Wakulla | Page 7

all safe on board the schooner and stowed down in the hold, and he soon had the trunks from the station and the bags from the hotel brought down in a wagon.
The captain said they had better spend the night on board, as he wanted to be off by daylight, and they might as well get to feeling at home before they started. They thought so too; and so, after a walk through the city, where, among other curious sights, they saw a post-office built on a bridge, they returned to the Nancy Bell for supper.
Poor Mr. Elmer, exhausted by the unusual exertions of the day, lay awake and coughed most of the night, but the children slept like tops. When Mark did wake he forgot where he was, and in trying to sit up and look around, bumped his head against the low ceiling of his berth.
Daylight was streaming in at the round glass dead-eye that served as a window, and to Mark's great surprise he felt that the schooner was moving. Slipping down from his berth, and quietly dressing himself, so as not to disturb his father, he hurried on deck, where he was greeted by "Captain Li," who told him he had come just in time to see something interesting.
The Nancy Bell was in tow of a little puffing steam-tug, and was already some miles from Bangor down the Penobscot River. The clouds of steam rising into the cold air from the surface of the warmer water were tinged with gold by the newly-risen sun. A heavy frost rested on the spruces and balsams that fringed the banks of the river, and as the sunlight struck one twig after another, it covered them with millions of points like diamonds. Many cakes of ice were floating in the river, showing that its navigation would soon be closed for the winter.
To one of these cakes of ice, towards which a boat from the schooner was making its way, the captain directed Mark's attention. On this cake, which was about as large as a dinner- table, stood a man anxiously watching the approach of the boat.
"What I can't understand," said the captain, "is where he ever found a cake of ice at this time of year strong enough to bear him up."
"Who is he? How did he get there, and what is he doing?" asked Mark, greatly excited.
"Who he is, and how he got there, are more than I know," answered "Captain Li." "What he is doing, is waiting to be taken off. The men on the tug sighted him just before you came on deck, and sung out to me to send a boat for him. It's a mercy we didn't come along an hour sooner, or we never would have seen him through the mist."
"You mean we would have missed him," said Mark, who, even upon so serious an occasion, could not resist the temptation to make a pun.
By this time the boat had rescued the man from his unpleasant position, and was returning with him on board. Before it reached the schooner Mark rushed down into the cabin and called to his parents and Ruth to hurry on deck. As they were already up and nearly dressed, they did so, and reached it in time to see the stranger helped from the boat and up the side of the vessel.
He was so exhausted that he was taken into the cabin, rolled in warm blankets, and given restoratives and hot drinks before he was questioned in regard to his adventure.
Meantime the schooner was again slipping rapidly down the broad river, and Mark, who remained on deck with his father, questioned him about the "river's breath," as he called the clouds of steam that arose from it.
"That's exactly what it is, the 'river's breath,'" said Mr. Elmer. "Warm air is lighter than cold, and consequently always rises; and the warm, damp air rising from the surface of the river into the cold air above is condensed into vapor, just as your warm, damp breath is at this very moment."
"But I should think the water would be cold with all that ice floating in it," said Mark.
"It would seem cold if we were surrounded by the air of a hot summer day," answered his father; "but being of a much higher temperature than the air above it, it would seem quite warm to you now if you should put your bare hand into it. We can only say that a thing is warm by comparing it with something that is colder, or cold by comparison with that which is warmer."
When Mark and his father went down to breakfast they found the rescued man still wrapped in blankets, but talking in a faint voice to the captain; and at the table