It would be a stroke too much from fate, I told
myself rebelliously, as I crossed the broad gallery and plunged
into the cool dimness of the lobby in the wake of the bellboys who,
discerning a helpless prey, had swooped en masse upon my bags.

"Miss Jane Harding?" repeated the clerk, and at the cool negation
of his tone my heart gave a sickening downward swoop. "Miss Jane
Harding and party have left the hotel!"

"For--for the island?" I gasped.

He raised his eyebrows. "Can't say, I'm sure." He gave me an
appraising stare. Perhaps the woe in my face touched him, for he
descended from the eminence of the hotel clerk where he dwelt apart
sufficiently to add, "Is it important that you should see her?"

"I am her niece. I have come all the way from San Francisco
expecting to join her here."

The clerk meditated, his shrewd eyes piercing the very secrets of
my soul.

"She knew nothing about it," I hastened to add. "I intended it for
a surprise."

This candor helped my cause. "Well," he said, "that explains her
not leaving any word. As you are her niece, I suppose it will do
no harm to tell you that Miss Harding and her party embarked this
morning on the freighter _Rufus Smith_, and I think it very likely
that the steamer has not left port. If you like I will send a man
to the water-front with you and you may be able to go on board and
have a talk with your aunt."

Did I thank him? I have often wondered when I waked up in the
night. I have a vision of myself dashing out of the hotel, and
then the hack that brought me is bearing me away. Bellboys hurled
my bags in after me, and I threw them largess recklessly. Some
arch-bellboy or other potentate had mounted to the seat beside the
driver. Madly we clattered over cobbled ways. Out on the smooth
waters of the roadstead lay ships great and small, ships with
stripped masts and smokeless funnels, others with faint gray
spirals wreathing upward from their stacks. Was one of these the
_Rufus Smith_, and would I reach her--or him--before the thin gray
feather became a thick black plume? I thought of my aunt at the
mercy of these unknown adventurers with whom she had set forth,
helpless as a little fat pigeon among hawks, and I felt,
desperately, that I must reach her, must save her from them and
bring her safe back to shore. How I was to do this at the eleventh
hour plus about fifty-seven minutes as at present I hadn't
considered. But experience had taug