Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island Part 26

"That!"

"Why, it--it looks like----"

"Come on. Let's find out." And Billie ran to the thing that looked like a large piece of driftwood washed up on the sand by the heavy sea.

And as she reached it she drew in her breath sharply and brushed a hand across her eyes to make sure she was not dreaming. On the thing that was not a piece of driftwood at all, but looked like a sort of crudely and hastily constructed raft, were lashed three small, unconscious little forms.

"Girls, look!" she almost screamed above the shrill wind. "Do you see them, too?"

"Why--why, they are children!" cried Laura. "Oh, Billie, do you suppose they're alive?"

"I don't know," said Billie, dropping to her knees beside the three pitiful little figures. Two of them were girls, twins evidently, and the third was a smaller child, a boy. Something in their baby att.i.tudes, perhaps their very helplessness, stung Billie to sudden action.

"Help me get them loose!" she cried to the other girls, who were still staring stupidly. "I don't know whether they're dead or not yet. But they will be if we don't hurry. Oh, girls, stop staring and help me!"

Then how they worked! The slippery wet rope that bound the little forms was knotted several times, and the girls thought they must scream with the nightmare of it before they got the last knot undone.

"There! At last!" cried Billie, flinging the rope aside and trying to lift one of the little girls. She found it surprisingly easy, for the child was pitifully thin. She staggered to her feet, holding the little form tight to her.

Laura and Vi each took one of the children and Connie offered to help whoever gave out first. Then they started back to the lighthouse. Luckily for them, the wind was at their backs, or they never could have made the trip back.

When they reached the Point they found that most of the crowd had dispersed. Only a few stragglers remained to talk over the tragedy in awed and quiet whispers.

These stared as the girls with their strange burdens fought their way toward the door of the lighthouse. Some even started forward as though to offer a.s.sistance, but the girls did not notice them.

Through the window Billie could see Uncle Tom standing before his mantelpiece, head dropped wearily on his arm. Then Connie opened the door and they burst in upon him.

"Oh, Uncle Tom!" she gasped. "Please come here, quick!"

CHAPTER XXIV

THREE SMALL SURVIVORS

It did not take Uncle Tom very long, experienced as he was, to bring the three children back to consciousness. As it was, they had been more affected by the cold and the fright than anything else, for the raft, crude as it was, had kept them above the surface of the waves and saved their lives.

As the girls bent over them eagerly, helping Uncle Tom as well as they could, the faint color came back to the pinched little faces, and slowly the children opened their eyes.

"Oh, they are alive, bless 'em," cried Billie, jumping to her feet. But the quick action seemed to terrify the children, and they cried out in alarm. In a minute Billie was back on her knees beside them, looking at them wonderingly.

"Why, what's the matter?" she asked, putting out her hand to the little boy, who shrank away from her and raised an arm before his eyes. "Why, honey, did you really think Billie would hurt a nice little boy like you?"

But all three children had begun to cry, and Billie looked helplessly at her chums.

Uncle Tom had spread a large rug on the floor and had laid the children on it while he worked over them. Up to this time he had been on his knees beside the girls, but now he got to his feet and looked down at them soberly.

"Somebody's been mistreating 'em," he said, his eyes on the three cowering, pathetic little figures. "Poor little mites--poor little mites!

Found 'em on a sort of raft, you say? Washed up by the waves?"

The girls nodded, and Billie, putting a tender arm around the little fellow, succeeded in drawing him up close to her while Laura and Vi tried to do the same with the little girls. Connie was watching her Uncle Tom.

"H'm," said the latter, stroking his chin thoughtfully. "Folks on the ship probably--drowned out there. Poor little waifs. Kind of up to us to take care of 'em, I reckon."

"Of course it is," cried Connie, jumping to her feet. "Uncle Tom, where did Mother and Daddy go?"

"On, toward the house," said Uncle Tom, nodding his head in the direction of the bungalow. "When they couldn't find you they got kind o' worried and thought you must have made tracks for home."

"Here they come now," cried Laura, for through the windows she had caught sight of Mr. and Mrs. Danvers hurrying along the walk toward the lighthouse.

"Oh, I'm glad," said Billie, hugging the little boy to her and smoothing his damp hair back from his forehead. The child had stopped crying and had snuggled close to Billie, lying very still like a little kitten who has found shelter and comfort in the midst of a wilderness. The soft little confiding warmth of him very suddenly made Billie want to cry.

"Your mother will know what to do," she said to Connie.

"Mother always does," said Connie confidently, and a minute later opened the door to admit two very much wind-blown, exhausted and very anxious parents.

"Oh, kiddies, what a fright you gave us!" cried Connie's mother, looking very pale and tired as she leaned against the door post while Mr. Danvers patted her hand gently and tried not to look too much relieved. "Where did you go? Why, girls----" She stopped short in absolute amazement and bewilderment as she caught sight of Laura and Vi and Billie on the floor, each with a child clasped in her arms. "Where did you get them?"

She did not wait for an answer. She flew across the room and, dropping to her knees, gazed at the children who at this new intrusion had started away from the girls and regarded her with wide, doubtful eyes.

"Why, you precious little scared babies, you!" she cried, pushing the girls away and gathering the children to her. "I don't know where you came from, but what you need is mothering. Where did they come from?" she asked, looking up at Uncle Tom.

"From out there," said Uncle Tom gravely, waving his hand toward the spot where the ship had gone down. Then he quickly told her and Mr. Danvers what the girls had told him. They did not interrupt. Only, when he had finished, Mrs. Danvers was crying and not trying to hide it.

"Oh, those poor, poor people!" she sobbed. "And these poor little frightened, miserable children all, all there is left. Oh, I'll never get over the horror of it. Never, never! John," she added, looking up at her husband with one of those quick changes of mood that the girls had learned to expect in her, "will you and Tom help me get the children home? They mustn't be left like this in dripping clothes. They'll catch their death of cold. What they need is a hot bath and something to eat, and then bed. Poor little sweethearts, they are just dropping for sleep."

So Uncle Tom took one of the little girls, Mr. Danvers another, and Connie's mother insisted upon carrying the little boy.

"Why, he's nothing at all to carry," she said, when her husband protested. "Poor child--he's only skin and bones."

So the strange procession started for the bungalow, the girls, tired out with nerve strain and excitement, bringing up the rear. But they did not know they were tired. The mystery of the three strange little waifs washed up to them by the sea had done a good deal to erase even the horror of the wreck.

"And we haven't the slightest idea in the world who they really are or whom they belong to," Connie was saying as they turned in at the walk.

"It is a mystery, girls, a _real_ mystery this time. And I don't know how we'll solve it."

But they forgot the mystery for the time being in the pleasure of seeing the waifs bathed and wrapped in warm things from the girls' wardrobes and fed as only Connie's mother could feed such children.

Gradually the fear died out of the children's eyes, and once the little boy even reached over timidly and put a soft, warm hand in Billie's.

"You darling," she choked, bending over to kiss the little hand. "You're not afraid of Billie now, are you?"

The little girls, who were twins and as like as two peas, were harder to win over. But by love and tenderness Connie's mother and the girls managed it at last.

And then eyes grew drowsy, tired little heads nodded, and Connie's mother, with a look at Mr. Danvers, who had been hovering in the background all the time, picked up one of the little girls and started for the stairs.

"I'm going to tuck them in bed," she said, speaking softly. "We can put them in our room, John--in the big bed."