The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point Part 33

She opened the door again, and this time, being prepared for the onslaught of the wind, merely gritted her teeth and ducked her head and plunged gamely into it. And without a minute's hesitation, the others, who were "also Outdoor Girls," followed her.

The fight with the wind that followed was all they had expected it would be--and more. Their clothes were whipped about their legs as if about to disengage themselves and fly away from their owners forever. And several times they were forced to stop and turn their backs to catch their breath and gather strength to go on.

But on they did go until the welcome vision of a gaunt old farmhouse rising ghostily from the early morning mist rewarded them and set their hearts to beating high with hope.

As they fought their way step by step up to the porch, they tried to call out, but found that whatever sound they were able to make was drowned in the roar of the wind.

They found an old-fashioned knocker on the big front door, and worked it with all their strength. After what seemed to them an age of waiting, the door itself opened and a head popped out at them.

"Well, what in time--" the owner of the voice was beginning, when Betty pushed impatiently past him, the girls following close behind her.

It took a surprisingly short time--seeing that the girls all insisted upon talking at once--to make the farmer understand the situation.

"We're going on to the life-saving station," Betty told him, trembling with excitement.

"All right, but my boys'll beat 'em to it," he promised, a glint in his grey eyes.

Then the girls were on their way again, pushing desperately against a wind that seemed to rise higher and higher with every minute, while in the east the greying sky grew light.

"A--clear--day!" Mollie gasped, pushing back the wind-blown hair from her face. "At last!"

"Do you hear anything?" Betty shouted back. "It seems to me I--"

They listened, and then, above the wind, it came to them unmistakably--the sound of voices, masculine voices.

"The life-savers!" gasped Grace. "We don't have to go any farther.

Let's--let's--wait for them."

They had not long to wait, for almost before Grace had finished speaking half a dozen men carrying life-saving paraphernalia broke through the underbrush and came running down the path toward them.

They stopped at sight of the panting girls, but Betty waved them on impatiently.

"The wreck!" she cried. "We came for you! Hurry!" and without another word the men hurried on, leaving the girls to follow them more slowly.

However, they accomplished the return trip in about half the time it had taken them to fight their way against the wind, and as the first bright rays of the sun gilded the country side, they found themselves back at the house, where Mrs. Ford was anxiously awaiting them.

She had some breakfast prepared for them, which they ate standing, then rushed headlong down to the beach. The life-savers were already busily at work launching their st.u.r.dy boats, and as the girls followed the direction they were taking out to sea they suddenly saw the wrecked ship.

Driven by the hurricane wind, it had been caught on one of those treacherous bars so common along this part of the coast. Part of the bottom had been torn away, and if the ship had not been so tightly wedged upon the bar it must certainly have sunk hours before. As it was, the starboard deck stood high in the air while the port side almost touched the water and was constantly swept by mountainous combers.

The girls shivered as they looked.

"If the waves should wash it loose--" Betty began, then checked herself.

The possibility was too horrible to contemplate.

"Look!" cried Mollie, clutching her arm, "They are filling the first boat. Oh, Betty, they'll certainly be swamped! I can't look!" She turned away but the next minute her eyes were fixed strainingly upon the wreck again.

"They're gone! They're gone!" cried Amy, jumping up and down in her excitement as the boat sunk in the hollow between two huge combers and was lost to view. "No, they're not! They're up again," as the boat, looking pathetically tiny in comparison to the vastness of the ocean, rose gallantly on the crest of a big wave and came rushing toward them, reeling from side to side. The next moment they were lost to view again.

"Oh, they'll never make it, they'll never make it," moaned Grace. "It isn't possible."

But the gallant little boat came on and out fighting its bitter fight with the elements, till, rising on one last long comber, it swept magnificently in and grounded on the sh.o.r.e.

The girls were already racing eagerly toward it, and a few minutes later were welcoming the poor bedraggled survivors back to safety. There were nine of them in all, four women, one young girl, three men and a little boy. The child was sobbing and clung to his mother's skirts, terrified.

Betty drew Grace aside.

"Some one will have to take them up to the house, let them dry out, and give them something to eat," she whispered. "Will you do that, Grace?"

Grace nodded, and Amy, who had overheard the request, begged to go with her. Mollie and Betty remained behind to watch the rest of the rescue work.

Luckily the ship was a merchant vessel and carried very few pa.s.sengers, so that the life-savers were confident of saving all those on board.

Also the wind was beginning to abate and the sea was becoming less angry--all of which helped them in their work.

The two girls were standing side by side, eagerly watching the progress of the second boat, when they were startled by a hail from behind and turned to find Grace and Amy flying down toward them.

"Mollie!" Amy gasped, trying to catch her breath while her cheeks flamed with excitement, "we just heard something we thought you ought to know.

You know the woman with the little boy," she hurried on as Mollie was about to speak, "well, while she was comforting her own child, she happened to speak of two other children on board--"

"Who cry a great deal," Grace put in eagerly. "They are in charge of a man who looks like a Spaniard, and they seem to be in mortal terror of him--"

"Girls," the word burst through dry lips as Mollie took a step toward them, "what are you telling me? Oh, I can't bear to hope if--" she grasped Grace's arm and shook it, not realizing how she hurt. "Tell me,"

she cried, "are they boy and girl--"

"Yes," Grace answered trembling. "I don't know, Mollie, dear, of course, but from her description, those two children sounded an awful lot like the twins!"

Mollie waited to hear no more, but was off like a whirlwind down the beach toward the second boat that was just coming in to sh.o.r.e. And while she ran she was praying with all her fervent young heart.

"Oh, Lord, give me back those babies!" she cried sobbingly. "If you only will I'll never, never, _never_ ask you for anything again as long as I live."

Then she saw them!

A big, vicious looking man with black hair and black bushy eyebrows was lifting Dodo--her little Dodo--out of the boat. And while she looked, her heart beating wildly, hardly able to believe the evidence of her eyes, the man stretched out his hand for the boy, who sat crouched in the back of the boat. Then followed something that made Mollie cry out in rage.

Because the boy hung back in evident terror, the man struck him across the face, and, seizing his hand, jerked him roughly out of the boat.

"Dodo! Paul!" screamed Mollie, racing down toward them, unmindful of wet feet and sodden clothing. "Babies, it's Mollie! Your own Mollie who--"

But her voice was drowned in a shriek from the twins as they tore themselves loose from the man and flung themselves upon her. She dropped to her knees in the sand and strained them to her, laughing, crying, sobbing out endearments while they clung to her frantically, burying their faces in her neck.

"Don't let wicked man get Dodo!" sobbed the little girl. "He's bad man!

He hurt Dodo."

With a cry Mollie jumped to her feet, an arm about each of the twins, and looked about for the man. The pa.s.sengers who had also come ash.o.r.e in the boat stood looking on in bewilderment. But the Spaniard had disappeared.

"Where did that man go?" cried Mollie frantically. "There he is!" she added, as she caught sight of him just approaching the foot of the bluff, evidently bent on flight. "Don't let him get away! He's a kidnapper!"

Several of the men were already racing off in pursuit, and as the Spaniard was a heavy man and not over agile, the foremost of them soon overtook him.