search-light eye on the hurricane-deck was just over her
head, and its great white cone seemed to hiss as it poured its dazzling
flood of fictitious noonday upon the shelving river bank and the
sleeping hamlet beyond. The furnace doors were open, and the red glare
of the fires quickened the darkness under the beam of the electric into
lurid life. Out of the dusky underglow came the freight-carriers, giving
birth to a file of grotesque shadow monsters as they swung up the plank
into the field of the search-light.

The stopping-place was an unimportant one, and a few minutes sufficed
for the unloading of the small consignment of freight. The mate had left
his outlook upon the hurricane-deck and was down among the men,
hastening them with harsh commands and epithets which owed their
mildness to the presence of the silent onlooker beneath the electric.

The foot-plank had been drawn in, the steam winch was clattering, and
the landing-stage had begun to come aboard, when the two men whose duty
it was to cast off ran out on the tilting stage and dropped from its
shore end. One of them fell clumsily, tried to rise, and sank back into
the shadow; but the other scrambled up the steep bank and loosened the
half-hitches in the wet hawser. With the slackening of the line the
steamer began to move out into the stream, and the man at the
mooring-post looked around to see what had become of his companion.

"Get a move on youse!" bellowed the mate; but instead of obeying, the
man ran back and went on his knees beside the huddled figure in the
shadow.

At this point the watcher on the promenade-deck began vaguely to
understand that the first man was disabled in some way, and that the
other was trying to lift him. While she looked, the engine-room bells
jangled and the wheels began to turn. The mate forgot her and swore out
of a full heart.

She put her fingers in her ears to shut out the clamor of abusive
profanity; but the man on the bank paid no attention to the richly
emphasized command to come aboard. Instead, he ran swiftly to the
mooring-post, took a double turn of the trailing hawser around it and
stood by until the straining line snubbed the steamer's bow to the
shore. Then, deftly casting off again, he darted back to the disabled
man, hoisted him bodily to the high guard, and clambered aboard
himself, all this while M'Grath was brushing the impeding crew aside to
get at him.

Charlotte saw every move of the quick-witted