Having got under way the work of preparing food and a hot drink for those who would soon be needing both, Mary Vanton allowed herself a moment at the window with the boys.
Above the steady diapason of wind and ocean came sounds of men shouting faintly. This was the crew of the Lone Cove Station, dragging apparatus to the dunes close by the Vanton house. A moment later Keeper Tom Lupton came in, banging the door; that being, indeed, the only way to close it against the force of the gale.
Mary Vanton hastened toward him.
“We shall go around the house,” he said, without wasting time in greeting her. “We can work better in the lee of the house. It will be a wonderful protection to us and if the line falls short it will be less likely to be fouled.”
“The whole house is yours,” Mary Vanton told him, quietly. “Use it. Come and go as you like. I am making gallons of hot coffee; there will be bacon and bread or hardtack.”
He thanked her and praised her with a single glance. “I must be getting outside,” he said, and left.
The boys had deserted the south window for one looking east where they could see the life savers bringing up their apparatus on the crest of a dune close by the house. Their mother spoke to them:
“John and Guy, bring in wood and get some dry wood up from the cellar and start fires in the fireplaces.”
They obeyed willingly enough. Mary went into the kitchen and sped the servant and her daughter in the task of victualling.