hipped the spray into a blinding sheet.
This was varied by squalls of sleet and hail and for three hours a
blinding snowstorm added to the general discomfort. Less than thirty
miles to the eastward lay the Gulf Stream, where the water was over 70
deg. and where no snow could ever be, but that gave the crew of the
_Miami_ little comfort.

It was not a coast on which vigilance could be relaxed, and Eric was
glad when the search for the _Madeleine Cooney_ was abandoned for a
while. It was time, too, for the _Miami_ had all she could do to take
care of herself. The Coast Guard vessel was midway between the Frying
Pan and the Lookout Shoals, two of the most famous danger points on the
Atlantic coast, and the wind had risen to a living gale. The first
lieutenant was on the bridge a great deal of the time. For forty-eight
hours there had been absolutely no sign of the sun or any star. There
was no way to determine the vessel's position except by dead
reckoning--always a dangerous thing to trust when there is much leeway
and many cross-currents. The lead was going steadily, heaved every few
minutes, while the _Miami_ crept along cautiously under the guidance of
that ancient safeguard of the mariner.

It was the evening of the second day after the worst part of the blow
started that the _Miami_ dropped her anchor in eight fathoms of water
off the North Carolina coast. Steam was kept full up, although the
position of the cutter in the lee of a point of land precluded the
immediate possibility of her dragging her anchors.

Almost exactly at noon the next day, the wireless operator intercepted a
message from the Norfolk Navy Yard that the steamer _Northwestern_ was
anchored 55 miles southwest of Lookout Shoals, with her propeller gone.
As this position, pricked on the chart, showed the steamer to be in a
dangerous and exposed position, and as, moreover, she was a menace to
navigation, being full in the path of vessels, the _Miami_ got under way
immediately.

As soon as the Coast Guard cutter reached the bar, a snowstorm, which
seemed to have been waiting around, as if for that very purpose, struck
down upon the water and the _Miami_ clawed out over the bar in a
blinding smother. There was a nasty, choppy sea, the wind having hauled
round to the westward, though it was not as violent as the day before.
At two o'clock in the afternoon the radio operator received a storm
warning for a nor'wester.

A passing vessel spoke the _Mia