from missing boats. Two picnic parties had started down river the
day before, just previous to the gale, and nothing had been heard
of them. It turned out that the pleasure-seekers saw their danger
in time, and ran ashore on one of the least exposed islands, where
they passed the night. Shortly after our own arrival they appeared
off Rivermouth, much to the joy of their friends, in two shattered,
dismasted boats.

The excitement over, I was in a forlorn state, physically and
mentally. Captain Nutter put me to bed between hot blankets, and
sent Kitty Collins for the doctor. I was wandering in my mind, and
fancied myself still on Sandpeep Island: now we were building our
brick stove to cook the chowder, and, in my delirium, I laughed
aloud and shouted to my comrades; now the sky darkened, and the
squall struck the island; now I gave orders to Wallace how to
manage the boat, and now I cried because the rain was pouring in on
me through the holes in the tent. Towards evening a high fever set
in, and it was many days before my grandfather deemed it prudent
to tell me that the Dolphin had been found, floating keel upwards,
four miles southeast of Mackerel Reef.

Poor little Binny Wallace! How strange it seemed, when I went to
school again, to see that empty seat in the fifth row! How gloomy
the playground was, lacking the sunshine of his gentle, sensitive
face! One day a folded sheet slipped from my algebra: it was the
last note he ever wrote me. I could not read it for the tears.

What a pang shot across my heart the afternoon it was whispered
through the town that a body had been washed ashore at Grave
Point--the place where we bathed! We bathed there no more! How well