class="pnext">"Well, we can turn around any time," remarked the boatman mildly. "But she won't do better than eight miles an hour at the outside. You can play that bet to win."

Miss Chalmers devoted to the boatman a swift and stormy glance. He irritated her even more than his atrocious boat. The easy, almost familiar style of his speech was something to which she was unaccustomed—from the lips of common persons. It seemed to her that he assumed a position of equality.

A boatman—a grimy-handed, hatless, whiskered boatman! A person who hired out!

She set her jaws tightly and resumed her unsatisfying study of the river. Her dignity checked upon her lips a withering rebuke.

More islands were passed and the channel widened somewhat. The passenger observed with growing annoyance that there were fewer lights ashore. The summer folks were going to bed. High time, she thought; she was tired herself.

Nearly half an hour more elapsed, enlivened only by an astonishingly swift movement on the part of the steersman, who uncoiled himself like a spring, flung himself forward, and rescued, with a long and lean arm, the grip that belonged to his passenger just as it was about to slide quietly from the narrow deck into the hospitable St. Lawrence. Unceremoniously he jammed it into a safer place under the gunwale. Then he resumed his lolling posture at the tiller. Miss Chalmers made no comment.

Then, after a little, the rhythmical wheeze of the engine was supplanted by a series of irregular choking gasps, then a sharp popping at broken intervals, and then—silence.

The boatman sat up lazily, reached for the lantern, and held it close to the machinery. The launch carried her momentum for a minute, then swung broadside to the current and drifted contentedly. Miss Chalmers bit her lip.

Very deliberately the boatman studied the engine, poking the lantern about and, when it failed to illuminate dark recesses, lighting the stump of candle. Then he spun the fly-wheel.

There was no answer. Again and again he spun it, but the engine remained inert. After a while he resumed his placid and apparently purposeless examination of the gasoline monster.

"Well, what is the matter now?" demanded a cutting voice.

"Engine stopped," said the boatman, putting down the lantern and beginning to refill his pipe.

"Thank you for the information," said Miss Chalmers icily. "Why has it stopped?"

"I couldn't begin to tell you—ma'am."

There was something about the "ma'am," drawled out at the end, that peculiarly exasperated her; it seemed to lack the servility that was familiar to her from the lips of servants.

"Do you know anything about engines?"

"Not much that's good."

Miss Chalmers's temper was rising rapidly. She looked at her watch, then at the dark shores and islands.

"How dared you bring me out here if you didn't—Oh, it's—it's—perfectly outrageous! It's—"

She left the sentence unfinished, seized the lantern, brushed her way past the boatman without so much as a scornful glance, and dropped to her knees in the bottom of the cock-pit.

The floor was oily and dirty, but Miss Chalmers paid no attention to that. She devoted the next five minutes wholly to an examination of the engine. The boatman watched and smoked.

Item by item, she inventoried the one-cylinder pest. She peered into the oil-cups; she smeared her gloves on the cam that operated the timing-lever; she fussed with the tickler on the carbureter; she did a score of other things, while her audience watched in silence. After she got through with the engine she turned her attention to the batteries, tightening a wire connection here and there.

"Now, where's your socket-wrench?" she demanded.

"Socket-wrench?" repeated the boatman. "That's a new one on me. I don't remember—"

"Haven't you ever taken out the spark-plug?"

"Oh, you mean that funny thing that screws it out. Sure! I've got one somewhere."

He fumbled under a seat and drew out a box that contained a disorderly array of tools. Miss Chalmers dived a daintily gloved hand into it and brought forth what she sought.

"If you want me to do that—"

He did not finish the sentence, because she already had the spark-plug in her hand and was holding the points close to the light.

"Dirty, of course," she commented disgustedly. "Have you any sand-paper?"

He found a bit after more fumbling, and watched her while she scrubbed the metal points until they were bright. Then she replaced the plug and screwed it into position with a vigorous twist of the wrench.

The boatman had settled back in his place. After that she found a screw-driver and removed the cover from the float-chamber in the carbureter. A brief inspection of this mysterious compartment satisfied her.

"Now spin that fly-wheel," she said abruptly, rising from her knees and moving aside to make room for him.

The boatman spun the fly-wheel, not once, but many times. Twice the engine started, only to stop after a few revolutions.

"It's abominable!" exclaimed the passenger. "What do you propose to do?"

"Nothing, I guess," replied the boatman. "You've done more things now than I ever knew could be done. Don't suppose you damaged anything, do you?"

She glared at him, then turned her scorching glance out upon the river.

"Here comes a boat!" she said suddenly.

The boatman followed the line of her pointing finger and discerned the lights of a craft that was bearing rather closely toward them.

"Do you think they will help us?" she asked.

"Might," he admitted.

"They must! I can't stay here all night. Hail them!"

He put two fingers between his lips and sent forth a shrill whistle.

"Do you call that a hail?" she exclaimed, rising to her feet. She made a miniature megaphone of her hands and flung a vigorous "Ahoy!" across the water.

The boat was closer now. Presently there was an answering voice.

"Any trouble?" said the voice.

The question affected the boatman like a shock of electricity. He started from his seat, leaned over the gunwale, and squinted through the gloom.

"Breakdown," called Miss Chalmers. "What boat is that?"

"Yacht Elizabeth. Want any help?"

Before Miss Chalmers could answer a voice at her ear boomed out:

"No-o-o, thanks! All right in a minute."

She turned in amazement upon the boatman, who was now on his knees in front of the engine, his face hidden from her.

"Why—you—you—"