BY W. J. HENDERSON.
"It's altogether too absurd!" That was what the schoolmaster said.
"It is a wicked assumption of power!" That was what the minister said.
"It's flying in the face of Providence!" That was what old Mrs. Mehonky said.
"Them two boys is a couple o' fools, an' they'll git drowned!" That was what old Captain Silas Witherbee, formerly commander of the steam oyster-dredge Lotus Lily, said.
And really, when you come to think of it, that was the most sensible remark of the lot. But what people said did not seem to trouble "them two boys."
"We're going to do it," declared Peter Bright.
"That's what," added Randall Frank.
And so they did. What was it? Well, it was this way. Searsbridge was a small sea-coast town situated at the head of a bay some four miles long. There was very little commercial traffic in that bay, for Searsbridge was a tiny place. A schooner occasionally dropped anchor in the bay when head winds and ugly seas were raging outside; and it was said that two or three big ships had run into the shelter of the harbor in days gone by, and there was a legend that a great Russian ironclad had once stopped there for a supply of fresh water. But, as a rule, only the fishermen's boats ran in and out between Porgy Point and Mullet Head. There was no light at the entrance to the harbor, but there were some of the sharpest and most dangerous rocks on the coast scattered about the entrance.
"It'd be a famous place for a wreck," said a visitor one day.