Mr. Barrett's barn had a stout ramp, and Watch Eyes and Billy Blaze trotted up and inside like homing pigeons. After Paul and Grandpa had loosened the ponies' girths and slipped the bits under their chins, they waded out to the DUKW. The passengers squeezed together to make room. Then the DUKW turned and chugged toward the village.
"Sir!" Paul asked the driver. "Could you take us up to Deep Hole to see about Grandpa's ponies?"
Grim-faced, the man replied, "Got to save people first."
As they turned onto Main Street, which runs along the very shore of the bay, Paul was stunned. Yesterday the wide street with its white houses and stores and oyster-shucking sheds had been neat and prim, like a Grandma Moses picture. Today boats were on the loose, bashing into houses. A forty-footer had rammed right through one house, its bow sticking out the back door, its stern out the front.
Nothing was sacred to the sea. It swept into the cemetery, lifted up coffins, cast them into people's front yards.
Up ahead, a helicopter was letting down a basket to three people on a rooftop. Grandpa gaped at the noisy machine in admiration. "I itch to be up there," he shouted, "lifting off the old and the sick."
Paul too wanted to do big rescue work.
As if reading his mind, the driver turned to him. "Son," he said, "do you feel strong enough to save a life?"
"Yes, sir!"
"Good. You know Mr. Terry—the man who has to live in a rocking bed?"