“Ain’t it always something wrong!  I told ’em about them boilers—­that they been leakin’ right along.  What will we do?”

“Only one thing to do now.  Run her before it.  Besides, she’ll be blown offshore soon now.  Run her across the bay.  South-south-east.  She ought to fetch Provincetown.”

“Yes, sir.  But when we get out from under the lee of the land what’ll happen?”

“I don’t know; but I do know what’ll happen to her bumpin’ over the rocks of this shore on a night like this!”

Jan touched Mrs. Goles’s arm.  “We better go below now, I think.  And you better go to your room and wrap up in any warm clothes you have—­two pairs of stockings, if you have them, and things like that.  To be ready for accidents, you know.  And wait for me in the saloon.”

“So there is danger?”

“You must not be thinking of that; but it is foolish not to be ready for accidents.  And while you are dressing up I will take a look round.”

“Oh, suppose he is aboard!  Won’t you watch out for him?”

“It’s him has to watch out for me on a night like this,” said Jan—­“and maybe watch out for more than me.”

* * * * *

Jan went to his room and put on his extra suit of underwear, and over his vest he drew his sweater.  From his suit-case he took his mother’s photograph and tucked it in his inside pocket.  Then he went up again to the top deck and located a life-raft—­made the rounds of the boat-deck and located the life-boats.

It was time now to study the storm.  The snow was not so thick, but the sea was making and the wind colder and stronger.  A gale from the northwest it would be when they were out in the open bay; and, besides the wind getting stronger the sea would be higher.  And it was as high now as was good for this old-fashioned side-wheeler with her old-time single engine.

Jan shook his head and, still shaking his head, once more made the rounds of the boat-deck.  Eight boats; and each boat might hold twenty-five people—­that is, if it was in a mill-pond.  But a night like this—­how many—­even if the running gear were sound?  “No, no,” said Jan to himself, and reinspected the lone life-raft on the top deck.  Two cigar-shaped steel air-cylinders with a thin connecting deck was the life-raft.  Jan had seen better ones; but a raft, at least, would not capsize.

He descended to the main deck, to where, in the gangway between house and rail, he could find a little quiet and think things over.  While there, amidships, a sea swept up under the paddle-wheel casing.  It boomed like a gun.  With it went some crackling.  Again a booming—­again a crackling.  The boat broached to.  Sea-water was running the length of her deck.

From out of the snow and night another sea came; and this one came straight aboard, roaring as it came.  Jan knew what it meant—­there is always the first sea by itself.  Not long now before there would be another.