"Mast-head light to the east'd!" sang out our skipper as we rounded the point of the Hook. Has your heart ever begun to dance at the sight of a school of bluefish when you were running down toward them with four squids trailing from your cat-boat? Have you ever heard a deer come crashing through the thicket toward your rifle? Imagine us, then, when we heard those words. Every man whipped out a night-glass, or waited eagerly for his neighbor's. A speck of yellow light on the horizon crawled slowly up the blue sky. "She's a liner," said our captain. "The ice and the hurricane have sent all the channel buoys adrift" (you know the ship channel is lighted with electric lamps like Fifth Avenue), "so her pilot will anchor outside." Away went the tug at full speed. The yellow mast-head light kept growing higher, like a meteor going backward. Soon we could distinguish the dim white shape of a giant steamship. As she came nearer we saw that she was ice-coated from the water-line to one hundred feet above the deck. The lights glowed and twinkled out of the cabin ports like the candles shining out of the white churches we used to have when we were little boys. The big ship anchored not far from the Sandy Hook Lightship (six miles out on the Atlantic). Our Captain knew her for the _Teutonic_ as readily as you would know your father in the street. On account of the high waves we dared not go within one hundred feet, for fear of being dashed against the steamship's side. Our tug's bow swung up in the wind, and we began a conversation with the officer on the _Teutonic_'s bridge, our words shooting back and forth across fifty yards of icy wind that sped between us at the rate of fifty-six miles an hour. The _Teutonic_ had no news of _La Gascogne_. On that Monday afternoon when the telegraph-operator in Fire Island tower reported the missing _Gascogne_ approaching his station, our tug started out again. The many weary and fruitless nights of watching and cruising were all forgotten. The searchers hurried through dinner in the galley, and drank big mugs of coffee in gulps. Every one was too happy to stay long at anything. I never knew the distance between the Battery and the outer light-ship to be so long. From here, at last, we spied a glimmer of red on the sky-line. If enthusiasm burned, there wouldn't have been a lens left in one of those glasses. Men perched on the top of the pilot-house to see better. "That's the _Gascogne_--three red lights at the mast-head--going under repairs," cried the mate, from the loftiest perch.