STARTLING NEWS
The home-coming of Captain Bijonah Tanner and his wife did not provide the thrill looked for by the more morbid inhabitants of Freekirk Head. In the excitement of the fire all hands had forgotten that cable communication between Mignon and the mainland was unbroken.
The operator, in the pursuance of his duty, had sent word of the fire to Eastport, and then concocted some cable despatches for Boston and Portland papers that left nothing to be desired from the viewpoint of sensationalism. In his zeal for filling space and eking out his slender income, the operator left nothing standing on Grande Mignon except the eternal rocks and the lighthouse.
It was such an account that Bijonah Tanner fed upon that morning in the tiny cabin of the Rosan, and half an hour after he had read it he was under way. Special mention had been made of Code Schofield’s rescue of little Bige, with a sentence added that the Tanner place had been wiped out.
With their minds filled with desperate scenes of 38 cataclysm and ruin, the Tanners raced the complaining Rosan around Flag Point six hours later, only to fall upon one another and dance for joy at the sight of the village nestling as of yore against the green mountains and gleaming white in the descending sun.
An acrid smell and a smudge of smoke told of what had really been, and a black heap of ruins where the familiar house had stood for so long confirmed their fears for their own property; but to see the village content and smiling, except for a poor building or two, was joy enough to overbalance the personal loss.
So those who expected a tearful and emotional home-coming were disappointed.
Code met the dory that rowed ashore after Bijonah had made fast to his mooring in the little cove that was the roadstead for the fishing fleet. He had half expected to share the duty with Nat Burns since the recent change in his relations to the Tanners, but Burns did not put in an appearance, although it was three o’clock in the afternoon.
Bijonah shook hands with him, and Ma Tanner kissed him, the latter ceremony being a baptism of happy tears that all were safe and alive. Bijonah cleared his voice and pulled hard at his beard.
“Understand you’re quite a hero, Code,” he ventured bluffly, careful to conceal any emotion, but resolved to give the occasion its due.