Felicia looked at her watch. She was astonished to find it had been over half an hour.
"Heaven knows where the boat could have got to in half an hour," Ken muttered, "with this tide. And the wind's going to sea, too."
Felicia shook him wildly by the arm. "Do you realize--Kirk's in that boat!" she moaned. "Kirk's in that boat--do you realize it?"
Ken tore himself free.
"No, I don't want to realize it," he said in a harsh, high voice. "Get back to the house, Phil! You can't do anything. I'm going to the harbor master now--I'm going everywhere. I may not be back to-night." He gave her a little push, "Go, Phil."
But he ran after her. "Poor old Phil--mustn't worry," he said gently. "Get back to the farm before it's dark and have it all cheerful for us when we come in--Kirk and I."
And then he plunged into the reek, and Felicia heard the quick beat of his steps die away down the wharf.
The harbor master was prompt in action, but not encouraging. He got off with Ken in his power boat in surprisingly short order. The coast guard, who had received a very urgent telephone message, launched the surf-boat, and tried vainly to pierce the blank wall of fog--now darkening to twilight--with their big searchlight. Lanterns, lost at once in the murk, began to issue from wharf-houses as men started on foot up the shore of the bay.
Ken, in the little hopeless motor-boat, sat straining his eyes beyond the dripping bow, till he saw nothing but flashes of light that did not exist. The Flying Dutchman--the Flying Dutchman--why had he not known that she must be a boat of ill omen? Joe Pasquale--drowned in February. "We got him, but we never did find his boat"--"cur'ous tide-racks 'round here--cur'ous tide-racks."
The harbor master was really saying that now, as he had said it before. Yes, the tide ran cruelly fast beside the boat, black and swirling and deep. A gaunt something loomed into the light of the lantern, and made Ken's heart leap. It was only a can-buoy, lifting lonely to the swell.