Tish Plays the Game by Mary Roberts Rinehart Page B

neighbor, who was just hauling in the largest halibut of the season, had the misfortune to have his line cut in half and of seeing the halibut escape.
    On the other hand, her resolution was strengthened by a letter from Charlie Sands, her nephew, which showed the moral deterioration being fostered by these wretched liquor smugglers.
    “Dear Aunt Tish,” he wrote. “It has just occurred to me that you are near the Canadian border. Scotch ought to be good and also cheap there. Why not fill a hot-water bag or two for me? Even a bottle or two would not come amiss, and if you are nervous on the train I suggest the space outside your ventilator in the drawing-room.”
    Tish’s indignation was intense. She wrote him a very sharp letter, informing him that she was now in the government service. “If the worst comes,” she said, “I shall not hesitate to arrest my own family. No Carberry has been jailed yet for breaking the nation’s laws, but it is not too late to begin.”
    It may have been pure coincidence, but Lily May ordered a hot-water bag from the mainland soon after that. She said her feet got cold at night.
    I must confess Lily May puzzled us at that time. She would not go fishing, but stayed at home and insulted poor Christopher. She claimed that he spent most of his time at the woodpile smoking cigarettes, and so she would go out and watch him. Hannah said that her manner to him was really overbearing, and that she believed she said quite insulting things to him under her breath.
    She counted the wood he cut too. Once Hannah heard her say, “Twice two fifty is five hundred. You’ve still five hundred to go.”
    And he groaned and said, “It’s the h— of a long way yet.”
    She was very odd about the revenue matter, also, and said very little when Tish got her badge.
    “Well,” she said, “it may stop a bullet. But that’s all it will stop.”
    As Tish said, such cynicism in the young was really bewildering.

IV
    I T WAS THE MIDDLE of July when Tish finally started on her dangerous duty. Aggie had begged to be left at home, but Tish had arranged a duty for each of us.
    “I shall steer the boat,” she said. “Aggie is to lower and lift up the anchor, and you, Lizzie, are to take charge of the fishing tackle and the bait.”
    We were, as I have said, to pretend to be fishing, and thus avert the suspicion of the bootleggers.
    Lily May and Christopher saw us off, and Lily May’s farewell was characteristic of her.
    “Pick out a good-looking rum runner for me,” Lily May called. “I know father would love to have one in the family.”
    We had gone about three miles, I think, when I heard a peculiar noise, like the rumbling of steam, but no one else noticed it. A little later, however, Aggie called out that there was a fountain playing not far ahead. Tish at once announced that it was a whale spouting, and changed our course so as to avoid it.
    We saw no more of it, and Aggie was beginning to look white about the ears and the tip of the nose as usual, when Tish decided to drop our anchor and there take up our position. She therefore stopped the engine and Aggie heaved the anchor overboard. But we did not stop.
    “There’s certainly a very fast tide,” Tish said, looking over the side. “We are going as fast as before.”
    “Then the bottom’s moving too,” Aggie said sharply. “The anchor’s caught, all right.”
    We looked about. Either we were moving out to sea or Smith’s Island was going toward the mainland and would soon collide with it. And at that moment the front end of the boat dipped down, shipping an enormous amount of sea, and throwing us all forward, and then the entire boat shot ahead as if it had been fired out of a gun.
    “It’s an earthquake, Tish,” Aggie groaned, lying prone in the water.
    Tish pulled herself to her knees and stared about her.
    “It may be a tidal wave,” she said. “But they go in, not out.” She then stared again, forward, and finally rose to her feet.