When Ralph, mooning alone alongshore, as had become his wont of late, spied the coming squall and the couple's danger therefrom, there was ample time for the fishers to have got up anchor and gained shelter between the Twin Rocks.
It was several minutes before Ralph realized that Lorna at least was deliberately ignoring his effort to warn her of peril. Or was she so much under Conny's influence that she considered his wisdom in weather matters above that of Ralph?
The latter might be stung in his pride—a vulnerable spot—by such a thought; but the occasion was too serious for him to shake off responsibility by a shrug of his shoulders.
He saw at last that the fishers were determined to yield him no attention. So, turning swiftly, he scrambled back to the sands. At the cove lay his own motor-boat, the Fenique, the fastest of the small flock of craft moored in the cove. In five minutes he reached the strand, pushed in a skiff, and sculled out to the Fenique's moorings.
Already the oily black mass of cloud had spread over the greater part of Clinkerport Bay. Thunder muttered behind it. The vivid lightnings intermittently lit the edges of the cloud. Behind that screen lurked an electric storm that, when it burst, promised disaster. Any light craft in its path would be as mere culch before a cyclone!
The barren backbones of the two reefs hid the dory on their seaward side from the site of the Fenique's moorings. Lorna and Conny might see their danger in season and make for shelter while Ralph was getting his motor-boat out of the harbor. But Endicott must take the risk of this. As the girl and her companion in the dory had refused to heed his warning, Ralph must needs risk his own life.
In spite of the seaworthiness of the lightkeeper's dory, Ralph did not believe Degger was seaman enough to handle the boat in a black squall. On him might rest the burden of the couple's rescue from the tempest that threatened.
He snubbed the skiff's painter to the mooring buoy. The motor-boat was in readiness for immediate use. He cast off the mooring hawser and went forward to turn the wheel. The spark caught the first time he threw the wheel over. The exhaust coughed sharply. Ralph eased on the engine and seized the spokes of the steering wheel as the propeller blades began to revolve.
The Fenique swam out into the open cove, and he headed her for the points of the double reef. The mouth of sheltered Clinkerport Bay was filled with racing, foam-crested waves, the slate-hued sides of which were veined with yellow. It was a wicked-looking patch of water into which Ralph steered the motor-boat.
Above the thunder of the breakers on the rocks and the roar of the surf along the shore he could now hear the high whine of the coming squall. The black cloud seemed suddenly to have expanded into a smothering mantle over both shore and sea.