Thus leaving the mother and wife partially reassured, the old father slipped out and down the track, cut deeply in the sand by the one-horse carts, to “Uncle Will’amses,” as fast as the storm would permit.  But no Jim had been seen there; and still more anxiously the stout old man fought his way back against winds that seemed strong” enough to blow him like a feather over the cliff’s edge, and against the spray which shot up from the beach below, smitten by the sounding surf, clear over the high top of Sankota Head.

Reaching his door during a brief lull in the wind, he heard faintly but distinctly the booming of guns fired by a ship in distress.  “It mus’ be some vessil on the shoals, an’ mos’ likely Jim’s heard her an’ got some o’ th’ other boys, an’ ’s went off in ’s boat ter help her.  Poor soul!” With this comforting reflection the father cheered the watchers inside, who had grown fearfully anxious, as the clock had long ago struck for midnight.

“We mus’ build a fire on the Head ter light ’em,” said the old man.  “There hed oughter be a light’us here, but ’s there ain’t none, we mus’ dew the bes’ we kin,”

So saying, he harnessed the horse—­almost as old as himself—­and with the aid of the two women loaded the sled with dry wood and started with it to the cliff, while the mother and daughter followed behind as best they might, struggling to keep alive without being set on fire by the coals in the iron pot which they carried between them.  It was a weary half mile, wind, spray and rain all contending against the feeble folk who had come out to help back to land and home the brave fellows who had gone to succor the distressed.  They made all the more sure that this was the case, because Jim’s new boat, the pride and joy of his life, was not to be found at the spot where he had only that day drawn, it high above the reach of even such a storm as this, ready for building over it on the morrow its winter house of pine-boughs and turf.

At last a fire was kindled; and leaving the women to watch it, old Stephen took several weary trips back to the cottage after fuel, making serious inroads upon a stock at the best not too large to meet the demands of the coming winter.  The flame, fanned by the blast even more than dashed by the spray and rain, sprang upward, casting its ruddy lances of light backward over the sandy downs, destitute even then of tree or shrub to break the force of the gale, and forward over the frothing white tops and deep, black troughs of waves that seemed to the excited eyes of the watching women like so many separate fiends leaping upward and stretching out white hands to clutch helpless victims and hurry them to the hell beneath.  And all the while the surf thundered at the foot of the trembling cliff.  No form could be discovered through the darkness beyond the near neighborhood of the shore; and but for the flash of the gun, which was seen continually, though its sound was but seldom heard above the surf and the wind, the watchers would have thought there was no ship near.