“It’s the Huronic!” gasped Hinpoha, her eyes following Sahwah’s pointing finger.
Jammed up on a reef and completely at the mercy 231 of the waves that battered against her side lay the great steamer that only a week before had swept so proudly through the channel. The beautiful white bird had its wings broken now, and drooping helplessly lay exposed to the full fury of the storm.
Hinpoha shrieked and covered her face with her hands. Horrified and fascinated, the others watched the waves dashing high over the tilting decks.
“Whe-e-e-w-w-w!” whistled the Captain.
“Can’t we do something,” said Sahwah, “run and tell somebody? Oh, don’t stand here and see that boat go to pieces!”
“What can we do?” asked Hinpoha.
Before anybody could answer her question a brilliant light suddenly flared up a short distance ahead of them on the shore. “What’s that?” asked Hinpoha in amazement.
“Beach patrol,” explained the Captain. “That’s the signal that he has sighted the ship. Now he’ll run back to the life saving station that’s about a mile beyond here opposite the mouth of the channel and tell them where the wreck is and they’ll come and take the people off the ship. See him going there, along the shore?”
In the gray darkness which followed the flash of light they could just barely make out the figure of a man running.
“I don’t see how he ever got that torch lit in this wind,” said Hinpoha.