“Well, git 'em on, and be quick. There's your hat. Give Jerry his.”
The excited Perez vanished through the door of his chamber, and Captain Eri glanced at the chronometer; the time was a quarter after two.
They hurried out of the door and through the yard. The wind, as has been said, was from the east, but there was little of it and, except for the clanging of the bell, the night was very still. The fog was heavy and wet, and the trees and bushes dripped as if from a shower. There was the salt smell of the marshes in the air, and the hissing and splashing of the surf on the outer beach were plainly to be heard. Also there was the clicking sound of oars in row-locks.
“Somebody is comin' over from the station,” gasped Captain Jerry. “Don't run so, Eri. It's too dark. I've pretty nigh broke my neck already.”
They passed the lily pond, where the frogs had long since adjourned their concert and gone to bed, dodged through the yard of the tightly shuttered summer hotel, and came out at the corner of the road, having saved some distance by the “short-cut.”
“That ain't Weeks's store,” declared Captain Perez, who was in the lead. “It's Web Saunders's place; that's what it is.”
Captain Eri paused and looked over to the left in the direction of the Baxter homestead. The light in the window was still burning.
They turned into the “main road” at a dog trot and became part of a crowd of oddly dressed people, all running in the same direction.
“Web's place, ain't it?” asked Eri of Seth Wingate, who was lumbering along with a wooden bucket in one hand and the pitcher of his wife's best washstand set in the other.
“Yes,” breathlessly answered Mr. Wingate, “and it's a goner, they tell me. Every man's got to do his part if they're going to save it. I allers said we ought to have a fire department in this town.”