Page:Cornelia Meigs--The island of Appledore.djvu/212

192 woman toiling to keep them burning. Yet it was not to friends they were signalling this  time, but foes ; to a lurking, treacherous enemy  whose one safety lay in secrecy and darkness,  and who read the message of defiance and  drew off silently into the night.

Hour after hour passed, the wind rose higher and higher, sweeping great clouds of  smoke and sparks along the beach. The tide came in and the seas rose, until even the harbour became a circle of tossing waves and  thundering breakers.

“They’ll not be trying to send any boats ashore now,” one of the fishermen said to Captain Saulsby. “I think Joe Happs is safe enough from any danger of their coming after  him.”

The Captain nodded gravely as he sat there on the sand.

“I believe you can let the fires go out,” he said, “and you have surely done a good deed  for Johann this night. He would thank you if he could, but it is pretty plain that just now  he can’t. I wonder what he is going to do.”

The people went away homeward one by one, the fires burned down to heaps of blazing  coals, the surf came roaring in, higher and