And daddy started into consciousness at the piteous cry

And daddy started into consciousness at the piteous cry, to find his little Boy Blue clinging to him in wild affright, while wind and wave burst into their wretched shelter,--wind and wave! Surging, foaming, sweeping over beach and bramble and briar growth that guarded the low shore, rising higher and higher each moment before the furious goad of the gale, came the white-capped breakers!
"Oh, the water is coming in on us! Poor daddy, poor daddy, you'll get wet!"
And then daddy, wild wanderer that he had been over sea and land, roused to the peril, his dulled brain quickening into life.
"The gun,--my gun!" he said hoarsely. "It is loaded, Freddy. Lift it up here within reach of my hand."
"O daddy, daddy, what are you going to do?" cried Freddy in new alarm.
"Shoot,--shoot! Signal for help. There is a life-saving station not far away. There, hold the gun closer now,--closer!"
And the trembling hand pulled the trigger, and its sharp call for help went out again and again into the storm.
Chapter 21 A Dark Hour
Meantime Dan had set his dingy sail to what he felt was a changing wind, and started Neb's fishing boat on the straightest line he could make for Killykinick. But it had taken a great deal of tacking and beating to keep to his course. He was not yet sailor enough to know that the bank of clouds lying low in the far horizon meant a storm; but the breeze that now filled and now flapped his sail was as full of pranks as a naughty boy. In all his experience as second mate, Dan had never before met so trying a breeze; and it was growing fresher and stronger and more trying every minute. To beat back to Beach Cliff against its vagaries, our young navigator felt would be beyond his skill. The only thing he could do was to take the shorter course of about three miles to Killykinick, and send off Jim and Dud in their rented boat (which had a motor) for a doctor. Then he could explain Freddy's absence to Brother Bart, and hurry back to his little chum.
Wind and tide, however, were both against these well-laid plans to-day. The wind was bad enough, but now even the waves seemed to have a strange swell, different from the measured rise and fall he knew. It was as if their far-off depths were rising, stirring out of their usual calm. They no longer tossed their snowy crests in the summer sunlight, but surged and swayed in low, broken lines, white-capped with fitful foam. And the voice--the song of the sea--that had been a very lullaby to Dan as he swung every night in his hammock beneath the stars, had a hoarse, fierce tone, like a sob of passion or pain. Altogether, Dan and his boat had a very hard pull over the three miles to Killykinick.
"Thar they come!" said Captain Jeb, who, with Brother Bart, was watching from the beach. "I told you you could count on Mate Dan, Padre. Thar the lads come, safe and sound; though they hed a pull against the wind, I bet. But here they come all right."
"God be thanked for that same!" said Brother Bart, reverently. "My heart has been nearly leaping out of my breast this last half hour. And you weren't over-easy about them yourself, as I could see, Jeroboam."