“Caleb and Lonny Bowles. They’d go anywheres cap’n told ’em. He was holdin’ tiller when I see him last; Caleb layin’ back on the sheet and Lonny bailin’. Cap’n said he wouldn’t ’a’ risked it, only we was behind an’ he didn’t want ye worried. I’m kind’er sorry they started; it ain’t no picnic out there, I tell ye.”
Betty gave an anxious look at Aunty Bell.
“Is it a very bad storm, Cap’n Brandt?” she asked, almost in a whisper.
“Wust I ever see, Mis’ West, since I worked round here,” nodding kindly to Betty as he spoke, his face lighting up. He had always believed in her because the captain had taken her home. “Everything comin’ in under double reefs,—them that is a-comin’ in. They say two o’ them Lackawanna coal-barges went adrift at daylight an’ come ashore at Crotch Island. Had two men drownded, I hear.”
“Who told you that?” asked Sanford. The news only increased his anxiety.
“The cap’n of the tow line, sir. He’s just telegraphed to New Haven for a big wreckin’ tug.”
Sanford told Captain Brandt to wait, ran upstairs two steps at a time, and reappeared in long rubber boots and mackintosh.
“I’ll walk up toward the lighthouse and find out how they are getting on, Mrs. Bell,” he said. “We can see them from the lantern deck. Come, Captain Brandt, I want you with me.” A skilled seaman like the skipper might be needed before the day was over.
Betty and Aunty Bell looked after them until they had swung back the garden gate with its clanking ball and chain, and had turned to breast the gale in their walk of a mile or more up the shore road.
“Oh, aunty,” said Betty, with a tremor in her voice, all the blood gone from her face, “do you think anything will happen?”