Betty gave an anxious look at Aunty Bell.

"Is it a very bad storm, Cap'n Brandt?" she asked, almost in a whisper.

"Wust I ever see, Mis' West, since I worked round here," nodding kindly to Betty as he spoke, his face lighting up. He had always believed in her because the captain had taken her home. "Everything comin' in under double reefs,-them that _is_ a-comin' in. They say two o' them Lackawanna coal-barges went adrift at daylight an'

come ash.o.r.e at Crotch Island. Had two men drownded, I hear."

"Who told you that?" asked Sanford. The news only increased his anxiety.

"The cap'n of the tow line, sir. He's just telegraphed to New Haven for a big wreckin' tug."

Sanford told Captain Brandt to wait, ran upstairs two steps at a time, and reappeared in long rubber boots and mackintosh.

"I'll walk up toward the lighthouse and find out how they are getting on, Mrs. Bell," he said. "We can see them from the lantern deck. Come, Captain Brandt, I want you with me." A skilled seaman like the skipper might be needed before the day was over.

Betty and Aunty Bell looked after them until they had swung back the garden gate with its clanking ball and chain, and had turned to breast the gale in their walk of a mile or more up the sh.o.r.e road.

"Oh, aunty," said Betty, with a tremor in her voice, all the blood gone from her face, "do you think anything will happen?"

"Not 's long 's Cap'n Joe's aboard, child. He ain't a-takin' no risks he don't know all about. Ye needn't worry a mite. Set down an' finish yer breakfas'. I believe Mr. Sanford ain't done more 'n swallow his coffee," she added, with a pitying look, as she inspected his plate.

The fact that her husband was exposed in an open boat to the fury of a southeaster made no more impression upon her mind than if he had been reported asleep upstairs. She knew there was no storm the captain could not face.

CHAPTER XIX

FROM THE LANTERN DECK

Tony Marvin, the keeper of Keyport Light, was in his little room next the fog-horn when Sanford and the skipper, wet and glistening as two seals, knocked at the outer door of his quarters.

"Well, I want to know!" broke out Tony in his bluff, hearty way, as he opened the door. "Come in,-come in! Nice weather for ducks, ain't it?

Sunthin' 's up, or you fellers wouldn't be out to-day," leading the way to his room. "Anybody drownded?" he asked facetiously, stopping for a moment on the threshold.

"Not yet, Tony," said Sanford in a serious tone. He had known the keeper for years,-had, in fact, helped him get his appointment at the Light. "But I'm worried about Captain Joe and Caleb." He opened his coat, and walked across the room to a bench set against the whitewashed wall, little streams of water following him as he moved.

"Did you see them go by? They're in Captain Potts's Dolly Varden."

"Gosh hang, no! Ye ain't never tellin' me, be ye, that the cap'n 's gone to the Ledge in all this smother? And that fool Caleb with him, too?"

"Yes, and Lonny Bowles," interrupted the skipper. As he spoke he pulled off one of his water-logged boots and poured the contents into a fire-bucket standing against the wall.

"How long since they started?" asked the keeper anxiously, taking down his spygla.s.s from a rack above the buckets.

"Half an hour ago."

"Then they're this side of Crotch Island yit, if they're anywheres.

Let's go up to the lantern. Mebbe we can see 'em," he said, unlatching the door of the tower. "Better leave them boots behind, Mr. Sanford, and shed yer coat. A feller's knees git purty tired climbin' these steps, when he ain't used to't; there's a hundred and ten of 'em.

Here, try these slippin's of mine," and he kicked a pair of slippers from under a chair. "Guess they'll fit ye. Seems to me Caleb's been doin' his best to git drownded since that high-flyer of a gal left him. He come by here daylight, one mornin' awhile ago, in a sharpie that you wouldn't cross a creek in, and it blowin' half a gale. I ain't surprised o' nothin' in Caleb, but Cap'n Joe ought'er have more sense. What's he goin' for, anyhow, to-day?" he grumbled, as Sanford drew on the slippers and placed his foot on the first iron step of the spiral staircase.

"He's taken the new pump with him," said Sanford, as he followed the keeper up the winding steps, the skipper close behind. "They broke the old pump on Sat.u.r.day, and everything is stopped on the Ledge. Captain knows we're behind, and he doesn't want to lose an hour. But it was a foolish venture. He had no business to risk his life in a blow like this, Tony." There was a serious tone in Sanford's voice which quickened the keeper's step.

"What good is the pump to him, if he does get it there? Men can't work to-day," Tony answered. He was now a dozen steps ahead, his voice sounding hollow in the reverberations of the round tower.

"Oh, that ain't a-goin' to stop us!" shouted the skipper from below, resting a moment to get his breath as he spoke. "We've got the masonry clean out o' water; we're all right if Cap'n Joe can git steam on the hoister."

The keeper, whose legs had become as supple as a squirrel's in the five years he had climbed up and down these stairs, reached the lantern deck some minutes ahead of the others. He was wiping the sweat from the lantern gla.s.s with a clean white cloth, and drawing back the day curtains so that they might see better, when Sanford's head appeared above the lens deck.

Once upon the iron floor of the deck, the roar of the wind and the dash of the rain, which had been deadened by the thick walls of the structure surrounding the staircase below, burst upon them seemingly with increased fury. A tremulous, swaying motion was plainly felt. A novice would have momentarily expected the structure to measure its length on the rocks below. Above the roar of the storm could be heard, at intervals, the thunder of the surf breaking on Crotch Island beach.

"Gosh A'mighty!" exclaimed the keeper, adjusting the gla.s.s, which he had carried up in his hand. "It's a-humpin' things, and no mistake.

See them rollers break on Crotch Island," and he swept his gla.s.s around. "I see 'em. There they are,-three o' them. There's Cap'n Joe,-ain't no mistakin' him. He's got his cap on, same's he allers wears. And there's Caleb; his beard's a-flyin' straight out. Who's that in the red flannen shirt?"

"Lonny Bowles," said the skipper.

"Yes, that's Bowles. He's a-bailin' for all he's worth. Cap'n Joe's got the tiller and Caleb's a-hangin' on the sheet. Here, Mr. Sanford,"

and he held out the gla.s.s, "ye kin see 'em plain 's day."

Sanford waved the gla.s.s away. The keeper's eyes, he said, were better accustomed to scanning a scene like this. He himself could see the Dolly, a mile or more this side of Crotch Island Point, and nearly two miles away from where the three watchers stood. She was hugging the inside sh.o.r.e-line, her sail close-reefed. He could even make out the three figures, which were but so many black dots beaded along her gunwale. All about the staggering boat seethed the gray sea, mottled in wavy lines of foam. Over this circled white gulls, shrieking as they flew.

"He's gittin' ready to go about," continued the keeper, his eye still to the gla.s.s. "I see Caleb shiftin' his seat. They know they can't make the P'int on that leg. Jiminy-whiz, but it's soapy out there! See 'er take that roller! Gosh!"

The boat careened, the dots crowded together, and the Dolly bore away from the sh.o.r.e. It was evidently Captain Joe's intention to give Crotch Island Point a wide berth and then lay a straight course for the Ledge, now barely visible through the haze, the derricks and masonry alone showing clear above the fringe of breaking surf tossed white against the dull gray sky.

All eyes were now fixed on the Dolly. Three times she laid a course toward the Ledge, and three times she was forced back behind the island.

"They've got to give it up," said the keeper, laying down his gla.s.s.

"That tide cuts round that 'ere P'int like a mill-tail, to say nothin'

o' them smashers that's rollin' in. How she keeps afloat out there is what beats me."

"She wouldn't if Cap'n Joe wasn't at the tiller," said the skipper, with a laugh. "Ye can't drown him no more 'n a water-rat." He had an abiding faith in Captain Joe almost as great as that of Aunty Bell.

Sanford's face brightened. An overwhelming anxiety for the safety of the endangered men had strangely, almost unaccountably unnerved him.

It was some comfort to feel Captain Brandt's confidence in Captain Joe's ability to meet the situation; for that little c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.l battling before him as if for its very life-one moment on top of a mountain of water, and the next buried out of sight-held between its frail sides not only two of the best men whom he knew, but really two of the master spirits of their cla.s.s. One of them, Captain Joe, Sanford admired more than any other man, loving him, too, as he had loved but few.

With a smile to the skipper, he looked off again toward the sea. He saw the struggling boat make a fourth attempt to clear the Point, and in the movement lurch wildly; he saw, too, that her long boom was swaying from side to side. Through the driving spray he made out that two of the dots were trying to steady it. The third dot was standing in the stern.

Here some new movement caught his eye. He strained his neck forward; then taking the gla.s.s from the skipper watched the little craft intently.

"There's something the matter," he said nervously, after a moment's pause. "That's Captain Joe waving to one of those two smacks out there scudding in under close reefs. Look yourself; am I right, Tony?" and he pa.s.sed the gla.s.s to the keeper again.

"Looks like it, sir," replied Tony in a low tone, the end of the gla.s.s fixed on the tossing boat. "The smack sees 'em now, sir. She's goin'

about."

The fishing-smack careened, fluttered in the wind like a baffled pigeon, and bore across to the plunging boat.

"The spray's a-flyin' so ye can't see clear, sir," said the keeper, his eye still at the gla.s.s. "She ain't actin' right, somehow; that boom seems to bother 'em. Cap'n Joe's runnin' for'ard. Gosh! that one went clean over 'er. Look out! _Look out!_" in quick crescendo, as if the endangered crew could have heard him. "See 'er take 'em!

There's another went clean across. My G.o.d, Mr. Sanford! she's over,-capsized!"