Almost sunset.  I pulled my boat’s head round, and made for home.

I had been floating with the tide, drifting athwart the long shadows under the western bank, shooting across the whirls and eddies of the rapid strait, grappling to one and another of the good-natured sloops and schooners that swept along the highway to the great city, near at hand.

For an hour I had sailed over the fleet, smooth glimmering water, free and careless as a sea-gull.  Now I must ’bout ship and tussle with the whole force of the tide at the jaws of Hellgate.  I did not know that not for that day only, but for life, my floating gayly with the stream was done.

I pulled in under the eastern shore, and began to give way with all my boyish force.

I was a little fellow, only ten years old, but my pretty white skiff was little, in proportion, and so were my sculls, and we were all used to work together.

As I faced about, a carriage came driving furiously along the turn of the shore.  The road followed the water’s edge.  I was pulling close to the rocks to profit by every eddy.  The carriage whirled by so near me that I could recognize one of the two persons within.  No mistaking that pale, keen face.  He evidently saw and recognized me also.  He looked out at the window and signaled the coachman to stop.  But before the horses could be pulled into a trot he gave a sign to go on again.  The carriage disappeared at a turn of the shore.

This encounter strangely dispirited me.  My joy in battling with the tide, in winning upward, foot by foot, boat’s length after boat’s length, gave place to a forlorn doubt whether I could hold my own—­whether I should not presently be swept away.

The tide seemed to run more sternly than I had ever known it.  It made a plaything of my little vessel, slapping it about most uncivilly.  The black rocks, covered with clammy, unwholesome-looking sea-weed, seemed like the mile-stones of a nightmare, steadily to move with me.  The water, bronzed by the low sun, poured mightily along, and there hung my boat, glued to its white reflection.

As I struggled there, the great sloops and schooners rustling by with the ebb, and eclipsing an instant the June sunset, gave me a miserable impression of careless unfriendliness.  I had made friends with them all my life, and this evening, while I was drifting down-stream, they had been willing enough to give me a tow, and to send bluff, good-humored replies to my boyish hails.  Now they rushed on, each chasing the golden wake of its forerunner, and took no thought of me, straining at my oar, apart.  I grew dispirited, quite to the point of a childish despair.

Of course it was easy enough to land, leave my boat, and trudge home, but that was a confession of defeat not to be thought of.  Two things only my father required of me—­manliness and truth.  My pretty little skiff—­the “Aladdin,” I called it—­he had given to me as a test of my manhood.  I should be ashamed of myself to go home and tell him that I had abdicated my royal prerogative of taking care of myself, and pulling where I would in a boat with a keel.  I must take the “Aladdin” home, or be degraded to my old punt, and confined to still water.