Mr. Peters had not waited to hear the conversation, but, immediately after depositing the keeper in a chair, had hastened to the store room, returning a moment later with a short length of joist and some seizing stuff.
Opening the window which looked toward the west, he shoved the timber through, pulling it across the aperture on the outside of the tower, and there making it fast.
A second visit to the store room, and he returned with a small pulley block, and a large quantity of rope about the size of that used on vessels as heaving-lines.
By the time he had made the block fast to the timber, Uncle Zenas began to have some idea of the plan, and he cried approvingly:
"You've got a great head, Ephraim, an' I reckon that's why you're so set in your ways. Sammy can stray off quite a bit from the tower, with us to look after him."
"Yes, an' the tide is fallin'," Mr. Peters added as he continued his work of making ready by taking off his coat and vest, and wrapping one end of the line with an old coat.
"There's no need of your goin' out yet a while, Sammy," Captain Eph said as he noted the first assistant's movements.
"I was allowin' that we'd better give the contrivance a try while we had time, so's to make certain it would work smooth."
This seemed a reasonable precaution, and Captain Eph knotted the padded rope around the first assistant's body, after which the window overlooking the eastern side of the ledge was opened, and Mr. Peters clambered up on the sill.
The keeper and Uncle Zenas, sitting near each other, hauled the line taut as it ran through the block, and when Mr. Peters swung himself off the sill of the window, they lowered him slowly to the rocks below.
Sidney, standing near by, could see the first assistant as he went boldly into the surf, and, as the waves carried him from his feet, the two men in the kitchen readily pulled him backward and upward until it was possible for him to regain his footing.
"It's a good plan, Uncle Zenas," Captain Eph said approvingly; "but I allow that Sammy stands a chance to get more or less skin scraped off of him if we're called upon to do the job in a hurry."
"He won't know it until the job is done, an' then we'll have plenty of time to patch him up. Sonny, s'pose you get the glasses, an' keep your eye on the dory."