er as possible between
himself and Tarpaulin Island before midnight.

Shipping his oars, he began to row, using infinite care lest creaking
rowlock or splashing blade betray him. Gradually he drew out of the
cove, and there was less need of caution. As he rounded Brimstone Point
he cast one last, long look at the cabin, square and black and silent.

The remembrance of his discomforts and indignities of the last three
weeks surged over him. He shook his fist at his vanishing prison.

"Good riddance!" he muttered. "Hope I'll never set eyes again on you or
the bunch inside you!"

He bent to his oars with redoubled vigor, and presently a high boulder
shut out the camp. In five minutes more he had rounded the point and was
pulling north on the heaving Atlantic swell.

The tide was running out strongly. It came swirling round Brimstone in
rips and eddies. Percy had never before realized that its force was so
great. He made a hasty calculation, and was very unpleasantly surprised
to discover that he would have to pull against it for fully ninety
minutes ere it turned to run the other way. He began to feel less sure
of reaching Head Harbor before daybreak.

"Guess I've bitten off an all-night job," thought he, disconsolately.

But there was no help for it--unless he desired to slink back to the
camp he had just abandoned with such thief-like stealth. Percy set his
teeth.

"Not while I've got arms to pull with!"

Before buckling to his task he glanced about. On his left rose the
familiar shores of Tarpaulin. Miles to his right and almost due west the
twin lights on Matinicus Rock twinkled faintly across the sea; while
behind him, a little to the west of north, shone the single star of
Saddleback, a good four leagues away. The dark-blue summer sky, unmarred
by the slightest cloud-fleck, was brilliant with constellations.

It was a night of nights for an astronomer or a poet, but Percy was
neither. He had no eyes for the splendor that overhung him. Ten long,
watery miles must be traversed before he could beach his pea-pod in the
little haven behind Eastern Head. Would his arms stand the strain?

His muscles were harder and stronger than they had been in the middle of
June. Likewise, his grit had strengthened with his physique.

"I'll make Head Harbor before light, if it kills me!"

Turning, he scanned the starry sky, and by means of his scanty knowledge
of astronomy identified the Great Dipper. Its pointers located t