[Illustration: Cover art] [Frontispiece: "You darling!" (page 114)] THE MAGNET (Published serially as "The Pilot-Fish") A ROMANCE By HENRY C. ROWLAND Illustrations by CLARENCE F. UNDERWOOD GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS - NEW YORK COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING CO. as _The Pilot-Fish_. COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY THE MAGNET CHAPTER I The big schooner-yacht _Shark_ lay peacefully at anchor in Shoal Harbour, Maine. At her taffrail the National Yacht Ensign aired itself lazily in the land-breeze; from fore- and main-trucks fluttered the pennant of the N. Y. Yacht Club and the burgee of Captain Eliphalet Bell, U.S.N., retired. A solid old seafaring tub was the _Shark_, built some time back in the seventies, when, no doubt, she had been a tremendous swell. She was square in the jowls, pug-nosed, paunch-bellied, with a stern like a coach-horse, and there was a break from her quarter-deck to the waist, and a high, t'gallant forecastle. Solid timber she was ... or at least looked to be, though a gimlet might have shown differently ... and what ballast she had was inside her and not jerking away at the keel in frantic efforts to whip out her spars. For a yacht of her size the _Shark_ probably carried the smallest crew on record, modern double-action hand-winches and other labour-saving devices being installed about her decks. Brightwork there was scarcely any, and that covered with a coat of shellac. Galvanised iron took the place of brass, but if the old schooner lacked the glitter of metal she certainly shone with spotless cleanliness. One saw at the first glance that the _Shark_ was less of a pleasure-craft than a floating home, and such a domicile she had truly been for fifteen years. Asthma and an insubordinate heart had retired her owner from the service of his country; the same affliction forbade his residence ashore and compelled him to seek a warm winter climate. Wherefore, he wisely bought the _Shark_ for a mere song, and made of her a home for himself and his three little motherless daughters: Cécile, aged nine; Paula, aged seven, and Hermione, aged four. That was fifteen years before the epoch of this saga, so that we find our three sirens at the dangerous ages of from nineteen to twenty-four. Little heed had their cantankerous parent ever given them, and little need had they of it, as from the very first day to the present, they had found a wise and kindly nurse, playmate, and duenna in that splendid old grizzled viking, Christian Heldstrom, Master Mariner.