I said that I wasn’t, and asked him if he was.  But he said: 

“No, not very.”

There were real waves on the Wecanicut side of the Monster now, and the wind was still blowing from that direction harder than ever.  Now and then a drop of spray would flick my cheek, and I think the sound of the wind around the rock was really more horrid than the noise the water made.  It seemed like midnight, but it was really quite early in the evening, when Jerry saw the lights bobbing along the shore of Wecanicut.  They were lanterns, two of them, and they stopped quite often, as if the people were looking for something.  For a minute I couldn’t even move.  Then I scrambled and slid after Jerry to the place on the Monster that most nearly faced the Wecanicut point.  I don’t think Greg really knew we’d left him; at least he didn’t make a sound.

The lanterns swung and bobbed nearer till they almost reached the point, and we could hear faint shouts.  Jerry and I braced our feet against the slimy rocks and shrieked into the dark, and the wind rushed down our throats and burned them.  We could hear the people quite clearly now.

“It’s Father’s voice,” Jerry said.  “Oh, Chris, the wind is dead against us. Now for it!”

I’d always thought Jerry could shout louder than any boy I ever heard, but you can’t imagine how high and thin both our voices sounded out there on the Sea Monster.  We heard Father’s voice quite distinctly: 

“Chris-ti-ine ...  Jer-r-r-y ... ti-in-e!”

We shouted till our chests felt scraped raw, the way you feel when you’ve run too hard, and the wind tore our voices straight out to sea, away from Wecanicut.  The lanterns stood quite still for a minute more, and then they bobbed away.  At first I didn’t believe that they were really growing smaller and smaller.  But they were, and at last they were gone entirely, far down the shore.

“Are you crying, Chris?” Jerry said suddenly, in a queer, wheezy voice.  He’d been shouting even harder than I had.

“I think not,” I said, and my own voice was very strange indeed.

Jerry whacked me hard on the back, and said: 

“Good old Chris! Good old Chris!”

The shore of Wecanicut was so black that we might have dreamed the lanterns, but I still could hear the way Father’s own voice had sounded, calling “Chris-ti-ine!” We almost stumbled over Greg when we crawled back to him, and he said:  “Can we go home now, Chris?”

The wind gnashed around in a spiteful kind of way, and Jerry touched my hand suddenly and said:  “Chris, it’s raining.”

CHAPTER IX

It was raining,—­big cold splashes that came faster and faster.  I felt my blouse stick coldly to my shoulder in the places where it was wet.

“We can’t let Greg lie there and have it rain on him,” I said.