ghtened; but he knew his father would soon be back, and
he didn't like to call him again. He listened to the waves washing,
surging, beating, roaring, on the shoals beyond the dike. Presently he
heard them, every now and then, thunder in against the very dike itself.
Upon this he grew more frightened, and called to his father several
times. But of course the small voice was drowned in the tumult of wind
and wave, and the father, working eagerly on the other side of the dike,
heard no sound of it.

Close by the shelter in which Jamie was crouching there were several
great tubs, made by sawing molasses-hogsheads into halves. These tubs,
in fishing season, were carried by the fishermen in their boats, to hold
the shad as they were taken from the net. Now they stood empty and dry,
but highly flavored with memories of their office. Into the nearest tub
Jamie crawled, after having shouted in vain to his father.

To the child's loneliness and fear the tub looked "cosey," as he called
it. He curled up in the bottom, and felt a little comforted.

Jamie was the only child of Captain Joe Boultbee. When Jamie was about
two years old, the Captain had taken the child and his mother on a
voyage to Brazil. While calling at Barbadoes the young mother had caught
the yellow fever. There she had died, and was buried. After that voyage
Captain Joe had given up his ship, and retired to his father's farm at
Tantramar. There he devoted himself to Jamie and the farm, but to Jamie
especially; and in the summer, partly for amusement, partly for profit,
he was accustomed to spend a few weeks in drifting for shad on the wild
tides of Chignecto Bay. Wherever he went, Jamie went. If the weather was
too rough for Jamie, Captain Joe stayed at home. As for the child,
petted without being spoiled, he was growing a tough and manly little
soul, and daily more and more the delight of his father's heart.

Why should he leave him curled up in his tub on the edge of the marshes,
on a night so wild? In truth, though the wind was tremendous, and now
growing to a veritable hurricane, there was no apparent danger or great
hardship on the marshes. It was not cold, and there was no rain.

Captain Joe, foreseeing a heavy gale, together with a tide higher than
usual, had driven over to the dike to make his little craft more secure.

He found the boat already in confusion; and the wind, when once he had
crossed out of the dike's shelter, was so much more violent th