Forgetting the rope that tied them together, Sandy lunged down the pile of stone toward the cabin. Ken and Cal were pulled down with him as he hurled himself around the corner of the cabin.
Before they could get to their feet Sandy was back, carrying a blanket from one of the bunks. He scrambled up the pile of stone, hauling impatiently at the line and waving the blanket even before Ken and Cal could reach him.
“It looks like it’s coming closer!” Ken shouted.
The air-borne craft in the sky was dropping rapidly now. Blinking their eyes against the glare of the sun, they could see that it was a helicopter—a bare thousand feet above the barge.
Approaching from windward, the helicopter continued to lose altitude as it swung in a circling maneuver until it was directly over the barge. Then it began to descend in a straight line like an elevator in an invisible shaft. When the machine was a scant thirty feet above their heads a door in the underbelly opened and something fell seaward to land on the pile of stone a few feet from where they stood.
“It’s a ladder!” Ken shouted. “A rope ladder! Come on!”
The ladder was swinging back and forth in the wind. Sandy made a grab for it and caught at the twisting rope. The helicopter continued to drop until it hovered only fifteen feet above them.
Ken looked upward. His father’s face was peering down at him from the aircraft.
“Dad!” Ken began to laugh, almost hysterical with relief now that their long ordeal was over. “Don’t bother to come aboard,” he shouted. “We were just leaving, anyway.”
Beside him, one arm thrust between the ladder rungs, the other around Ken’s shoulders, Sandy was laughing too.