i62 WILD WINGS 



There is no time to stop to grieve. The boat will be stove 

 to pieces soon. Down comes the wire cable, with a rope to 

 gird under the boat. A dash or two into the surf, and it is 

 done. Now hoist away. Slip and crash ! The stern goes 

 bumping over the rocks. " Hold hard, there ! " United yells 

 convey the intelligence up above. The cable slackens. Again 

 the rope is secure and the heavy boat goes sailing, as she 

 never did before, up into the darkness, like a phantom-ship. 

 They swing her in upon a ledge, and at last we all are safe. 

 We release the rope, the cable goes up and returns with the 

 crate, into which we put our baggage, and then we climb the 

 ladder with Keeper Peter Bourque, who has come down to 

 learn who has arrived and to welcome whomever it may 

 prove to be. 



Up in his lofty home, by his warm and welcome stove, this 

 twenty-third of June, my first task is to throw out all my wet 

 plates and set up the soaking holders to dry, while I renew 

 my friendship, and introduce the others to the keeper, his 

 nephew, and two young lady daughters. They are all radi- 

 ant, for since the fifth of the previous November, when the 

 government supply boat made her last call, they have seen 

 no other human beings till now, save some fishermen who 

 landed on the twenty-ninth of May. All that terrible winter 

 they were frozen in. Navigation was closed. There was no 

 need to light the torch for mariners, or to fire the bomb sig- 

 nals in the fog. All they could do was to maintain the strug- 

 gle for existence. The ice enclosed them in November, and 

 granted a possible release not until the middle of May. Even 

 now they had received no letters or papers since November. 

 With his glass the keeper had seen us before we had come 

 a mile from Bryon, and all hands set to work at once to write 

 letters, knowing that so small a craft could have no possible 

 destination beyond Bird Rock. And so, with tales of the 



