pe to perfect boat and magazine,
that he might do good service with them before winter should fall on
the waters of the Massachusetts Bay, where the hostile ships were
lying.

At last came the day wherein the final trial-trip should be made. The
pumps built by Mr. Doolittle, but not according to order, had failed
once, but new ones had been supplied, and everything seemed
propitious. David and Ezra, with their mother in the boat, rowed once
more to Poverty Island. "On the morrow the great venture should
begin," they said.

The time was mid-October. The forests had wrapped the cooling coast in
warmth of coloring that was soft and many-hued as the shawls of
Cashmere, while the sun-made fringe of goldenrod fell along the shores
of river and island and sea.

Mrs. Bushnell's heart beat proudly above the fond affection that could
not suppress a shiver, as the Turtle was pushed into the stream. She
could not help seeing that David made a line fast from the seine-house
to his boat ere he went down. They watched many minutes to see him
rise to the surface, but he did not.

"Mother," said Ezra, "the pump for forcing water out when he wants to
rise don't work, and we must pull him in. He feared it."

As he spoke the words he laid hold on the line, and began gently to
draw on it.

"Hurry! hurry! _do!_" cried Mrs. Bushnell, seizing the same line close
to the water's edge, and drawing on it with all her strength. She was
vexed that Ezra had not told her the danger in the beginning, and she
"knew _very_ well that SHE would not have stood there and let David
die of suffocation, in that horrid, brass-topped coffin!"

"Hold, mother!" cried Ezra; "pull gently, or the line may part on some
barnacled rock if it gets caught."

Nevertheless, Mrs. Bushnell pulled in as fast as she could.

The tide was sweeping up the river, and a shark, in hard chase after a
school of menhaden, swam steadily up, with fin out of water.

Just as the shark reached the place, he made a dive, and the rope
parted!

Mrs. Bushnell screamed a word or two of the terror that had seized
her. Ezra looked up, amazed to find the rope coming in so readily,
hand over hand. He cast it down, sprang to the boat, and pushed off to
the possible rescue, only to find that the Turtle was making for the
river-bank instead of the island.

He rowed to the spot. His brother, for the first time in his life, was
overcome with disappointment and disinclined to talk.

"I--I,