"There is no hurry now, for sure," she said. "TheFalconis half way to Carn du by this time. I do not suppose she will return until it is too dark to do more than signal important news very briefly."
"But this is important," cried Mrs. Vansittart shrilly. "It is of the utmost importance to me."
"'Fraid it can't be helped ma'am," said Pyne civilly. "Anyhow we're not ashore yet, and I can't see that any time will be wasted."
The electric bell jangled in the room, causing Mrs. Vansittart to jump visibly.
"Oh, what is it?" she screamed.
"My father is calling one of us up," explained Constance. "It may be a message from Jack. You go, Enid."
Enid hurried away. She had scarcely reached the next floor before Mrs. Vansittart, who seemed to have moods in full compass, said sweetly:
"Convey my deep obligations to Mr. Brand, won't you, Charlie. Indeed, you might go now and write out the text of my message to your uncle. Some early opportunity of despatching it may offer."
"All right," he said in the calm way which so effectually concealed his feelings. "Shall I escort you to your room?"
"By no means. I came here quite unassisted. Miss Brand and I can chat for a little while. It is most wearying to be pent all day and all night in one little room. Even the change to another little room is grateful."
Pyne bowed, and they heard his steady tread as he ascended the stairs.
"Quite a nice boy, Charlie," said Mrs. Vansittart, coming forward into the kitchen, with its medley of queer-looking, hissing, steaming contrivances.
"Yes. We think he is exceedingly nice," said Constance. She wondered why the other woman seemed always to stand in the shadow, by choice. The strongest light in the darkened chamber came from the grate, and Mrs. Vansittart deliberately turned away from it.
"If all goes well he will soon be my nephew by marriage," went on the other. "I quitted New York yesterday week in order to marry his uncle in Paris. Rather a disastrous beginning to a new career, is it not?"
"I hope not, indeed. Perhaps you are surmounting difficulties at the commencement rather than at the end."
"It may be. I am so much older than you that I am less optimistic. But you did not grasp the significance of my words. I said I was to be married in Paris."
"Yes," said Constance, still at a loss to catch the drift of an announcement which Mrs. Vansittart seemed so anxious to thrust upon her.
"Well, theChinookwas wrecked last night, or rather, early this morning. The name of the ship was not made known throughout the world until long after daybreak. It is quite impossible that Mr. Traill should have reached this remote corner of England from Paris in the interval."
For one moment the girl was puzzled. Then a ready solution occurred to her.
"Oh, of course, that is very simple. Mr. Traill was awaiting your arrival in Southampton, thinking to take you by surprise no doubt. That is sure to be the explanation. What a shock the first telegram must have given him!"
"How did he ascertain that his nephew and I were alive?"
"The very first thing father did was to telegraph the names of all the survivors. I know that is so because I saw the message."
"Ah. He is a man of method, I suppose. You are proud of him, I heard you say."
"I think there is no one like him in all the world. We are so happy at home that sometimes I fear it cannot last. Yet, thank God, there is no excuse for such night-mare terrors."
Mrs. Vansittart cooed in her gentle way.
"Indeed, you have my earnest good wishes in that respect," she said. "Do we not owe our lives to you? That is an excellent reason for gratitude, if a selfish one. But, some day soon, you will be getting married and leaving the parental roof."
"I do not wish to die an old maid," laughed Constance, "yet I have not discovered a better name than my own up to the present."
She fancied that Mrs. Vansittart winced a little at this remark. Deeming her visitor to be a bundle of nerves, she jumped to the conclusion that the other woman read into the words some far-fetched disparagement of her own approaching marriage.
"Of course," she continued, affably tactful, "I will hold another view when the right man asks me."
"Were you in my place," murmured her visitor, apparently thinking aloud rather than addressing Constance, "you would not be fearful of misfortune? You would not read an omen of ill luck into this dramatic interruption of all your plans? After many years of widowhood I am about to be married again to a man who is admirable in every way. He is rich, distinguished in manner and appearance, a person of note not only in the States but on the Continent. No woman of my years might desire a better match. Why could not the way be made smooth for me? Why should the poorChinook, out of the hundreds of mail-steamers which cross the Atlantic yearly, be picked out for utter disaster? It is a warning—a threat from the gods!"
The unconscious bitterness of her tone moved the girl to find words of consolation.
"I would not question the ways of Providence in the least," she said. "Surely you have far more reason for thankfulness than for regret."
"Regret! I am not regretting. But I have gone through such trials that I am unnerved. There, child! Forgive me for troubling you. And—and—kiss me, will you, and say you wish me well!"
She moved nearer, as if driven by uncontrollable impulse. Constance, not prepared for such an outburst, was nevertheless deeply touched by this appeal for sympathy.
"I wish you all the joy and happiness which I am sure you deserve," she said, stooping to kiss the wan, shrinking face held up to her.
Mrs. Vansittart burst into a paroxysm of tears and tottered towards the door.
"No, no," she gasped, as Constance caught her by the arm. "Do not come with me. I am—shaken. It will pass. For God's sake, let me go alone!"
Pyne found Enid rosy-red and inclined to be tearful. The dying light of day was still strong enough in the service-room to permit these things to be seen.
"No bad news, I hope?" he inquired, though the sight of Stephen Brand, seated at his desk and placidly writing, was reassuring.
The question steadied her to an extent.
"It is nothing of any consequence," she said and darted past him.
Brand looked up from his journal. He smiled, though the American thought there was a hint of pain in his eyes.
"I am going to lose one of my girls," he said. "Oh, no, this is not a loss by death but by marriage. If I were a Frenchman, I would describe it as gaining a son. Enid has just received what is tantamount to a proposal."
"By flag-wagging?" Pyne was naturally astounded.
"Yes. You would not expect one of the people from theChinookto be so enterprising."
"I—don't—know," said Pyne, punctuating each word with a deliberate nod.
"Well, in any case, I would not have forwarded the application after an acquaintance of eighteen hours," observed Brand with equal deliberation.
"They're two powerful fine girls," said Pyne, steering clear of the point. "They have just been telling me how Miss Enid happened along. It reads like a fairy tale."
"She was given to me by the winds and waves, yet she is dear to me as my own child. I shall miss her greatly—if all goes well here."
"I've cottoned on to both of them something wonderful. But, if I am not intruding into private affairs, how comes it that Miss Enid is being telegraphed for? Of course I can understand the gentleman being in a hurry. I would feel that way myself if the conditions were favorable."
Pyne could be as stolid as a red Indian when the occasion demanded it. Brand found no hint in his face of the hidden thought in his words.
"Have they said anything to you of a man named Stanhope?" inquired the lighthouse-keeper, resuming the entry in his diary after a sharp glance upwards.
"Y-yes. They pointed him out to me this morning. In the navy, I think. Fellow with a title, and that sort of thing."
"No. His mother is Lady Margaret Stanhope, being an earl's daughter, but his father was a knight. He has been paying attentions to Enid for a year and more, to my knowledge and to his mother's exceeding indignation, I fancy."
"That is where we on the other side have the pull of you."
"Have you? I wonder. However, Lady Margaret's views have not troubled me. I will deal with her when the time comes. At present it looks fairly certain that Master Jack has settled matters on his own account. I may be mistaken, of course. How do you interpret this?"
He closed the journal and handed to Pyne a memorandum taken down letter by letter by a sailor as Brand read the signal:
"Mother sends her love to Enid."
"Did mother ever convey her love to Enid before?" asked Pyne.
"No."
"Then I call that neat. I take off my hat to Stanhope. He and mamma have had a heart-to-heart talk."
Brand leaned his head on his hands, with clenched fists covering his ears. There was a period of utter silence until the lighthouse-keeper rose to light the lamp.
Pyne watched him narrowly.
"I may be trespassing on delicate ground," he said at last. "If I am, you are not the sort of man to stand on ceremony. In the States, you know, when the authorities want to preserve a park section they don't say: 'Please do not walk on the grass.' They put up a board which reads: 'Keep off.' We never kick. We're used to it."
"My notice-board, if required, will be less curt, at any rate," replied Brand, and they faced each other. Though their words were light, no pleasant conceit lurked in their minds. There was a question to be asked and answered, and it held the issues of life and death.
"What did you mean just now by saying, 'if all goes well here?' Is there any special reason why things should not go well?"
The young Philadelphian might have been hazarding an inquiry about a matter of trivial interest, so calm was he, so smooth his utterance. But Brand had made no mistake in estimating this youngster's force of character, nor did he seek to temporize.
He extended an arm towards the reef.
"You hear that?" he said.
"Yes."
"It may boil that way for weeks."
"So I have been told."
"By whom?"
"Mr. Emmett told me."
"Ah! He and I have discussed the matter already. Yet I imagine that neither he, nor any other man in the place save myself, grasps the true meaning of the fact."
"I've been theorizing," said Pyne. "It occurred to me that this light isn't here for amusement."
He looked up at the lamp and smiled. The pillar, in those days, must have been a haunt of illusions, for Brand, like Constance and Pyne himself in the case of Mrs. Vansittart, thought he caught an expression familiar to his eyes long before he had seen that clear-cut, splendidly intelligent face.
But there was no time for idle speculation. He glanced into the well of the stairs to make sure that no one was ascending.
Then he approached nearer to Pyne and said in an intense whisper:
"It is folly to waste words with you. I have reasoned this thing out and now I will tell you what I have decided. I will take the watch from eight until twelve. At twelve you will relieve me, and I will go below to secure provisions and water sufficient to maintain the lives of my daughters, you and myself for a few hours longer than the others. By right, if I followed the rules I have promised to obey, I alone should live. That is impossible. A Spartan might do it, but I cannot abandon my girls and yet retain my senses. I trust you because I must have a confederate. If the weather does not break before tomorrow night we must barricade the stairs—and fight—if necessary."
His face was drawn and haggard, his eyes blazing. He shook as one in the first throes of fever. He seemed to await his companion's verdict with an overpowering dread lest any attempt should be made to question the justice of his decree.
"Yes. I figured it out that way, too," said Pyne. "It's queer, isn't it, to be in such a fix when there's all sorts of help within call, so to speak. We might as well be in a mine closed up by an explosion. And, I'll tell you what—I'm real sorry for you."
Brand, collapsing under the strain, sank into a chair.
"It is an awful thing," he moaned, "to condemn so many men, women, and children, to such a death."
A spasm of pain made Pyne's lips tremulous for an instant. He had forgotten Elsie and Mamie.
But his voice was fully under control when he spoke again.
"You can count on me in the deal in all but one thing," he said.
The older man looked up fiercely. What condition could be imposed in the fulfilment of a duty so terrible?
"I am here by chance," went on Pyne. "One of your daughters may have told you that Mrs. Vansittart came from New York to marry my uncle. Anyhow you would know she was dear to him by his message today. She is sort of in my charge, and I can't desert her. It's hard luck, as I don't care a cent for her. She's the kind of woman old men adore—fascinating, bird-like creatures—when the cage is gilded."
Brand sprang to his feet and raced up to the trimming-stage. When his hands were on the lamp he felt surer of himself. It gave him strength during the hurricane and it would strengthen him now.
"There can be no exceptions," he said harshly. Pyne waited until the lighthouse-keeper rejoined him.
"I ought to have put my proposition before you first and made a speech afterwards," he said. "Constance and Enid will join you here when you say the word, but I will be on the other side of the barricade."
"Nonsense!" cried Brand. "You have no right to thrust away the chance that is given you. You saved all these people once. Why should you die uselessly?"
"What! Suppose it pans out that way. Suppose we live a couple of weeks and escape. Am I to face the old man and tell him—the truth? No, sir. You don't mean it. You wouldn't do it yourself. What about that shark the girls told me of. I can guess just what happened. He wanted the light refreshment in the boat. Did you scoot back when you saw his fin? I'm a heap younger than you, Mr. Brand, but that bluff doesn't go."
"Thank Heaven, we have twenty-four hours yet!" murmured Brand.
"It will be all the same when we have only twenty-four seconds. Let us fix it that way right now. Don't you see, it will be easier to deceive the girls? And there's another reason. Barricade and shoot as you like, it will be a hard thing to keep three-score desperate men boxed up down below. When they begin to diet on colza there will be trouble. A few of us, ready to take chances, will be helpful. Some of them may have to die quick, you know."
Brand closed his eyes in sheer affright. In that way he tried to shut out a vision.
"Be it so," he gasped. "May the Lord help us."
It was the responsibility that mastered him. Judges on the bench often break down when they sentence a criminal to death, but what judge, humane, tenderhearted and God-fearing, ever pronounced the doom of seventy-eight people snatched from a merciful death to be steeped in horrors.
At last his iron will predominated. The knowledge that the path of duty lay straight before him cheered his tortured soul. No man could say he erred in trying to save his children. That was a trust as solemn as any conferred by the Elder Brethren of the Trinity.
He placed a hand on Pyne's shoulder, for this youngster had become dear to him.
"Had I a son," he said, "I should wish him to be like you. Let us strive to forget the evils that threaten us. Brooding is useless. If need be, you will take charge of the lower deck. There is starvation allowance for three more days at the worst. But I hate the thought of starting the new scale tomorrow."
"It may not be necessary."
"Candidly, I fear it will. I know the Cornish coast too well. When bad weather sets in from the southwest at this season it holds for a week at the lowest computation."
"Is there no other way? Can nothing be done out there?"
"Able men, the best of sailors, the most experienced of engineers, have striven for half a century to devise some means of storm communication with a rock lighthouse placed as this is. They have failed. There is none."
"That's good," cried Pyne quite pleasantly. "Where is your pouch? I feel like a smoke. If I hadn't fired that question at you I should have wasted a lot of time in hard thinking."
Brand had to scheme that night to reach the store-room unobserved. TheFalcon, steaming valiantly to her observation post near the buoy, aided him considerably. He permitted the night watch to gather in the service-room whilst he supplied the men with tobacco, and stationed the officer on the gallery to observe the trawler in case she showed any signal lights.
Since the attempt on the lock Constance gave the key to her father after each visit. For the rest, the inmates of the pillar were sunk in the lethargy of unsatisfied hunger. Constance and Enid, utterly worn out with fatigue, were sound asleep in the kitchen, and the tears coursed down the man's face as he acted the part of a thief in securing the measured allowance of flour and bacon for one meal. The diet of one hungry meal for eighty-one people gave twenty-seven hungry meals for three. He ought to have taken more, but he set his teeth and refused the ungrateful task.
It is oft-times easy for a man to decide upon a set course, but hard to follow it.
"A week!" he murmured. "Perhaps ten days! That is all. Pray Heaven I may not go mad before they die!"
Pyne, watching the light, knew that Brand had succeeded. TheFalconwent; gradually the watch dispersed.
"Where is the hoard?" asked Pyne, making believe that they were playing some comedy.
"Hidden in the kitchen lockers. I could obtain only distilled water. You must persuade the girls in the morning that something went wrong with the apparatus."
As opportunity offered, Brand transferred the tins to the lockers of the service-room. Pyne, who missed nothing, shook his head when it became evident that the last consignment was safely stored away.
"Not much there," he commented.
"I will take no more!" was the fierce cry.
"You ought to."
"I refuse, I tell you! Don't torture me further."
"Any chance of a row in the morning? The purser and Mr. Emmett mount guard when the store-room is opened."
"I acted my role well. I built up the vacancies with empty tins."
"My sakes!" cried Pyne pityingly, "you deserve to win through."
"I think my heart will break," muttered Brand. "But look! The lamp! It needs adjusting."
Indeed, a fresh gale seemed to be springing up. The wind-vane having gone, the index was useless. It was not until a burst of spray drenched the lantern that Brand knew of a change taking place. The wind was backing round towards the north.
The barometer fell slightly. It portended either more wind and dry weather, or less wind accompanied by rain. Who could tell what would happen? Fair or foul, hurricane or calm, all things seemed to be the ungovernable blundering of blind chance.
When the rock was left in peace after the fall of the tide, Pyne promised to keep the light in order if Brand would endeavor to sleep until day-break. Rest was essential to him. He would assuredly break down under the strain if the tension were too long maintained, and a time was coming when he would need all his strength, mental and physical.
"Here have I been snoozing in odd corners ever since I came aboard," urged the American, "and I have nothing to do but starve quietly. It's ridiculous. My funeral is dated: yours isn't. You can't be on deck all the time, you know. Now, just curl up and count sheep jumping over a wall or any old game of the sort until your eyes close of their own accord."
Brand yielded. He lay on the hard boards, with a chair cushion for pillow; all the rugs rescued by Constance were now needed in the hospital. In less than a minute he was sound asleep.
"That was a close call," mused Pyne. "In another hour he would have cracked up. He's a wonder, anyhow."
The lighthouse-keeper slept until long after daybreak. Pyne refused to allow anyone to disturb him.
Soon after seven o'clock the watch reported that two vessels were approaching from the Bay. One was theFalcon, and the sailors soon made out that the other was the Trinity tender from Plymouth.
When they were both nearing the buoy, Brand was aroused.
It was evident that the brief rest had cleared his brain and restored his self-confidence. Instantly he took up the thread of events, and his first words showed how pleased he was that someone of authority in the lighthouse service should be in active communication with him.
Through his glasses he distinguished Stanhope on board the Trinity steamer, standing by the side of the inspecting-officer of the South-Coast lights. Other officials were there, but near Stanhope was a tall elderly man, unknown, and certainly a stranger in Penzance.
TheFalconwas now chartered by press-men, so the civilian on the official boat was evidently a person of consequence. Indeed, Brand imagined, long before Pyne was able to verify the impression, that the newcomer was Mr. Cyrus J. Traill, whom he had failed to notice in the poor light of the previous evening.
He knew quite well that the experienced chief of the lighthouse service would appreciate fully the disabilities under which he labored, with eighty-one mouths to feed from a stock already far below the three months' maximum.
The first telegraphed question betrayed the prevalent anxiety.
"Hope all is well?"
What was he to say? Was it not best to speak boldly and let men know the truth, not alone as to their present desperate plight but revealing the measures he had devised for the protection of the light? He could not make up his mind to launch out into a full explanation that instant.
So he signaled:
"Everyone alive, but many cases of grave collapse."
Stanhope was again the signaler—evidently he had arranged matters with the Admiral at Portsmouth—so Brand expected the prompt reply:
"How are Constance and Enid?"
"Quite well and cheerful."
The tall man near Stanhope bent closer.
"Are Mrs. Vansittart and Pyne all right?"
Brand assumed that the lady was in no worse condition than others. Constance, telling him the state of the sick during a hasty visit, had not mentioned her name.
So he sent the needed assurance, and went on forlornly:
"Suppose no effort can be made to open communication?"
To his great surprise, the answer came:
"We are constructing a raft. When the tide falls this afternoon we will try what can be done."
Ah, how glad he was that he had not obeyed his earlier impulse, and horrified the anxious rescuers by a prophecy of lingering death for many, with the prelude, perchance, of murderous excesses committed by men on the verge of madness. If that story had to be told he would not flinch, but it was a grateful thing that the hour of its telling might at least be deferred.
A long message followed, a string of loving words from relatives ashore to those known to be imprisoned on the rock. During the merely perfunctory reading off of the signals his active mind was canvassing the probabilities of success or failure for the venture of the afternoon. It was high-water about three o'clock, and, in his judgment, with the wind in its present quarter, about northwest by west, the cross seas which would sweep the reef and engulf the lighthouse at half-tide would render it wildly impossible for any raft ever built by man's hands to live in the immediate vicinity of the rock.
However, the issue lay with others now. He knew that they would do all that brave men would dare. He was tempted to make known the inspiring news to all hands, but refrained, because he feared ultimate failure. Beneath his feet was a human volcano. Stirred too deeply, it might become active and dangerous.
So the apathetic multitude in his charge, hungrily awaiting a scanty morsel of food which only provoked what it failed to gratify, must rest content with the long statement written out by the purser and read by him at the door of each room.
Pyne took to Mrs. Vansittart the news of his uncle's presence on the steamer.
"If you would like to see him," he said, "I have no doubt Mr. Brand will let you stand on the gallery for a little while."
She declined, excusing herself on the ground of weakness.
"In this high wind," she said, "it will be very cold out there, and any further exposure would make me very ill."
"That's true enough," he agreed, though he wondered why she raised no question concerning the message she wished him to convey to Mr. Traill.
Had she forgotten the urgency of her words over night? He had carried her instructions quite faithfully to Brand and the latter smiled at the fantasy.
"Time enough to think of such things when we are assured of the lady's departure," he said, and they left it at that.
Thinking to interest her, Pyne told her of the crowd on theFalcon.
"Mostly reporters, Brand thinks," he said. "What a story they will build up in the New York papers. It will be more fun than a box of monkeys to get hold of this week's news and read all the flapdoodle they are printing."
But Mrs. Vansittart was not to be roused from her melancholy. She dreaded the least physical suffering. Privation was a new thing in her life. Today she was inert, timid, a woman who cowered away from the door and was obviously anxious that he should leave her to the quiet misery of the packed bedroom.
As the day passed, a wearisome iteration of all that had gone before, a new feature in the relations of the crowded community made itself disagreeably apparent. Men drew apart from each other, singly, or in small groups. An inconsolable gloom settled on the women. By some means, the knowledge spread that they might all starve to death in the heart of this cold dungeon. They began to loathe it, to upbraid its steadfastness with spoken curses or unrestrained tears. The sanctuary of one day was becoming the tomb of the next. No longer was there competition to look at land or sea from the open windows. Everywhere was settling down a pall of blank, horrible silence and suspicion.
Even Constance yielded to the common terror once when the men of the watch escorted the bearer of a tray-load of provisions to the occupants of the coal-cellar.
"Enid," she whispered, "did you see the light in their eyes? What is it? Does hunger look that way?"
"It must be so, yet it is almost unbelievable. They are far removed from real starvation."
"One would think so. But it is so hard to realize things beforehand. And they have nothing to do. They are brooding all the time. We are slaves to our imagination. Many a sick person is allowed to eat far less than these men have been given, and the deprivation is not felt at all."
"What will become of us, Constance, if we are detained here for many days."
"Dear one, do not ask me. We must not think of such things."
"But dad is thinking of them. I watched his face when I took him a scrap of food just now, and—"
"Hush, dear. Let us pray—and hope."
There was a clatter of feet down the iron stairs. The men of the watch were hustling to unbar the iron door. A solidly built, circular raft had been lowered from the Trinity tender.
An assistant-keeper, wearing a cork jacket, with a rope about his waist, was clinging to a stumpy mast in the centre. Two stout guide-ropes were manipulated from the deck of the vessel, and the flat, unwieldly mass of timber was slowly drifting nearer to the lighthouse with the tide.
The door of the column opened towards the east, so the wind, with its pelting sheets of spray, was almost in the opposite quarter, and the stout granite shaft itself afforded some degree of protection for the entrance.
The scheme signaled from the steamer was a good one. None but a lunatic would endeavor to approach the rock itself, but there was a chance that the raft might be made to drift near enough to the door to permit a grapnel to be thrown across the rope held by the gallant volunteer on the raft.
It was his duty to attach the two ropes and thus render it possible for a stronger line to be drawn from the vessel to the pillar. There was no other way. The lighthouse did not possess a rope of sufficient length to be drawn back by the raft without the intervention of some human agency.
This was precisely the puny, half-despairing dodge that the reef loved to play with. Cat-like, it permitted the queer, flat-bottomed craft to approach almost within hail. Then it shot forth a claw of furious surf, the heavy raft was picked up as if it were a floating feather, turned clean over, and flung many fathoms out to sea, whilst both of its guiding cables were snapped with contemptuous ease.
The assistant-keeper, kept afloat by his jacket, was hauled, half drowned, back through the choking froth, whilst the wave which overwhelmed the raft curled up a spiteful tongue and almost succeeded in dragging out several of the men stationed in the doorway.
With a clang the iron shutter was rushed into its place, and when the sailor was rescued the Trinity boat steamed away to try and secure the raft.
So joyous hope gave way once more to dark foreboding, and the only comfort was the faint one to be extracted from the parting signal:
"Will try again next tide."
Discipline slackened its bonds that night. For one thing Mr. Emmett fell ill. Although inured to hardship in the elemental strife, being of the stocky mariner race which holds the gruff Atlantic in no dread, he had never before been called on to eat sodden bread, to drink condensed steam flavored with varnish, and to chew sustenance from the rind of raw bacon. These drawbacks, added to the lack of exercise and the constant wearing of clothes not yet dry, placed him on the sick list.
Again, there were ominous whispers of unfair division in the matter of food. It was not within the realm of accomplishment that the purser, Constance, Enid, and others who helped to apportion the eatables could treat all alike. Some fared better than others in quality if not in quantity. The unfortunate ones growled, and talked of favoritism.
A crisis was reached when the second officer mustered the night watch.
When one sheep leads the others will follow. A stout German from Chicago asked bluntly:
"Vere's de goot of blayin' at moundin' gart? Dere is bud von ting to gart, und dat is der kidchen."
Community of interest caused many to huddle closer to him. Here was one who dared to say what they all thought. Their feet shuffled in support. The officer, faithful to his trust, was tempted to fell the man, but he thought the circumstances warranted more gentle methods.
"Why are you dissatisfied?" he sternly demanded. "What do you suspect? Are you fool enough to imagine that you are being cheated by people who are dividing their last crust with you?"
"How do ve know dat? Dose girls—dey are chokin' mit Mr. Pyne all der day. Dey can'd do dat und be hungry, like us."
"You unmitigated ass!" said the disgusted officer. "There is food here for three people. They have fed eighty-one of us for two days and will keep us going several more days. Can't you figure it out? Isn't it a miracle? Here! Who's for guard and who not? Let us quit fooling."
And the doubters were silenced for the hour.
The hymn-singer endeavored to raise a chorus. He was not greeted with enthusiasm, but a few valiant spirits came to his assistance. A couple of hymns were feebly rendered—and again—silence.
"Say when," observed Pyne calmly when he entered the service-room to find Brand trimming the spare lamp.
"Not tonight," said Brand.
"Why not? Hell may break loose at any moment downstairs."
"What has occurred? I heard something of a dispute when the watch mustered at eight o'clock."
"Things are worse now. One of the men found a gallon of methylated spirit in the work-shop."
"Good Heavens! Did he drink any of it?"
"He and his mates have emptied the tin. Eight are helplessly drunk—the others quarrelsome. The next thing will be a combined rush for the store-room."
"But why did not the second officer tell me?"
"He thought you had troubles enough. If he could depend on the remainder of the crowd he would rope the sinners. Says he knows a slave knot that will make 'em tired."
Brand's eyes glistened.
"The fools," he said, "and just as the weather is mending, too."
"You don't mean that?"
"Listen."
He glanced up at the glass dome. Heavy drops were pattering on it; they looked like spray, but Pyne shouted gleefully:
"Is it rain?"
"Yes. I was just going to summon the watch to help in filling every vessel. By spreading canvas sheets we can gather a large supply if it rains hard. Moreover, it will beat the sea down. Man alive, this may mean salvation. Tie those weaklings and summon every sober man to help."
With a whoop, Pyne vanished. He met Constance on the stairs, coming to see her father before she stretched her weary limbs on the hard floor of the kitchen.
She never knew exactly what took place. It might have been politeness, but it felt uncommonly like a squeeze, and Pyne's face was extraordinarily close to hers as he cried:
"It's raining. No more canvas whisky. Get a hustle on with every empty vessel."
He need not have been in such a whirl, however.
When the shower came it did not last very long, and there were many difficulties in the way of garnering the thrice blessed water. In the first place, the lighthouse was expressly designed to shoot off all such external supplies; in the second, the total quantity obtained did not amount to more than half a gallon.
But it did a great deal of good in other ways. It brightened many faces, it caused the drunkards to be securely trussed like plucked fowls and dumped along the walls of the entrance passage, and it gave Brand some degree of hope that the rescue operations of the next day might be more successful.
When the rain cleared off, the moon flickered in a cloudy sky. This was a further omen of better fortune. Perhaps the jingling rhyme of Admiral Fitzroy's barometer was about to be justified:
"Long foretold,Long last;Short noticeSoon past."
"Long foretold,Long last;Short noticeSoon past."
And the hurricane had given but slight warning of its advent.
"I feel it in my bones that we shall all be as frisky as lambs tomorrow," said Pyne, when he joined Brand after the scurry caused by the rain had passed.
"We must not be too sanguine. There is a chance, now. I won't deny that, but the sea is treacherous."
"This reef licks creation. At Bar Harbor, in Maine, where a mighty big sea can kick up in a very few hours, I have seen it go down again like magic under a change of wind."
"That is quite reasonable. Any ordinary commotion has room to spread itself in the tide-way. Here the tide is broken up into ocean rivers, streams with boundaries as definite as the Thames. The main body sweeps up into the bottle-neck of the Channel. Another tributary comes round the north of the Scilly Isles and runs into the tidal stream again exactly at this point. The result often is that whilst little pleasure boats can safely run out into the Bay from Penzance there is a race over the rock that would break up a stranded battle-ship."
"Say, do you like this kind of life?"
"I have given my best years to it."
Pyne was smoking a pipe, one which Brand lent him. The tobacco was a capital substitute for food, especially as he had established a private understanding with Elsie and Mamie that they were to waylay him when possible and nibble a piece of biscuit he carried in his pocket.
This arrangement was to be kept a strict secret from all, especially from Miss Constance and Miss Enid, whilst the little ones themselves did not know that the she-dragons whom Pyne feared so greatly gave them surreptitious doses from the last tin of condensed milk, retained for their exclusive benefit.
"Do you mind me saying that you are a good bit of an enigma?" he hazarded, between puffs.
"It may be so, but I like the service."
"Just so. I was never so happy as when I took a trip as fourth engineer on a tramp in the Gulf of Florida. But that didn't signify being tied to a long-nosed oiler for the remainder of my days."
"Are you a marine engineer?" inquired Brand, with some show of interest.
"I hold a certificate, just for fun. I had a mechanical twist in me and gave it play. But I am an idler by profession."
The lighthouse-keeper laughed, so naturally that the younger man was gratified. Polite disbelief may be a compliment.
"An idler, eh? You do not strike me as properly classed."
"It's the fact, nevertheless. My grandfather was pleased to invest a few dollars in real estate on the sheep farm where Manhattan Avenue now stands. My uncle has half; my mother had the other half."
"Are both of your parents dead?"
"Yes, years ago. Lost at sea, too, on my father's yacht."
"What a terrible thing!"
"It must have been something like that. I was only six years old at the time. My uncle lost his wife and child, too, when theEsmeraldawent down. It nearly killed him. I never thought he would marry again, but I suppose he's tired of being alone."
"Probably. By the way, now that you mention it, Mrs. Vansittart wished to see me yesterday. I could not spare a moment so I sent her a civil message. She told Constance that she thought she knew me."
"Hardly likely," smiled Pyne, "if you have passed nearly the whole of your life in lighthouses."
"I did not quite mean to convey that impression. I knew a man of her late husband's name, many years ago."
"She is a nice woman in some ways," said Pyne reflectively. "Not quite my sort, perhaps, but a lady all the time. She is not an American. Came to the States about '90, I think, and lost her hubby on a ranch in California. Anyhow, the old man is dead stuck on her, and they ought to hit it off well together. The Vansittart you knew didn't happen to marry a relative of yours?"
"No. He was a mere acquaintance."
"Odd thing," ruminated Pyne. "It has just occurred to me that she resembles your daughter,—your elder daughter,—not so much in face as in style. Same sort of graceful figure, only a trifle smaller."
"Such coincidences often happen in the human family. For instance, you are not wholly unlike Enid."
"Holy gee!" said Pyne, "I'm too run down to stand flattery."
"Likeness is often a matter of environment. Characteristics, mannerisms, the subtle distinctions of class and social rank, soak in through the skin quite as sensibly as they are conferred by heredity. Take the ploughman's son and rear him in a royal palace, turn the infant prince into a peasant, and who shall say, when they reach man's estate, 'This is the true King.' You will remember it was said of the Emperor Augustus:Urbem lateritiam invenit, marmoream reliquit.'He found the city brick, he left it marble.' The same noble result may be obtained in every healthy child properly educated."
The college-bred youth had not entered into any general conversation with Brand before. He had the tact now to conceal his astonishment at the manner of his friend's speech.
"You fling heredity to the winds, then?" he asked.
Brand rose to his feet, as was his way when deeply moved.
"Thank God, yes!" he cried.
A faint hoot came to them through the chortling of the wind.
"One of our visitors," shouted Brand, "and here we are gossiping as though snugly seated in arm-chairs at the fireside."
He hurried to the gallery, putting on an oil-skin coat.
"Wemustwin through, and I guess I'll play ball with my father-in-law," quoth Pyne to himself as he followed.
This time it was theFalconalone, and she signaled with a lamp that it was deemed best to defer active operations until the following afternoon. The tide at dawn would not suit.
She went off, and the two men returned to the grateful shelter of the service-room.
Brand forbade further talk. Pyne must rest now and relieve him at three o'clock. The youngster needed no feather-bed: he was asleep in amazingly quick time. There is a supperless hunger which keeps people awake at night with a full larder in the house. The crude article differs from the cultured one so greatly that the man who hungers of necessity cannot sleep too much.
Thus far, the inhabitants of the lighthouse had been given quite enough nutriment to maintain life. There was no reason why any, even the most delicate, should be in real danger during the next forty-eight hours. But scientific reasoning and the animal instincts of mankind clash at times; in that lay the danger whose sullen shadow was deepening the lines in the corners of Brand's eyes.
Every hour, the officer on duty and some men of the watch visited him to report that all was well below. Some of the less drunken mutineers were pitifully sober now: the others were maudlin. Beyond the few words exchanged on this and kindred topics, he was left alone with his thoughts throughout the silent watch. Pyne slept heavily. Glancing at times at the youngster's stalwart figure and firm, handsome face, Brand found himself reviewing the buried years. He thought of the days when he, too, looked forth on the world with the stern enthusiasm of triumphant youth.
Long-forgotten ghosts were resurrected, shattered ideals built up again. He wondered, if the decades rolled back, would he decide, a second time, to abandon the fine career which lay at his feet and withdraw his grief and his talents to the seclusion of lonely rocks and silent headlands!
He had been happy, as men count happiness, during the decades. No cloud had arisen to mar the complete content of his life. The blossoming of the girls into delightful womanhood was an increasing joy to him, and it was passing strange that his little household should be plunged into a whirlpool of events in the very hour when their domesticity seemed to be most assured. The changeful moods of the elements found no counterpart in his nature. He, knowing the sea, did not expect it to remain fixed in one aspect. Whether in storm or calm the contrary would surely happen 'ere many days had passed. But life was a different thing. How came it that at the very close of so many years of association with the fickle ocean she should play such a trick on him and his daughters, enfold them with perils, snatch them from the quiet pleasures of the life they had planned for the future, and thrust upon them, even if they escaped with their lives, a publicity which he, at any rate, abhorred and even dreaded.
He harbored no delusions on this point. He knew that the drama of the Gulf Rock was now filling the columns of newspapers all over the world. He and his beloved girls would be written about, discussed, described in fulsome language, pictured by black and white artists, and eulogized by wide-awake editors eager to make much of a topic dear to the public mind.
On the rock they were undoubtedly in grave danger. Death confronted them—death at once extraordinary and ghastly. No tyrant of the Middle Ages, with all his paraphernalia for wringing truth or lies out of cringing wretches, had devised such a fate as threatened if the inconstant sea should choose to render the reef altogether unapproachable for many days. Yet, if help came, he and those dear to him were already steeped in unavoidable notoriety, bringing in its train certain vague disabilities which he had striven to avoid for over twenty years.
And all this because one fierce gale, out of the many he had endured, sprang into being at a moment when his mates were incapacitated and his daughters happened to pay him a surprise visit.
"It is an insane freak of fortune," he muttered, "so incomprehensible, so utterly out of focus with common events, that if I were a superstitious man, I should regard it as betokening the approach of some great epoch in my life. Surely, a merciful Providence would not bring my girls here to subject them to the lingering torture of hunger and thirst. I must not think of it further. That way lies madness."
There was at least one other troubled soul on the rock which divined some sinister portent in the storm. Mrs. Vansittart, even at this moment, was staring into the black void with questioning eyes.
He resolutely threw back his head as if he would hurl into the outer darkness the gibbering phantom which whispered these words of foreboding. Although the lamp needed no attention just then, he climbed to the trimming stage merely to find relief in mechanical action. He carefully examined the adjustment, and, to judge how the weather was shaping, went out into the gallery to look at the distant lights.
The three quick flashes of the Seven Stones Lightship were very clear. That was a good sign. The wind came from that quarter, and, blustering though it was, driving gigantic waves before it into the loud embrace of the reef, it maintained the good promise of the last few hours.
Seeking the comparative shelter of the east side, he gazed steadily at the Lizard. Its two fixed electric beams, nearly in line with the Gulf Rock, were dull and watery. A local squall of rain was sweeping down from the land. Changeable, threatening, unsettled—the meteorologist might apply any of these terms to the prevalent conditions.
Far out in the Channel he saw the twinkling masthead lights of several steamers. Blow high or low, mails must travel and vessels put to sea. On such a night, at other times, he would re-enter the lighthouse with a cheery sense of its comfort and home-like aspect. Now he dreaded the brilliant interior of the service-room. Its garish aspect ill accorded with the patient misery, the useless repinings, the inebriate stupor which crouched beneath. If he and those committed to his charge were to be saved, either the sea must be stilled or another miracle of the loaves and fishes enacted.
There, alone on the gallery, amidst the din of howling wind and ceaseless plaint of the waves, he seemed to be apart, cut off from the sufferings within. He lifted his eyes to the sombre arch of the heavens. Men said the age of miracles had passed. Pray God it might not be so!
When Brand went out, the sudden rush of cold air through the little door leading to the balcony aroused Pyne.
That young gentleman was rudely awakened from a seriously vivid dream. He fancied that Constance and he were clinging to the tail of an enormous kite, which had been made to hover over the rock by a green imp seated in an absurdly small boat.
They were solemnly advised by other gnomes, imps with sparkling, toad-like eyes, to entrust themselves to this precarious means of escape, but the instant they dropped off the ledge of the gallery their weight caused the kite to swoop downwards. The resultant plunge into the ocean and Constance's farewell shriek were nothing more terrifying than the chill blast and whistle of the air current admitted by Brand. But Pyne did not want to go to sleep again. He did not like emerald-hued spirits which arranged such unpleasant escapades.
He straightened his stiff limbs and sat up.
He was about to feel in a pocket for his pipe—he experienced the worst pangs of hunger after waking in such fashion—when he saw a woman's head and shoulders emerging out of the stairway.
At first he thought it was Constance, and he wondered why she had muffled her face in the deep collar of a cloak, but the visitor paused irresolutely when her waist was on a level with the floor.
She uttered a little gasp of surprise.
"You, Charlie?" she cried. "I thought you slept in the kitchen?"
"No, Mrs. Vansittart," he said. "I am assistant-keeper and I am here most all the time with Mr. Brand. But what in the name of goodness—"
"I was restless," explained the lady hurriedly. "If I remained another minute among those women I should have screamed aloud. How peaceful you are here. Where is Mr. Brand?"
"Guess he's gone outside to squint at the weather. But come right in. I can offer you a chair. Mr. Brand wants to see you, and this is a quiet time for a chat."
"How does he know me? What did he say?"
Mrs. Vansittart pressed her left hand to her breast. With the other she kept the high collar over her mouth and cheeks. Pyne could only see her eyes, and the alarmed light that leaped into them increased his astonishment at her unexpected presence.
"It seems to me," he answered, "that if you just walk up four more steps and sit down you can ask him all those things yourself."
"Were you speaking of me to him."
"I did happen to mention you."
"And he said he knew me?"
"No, ma'am. He said nothing of the sort. But, for mercy's sake, what mystery is there about it?"
"Mystery! None whatever. I was mistaken. I have never met him. I came now to explain that to him. Oh—"
She dived suddenly as the gallery door opened. Brand caught a fleeting glimpse of her vanishing form.
"Who was that?" he asked.
Pyne had found his pipe and was filling it with tobacco.
"Mrs. Vansittart," he answered.
"Paying her long-deferred visit, I suppose. She chose a curious hour."
"So I thought. But she just popped her head in to tell you that she didn't know you at all."
Brand smiled.
"Poor lady!" he said. "She, like the rest of us, is perturbed and uneasy. I imagine she is of a somewhat hysterical temperament."
"That's so," agreed Pyne.
There were puzzling discrepancies in Mrs. Vansittart's explanation of her untimely appearance. Evidently, she did not expect to meet him there. She thought she would find the lighthouse-keeper alone. The ready deduction presented itself that when she did encounter Brand she did not wish any third person to be present at the interview.
That Constance's father had no cause to look at matters in the same light he was quite certain. Anyhow, it was not his affair, and he declined to trouble his head about Mrs. Vansittart's vagaries.
So the young philosopher lit his pipe and delivered a dictum on the sex.
"Some women," he said, "are made up of contradictions. She is one. I have known her for some time and I thought nothing could phaze her. But there must be a sort of society crust over her emotions, and the wreck broke it. Now, for my part, I like a woman with a clear soul, one in whose eyes you can catch the glint of the inner crystal."
"They are rare," said Brand.
"I suppose so. Indeed, it used to be a mere ideal of mine, built up from books. But they exist, and they are worth looking for."
He waited, lest perchance the other man should take the cue thus offered, but Brand, for the twentieth time, was poring over the records of the days which followed the hurricane reported by a former keeper. The American pursed his lips.
"He has had a bad time with a woman once in his life," he mused. "It must have been Constance's mother, and that is why he doesn't believe in heredity. Well, I guess he's right."
Had he seen Mrs. Vansittart cowering on her knees outside her bedroom door, he might have found cause for more disturbing reflections. She was crying softly, with her face hidden in her hands.
"Oh, I dare not, I dare not!" she moaned. "I am the most miserable woman in the world. It would have been better if I had gone down with the vessel. The Lord saved me only to punish me. My heart will break. What shall I do? Where shall I hide?"
And her sobbing only ceased when the noise of ascending footsteps drove her into the company of sorrowful women who would nevertheless have forgotten some of their own woes did they but realize her greater anguish.
"Some people are never satisfied," said Pyne, whilst he helped the cooks by smashing a ham bone with a hammer. The bone had been picked clean of meat and marrow on the first day after the wreck, but it occurred to Enid that if it were broken up and boiled she might procure some sort of nourishment for the two children, who were fast running down in condition.
"What is the matter now?" inquired Constance, whose attentive eyes were hovering between the cooking stove and a distilling kettle.
All the flour and biscuits, with the exception of two tins reserved for extremities, had been used. She was striving to concoct cakes of chocolate out of cocoa, an article more plentiful than any other food of its kind in stock, but water could not be spared, and eating dry powder was difficult to parched palates.
"There are two tug-boats, a trawler, and a Trinity service-boat not half a mile away," said Pyne, "and the cliffs at Land's End are peppered with people."
"Surely that is satisfactory. Dad told me that theFalconsignaled this morning he was to expect a special effort to be made at half tide on the flow, and not on the ebb as was arranged yesterday."
"Yes, that is all right so far as it goes." Pyne leaned forward with the air of one about to impart information of great value. "But the extraordinary thing is that whilst every man on board those vessels is thinking like steam how best to get into the lighthouse, we are most desperately anxious to get out of it. So you see, as I said before, some people—"
"Oh, dash!" cried Enid, "I've gone and burnt my finger all through, listening to your nonsense."
"Are there really many people on the cliffs?" demanded Constance.
Pyne pounded the bone viciously.
"I go out of my way to inform you of a number of interesting and strictly accurate facts," he protested, "and one of you burns her fingers and the other doubts my word. Yet, if I called your skepticism unfeeling, Miss Enid would be angry."
"I don't know why kettle lids are so cantankerous," said Enid. "They seem to get hot long before the water does."
"The hottest part of any boil is on top," said Pyne.
Enid smiled forgiveness. "I believe you would be cheerful if you were going to be electrocuted," she said, pensively. "Yet, goodness knows, it is hard to keep one's spirits up this morning. The sea is as bad as ever. What will become of us if we get no relief today?"
"Mr. Pyne," interrupted Constance suddenly, "do you think that any of the men can have gained access to the store-room during the night?"
"I can't say for sure," he replied. "What has put that into your mind?"
"The purser and I examined all that was left this morning, and we both agreed that some of the things had disappeared. It is very strange."
Pyne was not wholly prepared for this mine being sprung on him. So he essayed to gain time.
"It doesn't appeal to me in that light. There was a miscalculation about the water. Why not about the food?"
"Because my father went through all the stores personally and portioned them out. Some flour and tinned meat have gone; I am quite sure of it. The question is—who can have taken them. The flour, at least, must have attracted attention if anybody tried to eat it."
"Did you say all that to the purser?" he asked, suspending his labors and looking at her steadily.
"No. We could not remember exactly what proportion of the various articles there ought to be left."
"Then take my advice, Miss Constance, and keep on forgetting," he said.
A quick flush came into her pale cheeks.
"You are not saying that without good cause?" she murmured.
"I have the best of reasons. If the least hint of such a thing goes round among the men there will be ructions."
Constance went to the door and closed it.
"Enid," she said, "I believe father and Mr. Pyne have got some dreadful plan in their minds which they dare not tell us about."
But the American was not to be cornered in such fashion. He opened the door again and went out, pausing on the threshold to say:
"I wouldn't venture to guess what might be troubling Mr. Brand, but you can take it from me that what he says, goes. Talk about grasping a nettle firmly, I believe your father would grab a scorpion by the tail if he felt that way."
And with this cryptic utterance he quitted them, intending to warn Brand at the first opportunity that the time was at hand when he must harden his heart and take the decisive step of cutting off communication between the service-room and the remainder of the building.
This could be done easily. The flanges of the uppermost iron staircase were screwed to the floor above and below. A few minutes' labor would remove the screws; the steps could be lifted bodily into the service-room and there utilized to seal the well.
"What a howling menagerie will break loose here when they find out," thought Pyne. "It's a hard thing to say, but we ought to have the door open. Quite a stack of folks will need to be pitched outside."
A comforting reflection truly, yet his face bore no token thereof as he joined the lighthouse-keeper and several of theChinook'sofficers and men on the gallery.
The wind had shifted another couple of points to the north, and the sea, apart from the reef, was running in a heavy unbroken swell. That was the tantalizing part of it. Any ordinary ship's boat, properly managed, could live in perfect safety in the open.
But the iron-toothed reef, with its tortuous channels and battling currents changing with every stage of the tide, surrounded the pillar with an apparently impassable barrier, whilst the lighthouse itself offered as frowning a front as any of the black rocks which reared their weed-covered crests at low water.
Signals were being exchanged between the gallery and the Trinity tender. Brand seemed to be very emphatic in his answers to the communications made to him by Stanhope.
"No, no," he muttered aloud, whilst the anxious man near him wondered why he was so impatient.
"It is utterly impossible!" he said again. "No boat can do it—some one should stop him. It means certain loss of life!"
At last, becoming aware that his companions could not understand what was going on, he turned to them with passionate explanation.
"That brave fellow Stanhope says that, with two others at the oars, he intends to row near enough to the rock at half flood to endeavor to spring onto the ladder. I cannot persuade him that no man has ever yet succeeded in such a mad project. Look below, and see how each wave climbs around eighteen or twenty feet of the base. The thing is wildly impracticable. He will be swept off and smashed to pieces before our eyes, even if the boat escapes."
"If the boat can come near enough for that purpose, couldn't we heave a line aboard her?" asked one of the ship's officers.
"We can try. I shall signal them to that effect. Anything is better than to sanction an attempt which is foredoomed to failure, and must result in the death of the man who tries it."
Thereupon more energetic flag-waving took place. Finally Brand desisted in sheer exasperation.
"I cannot convince him," he cried. "He has made up his mind. May the Lord preserve him from a peril which I consider to be a mortal one."
"Has he put forward any theory?" asked Pyne. "He was doing a lot of talking."
"Yes," explained Brand. "He believes that a strong boat, rowed to the verge of the broken water, might watch her opportunity and dart in close to the ladder on the back-wash of a big wave, allowing its successor to lift her high enough for an active man to jump onto the rungs. The rowers must pull for their lives the instant the wave breaks and leave him clinging to the ladder as best he can. There is more chance of success in that way, he thinks, than in trying to make fast a line thrown by us, even if it fell over the boat. It is all a question of time, he argues, and I have failed to convince him that not only he but his companions will be lost."
"Is there no chance?" inquired the second officer.
"Look below," repeated Brand hopelessly, and indeed, when they obeyed him, craning their necks over the rail to examine the seething cauldron from which the granite tower tapered up to them, no man could say that the lighthouse-keeper deplored Stanhope's decision without good reason.
They understood matters a little better, perhaps, when, one by one, they re-entered the lantern, theFalconhaving flitted away to make her final preparations. Brand asked them not to make known the nature of the pending undertaking.
"If I thought it would do any good to the suffering people I would gladly see them enlivened by the news," he said. "I confess, however, I expect nothing but disastrous failure—and—gentlemen—Lieutenant Stanhope is practically engaged to be married to one of my daughters."
What was to be said? They quitted him in the silence that was the dominant note of their lives just then. Pyne alone remained. He wondered why one man should be called on to endure so much.
Though each of those present on the gallery was loyal to Brand's sorrowful request, it was impossible to prevent others from seeing that something of exceptional interest was in progress afloat and on the rock.
Brand did not know that the officials of the Trinity House had only agreed to help Stanhope's hazardous project under compulsion. The sailor informed them that he was determined to carry out his scheme, with or without their assistance. So, when theFalcon, the tender, and a strong tug hired by Mr. Traill, rounded the distant Carn du headland at eleven o'clock, the lighthouse-keeper felt that further protest was unavailing. It behooved him to take all possible measures to help the men who were about to dare so much to help him.
In the first place, he caused a rope to be swung from the gallery to the doorway. If any doubt were entertained as to the grave risk attending Stanhope's enterprise it was promptly dispelled by the extreme difficulty met with in accomplishing this comparatively simple task. Even a heavy piece of wood, slung to the end of the ninety odd feet of cord necessary, did not prevent the wind from lashing the weighted end in furious plunges seaward. At last a sailor caught the swinging block with a boat-hook. The man would have been carried away by a climbing wave had not his mates perceived his danger and held him. Then two lifebuoys were attached to other ropes, in case there might be some slight chance of using them. The tackle which the unfortunate captain of theChinookhad cast adrift was utilized to construct safety lines in the entrance way. Loops were fastened to them, in which six of the strongest men available were secured against the chance of being swept through the door to instant death.
Meanwhile, the three vessels had steamed close to the mooring buoy, which, it will be remembered, lay in full view of the kitchen window. Constance gave them a casual glance. Being versed in the ways of the sea, she instantly discovered that some unusual event was astir.
She called her sister's attention to the maneuvers of the steamers; one, the Trinity tender, lay broadside on to the incoming tide.
"They are lowering a boat, I do declare," she announced, after they had watched the proceedings for a little while with growing curiosity. At the distance, nearly six hundred yards, it was difficult to discern exactly what was taking place.
"No boat can live if it comes near the rock," cried Enid. And then a wild thought brought her heart to her mouth.
"Oh, Connie!" she cried in a sudden access of terror, "I feel sure that Jack is doing something desperate to save us. Dad knows. They all know, but they would not tell us. That is why Mr. Pyne has not been near us for hours."
"It cannot be. No one would permit it. Father would never give his sanction. Enid, my dear one, why do you say such things? You frighten me!"
But Constance's lips were bloodless, and her eyes dilated with the fear which she, too, would fain deny.
They were perched so high above the sea that the dancing hillocks of green water could not wholly obscure the stoutly built craft which bobbed into startling prominence round the stern of the tender.
"It is, it is!" shrieked Enid. "Look, Connie! There is Jack kneeling in the bow. Oh, dear! oh, dear! Is he mad? Why don't they stop him? I cannot bear to look. Connie, tell me—shall I see him drowned before my eyes?"
The girl was distraught, and her sister was in little better plight. Fascinated, speechless, clinging to each other like panic-stricken children, they followed the leaping boat with the glassy stare of those who gaze, open-eyed, at remorseless death.
They scarce understood what was toward.
As the boat, a strong craft, yet such a mere speck of stanch life in the tumbling seas, was steadily impelled nearer, they saw the tug lurch ahead of the other vessels until a line was thrown and caught by Stanhope, who instantly fastened it round his waist. The rowers wore cork jackets, but he was quite unprotected. Bareheaded, with his well-knit limbs shielded only by a jersey, loose-fitting trousers and canvas shoes, he had declined to hamper his freedom of movement with the cumbrous equipment so essential for anyone who might be cast adrift in that dreadful sea.