Then he gave his attention to his side of the boat while Captain Barney
struggled in the bow. It was a fight that would have thrilled the soul
of whoever could have seen it. But that is always the way in the
bravest, most hopeless fights--no one ever sees them. They are fought
alone, in the dark, on the sea; and sometimes the lion-hearted live to
make a modest tale of it around a winter's fire; but more often the
sequel is, "Found drowned"--if even that.

Captain Barney, frightened into desperate courage, and Dan, in grim
realization that the measure of his good deed this night was the
measure of the soul he was getting to know, fought sternly. They were
on the open sea with all its mystery and lurking fate, and the dark was
all about. There was not even the impression of distance; the swells
arose as though at their elbows, tossed them with great, slimy ease,
let them down again, plucked them this way and that, while the humming
tow-line ran out to the vague, phantom, reeling tug ahead.

There was a suspicion of snow in the veiled sky, and the wind stabbed
like a knife. Twice the tug cut through a field of ice making out on
an offshore current, and the thumping the little row-boat received
seemed likely to rend her into drift-wood. But that was only one of
the chances; and the two men went on into the icy blast with jaws so
tightly clenched that their cheek muscles stood out in great knots.

The silence, the danger, the vagueness hung heavily. As Dan cast his
eyes gloomily into the wake of the tug, he saw a dark object shoot out
of the foam and dart down upon them like a torpedo; in fact a torpedo
could not have worked more serious effect upon the boat than did that
heavy, water-soaked log.

"Starboard your oar!" shouted Dan, at the same time digging his own oar
deep down on the port side and pulling upon it with all the magnificent
strength of his arms until it bent like a reed. There was just time to
avert the direct impact, not to escape altogether.

It was a glancing blow just above the water line; it punched a great,
jagged hole and gouged out the paint clear to the stern. Dan drew a
long breath and murmured in a half-sick voice, "They might as well kill
a man as scare him to death," while Captain Barney's face made a gray
streak in the darkness.

The _Quinn_ was now past the point of Sandy Hook and was skirting the
shore. The muffled beat of the breakers could be heard through the
gloom, which wa