Now most children would have cried; but Meg hadn't done such a thing since she was teething. No, she only taxed her little head for some means of escape. First, she must have a light. She well knew where the matches were kept, and in a moment she had a lantern burning brightly. Then it occurred to her to try the roof. It was a difficult matter to lift the heavy trap leading to the little platform from which the men usually watched during the winter days; but she soon stood out in the bleak night, the salt spray driving against her face, and the gale rushing by, as though it would tear her hold from the railing to which she clung.
White sea-gulls whirled about her head, attracted by the light, screaming hoarse and discordant notes in her ears. They terrified her at first, but she soon recalled what her "granny" had said, and felt sure the birds were trying to tell her something, and that it must be about her father, who was still out in the terrible storm, unable to find the inlet.
From far out on the sea the wind brought a moaning sound, as though some unhappy creature called in vain for help. It came nearer and more distinct from the northward, finally dying away in the distance upon the other hand.
Fierce lightning flashes broke from the retreating storm-clouds, and by the weird electric glare Meg saw a wild figure, with arms upraised, which seemed to come out of the surf, and speed along the sands. By the same light she thought she saw the topmasts of a vessel on the sea.
The gulls wheeled and screamed now more excitedly than ever. Meg was nearly overcome with terror, but losing not a moment, she sprang down the stairs, returning with an armful of torches. And now the lurid flare of the life-saving signal burned up fiercely, the winds catching the flame, and bearing thousands of dancing sparks away across the beach, while the shape of the station and the heroic little girl upon the roof stood out boldly, just in time for Lucky Tom to put his helm down, and head his boat away from the fatal breakers he was nearing in the darkness.
And now suppose we let good-natured Lucky Tom tell the rest of the story in his own style.
"Well, sir, you see, the blow came up kind o' unexpected like, an' I knowed we couldn't make port; but I didn't much care for that, as pilots has to take all sorts o' weather, but we reckoned we could keep the craft off an' on about the blowin' buoy; but, bless you! the buoy got adrift, an' floated away down the beach. We heard it groanin' ahead of us all the time, an' afore we knowed where we was, we got nigh into the breakers. Just then I seen a twinkle on the beach, an' shortly a torch showed us the station, with an angel o' mercy a-wavin' it from the roof; an' it wa'n't a minnit too soon, nuther.
"We kept away till daylight a-watchin' an' wonderin' at the torches burnin' all the time from atop o' the station, and then we made the inlet. Mebbe it'll seem queer to you, but none of us thought of Meg when we saw the light; but the whole thing was plain enough when one of the crew came runnin' to the house, after we'd been ashore a bit, an' hollered:
"'Why, Lucky Tom, the angel we saw was nobody but your own Shadow, little Meg, an' she's there yit, wavin' a flag.' So we went over an' let her out. The young'un told us all about hearin' the sound o' complainin' on the sea, the black figure that ran along the beach, an' the warnin' the birds give her. You see, that was a notion her granny put into her head, the one about the birds. Speakin' of the old woman, there was another queer thing that happened on the same night. We couldn't find marm high nor low; but when Meg spoke of the wild spirit on the beach, we knowed it must be her, and sure enough we found the poor old body 'way up by the point, 'most dead. She had an idee, you see, that when it blowed hard the Petrel would come ashore, though I reckon the Petrel has been at the bottom more'n twenty years now. We took her home an' 'tended her, but she didn't last long after that."
The story of Meg's adventure came to the ears of a lady on the mainland, and she soon afterward paid a visit to the little girl, who was now left all alone when her father went away, and it was arranged that she should live in the lady's house, and go to school. And now the school-master says she promises to prove as bright as she is brave.