Ding-dong, Ding-dong.
She started, looked about, then stood straight up to stare open mouthed at what she saw.
And at that moment, faint and from far away there came the hoarse hoot of the fog horn on the steamer from Booth Bay Harbor.
“A hundred passengers on that boat,” she thought as her heart stood still, “perhaps two hundred, three hundred people, men, women and children, many little children coming home from a joyous vacation.”
She looked again at the thing she had seen and could scarcely believe her eyes.
Dim, indistinct but unmistakable, had appeared the outline of a steel frame, and at its center a large bell.
“Like a ghost,” she told herself.
“But it’s no ghost!” Instantly she sprang into action. Cutting her fish line, she allowed it to drift. Dragging up her dripping anchor, she dropped it into the boat. Then, gripping the oars, she put all her strength into a dozen strokes that brought her with a bump against the side of the steel frame from which the bell hung suspended.
The next thing she did was strange, indeed. Having removed her heavy wool sweater, she wrapped it tightly about the clapper of the bell, then tied it securely there with a stout cod line.
“There now,” she said, breathing heavily as she sank to a sitting position on one of the hollow steel floats that prevented the bell and its frame from sinking. “Now, perhaps you will keep still and let me dream.