“I wonder how long a fellow could live out here, anyhow,” he murmured, “if it should go on fogging forever, and if, after a day or two of it, I should want my supper as much as I do now? I want a loaf of rye bread and a couple of quarts of milk like everything, and I wouldn’t mind having an apple, or even a glass of water would taste first-rate. There must be sailing craft around here thick as berries in a pudding—if I could only run against one now.” But the only thing Frank ran against was deeper darkness and now and then a denser fog-bank.
The last button of Frank’s coat was buttoned ere long. Whatever else of cold there was to come, he must bear as best he could. He rowed a little to keep warm and shouted a good deal, and began to feel the awful pressure of loneliness clasping him tighter and tighter. At last the cold damp affected his strained eyeballs to such degree that he was compelled to shut his eyes; and then somehow—exactly how he could not understand—he began to see himself, not out there, mistbound in the cool autumn evening, tossing up and down on the swell of the sea, but just himself as he was, as he had been living from day to day in his home, and his selfishness began to grow into something awful. He wished he could remember a few kind, nice, good things that he had done for somebody over there on that queer land, that must be somewhere, but which seemed so far away, and a good deal more like a dream than—but what was that noise? Frank shouted to it, but the rolling porpoise did not think it worth while to wait and make reply.
At last, thoroughly worn out, Frank sank down gradually into his boat and began to sob. There was no one to hear and he sobbed on until the misery of the darkness and the breathing waters grew into him. He wanted something that he had not; he wanted the solid land and safety; home, with its love and warmth, its lights and food; and all at once he wanted something more even than these—he wanted the God of the sea, in whose dreadful clasp he was caught, to be his friend.
He was tired of rowing, tired of calling, tired of everything. He wanted to go to sleep. Yes, Frank was, as he had said, fourteen and over and could take care of himself; but he, for the first time in many, many nights, went back to that most comforting form of petition, “Now I lay me.” With a firm resolve to be a better boy, sell the Clover, and be kind to Kate and love everybody, and always tell the truth and do just right, if he ever got to land, Frank sank into a state of damp unconsciousness.
When he awoke, the boat was tossing up and down; the fog was, if anything, denser than ever, and he was so stiff that on the first trial he could not sit up. To have had no supper was uncomfortable, to go breakfastless was hard; but the day was dawning. A light fog would be a few degrees better than a dark one; besides, by this time all the boats in the harbor must be beating about in search of him. But no boat found him all that long, cold day, and another night found Frank Hallock, limp and helpless and half unconscious, lying in the Clover, which drifted and drifted in the open Sound. It was the longest fog that had been known in many years.
Chapter XVI.
Again and again Kate Hallock reiterated the statement that only a little while before the fog came she saw two boats lying near the island.
“The boy is safe enough at the island,” said every one of the boatmen to whom Mr. Hallock applied for advice concerning the proper thing to do. Mr. Hallock himself believed that Frank was there and tried his utmost to convince Mrs. Hallock and Kate that Captain Green must have seen the fog coming in and would, without any doubt, look after the safety of Frank.
“I wish somebody would go over at low water and find out,” said Mrs. Hallock; and Harry Cornwall, hearing the words, determined to go.