from side to side and hailed and answered hails from the bridge,
and while he strained for sight and hearing through the gale-swept
snow, the leaping pulse within repeated, "I've found him! I've found
him!" Alan held no longer possibility of doubt of old Burr's identity
with Benjamin Corvet, since the old man had made plain to him that he
was haunted by the _Miwaka_. Since that night in the house on Astor
Street, when Spearman shouted to Alan that name, everything having to
do with the secret of Benjamin Corvet's life had led, so far as Alan
could follow it, to the _Miwaka_; all the change, which Sherrill
described but could not account for, Alan had laid to that. Corvet
only could have been so haunted by that ghostly ship, and there had
been guilt of some awful sort in the old man's cry. Alan had found the
man who had sent him away to Kansas when he was a child, who had
supported him there and then, at last, sent for him; who had
disappeared at his coming and left him all his possessions and his
heritage of disgrace, who had paid blackmail to Luke, and who had sent,
last, Captain Stafford's watch and the ring which came with it--the
wedding ring.

Alan pulled his hand from his glove and felt in his pocket for the
little band of gold. What would that mean to him now; what of that was
he to learn? And, as he thought of that, Constance Sherrill came more
insistently before him. What was he to learn for her, for his friend
and Benjamin Corvet's friend, whom he, Uncle Benny, had warned not to
care for Henry Spearman, and then had gone away to leave her to marry
him? For she was to marry him, Alan had read.

It was with this that cold terror suddenly closed over him. Would he
learn anything now from Benjamin Corvet, though he had found him? Only
for an instant--a fleeting instant--had Benjamin Corvet's brain become
clear as to the cause of his hallucination; consternation had
overwhelmed him then, and he struggled free to attempt to mend the
damage he had done.

More serious damage than first reported! The pumps certainly must be
losing their fight with the water in the port compartment aft; for the
bow steadily was lifting, the stern sinking. The starboard rail too
was raised, and the list had become so sharp that water washed the deck
abaft the forecastle to port. And the ferry was pointed straight into
the gale now; long ago she had ceased to circle and steam slowly in
search for boats; she struggled with