Chapter XII · ON THE “CALF’S” BACK.

Let us take advantage of this lapse of time to go back a little and see what had become of Olly Burdeen.

The salt water and the barnacles told but too true a tale: he had been thrown upon the lesser rock, which the next tide would submerge.

If he had still any doubt of that terrible fact, it must have been dispelled when the moon rose amid broken clouds and showed him the “Calf’s tail” churning the waves at the end of his surf-fringed reef; also the glimmering back of the “Old Cow,” with its encircling surge, a furlong or more to the south.

An old, sad moon it was, with a distorted, melancholy face peering above the illimitable desolation of waters; yet a welcome sight to the drenched and shivering castaway, waiting on his lonely ledge for the tide to return and cover it. No wonder it appeared to him not the cheerful orb he knew, but some ancient, decayed satellite coming to look for the last time on a lost world!

After his long labor with his rude paddle, and the effort it had cost to swim to the rock and scramble out upon it, he was nearly exhausted; and the discovery of barnacles in the pool had quenched what remained of his courage. There was no shelter from the wind; and in his wet clothes he felt a deadly chill striking to his bones.

Then followed another discovery, which did not tend to restore his spirits.

He had from the first given up the boat as lost. It had disappeared in the dark and turbulent water almost as soon as he left it; nor could he see anything of it afterward.

It was an old dory that had been hired for the season by one of Mrs. Murcher’s boarders. Olly had taken that, too, without leave; but it was the custom on the coast for people to make rather free use of any boats that came in their way. With it had gone his sole means of escape from certain death; otherwise he would have cared little for the loss.

In his fearful anxiety about his own safety, he had thought little even of the safety of the watch. He hated the recollection of it; for, probably, if it had not been for that, it might never have occurred to him to row out from shore in order to get a sight of the returning yacht, around the point.

After the moon rose, he looked across the tumbling billows at the “Old Cow” wallowing in their froth, and felt that his salvation lay in reaching that before the rising tide should sweep him from the “Calf.” Yet, how was that possible? The very thought of swimming so far, alone in the night, in the wild ocean, was frightful to him. Yet as a last resort he might be driven to make so desperate an attempt.

As for the water, it could hardly seem colder than the wind that pierced his drenched clothes. He no longer thought of any injury to them—the stylish suit that had been a delight to his soul a few hours before! He wept with despair as he thought of the joy that had turned to such bitter woe; and he wished he had never seen the giver or his gift.

Salt water might ruin the watch; but, if so, that was probably ruined already. At all events, it was past being returned to its case in Mr. Hatville’s room, without that gentleman’s knowledge of its having been removed.

Past, indeed! Thinking of it, Olly put up his hand to his pocket. It gave him a start of fresh terror, even in his utter misery and wretchedness, to find it empty.

The watch was gone! That was his last disheartening discovery.

How long it had been gone he had not the slightest means of knowing. His teeth chattered, and he trembled from head to foot, as he hurriedly searched his clothing for the timepiece, but in vain.

He at first believed that he had lost it in his struggle between the boat and the ledge; for he remembered having looked down and seen the golden glitter of the seal, not long after he went adrift. But now the moonlight disclosed the seal still hanging by the hook in his button-hole. The guard had been broken, and everything, excepting the seal and a few dangling links, had gone with the watch.

He concluded that he must have lost it when he had his first tumble in the boat. The oar, when it struck his breast, and flew from his hand, had doubtless caught in the chain, and snatched the watch from his pocket. Of course he couldn’t know that this was so; but if he had foreseen what Perce Bucklin was to find on the beach a few hours later, he would have argued that no watch could have been conveyed so far, in so short a time, by waves or tide.

However it might have happened, it was hopelessly gone; and now, in his enfeebled, frightened state, he began to consider how he should escape the suspicion of having stolen it, if ever his body reached the shore alive or dead.

“Nobody knows I had it,” he said miserably to himself. “And why should anybody ever know?”

He unhooked what was left of the guard, and held it, with the seal, for a moment in his shaking fingers, considering whether he should destroy that evidence against him by flinging it into the sea.

But he could hardly make up his mind to cast away irrevocably what might prove of value, should the watch and the rest of the guard be found. That might still be possible, he reasoned; and, after a few minutes of sickening doubt and hesitation, he put the shining trinkets into his pocket. Even as he did so, he went about mechanically searching for what he had hardly the faintest expectation of finding. Who that has ever lost a prized object has not done the same?—looking again and again in places where a superstitious hope whispers that it may be mysteriously lurking.

He felt sure that it could not, without his knowledge, have dropped from his pocket when he had stooped over the pool to grope for barnacles; and even if it had, the moonlight must show so bright an object shining in the shallow bottom. Yet he explored it carefully with his hands, and went back and explored it again, after examining other parts of the ledge.

But why be so anxious about the watch, when he was in despair of saving his own life? He said that to himself, as he searched every crevice and hollow of the slope where he had crawled out of the sea.

It was fortunate that he had something thus to engage his wretched thoughts and benumbed hands. And a still better employment awaited him.

He had some time before he heard a strange thumping and grinding sound, which he supposed must be caused by the motion of the “Calf’s tail.”

The hunt for the watch had kept him from investigating it. But now that very search led him to make a different, but even more welcome discovery.

The side where he had landed was in shadow. As he followed it around, just out of reach of the waves, he saw to his great joy something rising and falling in the black seaweed that grew below the gray girdle of barnacles, and bumping on the reef. It was his boat, which the wind had blown against the little island, and lodged not far from the “Calf’s tail.”

It was lying on its side, and a heave of the sea threw up the dark gunwale into the moonlight that slanted across the surf-vexed end of the island. As the wave drew back, sucking heavily along with it the somber fringe of rockweed, Olly stepped cautiously down on this slippery footing, and, seizing the rail of the dory, held it fast. Then with the next swell he lifted the end upon the barnacled rocks and held it again, while its heavy freight of water spilled out over the side into the sea.

Getting hold of the painter, he now had the boat safe, and, by a little management, he was able to haul it higher up the slope and tip the rest of the water out. The exertion warmed him, and success gave him new courage.

True, he had no oars, and the thwart he had used for a paddle was lost. But there was a second thwart which he could detach. The dory appeared little the worse for the rough usage it had received, and he did not doubt but it would prove seaworthy when it should become necessary for him to intrust his life to it, in escaping from the rock.

That might be some time yet, for it was now low water. With the turning of the tide, the wind might change or go down; and it would probably be near daylight before the “Calf” would be submerged.

“The trouble will be,” he reflected, “to get the dory upon that highest part.”

That was something more for him to do. He worked it along inch by inch, pulling seaweed from the rocks to put under it in order to make it slide easily over the barnacles.

But this device came near causing him a sad accident. Once, when he released his hold of the boat to take breath after violently lifting, it broke away from him and started back down the descent, which the seaweed he had placed there made slippery. He sprang to seize the painter, which was dragging on the rocks, but it pulled him after, and boy and boat barely escaped plunging together into the brine.

As it was, though, he arrested its progress just as it struck a billow. He was compelled once more to tip it over—for he had no other means of getting the water out—and then to perform over again the labor of lifting it up the ledge.

But this was, perhaps, a fortunate accident, since it kept him in exercise until he felt that his clothes were getting dry. And it showed him, besides, the danger that would attend the final launching of the dory.

(To be continued.)