Chapter 11

"Oh, I'm here yet!" he said, thinking his patient needed the reassurance. "I'm staying here right by you, to say prayers, or get water or anything you want. Dan left me here to take care of you. He has gone for the doctor; and if you just hold on till they get here, why, maybe--maybe--they'll pull you through all right. Gee whilikins!" exclaimed Freddy, as the sick man suddenly started up from his rude pillow. "You mustn't do that!"

"I must--I must!" was the hoarse reply; and Freddy was caught in a wild, passionate clasp to his patient's heart. "Dying or living, I must claim you, hold you, my boy,--my own little son,--little Boy Blue!" The voice sank to a low, trembling whisper. "Little Boy Blue, don't you know your own daddy?"

And Freddy, who had been struggling wildly in what he believed to be a delirious grasp, suddenly grew still. "Little Boy Blue,"--it was the nursery name of long ago,--the name that only the dad of those days knew,--the name that even Brother Bart had never heard. It brought back blazing fire, and cushioned rocker, and the clasp of strong arms around his little white-robed form, and a deep, merry voice in his baby ear: "Little Boy Blue."

Freddy lifted a frightened, bewildered little face. The eyes,--softened now with brimming tears; the straight nose like his own, the waving hair, the scar he had so often pressed with baby fingers,--ah, he remembered,--little Boy Blue remembered! It was as if a curtain were snatched from a far past that had been only dimly outlined until now.

"My daddy,--my daddy,--my own dear daddy!" he cried, flinging his arms about the sick man's neck. "Oh, don't die,--don't die!"

For, weak and exhausted by his outburst of emotion, the father had fallen back upon his pillow, gasping for breath, the sweat standing out in great beads on his brow, his hand clutching Freddy's own in what seemed a death clasp.

And now Freddy prayed indeed,--prayed as never in all his young life he had prayed before,--prayed from the depths of his tender, innocent heart, in words all his own.

"O God, Father in heaven, spare my dear daddy! He has been lost so long! Oh, do not let me lose him again! Save him for his little boy,--save him, spare him!"

Without, the sky had darkened, the wind moaned, the waves swelled white-capped against the low shore. The August storm was rising against Last Island in swift wrath; but, wrestling in passionate fervor for the life that had suddenly become so precious to him, Freddy did not hear or heed. The dogs started out into the open. Father and son were alone in the gathering gloom.

Through what he believed the throes of his death agony, the sick man caught the sweet, faltering words: "O dear Lord, have mercy on my dear father! Let him live, and we will bless and thank You all the rest of our lives. He has been lost so long, but now he has come back. Oh, try to say it with me, daddy: you have come back to be good,--to live good and live right forever!"

And then, even while Freddy prayed, the storm burst upon Last Island. And such a storm! It seemed as if the derelict lying there had roused wind and wave into destructive fury against the friendly outpost that sheltered him. Last Island had been abandoned on account of its perilous exposure; and its beacon light, shattered again and again by fierce ocean gales, was transferred to a safer shore.

"It's a-washing away fast," old Neb had informed Dan when they had drifted by the low-lying shore. "Some of these days a big storm will gulp it down for good."

And truly the roaring sea seemed to rush upon it in hungry rage to-day. The dogs came in crouching and whining to their master; while the wind shrieked and whistled, and the foaming breakers thundered higher and higher upon the unprotected shore.

"O Dan, Dan!" thought Freddy hopelessly, as the storm beat through the broken walls and roof. "Dan will never get here now,--never!"

But, though his heart was quailing within him, Brother Bart's laddie was no weakling: he stood bravely to his post, bathing his father's head and hands, wetting the dry, muttering lips, soothing him with tender words and soft caresses,--"daddy, my own dear daddy, it is your little boy that is with you,--your own little Boy Blue! You will be better soon, daddy." And then through the roar and rage of the storm would rise the boyish voice pleading to God for help and mercy.

And the innocent prayer seemed to prevail. The sick man's labored breathing grew easier, the drawn features relaxed, the blood came into the livid lips; and, with the long-drawn sigh of one exhausted by his struggle for life, Freddy's patient sank into a heavy sleep; while his little Boy Blue watched on, through terrors that would have tried stronger souls than Brother Bart's laddie. For all the powers of earth and air and sea seemed loosened for battle. The winds rose into madder fury; the rain swept down in blinding floods; forked tongues of fire leaped from the black clouds that thundered back to the rolling waves.

The dogs crouched, whimpering and shivering, at Freddy's side. Whether daddy was alive or dead he could not tell. He could only keep close to him, trembling and praying, and feeling that all this horror of darkness could not be real: that he would waken in a moment,--waken as he had sometimes wakened in St. Andrew's, with Brother Bart's kind voice in his ear telling him it was all a dream,--an awful dream.

And then blaze and crash and roar would send poor little Boy Blue shivering to his knees, realizing that it was all true: that he was indeed here on this far-off ocean isle, beyond all help and reach of man, with daddy dying,--dead beside him. He had closed the door as best he could with its rusted bolt; but the wind kept tearing at it madly, shaking the rotten timbers until they suddenly gave way, with rattle and crash that were too much for the brave little watcher's nerves. He flung his arms about his father in horror he could no longer control.

"Daddy, daddy!" he cried desperately. "Wake up,--wake up! Daddy, speak to me and tell me you're not dead!"

And daddy started into consciousness at the piteous cry, to find his little Boy Blue clinging to him in wild affright, while wind and wave burst into their wretched shelter,--wind and wave! Surging, foaming, sweeping over beach and bramble and briar growth that guarded the low shore, rising higher and higher each moment before the furious goad of the gale, came the white-capped breakers!

"Oh, the water is coming in on us! Poor daddy, poor daddy, you'll get wet!"

And then daddy, wild wanderer that he had been over sea and land, roused to the peril, his dulled brain quickening into life.

"The gun,--my gun!" he said hoarsely. "It is loaded, Freddy. Lift it up here within reach of my hand."

"O daddy, daddy, what are you going to do?" cried Freddy in new alarm.

"Shoot,--shoot! Signal for help. There is a life-saving station not far away. There, hold the gun closer now,--closer!"

And the trembling hand pulled the trigger, and its sharp call for help went out again and again into the storm.

XXI.--A DARK HOUR.

Meantime Dan had set his dingy sail to what he felt was a changing wind, and started Neb's fishing boat on the straightest line he could make for Killykinick. But it had taken a great deal of tacking and beating to keep to his course. He was not yet sailor enough to know that the bank of clouds lying low in the far horizon meant a storm; but the breeze that now filled and now flapped his sail was as full of pranks as a naughty boy. In all his experience as second mate, Dan had never before met so trying a breeze; and it was growing fresher and stronger and more trying every minute. To beat back to Beach Cliff against its vagaries, our young navigator felt would be beyond his skill. The only thing he could do was to take the shorter course of about three miles to Killykinick, and send off Jim and Dud in their rented boat (which had a motor) for a doctor. Then he could explain Freddy's absence to Brother Bart, and hurry back to his little chum.

Wind and tide, however, were both against these well-laid plans to-day. The wind was bad enough, but now even the waves seemed to have a strange swell, different from the measured rise and fall he knew. It was as if their far-off depths were rising, stirring out of their usual calm. They no longer tossed their snowy crests in the summer sunlight, but surged and swayed in low, broken lines, white-capped with fitful foam. And the voice--the song of the sea--that had been a very lullaby to Dan as he swung every night in his hammock beneath the stars, had a hoarse, fierce tone, like a sob of passion or pain. Altogether, Dan and his boat had a very hard pull over the three miles to Killykinick.

"Thar they come!" said Captain Jeb, who, with Brother Bart, was watching from the beach. "I told you you could count on Mate Dan, Padre. Thar the lads come, safe and sound; though they hed a pull against the wind, I bet. But here they come all right."

"God be thanked for that same!" said Brother Bart, reverently. "My heart has been nearly leaping out of my breast this last half hour. And you weren't over-easy about them yourself, as I could see, Jeroboam."

"Wall, I'm glad to see the younkers safe back, I must say," agreed Captain Jeb, in frank relief. "Thar was nothing to skeer about when they started this morning, but that bank of cloud wasn't in sight then. My but it come up sudden! It fairly took my breath when Neb pointed it out to me. That ar marline spike didn't hurt his weather eye. 'Hurricane,' he says to me; 'straight up from the West Indies, and them boys is out!' I tell you it did give me a turn--aye, aye matey!" as Dan came hurrying up the beach. "Ye made it all right again wind an' tide--but where's the other?"

"Laddie,--my laddie!" cried Brother Bart, his ruddy face paling. "Speak up, Dan Dolan! Has harm come to him?"

"No, no, no!" answered Dan eagerly, "no harm at all, Brother Bart. He is safe and sound. Don't scare, Brother Bart." And then as briefly as he could Dan told the adventure of the morning.

"And you left laddie, that lone innocent, with a dying man?" said Brother Bart. "Sure it will frighten the life out of him!"

"No, it won't," replied Dan. "Freddy isn't the baby you think, Brother Bart. He's got lots of sand. He was ready and willing to stay. We couldn't leave the poor man there alone with the dogs."

"Sure you couldn't,--you couldn't," said the good Brother, his tone softening. "But laddie--little laddie,--that never saw sickness or death! Send off the other boys for the doctor, Jeroboam, and the priest as well, while Dan and I go back for laddie."

But Captain Jeroboam, who was watching the horizon with a wide-awake weather eye, shook his head.

"You can't, Padre,--you can't. Not even the 'Lady Jane' could make it agin what's coming on now. If the boy is on dry land, you'll have to trust him to the Lord."

"Oh, no, no!" answered the good Brother, forgetting what he said, in his solicitude. "I'll go for him myself. Give us your boat, man, and Dan and I will go for laddie."

"Ye can't, I tell ye!" and the old sailor's voice took a sudden tone of command. "I'm captain of this here Killykinick, Padre; and no boat leaves this shore in the face of such a storm, for it would mean death to every man aboard her,--sure and certain death."

"The Lord have mercy,--the Lord have mercy!" cried Brother Bart. "My laddie,--my poor little laddie! The fright of this will kill him entirely. Oh, but you're the hard man, Jeroboam! You have no heart!"

"Back!" shouted Captain Jeb, heedless of the good old man's reproaches, as a whistling sound came over the white-capped waves. "Back, under cover, all of ye. The storm is on us now!"

And, fairly dragging Brother Bart, while Neb and Dan hurried behind them, the Captain made for shelter in the old ship under the cliffs, where Dud and Jim had already found refuge.

"Down with the hatches! Brace everything!" came the trumpet tones of command of the old sailor over the roar of the wind. And doors and portholes shut, the heavy bolts of iron and timber fell into place, and everything was made tight and fast against the storm that now burst in all its fury on Killykinick,--a storm that sent Brother Bart down on his knees in prayer, and held the boys speechless and almost breathless with terror. In the awful blackness that fell upon them they could scarcely see one another. The "Lady Jane" shook from stem to stern as if she were being torn from her fifty years' mooring. The stout awnings were ripped from the upper deck; their posts snapped like reeds in the gale; the great hollows of the Devil's Jaw thundered back the roar of the breakers that filled their cavernous depths with mad turmoil. On land, on sea, in sky, all was battle,--such battle as even Captain Jeb agreed he had never seen on Killykinick before.

"I've faced many a hurricane, but never nothing as bad as this. If it wasn't for them cliffs behind us and the stretch of reef before, durned if we wouldn't be washed clean off the face of the earth!"

"Laddie, laddie!" was the cry that blended with Brother Bart's prayers for mercy. "God in heaven, take care of my poor laddie through this! I ought not to have let him out of my sight."

"But he's safe, Brother Bart," said Dan, striving to comfort himself with the thought. "He is on land, you know, just as we are; and the old lighthouse is as strong as the 'Lady Jane'; and God can take care of him anywhere."

"Sure He can, lad,--He can. I'm the weak old sinner to doubt and fear," was the broken answer. "But he's only a bit of a boy, my own little laddie,--only a wee bit of a boy, that never saw trouble or danger in his life. To be facing this beside a dying man,--ah, God have mercy on him, poor laddie!"

So, amid fears and doubts and prayers, the wild hours of the storm and darkness passed; the fierce hurricane, somewhat shorn of its first tropic strength, swept on its northward way; the shriek of the wind sank into moan and murmur; the sea fell back, like a passion-weary giant; the clouds broke and scattered, and a glorious rainbow arched the clearing sky.

The bolts and bars that had done such good duty were lifted, and the crew of the "Lady Jane" went out to reconnoitre a very damaged domain. Cow-house and chicken-house were roofless. Brown Betty lay crouching fearful in the ruins while her feathered neighbors fluttered homeless in the hollows of the rocks. The beans and peas and corn,--all things that had lifted their green growth too proudly, were crushed to the earth. But far worse than this was the havoc wrought on the beach. One half of the wharf was down. The small boats, torn from their moorings, had disappeared entirely. The motor boat Jim and Dud had hired for the season was stove in upon the rocks. The "Sary Ann," stranded upon the shoals of Numskull Nob, to which she had been swept by the gale, lay without mast or rudder, leaking at every joint.

The two old salts surveyed the scene for a moment in stoic silence, realizing all it meant to them. But Brother Bart, with the sunlight dancing on the waves, the rainbow arching the sky, broke into eager, hopeful speech.

"God be thanked it's over and we're all alive to tell it; for Noah's deluge itself couldn't have been worse. And now, Jeroboam, we'll be going over after laddie; and the Lord grant that we may find him safe as the rest!"

"We'll be going after him!" repeated Captain Jeb, grimly. "How and whar!"

"Sure--can't we right one of the boats?" asked the old man, anxiously.

"Which boat," was the gruff question. "That thar play toy" (surveying the motor boat) "is smashed in like an eggshell. Whar the other has been swept to nobody knows. And the 'Sary Ann' has done her best, as we all can see; but no boat could hold her own agin that storm. Do you think she will stand till morning, Neb?"

Neb rolled his dull eyes over reef and shoal.

"She moight," he replied briefly. "Struck pretty bad thar in the bow; but the wind is down now and the tide is low."

"And she is oak-keeled and copper-braced from stem to stern," continued Captain Jeb. "She may stick it out until we can get thar and tow her in. As for the boy, Padre, we can't reach him no more'n we can reach the 'Sary Ann' without a boat; and thar's nothing left that will float around this Killykinick."

"Ah, the Lord have mercy! And are we to leave laddie in that wild place beyond all night?" cried Brother Bart. "Scatter, boys,--scatter all over the place, and maybe you can find a boat caught in the rocks and sands; for we must get to the laddie afore the night comes on, cost what it may. Scatter and strive to find a boat!"

While the boys scattered eagerly enough Captain Jeb, making a spyglass of his hands, was scanning the horizon with a sailor's practised eye.

"What is it you see?" asked Brother Bart, anxiously. "Don't tell me it's another storm!"

"No," answered Captain Jeb, slowly, "it ain't another storm. Neb" (his tone grew suddenly sharper and quicker), "step up to the ship and get the old man's glass,--the glass we keep shut up in the case."

Neb, who never shirked an order, obeyed. In a moment he returned with one of the greatest treasures of the "Lady Jane"--Great-uncle Joe's ship-glass that was always kept safe from profaning touch; its clear lenses, that had looked out on sea and sky through many a long voyage, polished to a shine. Captain Jeb adjusted them to his own failing eyes, and gazed seaward for a few moments in silence. Then he said:

"'Pears as if I couldn't see clarly after that tarnation blow. You look out, Neb. And, Padre, you'd better step back thar and keep a weather eye on them younkers. It doesn't do to turn them out too free, with things all broke up."

"You're right, man,--you're right, Jeroboam," said the good Brother tremulously. "I'll keep an eye on them, as you say."

"Thar,--I've got him out of the way!" said Captain Neb, as Brother Bart hurried back to watch over his scattered flock. "Now look, Neb,--look steady and straight! Three points to the south of Numskull Nob,--what d'ye see?"

"Nothing at all," answered Neb.

"Look again!" His brother adjusted the old shipmaster's glass with a hand that trembled strangely. "Another point to the south. Look steady as ye can, Neb. Yer weather eye was always clarer than mine. What d'ye see now?"

"Nothing," came the answer again; and then the dull tone quickened: "Aye I do,--I do! Thar's suthing sticking out of the waves like a broken mast."

"The Old Light," said Captain Jeb, hoarsely,--"all that's left of it. Last Island has gone under, as you said it would, Neb,--clean swallowed up. And the boy--" (the speaker gulped down something like a sob). "Looks as if the Padre will never see his little lad agin."

XXII.--THE LOST AND FOUND.

There had been an extra Mass at the little church at Beach Cliff on the morning of the storm. Father Tom Rayburn, an old classmate of the pastor's, had arrived, and been welcomed most cordially.

"I'm off to an old camping ground of mine--Killykinick," he had explained to his host as they sat together at breakfast. "One of our Brothers is there with some of St. Andrew's boys, and my own little nephew is among them."

"Ah, yes, I know!" was the reply. "They come every Sunday to the late Mass. And, by the way, if you are going out into those ocean 'wilds,' you could save a busy man some trouble by stopping at the Life-Saving Station (it's not far out of the way, as I suppose you'll take a sail or a motor boat); and I promised two of those sturdy fellows who are groping for the Truth some reading matter. I thought a friendly talk at the same time would not be amiss. They have little chance for such things in their lonely lives. But my duties are quadrupled at this season, as you know."

"And the 'wilderness' is in my line," said Father Tom. "Of course I'll be glad to stop. I used to haunt the Life-Saving Station when I was a boy; and I should like to see it again, especially when I can do a little missionary work on the side," he laughed cheerily.

And so it had happened that while Dan and Freddy were hauling in their lines and delivering breakfasts along the shore, one of the trig motors from the Boat Club was bearing a tall, broad-shouldered passenger, bronzed by sun and storm, to the Life-Saving Station, whose long, low buildings stood on a desolate spit of sand that jutted out into the sea beyond Shelter Cove. It was Uncle Sam's farthest outpost. The Stars and Stripes floating from its flagstaff told of his watchful care of this perilous stretch of shore that his sturdy sons paced by day and night, alert to any cry for help, any sign of danger.

Father Tom, whose own life work lay in some such lines, met the Life-Savers with a warm, cordial sympathy that made his visit a most pleasant one. He was ready to listen as well as talk. But Blake and Ford, whom he had come especially to see, were on duty up the shore, and would not be back for more than two hours.

"I'll wait for them," said Father Tom, who never let a wandering sheep, that hook or crook could hold, escape his shepherd's care; and he settled down for a longer chat of his own wild and woolly West, which his hearers watching with trained eyes the black line in the horizon, were too polite in their own simple way to interrupt. Their guest was in the midst of a description of the Mohave Desert, where he had nearly left his bones to bleach two years ago, when his boatman came hurriedly up with a request of speedy shelter for his little craft.

"There's a storm coming up I daren't face, sir," he said. "We can't make Killykinick until it blows over. You'll have to stay another hour or two here."

"All right, if our good friends will keep us," was the cheery response. "We are not travelling on schedule time."

And then Father Tom looked on with keen interest as the sturdy life-savers made ready for the swift-coming tempest that was very soon upon them, bringing Blake and Ford back, breathless and drenched, to report their observations along the beach,--that there was nothing in sight: everything had scudded to shelter. So all gathered in the lookout, whose heavy leaded glass, set in a stone frame, defied the fury of the elements. And, thus sheltered, the group in Uncle Sam's outpost watched the sweep of the storm.

"It's a ripper!" said Blake, translating the more professional opinion of his mates to Father Tom. "But we ain't getting the worst of it here. These West Indianers travel narrow gauge tracks, and we're out of line. Killykinick is catching it bad. Shouldn't wonder if that stranded tub of the old Captain's would keel over altogether."

"You think they are in danger there?" asked Father Tom, anxiously.

"Oh, no! Thar's plenty of other shelter. Killykinick is rock-ribbed to stand till the day of doom. George! I believe Last Island is going clean under!"

"Let her go!" came the keeper's bluff response. "Been nothing but a bramble bed these twenty years."

"Bramble bed or not, some fools are camping there," said Blake. "I've seen their dogs on the beach for the last three days; and there was a boat moored to the rocks this morning, and boys scrambling along the shore. The folks that are boxed up in town all winter run wild when they break loose here, and don't care where they go--"

"Hush!" broke in the keeper, suddenly. "Push open the glass there, men, and listen! I think I heard a gun!"

They flung open the window at his word. Borne upon the wild sweep of the wind that rushed in upon them, there came again a sound they all knew,--the signal of distress, the sharp call for help. It was their business to hear and heed.

"A gun sure, and from Last Island!" said the keeper, briefly. "There are fools there, as you say, Blake. Run out the lifeboat, my men! We must get them off. Both boats, for we don't know how many we have to care for."