Page:Silver Shoal Light.djvu/46

 CHAPTER III

HE cries of a flock of kittiwakes wheeling noisily over the lighthouse woke Joan the next morning. She wondered for a moment where she was, till she breathed the keen salt air which tingled through the window; then, remembering everything, she lay back luxuriously. The flat gray of the sky was fading to a tender rosiness, which was shot across with broad streaks of orange as the sun floated up. Cold and hard the sea-line met the glowing clouds, a band of steel color. Sailing toward the sun, a four-masted schooner slipped along the horizon; to the north, a wisp of smoke marked a vessel hidden over the earth's edge. The dawn-wind stirred the curtains at Joan's window and whispered about the room. Two big sea-going tugs—business-like craft in sober, workaday dress—passed close to the lighthouse on their way into the bay. As Joan watched them, their lights, ghostly in the dawn, went out suddenly; she saw men moving about the decks