They looked aloft and then at each other.  There was little save reflection in their several glances.  Men of this caliber do not hesitate over a risk of life or ship.  Cautious as Tunis Latham was, his agreement with those he had contracted with called for a prompt fulfillment of the details of the pact.  Nor did the prospect of the rising gale and rising sea cause any of the trio to blanch.  It was not a long run to Big Wreck Cove.  Properly manned, the Seamew should make it prettily in three or four hours.  In addition, there was little but an open roadstead before the port of Hollis.  The breakwater was scarcely strong enough to fend off the waves in a real gale.  And they knew that a gale was coming.

This was no place for a schooner of the Seamew’s size to ride out the storm.  She might easily drag her anchors and go ashore on the Hollis sands that in the past had buried many a good ship.  So the trio of Cape men nodded grimly to each other and took the better chance.

CHAPTER XXXI

BITTER WATERS

Ah, yes! youth, and romance linked with a self-scrutiny born of her New England ancestry if not of her father’s Celtic blood, had brought Sheila Macklin to her dreadful pass.  One might have said, if one were hardened enough, that had the young woman “possessed an ounce of sense” she would not have made herself penniless, an outcast, and so suffered because she could not escape quickly from an environment well-nigh poignant enough to turn her brain.

She was days in recovering from the shock of the appearance of the real Ida May Bostwick at the Ball homestead.  And those hours of torture that had followed had eaten like acid into Sheila’s soul.

She had by no means recovered herself when Tunis had his brief interview with her.  Had she not shut herself away from him—­refused to even discuss the situation with the troubled skipper of the Seamew—­she must have broken down, given way to that womanly weakness born of love for the man of her choice.

For Sheila knew how Tunis Latham suffered.  She felt that her course was right; nevertheless she fully appreciated how keen the blow of her decision fell upon the partner in her sin.

A sin it was—­almost, it seemed to her now, an unpardonable crime.  To seize upon another girl’s identity; to usurp another’s chance; to foist herself upon the unsuspecting and kindly souls at the Ball homestead in a way that raised for them a happiness that was merely a phantom—­the thought of it all was now a draught of which the dregs were very, very bitter.

Over and over again she recalled all that Ida May Bostwick had said to and of her.  It was all true!  Coarse and unfeeling as the shopgirl was, Sheila lashed her troubled soul with the thought that what Ida May had said was deserved.  Neither circumstances nor the fact that Tunis had suggested the masquerade excused the transgression.