“Tell me where the Deerfoot is.”
“Ask me something easier. She may be lying where we left her, or twenty miles away.”
“We should have heard her if she came down stream.”
“She may have gone up the river and around into the Sheepscot.”
“And back to the former hiding place of this boat or to a different one—the ‘Beautiful Isle of Somewhere,’” said Alvin grimly.
“One place will serve as well as another. I wonder whether there was ever so wonderful a mix-up of launches since such craft were known.”
Alvin shut off power and the two listened. From some point miles away came the hoarse growl of a steam whistle, but all else was still. He had hoped that they would hear the Deerfoot’s exhaust, but nothing of the kind came to their ears. He flirted the switch around and resumed the speed which was not above half a dozen miles an hour.
One of the plagues of the Maine coast is the dense fogs which sometimes creep far up the rivers. Such an obscurity now began settling over Montsweag Bay and Back River, shutting out the moonlight as well as the rays of the rising sun. Before Alvin was aware, he could not see either shore until he had run far over to the right and caught a shadowy sight of the pines, spruce and firs which lined the bank. The air dripped moisture and, though it was summer, it grew chilly.
While gliding slowly forward they heard a steamer’s bell, accompanied by occasional blasts from her whistle. She was feeling her way down stream and sounding warnings to other craft. By and by the beat of her screw and the ripple of the water from her bow sounded so near that Alvin edged closer to land. In the heavy mist loomed a minute later a bulky steamer, surging southward at sluggish speed, the crew, as seen for an instant, looking like saturated ghosts.
The boat was quickly swallowed up, her bell still tolling, with blasts from her whistle at short intervals.