northeaster--"

She broke in scoffingly--"Oh! those weathermen! They're always wrong. It's a perfectly scrumptious afternoon. The storm, if it comes, will probably show up sometime tomorrow!"

"Well," he retorted, "you're your own boss, I suppose.--If you were my sister," he added suddenly, "you wouldn't go sailing today."

"Then it's a good thing I'm not your sister. Thanks for your interest," she mocked. There was a hint of anger in her voice at the suspicion that Bill Bolton was trying to patronize her. "Don't worry," she added, resuming her usual tone, "I can handle a boat--Good-bye!"

Their eyes met; Bill's gravely accusing, hers, full of defiant determination.

"Good-bye--sorry I spoke." Bill turned away and walked up the beach toward the club house.

Dorothy chuckled when she saw him throw a quick glance over his shoulder. She waved her hand, but he kept on without appearing to notice the friendly gesture.

"A temper goes with that blond hair," she said to herself, digging a bare heel into the loose shingle. "I guess I was pretty rude, though. But what right had he to talk like that? Bill Bolton may be a famous aviator, but he's only a year older than I am."

She ran the skiff out through the shallows and sprang aboard. Standing on the stern thwart she sculled the small craft forward with short, strong strokes, and presently nosed alongside the Scud. As she boarded the sloop and turned with the skiff's painter in her hand she caught sight of Bill getting into an open roadster on the club driveway.

"I guess he meant well," she observed to the wavelets that lapped the side of the Scud, "but just the same--well, that's that."

Making the painter secure to a cleat in the stern, she set about lacing a couple of reefs into the mainsail. Having tied the last reef-point, she loosened the skiff's painter, pulled the boat forward and skillfully knotted the rope to the sloop's mooring. Then she cast off the mooring altogether and ran aft to her place at the tiller.

The Scud's head played off. Dorothy, as she had told Bill, was no novice at the art of small boat sailing. With her back bracing the tiller she ran up the jib and twisted the halyard to a cleat close at hand.

Then as the sloop gained steerageway, she pulled on the peak and throat halyards until the reefed-down mainsail was setting well. The Scud, a fast twenty-footer, was rigged with a fore-staysail and gaff-topsail as well, but Dorothy knew better than to break them out in a wind like this.

As it was she carried all the canvas her little boat would stand, and they ran out past the Point, which acted as a breakwater to the yacht club inlet, with the starboard gunwale well awash. The wind out here stiffened perceptibly and Dorothy wished she had tied in three reefs instead of two before starting. Her better judgment told her to go about and seek the quieter waters of the inlet. But here, pride took a hand.

If she turned back and gave up her afternoon sail, the next time she saw Bill Bolton she must admit he had been right. No. That would never do.

Although the wind out here was stiffer than she had imagined, this was no northeast gale; a good three-reef breeze, that was all. So lowering the peak slightly she continued to head her little craft offshore.

The Scud fought and bucked like a wild thing, deluging Dorothy with spray. She gloried in the tug of the tiller, the sting of the salt breeze, the dance of her craft over choppy seas. Glistening in the clear summer sunlight, flecked with tiny whitecaps, the landlocked water stretched out to where the low hills of Long Island banked the horizon in a blur of purple and green.

Now and then as she luffed into a particularly strong gust, Dorothy had her misgivings. But pride, confidence in her ability to handle her boat and the thrill of danger kept her going.

She had been sailing for about an hour, beating her way eastward with the Connecticut shore four or five miles off her port quarter, when all at once, somehow, she felt a change. The sunshine seemed less brilliant, the shadows less solid, less sharply outlined. It seemed as if a very thin gauze had been drawn across the sun dimming without obscuring it. Dorothy searched the sky in vain to discover the smallest shred of cloud.

At the same time the breeze slackened and the air, which had been stimulant and quick with oxygen seemed to become thick, sluggish, suffocating. Presently, the Scud was lying becalmed, while the ground swell, long and perfectly smooth, set sagging jib and mainsail flapping. Except for the rattling of the blocks and the creaking of the boom, the silence, after the whistling wind of a few minutes before, was tremendously oppressive.

Then in the distance there was a low growl of thunder. In a moment came a louder, angrier growl--as if the first were a menace which had not been heeded. But the first growl was quite enough for Dorothy. She knew what was coming and let go her halyards, bringing down her sails with a run. Now fully alive to the danger, she raced to her work of making the little craft secure to meet the oncoming storm.

She was gathering in the mainsail, preparatory to furling it when there was a violent gust of wind, cold, smelling of the forests from which it came, corrugating the steely surface of the Sound. Two or three big raindrops fell--and then, the deluge.

Dorothy rushed to a locker, pulled out a slicker and sou'wester and donned them. Returning to her place by the tiller, she watched the rain. Rain had never rained so hard, she thought. Already both the Connecticut and Long Island shores were completely blotted out, hidden behind walls of water. The big drops pelted the Sound like bullets, sending up splashes bigger than themselves.

Then suddenly the wind came tearing across the inland sea from out the northeast. Thunder crashed, roared, reverberated. Lightning slashed through the black cloud-canopy in long, blinding zigzags. The wind moaned, howled, shrieked, immense in its wild force, immense in its reckless fury.

A capsized sloop wallowed in the trough of heavy seas rearing a dripping keel skyward--and to this perilous perch clung Dorothy.

The black brush of storm had long ago painted out the last vestige of daylight.

Crouching on the upturned hull of her sloop, Dorothy clung to the keel with nerveless fingers, while the Scud wallowed in an angry sea laced with foam and spray. She knew that in a little while the boat must sink, and that in water like this even the strongest swimmer must quickly succumb. Cold, wet and helpless, Dorothy anxiously scanned her narrow horizon, but in vain.

For another half hour she hung on in the rain and darkness, battered by heavy combers that all but broke her hold. She was fast losing her nerve and with it the willingness to struggle. Phantom shapes reached toward her from the gloom. Strange lights danced before her eyes....

With a rolling lurch the Scud sank, and Dorothy found herself fighting the waves unsupported. The shock of sudden immersion brought back her scattering wits, but the delusion of dancing lights still held; especially one light, larger and brighter than the others. Surely this one was real and not the fantasy of an overwrought imagination!

Half smothered in flying spume, the drowning girl made one last frantic effort to keep afloat. Above the pounding of the sea, a throbbing roar shook her eardrums, a glare of light followed by a huge dark form swooped down as if to crush her--and she lost consciousness.

Dorothy awoke in a darkness so complete that for a moment she thought her eyes must be bandaged. Nervous fingers soon found that this was not the case, and reaching out, they came in contact with a light switch.

The sudden gleam of the electrics half blinded her. Presently she saw that she lay on a narrow bunk