st of the boat to try a heave of the lead.

The sound of the bell could be heard clearly enough now--the uncertain,
hesitating clang of a bell-buoy rocked in the tideway--with its
melancholy note of warning. Indeed, there are few sounds on sea or land
more fraught with lonesomeness and fear. Behind it and beyond it a
faint "tap-tap" was now audible. Barebone knew it to be the sound of
a caulker's hammer in the Government repairing yard on the south side.
They were drifting past the mouth of the Harwich River.

The leadsman called out a depth which Loo could have told without the
help of line or lead. For he had served a long apprenticeship on these
coasts under a captain second to none in the North Sea.

He turned a little on his bed of sails under repair, at which the
Captain had been plying his needle while the weather remained clear, and
glanced over his shoulder toward the ship's dinghy towing astern. The
rope that held it was made fast round the rail a few feet away from
him. The boat itself was clumsy, shaped like a walnut, of a preposterous
strength and weight. It was fitted with a short, stiff mast and a
balance lug-sail. It floated more lightly on the water than the bigger
vessel, which was laden with coal and provender and salt for the
North Atlantic fishery, and the painter hung loose, while the dinghy,
tide-borne, sidled up to stern of its big companion like a kitten
following its mother with the uncertain steps of infancy.

The face of the water was glassy and of a yellow green. Although the
scud swept in toward the land at a fair speed, there was not enough wind
to fill the sails. Moreover, the bounty of Holland seemed inexhaustible.
There was more to come. This fog-bank lay on the water halfway across
the North Sea, and the brief winter sun having failed to disperse it,
was now sinking to the west, cold and pale.

"The water seems shallow," said Barebone to the Captain. "What would you
do if the ship went aground?"

"We should stay there, mon bon monsieur, until some one came to help us
at the flood tide. We should shout until they heard us."

"You might fire a gun," suggested Barebone.

"We have no gun on board, mon bon monsieur," replied the Captain, who
had long ago explained to his prisoner that there was no ill-feeling.

"It is the fortune of war," he had explained before the white cliffs of
St. Valerie had faded from sight. "I am a poor man who cannot afford
to refuse a good offer. It is a