off-shore to be in the track of traffic. However, he could see no sail,
no encouraging trail of smoke. But after a time he did behold something
which was not encouraging. He stood up and balanced himself and gazed
westward, in the direction in which they were drifting; every now and
then a lifting wave enabled him to command a wide expanse of the sea.

He saw a white ribbon of foam that stretched its way north and south
into the obscurity of the mists. He did not report this finding at once.
He looked at his companions and pondered.

"I think you have something to say to me," suggested the girl.

"I suppose I ought to say it. I've been wondering just how it ought to
be said. It's not pleasant news."

"I am prepared to hear anything, Captain Mayo. Nothing matters a great
deal just now."

"We are being driven on to the coast. I don't know whether it's the
Delaware or the New Jersey coast. It doesn't make much difference. The
breakers are just as bad in one place as in the other."

"Why don't you anchor this boat? Are you going to let it go ashore and
be wrecked?" asked Bradish, with anger that was childish.

"The anchor seems to have been overlooked when we started on this little
excursion. As I remember it, there was some hurry and bustle," returned
Mayo, dryly.

"Why didn't you remember it? You got us into this scrape. You slammed
and bossed everybody around. You didn't give anybody else a chance to
think. You call yourself a sailor! You're a devil of a sailor to come
off without an anchor."

"I suppose so," admitted Mayo.

"And there wasn't any sense, in coming off in this little boat. We ought
to have stayed on the schooner."

"Ralph!" protested the girl. "Have you completely lost your mind? Don't
you know that the schooner sank almost the minute we left it?"

"Mr. Bradish's mind was very much occupied at the time," said Captain
Mayo.

"I don't believe the schooner sank. What does a girl know about such
things? That fellow got scared, that's the trouble. There isn't any
sense in leaving a big boat in a storm. We would have been taken off
before this. We would have been all right. This is what comes of letting
a fool boss you around when he is scared," he raved.

"You are the fool!" she cried, with passion. "Captain Mayo saved us."

"Saved us from what? Here we are going into the breakers--and he says
so--and there's no anchor on here. He took everything out of my hands.
Now why doesn't he do someth