When the keeper and Dave returned to the kitchen, preparations for dinner were started, and then Mr. Tolman said, "We have a few minutes to spare, and I guess we will take up our boat."
"Well, if it should promise to be a quiet day I could moor it near the light; but, of course, in rough weather, when everything is tumbling round the rocks, I had better have it h’isted into a safe place. I’ll show you."
"Isn’t it going to be quiet?" asked Dave eagerly. "I’d like to see a storm out here."
"Better see it than feel it, I tell ye. I don’t know but that it will be fair," said the keeper, at the door of the fog-signal tower, looking out upon the water, while a light breeze gently lifted and dropped the thin gray locks on his brow. "May be fair, but still--still--I don’t know. A bit hazy in the no’th-east."
"Oh, if it would storm!" said Dave enthusiastically.
The keeper smiled at his eagerness, and said: "I think you’ll have your wish before you get through; and it’s a tough place out here in a storm, the wind howling round the light, the big breakers thundering and smashing along the bar, the spray flying up to the lantern, or, if there is a fog, the old fog-horn screeching dismally. What do you think of it? That don’t suit you, does it?"
"Well, we will get the boat up. You see we have ’tackle and falls’ right here at the door, rigged overhead, you see, and we can get up ’most anything. If you will go down and make the boat fast, we will then raise her."
Dave descended, attached the boat at her stern and bows to the suspended tackle, and returned to the keeper’s side. Then they pulled on the ropes. The boat came readily up, and hung opposite the door of the fog-signal tower.
"Now we are all right," declared Dave. "This is a fortress where we have a boat, and can go off if we wish, but no enemy can get to us."
All this increased the keeper’s pleasure in witnessing the eagerness of Dave. At dinner the keeper rehearsed his duties, and added,--
"May not seem as if there was much to be done, but to keep everything in good condition it takes some time, and then there may be fogs--oh my!"
This made Dave, of course, none the less anxious to hear the big breakers booming against the lighthouse, and as an accompaniment the fog-horn moaning hoarsely. The keeper gave Dave his course of duties during the day; and while they despatched dinner he told Dave also about a heavy storm just "ten years ago that very day." And this only fired up Dave’s anxiety to see what the keeper termed "a howler."