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CHAPTER VII
THE SIGNAL GUN
The train did not slow down for Sandtown until after mid-afternoon, and when the party of young folk alighted from the private car there were still five miles of heavy roads between them and Lighthouse Point. It had been pleasant enough when Ruth Fielding and her companions left Cheslow, far up in New York State; but now to the south and east the heavens were masked by heavy, lead-colored clouds, and the wind came from the sea in wild, rain-burdened gusts.
“My! how sharp it is!” cried Ruth. “And it’s salt!”
“The salt’s in the air–especially when there is a storm at sea,” explained Heavy. “And I guess we’ve landed just in time to see a gale. I hope it won’t last long and spoil our good time.”
“Oh, but to see the ocean in a storm–that will be great!” cried Madge Steele.
The Stones’ house had been open for some days and there were two wagons in readiness for the party. The three boys and the baggage went in one, while the five girls crowded into the other and both wagons were driven promptly toward the shore.
The girls were just as eager as they could be, and chattered like magpies. All but Mary Cox. She had been much unlike her usual self all day. When she had joined the party in the private car that morning, Ruth noticed that The Fox looked unhappy. Her eyes were swollen as though she had been weeping and she had very little to say.
For one thing Ruth was really thankful. The Fox said nothing to her about the accident on the Lanawaxa. She may have been grateful for Ruth’s timely assistance when she fell into Lake Osago; but she succeeded in effectually hiding her gratitude.
Heavy, however, confided to Ruth that Mary had found sore trouble at home when she returned from Briarwood. Her father had died the year before and left his business affairs in a tangle. Mary’s older brother, John, had left college and set about straightening out matters. And now something serious had happened to John. He had gone away on business and for weeks his mother had heard nothing from him.
“I didn’t know but Mary would give up coming with us–just as Lluella and Belle did,” said the stout girl. “But there is nothing she can do at home, and I urged her to come. We must all try to make it particularly pleasant for her.”
Ruth was perfectly willing to do her share; but one can scarcely make it pleasant for a person who refuses to speak to one. And the girl from the Red Mill could not help feeling that The Fox had done her best to make her withdraw from Jennie Stone’s party.
The sea was not in sight until the wagons had been driven more than half the distance to the Stone bungalow. Then, suddenly rounding a sandy hill, they saw the wide sweep of the ocean in the distance, and the small and quieter harbor on the inviting shore of which the bungalow was built.
Out upon the far point of this nearer sandy ridge was built the white shaft of the Sokennet Light. Sokennet village lay upon the other side of the harbor. On this side a few summer homes had been erected, and beyond the lighthouse was a low, wind-swept building which Heavy told the girls was the life saving station.
“We’ll have lots of fun down there. Cap’n Abinadab Cope is just the nicest old man you ever saw!” declared Heavy. “And he can tell the most thrilling stories of wrecks along the coast. And there’s the station ‘day book’ that records everything they do, from the number of pounds of coal and gallons of kerosene used each day, to how they save whole shiploads of people–”
“Let’s ask him to save a shipload for our especial benefit,” laughed Madge. “I suppose there’s only one wreck in fifteen or twenty years, hereabout.”
“Nothing of the kind! Sometimes there are a dozen in one winter. And lots of times the surfmen go off in a boat and save ships from being wrecked. In a fog, you know. Ships get lost in a fog sometimes, just as folks get lost in a forest–”
“Or in a blizzard,” cried Helen, with a lively remembrance of their last winter’s experience at Snow Camp.
“Nothing like that will happen here, you know,” said Ruth, laughing. “Heavy promised that we shouldn’t be lost in a snowstorm at Lighthouse Point.”
“But hear the sea roar!” murmured Mary Cox. “Oh! look at the waves!”
They had now come to where they could see the surf breaking over a ledge, or reef, off the shore some half-mile. The breakers piled up as high–seemingly–as a tall house; and when they burst upon the rock they completely hid it for the time.
“Did you ever see such a sight!” cried Madge. “‘The sea in its might’!”
The gusts of rain came more plentifully as they rode on, and so rough did the wind become, the girls were rather glad when the wagons drove in at the gateway of the Stone place.
Immediately around the house the owner had coaxed some grass to grow–at an expense, so Jennie said, of about “a dollar a blade.” But everywhere else was the sand–cream-colored, yellow, gray and drab, or slate where the water washed over it and left it glistening.
The entrance was at the rear; the bungalow faced the cove, standing on a ridge which–as has been before said–continued far out to the lighthouse.
“And a woman keeps the light. Her husband kept it for many, many years; but he died a year ago and the government has continued her as keeper. She’s a nice old lady, is Mother Purling, and she can tell stories, too, that will make your hair curl!”
“I’m going over there right away,” declared Mary, who had begun to be her old self again. “Mine is as straight as an Indian’s.”
“A woman alone in a lighthouse! isn’t that great?” cried Helen.
“She is alone sometimes; but there is an assistant keeper. His name is Crab–and that’s what he is!” declared Heavy.
“Oh, I can see right now that we’re going to have great fun here,” observed Madge.
This final conversation was carried on after the girls had run into the house for shelter from a sharp gust of rain, and had been taken upstairs by their hostess to the two big rooms in the front of the bungalow which they were to sleep in. From the windows they could see across the cove to the village and note all the fishing and pleasure boats bobbing at their moorings.
Right below them was a long dock built out from Mr. Stone’s property, and behind it was moored a motor-launch, a catboat, and two rowboats–quite a little fleet.
“You see, there isn’t a sail in the harbor–nor outside. That shows that the storm now blowing up is bound to be a stiff one,” explained Heavy. “For the fishermen of Sokennet are as daring as any on the coast, and I have often seen them run out to the banks into what looked to be the very teeth of a gale!”
Meanwhile, the boys had been shown to a good-sized room at the back of the house, and they were already down again and outside, breasting the intermittent squalls from the sea. They had no curls and furbelows to arrange, and ran all about the place before dinner time.
But ere that time arrived the night had shut down. The storm clouds hung low and threatened a heavy rainfall at any moment. Off on the horizon was a livid streak which seemed to divide the heavy ocean from the wind-thrashed clouds.
The company that gathered about the dinner table was a lively one, even if the wind did shriek outside and the thunder of the surf kept up a continual accompaniment to their conversation–like the deeper notes of a mighty organ. Mr. Stone, himself, was not present; but one of Heavy’s young aunts had come down to oversee the party, and she was no wet blanket upon the fun.
Of course, the “goodies” on the table were many. Trust Heavy for that. The old black cook, who had been in the Stone family for a generation, doted on the stout girl and would cook all day to please her young mistress.
They had come to the dessert course when suddenly Tom Cameron half started from his chair and held up a hand for silence.
“What’s the matter, Tommy?” demanded Busy Izzy, inquisitively. “What do you hear?”
“Listen!” commanded Tom.
The hilarity ceased suddenly, and all those at the table listened intently. The sudden hush made the noise of the elements seem greater.
“What did you hear?” finally asked his sister.
“A gun–there!”
A distant, reverberating sound was repeated. They all heard it. Heavy and her aunt, Miss Kate, glanced at each other with sudden comprehension.
“What is it?” Ruth cried.
“It’s a signal gun,” Heavy said, rather weakly.
“A ship in distress,” explained Miss Kate, and her tone hushed their clamor.
A third time the report sounded. The dining room door opened and the butler entered.
“What is it, Maxwell?” asked Miss Kate.
“A ship on the Second Reef, Miss,” he said hurriedly. “She was sighted just before dark, driving in. But it was plain that she was helpless, and had gone broadside on to the rock. She’ll break up before morning, the fishermen say. It will be an awful wreck, ma’am, for there is no chance of the sea going down.”
CHAPTER VIII
THE LIFEBOAT IS LAUNCHED
The announcement quelled all the jollity of the party on the instant. Heavy even lost interest in the sweetmeats before her.
“Goodness me! what a terrible thing,” cried Helen Cameron. “A ship on the rocks!”
“Let’s go see it!” Busy Izzy cried.
“If we can,” said Tom. “Is it possible, Miss Kate?”
Heavy’s aunt looked at the butler for information. He was one of those well-trained servants who make it their business to know everything.
“I can have the ponies put into the long buckboard. The young ladies can drive to the station; the young gentlemen can walk. It is not raining very hard at present.”
Mercy elected to remain in the house with Miss Kate. The other girls were just as anxious to go to the beach as the boys. There were no timid ones in the party.
But when they came down, dressed in rainy-weather garments, and saw the man standing at the ponies’ heads, glistening in wet rubber, if one had withdrawn probably all would have given up the venture. The boys had already gone on ahead, and the ship’s gun sounded mournfully through the wild night, at short intervals.
They piled into the three seats of the buckboard, Ruth sitting beside the driver. The ponies dashed away along the sandy road. It was two miles to the life saving station. They passed the three boys when they were only half way to their destination.
“Tell ’em not to save all the people from the wreck till we get there!” shouted Tom Cameron.
None of the visitors to Lighthouse Point realized the seriousness of the happening as yet. They were yet to see for the first time a good ship battering her life out against the cruel rocks.
Nor did the girls see the wreck at first, for a pall of darkness lay upon the sea. There were lights in the station and a huge fire of driftwood burned on the beach. Around this they saw figures moving, and Heavy said, as she alighted:
“We’ll go right down there. There are some women and children already–see? Sam will put the horses under the shed here.”
The five girls locked arms and ran around the station. When they came to the front of the building, a great door was wheeled back at one side and men in oilskins were seen moving about a boat in the shed. The lifeboat was on a truck and they were just getting ready to haul her down to the beach.
“And the wreck must have struck nearly an hour ago!” cried Madge. “How slow they are.”
“No,” said Heavy thoughtfully. “It is July now, and Uncle Sam doesn’t believe there will be any wrecks along this coast until September. In the summer Cap’n Abinadab keeps the station alone. It took some time to-night to find a crew–and possibly some of these men are volunteers.”
But now that the life-savers had got on the ground, they went to work with a briskness and skill that impressed the onlookers. They tailed onto the drag rope and hauled the long, glistening white boat down to the very edge of the sea. The wind was directly onshore, and it was a fight to stand against it, let alone to haul such a heavy truck through the wet sand.
Suddenly there was a glow at sea and the gun boomed out again. Then a pale signal light burned on the deck of the foundered vessel. As the light grew those ashore could see her lower rigging and the broken masts and spars. She lay over toward the shore and her deck seemed a snarl of lumber. Between the reef and the beach, too, the water was a-foul with wreckage and planks of all sizes.
“Lumber-laden, boys–and her deck load’s broke loose!” shouted one man.
The surf roared in upon the sands, and then sucked out again with a whine which made Ruth shudder. The sea seemed like some huge, ravening beast eager for its prey.
“How can they ever launch the boat into those waves?” Ruth asked of Heavy.
“Oh, they know how,” returned the stout girl.
But the life-savers were in conference about their captain. He was a short, sturdy old man with a squarely trimmed “paint-brush” beard. The girls drew nearer to the group and heard one of the surfmen say:
“We’ll smash her, Cap, sure as you’re born! Those planks are charging in like battering-rams.”
“We’ll try it, Mason,” returned Cap’n Abinadab. “I don’t believe we can shoot a line to her against this gale. Ready!”
The captain got in at the stern and the others took their places in the boat. Each man had a cork belt strapped around his body under his arms. There were a dozen other men to launch the lifeboat into the surf when the captain gave the word.
He stood up and watched the breakers rolling in. As a huge one curved over and broke in a smother of foam and spray he shouted some command which the helpers understood. The boat started, truck and all, and immediately the men launching her were waist deep in the surging, hissing sea.
The returning billow carried the boat off the truck, and the lifeboatmen plunged in their oars and pulled. Their short sharp strokes were in such unison that the men seemed moved by the same mind. The long boat shot away from the beach and mounted the incoming wave like a cork.
The men ashore drew back the boat-truck out of the way. The lifeboat seemed to hang on that wave as though hesitating to take the plunge. Ruth thought that it would be cast back–a wreck itself–upon the beach.
But suddenly it again sprang forward, and the curling surf hid boat and men for a full minute from the gaze of those on shore. The girls clung together and gazed eagerly out into the shifting shadows that overspread the riotous sea.
“They’ve sunk!” gasped Helen.
“No, no!” cried Heavy. “There! see them?”
The boat’s bow rose to meet the next wave. They saw the men pulling as steadily as though the sea were smooth. Old Cap’n Abinadab still stood upright in the stern, grasping the heavy steering oar.
“I’ve read,” said Ruth, more quietly, “that these lifeboats are unsinkable–unless they are completely wrecked. Water-tight compartments, you know.”
“That’s right, Miss,” said one of the men nearby. “She can’t sink. But she can be smashed–Ah!”
A shout came back to them from the sea. The wind whipped the cry past them in a most eerie fashion.
“Cap’n Abinadab shouting to the men,” explained Heavy, breathlessly.
Suddenly another signal light was touched off upon the wreck. The growing light flickered over the entire expanse of lumber-littered sea between the reef and the beach. They could see the lifeboat more clearly.
She rose and sank, rose and sank, upon wave after wave, all the time fighting her way out from the shore. Again and again they heard the awesome cry. The captain was warning his men how to pull to escape the charging timbers.
The next breaker that rolled in brought with it several great planks that were dashed upon the beach with fearful force. The splinters flew into the air, the wind whipping them across the sands. The anxious spectators had to dodge.
The timbers ground together as the sea sucked them back. Again and again they were rolled in the surf, splintering against each other savagely.
“One of those would go through that boat like she was made of paper!” bawled one of the fishermen.
At that moment they saw the lifeboat lifted upon another huge wave. She was a full cable’s length from the shore, advancing very slowly. In the glare of the Coston light the anxious spectators saw her swerve to port to escape a huge timber which charged upon her.
The girls screamed. The great stick struck the lifeboat a glancing blow. In an instant she swung broadside to the waves, and then rolled over and over in the trough of the sea.
A chorus of shouts and groans went up from the crowd on shore. The lifeboat and her courageous crew had disappeared.
CHAPTER IX
THE GIRL IN THE RIGGING
“Oh! isn’t it awful!” cried Helen, clinging to Ruth Fielding. “I wish I hadn’t come.”
“They’re lost!” quavered Mary Cox. “They’re drowned!”
But Heavy was more practical. “They can’t drown so easily–with those cork-vests on ’em. There! the boat’s righted.”
It was a fact. Much nearer the shore, it was true, but the lifeboat was again right side up. They saw the men creep in over her sides and seize the oars which had been made fast to her so that they could not be lost.
But the lifeboat was not so buoyant, and it was plain that she had been seriously injured. Cap’n Abinadab dared not go on to the wreck.
“That timber mashed her in for’ard,” declared a fisherman standing near the girls. “They’ve got to give it up this time.”
“Can’t steer in such a clutter of wreckage,” declared another. “Not with an oared boat. She ought to be a motor. Every other station on this coast, from Macklin to Cape Brender, has a lifeboat driven by a motor. Sokennet allus has to take other folks’ leavin’s.”
Helplessly the lifeboat drifted shoreward. The girls watched her, almost holding their breath with excitement. The three boys raced down to the beach now and joined them.
“Crickey!” yelped little Isadore Phelps. “We’re almost too late to see the fun!”
“Hush!” commanded Ruth, sharply.
“Your idea of fun, young man, is very much warped,” Madge Steele added.
“Haven’t they got the wrecked people off?” demanded Tom, in wonder.
At the moment an added Coston burned up on the wreck. Its uncertain glare revealed the shrouds and torn lower rigging. They saw several figures–outlined in the glaring light–lashed to the stays and broken spars. The craft was a schooner, lumber-laden, and the sea had now cast her so far over on her beam-ends that her deck was like a wall confronting the shore. Against this background the crew were visible, clinging desperately to hand-holds, or lashed to the rigging.
And a great cry went suddenly up from the crowd ashore. “There’s women aboard her–poor lost souls!” quavered one old dame who had seen many a terrifying wreck along the coast.
Ruth Fielding’s sharper eyes had discovered that one of the figures clinging to the wreck was too small for a grown person.
“It’s a child!” she murmured. “It’s a girl. Oh, Helen! there’s a girl–no older than we–on that wreck!”
The words of the men standing about them proved Ruth’s statement to be true. Others had descried the girl’s figure in that perilous situation. There was a woman, too, and seven men. Seven men were ample to man a schooner of her size, and probably the other two were the captain’s wife and daughter.
But if escape to the shore depended upon the work of the lifeboat and her crew, the castaways were in peril indeed, for the boat was coming shoreward now with a rush. With her came the tossing, charging timbers washed from the deck load. The sea between the reef and the beach was now a seething mass of broken and splintering planks and beams. No craft could live in such a seaway.
But Ruth and her friends were suddenly conscious of a peril nearer at hand. The broken lifeboat with its crew was being swept shoreward upon a great wave, and with the speed of an express train. The great, curling, foam-streaked breaker seemed to hurl the heavy boat through the air.
“They’ll be killed! Oh, they will!” shrieked Mary Cox.
The long craft, half-smothered in foam, and accompanied by the plunging timbers from the wreck, darted shoreward with increasing velocity. One moment it was high above their heads, with the curling wave ready to break, and the sea sucking away beneath its keel–bared for half its length.
Crash! Down the boat was dashed, with a blow that (so it seemed to the unaccustomed spectators) must tear it asunder.
The crew were dashed from their places by the shock. The waiting longshoremen ran to seize the broken boat and drag it above high-water mark. One of the crew was sucked back with the undertow and disappeared for a full minute. But he came in, high on the next wave, and they caught and saved him.
To the amazement of Ruth Fielding and her young companions, none of the seven men who had manned the boat seemed much the worse for their experience. They breathed heavily and their faces were grim. She could almost have sworn that the youngest of the crew–he had the figure “6” worked on the sleeve of his coat–had tears of disappointment in his eyes.
“It’s a desperate shame, lads!” croaked old Cap’n Abinadab. “We’re bested. And the old boat’s badly smashed. But there’s one thing sure–no other boat, nor no other crew, couldn’t do what we started to do. Ain’t no kick comin’ on that score.”
“And can’t the poor creatures out there be helped? Must they drown?” whispered Helen in Ruth’s ear.
Ruth did not believe that these men would give up so easily. They were rough seamen; but the helplessness of the castaways appealed to them.
“Come on, boys!” commanded the captain of the life saving crew. “Let’s git out the wagon. I don’t suppose there’s any use, unless there comes a lull in this etarnal gale. But we’ll try what gunpowder will do.”
“What are they going to attempt now?” Madge Steele asked.
“The beach wagon,” said somebody. “They’ve gone for the gear.”
This was no explanation to the girls until Tom Cameron came running back from the house and announced that the crew were going to try to reach the schooner with a line.
“They’ll try to save them with the breeches buoy,” he said. “They’ve got a life-car here; but they never use that thing nowadays if they can help. Too many castaways have been near smothered in it, they say. If they can get a line over the wreck they’ll haul the crew in, one at a time.”
“And that girl!” cried Ruth. “I hope they will send her ashore first. How frightened she must be.”
There was no more rain falling now, although the spray whipped from the crests of the waves was flung across the beach and wet the sightseers. But with the lightening of the clouds a pale glow seemed to spread itself upon the tumultuous sea.
The wreck could be seen almost as vividly as when the signal lights were burned. The torn clouds were driven across the heavens as rapidly as the huge waves raced shoreward. And behind both cloud and wave was the seething gale. There seemed no prospect of the wind’s falling.
Ruth turned to see the crew which had failed to get the lifeboat to the wreck, trundling a heavy, odd-looking, two-wheeled wagon down upon the beach. They worked as though their fight with the sea had been but the first round of the battle. Their calmness and skillful handling of the breeches buoy gear inspired the onlookers with renewed hope.
“Oh, Cap’n Abinadab and the boys will get ’em this time,” declared Heavy. “You just watch.”
And Ruth Fielding and the others were not likely to miss any motion of the crew of the life saving station. The latter laid out the gear with quick, sure action. The cannon was placed in position and loaded. The iron bar to which the line was attached was slipped into the muzzle of the gun. The men stood back and the captain pulled the lanyard.
Bang!
The sharp bark of the line-gun echoed distressingly in their ears. It jumped back a pace, for the captain had charged it to the full limit allowed by the regulations. A heavier charge might burst the gun.
The line-iron hurtled out over the sea in a long, graceful curve, the line whizzing after it. The line unwound so rapidly from the frame on which it was coiled that Ruth’s gaze could not follow it.
The sea was light enough for them to follow the course of the iron, however, and a groan broke from the lips of the onlookers when they saw that the missile fell far short of the wreck. To shoot the line into the very teeth of this gale, as Cap’n Abinadab had said, was futile. Yet he would not give up the attempt. This was the only way that was now left for them to aid the unfortunate crew of the lumber schooner. If they could not get the breeches buoy to her the sea would be the grave of the castaways.
For already the waves, smashing down upon the grounded wreck, were tearing it apart. She would soon break in two, and then the remaining rigging and spars would go by the board and with them the crew and passengers.
Yet Captain Abinadab Cope refused to give over his attempts to reach the wreck.
“Haul in!” he commanded gruffly, when the line fell short. Ruth marveled at the skill of the man who rewound the wet line on the pegs of the frame that held it. In less than five minutes the life-savers were ready for another shot.
“You take it when the regular crew are at practice, sometimes,” whispered Heavy, to Ruth, “and they work like lightning. They’ll shoot the line and get a man ashore in the breeches buoy in less than two minutes. But this is hard work for these volunteers–and it means so much!”
Ruth felt as though a hand clutched at her heart. The unshed tears stung her eyes. If they should fail–if all this effort should go for naught! Suppose that unknown girl out there on the wreck should be washed ashore in the morning, pallid and dead.
The thought almost overwhelmed the girl from the Red Mill. As the gun barked a second time and the shot and line hurtled seaward, Ruth Fielding’s pale lips uttered a whispered prayer.
