A Silver Brand — page 143: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A SILVER BRAND. 135 “The boat? sartain, Mr. Nathaniel; you needn’t ha’ stopped to ask for it. What d’ye say? The gal missing! Thunder and Mars! Here, Jack, Noah; turn out, will ye. We’ll all look around a bit. In these cases it’s begt not to be a losing time.” Nat was willing now. Something weighing down his heart and chilling his blood made him feel sure that the absence of the youthful friends was no- result of girlish frolic or of innocent accident. Rowing around the point as swiftly as might be, he found Paul and Urban Foss just shoving off themselves. He halted to speak to them. “Ihave set three of the fishermen on the search. My boat is gone also—the rope is‘cut. It may not mean any- thing, but it has a suspicious look.” | At that moment a thought struck him at which he gnashed his teeth in rage. “That headstrong boy! Ihad forgotten him entirely. He went back to the town, but it is possible he has some- how returned. Has he dared to forestall me? To carry out his original purpose, and run away with the girl with- out consulting me ?” He did not proceed any farther with these ideas, for at that moment his eye caught an object drifting in a rift of mingled foam and moonlight, a black line in a flash of sil- ver far out toward the channel which carried the ships toward the upper port. | | He sprang to the oars with a hearty will, and made his little craft fly like a feather; but it was a long and weary chase the drifting object gave him. At last his tired hands grasped the edge of a floating boat. He knew at’ the first glance, without aid of the severed rope which dangled behind, thatit was hisown. And it was empty. He pushed the straw hat away from his reeking forehead, and sat a moment staring down atit. Then he produced the useful little box of tapers, struck off one, and held it over the edge, and closely examined the bottom. A little pool of something dark and wet glistened on the stern seat and trickled to the flooring. Nat pulled out his handkerchief and drabbled through it. When he brought it back to the taper he gave a hol- low groan. Blood! and whose? Something else sparkled there. He secured the two boats together and then clambered into hisown, There was one oar broken, and the glistening object was a buckle. Comicboo cS m (e(e)