standing at the taffrail, Barcus—nowhere to be seen. The second confirmed his surmise that the Seaventure had come up into the wind, and now was yawing off wildly into the trough of a stiff sea. A third showed him to his amazement a Gloucester fisherman—which they had overhauled with ease that morning and which now should have been well down the horizon astern—not two miles distant, and bearing directly down upon the smaller vessel.
Bewildered, he darted to the girl's side, demanding to know what was the matter. She turned to him a face he hardly recognized—but still he didn't understand. The interference was a thing unthinkable; his brain faltered when taxed to credit it. Only when he saw her tearing at the painter, striving to cast it off and with it the dory it dragged a hundred feet astern, and another glance discovered the head of Mr. Barcus rising over the stern of the tender as he strove to lift himself out of the water, did Alan appreciate what had happened.
It was with the feeling that all the world had gone mad, that he seized the girl and tore her away from the rail before she could unknot the painter.
"Rose!" he cried. "What's the matter with you? Don't you see what you're doing?"
She ceased to struggle and lay unresisting in his arms. "Let him go!" she muttered. "We don't want him—and he'll be picked up, right enough."
