owed him like a sinister shadow for years to this
obscure, black smother of water, to the _Gar_ reeling crazily forward
under an impotent hand. The yacht was behaving heroically; no other
ketch could have lived so long, responded so gallantly to a wavering
wheel.

"Three and three," he shouted above the combined stridor of wind and
sea.

The next minute would see their safe passage or a helpless hulk
beating to pieces on the bar, with three human fragments whirling
under the crushing masses of water, floating, perhaps, with the dawn
into the tranquillity of the bay.

"Three and a half," he cried monotonously.

The _Gar_ trembled like a wounded and dull animal. The solid seas were
reaching hungrily over Woolfolk's legs. A sudden stolidity possessed
him. He thrust the pole out deliberately, skillfully:

"Three and a quarter."

A lower sounding would mean the end. He paused for a moment, his
dripping face turned to the far stars; his lips moved in silent,
unformulated aspirations--Halvard and himself, in the sea that had
been their home; but Millie was so fragile! He made the sounding
precisely, between the heaving swells, and marked the pole instantly
driven backward by their swinging flight.

"Three and a half." His voice held a new, uncontrollable quiver. He
sounded again immediately: "And three-quarters."

They had passed the bar.

XV

A gladness like the white flare of burning powder swept over him, and
then he became conscious of other, minor sensations--his head ached
intolerably from the fall down the stair, and a grinding pain shot
through his shoulder, lodging in his torn lower arm at the slightest
movement. He slipped the sounding pole into its loops on the cabin and
hastily made his way aft to the relief of Poul Halvard.

The sailor was nowhere visible; but, in an intermittent, reddish light
that faded and swelled as the cabin door swung open and shut, Woolfolk
saw a white figure clinging to the wheel--Millie.

Instantly his hands replaced hers on the spokes and, as if with a
palpable sigh of relief, the _Gar_ steadied to her course. Millie
Stope clung to the deck rail, sobbing with exhaustion.

"He's--he's dead!" she exclaimed, between her racking inspirations.
She pointed to the floor of the cockpit, and there, sliding
grotesquely with the motion of the seaway, was Poul Halvard. An arm
was flung out, as if in ward against the ketch's side, but it
crumpled, the body hit heavily, a han