“Ahoy!” he shouted. “Ahoy there! Who is it? Where are you?”
“Help!” came the calls again—and nearer. “Help!”
“Look out!” roared Seth, peering excitedly over his shoulder into the dark. “Where are you? Look out or you'll be afoul of . . . Jumpin' Judas!”
For out of the fog loomed a bulky shape driving down upon him. He pulled frantically at the oars, but it was too late. A mast rocked against the sky, a stubby bowsprit shot over the dory, and the little boat, struck broadside on, heeled to the water's edge. Seth, springing frantically upward, seized the bowsprit and clung to it. The dory, pushed aside and half full of water, disappeared. From the deck behind the bowsprit two voices, a man's voice and a woman's, screamed wildly.
Seth did not scream. Clinging to the reeling bowsprit, he swung up on it, edged his way to the vessel's bows and stepped upon the deck.
“For thunder sakes!” he roared angrily, “what kind of navigation's this? Where's your lights, you lubbers? What d'you mean by—Where are you anyhow? And—and what schooner's this?”
For the deck, as much as he could see of it in the dark, looked astonishingly familiar. As he stumbled aft it became more familiar still. The ropes, a combination of new and old, the new boards in the deck planking, the general arrangement of things, as familiar to him as the arrangement of furniture in the kitchen of the Lights! It could not be . . . but it was! The little schooner was his own, his hobby, his afternoon workshop—the Daisy M. herself. The Daisy M., which he had last seen stranded and, as he supposed, hard and fast aground! The Daisy M. afloat, after all these years!
From the stern by the cabin hatch a man came reeling toward him, holding to the rail for support with one hand and brandishing the other.
“Help!” cried the man wildly. “Who is it? Help us! we're drowning! We're . . . Can't you put us ashore. Please put us . . . Good Lord!”
Seth made no answer. How could he? The man was Bennie D.