“It’s ever so much rougher out here than it is in the bay, isn’t it?” Isabel called faintly, but the wind drowned her voice, and she sat huddled up on a locker with her coat turned up around her ears, for all the world like a ship’s cat in a storm, Tom said.
Tarker’s Light was about five miles down the west shore towards Portland. The seas were longer and heavier than those on the bay, but the sloop rode them easily, and only shipped one big green fellow, as the Captain tacked south of the Light, and cut across back towards home. It splashed up over the deck house, and caught Isabel and the rest fairly, until they shrieked. Polly and Nancy escaped, for they were with the Captain, and they rounded the big bell buoy out in mid channel that clanked a warning note as if it had a cold in its head, Sue said.
It was after five when they came up to the Life Saving Station on the Point, and stood by handsomely while Billy Clewen, the keeper, came out in a dory and took off the girls.
“I’m thinking that I’ll send you home by the shore road, with Tom and a lantern,” said the Captain, as they walked up the beach towards the low wooden buildings that nestled among the great hummocks of sand at the Point. “I’m on the eight to twelve watch to-night, and I can walk a ways with you myself, but the wind’s dropped down with the sun, and there’ll hardly be a puff to carry you back by water.”
“How lonesome it looks out here,” said Polly, standing on one of the sand dunes, and gazing around her. The Point of the Sickle came down to what Tom called a mere “spit of sand.” There were few rocks out there, except for the reef that lay east of the channel, towards the east shore. On the Point there was just a long, low stretch of sand, with great circling combers flowing in ceaselessly, breaking one above another on the long, shallow shingle. Dark green they were underneath, then lighter, and lighter, as the sunlight shot them through with rainbow hues, and last of all the curling plumes of spray tossed on their crests.
“Isn’t it all pretty,” cried Ruth, her cheeks turning pink as she ran to Polly’s side. “Don’t you know some place in Kipling where he tells about the white horses of the sea? Oh, Polly, I love it all so. I never saw the real ocean before. I mean to stand on a shore, and look out and out and out on just waves, and know that there’s no land for a thousand miles.”
“Farther than that,” said Polly. “I think it’s beautiful.”
“So it is, so it is, now,” agreed the Captain, “but ’tain’t so pretty in the winter, when the ice piles up, and the sleet beats you half down to the ground, when you try to fight your way in its face.”
“Do you have to patrol all night long on the beach?” Polly asked, in her earnest, compassionate way.
“Well, no. We take it in watches. One watch leaves about sunset, and they travel two miles to the half-way house over yonder, and they meet the next watch, and so it goes through the night.”