"If he don't it won't be any very great job to let him know where you are, Sonny," the keeper replied emphatically. "It'll go hard if we can't hail a fisherman, or a pilot boat, an' send a letter ashore to the post-office, so you needn't worry about that part of it. But tell me how you happened to be adrift in that motor boat."
"We went out to look at what seemed to be a lot of wreckage; it was so calm that the _West Wind_ hardly moved through the water, and father said I might go with Mr. Sawyer, because I know how to run the motor and steer. Then, before we'd got to the wreckage, the fog shut in, and we couldn't see the schooner. I believe I could have gone straight to her at first, but after Mr. Sawyer fell over-board, I turned the boat around so many times trying to pick him up, that I couldn't tell where the _West Wind_ might be."
"The second mate; he was a good friend of mine, and I wouldn't have been allowed to go out to look at the wreckage if he hadn't coaxed father."
"How did a sailorman contrive to tumble over-board?" Mr. Peters asked curiously, as if it seemed to him impossible such an accident could occur.
"We ran down a spar, and he was leaning over the bow trying to make out if it was a buoy that had gone adrift, or a portion of the wreckage we had sighted, when a heavy sea came. It seemed to me as if the timber struck Mr. Sawyer on the head, for over he went like a log, and although I put the boat back and forth until it grew too dark to see, I couldn't find him."
"Wasn't you frightened, Sonny?" Mr. Peters asked, and the lad replied with a sigh:
"I was feeling too sorry for that, sir, and I thought certain the schooner would pick me up, even if the fog was thick; but I did get frightened when the night shut in, and the wind began to blow so that the spray from the tops of the waves came aboard, soaking me with water. My name is Sidney, if you please, sir."
"Then what did you do?" Captain Eph asked in a whisper.
"I just sat there and cried, sir, till I remembered what father has often told me, that when a boy, or a man, for that matter, loses his courage, he is a great deal worse off than if he kept up his spirits. I had often run the motor while the _West Wind_ was in port, and I tried to make out how much gasolene there was in the tank, for I knew steerage-way was needed, else I couldn't keep her head up into the wind. It was a terribly long while before day came again, and then the fog covered everything so that I couldn't see very far in either direction. Of course father hunted for me; but I knew he didn't have much chance of finding me in that kind of weather."