As they fought their way step by step up to the porch, they tried to call out, but found that whatever sound they were able to make was drowned in the roar of the wind.
They found an old-fashioned knocker on the big front door, and worked it with all their strength. After what seemed to them an age of waiting, the door itself opened and a head popped out at them.
"Well, what in time—" the owner of the voice was beginning, when Betty pushed impatiently past him, the girls following close behind her.
It took a surprisingly short time—seeing that the girls all insisted upon talking at once—to make the farmer understand the situation.
"We're going on to the life-saving station," Betty told him, trembling with excitement.
"All right, but my boys'll beat 'em to it," he promised, a glint in his grey eyes.
Then the girls were on their way again, pushing desperately against a wind that seemed to rise higher and higher with every minute, while in the east the greying sky grew light.
"A—clear—day!" Mollie gasped, pushing back the wind-blown hair from her face. "At last!"
"Do you hear anything?" Betty shouted back. "It seems to me I—"
They listened, and then, above the wind, it came to them unmistakably—the sound of voices, masculine voices.