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"Maybe," I assented. "I don't pretend to love him, but " "If you don't mind," interrupted Charlie, "we'll let it go at 'but' ". And he rose. "The tide's beginning to run out. Send me word where you are, as soon as you get a chance; and good luck to you, old chap, and your doubloons and pieces of eight!" Then we walked down to his row-boat, and soon he was aboard the sponger.
They could only stand staring, expecting to see it between the mountainous waves, utterly unable to believe the truth, that it had sunk out of sight and was resting on the bottom of the river. And as they were thus still searching the wild, dark flood with incredulous eyes, they suddenly saw a small row-boat in the middle of the stream.
He was not sorry for the meeting. He needed such a meeting to measure the parallax of his progress and her stagnation. He needed this impression of Helen to obliterate the memory of the row-boat. She was no longer to remain in his mind associated with the blessed memory of little Kate.
Hereafter he could think of Katy in the row-boat the other figure was a dim unreality which might have come to mean something, but which never did mean anything to him. I wonder who keeps the tavern at Cypher's Lake now? In those old days it was not a very reputable place; it was said that many a man had there been fleeced at poker.
Unsuccessful in tugging the steamer in that direction, they raised the anchor into the row-boat and took it to other locations one after another; but the engine panted and throbbed in vain. In the meantime the captain had gone to a village on the shore, had hired sixty natives, and brought them out in boats.
Betty and Bobby selected a flat-bottomed row-boat and for passenger they took Frances, who offered to help row if they became tired. Louise and Constance chose another canoe. They headed north, and once out in the center of the lake, paddled and rowed steadily. Betty's rowing experience was limited, but Bobby was proud of her "stroke," and soon taught her chum the secret of handling the oars.
Directly opposite stood the eccentric young man of the row-boat, watching the show out of listless eyes whose expression never changed. "On that horse-block," said Peter, raising his voice to carry above an outburst of catcalls and allegedly humorous comment, "stands the Hunston Reform Movement. Giving 'em a ripping talk, too all out of Bryce, Mill, and the other fellows."
She had climbed up the cliff by a gradual, roundabout path; and after Windham saw her, she had wandered on, lost herself for a while, and got back after both stage and boat had left, each party supposing she had gone with the other. Windham found a row-boat and started back. He knew nothing about boats; but the bay was very smooth, it was yet early, and he got across in due time.
At noon, after his conversation with Prince Aribert, he went down the river in a hired row-boat as far as the Custom House, and poked about everywhere, in search of any vessel which could by any possibility be the one he was in search of. But he found nothing. He was, therefore, tolerably sure that the mysterious launch lay somewhere below the Custom House.
If the ship had ever chanced to run down a row-boat, or a sloop, or any specimen of smaller craft, I should only have wondered at the temerity of any floating thing in crossing the path of such supreme majesty. The ship was leisurely chained and cabled to the old dock, and then came the disembowelling. How the stately monster had been fattening upon foreign spoils!
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