use on Astor Street? Were those
hands, which held the steamer to her course, the hands which had
written to Alan in secret from the little room off his bedroom and
which pasted so carefully the newspaper clippings concealed in the
library?

Regularly at the end of every minute, a blast from the steam whistle
reverberated; for a while, signals from the shore answered; for a few
minutes the shore lights glowed through the snow. Then the lights were
gone, and the eddies of the gale ceased to bring echoes of the
obscuration signals. Steadily, at short, sixty-second intervals, the
blast of Number 25's warning burst from the whistle; then that too
stopped. The great ferry was on the lake alone; in her course, Number
25 was cutting across the lanes of all ordinary lake travel; but now,
with ordinary navigation closed, the position of every other ship upon
the lake was known to the officers, and formal signals were not thought
necessary. Flat floes, driven by wind and wave, had windrowed in their
course; as Number 25, which was capable of maintaining two thirds its
open water speed when running through solid "green" ice two feet thick,
met this obstruction, its undercut bow rose slightly; the ice, crushed
down and to the sides, hurled, pounding and scraping, under the keel
and along the black, steel sides of the ship; Alan could hear the hull
resounding to the buffeting as it hurled the floes away, and more came,
or the wind threw them back. The water was washing high--higher than
Alan had experienced seas before. The wind, smashing almost straight
across the lake from the west, with only a gust or two from the north,
was throwing up the water in great rushing ridges on which the bow of
Number 25 rose jerkily up and up, suddenly to fall, as the support
passed on, so that the next wave washed nearly to the rail.

Alan faced the wind with mackinaw buttoned about his throat; to make
certain his hearing, his ears were unprotected. They numbed
frequently, and he drew a hand out of the glove to rub them. The
windows to protect the wheelsman had been dropped, as the snow had
gathered on the glass; and at intervals, as he glanced back, he could
see old Burr's face as he switched on a dim light to look at the
compass. The strange placidity which usually characterized the old
man's face had not returned to it since Alan had spoken with him on the
dock; its look was intent and queerly drawn. Was old Burr beginning to
remember