THE BLACK SQUALL
Lorna Nicholet was of a joyous heart--a joy-bringer and a joy-giver.
She had spent a happy childhood. Miss Ida's firm government had been
the very best bringing up the girl could have had, for not only was she
of a lightsome disposition, but she was inclined to carry that chief
trait of her character to recklessness.
Left to herself, impulse would more often have guided her
decisions--both momentous and unimportant--than the really good sense
with which she was endowed. She was a charming mixture of infantile
trustfulness and downright practicality. She was wont to trust in the
good intentions of everybody, yet she often shrewdly evaded pitfalls
that girls of her cheerfully optimistic type sometimes get into.
Her happy association with Ralph Endicott caused Lorna to look upon all
young men as being like her chum. Because Ralph was chivalrous and a
"good fellow," Lorna believed such was the character of all young men.
She treated Conway Degger as she always had Ralph. Degger was shrewd
enough (or was it because of the warning word Ralph had once given him?)
in most instances to pattern his attitude after the example set by the
frank and clean-minded Endicott.
Occasionally there were crudities shown in Degger's nature that rather
shocked the gently bred Lorna. But she overlooked these lapses on his
part, and their companionship was in the main that of two healthy-minded
boys, rather than that of a young man and a young woman.
She had insisted upon blaming Ralph Endicott for the determination of
their families to force Ralph and herself into an engagement. She felt
that if he had "put his foot down like a man" and refused to hear of any
such arrangement the Endicotts and the Nicholets, in conclave assembled,
would give up the idea. That she had not yet declared in her own
household that she scorned Ralph and would not marry him, did not count
in her opinion. If Ralph was a real man he would not put such a burden
upon her. And then, secretly, she knew her Aunt Ida and her father
would take any such declaration on her part very lightly indeed.
"Lorna is very young yet, John," Miss Ida said to Lorna's father, and in
the girl's hearing. "Too young to really know her own mind. But
surely, when she throws off this childishness of thought, she must agree
with us that there is only one proper course to pursue. Ralph is a
splendid boy, and his family is irreproachable."
"He's a good deal like his Uncle Henry, I should say," observed John
Nicholet.
Miss Ida bridled, as she frequently did when Henry Endicott was
mentioned. Lorna had more than once noted it.
"I should hope Ralph would have some traits of character not patterned
upon those of his uncle," she said. "I believe that if Lorna takes
Ralph Endicott for a husband, she will do extremely well."
What could a girl say in rejoinder to such calm and over-riding
statements? Individuality was not to be considered at all! She must
look upon a marriage contract as of more importance to the family than
to herself.
"I might as well be a French girl, instead of a real Yankee," she
furiously complained. "What did our ancestors come here for? For
freedom! And I mean to have my share."
"There, there!" sighed Miss Ida, smiling faintly. "At least, my dear,
don't be loud if you do insist on being childish."
What could one do under these circumstances? Run away? Flout her
family--and the Endicotts--directly? But Lorna had no place to run away
to, and nobody she cared to run away with. Least of all at this time
did she have any idea of running away with Conny Degger!
That young man bided his time with admirable composure. If he was
deeply enamored of Lorna, he succeeded in hiding the feeling from public
view. The girl wanted a male companion to "play with." Beyond having a
good time swimming, and boating, and fishing, and following other
longshore pursuits, Lorna had no thought. Degger was a patient waiter.
The old lightkeeper's suggestion that Ralph and his family were in
financial difficulties gave Lorna certain pause. She had been treating
Ralph whenever they met to a mixture of careless comradery and downright
snubbing. He could consider himself as being, in her opinion, of small
importance. She thought this had begun to make its impression on what
she called "His High-Mightiness."
Of late she had caught Ralph looking at her with an expression of
countenance that she could not altogether fathom. Was it a look of
compassion? And why? Or did it display his secret fear of losing Lorna
altogether? The girl never had believed that Ralph Endicott was as much
opposed to the determination of the two families to get them married as
she herself was. What girl with a proper amount of pride and vanity
could have believed such to be the fact?
Tobias Bassett's matchmaking, brought to bear upon Lorna's mind, caused
the girl to reconsider Ralph's evident disturbed mental state. If Mr.
Henry Endicott had frittered away the family fortune, as Tobias
intimated, naturally Ralph's family would insist more strongly than ever
that he marry Lorna.
Upon coming of age Lorna would have a considerable fortune in her own
right. This dowry the Endicotts naturally would consider as being the
salvation of Ralph's fortunes, if not of the family's. Nor did this
thought seem at all shocking to the girl's mind.
The idea of Ralph going away to look for a business opening seemed much
more disturbing to Lorna. That an Endicott should be obliged to seek a
livelihood in the ordinary marts of trade was a most upsetting thought.
She really wished--did Lorna--that she might do something for her old
chum in a financial way without thereby pledging her hand to him in
marriage.
The effect of all these disturbing thoughts upon her own peace of mind
was to be considered. Already her Aunt Ida had emphatically declared it
to be Lorna's duty to marry Ralph. If Miss Nicholet knew of the waning
fortunes of the Endicotts, would she not be the more insistent that her
niece keep faith with Ralph and fulfil the contract so long arranged by
their kin?
"My goodness!" sighed Lorna, being sorry for Ralph, yet more sorry for
herself, "if it would only enter Aunt Ida's head to marry Professor
Endicott. That would be a logical way out of it, and would relieve me.
And if Aunt Ida was once in love with Ralph's uncle, why shouldn't she
come to the rescue instead of making me the sacrificial offering? Oh,
dear!"
Lorna's confidential relations with Ralph, however, were broken.
Instead of planning the day's activities with her old chum, it was to
Conny Degger she turned for assistance in pleasurably killing the idle
hours alongshore.
Degger did nothing quite as well as Ralph--unless his small talk was
more amusing. He did possess a fund of amusing chatter; whereas Ralph
had been wont to lapse into long spells of silence while he and Lorna
were fishing or sailing. Lorna often accused Degger of "talking the
fish off their feeding grounds."
Still, the light chatter of her new chum was not altogether
unentertaining. She could not expect any other young man to be just
like Ralph Endicott. Indeed, she told herself she did not want Conny
Degger to be the same sort of man as Ralph.
Now she had a chance to take the lead when they went fishing or boating.
She knew infinitely more (thanks to Ralph) about such sports than
Degger. Lorna could not, however, manage a boat--not even the
lightkeeper's dory--as well as Ralph. No fisherman's son in all
Clinkerport was a better sailor of small craft than Ralph Endicott.
So it was that the day came when Lorna (whether she would or no) desired
the presence of Ralph instead of Conny with her in the dory off the Twin
Rocks. She had ample opportunity on this occasion to compare the two
young men.
The weather had been uncertain all day. When Lorna and Conny Degger
came over from the Clay Head and borrowed the lightkeeper's dory, Tobias
would surely have warned them against going out had he seen them. But
he was taking his daily nap, for his care of the lamp in the tall tower
kept him awake a good part of each night.
Gusts of wind were swooping down upon the sea and ruffling it into lurid
patches far off shore--certain indication of coming trouble. After the
dory was beyond the shelter of the reefs the pleasure seekers saw
streaks of driving rain racing across the wave tops, away out on the
open sea. But the fish began to bite ravenously.
It was while their luck was so good that Lorna saw suddenly a figure
scrambling over the shore-end of the outer reef, and waving an energetic
arm to them.
"Now, what does _he_ want?" the girl demanded, with no little
exasperation.
"Who is it? The skipper?" Conny asked lightly, and without turning his
head.
"It's Ralph," she said shortly.
"Oh! Endicott? He is always trying to butt in, isn't he?" suggested
Conny, laughing. "Sour grapes, I suppose. Let him swing his arm off.
_He_ doesn't own this boat."
Lorna giggled. "It's funny," she commented, glancing back at the figure
gyrating on the rock. "Ralph doesn't often get so excited. And over
what, I wonder."
Neither she nor her companion looked skyward. Over the bay a black mass
of cloud had risen and was rolling toward the open sea. Lurid
lightnings played upon its edges.
The dory in which the girl and Conny Degger sat was several
cable-lengths off the jaws of the reef. It seemed as though they had
plenty of clear-way in which to manage the craft if a squall did strike.
Neither, however, expected what was threatening from the cloud.
When Ralph, mooning alone alongshore, as had become his wont of late,
spied the coming squall and the couple's danger therefrom, there was
ample time for the fishers to have got up anchor and gained shelter
between the Twin Rocks.
It was several minutes before Ralph realized that Lorna at least was
deliberately ignoring his effort to warn her of peril. Or was she so
much under Conny's influence that she considered his wisdom in weather
matters above that of Ralph?
The latter might be stung in his pride--a vulnerable spot--by such a
thought; but the occasion was too serious for him to shake off
responsibility by a shrug of his shoulders.
He saw at last that the fishers were determined to yield him no
attention. So, turning swiftly, he scrambled back to the sands. At the
cove lay his own motor-boat, the _Fenique_, the fastest of the small
flock of craft moored in the cove. In five minutes he reached the
strand, pushed in a skiff, and sculled out to the _Fenique's_ moorings.
Already the oily black mass of cloud had spread over the greater part of
Clinkerport Bay. Thunder muttered behind it. The vivid lightnings
intermittently lit the edges of the cloud. Behind that screen lurked an
electric storm that, when it burst, promised disaster. Any light craft
in its path would be as mere culch before a cyclone!
The barren backbones of the two reefs hid the dory on their seaward side
from the site of the _Fenique's_ moorings. Lorna and Conny might see
their danger in season and make for shelter while Ralph was getting his
motor-boat out of the harbor. But Endicott must take the risk of this.
As the girl and her companion in the dory had refused to heed his
warning, Ralph must needs risk his own life.
In spite of the seaworthiness of the lightkeeper's dory, Ralph did not
believe Degger was seaman enough to handle the boat in a black squall.
On him might rest the burden of the couple's rescue from the tempest
that threatened.
He snubbed the skiff's painter to the mooring buoy. The motor-boat was
in readiness for immediate use. He cast off the mooring hawser and went
forward to turn the wheel. The spark caught the first time he threw the
wheel over. The exhaust coughed sharply. Ralph eased on the engine and
seized the spokes of the steering wheel as the propeller blades began to
revolve.
The _Fenique_ swam out into the open cove, and he headed her for the
points of the double reef. The mouth of sheltered Clinkerport Bay was
filled with racing, foam-crested waves, the slate-hued sides of which
were veined with yellow. It was a wicked-looking patch of water into
which Ralph steered the motor-boat.
Above the thunder of the breakers on the rocks and the roar of the surf
along the shore he could now hear the high whine of the coming squall.
The black cloud seemed suddenly to have expanded into a smothering
mantle over both shore and sea.
As he steered the motor-boat around the out-thrust rocks, the black
squall burst. The dory had not escaped the peril of it. Lorna and
Conny had got up the kedge, and now Degger was at the oars tugging
vainly to drive the dory shoreward.
"The poor fish!" was Ralph's rather futile comment.
A good boatman would have known instantly that to head into the wind was
a perfectly useless undertaking. There was a short mast and a sail
lashed under the thwarts. To step the mast and spread a hand's breadth
of canvas, so keeping the dory before the wind and to outrun the waves
that were already beginning to climb, was the seamanly thing to do.
Just as Ralph had feared, Degger was doing what most surely would bring
the girl and himself into jeopardy.
"Ought to be a law against fellows like him ever getting into a boat!"
muttered Endicott, increasing the speed of his own craft when clear of
the point. "He's lost one boat already. You'd think that would satisfy
him. And to lug Lorna along with him----"
Ralph might have been somewhat unfair in this criticism of Degger; but
he was much worried for Lorna Nicholet's safety. Under the increasing
strokes of the propeller the _Fenique_ began fairly to bound over the
waves. She shook all through her length when her propeller blades
plunged out of the water. She was only "hitting the high spots" when
she came into view of the two in the dory.
Lorna screamed in satisfaction at sight of the _Fenique_ with Ralph
standing in her cockpit. It was a cheering sight.
But Conny missed his stroke as he glared over his shoulder to see the
approaching rescuer. A wave slapped aboard the dory, half filled it,
and dragged one of the oars from Degger's hand.
Lorna screamed again, this time in actual fear. She was waist deep in
the sea that had come inboard. Degger showed no white feather, although
he was awkward in getting into the stern with the remaining oar. The
dory had begun to swing broadside to the bursting seas, and their
situation was indeed perilous.
Ralph shouted a command that the two in the dory did not hear. Degger
knew of but one thing to do. He saw the dory in danger of being swamped
in the trough between two waves, and he plunged the oar into the sea to
right her. The next instant another wave came inboard, the impact of it
all but throwing him on his face in the bottom of the boat.
The dory began to settle under this weight of water. Their submersion
seemed to be at hand.