Hour after hour the billows rolled in over the barrier of the Twin Rocks reefs and guttered the sands and the highway beyond until the sea finally breached through the shell road and spread, waist high, upon the lowlands. No such unseasonable tide had ever before been marked by the natives of the Cape. Even the "great tide of ninety-eight" had not reached this high mark.
Tobias remained with Lorna in the kitchen. It was useless for her to attempt to go home, even when the water receded. Tobias could not leave the light to attend her, and there was nobody else to accompany her to Clay Head.
So she set about getting their supper. They spoke of the tide and the wonder of it. It was now too dark to see anything at all in the direction of the sea, save where that ray of light streamed forth from the top of the tower. It was quite impossible even to observe the water boiling over the reefs.
"I give it as my opinion," said Tobias, "that them that's got small craft in the Cove yonder will find 'em either smashed along the inner side of the rocks or sunk. I know my dory's sunk long ago."
"Oh, not your Marybird or Ralph's Fenique, I hope!" cried Lorna.
"I put a spring on the motor boat's hawser," rejoined the lightkeeper. "And the Marybird is hauled up on the sand with a kedge out, bow and stern. I don't reckon she'll drag 'em, no matter how high the tide is. I would not want anything to happen to Ralph's craft—nossir!"
But their minds—neither Tobias's nor the girl's—were not fixed upon these things. Secretly both were concerned with the distressed fishing schooner, the Nelly G. What would this night that had now shut down bring to that imperiled craft?
Immediately after supper Tobias went up to the lamp again. But he came down quickly. He feared that Lorna might follow him.
When she asked him if he had seen the schooner's topmasts again, he shook his head. It was true. As far as he knew she might have gone down already. Yet he hoped. If she was beached, or being driven inshore, surely the crew of the Nelly G. would burn Coston lights or send up signal rockets.
Tobias, of course, could not think of bed on such a night as this. And Lorna was far too seriously wrought upon to join Miss Heppy upstairs. The lightkeeper suggested it, but she shook her head in positive refusal. She would keep watch with him. Every hour the old man climbed the stairs and searched the turbulent sea as well as he could by the light of the steady ray of the lamp. He owned no night glasses, and unless the endangered schooner came within range of the light's beam there would be small chance of spying her.