uffeting of the waves. Thus invisible, they become a serious menace
in the course of small boats. Sometimes in rough water, a boat falling
from a wave has struck on one of these to have its bottom pierced, and
forthwith to fill and sink.

It was one of these stakes that now caused catastrophe. The sloping
stern scraped over it. Next instant, the brittle bronze propeller blades
rasped against it. They were swept off as smoothly as icicles from a
window ledge, and the homeward cruise of the frail little tender was at
an end.

There came a scream from Ethel, which was echoed by a groan from the
physician as his thoughts went in despair to the two pellets--only two!
It was with the mechanical action of the experienced yachtsman that he
threw the throttle of the engine as it raced free from the propeller's
resistance.

"Oh, Doctor," the girl cried, "what is it now? What has happened to
us--"

"Our propeller blades are stripped, Miss Marion," he answered, in a tone
of deep dejection. "There is no injury to the hull, of course, or we
would have taken in water already. There is no danger, but," he
concluded with great bitterness, "it is very discouraging, I must
admit."

"What shall we do, Doctor?--drift with the wind until we are picked up
by some passing vessel?"

"I think not, Miss Ethel," Garnet replied. "Judging from the direction
of the breeze, in less than an hour we shall come on the shore of Core
Banks."

He spoke in a new voice of gentleness as he continued:

"Pray do not worry. I don't believe there is an acre of water that we
will pass over where the depth would be above our arm-pits."

The thought of being stranded upon the barren Core Banks would have been
serious enough to awaken dread in the heart of any woman, even in the
company of a sane person. But Ethel Marion had her distress instantly
increased by the fact that the man with her was of unsound mind. She had
a general idea of how far they would be distant from any human
habitation. This very strip of sand had been pointed out to her many
times by the local pilot aboard her father's yacht. Now, there came
crashing into her tortured brain memories of tales told by that same
pilot; concerning treasure secreted there years agone by the pirate
Black Beard; concerning the weird lights that rose from the sands at
night, then mysteriously vanished; concerning the evil beach-combers who
burned here their flares to trick the skippers of ships out at sea a