places, and under Fairchild’s direction the two tenders retraced the course of yesterday. The first two boats were some distance ahead, moving slowly, and the tenders separated also and the searchers poled along, prodding with their oars at the lake floor. And such is the influence of action on the mind that soon even Fairchild’s burly optimism became hushed and uncertain before the imminence of the unknown, and he too was accepting the possible for the probable, unaware.
The sun was hazed, as though wearied of its own implacable heat, and the water—that water which might hold, soon to be revealed, the mute evidence of ultimate flouting of all man’s strife—lapped and plopped at the mechanical fragilities that supported them: a small sound, monotonous and without rancor—it could well wait! They poled slowly on.
Soon the four boats, fanwise, had traversed the course, and they turned and quartered back and forth again, slowly and in silence. Afternoon drew on, drowsing and somnolent. Yacht and tug lay motionless in a blinding shimmer of water and sun. . . .
Again the course of yesterday was covered foot by foot, patiently and silently and in vain; and the four boats as without volition drew nearer each other, drifting closer together as sheep huddle, while water lapped and plopped beneath their hulls, sinister and untroubled by waiting . . . soon the motor boat drifted up and scraped lightly along the hull in which Fairchild sat, and he raised his head, blinking against the glare. After a while he said:
“Are you a ghost, or am I?”
“I was about to ask you that,” Gordon, sitting in the motor boat, replied. They sat and stared at each other. The other boats came up, and presently the one called Walter spoke.
“Is this all you wanted out here,” he asked in a tone of
