Page:Silver Shoal Light.djvu/343

 against her own. As she stooped to pull the covers around him, he pushed her from him.

"Go!" he said. "I'm all right now. Go to the Light! Oh, run!"

She ran down the dark, steep stairs, through the lamp-room passage. There she stumbled over familiar rubber-boots; an oilskin coat swept her cheek and made her start violently. Up the iron steps of the tower, around and around, losing all sense of how far she had come, till she fell against the little ladder at the top.

In the lantern it was chokingly black, and from the darkness without came the steady throb and thrill of a screw. Joan groped frantically. The match spurted and flickered, then a calm, triumphant radiance filled the night. There was the grinding, hissing roar of a great engine backing full speed astern, a racing and thrashing of water. Joan clung dizzily to the rail of the gallery, looking down.

Out of the somber immensity of the night loomed the shape of a great steamship, backing desperately away from the ledges. It sheered off and swung close around the seaward corner of the lighthouse, so close that Joan saw dim white faces staring up at her blankly.