foot launch. He shall look after it. Of course, he’ll have to mess with the crew." Radway looked at her. "You don't seem very much pleased, Miss Unwin, at gaining your point."
Mary said nothing. She felt she would rather have lost it. There settled on her a sense of depression as she thought of the trip.
"Thank you," she returned formally. "I am sure he will be useful."
"Tell him to report to Captain Hallett, of the Albatross, at the yacht club float, at the foot of East Twenty-Third Street. She leaves Bar Harbor to-morrow night and will be here by Sunday."
When she was gone, Radway sank down into his padded chair and told himself he was getting old. There were physical troubles multiplying with a frightening rapidity. After all, he might not be able to turn this trip into one of the old-time carouses. Presently he rang a buzzer and Mary came in.
"Take this telegram," he said. "'W. Clement, S.S. Albatross, Bar Harbor, Maine. Ship competent doctor aboard for trip. Health not too good. Radway."
As she was leaving the room he called out more cheerfully. "You can insert 'young and handsome,' if you like. You'll have some one to play with then."
CHAPTER IV
The Kidnaping
CURIOUSLY enough, Bettington, as he made his way northward from Gloucester, felt a sense of happiness in that he had engaged himself to lift the Unwin family from its monetary troubles.
As a rule he avoided taking upon himself any obligations, less from selfishness than a fear they would cramp him and hurt his work. The sketches he made—which would afterward be transferred to his big canvases—were the best he had ever done. He was pleased, who was ordinarily a hard critic. "This," he cried, as he looked at a study of surf and rock, "will pay Mary's tuition and board for a year."
He was so engrossed in perfecting the thing, that he took little heed of time. He was perched upon a little island of rock, some three miles from Blackport. His enthusiasm led him to overlook the signs of a coming storm.
It was his fate to be blind to the approach of the worst storm which late August ever brought to the Maine coast. The north Atlantic, which has in abundance all maritime perils, borrowed for the time the character of a southern ocean and projected a typhoon on a holiday coast.
Fighting for Life
With the first puff of that fearful storm a great wave, like a tidal bore, rolled in and overwhelmed the rock. In the desperate fight for life poor Mary's first six months' tuition and board were swept away. The portable easel and paint-box sank beneath the foam.
Only owing to his great strength and ability as a swimmer was Bettington able to reach shore. And then good fortune aided him. He was lifted clear of needle-pointed rocks and thrown on a mass of kelp.
With the storm came an awful darkness which presently merged into night and left Bettington, bruised and weary, trying to make his way to the village. The storm blotted out all familiar landmarks and all sense of direction. Where Blackport should be was darkness.
It happened that the damage to wires had plunged the town into blackness and he was misled. It was midnight when a dim light showed him he was near a small house of some sort. Investigation proved it to be a lonely cottage on an island connected with the mainland by a rough plank bridge. Fishing nets and lobster pots were evi-
