manhood."

"But you smoke, Doctor!"

"Sure I do," the other rejoined. "And I swim, pretty nearly as well as
any of you young fellows. But I didn't start any cigarette business when
I was a kid, the way lots of boys do now. It wasn't until I was in
college that I smoked my first pipe."

"Then you think it's all right for a chap to smoke after he's grown up?"

"I wouldn't go as far as to say that," the doctor said, "but there's no
doubt that the cases which have turned out worst are those in which the
habit began early. Nature's a wise old scout, Eric, and you're apt to
find that a man who's likely to be hurt by smoking won't develop a
craving for it unless he started too young, or unless he forced himself
to excess."

The boy wanted to question the doctor further, for he was thoroughly
interested in finding out that smoking prevents an athletic manhood,
when the speaker was interrupted by a cry from the half-conscious man.

"Jake!" he called.

The doctor was beside him in a second.

"What is it, son?" he said, bending his head down so that his grizzled
mustache almost brushed the man's face.

[Illustration: THE LIGHT THAT NEVER SLEEPS.

A powerful automatic beacon on Richardson's Rock, Cal., that burns half
a year without attention.

Courtesy of U.S. Bureau of Lighthouses.]

"Jake! Where's Jake?"

A sudden silence swept over the station. Only the Eel moved. With that
queer sliding step of his that was almost noiseless, he went to the door
of the little house that faced the sea.

"Jake!" again the cry came. "Where's Jake?"

The man was relapsing into unconsciousness when the doctor quickly took
a powerful restorative from his medicine-bag, which lay beside the cot,
and held it to the man's nose. The fumes roused him.

"Where did you leave him?" queried the doctor.

"I--I couldn't get him," gasped the rescued man, breathing heavily.

There was a general rustle and every man half-turned to the door. In the
silence a man's boot, being kicked off, clattered noisily on the floor.

"How do you mean you couldn't get him?" the doctor persisted. "Was he
swimming with you?"

"He went down--sudden--" came the answer, weakly, "and when I tried ...
to help ... he pulled at my legs."

The words were hardly out of his lips before the station-house was
empty save for the doctor and the rescued swimmer. As the door slid back
behind them, Eric heard the man cry in a quavering voice,

"I've drowned him! I've