“Ye can’t, I tell ye!” and the old sailor’s voice took a sudden tone of command. “I’m captain of this here Killykinick, Padre; and no boat leaves this shore in the face of such a storm, for it would mean death to every man aboard her,—sure and certain death.”
“The Lord have mercy,—the Lord have mercy!” cried Brother Bart. “My laddie,—my poor little laddie! The fright of this will kill him entirely. Oh, but you’re the hard man, Jeroboam! You have no heart!”
“Back!” shouted Captain Jeb, heedless of the good old man’s reproaches, as a whistling sound came over the white-capped waves. “Back, under cover, all of ye. The storm is on us now!”
And, fairly dragging Brother Bart, while Neb and Dan hurried behind them, the Captain made for shelter in the old ship under the cliffs, where Dud and Jim had already found refuge.
“Down with the hatches! Brace everything!” came the trumpet tones of command of the old sailor over the roar of the wind. And doors and portholes shut, the heavy bolts of iron and timber fell into place, and everything was made tight and fast against the storm that now burst in all its fury on Killykinick,—a storm that sent Brother Bart down on his knees in prayer, and held the boys speechless and almost breathless with terror. In the awful blackness that fell upon them they could scarcely see one another. The “Lady Jane” shook from stem to stern as if she were being torn from her fifty years’ mooring. The stout awnings were ripped from the upper deck; their posts snapped like reeds in the gale; the great hollows of the Devil’s Jaw thundered back the roar of the breakers that filled their cavernous depths with mad turmoil. On land, on sea, in sky, all was battle,—such battle as even Captain Jeb agreed he had never seen on Killykinick before.
“I’ve faced many a hurricane, but never nothing as bad as this. If it wasn’t for them cliffs behind us and the stretch of reef before, durned if we wouldn’t be washed clean off the face of the earth!”
“Laddie, laddie!” was the cry that blended with Brother Bart’s prayers for mercy. “God in heaven, take care of my poor laddie through this! I ought not to have let him out of my sight.”
“But he’s safe, Brother Bart,” said Dan, striving to comfort himself with the thought. “He is on land, you know, just as we are; and the old lighthouse is as strong as the ‘Lady Jane’; and God can take care of him anywhere.”
“Sure He can, lad,—He can. I’m the weak old sinner to doubt and fear,” was the broken answer. “But he’s only a bit of a boy, my own little laddie,—only a wee bit of a boy, that never saw trouble or danger in his life. To be facing this beside a dying man,—ah, God have mercy on him, poor laddie!”
So, amid fears and doubts and prayers, the wild hours of the storm and darkness passed; the fierce hurricane, somewhat shorn of its first tropic strength, swept on its northward way; the shriek of the wind sank into moan and murmur; the sea fell back, like a passion-weary giant; the clouds broke and scattered, and a glorious rainbow arched the clearing sky.