ck. Woolfolk took her immediately into the cabin; where,
lighting a swinging lamp, he placed her on one of the prepared berths
and endeavored to wrap her in a blanket. But, in a shuddering access
of fear, she rose with outheld palms.

"Nicholas!" she cried shrilly. "There--at the door!"

He sat beside her, restraining her convulsive effort to cower in a
far, dark angle of the cabin.

"Nonsense!" he told her brusquely. "You are on the _Gar_. You are
safe. In an hour you will be in a new world."

"With John Woolfolk?"

"I am John Woolfolk."

"But he--you--left me."

"I am here," he insisted with a tightening of his heart. He rose,
animated by an overwhelming necessity to get the ketch under way, to
leave at once, for ever, the invisible shore of the bay. He gently
folded her again in the blanket, but she resisted him. "I'd rather
stay up," she said with a sudden lucidity. "It's nice here; I wanted
to come before, but he wouldn't let me."

A glimmer of hope swept over him as he mounted swiftly to the deck.
"Get up the anchors," he called; "reef down the jigger and put on a
handful of jib."

There was no immediate response, and he peered over the obscured deck
in search of Halvard. The man rose slowly from a sitting posture by
the main boom. "Very good, sir," he replied in a forced tone.

He disappeared forward, while Woolfolk, shutting the cabin door on the
confusing illumination within, lighted the binnacle lamp, bent over
the engine, swiftly making connections and adjustments, and cranked
the wheel with a sharp, expert turn. The explosions settled into a
dull, regular succession, and he coupled the propeller and slowly
maneuvered the ketch up over the anchors, reducing the strain on the
hawsers and allowing Halvard to get in the slack. He waited
impatiently for the sailor's cry of all clear, and demanded the cause
of the delay.

"The bight slipped," the other called in a muffled, angry voice.
"One's clear now," he added. "Bring her up again." The ketch forged
ahead, but the wait was longer than before. "Caught," Halvard's voice
drifted thinly aft; "coral ledge." Woolfolk held the _Gar_ stationary
until the sailor cried weakly: "Anchor's apeak."

They moved inperceptibly through the dark, into the greater force of
the wind beyond the point. The dull roar of the breaking surf ahead
grew louder. Halvard should have had the jib up and been aft at the
jigger, but he failed to appear. John Woolfolk wondered, in