After supper he heaped up the fire, put her chair in the warmest corner, and brought her knitting all ready. She had a great basket full of socks and stockings, big and little, ready to send for sale down to the town.
"Are you going out again, Lloyd?" when he kissed her. "It's a bitter night."
"Down on the beach a bit, mother. You go to bed early. I'll be in all right and safe."
He seemed to have forgotten that it was Christmas eve. His mother had not. She looked after him sorrowfully. In old times, when his father was alive, Christmas had been a great holiday for his boys. Afterward, John had made it so for Lloyd. Now, she had not a penny to spare to buy him a book or a toy, such as other boys had down in the village, even the poorest. Even the new shoes which she had hoped to be able to buy, to take the place of his broken boots, she had to give up.
She thought it was but a dull, poor life coming for Lloyd. He was too young to be put to hard, hard work with neither chance for learning nor play. But, as she sat looking in the fire, she suddenly remembered how God, who held the great, moaning sea and the starless night in the hollow of His hand, held her, too, and her boy.
In the meantime, Lloyd was down on the beach. It was growing dark fast. The schooner was beating about uncertainly, yet evidently determined to reach the island.
Lloyd had made up his mind. There was no way to give her warning. All he could do was to guide her, if possible, into the safe channel.
He went down to the landing opposite Cook's Crack, and began making a half-circle of bits of rock and sand, to keep off the wind from the fire he meant to make.
Then he began collecting sticks, dried grass, and bits of old wrecks, with which the beach was strewed.
Now, making a bonfire no doubt appears to you, boys, to be only fine fun, and you think Lloyd a very lucky fellow to have the chance. But a bonfire in the street, on a summer night, or down in a vacant lot, is a very different matter from Lloyd's work, alone, on a December night, with the salt water plashing about his legs, and his breath freezing about his mouth. Besides, he knew that the lives of the ship's crew depended on what he did, or left undone. And he was not a man, to be sure he was right, but a boy, only thirteen years old.