“A ship is wrecked on the Black Reefs.”
Billie leaped from her bed and began to dress hurriedly.
“It must be a fearful sight,” she exclaimed, as she pulled on her clothes. “The poor sailors, will they be saved?”
“I haven’t heard,” answered Nancy, “but the whole town is rushing up the Cliff Road.”
“Tell Ben to get ‘The Comet.’ He can run it as well as I can now.”
“He has,” answered Nancy, with the privilege of friendship. “I made him get it while I routed you out.”
In another five minutes “The Comet,” with its load of boys and girls,—only Mary and Percy were missing,—was climbing Cliff Road in a driving hurricane of wind.
A straggling line of people hurried along the path toward the Life-Saving Station.
“Is that it?” demanded Billie breathlessly, when the car had come to a standstill opposite the light house.
“Yes,” replied Merry, looking through the glasses. “She doesn’t look much larger than a fishing smack from this distance, but she’s really a pretty big schooner and she’s in a bad fix, too. She has stuck right on the Serpent’s Fang, Ben. You remember that old fisherman showed it to us last summer when we were sailing? It’s a pointed rock that sticks up higher than the others and it looked to be a pretty fierce proposition to me.”