he be mistaken? Was that man, whose eyes turned alternately from the compass to the bow of the ferry as it shifted and rose and fell, the same who had sat in that lonely chair turned toward the fireplace in the house on Astor Street? Were those hands, which held the steamer to her course, the hands which had written to Alan in secret from the little room off his bedroom and which pasted so carefully the newspaper clippings concealed in the library?

Regularly at the end of every minute, a blast from the steam whistle reverberated; for a while, signals from the shore answered; for a few minutes the shore lights glowed through the snow. Then the lights were gone, and the eddies of the gale ceased to bring echoes of the obscuration signals. Steadily, at short, sixty-second intervals, the blast of Number 25's warning burst from the whistle; then that too stopped. The great ferry was on the lake alone; in her course, Number 25 was cutting across the lanes of all ordinary lake travel; but now, with ordinary navigation closed, the position of every other ship upon the lake was known to the officers, and formal signals were not thought necessary. Flat floes, driven by wind and wave, had windrowed in their course; as Number 25,