From where Jack sat on the side steps industriously shining his Sunday shoes he could look straight ahead along the dusty road to where the squatty stone lighthouse, dazzlingly white in the sunlight, stood firmly on its granite ledge. Beyond it, against the blue summer sky, a flock of gulls were circling and dipping, their plaintive, discordant cries coming to him on the breeze. Suddenly, above the hungry notes of the seagulls and the lisp of the west wind and the sounds from the house, came the steady chug, chug, chug of a motor boat. Idly, Jack wondered whose it was and arose to his feet to look. But the boat was hidden by the shore and he subsided again and gave a final brush to the shoe he held. Then he set it down beside its fellow, already polished, and began to whistle one of his tuneless airs, tapping time against the edge of the step below with the blacking brush. At that moment the chug of the motor boat grew suddenly louder and Jack looked down to the cove just as a white launch came around the corner. The boy in the bow at the wheel waved a greeting. Jack waved back and descended the slope. The engine stopped its chatter and the launch sidled up to a spile near the beach. Hal shouted a direction and Bee, leaving the wheel, clambered to the deck in front and picked up the painter. Then leaning toward the spile he sought to pass the end of the rope about it. The natural result was that he pushed the bow of the launch away and in a moment he was clutching the slippery post with his arms and striving to pull back the launch with his feet.
“Whoa!” he shouted. “Come back here! Hey, Hal, push her back!”
But Hal, having no boat-hook nor oar at hand, was helpless, and a moment later the launch had abandoned Bee to his fate and he was clinging to the spile with arms and legs. Jack, on the beach, shouted with laughter. Hal, pulling at an obdurate locker lid to get an oar, sputtered directions and advice.
“Hold tight, Bee! Just a minute! I’ll get an oar! Hang this thing! I can’t get it open! Reach up and grab the plank, Bee!”
But when Bee tried to adopt the latter suggestion he began to slip down the spile and so, with a yell of dismay, returned to his close embrace. By that time Jack had recovered from his amusement and went to the rescue. Climbing onto the plank, he hurried out and reached down a hand to Bee.
“Here, take hold and I’ll pull you up,” he said with a chuckle.
“If I do I’ll drop,” panted Bee. “Take hold yourself!”
So Jack got a grip around one of his wrists and finally Bee managed to wriggle up to the plank. Then he sat down, with his feet hanging over the water, and laughed until the tears came. And Hal, bobbing helplessly about in the middle of the cove, and Jack, clinging to the pipe, laughed with him.
“Did—did you see that launch trip me up?” gasped Bee finally. “And—and look at my Sunday-go-to-meeting suit! It’s all over green slime and crushed oysters! It’s completely spiled!”