XVI.
_THE STORM STRIKING._
After dinner Dave mounted the stairway leading to the keeper's room.
"Still sleeping," thought Dave, lingering on the threshold andhesitating to go forward. He advanced, though, in a moment, for he wasstartled at the keeper's appearance. It was like an intermittent stuporrather than the continued unconsciousness of sleep. Dave touched thekeeper, and he found the temperature to be that of a high fever. Attimes the old light-keeper would start and open his eyes, and when Daveleft the room to search the pantry for some simple remedy on themedicine-shelf, he found on his return that his patient had left his bedand was standing by the narrow window in the thick stone walls. Hemurmured something about "storm," about the "light," and suffered Daveto lead him back to bed.
"I must look out how I leave him again," thought Dave; and yet how couldhe manage the case alone?
"I must have help," he said, "and soon as I have a chance I must hang asignal out at the door. Perhaps some one will call, and I'll wait beforeshowing the signal."
Nobody came. Why should they come because suspecting any trouble? Theafternoon was pleasant. The sea broke gently upon the stone walls of thelighthouse, and the sun shed its quiet glow like some benediction ofpeace upon the sea. It was the very afternoon when a spectator would belikely to conclude that the lighthouse was in no need of help.
"I'll go now," at last concluded Dave. "He is asleep; his fever isrunning lower. I will step to the door of the signal-tower, and throwout a white sheet there, and somebody may see it."
Nobody came, and yet here was a man who might be dangerously sick. Atthe hour of sunset he ran up to the lantern and lighted the lamp. Hequickly descended, saying to himself, "How glad I am that it is notfoggy! So much to be thankful for! How could I start that signal! Butit won't do to try to get through the night in this fashion. What, whatcan I do?"
The twilight thickened; the shadows trailed longer, broader, and darkerfolds across the sea. Dave sat alone with the sick man, who moaned asif in pain.
"I have it!" he suddenly exclaimed, recalling what Thomas Trafton toldhim. "I can do one thing more. I'll hang the lantern out from thetower; maybe Bart will possibly see it."
Watching his chance when the keeper was less uneasy, he ran downstairs,lighted a lantern, and then suspended it outside a window on thelandward side of the tower. The cool air of the sea blew refreshinglyon his heated face as he leaned out.
"The air feels good; but I can't stop here," said Dave, hurrying awayand returning to the keeper's room. "There! I have done all I could,and now--"
There came to him again the words of the psalmist, "Wait on the Lord: beof good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, onthe Lord."
He could rest on that promise. He was beginning to find out what Godcould be in the time of trouble. Friends might fail him; on every sidethere might be an emptiness, a loneliness. All about him settled thepresence of God, filling up this solitude, this waste, this night. Hecould lean on God and--wait. Others might suspect his integrity. Heknew he was not guilty, and he welcomed the thought of God'sknowledge--that God saw to the bottom of his heart, and into the depthsof his life, and God knew he was innocent. Yes, he could wait.
That evening Thomas Trafton, his old mother, and Bart sat around thelittle table of pine on which the kitchen lamp had been placed. Thefather was telling where he had been that day and whom he had seen.
"Dave Fletcher was down at the fish-house to-day. He spoke, Bart, ofyour looking through the spy-glass, but he did not think it necessary."
"Did he speak of it?" said Bart eagerly. "I have a great mind to--"
"To go out?" asked his father--"to go out and see? Oh, nonsense! Nomore need of it than my going to Australia."
"Oh, let him go if he wants to," pleaded the grandmother; and the fatherassented.
Bart reached up to the spy-glass resting on a shelf, took it down, andseizing his hat also, hurried outdoors. He was going through the yard,when he saw somebody stealing away from a shed in the rear of the house.
"Why, if that don't look like Dave Fletcher himself!" thought Bart."Dave Fletcher!" he shouted.
Whoever it was--and the form certainly did resemble Dave's--he made noreply, but hurried through the yard down into the street.
"Somebody else, I suppose!" murmured Bart. "Wonder what he wanted!Perhaps it was one of the fishermen who wanted to leave something forfather. Can't stop to see now."
He hurried to the top of the hill, raised his glass, and pointed ittoward the lighthouse.
"Father!" he said, appearing the next minute in the kitchen, andspeaking hurriedly, "oh--oh--come here! and you--granny--and see if--"
He said no more, for this was sufficient to startle his auditors, andall three hastened up the hill.
"You didn't see a second light at the lighthouse?" asked the father.
"Yes, I did," replied Bart; "I know I did."
"Guess you were mistaken," suggested granny.
"No, I wasn't; you just look and see your--yourself."
Granny could not see anything except a hazy glow where the lighthousemight be supposed to stand.
"Can't say I saw even that as well as I wanted to," she confessed toherself.
Thomas Trafton's keen eyes, though, detected a bright little star underthe light in the lantern of the sea-tower, and exclaimed, "No doubtabout it! Afraid there's trouble there, and--"
"Could take our boat, father," said Bart eagerly, who had been alreadyplanning for this emergency, "and pick up a doctor; for that is what thesignal must mean after what Dave told me, you know, and--and--"
"We will go right off," said Thomas Trafton, in his quick, decided way.
As they were rowing across the river to obtain the services of Dr.Peters, Bart thought of the time, half-a-dozen years ago, when his questfor the physician ended in a river-bath.
"Dave Fletcher did a good thing for me then," thought Bart, "and I willstand by him now."
How he bent to his oars and made them bend in their turn! It was apleasure to be of some use in the world.
It was that evening that the light-keeper came back for a moment toconsciousness, and looking steadily at Dave, said in a very serious toneof voice, "How long have I been lying here?"
"Oh, only since morning," replied his nurse, delighted to hear hisvoice. "Now, you be quiet and tell me if you want anything--anymedicine you take when you are sick this way."
Here the keeper's thoughts wandered again. He talked about the fog thatwas coming, and a craft that was caught on the bar, and then, looking atDave steadily, said in a hesitating way, "Hadn't you better--putit--back--Dave?"
"Put back what, sir?"
"What you--took? Let me--as a--friend--advise you."
"Took?"
The keeper lifted himself on his elbow and looked all around, as iftrying to find something.
"David, don't hide it!"
Then the keeper fell back upon his bed, and murmuring a few wordsindistinctly, he was lost again in a stupor. He was no sooner quietthan his assistant's quick ear caught the sound of steps and voices downin the signal-tower; for all the doors this summer evening were openbetween the keeper's room and the platform at the entrance of thelighthouse. It was the arrival of Thomas Trafton's party, and Dr. Peterswas a member of it. If Dave felt that its coming was like the reachingout of a hand that lifted him up and strengthened him, the words of thekeeper were like a hand smiting him down.
What did Toby Tolman mean?