“With a hot poker. I’ll heat it in the kitchen stove. I’ll burn a lot of little holes all around the lock, and then I can knock the piece of door out! The men can’t hear that!”
“Good!” cried Ned. “Hurry Jess!”
They could hear the girl moving about the kitchen. The rattle of iron on iron came to their ears. Presently there was the smell of burning wood. It grew stronger. Then a dull red point pierced the door, and came through into the storeroom.
“That’s the first hole!” whispered Jess. “I’ll burn them as fast as I can.”
To the boys it seemed as if there was half an hour between each reappearance of the glowing point of the poker, but it was only a few minutes. There were seven holes burned, when they heard Jess hurry away.
Then resounded the tramp of feet in the lower part of the lighthouse. A few seconds later the boys heard voices.
“Is it working all right?” a man asked.
“You bet,” was the reply. “Now you and Bill had better put off in the sloop. She’ll strike pretty soon, and you may pick up passengers with a lot of valuables.”
“It’s blowing pretty hard to go out in the sloop,” one of the crowd objected.