But the words were lost. The young sailor in the red shirt fairly pitched him over the rail. The life saver, running alongside, gave him a hand. Captain Peters was leaning out impatiently from his wheel-house door, and now at the signal he dove back and hurriedly rang for full steam ahead; it was no place to run chances. And as the schooner passed out into the open lake, leaving the lighthouse behind her, and soon afterward casting off the tug, there was no time to look back at the raging figure on the pier. Though once, to be sure, Dick had turned with a laugh and shouted out a few lines of a wild parody on the song of the day, “Baby Mine.”

The song proved so amusing that, when they were free of the tug and were careening gayly off to the southwest with all fast on board and a boiling sea around them, he took it up again. And braced at a sharp angle with the deck, one eye on the sails, another cast to windward, his brown hands knotted around the spokes of the wheel, he sang away at the top of his lungs: – =

"He is coming down the Rhine.

With a bellyful of wine,"=

Young Harper worked his way aft along the upper rail. His eye fell on the figure of his captain, and he laughed and nodded.

“Lively goin’, Cap’n.”

Lively it certainly was.

“Guess there ain’t no doubt about our makin’ it!”

“Doubt your uncle!” roared the Captain. And he winked at his young admirer.

“Guess Mr. Roche didn’t like the looks of it.”

“Guess not.”

Harper crept forward again. And Smiley, with a laugh in his eye, squared his chest to the storm, and thought of the necklace stowed away in the cabin; and then he thought of her who was to be its owner day after to-morrow, and “I wonder if we will make it,” thought he; “I wonder!”

And make it they did. Sliding gayly up into a humming southwest wind, with every rag up and the sheets hauled home, with the bluest of skies above them and the bluest of water beneath (for the Lakes play at April weather all around the calendar), Wednesday afternoon found them turning Grosse Pointe.

The bright new paint was prematurely old now, the small boat was missing from the stern davits, the cabin windows had been crushed in, and one sailor carried his arm in a sling, but they had made it. Harper, hollow-eyed, but merry, had the wheel; Smiley was below, snatching his first nap in forty-eight hours, with the red corals under his head.

“Ole,” called Harper, “wake up the Cap’n, will you? I can’t leave the wheel. He said we was to call him off Grosse Pointe.”

So Ole called him, and was soon followed back on deck by another hollow-eyed figure.

“Guess it’s just as well Mr. Roche didn’t come along,” observed the boy, as he relinquished the wheel. “He’d’a’ had all he wanted, and no mistake.”

“He had enough to start with. There wasn’t any room for drunks this trip.”

As he spoke, Smiley was running his eye over the familiar yellow bluffs, glancing at the lighthouse tower, at the stack of the water works farther down the coast, at the green billows of foliage with here and there a spire rising above them, and, last and longest, at the two piers that reached far out into the Lake, – one black with coal sheds, the other and nearer, yellow with new lumber.

Between these piers, built in the curve of the beach and nestling under the bluff, was a curious patchwork of a house. Built of odds and ends of lumber, even, in the rear, of driftwood, perched up on piles so that the higher waves might run up under the kitchen floor, small wonder that the youngsters of the shore had dubbed it “the house on stilts.”

Old Captain Fargo (and who was not a “Captain” in those days!) had built it with his own hands, just as he had built every one of the sailboats and rowboats that strewed the beach, and had woven every one of the nets that were wound on reels up there under the bluff.

A surprisingly spacious old house it was, too, with a room for Annie upstairs on the Lake side, looking out on a porch that was just large enough to hold her pots and boxes of geraniums and nasturtiums and forget-me-nots.

Smiley could not see the house yet; it was hidden by the lumber piles on the pier. But his eyes knew where to look, and they lingered there, all the while that his sailor’s sixth sense was watching the set of the sails and the scudding ripples that marked the wind puffs. He wore a clean red shirt to-day and a neckerchief that lay in even folds around his neck. Redolent of soap he was, his face and hands scrubbed until they shone. And still his eyes tried to look through fifty feet of lumber to the little flowering porch, until a sail came in sight around the end of the pier. Then he straightened up, and shifted his grip on the spokes.

The small boat was also blue with a white stripe. At the stern sat a single figure. But though they were still too far apart to distinguish features, Dick knew that the figure was that of a girl – a girl of a fine, healthy carriage, her face tanned an even brown, and a laugh in her black eyes. He knew, even before he brought his glass to bear on her, that she was dressed in a blue sailor suit, with a rolling blue-and-white collar cut V-shape and giving a glimpse of her round brown neck. He knew that her black hair was gathered simply with a ribbon and left to hang about her shoulders, that her arms were bared to the elbow. He could see that she was carrying a few yards more sail than was safe for a catboat in that breeze, and there was a laugh in his own eyes as he shook his head over her recklessness. He knew that it would do no good to speak to her about it; and her father and mother had never been able to look upon her with any but fond, foolish eyes.

Steadily the Merry Anne drew in toward the pier; rapidly the Captain– so Annie called her boat – came bobbing and skimming out to meet her. A few moments more and Dick could wave his hat and shout, “Ahoy, there!” And he heard in reply, as he had known that he should, a merry “Ahoy, there! I ‘ll beat you in!” And then they raced for it, Annie gaining, as she generally could, while the schooner was laboriously coming about, and working in slowly under reduced sail. She ran in close to the pier, came up into the wind, and waited there while the crew were making the schooner fast.

At length the stevedores started unloading the lumber and Dick was free. He leaned on the rail and looked down at Annie who had by this time come alongside; and he saw that she had a bunch of blue-and-white forget-me-nots in her hair.

“Well,” she said, looking up, and driving all power of consecutive thought out of Dick’s head, as she always did when she rested her black eyes full on his, “well, I beat you.”

“Take me aboard, Annie. I’ve got something for you.”

“All right, come down. You can take the sheet.”

Dick pushed off from the schooner’s side and the Captain filled away toward the shore.

“Hold on, Annie, come about. I don’t have to go in yet.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t care – run out a little way.”

Annie brought her about and Dick watched her with admiring eyes. “Well, now,” he began, as they settled down for a run off the wind, “I didn’t know whether I was going to get here to-day or not.”

“It was pretty bad.”

“You were thinking of me, weren’t you, Annie?”

She smiled and gave her attention to the boat.

“Roche was drunk, and I had to leave him at Manistee.”

“You didn’t come down shorthanded, did you, Dick, – in that storm?”

He nodded.

“But how? You couldn’t have got much sleep.”

“I didn’t get any till this noon.”

“Now, that’s just like you, Dick, always running risks when you don’t have to.”

“But I did have to.”

“I don’t see why.”

“What day’s to-day?”

A mischievous light came into her eyes, but her face was demure. “Wednesday,” she replied.

“Yes, I knew that.”

“Why did you ask me, then?”

“Oh, Annie, Annie! When are you going to stop talking that way?”

Again the boat claimed all her attention. He leaned forward and dropped his voice.

“Don’t you think I’ve waited most long enough, Annie?”

“Now, Dick, be sensible.”

“But haven’t I been sensible? Not a word have I said for two months. And I told you then I would speak on your birthday.”

“So you really remembered my birthday?”

“Remembered it, Annie! What a girl you are! Do you know how long I’ve been waiting? And all the boys laughing? It’s two years this month. It was on your birthday that I saw you first, you know. And it wasn’t a month after that that I spoke to you. How could I help it? Who could have waited longer? And you, with your way of making me think you were really going to say yes, and then just laughing at me.”

“Now, Dick – if you don’t stop and be sensible, I ‘ll take you straight inshore.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t do that, Annie?”

“Yes, I would. I will now. Ready about!” The Captain came rapidly up into the wind, but stopped there with sail flapping; for Dick held the sheet, and his hand had imprisoned hers on the tiller.

“Now, Dick – Dick – ”

“Wait a minute. Don’t be angry with me when I’ve risked the schooner and everybody aboard her just so’s to get down here on your birthday. Promise me you ‘ll hold her in the wind while I get you your present.”

She hesitated, and looked out toward the horizon.

“Promise me that, Annie, and I ‘ll let go your hand.”

“You – you’ve forgotten – what you promised – ”

“I know, I said I’d never take hold of your hand again until you put it in mine – didn’t I?”

She nodded, still looking away.

“And I’ve broken the promise. Do you know why, Annie? It’s because when you look at me the way you do sometimes, I could break every promise I’ve ever made – and every law of Congress if I thought it would just keep you looking at me.”

Not a word from Annie.

“Promise me, Annie, that you ‘ll hold her here?”

Still no word.

“Won’t you just nod, then?”

She hesitated a moment longer, then gave one uncertain little nod. He released her hand, held the sheet between his knees, drew the package from his pocket, and displayed the corals. She was trying bravely not to look around, but her glance wavered, and finally she turned and looked at it with eager eyes. “Oh, Dick, did you bring that for me?”

“I surely did.” He held it up, and when she bent her head forward, he slipped it over and around her neck. Her eyes shone as she ran the red beads through her fingers and looked at the carved pendant. Dick leaned back and watched her contentedly. Finally she let her eyes steal upward and meet his, with a smile that was half roguish. “I never really laughed at you, did I, Dick?”

He moved forward with sudden eagerness. “Don’t you think now is a good time to say yes, Annie, – now, on your birthday? I own a quarter of the schooner now, you know; and I’m ready to make another payment to-morrow. And don’t you see, when we’re married you can help me to save, and before we know it we can have a home and a business of our own.” She was bending over the corals. “You didn’t really think you could save more with – with me, than you could alone, did you, Dick?”

“Yes, I’m sure of it. It will give me something to work for, don’t you see?”

“But – but – ” very shyly, this – “Haven’t you anything to work for now?”

“Oh, Annie, do you mean that – are you telling me you ‘ll give me the right to work for you? That’s all I want to know.”

“Now, Dick – please let go my hand – you promised, you know – ”

“What is a promise now! If you knew how you torture me when you lead me on till I’m half wild and then change around till I don’t know what I’ve said or what you’ve said or hardly who I am – ”

“No, Dick, you mustn’t – I mean it. We must go in. See, there’s father on the beach. It must be supper-time.”

“Wait a minute – I haven’t half told you – ”

But she was merciless. The Captain came about and headed shoreward.

“Did you meet the revenue cutter anywhere up the Lake – the Foote? She was here yesterday.”

“There you are again, all changed around! What do I care about the Foote– when I’m just waiting to hear you say the only word that can make my life worth living. Now, Annie – ”

“You mustn’t, Dick. I’ve let you say too much now. If you go on, you ‘ll make me feel that I can’t even thank you for your present.”

“Was that all? Were you only thanking me?”

She nodded, and Dick’s face fell into gloom. But when the Captain was beached, and Annie had leaped lightly over the rail, she turned and gave him one merry blushing look that completely reversed the effect of her reproof. And as she hurried up to the house, he could only gaze after her helplessly.