But there was no flavor of the Fourth in the bell's note this night. Whoever the ringer might be, he was ringing as though it was his only hope for life, and the bell swung back and forth without a pause. The red glow in the fog brightened again as the Captain gazed at it.
Captain Jerry came tumbling up the stairs, breathless and half dressed.
“Where do you make it out to be?” he panted.
“Somewhere's nigh the post-office. Looks 's if it might be Weeks's store. Where's Perez?”
Captain Eri had lighted a lamp and was pulling on his boots, as he spoke.
“Here I be!” shouted the missing member of the trio from the dining room below. “I'm all ready. Hurry up, Eri!”
Captain Eri jumped into his trousers, slipped into a faded pea-jacket and clattered downstairs, followed by the wildly excited Jerry.
“Good land, Perez!” he cried, as he came into the dining room, “I thought you said you was all ready!”
Captain Perez paused in the vain attempt to make Captain Jerry's hat cover his own cranium and replied indignantly, “Well, I am, ain't I?”
“Seems to me I'd put somethin' on my feet besides them socks, if I was you. You might catch cold.”
Perez glanced down at his blue-yarn extremities in blank astonishment. “Well, now,” he exclaimed, “if I hain't forgot my boots!”
“Well, git 'em on, and be quick. There's your hat. Give Jerry his.”
The excited Perez vanished through the door of his chamber, and Captain Eri glanced at the chronometer; the time was a quarter after two.
They hurried out of the door and through the yard. The wind, as has been said, was from the east, but there was little of it and, except for the clanging of the bell, the night was very still. The fog was heavy and wet, and the trees and bushes dripped as if from a shower. There was the salt smell of the marshes in the air, and the hissing and splashing of the surf on the outer beach were plainly to be heard. Also there was the clicking sound of oars in row-locks.
“Somebody is comin' over from the station,” gasped Captain Jerry. “Don't run so, Eri. It's too dark. I've pretty nigh broke my neck already.”
They passed the lily pond, where the frogs had long since adjourned their concert and gone to bed, dodged through the yard of the tightly shuttered summer hotel, and came out at the corner of the road, having saved some distance by the “short-cut.”