There was no reply. A girl like this keeper of the Lime Rock Light left no room for pretty compliments, but made a man feel that if she could do such deeds with simple courage, what could he not do with such a spirit as hers! No one ever paid Ida Lewis higher praise than these two rough men when, on leaving, they each gripped her hand and the spokesman said:
"Whenever I see your light shining, I'll put up a prayer for its keeper, and thanking you for what you did for us, ma'am--if my little one's a girl, she will be Ida Lewis!"
Up spoke his comrade: "My daughter's twelve year old come September next, and I hope she'll be your kind. It'd make a new kind of a world to have such!"
While such praise did not turn Ida's very level head, or make her vain, it gave her a deep satisfaction and a tremendous sense of responsibility in her beloved occupation.
Two years went by, and Ida Lewis was a name which commanded respect throughout Rhode Island because of her work for the government, and there was scarcely a day when she did not direct some wandering boatman or give valuable aid to a distressed seafarer, but from the day she brought the men and their load of sheep to shore it was a year before there was any need of such aid as she had given them. Then on a day never to be forgotten by those to whose rescue she went, she saw two of the soldiers who were stationed at Fort Adams rowing toward the fort from Newport. A young lad was at the oars, and he showed that he was not in any way experienced as a boatman. A sudden squall overtook the small boat in mid-bay, and, as Ida Lewis looked at it, it capsized. At the moment Ida happened to be without hat or coat, or even shoes. Rushing to the boat-house, she took her staunch friend to the shore, and launched out in the wild squall under an inky-black sky; and she had to row against a wind that drove her back time after time. Finally she reached the wreck, only to find the boy had gone under. The soldiers were clinging to the bobbing keel of the boat, and Ida grasped them with a firm, practised hand, while at the same time managing to keep her own boat near enough so that when a wave washed them together she was able to help the exhausted soldiers to climb into it. They were unable to speak, and one of them was so exhausted that she feared she could not get him to land in time to resuscitate him.