Billy swayed forward and Janet caught him. She laid him upon the floor and bent above him.
"My Cap'n!" she moaned, "oh! Cap'n Billy!" But Billy heeded her not. "He's dead!" The horror-filled words startled even the speaker. "Dead! my Billy!" But no, he breathed! "I must do his work, and get help!" the girl started up wildly. "He isn't dead! He shall not die!" She took his check from his pocket, and his Coston light. Then she gently moved him nearer the stove, put coal on the blaze, and loosened the heavy coat. "Now!" she muttered, and rushed out into the night and storm. The strength of ten seemed to possess her; and the calmness of desperation lent her power.
The noise of the wind deadened the sound of the surf. Sometimes she found herself knee deep in icy water,—for the tide was terribly high. Then she crawled up to the dunes and felt with mittened hands for the stiff grass. Presently she came to a rock, a rare thing on that coast, and she clung to it desperately. It was as true a landmark to the girl of the Station as a mountain peak would have been to an inland traveller.
"Only a mile more!" she panted, and then a memory of one of Davy's old hymns came to her:
"The shadow of a mighty rock within a weary land."
She recalled how she, as a little child, had often crouched beside this very rock when the summer's sun beat hot upon the sand. Summer! Was there ever such a thing as summer on this ice-bound shore? She dreaded to set forth again. A stupor was creeping over her, a stupor she had been trained to fear. She struggled to her feet, but the mad thought of summer would cling to her benumbed fancy. It fascinated and lured her dangerously. She saw the Hills rise, many colored, in the blackness. She saw Thornly's little hut with its door set open to the cool, refreshing breeze. It was a breeze then, this fierce, cruel wind. It was a gentle breeze when summer and love held part! She heard again the call of the golden whistle; and this fancy made her draw her breath in sharp gasps. She shut her stiff lids and saw Thornly coming over the sunlighted Hills with his joy-filled face, shining in the summer day!
Oh! if she could but hear that golden call just once again how happy she would be! Maybe, when death came, God would let Thornly call her in that way, just as God had let Susan Jane's lover come to her upon the shining, incoming wave!
But then Thornly was not her lover; she was his and that was different!
"Death!" Again the girl struggled forward. She must not die! Why, Billy was there alone, in the halfway house—and Billy's duty was still unperformed.
On, on once again! The wind was blowing in gusts now. It was reckoning with the near-coming day and was lessening in fury. But the sudden blasts were almost worse than the steady gale. Janet, weakened and numb, was hardly upon her way, before she was knocked from her feet by the cruel force and lay, face downward, upon the icy sand! Hurt and discouraged, she yet managed to rise. The pain roused her dulled senses and in the lull that followed a strange ghostly sound was borne seaward. She stopped and stood upright. Again it came, plaintively and persistently, rising and falling. As if the faint note had power over night and tempest, the blackness seemed to break; the snow ceased, and overhead, through a riven cloud, a pale, frightened moon peered curiously. Then the wind shrieked defiantly. But again it came, that tender, penetrating call, nearer, nearer, over the dunes, and down toward the thundering sea!