There was, besides, another danger. The kelp! He was a good swimmer; but could he ever make his way through breakers in which such fields of sea-weed tossed and rolled?
The night was shutting down with gathering clouds. The wind struck the skiff with a force he had not felt under the lee of the woods. Not a human being was in sight, nor a boat—only two or three distant sails on the horizon.
"Oh, the yacht! Where is the yacht?" he cried aloud, gazing eagerly around the point of rocks, the view beyond which was rapidly opening as he drifted out to sea.
A little while before, he would have been sorry enough to have had the Susette come in before he had time to land and run back to the boarding-house with the borrowed watch; but now he wished for nothing so devoutly as that it might come along and pick him up—so much worse things might happen than the discovery of the time-piece in his possession.
But no yacht hove in sight. The glory had faded out of the sky. The sea darkened; the wind increased. He shouted for help, though with little hope of making himself heard.
There were only women at the boarding-house, and even if his voice reached them, it must have sounded so faint and far away as to attract no especial attention. But the upper windows were visible over the sand-hills. Perhaps somebody, perhaps Amy Canfield herself, was gazing from them.
In that hope he swung his hat with frantic gestures of distress, still screaming for help, as he drifted away on the darkening waters.
(To be continued.)