Hardly had she touched the ground before a door in the lower part of the lighthouse opened and the form of Jeff Stokes emerged. He told them that the struggle with the wind had been seen by the light-keeper and himself, and he was warm in his congratulations of the daring young aviators. The light-keeper, a grizzled man named Zeb. Beasley, followed close on Jeff’s heels.
“Come right into the house and hev some supper,” he said warmly. “It’s only rough fare, but you’re welcome. My misses will be glad to have you.”
Truth to tell, both Peggy and her brother were almost famished and worn out after the tension of the struggle with the wind. This being so, they were glad enough to accept the light-keeper’s kind invitation.
Peggy’s first action, however, was to hasten to the ’phone in the lighthouse and call up their aunt. Miss Prescott, who had been badly worried over their prolonged absence, was much relieved to learn that they were safe and sound.
Mrs. Beasley, a motherly woman of middle age, took charge of Peggy while Jeff Stokes entertained Roy. Jeff said that he liked the life at the light, lonesome as it grew sometimes. When he felt blue he used to relieve the monotony by talking, by means of invisible waves, with other operators. He wiled many a weary hour away in this manner, he said.
Suddenly, in the midst of their talk, he excused himself and hastened to the small room in which his instruments were. The place, filled with shiny, mysterious apparatus and networked above with wires, was as neat as a pin.
“Some one’s calling,” Jeff explained.
His quick ear had caught the faint “tick-tick” hardly audible to the untrained ears, which told him that a message was vibrating through the night. Slipping over his head a metallic apparatus, not unlike the telephone receivers worn by “Central,” Jeff began listening intently. Drawing a pad toward him, he was soon writing down the message as it was ticked off. Presently it was completed, by which time Peggy was one of his audience.
“‘Steamer Valiant, Captain Briggs, of London, wishes to be reported as passing Rocky Point, bound for Boston,’” read off Jeff. “Hum—nothing very exciting there.”
“What are you going to do now?” asked Peggy, as Jeff, the message in his hand, turned to another table, one on which were arranged some ordinary telegraph instruments.