Although he denied to himself that he felt any jealousy, he had begun to believe that it was his duty to separate Conny and Lorna. He was not so lacking in humane instincts as to wish that Conny had lost his grip on the rope when he was overboard so that the difficulty would have been quite satisfactorily settled; and yet the thought flashed into his mind. As Ralph conned the course of the plunging _Fenique_ he likewise conned the problem of how to get rid of Conway Degger without inspiring in Lorna’s breast a greater liking for the fellow than he believed she already sustained. They raised the Lower Trillion life-saving station and drove on for the mouth of the harbor. A can buoy marked the channel and a deep-mouthed bell in a bracket on the end of the stone pier tolled intermittently. Ralph skilfully steered into the calm pool behind this breakwater. "Some traveling," he observed, when he had shut off the engine and looked at his watch. "Forty-five minutes from the light. The old tub never made better time, even in a flat calm." "Are we safe at last?" gasped Degger, sitting up. "Just as safe as though you were at home and in bed," rejoined Ralph rather bruskly. "What shall I do?" Lorna asked. "I look a fright." "Why, Miss Lorna," Conny said, quickly regaining his spirits, "you’ll have time enough to dry your things in the cabin. We’ll be here for hours, I suppose." "_We_ may," Ralph said quickly. "But Lorna can go home by land. I’ll find somebody with a flivver to take her up to Clay Head." "Oh!" exclaimed Degger. "Then I guess I’ll go with her." "Guess again," Ralph rejoined. "I need you." "What’s that?" ejaculated the other. "We’ll start back in the _Fenique_ just as soon as the wind hauls off a little. She’s fluttering now." "Do you think for one moment that I would risk my life outside in this dinky little craft again unless it is calm? I guess all these motor-boats are alike—as unsafe as they can be!" "Oh, I’ll not start back for the light until all danger is over," Ralph told him quietly. "The clouds are breaking. In a couple of hours it may be all right. And we must pick up Tobias’s dory and tow it in." "Of course!" Lorna said cheerfully. "I had forgotten that." "Say!" exclaimed Degger loudly, "the skipper’s dory can drift to the Bahamas and back again, as far as I am concerned. I wouldn’t trust myself outside again to-day——" "Then who will pay Tobias for his boat?" demanded Ralph sharply. Lorna had been about to suggest this very point—although more diplomatically—when Ralph blurted out his question. The scorn expressed on his face and the fire in his eyes stirred her to some defense of Degger’s selfishness. "Of course _I_ will pay Mr. Bassett," she said decisively. "It is my fault that we lost the dory. I asked Conny to take me out in it. I will pay Mr. Bassett if it is lost."