Killykinick Part 21

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 G.o.d, 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 sh.o.r.e. The August storm was rising against Last Island in swift wrath; but, wrestling in pa.s.sionate 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 sh.o.r.e.

"It's a-washing away fast," old Neb had informed Dan when they had drifted by the low-lying sh.o.r.e. "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 sh.o.r.e.

"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 G.o.d 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 hoa.r.s.ely. "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 hoa.r.s.e, fierce tone, like a sob of pa.s.sion 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."

"G.o.d 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 sh.o.r.e 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. "G.o.d 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 G.o.d can take care of him anywhere."

"Sure He can, lad,--He can. I'm the weak old sinner to doubt and fear,"