He turned to Louise. "I’m going over on the _Success_," he said. "The doctor will come back with me. Is there anything else I can do?" "No, unless—you can find Philip." "I am afraid he is still in Victoria. He would hardly have started to cross the Straits in this storm." "No," she assented, "not in this storm." She lifted her hand to her head in a bewildered way, and turned to her baby with the mechanical effort of one long worn out with anxiety and watching. But when the child coughed again, a harder paroxysm, the motherhood leaped to her eyes. "Paul," she cried, "oh, Paul." He did not try to answer that appeal; he could not look at her. But he took the child’s medicine from the table and stood for a moment, thoughtful, irresolute. A man who has the charge of workmen in an isolated place, out of range of a physician, picks up the rudiments of medicine and surgery, and presently he went to a stand holding a few general remedies. He poured a little of the liquid from the bottle he carried, into an empty vial, and added several drops of ammonia. He gave the baby a potion from the mixture, lifting the blond head higher, rearranging the pillows gently, with a woman’s touch. He waited a brief interval, watching the result. "It’s a very strong stimulant," he said. "Only use it every alternate time, or—if the attack is bad. I won’t be longer than I can help." While he walked down to the store he saw Mason’s signal-light on the wharf, but the little mail steamer, plying between Seattle and a near port, was not yet in sight, though nearly an hour late. Forrest unlocked the door and lighted his desk lamp. "There isn’t a rowboat on this beach," he thought. "Nothing but Sing’s dugout; and what could she do in this sea?" He began to post his books, but the child’s face drifted between him and the open page, and that appeal of the mother’s rang an undernote to the rush and scream of the wind. He laid his pen down and sat staring, absent, harassed, up at the rafters. A timber creaked; the great building shook in a heavier gust, and the sea swept with a long hiss and swash on the beach under the piling. Then presently above all these noises there came the shrill toot of a whistle. It was a sound that brought him to his feet. He threw his books into the safe, lifted his overcoat from the counter, and was about to extinguish the light, when the door opened and Mason entered with a rush of sharp air. "She’s gone by, sir," he said. "Headlight stove in, sir; sea smashing on the wheel-house." The manager’s hand dropped from the burner. "But she answered the signal, Mason; she whistled the landing." "Ay, sir, an’ wore away, sir, er rollin’ like er porpoise." "Well, Mason, it means the dugout. She’s on the beach above the float." Mason’s watery eyes blinked. "Ay, sir, an’ more’n half full, sir." "Then we’ll bail her."