an he had
expected, that it took him some time to get things "snugged up." He felt
that Jamie was all right, as long as he was out of the wind. He was only
a stone's throw distant, though hidden by the great rampart of the dike.
But the Captain began to wish that he had left the little fellow at
home, as he knew the long walk over the rough road, in the dark and the
furious gale, would sorely tire the sturdy little legs. Every now and
then, as vigorously and cheerfully he worked in the pitching smack, the
Captain sent a shout of greeting over the dike to keep the little lad
from getting lonely. But the storm blew his voice far up into the
clouds, and Jamie, in his tub, never heard it.

By the time Captain Joe had put everything shipshape, he noticed that
his plunging boat had drifted close to the dike. He had never before
seen the tide reach such a height. The waves that were rocking the
little craft so violently, were a mere back-wash from the great seas
which, as he now observed with a pang, were thundering in a little
further up the coast. Just at this spot the dike was protected from the
full force of the storm by Snowdons' Point. "What if the dike should
break up yonder, and this fearful tide get in on the marshes?" thought
the Captain, in a sudden anguish of apprehension. Leaving the boat to
dash itself to pieces if it liked, he clambered in breathless haste out
on to the top of the dike, shouting to Jamie as he did so. There was no
answer. Where he had left the little one but a half-hour back, the tide
was seething three or four feet deep over the grasses.

Dark as the night had grown, it grew blacker before the father's eyes.
For an instant his heart stood still with horror, then he sprang down
into the flood. The water boiled up nearly to his arm-pits. With his
feet he felt the great timber, fastened in the dike, on which his boy
had been sitting. He peered through the dark, with straining eyes grown
preternaturally keen. He could see nothing on the wide, swirling surface
save two or three dark objects, far out in the marsh. These he
recognized at once as his fish-tubs gone afloat. Then he ran up the dike
toward the Point. "Surely," he groaned in his heart, "Jamie has climbed
up the dike when he saw the water coming, and I'll find him along the
top here, somewhere, looking and crying for me!"

Then, running like a madman along the narrow summit, with a band of iron
tightening about his heart, the Captain reac