“Umiak!  Umiak!” (A boat!  A boat!)

Abel arose deliberately in his skiff, and looking in the direction in which Mrs. Abel pointed discovered, coming out of the horizon, a boat, rising and falling upon the swell.  It carried no sail, and after careful scrutiny Abel’s sharp eyes could discern no man at the oars.  This, then, was the cause of Mrs. Abel’s excitement.  The boat was unmanned—­a derelict upon the broad Atlantic.

A drifting boat is fair booty on the Labrador coast.  It is the recognized property of the man who sees it and boards it first.  And should it be a trap boat he is indeed a fortunate man, for the value of a trap boat is often greater than a whole season’s catch of fish.

So Abel lost no time in hauling in and coiling his jigger line, in adjusting his oars, and in pulling away toward the derelict with all the strength his strong arms and sinewy body could muster.

Abel had wished for a good sea boat all his life.  When the fishing schooners now and again of a foggy night anchored behind Itigailit Island he never failed to examine the fine big trap boats which they carried.  Sometimes he had ventured to inquire how much salt fish they would accept in exchange for one.  But he had never had enough fish, and his desire to possess a boat seemed little less likely of fulfilment than that of a boy with a dime in his pocket, covetously contemplating a gold watch in the shop window.

But here, at last, drifting directly toward him, as though Old Ocean meant it as a gift, propelled by a gentle breeze and an incoming tide, came a boat that would cost him nothing but the getting.  Fortune was smiling upon Abel Zachariah this fine August morning.

Now and again as he approached the derelict, Abel rested upon his oars, that he might turn about for a moment and feast his eyes upon his prospective prize, and revel in the pleasure of anticipation about to be realized.

And so, presently, he discovered that the boat was not a trap boat after all, but a much finer craft than any trap boat he had ever seen.  Its lines were much more graceful, it had recently been painted, and, as it rose and fell with the swell, a varnished gunwale glistened in the sunlight.  It was fully four fathoms and a half in length, and was undoubtedly a ship’s boat; and, being a ship’s boat, was probably built of hard wood, and therefore vastly superior to the spruce boats of the fishermen.

Abel had fully satisfied himself upon these points before, keenly expectant, he at length rowed alongside the derelict.  Grasping its gunwale to steady himself, he was about to step aboard when, with an exclamation of astonishment and horror, he released his hold upon the gunwale and resumed his seat in the skiff.

Stretched in the boat lay the body of a man.  In the man’s side was a great gaping wound, and his clothing and the boat were spattered and smeared with blood.  The man was dead.  In the fixed, cold stare of his wide-open eyes was a look of hopeless appeal, and the ghastly terror of one who had beheld some awful vision.