“I’m going to send three of you over there to help out, at least for a while,” Miss Warren confided to Norma.
“Oh! I’m glad!” Norma exclaimed. “It’s really not safe for them there, three old fishermen, an aged inventor, two spinsters, and a child.”
“And if you were there, you would protect them!” the Lieutenant laughed. “However, I wasn’t thinking of safety, but of the rare opportunity they have for airplane spotting.
“Of course,” she added after a moment, “it will, at best, be only an outpost. Our main station will always be at Indian Harbor.”
If her superior was not, at that moment, thinking of the possible dangers of life on Black Knob, Norma most surely was. After recalling Patsy’s words, she thought, “Spies have been landed on American shores from submarines and may try again. Black Knob would make a marvelous hideout if only—”
At that moment she was seeing a picture of herself and the aged inventor standing at the log cabin’s windows that were like loop-holes, and firing tommy-guns while Patsy dragged up fresh belts of ammunition.
Real danger replaced her dreams and that in a very short time for, as if by magic, the sea began rolling in a most alarming manner and the wind began to tear at them like mad.
“I—I can’t hold her on her course,” Betty panted. “It’s a quar—quartering wind and every wave thro—throws—”
At that a wave, larger than the rest, came splashing across the deck.
Half drowned Norma sprung to her feet, but Lena was before her. Crowding Betty aside, she seized the wheel and, bracing herself like a veteran, she brought the boat about to head it squarely into the storm.