But now, as the light swung closer in, it fell upon a boy in a large dory. He was battling the storm to keep his dory afloat.
“Lester.” Don’s heart swelled.
Swift as the flight of a gull, the light shot outward until it fell upon a mastless boat wallowing in the trough of a wave. There it came to rest.
How the young city boy, little accustomed to the sea, pulling for the spot marked by that light, battled his way forward until at last, drenched, hands blistered, well nigh senseless with fatigue, he overhauled the crippled boat, and how after that three girls and a boy fought the storm and won will remain one of the tales to be told round island cottage fires on stormy nights.
One incident of that night will always remain burned on Don’s brain. As he held his light steadily in its place, there struck his ears a deafening crash that was not thunder, and instantly the sky was illumined by a glare that was not lightning. When, a half hour later, he was free to search the sea for the floundering motor boat which his light had first picked up, it had disappeared.
CHAPTER XIX
A FIRE ON THE BEACH
As Don at last threw off the powerful searchlight and descended the steel stairway that led to the ground, two problems stood out in his mind. He had broken all rules in using the searchlight. There had been strict rules about that. No civilian was to touch it.
“Well,” he told himself, “they may send me to jail if they must. I’d do it again for my sister and for them.”
The other question that puzzled him was one regarding that explosion at sea. Since he knew nothing of the afternoon’s happenings at Witches Cove and their aftermath at sea, he could make little of it.
As for the four girls, they had, it seemed to Ruth at least, lived a lifetime in a few hours. In one short afternoon they had experienced peace, hope, joy, near triumph, fear, disaster and all but death. What more could there be to life?