ough, where,
winding through the salt marshes, it emerged into the Back Harbor.

He crept in nearer and nearer, but no shore came in sight. The fog was
now so thick that he could see not more than ten feet from the boat,
but if he was in the mouth of the Slough he should have grounded on the
marsh bank long before. The reason that he did not, a reason which did
not occur to him at the time, was that the marshes were four feet under
water. Owing to the tremendous tide Pounddug Slough was now merely a
continuation of the Harbor and almost as wide.

The lightkeeper began to think that he must have miscalculated his
distance. He could not have rowed as far as he thought. Therefore,
he again turned the dory's nose into the teeth of the wind and pulled
steadily on. At intervals he stopped and listened. All he heard was
the moan of distant foghorns and the whistling of the gusts in trees
somewhere at his left. There were pine groves scattered all along the
bluffs on the Eastboro side, so this did not help him much except to
prove that the shore was not far away. He pulled harder on the right
oar. Then he stopped once more to listen.

Another blast howled through the distant trees and swept down upon him.
Then, borne on the wind, he heard from somewhere ahead, and alarmingly
near at hand, other sounds, voices, calls for help.

"Ahoy!" he shouted. "Ahoy there! Who is it? Where are you?"

"Help!" came the calls again--and nearer. "Help!"

"Look out!" roared Seth, peering excitedly over his shoulder into the
dark. "Where are you? Look out or you'll be afoul of . . . Jumpin'
Judas!"

For out of the fog loomed a bulky shape driving down upon him. He pulled
frantically at the oars, but it was too late. A mast rocked against the
sky, a stubby bowsprit shot over the dory, and the little boat, struck
broadside on, heeled to the water's edge. Seth, springing frantically
upward, seized the bowsprit and clung to it. The dory, pushed aside and
half full of water, disappeared. From the deck behind the bowsprit two
voices, a man's voice and a woman's, screamed wildly.

Seth did not scream. Clinging to the reeling bowsprit, he swung up on
it, edged his way to the vessel's bows and stepped upon the deck.

"For thunder sakes!" he roared angrily, "what kind of navigation's this?
Where's your lights, you lubbers? What d'you mean by--Where are you
anyhow? And--and what schooner's this?"

For the deck, as much as he could see of it in the