“But the sea is calm, and the boy may die. It will break the Captain’s heart not to see him again,” urged Harry.
The boatmen looked up and down the harbor, as far as the fog permitted them to see, and silently shook their heads.
“I will pay you for the boat if I injure it,” said Harry.
Before the man, who was about to urge Harry’s inability to pay, could speak, Frank Hallock reached the pier.
“Here’s five dollars,” he cried, “for the man who finds Captain Green and brings him in through the fog.”
In a moment a half dozen men stepped off the pier into as many boats and began to pull down into the fog. The harbor’s mouth was a half mile away.
Frank and Harry lingered only to hear the last stroke of oar, and then Harry suggested going down to the Sound beach, past which the boats must go to get to sea. When the shore was reached, the fog was so dense that the boys could see no farther out than a few rolls of swollen water coming in from the east. They began to shout with all their might and to listen for an answer, but none came. Landward came another sound. It was Kate, ringing, as she ran, the schoolmaster’s bell.
“I thought,” she said, coming to the shore, “that maybe you’d be down here, and I was sure Captain Green would know the sound of his own bell better than anything else; and, I do declare, if here isn’t Josh coming after me.”
“Set him to howling,” said Frank.
“Let us shout and ring and howl together,” proposed Harry, and they began.