The Price

by Francis Lynde

The worst was over in a moment, and under the lee of the small island there was a brief respite for pumping and bailing. The girl's black eyes were shining with excitement and fearless daring, and Griswold would have given much for time and leisure in which to catch and fix the fleeting inspiration of the instant. But there was little space for the artistic appreciation.

"Hurry!" she cried; "we'll have to take it again in a minute or two!" and there was still a bucketing of the shipped sea to thrash about in the cockpit when the island withdrew its friendly shelter and the Clytie, going free and sailed as Griswold had never seen a catboat sailed before, wallowed out into the smother.

For a little time there was not much to choose between drowning and being hammered to death by the leaping plunges and alightings of the frail cockle-shell which seemed to be blown bodily from crest to crest of the short, high-pitched seas. The wind, heavily rain-laden, came in furious gusts, flattening the reefed canvas until the bunt of the sail dragged in the trough. Griswold climbed high on the weather rail, leaning far out to help hold the balance between the heaving seas and the pounding blasts. In the momentary lulls he had flitting glimpses of the far-away town shore, with the storm-torn waste of waters intervening. With the wind veering more and more to the west, it was a fair run to the shelter of the home bay. But Margery was laying the course far to the right, though to do it she was holding the catboat cockpit-deep in the smother and taking the chance of a capsize with every recurring gust. Griswold edged his way aft as far as he dared.

"Hadn't you better let her fall off a little more and run for it?" he suggested, and he had to shout it into the pink ear nearest to him to make himself heard above the roaring of the wind and the crashing plunges of the boat.

She shook her head and made an impatient little gesture with her elbow toward the storm-lashed raceway over the bows. Griswold winked the spray out of his eyes and looked. At first he saw nothing but the wild waste of whitecaps, but at the next attempt he made out the hotel steam launch, half-way to the entrance of the southern bay and a little to leeward of the Clytie's course. The small steamer was evidently no sea-boat, and with more courage than seamanship, its steersman was driving straight for the Inn bay without regard for the direction of the wind and the seas.

"That's Ole Halverson!" cried the tiller maiden with scorn in her voice. "He thinks because he happens to have a steam engine he needn't look to see which way the wind is blowing."

"She's pitching pretty badly," Griswold called back. "If he only had sense enough to ease off a little...." Suddenly he became aware of the finer heroism of his companion. He knew now why she had refused to take shelter under the lee of the island, and why she was holding the catboat down to the edge of peril to keep the windward advantage of the laboring steamer. "Margery, girl, you're a darling!" he shouted. "Take all the chances you want to and I'm with you, if we go to the bottom!"

She nodded complete intelligence and took in another inch of the straining main-sheet.

"If Halverson loses his nerve they're going to need help, and need it before the Osprey can get out to them," she prophesied.

Griswold looked again, this time over the catboat's counter, and saw a big schooner, close-reefed, hauling out from a little bay on the north shore. The launch's plight had evidently impressed others with the necessity of doing something. The need was sufficiently urgent. Once again the Swedish man of machinery in charge of the craft in peril was inching his helm up in a vain endeavor to hold the course, and the little steamer was rolling almost funnel under. Griswold forgot that his companion was a woman and swore rabidly.