Bivens was vastly amused at Stuart's orders.

"Jim, you're as fussy as an old maid. You ought to marry and join the human race."

Stuart scanned the horizon, watching a flock of ducks working their way northward. The sign was ominous. Birds know which way the wind is going to blow before it comes, and if a gale is on the way they always work into the teeth of it. They are all equipped with barometers somewhere inside their little brain-cells.

It was useless to tell this to Bivens. He didn't have sense enough to understand it. But he quietly made up his mind to take up the decoys and row in as soon as the tide ebbed down to two feet of water.

In the meantime he would make the best of the situation. The ducks began to come in and decoy like chickens. He killed half a dozen and in the excitement began to forget the foolhardiness of the trip.

Bivens shot a dozen times, missed, got disgusted and began to fret and complain.

At first Stuart made no answer to his nagging suggestions until Bivens got to the one thing that had evidently been rankling in his heart.

"Jim, you're the biggest puzzle I ever struck. Every time I look at you I have to rub my eyes to see if I'm awake. Would you mind telling me the mental process by which you rejected my offer?"

"What's the use to discuss it, I've made up my mind--and that's the end of it."

"But I want to know," Bivens persisted. "Your silence on the subject makes me furious every time I think of it. How any human being outside of an insane asylum could be so foolish is beyond my ken."

"I know it is, so let's drop it," Stuart interrupted.

"I won't drop it. You rile me. You're the only man I've struck on this earth that didn't have his price."

"Perhaps we have different ways of fixing values. To me value is a thing which gives life. If it brings death is it valuable? You are not yet fifty years old and a wreck. What's the use? What can you do with your money now?"

"It brings luxury, ease, indulgence, power, admiration, wonder, and the envy of the world."

"What's the good of luxury if you can't enjoy it; ease if you never take it; indulgence when you have lost the capacity to play; power if you're too busy getting more to stop and wield it?"

"Jim, you're the biggest fool I ever knew, without a single exception,"

Bivens said, petulantly.

Stuart glanced anxiously toward the yacht. It was three o'clock. The tide had ebbed half out and there was barely enough water on the flats now for the tender to cross. It was snowing harder and the wind had begun to inch in toward the north.

"No more ducks to-day, Cal," Stuart said briskly, returning to his tone of friendly comradeship. "We've got to get away from here. It's getting colder every minute. It will be freezing before night."

"Well, let it freeze," Bivens cried, peevishly. "What do we care? It's just ten minutes' run when the tender comes."

To Stuart's joy he saw the men start the tender.

"It's all right, they're coming now!" he exclaimed. "We'll have another crack or two before they get here."

He crouched low in the blind for five minutes without getting a shot, rose and looked for the tender. To his horror he saw her drifting helpless before the wind, her engine stopped and both men waving frantically their signals of distress.

"My God!" he exclaimed. "The tender's engine is broken down."

Bivens rose and looked in the direction Stuart pointed.

"Why don't the fools use the oars?"

"They can't move her against this wind!"

"Will they go to sea?" Bivens asked, with some anxiety.

"No, they'll bring up somewhere on a mud flat or marsh in the bay on this low water, but God help them if they can't fight their way back before flood tide."

"Why?" Bivens asked, incredulously.

"They'd freeze to death in an open boat to-night."

"Norwegian sailors? Bosh! Not on your life! They were born on icebergs."

Stuart rose and looked anxiously at the receding tide. He determined to try to reach the yacht at once. He put the guns into their cases, snapped the lids of the ammunition boxes, stowed the ducks he had killed under the stern of the boat, and stepped out into the shallow, swiftly moving water. He decided to ignore Bivens and regard him as so much junk. He pulled the boat out of the blind, shoved it among the decoys, and took them up quickly while the little financier sat muttering peevish, foolish complaints.

"Now if you will lie down on the stern deck, I'll see if I can shove her."

"Why can't I sit up?" Bivens growled.

"You can, of course, but I can't move this boat against the wind if you do."

"All right, but it's a rotten position to be in and I'm getting cold."

Stuart made no reply, but began to shove the little boat as rapidly as possible across the shallow water.

The snow had ceased to fall and the cold was increasing every moment.

He scanned the horizon anxiously, but could see no sign of the disabled tender.

He had gone perhaps two hundred yards when the boat grounded on the flats. He saw at once that it was impossible to make the yacht until flood tide. The safest thing to do was to get out and push to the island marsh, two or three hundred yards away. There they could take exercise enough to keep warm until the tide came in again. It would be a wait of two hours in bitter cold and pitch darkness, but there was no help for it.

Bivens sat up and growled:

"What the devil's the matter? Can't you hurry up, I'm freezing to death!"

"We can't make it on this tide. We'll have to go to the marsh."

"Can't we walk over the flats and let the boat go?"

"I could walk it, but you couldn't."

"Why not?" Bivens asked, angrily.

"Because you haven't the strength. This mud is six inches deep and tough as tar. You'd give out before you'd gone two hundred yards."

"Nothing of the sort!" Bivens protested, viciously. "I'll show you!"

He stepped out of the boat and started wading through the mud. He had made about ten steps when his boot stuck fast, he reeled and fell. The water was less than six inches deep but his arms were wet to the skin as far as the elbows, and the icy water got into his boots and drenched his feet.

Stuart picked him up without comment and led him back to the boat.

Bivens was about to climb in when the lawyer spoke quickly: