n dry,
upholstered cabins who would never learn that they had massacred a boat
before breakfast. So Harvey rang the bell.

"Yes, they slow daown one turn o' their blame propeller," said Dan,
applying himself to Manuel's conch, "fer to keep inside the law, an'
that's consolin' when we're all at the bottom. Hark to her! She's a
humper!"

"Aooo-whoo-whupp!" went the siren. "Wingle-tingle-tink," went the bell.
"Graaa-ouch!" went the conch, while sea and sky were all mired up in
milky fog. Then Harvey felt that he was near a moving body, and found
himself looking up and up at the wet edge of a cliff-like bow, leaping,
it seemed, directly over the schooner. A jaunty little feather of water
curled in front of it, and as it lifted it showed a long ladder of
Roman numerals-XV., XVI., XVII., XVIII., and so forth--on a
salmon-coloured gleaming side. It tilted forward and downward with a
heart-stilling "Ssssooo"; the ladder disappeared; a line of
brass-rimmed port-holes flashed past; a jet of steam puffed in Harvey's
helplessly uplifted hands; a spout of hot water roared along the rail
of the _We're Here_, and the little schooner staggered and shook in a
rush of screw-torn water, as a liner's stern vanished in the fog.
Harvey got ready to faint or be sick, or both, when he heard a crack
like a trunk thrown on a sidewalk, and, all small in his ear, a
far-away telephone voice drawling: "Heave to! You've sunk us!"

"Is it us?" he gasped.

"No! Boat out yonder. Ring! We're goin' to look," said Dan, running out
a dory.

In half a minute all except Harvey, Penn, and the cook were overside
and away. Presently a schooner's stump-foremast, snapped clean across,
drifted past the bows. Then an empty green dory came by, knocking on
the _We're Here's_ side, as though she wished to be taken in. Then
followed something, face down, in a blue jersey, but--it was not the
whole of a man. Penn changed colour and caught his breath with a click.
Harvey pounded despairingly at the bell, for he feared they might be
sunk at any minute, and he jumped at Dan's hail as the crew came back.

"The Jennie Cushman," said Dan, hysterically, "cut clean in
half--graound up an' trompled on at that! Not a quarter of a mile away.
Dad's got the old man. There ain't any one else, and--there was his
son, too. Oh, Harve, Harve, I can't stand it! I've seen--" He dropped
his head on his arms and sobbed while the others dragged a gray-headed
man aboard.

"What did yo