------------------

I

THE LOST PASSENGER

Charley Norton was bored and unhappy. He stood at the starboard rail of
the mail boat gazing out at the cold, bleak rocks of the Labrador coast,
dimly visible through fitful gusts of driving snow.

Charley Norton and his father's secretary, Hugh Wise, had boarded the
ship at St. John's ten days before for the round trip voyage to Hopedale,
and during the voyage there had not been one pleasant day. Biting blasts
swept the deck, heralding the winter near at hand, and there was no
protecting nook where one could escape them and sit in any degree of
comfort. The cabin was close and stuffy, and its atmosphere was heavy
with that indescribable odor that rises from the bowels of old ships.
The smoking room, bare and dismal and reeking with stale tobacco smoke,
was deserted, save when the mail boat doctor and Hugh Wise were
occasionally discovered there in a silent game of checkers.

Charley had tried every corner of the ship to which he was admitted, and
had decided that, as uncomfortable as it was, he preferred the deck to
cabin or smoking room.

It was the middle of October, and the last voyage the mail boat was to
make until the end of the following June, when the winter's ice would
clear from the coast, and navigation would open for another short
summer. The last fishing schooner had already hurried southward to
escape the autumn gales and the blockade of ice, and the sea was
deserted save by the lonely mail boat, which was picking up the last of
the Newfoundlanders' cod fishing gear at the little harbours of the
coast.

"A swell time I'm having!" Charley muttered. "Not even a decent place on
the old ship where I can sit and read!"

"Not having a good time, eh?"

Charley looked up into the smiling face of Barney MacFarland, the second
engineer.

"Hello!" he exclaimed. "I didn't know anybody was around. I didn't hear
you."

"Having a rotten time?" Barney grinned good-naturedly.

"The worst I've ever had!" said Charley. "It's too cold to stay on deck
and too close and smelly inside, and there's no one to talk with. Mr.
Wise sprawls in his bunk reading silly novels he brought with him, when
he isn't playing checkers with the Doctor."

"'Tis a bad season to be coming down to The Labrador," suggested Barney.
"Though there's fog enough in July and August, we're having fine weather
too, with plenty of sunshine. 'Tis then the passengers are with us, with
now and