ie away down the wharf.

The harbor master was prompt in action, but not encouraging. He got off
with Ken in his power boat in surprisingly short order. The coast guard,
who had received a very urgent telephone message, launched the
surf-boat, and tried vainly to pierce the blank wall of fog--now
darkening to twilight--with their big searchlight. Lanterns, lost at
once in the murk, began to issue from wharf-houses as men started on
foot up the shore of the bay.

Ken, in the little hopeless motor-boat, sat straining his eyes beyond
the dripping bow, till he saw nothing but flashes of light that did not
exist. The _Flying Dutchman_--the _Flying Dutchman_--why had he not
known that she must be a boat of ill omen? Joe Pasquale--drowned in
February. "We got him, but we never did find his boat"--"cur'ous
tide-racks 'round here--cur'ous tide-racks."

The harbor master was really saying that now, as he had said it before.
Yes, the tide ran cruelly fast beside the boat, black and swirling and
deep. A gaunt something loomed into the light of the lantern, and made
Ken's heart leap. It was only a can-buoy, lifting lonely to the swell.

Far off, the siren raised its mourning voice.

CHAPTER XIII

"THE SEA IS A TYRANT"

Ken stumbled into the open door of Applegate Farm at three the next
morning. Felicia was asleep in a chair by the cold ashes of the fire. A
guttering candle burned on the table. She woke instantly and stared at
him with wide eyes.

"What is it?" she said, and then sprang up. "Alone?"

"Yes," Ken said. "Not yet. I'm going back in a little while. I wanted to
tell you how everybody is working, and all."

She ran to bring him something to eat, while he flung himself down
before the hearth, dead tired.

"The fog's still down heavy," he said, when she came back. "The coast
guard's been out all night. There are men on shore, too, and some other
little boats."

"But the tide was running out," Phil said. "He's gone. Kirk's--gone,
Ken!"

"No," Ken said, between his teeth. "No, Phil. Oh, no, no!". He
got up and shook himself. "Go to bed, now, and _sleep_. The idea of
sitting up with a beastly cold candle!"

He kissed her abruptly and unexpectedly and stalked out at the door, a
weary, disheveled figure, in the first pale, fog-burdened gleam of dawn.

It was some time after the _Flying Dutchman_ parted her one insufficient
mooring-rope before Kirk realized that the sound of the water about her
had chang