The Launch Boys' Cruise in the Deerfoot

by Edward Sylvester Ellis

He sat down in one of the chairs to think, and his musings ran riot, but the end was always the same: it was utterly beyond his power to help himself out of the dilemma.

"I'll have to drift and drift till morning comes; then if I'm not too fur out on the ocean somebody will pick me up. I'm thinking the same is a good idee to lay low, as me cousin remarked whin he was knocked down. Some boat is likely to run into me 'cause I haven't any lights burning, and as she's going by I'll grab her—whisht! phwat's that?" he asked himself, with a new thrill of alarm.

The sound that had startled him was a distinct jar of the boat. At that moment, it was so dark he could not see beyond the flag at the bow of the launch. Nothing amiss was discerned in that direction, but a second bump caused him to glance to the left, and then he received the answer to his question.

The boat had drifted against a pile of rocks, which come down to the edge of the sea on one of the two little uninhabited masses of sand and stones, known as the White Islands. This was the northern one, opposite Fisherman Island, from which it is separated by more than a mile of the sea.

The sudden discovery rattled Mike for the moment and caused him to do a foolish thing, which he never would have done had he taken a half minute for reflection. His dread was that the boat would be battered to pieces on the rocks. With no thought of his own safety, he sprang from the cockpit, placed one foot on the gunwale and leaped as far as he could, his purpose being to push the craft clear. With all his strength—and he possessed a good deal of it—he barely succeeded. He fell on his face and knees, and had he not clutched desperately and seized a craggy point he would have slipped back into the water.

What he ought to have done, as he recalled the next instant, was to use the pole on the boat to press against the rocks and shove the launch clear. That would have been easy and effective, but it was too late now to think of it.

The reactive force of his body as he leaped drove the boat back perceptibly. Inasmuch as the current had swept it forward in the first place, the action would have been repeated but for a curious condition which quickly showed itself. Had the boat struck farther south, its return after being forced away would have occurred. Had it first drifted farther north it would have cleared the islet altogether, and continued floating toward the lower end of Southport, but it so came about that when the current regained control of the launch and shoved it westward again, it just cleared the northern end of the mass of rocks and was swallowed up in the enshrouding gloom.

Mike Murphy stumbled as near as he could to the Deerfoot and stared out in the darkness. A moment after it disappeared a partial clearing of the clouds in front of the moon brought it dimly into sight again. This lasted but a brief interval when it vanished for good.

"Good-by," called the lad. "I did the best fur ye that I knowed, and now ye must take care of yersilf, which the same has to be done by Mike Murphy."

The youth was a philosopher, and with his rugged health and naturally buoyant spirits he took the rosiest view he could of his situation. It was clear that in more than one respect he was better off on this mass of rocks and sand than in the launch—that is, during the darkness. So long as he was afloat with no lights burning, he was in great danger of being run down by some larger boat. In the event of such a calamity he was liable to be caught in a crush where his life preserver could not save him.