They had reached the wharf, and stood gazing out at the dark harbor water, across which a broad golden pathway stretched from the Coatue shore almost to their feet. The moon itself, a huge round disk of orange, like a Chinese lantern, hung low in the sky, and it seemed to the three rapt children that the whole atmosphere about them was shot through with a fine golden mist that rose partly from the path of gold on the water, and partly dropped, curtain-like, from the moon above it. “Oh, Tommy, think of how that moon’ll look at sea!” Erica cried, softly, clutching his sleeve with a new big lump in her throat. “If only I’d been a boy, you and Lis and I could have shipped together, and gone adventuring like those friends in that book in your mother’s library—_The Three Musketeers_.” “Better not let Aunt Charity know you’ve read that book,” Tommy adjured her, wisely ignoring the little traitorous break in Erica’s voice. Of course Erica wasn’t the kind of girl who spilled tears all over the place, but then, as Tommy philosophised to himself, you never could be sure about a girl—even the most sensible of them surprised you once in a while. “I hate this being always told ‘Don’t do this,’ ‘Don’t read that,’ or ‘Don’t say the other thing,’” Erica burst out, rebelliously. It was an old grievance. “There’s so little that’s really ladylike for a girl to do.” “Listen,” Lis broke in, lifting an emphatic hand for silence. “It sounded like somebody calling ‘Help.’ Didn’t either of you hear it?” Straining their ears, Tommy and Erica listened, and faintly but very distinctly there came to all three the sound repeated. There was no doubt this time about its being a cry of distress, and it appeared to come, alarmingly, from the water somewhere off the wharf’s end. “Some one’s fallen overboard,” Tommy shouted, excitedly. And tearing off cap and coat with a single jerk, tossed these cumbering articles of apparel aside and raced down the dock in the direction of the cry. Lister and Erica were only a step or two behind him, but not near enough to hold him back from the reckless project he so obviously had in mind. Reaching the edge of the wharf, he mounted in one agile leap to the heavy timbering at the side and, lifting both arms above his head, dove into the blackness below. Erica’s cry of frightened protest rang out simultaneously with Tommy’s dive, and the next moment both Lister and she were standing on the edge of the wharf, staring anxiously down at the choppy little waves raised by the wind’s violence. The side of the wharf Tommy had dived from was that away from the moon, and until the eyes of the two up above grew accustomed to the darkness, they could make out nothing. Then, gradually, they could see the white outline of the little wave-crests and the blacker hollows between, and last of all a moving, dark object that looked like a head swimming very slowly back toward the dock.