

**Terror at the Lighthouse**

### Terence O'Grady

Copyright Terence O'Grady 2014

Cover and other images by Dreamstime

Smashwords Edition

Smashword Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

**Table of Contents**

Prologue

Chapter 1: Undercurrents!

Chapter 2: Life at the Lighthouse

Chapter 3: Learning the Ropes

Chapter 4: Unwelcome Visitors

Chapter 5: Trial by Water

Chapter 6: Rough Day at School

Chapter 7: Exploring the Island

Chapter 8: Encounter in the Woods

Chapter 9: Safe Again

Chapter 10: A Terrible Storm

Chapter 11: Trial by Fire

Chapter 12: Another Close Call

Chapter 13: Danger Lurking

Chapter 14: Terror at the Lighthouse

Chapter 15: To the Rescue

Chapter 16: Looking Ahead

Prologue

Throughout much of the 20th century, the lighthouses of the Great Lakes were extraordinarily valuable to the many sailing vessels that crisscrossed the mighty fresh water seas. The ships—large and small—carried ore, timber, manufactured goods and occasionally passengers from port to port in the Midwest and the upper Northeastern parts of the United States. It was a dangerous business; the Great Lakes are huge and sometimes violent, and sailing them was (and is) not for the faint of heart. The many lighthouses provided a welcome beacon that warned the ships away from the most dangerous shorelines and guided them through the sometimes narrow straits that could only be negotiated by the most skilled captains.

The people who manned the lighthouses were often as courageous as the captains and crews of the great ships. The lighthouse keepers struggled against nature and sometimes primitive technology to keep the beacons lit and the foghorns sounding through the night at times of danger. Without their assistance, many more ships would lie at the bottom of the Great Lakes with all hands lost.

Set in Door County, Wisconsin in the 1920s, this story is about the adventures of the Lester family when Mr. Lester takes the position of the keeper of Harris Island lighthouse. The geographical settings for the story are based on a composite of the Lake Michigan lighthouses of the Door Country region (in particular the Cana Island lighthouse). While the book is fiction, many of the events that take place are based largely on those that actually occurred in various Great Lakes lighthouses in the 1920s or 1930s.

Chapter 1: Undercurrents!

Rebecca squinted at her brother and frowned as he pushed his boat out from the dock.

"Should you be doing this? I don't think you should be doing this," she yelled as she walked quickly to the end of the dock.

"Father told me to," replied William. "I'll be fine."

Within half a minute, William had rowed about twenty feet from shore. As he adjusted his oars to move parallel to the shore, he felt his boat beginning to move farther out into Lake Michigan, away from Harris Island and the lighthouse he now called home.

William tugged harder at the oars but they didn't seem to be responding. He knew that he was caught in the undercurrents his father had warned him about. All of a sudden the little boat seemed to be moving completely by itself, and William knew he was in trouble. The undercurrents were strongest just off the northeast tip of Harris Island and that's where he was now.

William stopped for a moment to think. His father had told him that if he were ever caught in the undercurrent, he should let the boat float with it and then, after he got some speed up, pull hard to one side to release himself from its power. William quickly put the little boat into position, allowing the gently pulsating water to carry him along. Then, grabbing the right oar with both hands, he yanked it as sharply as he could. The little boat spun around and seemed to hesitate. He yanked again—harder this time—and the boat darted to the left, and then came to rest. William paused, and took a deep breath. He was free from the current. He grabbed both oars now and headed for the dock, about forty feet away. He had taken enough chances for one day.

As he tied the small skiff to the dock, William looked over the island's rocky beach. It seemed peaceful, just as if nothing had every happened there or ever _would_ happen there. But he knew that wasn't true. Lake Michigan could look peaceful and calm in the morning only to turn angry and violent by the early afternoon. And sometimes the huge lake was dangerous even when it didn't seem to be dangerous. His father had warned him about the undercurrents at least a dozen times, but William had never really taken him seriously. Undercurrents weren't something you could see, so he hadn't thought much about them. Now he realized that they were like an invisible hand that could just grab you and carry you where you didn't want to go.

As William walked from the dock, he saw his sister standing there with her arms folded over her chest.

"You almost hit the rocks, you know," she said, shaking her head slowly. "The rocks beneath the surface that Father warned us about."

William sighed. "I know all about the hidden rocks, Rebecca. I was the one who first told Father about them."

"Well, you don't act like you know," Rebecca said huffily. "Why were you out there anyway? Rowing around out there without any good reason? Father says..."

"I had a reason, Rebecca. I was looking for driftwood that might have piled up near the shore."

"You could have done that from shore," said Rebecca, her hands shifting to her hips.

"It's easier to spot if I can get out on the lake a bit. Besides, why do you care?"

"It's just stupid, that's all. It's stupid to take chances."

"Look, Rebecca, I wasn't taking chances. You can't live in a lighthouse and be afraid of the water. And it's not your job to be running off to Father to tell him everything I do."

"No? What else do I have to do?"

"You can feed the chickens. Remember? It's the one job that Mother's given you to do and you usually forget to do it."

"Stupid chickens! We never had chickens when we lived in Baraboo. They're the dumbest birds in the world. I don't even like to _eat_ chicken."

"We didn't have them in Baraboo because we lived right across the street from a grocery store. Now we're on an island. At least it's an island when the tide's high. And besides, we're miles away from a grocery store. We've got to think about growing our own food now."

"I still hate chickens," she grumbled, pivoting around and marching off the dock.

Chapter 2: Life at the Lighthouse

William knew that Rebecca was bored, but he couldn't really do anything about that. She never seemed interested in exploring the island or the surrounding woods. She wasn't even interested in watching for the ships.

William had a hard time understanding that. Although Harris Island could be a bit lonely, he felt that Lake Michigan was never boring. They had now lived at the lighthouse for almost two months and it was always exciting just watching the huge ships go by. A large number of ships had passed in sight of the lighthouse, probably more than a hundred. Most were just ordinary looking steamers, some of them towing the massive schooner-barges that carried lumber, coal and just about anything else you could think of. Some were headed north, maybe to hook around the peninsula and head for the port of Sturgeon Bay and then maybe Green Bay after that. Or maybe they were headed south, toward Milwaukee and then Chicago. None of the ships had come close to the lighthouse, except for one on a very foggy night in July when the tower's beacon light had trouble penetrating the thick gray air. William's father had to keep ringing the fogbell because the ancient foghorn refused to work, as it often did. On that night, a couple of ships—one of them an old-fashioned schooner—seemed to William to get much closer than usual to the dangerous shoals that jutted out of the water just to the west of the lighthouse. But his father had told William that there was really no problem that night and nothing to worry about.

Still, William knew that there was always a sense of danger around the lighthouse. To him, that was very exciting. But Rebecca never seemed to notice or to care. She missed her friends from Baraboo, the little Wisconsin town where they had lived before coming to Harris Island. William missed them too, but it was different for Rebecca. William found that life in their new home could be exciting. Rebecca just seemed lost. But now that their school in North Bay was starting up, he hoped that Rebecca might find some new friends and cheer up a little.

They had only been attending their new school for a week now and William thought it was alright so far. Rebecca had already complained to her mother that no one in the new school liked her. But that was Rebecca. She complained about things even when they were going well.

As William walked back from the dock to the living quarters attached to the lighthouse, he caught a glimpse of his mother, Ann Lester, kneeling in the garden. He knew that his mother, like Rebecca, was not very happy about living at the lighthouse, not yet anyway. She had wanted Mr. Lester to keep his job as a teacher in Baraboo, and was disappointed when her husband had informed her that he had been released from his teaching job and they would have to move. It had not been a good situation. Mr. Lester had stuck up for another teacher who had been fired by the school board and, a few days later, he had been let go as well. "I don't regret standing up for a friend. It was the right thing to do," he had told his wife. But now Mr. Lester was unemployed and the family had almost no savings in the bank.

Mr. Lester had searched for a job in the Baraboo area for several weeks but had no luck. Eventually, he had been able to land the job as a keeper at Harris Island lighthouse off of Door County and the family had moved almost immediately to their new home, a three-bedroom, two-story house attached to the lighthouse tower. But Mrs. Lester had found their new living quarters to be cold, damp and much too small. It was obvious that she missed their nice house in Baraboo. She was also unhappy about how isolated the lighthouse was—two miles from the nearest house and even farther from the nearest grocery store. His mother and father had early on decided that the family would have to grow some of its own food. But that wasn't turning out to be easy. William's mother struggled to get much of anything to grow in the large garden patch beside the lighthouse. The land was too rocky, she said. The soil too thin.

But his mother knew how important it was to try to grow something. Money was tight. The lighthouse job paid poorly, especially for the first six months— the "probationary period" when Mr. Lester could be fired from the position if anything at all went wrong. Yes, things were very tight and Mrs. Lester wasn't sure exactly how they were going to survive the winter.

Chapter 3: Learning the Ropes

Mr. Lester wiped his hands carefully with an old rag before tossing it over a decaying fence post. He was worried, although he didn't want anyone to know it. He was new to the job of lighthouse keeper and he wasn't absolutely sure he could handle it. He wasn't very experienced in the ways of the lighthouses or seafaring on the Great Lakes. Mr. Lester had worked on Lake Michigan for only a single summer, sailing on his uncle's ore boat as a teenager, and had never set foot in a lighthouse before applying for the job in May of that year.

The position at the lighthouse had become vacant unexpectedly when the previous keeper had been removed from his position under mysterious circumstances. Apparently, the beacon light had been allowed to go dark by the former keeper on three separate occasions in April of that year, just when the shipping season on Lake Michigan was starting to get busy again. That keeper, Tom Brown, had been relieved of his duties after a hearing by the regional Lighthouse Board and had returned to his area farm, complaining loudly of the "unfair treatment" he had received. Richard Lester had never heard the details about why Brown had been dismissed, but there were plenty of rumors about Brown drinking too much while on duty and neglecting to keep the beacon light supplied with kerosene. One thing was clear, though. Brown was now angry and resentful. He thought that the job of keeper should still be his, and he complained bitterly to anyone who would listen about being replaced by an amateur who knew nothing about lighthouses or the dangers of Lake Michigan.

Mr. Lester knew that Brown would be watching him closely, waiting for him to make some mistake so that he might be able to get his old job back. But Mr. Lester couldn't let that happen. He needed this job. His family needed it. One way or another, he was going to make it work.

"Good morning, Father," said William, coming up quietly behind him.

Mr. Lester's face brightened. "William, where've you been? I could use a little help."

"With the fence posts?"

His father smiled and shook his head. "No, these are beyond help, at least for now. But I could use some help cleaning the lighthouse lens. That's a lot more important anyway. C'mon."

Mr. Lester led William into the lighthouse tower and up the long, winding stairwell to the top. William had made his way to the top before, but only with his father by his side. He was always a little wary of the circular stairs because the passageway was narrow and a wrong step might have sent him tumbling four stories to the ground floor. But, with his father by his side, William felt confident and took the narrow steps quickly.

When they had arrived at the lantern room, William was once again surprised by how small it was—about six feet tall and nine feet wide with a two-foot balcony circling around it on the outside. Over the beacon itself was a copper dome three feet high which, his father explained, served to ventilate the flame that created the light. At the bottom of the wall, there were a series of louvers that provided the air to keep the flame going. His father explained that the louvers had to be changed if the wind was strong or changed direction. William gazed with wide eyes at the eight-sided lantern and the confusing collection of shiny glass surfaces that went with it.

Mr. Lester grabbed a special soft cloth and gently began to rub one of the glass facets of the special lens that magnified the beacon light, one that could be seen miles away by the ships that travelled the Great Lakes. The beacon light—and the lens that shielded and magnified it—was obviously the main reason the lighthouse existed. And a lighthouse never slept. It had to be ready night or day to do its job—to help ships navigate, to warn them away from danger, to show them the way through a foggy day or a stormy night. If the ships approached too close to the dangerous shoals around the lighthouse, someone had to sound the foghorn or—as was often the case—sound the smaller fogbell when the balky foghorn refused to operate.

William's father handed him a smaller cloth. "Here, son. You work on the lower section of the lens. It's got to be spotless so the light can shine through as brightly as possible."

As William began to gently rub the lower part of the lens, he said, "It looks complicated. Why does it have all of those tilted mirrors?"

This is a third order Fresnell lens," replied his father. "All those different prisms reflect and refract the flame to expand and focus the power of the light coming from it. On a clear day, you can see the light from this lamp for at least twelve miles out to sea. But the light doesn't just sit there, it flashes. It shines steady for twenty seconds and then flashes four times before it starts the whole pattern all over again. Everything is controlled by a series of gears, almost like a clock mechanism. Look, you can just see the top of it," he said, pointing to a large box beneath the lens.

"Most every lighthouse has its own patterns of flashes," he continued. Plum Island's got one pattern and Bailey's Harbor has got a different one. A captain's got to know if he's looking at our beacon light, or the light from Bailey's Harbor. If he's heading into North Bay to escape a storm and thinks he's looking at the Plum Island or Bailey's Harbor beam, but he's really looking at ours, then he's in trouble. In fact, he's going to hit that shoal right out there over to the northwest of the lighthouse. And if he misses that, he's going to hit the shallows on our right. But if he knows it's our light that he's looking at, then he can avoid both those problems and head himself directly into the harbor without a scratch."

"But what makes it work?" asked William. "Is it really like a clock?"

"Not exactly, although you do have to wind it every four hours," said his Father. "Look at these cables and gears over here," he said, pointing to a pair of thick black cables fastened to the bottom of several large gears. "A pair of cables from this mechanism goes down to a pulley system and a large weight descends from right here at the top all the way down to the cellar. That's what keeps the whole thing moving. Unfortunately, it doesn't always move correctly. We've haven't had any problems with it yet but, if the tower's not standing absolutely straight, those gears will sometimes jam up."

"What happens then?" asked William.

"It wouldn't be good. The light would stop flashing. Of course it probably won't happen, William," said his father, smiling, "but, if it does, we just have to straighten the cables out and free up the gears by hand. Sometimes the cables just get all jumbled together for no reason at all. Doesn't matter. We still have to straighten them out."

"How do we unjumble them?" asked William.

"Oh, I'll always be around to take care of that," his father said, patting him gently on the shoulder.

"But what if you're not?"

Mr. Lester smiled. "About halfway up the circular stairs we just came up, you probably noticed that there was a small door going into that round column sitting right in the middle of the tower. That little door lets you get at the cables in case you have to straighten them out. And then, if that doesn't work, you have to turn the mechanism by hand with a handle that attaches directly to the gears."

"Gosh," said William. "There's so much that can go wrong."

"Well, I'm afraid that those aren't the only things that can go wrong," said his father with a sigh. "We've actually got two lamps here. Take another look at the one in front. It's an incandescent kerosene vapor burner. This was installed about ten years ago. Those nozzles down there turn the kerosene into vapor and the flame burns the vapor. It's nice and bright, just about doubles the candle-power of the light compared to the old fashion kind of wick lantern."

"So that's a good thing, isn't it?" said William, looking up from the burner.

"Sure, it's a good thing," replied his father. "The only thing is that the nozzles don't always work. They can get clogged up, especially if there's anything wrong with the kerosene. And, if they get clogged up, it might take a couple of hours to clean them. But the ships sailing the lake can't be without Harris Island lighthouse for a couple of hours while I'm cleaning the nozzle. So, when that happens, we have to light the old wick here and let that burn as a substitute. It's not as bright, of course, but it's a lot better than nothing."

"You mean the light can really just go out...just like that?" asked William.

"That's not the only thing that can decide not to work," said his father. "Come downstairs with me and we'll take a look at the foghorn. That thing almost never works right."

William nodded and finished polishing the corners of the glass lens carefully. Every time he stood in front of the huge lens, he was reminded of how important the job of lighthouse keeper really was. The keeper's ability to do his job right might someday make the difference between life and death.

Chapter 4: Unwelcome Visitors

The tall, scruffy-looking man peered through the thick trees in the direction of the lighthouse. He nodded silently and turned to a shorter, shabbily-dressed man a few steps in back of him.

"So what do ya see, Elmer?" asked the second man, his burly arm pushing away a large branch from his face.

"Well, Sam, it looks about the same as it did last year," said Elmer, peering through the bushes at the lighthouse.

"Is the chicken coop still there?"

"Looks like it," grunted Sam. "Good thing, too. I've become real partial to old man Brown's chickens."

"Yeah, but old man Brown's not here anymore. He's gone back to his farm. I heard that somebody else tends this lighthouse now," said Elmer, stroking the stubble on his jaw.

"Well, all I care about is whether they've still got some nice plump chickens we can steal!" sneered Sam, spitting his tobacco at a near-by tree stump.

"Yeah, and maybe they've got something else we can 'borrow' as well," said Elmer.

"The only way we're gonna find that out is if we get close enough to get a good look," said Sam, nudging his friend forward. "So why don't you move up there a bit so we can both see what's going on?"

The two men moved stealthily through the underbrush until they were almost at the edge of the water.

"Water's pretty low right now," said Sam quietly. "Getting out to the island will be easy. We'll barely get our shoes wet."

Elmer shook his head. "You know, Sam, I'm not so sure there's a darn thing out there to steal. Only a couple of chickens in that coop as far as I can see."

"There's always food somewhere at a lighthouse, Elmer," said Sam nodding his head wisely. "Lighthouse keepers can't just walk over to the grocery store every day. They have to store food up for a week or two at a time. All we've got to do is find where they keep it."

"So we just walk into the kitchen and say 'Excuse me, ma'am, but we're a couple of tramps here to take all your food. I'm sure you won't mind tellin' us where you've put it and maybe help us stuff it into our bags,'" said Elmer.

"I'm not sayin' we're going to walk into the kitchen. See that summer kitchen out there? Maybe there's somethin' in that," said Sam, pointing to a small building about thirty feet to the right of the main house.

"That old building's about fallin' apart. The only thing that they're keepin' there are mice and a couple of sacks of corn," said Elmer.

Well," said Sam, urging his partner forward, "let's find out. Let's see if they've got a few crusts of bread to share with a couple of wandering hoboes, and get a closer look at the setup at the same time."

The two men trudged across the stony causeway, hopping from one rock to the next to avoid the small pools of water. As they drew closer to the house, Mrs. Lester came out with a clothesbasket to hang some clothes on the line.

"Howdy, ma'am," said Sam, taking off his weather-beaten hat and bowing his head slightly to Mrs. Lester who, caught off guard by his voice, jumped back slightly from the clothesline.

"We was wonderin,' ma'am," said Elmer, who had also doffed his hat and now held it in his hand, "if you had some morsels you might be able to share with us. We've been walking for several hours, ma'am, and haven't had a single bite to eat all day."

Mrs. Lester quickly recovered her composure. "I'm sorry to say that I can't be of much help. I've got a family of four to feed here and food's a little scarce for us as well at the moment. Where are you two headed?"

"Oh...around, just around." Sam smiled. "We're gentlemen of the road, as you might say."

"I see," said Mrs. Lester, eyeing them carefully. "Well, gentlemen, I'm sorry I can't help you," she said, quickly beginning to pin the clothes onto the clothesline.

The two turned away and started walking back slowly over the causeway. "Well, that ain't real neighborly, is it?" said Sam nastily over his back, just loud enough for Mrs. Lester to hear. Mrs. Lester ignored the comment and finished hanging up the clothes, watching the two men out of the corner of her eye until they disappeared into the woods back on the mainland.

"So there's four of them, eh?" grunted Sam as he stepped back behind a tree to observe the lighthouse. "You were right about the summer kitchen, Elmer. From what I could see, there's not much left to it. Nothin's stored there, that's for sure. And all they've got is a couple of scrawny chickens not worth stealin'. Guess these folks ain't quite as ambitious as old man Brown was."

"I think we're wastin' our time, Sam," said Elmer. "Maybe she was tellin' the truth. Maybe they ain't got much food."

"Oh, they ain't starvin'," said Sam with a sly smile. "They just don't want to share with a couple of men down on their luck. That's just not right, Elmer. And one of these days, we're gonna teach 'em a little lesson."

The two men turned their backs on the lighthouse once again and disappeared back through the woods.

Mrs. Lester walked swiftly back to the house and yelled for her husband to come down from the tower. He came down the stairs quickly, wiping his hands on a dirty brown cloth.

"Richard," she said, picking up a kitchen knife, "A couple of men were just here—asking for a handout. I told them I was sorry, but we had nothing to spare."

'Who were they? Did they give their names?" Mr. Lester asked.

"No," replied Mrs. Lester. "They didn't offer and I didn't ask. Looked to be some sort of hoboes. Said they were 'gentlemen of the road.'"

"Huh," grunted Mr. Lester. "I guess that's what the more ambitious tramps call themselves these days. They're pretty adventurous to come all the way out here just looking for a handout. I suppose we could have given them a little something."

"Absolutely not, Richard," replied Mrs. Lester quickly. "We don't have much to spare. We haven't been to town for a week and the food's getting scare. God knows the garden isn't giving us much."

"No, I suppose not," her husband replied, nodding his head gently.

"Besides," she added, "it's always a mistake to feed those fellows. That'll just get them to come back for more. They're not just down on their luck, Richard. This is all they do, you know...go from one place to another, hoping to get a handout."

"I know," replied her husband. "But like I said, I'm just surprised they'd come way out here. We're miles from the nearest farm. You'd think the pickings would be pretty slim in these parts."

"Maybe these two were used to getting a little something from the last keeper," said Mrs. Lester, walking over to the counter to pick up an onion.

"From Tom Brown?" said Mr. Lester. "Well, I never met the man, but from what I've been hearing, Mr. Brown would be slow to give his grandmother a handout."

"Maybe these two helped themselves when Brown wasn't looking. They looked pretty seedy to me."

"Really?" said Mr. Lester, a worried expression beginning to cross his face. "Did either of those two say anything threatening?"

"Not really threatening...but one of them made of point of saying that I wasn't being very 'neighborly' in a pretty nasty voice—and he made sure I heard him say it."

"Well, it's probably nothing," said Mr. Lester, "but just in case, let's keep the children close by the house for a couple of days. I'll be going into town tomorrow and I'll mention it to the police. But I'm sure it's nothing to worry about."

Chapter 5: Trial by Water

The next day, a Saturday, dawned early for William. He had promised his father that he would accompany him on his morning routine and that meant getting up at 5:00 AM. It had sounded like an exciting idea the day before, but now, on a Saturday, when he usually liked to sleep a little later in the morning, he wasn't sure he had enough energy to crawl out of bed. He knew there was a lot to do because his father had often related the long list of lighthouse chores that had to be done each morning, but today was the first time he was actually going to help his father do every one of his daily tasks. In the weeks before, William had helped out by whitewashing the fences around the outside rim of the island and the boathouse off to the north side of the island. But he had never actually helped very much in the lighthouse itself, and some of the jobs he was supposed to help with sounded awfully complicated.

As William began his breakfast, his father was already in his official-looking keeper's uniform, a dark blue coat with large brass buttons, vest and trousers, and an impressive captain's hat with the official bronze lighthouse insignia displayed in front. William thought it strange that his father dressed in that uniform every day when much of the work he had to do was hot and dirty. Besides, the uniform was an old one, loaned to him by Mr. Morton, the keeper of a nearby lighthouse, and it didn't fit very well. When the family had just moved to the lighthouse a couple of months earlier, William had asked his father why he didn't just wear dungarees? Wouldn't they be a lot more comfortable? His father had agreed, but he reminded William that the job of keeper was an "official" position—it was like being the captain of a vessel that never went to sea and so, just like the captain of a ship, he had his uniform to wear.

Actually, he went on, it was even more important than being captain of a ship. The captain of a ship had only that particular ship to worry about—including the cargo and crew, of course. But a lighthouse keeper had to worry about _all_ the ships that came into his area. And there were an awful lot of ships—hundreds and hundreds of ships, crews and cargoes—that depended on the Harris Island lighthouse as an aid to navigation and as warning that dangerous shoals and rocky shallows were close by. Of course, it was at night or in a storm that ships of all sizes, even the huge steel-hulled steamers, needed the lighthouse most of all. And, his father said as they started out together to the fuel house, today looked like just the sort of day when a storm might be brewing.

The first job for the morning was to measure out the kerosene that would be needed for the lamp in the evening and carry it from the fuel house in the backyard up the long, winding circular staircase to the lantern room in the lighthouse tower. While measuring the kerosene and pouring it carefully into the five-gallon cans was a little tricky, William soon discovered that carrying his full-to-the-brim can up the narrow, winding staircase was quite a bit trickier. While his father, carrying a can in each hand, seemed to spring up the circular stairs fairly quickly, William moved very slowly, constantly afraid of bumping the can on the side rail and spilling some of the precious kerosene. When he finally made it up to the top after giving his kerosene can just the slightest little bump on the inner wall as he took the last two steps, his father was smiling broadly at him. "Nice job, William," he said, "although it's a good thing the light wasn't desperate for fuel with you taking your own sweet time about getting up here."

William smiled back. "I went as fast as I could, Father. These stairs are tricky."

"Nothing like the circular stairs of a lighthouse to keep you nimble," laughed his father. "Why, you're going to be dashing up these steps three at a time with a can of kerosene in each hand before you know it." William and his father poured the contents of their cans into the large red tank that fed into the lantern above them.

Standing in the watch room beneath the beacon for only the second time William scanned the room quickly. "Wow, this room is really small."

His father nodded. "The watch room's really meant for just one person to stand here and be on the lookout for possible problems, especially on foggy or stormy nights. In fact, it does seem to be getting a little rough out there now, as I was afraid it might. The sky doesn't look so good either."

It was true. It had seemed windy even at breakfast time but now, less than an hour later, the lake was showing off some large whitecaps. At times the waves seemed like no more than two-footers, but some of them were definitely bigger and were throwing some spray around when they hit the short concrete pier or the rocks by the front of the lighthouse. William thought he could feel the floor beneath him move just a little and he looked up at his father questioningly. "It does move a little, doesn't it?" said Mr. Lester. "I'm guessing that the foundation for the tower isn't in very good shape. Sometimes ice gets between the double walls and loosens them up."

"Could the tower really fall over...with us inside?"

"No, it's not supposed to be dangerous. Mr. Morton told me about it when he came for a visit. When the wind is hard from the northeast, the tower moves a little. In a real bad blow, it might actually shake a little bit. Now that's not going to hurt anyone standing up here, but it's possible that it might hurt the flow of kerosene to the lamp. Also, the clockwork mechanism that flashes the beacon can get tangled up if the gears get moved around too much. I'll show you what that looks like in a minute."

"But if it's broken," asked William, "shouldn't we get someone to fix it?"

"Well, son," replied his father, "I doubt if it's really a dangerous problem. I'm told that the wind would have to be absolutely ferocious before the tower would move that much. And the fact is, William, that the government is not going to spend a lot of money on this particular lighthouse. Or at least that's what everybody tells me. So I think we're just going to have to do the best job we can with what we have."

Their work completed, William's father bounded down the circular stairs quickly with William descending more slowly behind him.

As they walked into the yard, it was obvious that the wind had picked up considerably over the last few minutes. Also, a light fog seemed to be rolling over the island. You had to squint to see more than a few hundred yards out into the lake. William's father stopped in mid-stride and looked around. "I was afraid this might turn into something," he said wistfully. "And I think it's going to get worse before it gets better. Now we'd really better try to get that old foghorn working."

The foghorn building was about forty feet from the lighthouse on the southeast part of the island. It was a small shed with a large, ugly smokestack sticking out of the top. A large heap of logs was piled up next to it.

"We'd better get this fire going as quickly as we can," his father said, grabbing an armful of split logs as he entered the small building. In just a few minutes, a small fire was going and the large boiler was beginning to heat up.

"It's going to take an hour or so to build up enough steam. Come on. Let's get over to the boathouse and see what things look like over there," said his father, wiping his hands on a nearby work rag. He hurried out the door of the small building and started off toward the other side of the island taking large strides. William kept up with him as best he could.

"I thought so," his father said, when they had finally arrived at the boathouse. It looks bad here and getting worse every minute."

Standing out on the boathouse dock, William and his father could see that the fog was coming from the northwest and it was coming fast and thick. And the waves had gotten a lot higher since breakfast, even since he and his father had stood in the watch room of the tower just a few minutes earlier. The waves were up to three feet in some places now, and the spray was spilling over the wooden pier attached to the boathouse.

"Okay, here's what we have to do, William," said his father in a loud voice, grabbing his cap to keep it from being blown off his head by the frequent sharp gusts of wind. "I'll get back to the foghorn and see if we can get that miserable thing working. You get up to the second level of the tower. You probably noticed that handle sticking out of the wall on the second level as we went past it this morning?"

William nodded his head timidly. He wasn't really sure what his father meant. He didn't remember seeing anything on the second landing because he was so busy trying to get his can of kerosene up the narrow stairs without spilling anything.

"Well, that's the pull for the fogbell," explained his father. "It's not worth much but we've got to try it. It's going to take me a while to get the steam up in the foghorn even if everything does work properly. And we can't wait that long. So, I want you to get up to that fogbell and start ringing it...right now. Yank that handle once, wait five seconds and then yank it again three times. When your arm gets tired, you can stop and rest. But don't rest too long. And on your way, stop in and tell your mother that I may need her out here for a minute. Okay?"

William nodded his head quickly and turned to go. He hesitated for a couple of seconds and his father turned to face him. "It's going to be okay, son, but we'll have to work together on this one. Just be real careful and everything's going to be fine."

William sprinted off to the lighthouse tower, stopping briefly to call into his mother that there was a problem and that his father would need some help with the foghorn. She dropped the towel in her hand quickly and yelled at Rebecca to stay in the house before she bolted out the door. William sprang up the circular stairwell to the second landing as quickly as he could. Sure enough, there was an ancient-looking brown handle mounted on a plate in the outside wall. He realized now that it connected to the old bell that hung outside the lighthouse tower. He had heard his father ring the bell by hand only once or twice before, and then only on and off for a half an hour or so. Was the storm today going to be worse than on those other days?

Meanwhile, Mr. Lester was struggling with the foghorn. It seemed as if steam had finally built up to the level needed to blow the large horn mounted about twelve feet over the top of the building, but after a single loud blast lasting about three seconds the pressure failed and the horn went silent again. "I'm losing too much pressure at these gaskets," Mr. Lester yelled to his wife, who had just appeared at the doorway. "This happens almost every time. The only thing we can do is to try to stuff some old rags into the joints."

Mrs. Lester, grim-faced and determined, wheeled around and started back to the house. "I'll grab anything I can find," she yelled over her shoulder.

William had begun pulling the handle of the fogbell but the sound it created seemed small and tinny to him. Could some ship out there really even hear this? He yanked harder at the handle but the difference in the sound was barely audible. He then remembered the pattern his father had given him: one pull...wait five seconds and pull three more times. But should the three pulls come fast or slow? It didn't seem to matter since even inside the tower the wind and waves had become so noisy that the small bell barely seemed to make a dent in all the sounds whirling around it.

Suddenly, his father was beside him. "Foghorn won't work. We can't keep the pressure up. This fogbell's all we got. Can you keep it ringing while I go upstairs?"

William nodded silently and gave the handle his hardest yank yet. His father loped up to the watch room. "Gosh, it's getting bad out there," he said, shaking his head slowly. "Wait! What's that?" he gasped, staring intently out into the fog. He grabbed the binoculars hanging from a nail near the door and quickly called down to William. "Get your mother, son. I need her eyes up here. Leave the bell for a minute."

William scampered down to the first landing and into the kitchen. In a few seconds, his mother was following him up the cylindrical stairs to the watch room.

"What is it, Richard?" gasped his mother, out of breath from her dash up the stairs.

"I'm pretty sure there's something out there...looks like a steamer...pulling hard but not making a lot of progress. I don't think she's in trouble, but I'm not sure if I see a signal or not," said Mr. Lester, handing the binoculars to his wife.

"I see a ship...a steamer, I guess...not a big one," she said slowly, training her eyes on an object blurred by two hundred yards of fog.

"Is it my imagination, or is she signaling us?" asked her husband.

"I think there's a pattern of flashes, but the light's pretty dim and it seems to be fading out," Mrs. Lester said, handing the glasses back to her husband.

"I couldn't make out the pattern either, but I think it means they're going to try to send a skiff ashore."

"Come ashore? Where?"

"Well, in this case, right here in front of us. They'll probably try to dock on the cement pier in front of the lighthouse."

"But Richard," said his wife, "you keep saying it's not safe to do that."

"Not on a day like today," said Mr. Lester, shaking his head. "With all this fog, they'll be on top of that pier almost before they see it. A small boat could get crushed up against it. But look...that's what they're doing. See that little dinghy? It's coming this day...a couple of people in it."

"Can't we signal them or something?" Mrs. Lester said, leaning forward and trying to focus her eyes on the scene in front of her.

"Well, I think they see us. And they fully intend to land here. I only hope they know what they're doing," Mr. Lester said, lowering the glasses from his face. "I'm going down to the pier. They're not moving very fast. Maybe I can yell out to them—let them know what they're up against before they slam up against that slab of concrete."

Mr. Lester hurried down the stairs to the first landing as his wife continued to gaze intently at the struggling little dinghy through the binoculars. "William, forget the fogbell for a minute and follow me," his father barked as he sped past him, quickly grabbing a life ring and a pair of ropes suspended from a hook. By the time that William got out to the pier in front of the lighthouse, his father was standing at the edge, bellowing out warnings to the small boat—now barely visible—which was slowly bobbing forward through the waves. The fog seemed thicker down by the water and at times the little boat faded out of view completely.

All of a sudden, the small boat appeared again, only a few yards from the dock, and moving quickly toward it, carried by the cresting four-foot waves. "Ahoy!" shouted his father. "Come in gentle or you'll be hammered."

"We've got an injured man here!" bellowed one of the men on the boat, his hand cupped to his mouth. "We've got to get him to shore."

Just then the surging waves began propelling the little boat to the left of the concrete pier in the direction of some jagged rocks guarding the shore.

"I'll throw you a line," shouted Mr. Lester. He grabbed the life ring and tossed it toward the little boat, now moving away from the pier to his left. The ring fell short just as the man in the boat reached out to clutch it. William's father quickly reeled the line in and hurled it again in the direction of the struggling skiff. The oarsman grabbed it this time, slipped off the life ring and secured the line to his boat. William could now see that the second man in the boat was huddled near the bottom and was moaning quietly.

Mr. Lester braced himself against the docking post and pulled desperately on the line, trying to bring the small boat back in the direction of the dock. William quickly ran up behind to help him pull.

"No, William, not now," Mr. Lester grunted. "Just stand back a bit. But grab that second line, we may need it."

William backed away, glancing around to find the other line. He scooped it up quickly. His father continued to strain against the rope and gradually the little boat inched closer to the pier. The waves seemed a little smaller now and it looked like the docking might be smooth.

Only a couple of feet away now, the oarsman tossed the skiff's line over to Mr. Lester who quickly wrapped it around a pole. Inches away from the pier, the first man helped the second to his feet. "Careful," he shouted, "he's burned pretty bad."

"Right," I'll be careful." Mr. Lester reached out and grabbed the injured man carefully under the arms and gently tugged him up to the pier. The injured man groaned but managed to grab onto the side and help lift himself up. In a few seconds, he was safely on the pier, although down on one knee and clearly exhausted.

"William," his father yelled without turning around, "go to the house quickly and bring back every blanket you can find. Tell your mother that we're bringing in an injured man."

William turned quickly but the water-swept surface of the pier made him slip briefly. He recovered his balance and started toward the lighthouse.

"I'm coming too," yelled the other man, bobbing up and down in the small boat as the waves started to regain their momentum.

"Give me your hand," shouted Mr. Lester, bracing himself against the railing post as he extended his arm toward the skiff. The man in the boat grabbed his wrist and began to lift his right leg toward the pier. Just then, a large wave rolled the boat away from the pier. The man clutched Mr. Lester's hand with all his power and pulled himself out of the boat toward the pier, his right leg now planted on the concrete surface but his left leg still dangling over the side. Suddenly a large wave tossed the boat forward, smashing it against the man's leg, still straddled over the side of the pier. The man's voice boomed in a roar of agony, but a second later Mr. Lester had managed to pull him all the way up to the pier, where he lie writhing in pain.

Chapter 6: Rough Day at School

William woke up early the next day and immediately his mind was full of thoughts about the remarkable weekend his family had just experienced. The dramatic rescue of two men from the steamer "John Winston" was the most exciting thing he had ever seen. And he had even participated in it—at least a little.

The first of the two men to be rescued from the skiff had been badly burned in a boiler accident and his shipmates had figured that he must be taken to a doctor as quickly as possible. So, seeing the Harris Island lighthouse only a few hundred yards away, the first mate had decided to risk transporting him to the lighthouse in one of the steamer's small skiffs. The fog was bad, they figured, but it was only going to get worse and the seas weren't going to get any smoother, not for a while anyway. They hadn't reckoned that the waves would play tricks with the skiff at just the wrong time, smashing the first mate's leg against the concrete pier. It had taken Mr. Lester, with the help of Mrs. Lester and William, only a few minutes to get the burned man into the safety of the house, but the first mate's broken leg had made transporting him more difficult and time consuming. As soon as both men were being warmed up inside the Lester's home, William was sent running to the house of one the neighboring farmers who owned a car. Within the hour both men were speeding to Sturgeon Bay to receive proper medical attention.

The family received word the next day that both men, though seriously injured, would eventually recover completely. Both had sent their thanks to Mr. Lester and his family for their assistance in time of need.

But now it was Monday and time to think about school. William didn't really mind school—he just didn't particularly love it. First of all, it was a very long walk to the school in North Bay, almost three miles each way. They had to figure that the walk would take a little over an hour, especially because it was hard to keep his little sister, Rebecca, moving fast. William felt that he could probably have made the walk in under an hour easy if it weren't for Rebecca.

But Rebecca was good company, at least some of the time. They had always gotten along better than other brothers and sisters he knew, although William sometimes thought it was unfair that Rebecca got away without doing much work around the lighthouse. But he was twelve and she was only ten and he realized that made a difference.

And anyway, he felt sorry for her. He knew that Rebecca wasn't really that happy at the lighthouse, that she missed living in Baraboo and having lots of neighborhood kids around to play with. William didn't miss those kids quite so much, but he knew that Rebecca was bored wandering around the little island all the time with no one to play with other than their dog, Bailey.

Still, even though she complained all the time about it at home, Rebecca seemed happy enough at school. Even on the days when William was pretty glum about getting up before daybreak and taking that long walk to school, Rebecca sometimes seemed remarkably cheerful. Although she would complain endlessly every night about having to do homework, in the mornings she would often babble on about how much fun school was and how much she enjoyed seeing her friends. And it was true. She already had a lot of friends at school. Everyone always seemed to like Rebecca. She was talkative, a little noisy maybe, but she always came up with great schemes about things that would be fun to do.

But William was pretty quiet. He was friendly to everyone and there were a few boys at school he liked to hang around with. But William was not the leader. He was not the one who came up with great ideas about what to do next.

Many of William's classmates were farm kids who didn't really see why they should be in school at all, particularly at harvest time. And, sometimes, one or two of the boys would miss school for a week or two at a time while they stayed home on the farm to help out their fathers. William admired them for that, and was a little bit envious that those boys had such important jobs to do, working alongside their fathers almost as equals. In farming, every child had an important job to do—not just some silly household chores—but something important. If these boys didn't do their jobs, the crops would never get in and the family would lose a big part of its income.

William had some opportunities to help his father from time to time, of course. On the day he had helped with the fogbell—the day of the accident that took place right off the lighhouse's concrete pier—all the adults had praised him for keeping a calm head and doing his job so effectively. But in William's mind, he hadn't done much—nothing of any importance. The skiff from the steamer had known all along where the lighthouse was—it didn't really need to hear the fogbell at all.

And besides, William was powerless, just like his father had been, to prevent the little skiff from being picked up by a large wave and smashed into the concrete dock, breaking the man's leg in the process. And when that had happened, he had panicked—he knew he had. He hadn't been calm at all. His face might not have shown anything, but he knew he wasn't really thinking straight. And when he had been sent to go for help, it seemed to him that it had taken forever to get to the neighbor's house, even though he'd been running at full speed. Later on, after it was all over, everyone told him that he had made good time. His mother and father had said they were very proud of him. But he still didn't feel like he had really done anything—nothing useful anyway.

And besides, when would something like that happen again, a ship in distress right off the lighthouse? His father had said that it could happen anytime, especially since it would soon be November and that was a dangerous month on the Great Lakes. Still, William figured that nothing like that ever would happen again. And if something did happen, he probably wouldn't be able to help much. Although he could now load the kerosene lamp and handle some of the simpler duties, he still didn't really understand how the complicated equipment in the lighthouse tower worked, despite the fact that his father had tried to explain it to him several times. But there were just too many things to remember. Maybe those farm kids have it better, he thought. They have important jobs, but jobs that weren't so complicated to do.

William particularly liked one of the farm kids, Jerry Van de Hoven, who seemed always to be cheerful. Jerry had always shown an interest in the lighthouse and, when William had described to him what had happened to the steamer and the skiff, he seemed fascinated. Jerry had even told William that he was lucky to be living in the lighthouse where his family always knew they'd have something to eat, even if the rains came too late or the frost came too early. William hadn't thought about that much—the idea that no matter how much work you were willing to put in on a farm, everything still depended on the weather cooperating.

Of course, the weather was a pretty big factor for the people who earned their living on the lake as well, as William had learned recently. His father had said once or twice that death could ride in on a gale on Lake Michigan, but William wasn't quite sure what he meant by that. He knew that bad weather could make things scary out on the lake, but he didn't figure that it could really affect him, asleep in his bed in the lighthouse. Unless his father were to lose his job somehow, on account of a storm. Maybe that could happen. He just didn't know. Everybody seemed to think that his father had done a good job in the last emergency. Even some of the other kids in the school had heard about it and mentioned it to William.

But there was one kid, Bobby Brown, who never had anything good to say about William or the lighthouse. William knew that he was the grandson of the man who had run the lighthouse before his father took over, and he knew that Bobby—like his father and grandfather—held a grudge against William's father, a grudge that was obviously being applied to William as well. Bobby Brown was a big kid, taller than William by at least a couple of inches and probably forty pounds heavier. He never lost a chance to say something nasty about William, especially if he ever happened to drop a ball or swing and miss at a pitch when playing baseball over lunch hour.

William managed to ignore Bobby Brown's insults most of the time and Bobby never tried to tease Jerry Van de Hoven, probably because Jerry was at least as big as Bobby and never backed down to anybody. So Jerry was a good friend to have, because when William was with him, Bobby seemed to leave him alone.

But the day after the accident at the lighthouse, Bobby didn't care who William was with. He started taunting him even before classes began that morning, saying that William's father didn't know how to run a lighthouse and that if his grandfather were still the keeper there, the accident never would have happened. Bobby told everyone who would listen that the man in the skiff was almost killed because William's father didn't know how to tie a proper line.

William denied it of course, but he wondered if there could be something in what Bobby said—could his father really have done something wrong? He didn't think so, and the two sailors had thanked him for his help, so he figured that his father must have done the right thing. But Bobby Brown sure didn't think so. He said that eventually someone would get killed because William's father didn't know how to do his job. William told Bobby that he was crazy and Jerry told him to knock it off. But Bobby wouldn't stop talking and William was beginning to wonder if any of the other kids were starting to believe him. Even one of Rebecca's friends had apparently said something mean to Rebecca about the accident at recess and she had started crying for a minute.

So that day at school had been a long one and William was glad to have it over with, even though he had a three mile walk ahead of him with a load of heavy books on his back. Rebecca seemed to have recovered completely from her crying spell earlier in the day and appeared cheerful enough. When William asked her what one of her friends had said to her to make her cry earlier that day, she said it was nothing and refused to talk about it. Still, a few minutes later, she said that sometimes she wished that they lived on a farm like most of the other kids at school.

"Well, we don't," William had told her. "And we should be happy about it. I don't know about you, but I don't want to spend my whole life milking some dumb cows."

"I like cows," Rebecca had responded sulkily and they walked the rest of the way home in silence.

Chapter 7: Exploring the Island

It was a pleasant Saturday morning in mid-October with the sun shining brighter than it had for days. But while the sun seemed warm, the breeze was quite cool. William had woken up early with the idea of getting out of the house before any new chores could be assigned to him and before his sister could wake up and tag along with him. But it didn't work. His mother was up earlier than everyone else, as usual, and the first thing she said to him was to check the kerosene level in the lamp. So he spent the first forty-five minutes of the day lugging the kerosene cans up to the fuel reservoir in the tower. He had done that job many times before and had by this time acquired some skill in doing it. He was almost as fast as his father at getting the cans up the spiral stairs now, even though he couldn't carry up as many cans at one time. He didn't actually enjoy doing it—it was tedious work—but he felt proud of the fact that he had gotten so much better at it in just a little over a month.

With the lamp now refueled, William was anxious to get going. His father would later check to see that the mechanism was working properly and clean up the glass on the lamp and on the tower itself. William might well be asked to help with that job on a Saturday if he hung around too long and, since he wanted to do a little fishing and exploring that day on his own, he knew he had to move fast. But when he called into the kitchen to tell his mother that he was leaving, his mother called back, telling him to hold on for a minute because his sister was almost finished with breakfast and he should take her with him. It would do both of them some good to get outside for a while on such a nice day. William winced on hearing this, but knew better than to protest. So he just sighed to himself and plopped down on the porch bench to wait for Rebecca.

"Want to go fishin'?" William asked his sister as she came strolling out the door.

"That's boring," she answered, a sour expression on her face. "There must be something else to do."

Just then, their mother stuck her head out the door. "Don't leave the island, you two. We might need you and have to call you back."

William sighed again. Now he had his sister in tow and he wasn't supposed to leave the island. All of a sudden, the possibilities—which had seemed so limitless just half an hour earlier—now seemed to be shrinking almost to nothing.

"Great," said William darkly. "So I guess we'll just go for a walk. Let's head out to the boathouse landing through the woods."

Rebecca shrugged. She wanted to come, but hated the fact that William was taking her because he had to.

William walked quickly toward the woods, which started about fifty feet from the lighthouse and the outbuildings, with Rebecca dawdling behind. He loved the sound of shuffling through the thin carpet of red and yellow leaves that were beginning to collect on the ground. William had always believed that autumn was the best season of the year, but he always regretted that it seemed so short. And now, living in northeastern Wisconsin on the edge of Lake Michigan, he knew that fall would be shorter than ever and the biting winds of winter would be just around the corner.

There was a narrow, somewhat worn path through the woods heading in the direction of the boathouse, but William ignored it, preferring to plow through the tree branches instead. As a result, Rebecca spent much of the time ducking swinging branches and grumbling. In about five minutes, the shoreline to the north of the island was in sight and William veered to the right.

"Where we going now?" asked Rebecca, out of breath from trying to keep up with William.

"I told you," said William, "the boathouse. I want to see if that bird's nest I saw last time is still on the roof."

Just then, a couple of small rabbits sprang out of the underbrush and darted in front of William and Rebecca. William quickly started in pursuit.

"Leave the bunnies alone," pleaded Rebecca. "Don't hurt them."

"I'm not going to hurt them. Come on. Let's just see where they go."

William charged through the bushes and trees quickly but soon lost track of the fleeing rabbits. He stopped for a minute and listened, and then started off again to his left.

"Now where are we going?" whined Rebecca. "There's no trail that way."

"There will be in a minute. Come on. Let's see what's over here."

Less than two minutes later, William poked his head through the underbrush and trees and found that he was closer to the water than he would have guessed. In front of him, only about fifteen feet away, was the shoreline with the gentle waves breaking calmly on the rocky beach in an easterly direction. William couldn't remember seeing this stretch of the shoreline before, although he figured that the boat landing couldn't be farther than three hundred yards away to his right, his view of it probably blocked by a spit of wooded land that stuck out into the lake.

"So we're here. Where are we?" asked Rebecca, walking up quickly behind William. "I don't see the bunnies."

"They lost us way back in the woods," said William. "I thought I heard some kind of hissing sound over here, but I guess not. Maybe it was just the waves."

"What else could it be?" asked Rebecca.

"I don't know...maybe a timber rattler," William said, trying to sound casual.

"A snake? The kind of snake that bites you?" asked Rebecca, her eyes widening.

"Maybe, if you're not careful," responded William.

"Is it poisonous? Do you die?"

"You're not going to die if you don't get bit, and you're not going to get bit unless you do something stupid like stepping on it or throwing a rock at it," explained William.

"Do you mean there are actually poisonous snakes on our island?" asked Rebecca, increasingly upset by the conversation.

"Of course," said William in his most condescending tone. "There are lots of snakes on the island, but most of them don't bite. If you see a snake, just walk around it in a wide circle and it'll leave you alone. Now just forget about the snakes. Come on over here for a minute."

William walked quickly over to what looked like a medium-sized mound of earth surrounded by large jagged rocks, about ten feet from the shoreline. There was a small opening near the bottom of the mound, although it was partially covered by a large rock.

"Hey, look," said William excitedly. "I think it's some sort of cave or something." He bent down to peer into a small opening into the darkness within. "I've got to get this stupid rock out of the way first."

"Mother always tells me to leave everything on this island just the way I found it. Don't you think you better leave that alone?"

"I'm only moving a rock. Come on, give me a hand."

"Oh, no. I'm not going to get in trouble just to see some stupid cave."

"Oh, come on over and take a look," he said, struggling to push the large rock over to the side. "It's just a little cave. It probably doesn't go anywhere at all."

After finally pushing the rock out of the way, William peered more deeply into the hole. "I think we can fit," he said. "And look, there's even a little light. You can see in here. It's not very big, though." William got to his knees and started to crawl gingerly over the sharp stones into the small cave.

"I'm not going in there. I'll bet it's all dirty," said Rebecca, wrinkling her nose.

"Yeah, a little. And it's a little wet on the bottom. But there's some light coming in from some cracks between the rocks."

Once inside, William discovered that the whole cave only extended about six feet into the mound and the side nearest the water was made up only of rocks that looked like they had been stacked on top of each other. The cracks between the rocks let a fair amount of light in and, once his eyes were used to the semi-darkness, he could see well.

"There's some sort of old barrel in here...maybe an old whiskey barrel or something. I don't think there's anything in it," William reported. "Come on in and take a look."

Rebecca dropped to her knees and leaned forward, sticking her head as far inside the opening as she could. "Do you think it was a hiding place for someone?" asked Rebecca, her interest in the cave starting to perk up.

"I don't think anybody could actually hide here, at least not for very long," William said. "But it might have been used by someone to hide things—like this barrel—that the owner didn't want anyone to find."

"Why would anyone hide a whisky barrel here?" asked Rebecca.

"I'll tell you what I think," said William. "I think that one of the earlier lighthouse keepers used this as a hiding place because he didn't want the lighthouse inspector or anyone else to find out he was drinking."

"But why would that have to be a secret?" asked Rebecca.

"Because if a lighthouse keeper gets drunk on the job, he gets fired," said William. "Father thinks that the last keeper, Mr. Brown, might have been fired because he was drunk."

"Really?" said Rebecca. "Do you think this belongs to him?"

"Probably not. It's been here a long time. It could be anybody's," said William, backing out of the cave.

"But it's got to belong to somebody who lived on the island, right?" said Rebecca.

William put his hand on his chin. "I guess...but it's not that hard to get out to the island, especially if the water level's low."

"Well, I think we should tell Mother and Father right away," asserted Rebecca, her arms crossed over her chest.

"Yeah, we could," said William. "But then it might be nice to have a secret hiding place of our own."

"Right away!" demanded Rebecca. "We should tell them right away. If you don't tell them, I will."

"Okay...I'll tell them. Don't worry. But first I'm going to find out more about the cave. Maybe there are some other caves around here, too. Or maybe there's something buried under the bottom here...although it would be pretty wet. Let me just wait until I find out a little more about it before I tell anyone. Right now, there's not that much to tell."

"William," said Rebecca firmly, "don't you dawdle about this. If you don't tell Mother and Father in two days, I'm going to do it."

"Sure, sure...but give me some time to explore a little," said William impatiently. "Say, do you want to go back to the house now? I'll walk you back."

"I want to walk back on the path so there aren't any stupid snakes around," grumbled Rebecca.

"Well, the only thing wrong with that, Rebecca, is that we don't really know where the path is. But come along with me over this way. I've got a feeling that if we keep walking along the shoreline, we'll see the boathouse before you know it."

Before long, they had rounded the shore hugging the spit of land jutting out from the island and were within sight of the boathouse. A newer building, the boathouse, which held one dinghy and one slightly larger skiff, was still in pretty good shape. William had been allowed to row around a little in the dinghy as long as he never got too far away from the shore. His father occasionally used the skiff to check out the other side of the island.

There was also an older, second building containing a couple of huge, barrel-like cylinders into which the visiting fuel ships would drop off the monthly supply of kerosene for the lighthouse. From there, the fuel would be transferred to the smaller tank in the fuel house close to the lighthouse tower. His father was continually checking the levels on the larger tanks, because running out of fuel for the lighthouse flame was just about the worst thing that could happen to a lighthouse keeper.

Once in the vicinity of the boathouse, Rebecca regained her bearings and immediately found the short path leading through the woods back to the lighthouse. "Race you back to the lighthouse," she yelled.

"You go ahead. I'll be along in a minute," he yelled back. Rebecca went off, half running, half skipping toward home.

William watched for a minute, and then turned back to the boathouse. He walked slowly out to the end of the pier and watched the gently undulating waves. "The lake looks real calm today," he said to himself. "Let's hope it stays that way."

Chapter 8: Encounter in the Woods

Rebecca had been in a very bad mood all day. She had been invited to a picnic with some of her friends from school but, since the Lester family had neither a car nor a wagon to take her into North Bay on a Saturday morning, she had been forced to decline the offer. Although she had often been bored on the island before, this was the first time she had felt so completely cut off from the rest of the world. If only her parents had a car!

What made it almost worse for Rebecca was that William had also received an invitation to visit a school friend later that afternoon on a nearby farm and William could walk there himself—he wouldn't even need a car. When her mother tried to break Rebecca out of her grumpiness by assigning her a long list of chores to do, Rebecca was livid, stamping her feet with rage. This of course had caused her mother to send her immediately to her room for the day, without any of her books to keep her company.

Rebecca's mother was herself not in a particularly good mood. The family had heard through the grapevine that the Lighthouse Board inspector would be arriving soon, perhaps in the next day or so. The inspector would check to see if all the necessary maintenance had been performed and that the lamp and all the other equipment were in perfect working order. Both Mr. and Mrs. Lester were somewhat worried about this. Although they had certainly kept up with the standard maintenance for the lighthouse, whitewashing the fences, keeping the house in good order, keeping the lens polished and well-adjusted, there were some problems which they had inherited that were nowhere near being fixed. The foghorn, which had failed on that foggy early October day when a steamer had tried to land a wounded man at the lighthouse, was still in disrepair. William's father would be able to get the steam engine that powered it working for short periods of time, but the foghorn was balky. Sometimes the boiler would fire up long enough to provide a series of loud blasts and then lose pressure completely.

Mr. Lester knew that he was not the first keeper at Harris Island to have trouble with that fog signal. He had heard from his neighbors that it had not worked properly from the day it was installed. But Mr. Lester only had probationary status as the keeper of the Harris Island lighthouse and the inspector might come to the conclusion that unless he was skilled enough to fix this problem, he was not fit to act as the lighthouse keeper, since at least a moderate level of mechanical skills were expected of all keepers. And, of course, as a probationary keeper, he could be replaced on a week's notice. The Lighthouse Board didn't even have to give him a reason for his dismissal. They could just tell him he was considered "unsuitable for the position" and he and the rest of the family would have to pack their bags.

So everyone in the family was a little on edge that Saturday, and Rebecca, it seemed, had picked the wrong day for a temper tantrum. But that was not, of course, how Rebecca saw the situation. She remained indignant that William might be able to play with his friend later that day—assuming he finished all his chores on time—while she would be stuck on the island as usual, missing the picnic with her friends that she so desperately wanted to attend. Besides, many of the chores that Rebecca had been asked to do were not "real" jobs—not important jobs, anyway. While William actually got to load kerosene into the lamp, Rebecca was left with picking up driftwood that had washed up on the rocky shoreline by the lighthouse. Despite her mother's assurances that picking up driftwood was a very important job since the inspector was coming any day and, when he came, he would certainly check the shoreline to see if it were tidy and shipshape, Rebecca felt certain it was just busywork and certainly not worth missing a picnic for.

Rebecca had lain on her bed staring at the colored cut-outs of animals on the wall and complaining bitterly to her diary of her mistreatment for almost an hour when her mother called up from the kitchen. Her mother told her that Rebecca was perfectly welcome to come down and join the family as soon as she took care of her chores. Rebecca replied with a clipped "alright," and walked slowly down the stairs, past her mother and through the kitchen door into the backyard. Still boiling with anger, Rebecca took off immediately for the woods to the north of the house.

At first she kept to the path, but soon veered off. "Who cares if I see a dumb old timber rattler anyway?" she mumbled to herself. "I don't even care if I do get bit. Maybe then I could get off of this stupid little island."

She soon realized that she was walking in the same direction that she and her brother had gone the other day. There was no real trail, but she recognized some places where they had broken off some branches or trampled down a few bushes. "This is where we saw the bunnies," she said to herself, as she pushed her way through the brush, occasionally getting scratched by branches snapping back into her legs. There were no butterflies around by this time, of course, but as she made her way slowly through the woods, she thought it might be interesting to start a leaf collection. Maybe her teacher would let it count as a science project. Most of the leaves had changed color by now but that just made them more interesting, she thought, especially the gold and red ones. Of course the leaves were drier now and they might crumble when you pasted them into a leaf book, but she still might try it. Maybe she'd just save them all in a bucket.

She had just started to look for particularly pretty leaves when she heard a sound ahead in the woods. She looked up in time to see that something had been moving, and now it had stopped. She couldn't really tell what it was. Even though the trees had lost a lot of leaves, the undergrowth was still too thick in places to see much of anything clearly. But whatever it was, it must have been pretty big. No squirrel or rabbit would make that much noise and, besides, the movement she had sensed had been higher, not on ground level.

Rebecca stopped and the breath caught in her throat. Maybe it was a deer. She had seen one or two at the edge of the woods, and her father had said that she would see more soon because they'd be leaving the woods to forage for food as fall turned into winter. But if it was a deer, it must now be standing completely still because Rebecca could see nothing. "Do deer do that?" she asked herself. "How long can they stand there without moving an inch?"

But just seconds later, she heard something moving again. It was further to her right than before, but it was definitely moving and moving quickly away from her. Rebecca walked forward a couple of steps and, peering around a tree, could now see that it was definitely a person—a man wearing what must have been a brown jacket, walking quickly away, or at least as quickly as you could walk through the thick woods. Had he seen her? He must have. Why else would he have stopped? Mustering all her courage, she cried out, "Hello, hello...is anybody there?"

That was stupid, she thought. Of course there was somebody there. But the man didn't answer. He seemed to pause—she still couldn't really see clearly—and then continue to move on to the right. Where was he going? For a moment, it looked as if he were doubling back and might block her retreat back to the house. Now Rebecca froze. Who was he? What was he doing on her island? He had obviously seen her. Was he really trying to cut her off?

She decided that she had to keep moving and began pushing quickly through the tree branches and bushes, trying to find the path she and her brother had taken. Nothing really looked familiar. She couldn't really be sure where she was, but she knew she'd better keep moving. Since she was now making a lot of noise herself, she couldn't hear the man—couldn't be sure if he was following her or not. She didn't think so, but she thought she'd better not stop to find out.

In just a minute or two, she could see the water's edge through the thinning forest. She burst out on to the shore area and wheeled around to listen for the stranger. She could hear nothing, but she realized that the wind over the lake must be starting to pick up a little since it seemed louder than it had just a few minutes earlier when she left the lighthouse. The waves were getting stronger, too, and the larger ones made a lot of noise as they crashed against the large rocks that defended the shoreline.

Rebecca could see to her right the mound of earth and rocks that sheltered the little cave which she and her brother had discovered just the other day. She knew that beyond the cave, around the corner of the island and not visible from where she was standing, was the boathouse. Could she make it to the boathouse in case the stranger really was following her? Could she hide there if she had to?

Then she heard him. She could hear something crashing through the trees and bushes, although it was hard to tell how close he was. She was out in the open now. If he was after her, he could spot her in a minute and catch her easily. She'd never make it to the boathouse on time. Maybe she could run back into the woods and hide there. But she still wasn't sure where he was. If she ran back into the woods, she might be running right into his arms. Then she cast her eyes on the little mound of earth again—the cave.

She ran quickly over to the opening. Her brother had not replaced the large stone in front of the entrance, but he—or someone else— had piled up some old dead branches in front of it. She quickly moved them to the side and looked inside, trying to adjust her eyes to the faint light. The noises behind her seemed to be getting louder and she spun around to look. There he was! An old man she'd never seen before, carrying what looked like a stick, maybe a small axe. He stepped out from the woods and looked to the right and left. He hadn't seen her yet, but she knew he would soon. Without thinking, she lunged ahead into the mouth of the small cave and crawled down into the bottom of it. As her hands hit the floor of the cave, she realized that there was much more water than there had been the other day. That day, the floor of the cave had only been damp; today, there were at least four inches of water. And she could see that some of the waves off the lake—larger today than they had been the day of their first exploration—were actually hitting the side of the cave and driving more water between the cracks in the stony side facing the water. She recoiled and started to back out, but realized she couldn't. Slowly, she worked her body around to where she could see outside. Instinctively, she reached out to pull the branches back in front of the opening so she couldn't be seen as easily.

She could see the old man walking down the rocky shoreline, but heading away from her. He seemed to be going in the direction of the boathouse, although he was moving slowly. The waves kept slapping the outside wall of the cave and the water inside seemed to be rising just a little higher every time. And the wind was getting worse. She could hear it whistle in the trees from time to time. She sat as still as possible until the old man had reached the spit of land that extended out into the water, blocking her view of the boathouse. Yes, that must be where he was headed. She knew that she couldn't stay kneeling in four inches of water for long; her teeth were already chattering and her muscles were starting to stiffen up.

What should she do now? It looked like she might be able to make it back to the lighthouse through the woods without running into the old man—not unless he heard her and headed back into the woods himself. But she didn't think he would. Between the wind and the waves, it was probably too noisy to hear her and, besides, she knew she could be as quiet as a mouse if she had to be. But was that really the best plan?

Who was this old man she had never seen? Why was he on the island and what was he going to do in the boathouse? Maybe he wasn't really after her, but he must be up to something. She knew that he had no business being on the island or anywhere near the boathouse. Within seconds she had decided that she must follow him—at a distance—to see what he was going to do.

She crawled slowly from the cave and started after the man, crouching down instinctively until she realized she was doing it. "That's stupid," she said to herself. "If he looks around, he's gonna see me anyway," and then straightened up a little. He was almost out of sight now so she started moving faster, going as quickly as she could over the angular rocks that would occasionally roll over underneath the weight of her foot, making a sharp clinking sound as they were pushed into the rocks around them. But she realized now that the old man was much too far ahead of her to hear any noise she made, so she picked up the pace.

The man had been out of sight for almost a minute when she reached the little bit of woods that jutted out into the lake. She pushed through the trees and re-emerged quickly on the other side. But the old man had been moving slower than she had thought, and she was now closer to him than she wanted to be.

Had he stopped to look around? Or had he just been walking slowly? She kneeled down for a minute, realizing by her squishy shoes that she was a lot wetter than she thought. Her mom wasn't going to be happy about that. But she had stuck it out this far and she was determined to follow the old man.

The boathouse was in sight now and the old man continued to walk directly toward it. Rebecca realized that she couldn't really stay too far back if she was going to see what the old man was up to. And yet there was no place at all to hide if he stopped and turned around. The woods were further back from the shoreline at this point and were a lot thinner than before. But even if he saw here, she might be able to make it to the woods before he got to her. He didn't seem able to move too fast.

She could now clearly see that he was carrying a small axe and also a small brown bag. What was he going to do with them? The old man headed toward the shack holding the two large bulk kerosene containers. As he turned the corner to enter the building, Rebecca made a dash to the back of the boathouse where she'd be hidden from view. She froze there for a couple of minutes, hearing no sounds from the storage shack. "What's he doing in there?" she thought to herself. "I've got to get closer."

She edged slowly along the side of the boathouse until the shack was in sight, only about twenty feet away. Then she dashed to the back of the shack. She put her ear to the sideboards and tried to squint through a slight crack between them. But she could neither hear nor see anything. She started to inch toward the door of the shack, hoping to get a quick look in without being seen. Just then, she heard a crashing sound and jumped back, an involuntary little gasp escaping her mouth. She quickly realized that it was the sound of the axe striking one of the huge wooden barrels. The old man was trying to destroy it! Anger seethed up inside her and she started to march indignantly to the doorway. But then she realized how dangerous that would be—almost crazy. Surprising a man with an axe in his hand? What would he do? He might turn around and use it on her! No, the only thing she could do would be to try to get a good look at the old man's face so she could recognize him later. And then, she should somehow get to safety...get back to the lighthouse without being seen and tell her father what had happened.

Once more she moved toward the door, this time carefully, hoping to get a quick peak at the old man's face. She could hear five or six more blows from the axe and she thought she could hear liquid running onto the ground—it must be the kerosene, she thought, leaking from the huge barrel.

Then the sounds of the axe stopped suddenly. Had the old man heard her? If he was to come out now, it wouldn't do any good for her to see his face because he'd probably take care of her right there and then. She decided she had to run for it. Moving slowly and quietly at first, she started to pick up speed but quickly realized that the faster she went over the stony surface, the more noise she made. She could no longer hear the old man's axe behind her. Where was he now? Had he finished his job and was he now coming after her?

Noise or not, she realized that she had to move fast. She could try to make it to the woods and hide herself there, but the really thick part of the woods was at least fifty feet away from the shoreline at that point. Besides, if he saw her go into the woods, he could sneak up on her without her even knowing it until it was too late. So she just kept running, stumbling a couple of times, and giving her ankle a painful turn as she reached the little bit of woods that jutted out into the lake. Finally, when she could stand it no longer, she cast a quick glance over her shoulder. She saw him! He was coming along the shoreline, heading her way, although not quickly. He must have seen her! But why wasn't he coming faster? Why wasn't he running after her?

She plunged through the sliver of woods and out the other side to the rocky shoreline once again. Then she saw the little cave ahead of her. That was it! She could hide there and still see if he was getting close. She sprinted the last few yards to the cave, almost flying over the large rocks. Reaching the cave, she dove down into it, not even noticing the icy cold water that came up to her elbows as she lay there, supporting herself with her arms. She turned around as quickly she could and once again grabbed the leafy branches to cover the mouth of the cave.

She could see him now, still moving slowly but clearly moving in her direction. Maybe he'd walk right by the little cave without even noticing it. Then she could take off and make it back to the lighthouse. She might not be able to tell her father in time to catch the old man, but at least she'd be safe and her father could worry about him later.

But then, she thought, what if the old man knows about the cave? What if he's the one who left the old whisky barrel in the cave to begin with? What if it's _his_ cave, _his_ hiding place and now he's going to check it to see if there's anything in there? She shivered with the thought. Was the water getting higher in the little cave? It almost seemed to be up to her knees now, as she sat on her haunches, peering out the hole to check on the old man's progress. How much longer could she stay in the cave? She could see her hands starting to turn blue and, when she reached down with her left hand to touch her ankle, she realized that she could barely feel anything at all.

Slowly, the man drew closer to the little cave. He seemed to be angling right for it. "If he's going to find me, I hope he just does it and gets it over with," she said to herself.

A moment later, the old man was standing over the entrance. "Come on out of there," he growled. "I know you're in there."

Rebecca froze. After a few seconds, she realized she had been holding her breath and quietly let the air go out of her lungs. She said nothing.

"This ain't your cave. Hell, this ain't your island," he said angrily. "You come out of there or my axe is gonna come in and get you."

Rebecca backed as far into the small cave as she could, but she realized that she still wouldn't be able to escape the axe if he really swung it into the mouth of the cave.

"I'm not tellin' you again," the old man bellowed.

Just then, Rebecca could hear—very faintly in the distance—her brother's voice calling her name. The old man grunted and turned around. He could see William appearing from the woods about two hundred yards away.

The old man turned back to Rebecca. "You and your family...you get off our island, you hear? Or you'll be sorry you ever set foot on it."

With a burst of courage, Rebecca yelled at the top of her lungs, "William! William! I'm in here!"

Rebecca didn't know if her brother heard her, but she could hear him yell again, "Rebecca! That you? I'm coming!"

The old man cursed and plunged his axe into the mound of dirt at the top of the cave, causing some dirt to come down on Rebecca's head. She winced but remained quiet. Then the old man grabbed his axe, turned and moved off into the woods.

Seeing the old man strike the top of the cave and figuring that Rebecca must be inside it, William had yelled out, "Hey! Stop that!" and started running toward the cave. By the time he got much closer, the old man had reached the fringe of the woods and disappeared into it.

"Rebecca! Are you in there? Are you alright?" William shouted, tossing the branches covering the hole several feet into the air.

Rebecca slowly nudged her head out of the hole. Seeing that the old man was gone and that it was really William standing in front of her, she gasped back a sob and crawled out of the cave quickly, soaking wet and dripping water from all four limbs.

"Rebecca, are you okay?" William asked again, grabbing her shoulders and peering intently into her eyes. "What happened?"

Rebecca didn't answer. Staggering to her feet, she grabbed her brother and squeezed him tighter than she ever had in her whole life.

Chapter 9: Safe Again

Rebecca had to tell her story of what had happened five times before her mother and father were finally convinced that she had actually been in serious danger. Rebecca and William had come dashing home, exploding with descriptions of the old man and his at first suspicious and then finally destructive activities. Mr. and Mrs. Lester could make little sense of the earliest versions of their children's reports. Rebecca seemed to be telling several different stories at once, and William kept embellishing his sister's narration with increasingly sinister descriptions of the old man and his threatening behavior. At first, both parents assumed that Rebecca had simply over-reacted upon seeing some cantankerous old hobo strolling the island looking for food or an opportunity for petty theft.

They were not particularly pleased to hear about the little cave the children had found, and immediately grilled William about why he had not informed them about his "discovery" right away. And why, they wished to know, had Rebecca hidden in the cave when she knew perfectly well she would become soaking wet and maybe catch her death of pneumonia in the process?

The children, naturally, tried to explain that it was a question either of getting wet in the cave or being murdered by an axe-wielding maniac, but their parents strongly resisted this explanation. Finally, after Rebecca changed into dry clothes, the two children managed to drag and pull their father out to the boathouse where he could examine the damage for himself.

When Mr. Lester saw what the old man's axe had done to one of the two large wooden kerosene tanks, he finally realized that something serious really had taken place. By this time, over half of the kerosene had flowed out of the large tank. Shaking his head with disgust, Mr. Lester told William to grab the wheelbarrow and as many small barrels as he could fit into it and try to save as much of the kerosene as possible from the leaking tank. Then, fully realizing for the first time that Rebecca had not been exaggerating in her account of what the man had done, he took Rebecca firmly by the shoulders and asked her if she was sure she hadn't been hurt in some way and to once again describe the man who did this.

Rebecca explained once again that, no, she hadn't been hurt, but she would have been if William hadn't arrived at the last minute to scare the old man off. Of course, William was delighted to hear his behavior described so heroically, although he had actually felt quite timid and slow when he had approached the old man who was intimidating his sister.

At this point, Mr. Lester decided that the situation called for action. His first thought was to send William to the nearest farm with a telephone to inform the police. Then he realized that the old man might still be lurking around in the woods, probably not on the island anymore, but perhaps somewhere nearby on the mainland. So he told Rebecca and William that, as soon as they had saved as much of the leaking kerosene as possible, they should go back to the house and stay with their mother while he went for the police. He would be back in about an hour, but until then they should keep the door locked and cast a watchful eye for any strangers. These instructions unnerved the children a little, but they nodded dutifully and quickly headed back to the house while Mr. Lester started for the nearby Van den Berg farm to use their phone.

Although Mr. Lester was back home within a couple of hours, the police did not arrive until almost three hours later, parking their truck at the end of the little dirt road at the edge of the mainland and walking over the causeway to the island itself. The police listened patiently to the children's stories and to Mr. Lester's description of the damage done to the large holding tank, after which they followed him to the boathouse, recording in their notebooks the details of the destruction. They made a cursory tour of the woods around the boathouse but everyone agreed that it was unlikely the man would still be in the area so many hours after the children's encounter with him.

As part of their investigation, the policemen asked both Rebecca and William if they had gotten a good look at the man. William reported that he had seen him mostly from the back. Rebecca said that she had tried to get a good look at him when he was in the boathouse but hadn't been able to get anything other than a quick glance. Then, later, when the old man had her cornered in the cave, she admitted that she had her eyes closed some of the time. She wasn't positive she could identify the man if she saw him again, but she might be able to.

The officers asked Mr. Lester if he had any particular enemies that might have done the damage. Mr. Lester hesitated, the thought crossing his mind that it might have been Mr. Brown, who had been previously been the keeper at Harris Island but who had been fired, presumably for dereliction of duty. Brown seemed to hold a grudge against the Lesters, even though they had nothing to do with his dismal. Still, Mr. Lester couldn't be sure it was Brown, especially because Rebecca had described the interloper simply as an "old man." Since he didn't want to be seen as making any unfounded accusations, he said nothing.

The police suggested that perhaps the old man had just been a tramp after all, one who had had too much to drink. Mr. Lester nodded his agreement tentatively, but said he hoped there might be a further investigation. The police assured him that they would continue to look into the matter and politely took their leave.

William and his father had just finished emptying the little bit of kerosene that could be saved into the reservoir for the lighthouse lantern, when another car pulled up the little road on the mainland.

"Now, who could that be?" said Mrs. Lester, standing in the yard and covering her eyes with her hand to get a better look at the older gentleman who appeared from inside the car. Dressed in a rather formal looking suit, he began to walk gingerly over the causeway to the island. "He doesn't look familiar," she said to her husband.

"Well, I don't know him to see him," said Mr. Lester, "but I've got a strong suspicion that the man is Lawrence Alberts, one of the Lighthouse Board inspectors for these parts."

"Oh no! Not today," moaned Mrs. Lester. "My gosh, hasn't enough gone wrong today?"

"We knew he was coming one of these days," said her husband. "I guess we might as well get everything over with today."

"Are you going to tell him about the damage that stranger did? Are you going to tell him that this may not be a safe place for our children?" asked Mrs. Lester grimly, her eyes flashing.

Mr. Lester lowered his head and sighed audibly. "I don't know what I'm going to tell him. Of course I'm going to tell them that one of the tanks has been damaged. He's going to see that as soon as he starts to look around. I don't know what else I'm going to tell him. I'm just hoping I can get that gosh darn foghorn going since you know he's going to want to hear that in operation."

"You should tell him," added Mrs. Lester curtly, "that the island isn't safe and something must be done about it. Someone should be protecting us from attacks like this."

"Ann," Mr. Lester replied quietly, " _I'm_ the one who's supposed to be protecting us. The keeper is supposed to take care of security on the island."

"Humpf," grunted Mrs. Lester, folding her hands across her chest.

"And I will, Ann," said her husband. "I'll do a better job. We'll just be more careful about letting the children go off by themselves."

"So they're to be like prisoners in their own home? They weren't prisoners in Baraboo, Richard."

"I know that, Ann," Mr. Lester replied calmly, "and they won't be prisoners here. We'll just have to be more careful until we find out who caused all this trouble. Once we find out, and the man is arrested, then things can go back to normal."

"What is 'normal' on this island, William?" asked Mrs. Lester, her tone still hard. "Is walking three miles to school to be considered normal? And having to walk a mile to take a bus into town two days a week just to pick up groceries? Is that normal?"

"We haven't solved all our problems yet, Ann, but we can solve most of them if you'll be patient," replied her husband. "But today, we've got to get through this inspection or I won't have a job after this week and we won't have any money to buy groceries with."

"Yes...well, I'm sure that this Mr. Alberts will find no fault with the way I keep the house," said Mrs. Lester as she turned around and marched back into the house.

Seconds later, Mr. Alberts was walking up the wooden sidewalk toward Mr. Lester, who stepped forward to meet him.

"Mr. Alberts, I assume," said Mr. Lester, reaching out to shake his hand. "It's a great pleasure to meet you."

"Yes, yes, of course," replied Mr. Alberts, a somewhat sour look on his rotund face. "Well, we'll be wanting to get right to work of course. You've been here for three months, is that correct, Mr. Lester?"

"Yes, almost exactly."

"So I'm assuming you have everything in hand by this point?"

"I believe that most things are in good shape, Mr. Alberts. We've been discharging the duties of the position very carefully."

"Yes, yes...well, we'll see. I'd like a tour of the outbuildings first," said Alberts, glancing around quickly. "Mmm...privy could use a little paint," he said, making a check in the small notebook he carried with him.

"It's on my list, sir," replied William.

"Fog signal building looks reasonably shipshape," Alberts said, walking slowly toward the small building.

"My son and I just painted the door and trim last week."

"Hmm...everything in good working order? Let's have a listen to the fog signal. Seems a bit dusky today, you may even need it before the night's over."

Ever since Mr. Lester had been warned of the impending visit from the inspector, he had made sure that the wood-fired boiler for the foghorn was warm and ready to go with only a few minutes notice. "I just have to stoke up the fire a little bit, sir, and it should be ready in a couple of minutes."

"Fine. You do that and I'll take a look inside the domestic space," said Alberts. He started to walk off toward the house while glancing at the grounds and making check marks in his notebook along the way. Seeing Mrs. Lester peeling potatoes over the sink as he walked into the kitchen, he gave her a brief nod. "Don't mind me, ma'am. You just go about your business."

Mrs. Lester, who was already unhappy about being "inspected" without notice being provided in advance, nodded curtly in return but said nothing. Alberts inspected the four rooms on the first floor one by one. After walking quickly through the parlor, he went over to a spot on one of the inner walls in the passage leading to the tower and touched it with his finger.

"That's just from the dampness," interjected Mrs. Lester, who had walked up behind him, wiping her hands with a dish towel. "Seems as if some of these spots never go away no matter what you do."

"The dampness is there because the tower masonry is encased in iron. Traps the moisture in," said Alberts solemnly. "You're just going to have to live with it."

"I see," said Mrs. Lester.

Walking next into Mr. Lester's office, Alberts began leafing through the pages of the daily logbook. "Mmm...some of these entries in the logbook could be a bit more detailed," he said, loudly enough for Mrs. Lester to overhear him as she started back toward the kitchen.

"You'll have to take that up with my husband. As you know, I have no official capacity here," she said, following him into the office.

"You might want to mention it to him," said Alberts in a deadpan voice. "Hard to tell from some of these entries just how foggy it was on a given day."

"I've tried to describe the bad weather days in pretty much the same terms as the previous logbooks," said Mr. Lester, walking quickly into the room and picking up one of the older logbooks off the shelf.

"Just because some people did it one way in the past, doesn't mean it's the right way," said Alberts, waving off Mr. Lester's attempt to show him a page in one of the older logbooks. "Now, have you got all of your expenses clearly recorded?"

"Yes sir," said Mr. Lester. "Right here in this ledger book." Mr. Lester put down the old logbook and scooped up his expense account book. Alberts bent down to scrutinize the entries and numbers carefully. "Kerosene holding out, alright?" he asked.

"Well, we were in very good shape until today. We lost quite a bit today. Just before you came, actually. One of the large storage tanks down by the boathouse was vandalized," said Mr. Lester.

"What's that you say? Vandalized?" puffed Alberts. "What are you talking about?"

"I'll be happy to show you if you'd like to walk out there with me," said Mr. Lester, gesturing in the direction of the boathouse.

"Yes, yes...by all means...serious business. All vandalism must be reported you know," said Alberts, showing a bit more liveliness in his step as Mr. Lester led the way out of the house and in the direction of the boathouse.

"This happened just hours before you arrived," said Mr. Lester striding quickly ahead with Alberts struggling somewhat to keep up. "The police have been here to investigate but we don't have any idea who did it. It may have been some tramp. Whoever it was did a fair amount of damage with an axe."

When they arrived at the boathouse and Alberts saw the series of slashes in one of the large tanks, he started scribbling furiously in his notebook. "My word," he said, pausing briefly from his writing to look up at Mr. Lester. "There is a considerable amount of damage to government property here. You say that you have no idea who did it? Who discovered the damage?"

"My daughter actually discovered this," began Mr. Lester.

"A child?" interrupted Alberts. "Are there children involved here?"

"No," Mr. Lester said calmly, "there are no children involved. It's just that my daughter happened to see the man who did this, although she didn't get a very good look at him."

"Mm...," said Alberts suspiciously. "Are you sure the child wasn't involved, perhaps playing with other children?"

"My daughter does not play with axes, Mr. Alberts," said Mr. Lester curtly, "and there were no other children on the island, except for my son who arrived at the last minute."

"Yes, well perhaps security measures should be tightened up a bit here. If someone can simply walk on to the island and destroy a fuel tank with an axe...well, perhaps security is too lax."

"Mr. Alberts," Mr. Lester said calmly. "I am one man. There is enough work at this lighthouse for two people and, I am told, there was at one time an assistant keeper position to help with all the work. But for now, I have to do everything. I am performing my duties to the best of my ability, but I cannot be everywhere. I cannot watch everything at once. I deeply regret that this vandalism has taken place—my son and I moved as quickly as we could to save some of the kerosene before it had all leaked out. I'm sure the local police will do the best they can to catch the person who did it, but right now none of us really knows much about it. There's no more that I can say about this unfortunate incident for the moment. However, if you'd like to proceed with your inspection of the fog signal and the lighthouse lamp, I'd be happy to escort you there."

Alberts grunted his assent and the two of them walked in silence toward the fog signal shack. "I sure hope this foghorn decides to work for a change," thought Mr. Lester to himself as they walked into the small building.

"I'm pretty sure we have enough steam up now," he said to Alberts as they entered the small stone building. Mr. Lester pulled the rope down forcefully and held it, the foghorn emitting a loud, bellowing sound. After a brief pause, he pulled three more times, invoking three shorter "tooting" sounds.

"Yes...yes...everything seems to be in order here," said Alberts, nodding his head and marking in his notebook. "Lucky thing. That fog signal has given some of the previous keepers fits. But I see you have it in good working order."

Mr. Lester smiled slightly before clearing his throat. "Yes...well perhaps we should examine the beacon next." The two men walked to the tower and slowly made their way up the circular stairs.

Stopping at the watch room, Alberts examined the windows and small telescope sitting on a fixed stand in the front of the small room. "Has this been working satisfactorily?" asked Alberts, his pencil poised over his notebook.

"Not really," replied Mr. Lester. "The lens is cracked. We generally use those binoculars," he said, indicating a pair suspended from a nearby peg.

"Problem, eh?" said Alberts. "Perhaps we can get a replacement. I'll put it in my report."

The men climbed up the short ladder to the lamp room and Alberts immediately began writing once again in his notebook. "This unit been working properly?" he asked.

"We've had no difficulties with it," said Mr. Lester. "Shall we light it up?"

"That's what I'm here to see," said Alberts.

Mr. Lester quickly adjusted the valves feeding into the wick and attempted to light the lamp using a long-necked match. The flame caught, flickered briefly and then went out. "That's strange," said Mr. Lester softly. "The lamp is usually quite dependable."

"Have the valves been cleaned? Is the feed properly adjusted?" asked Alberts, his hands on his hips.

"I cleaned and adjusted them this morning as usual," Mr. Lester said, a puzzled look on his face. "Everything was working fine last night."

"Everything is clearly not working well now, Mr. Lester," said Alberts, beginning to write quickly in his notebook. "Is it necessary to remind you that the lives of seafaring men, not to mention the safety of a great number of ships, depend on you being able to fulfill your duties consistently and in a timely fashion? It does not matter whether the lamp was serviceable last night, it matters whether it is operational today."

Mr. Lester peered intently into the mechanism, almost desperate to make some small adjustment that would make the beacon functional.

"I'm afraid that this is a very unfortunate failure, Mr. Lester, especially with you being in a probationary appointment..." began Alberts.

Mr. Lester leaned down once again to examine the valves. Then he stuck his finger in the fuel reservoir tank and held it to his nose. "There's something wrong with this fuel, Mr. Alberts."

"What do you mean, Mr. Lester? This fuel is from your normal supply, is it not?"

"Look at it, Mr. Alberts. Better yet, taste it," said Mr. Lester, holding his finger to his lips.

"Mr. Lester, are you serious? This is extraordinary..."

"Do you see these fine granules?" asked Mr. Lester, holding his coated finger up for Alberts to examine. "It's sugar. Part of this fuel came from the damaged holding tank. We siphoned as much of it as we could into buckets before it all leaked out. My son used it to top off the fuel reservoir for the lamp. We had no idea it had been sabotaged, but the same man who was making handy with his axe must have dumped sugar in it and the sugar is clogging up the valves."

"Indeed? Sabotage? More destruction to government property? I say, Mr. Lester, this has got to stop!" Alberts demanded gravely.

"Mr. Alberts," said Mr. Lester, trying to appear as calm as possible, "this is not as serious as it looks. I can replace the tainted kerosene and re-clean the valves in a matter of minutes. Why don't you go back downstairs to the kitchen and have a nice cup of coffee—my wife will be delighted to fix you one. I'll call you back up in no time and we'll have everything working like a charm."
Draining and replacing the kerosene and cleaning the valves took almost an hour with Mr. Lester and his son working frantically the whole time. Alberts spent most of the time checking his watch and grunting his displeasure while Mrs. Lester asked him at least half a dozen times if he was sure he wouldn't like more coffee.

Finally, the job was done and Alberts re-ascended the circular stairwell up to the lantern room. This time, the lamp lit promptly and the pulley mechanism that provided its distinctive flashing pattern worked flawlessly. Alberts nodded his approval of the process vaguely, continuing all the while to write furiously in his notebook. Following the display of the lamp, and innumerable apologies from Mr. Lester about the problem with the tainted kerosene, Alberts finally took his leave, after Mr. Lester had walked with him across to the mainland road where his car was waiting. The two men shook hands uncertainly and Alberts was gone. Mr. Lester walked slowly back to the house and collapsed into a kitchen chair, his wife standing nearby, shaking her head in dismay.

"What happened, Father?" asked William, charging into the kitchen. "Did we pass the inspection?"

"I don't know son, I really don't know," Mr. Lester said with a sigh.

Chapter 10: A Terrible Storm

The letter came about a week and a half later. Mr. Lester had passed the inspection and would be allowed to continue in his probationary appointment, at least until the next inspection three months later.

The report from the Lighthouse Board was by no means glowing. The inspector had naturally complained about the vandalism of government property, making the point that it might have been avoided if "the keeper had engaged more frequently in patrols of the grounds." There was also a complaint that "impurities" had been allowed into the kerosene that had been used as fuel for the lamp. Mr. Lester found this remark to be particularly aggravating since the inspector had known full well that the "impurities" were the result of the sabotage of the large fuel tanks by the boat landing, and yet there was no mention of that in the report. The report also complained about the "cursory" nature of Mr. Lester's daily entries in the logbook, despite the fact that they were easily twice as long and detailed as the entries by any of the previous keepers.

"Fine," Mr. Lester had said to his wife. "So they want longer daily entries? I can give them daily novels if that's what they want. We'll see how pleased they are when I start requisitioning new logbooks at twice the rate of any other keeper."

Still, now that it was over and they had passed the inspection, Mr. and Mrs. Lester were able to joke together about some aspects of it, especially the dour behavior of Mr. Alberts, the inspector. When Mrs. Lester read that Alberts had been generally complimentary about the cleanliness and organization of the home—or "domestic space" as he had referred to it—but had complained briefly about moisture spots on the wall, she had laughed uproariously.

The report had also been vaguely complimentary of Mr. Lester's mechanical skills as shown in his ability to get the fog signal working properly, something that not all of the past keepers had been able to do. Of course, Mr. Lester knew that the foghorn had a tendency to work only when it was in the mood to do so, regardless of the actions taken by Mr. Lester or anyone else. Fortunately, the foghorn had decided to work on the day that the inspector was present. But Mr. Lester knew that was mostly luck. He knew he had not really fixed it, because three days after the inspector's visit, he had tried the whistle again and it had refused to operate after giving a couple of half-hearted blasts. As a result, he had decided that, as soon as his probationary appointment was ended and he was made the "permanent" keeper of the Harris Island lighthouse, he would appeal to the Lighthouse Board for a new foghorn, arguing that the current one was basically unfixable. He knew that his protests about the equipment would not be taken seriously at this point, but he felt that eventually he could get the job done if he were persistent enough.

The letter announcing that the lighthouse had passed its first inspection was a cause for some celebration in the Lester household when it arrived, but there was not much time for a party since the chores still had to get done on time and, besides, the weather was looking a bit menacing that day.

It was the day before Halloween and, as Rebecca and William trudged home after school through the rain, Rebecca had thought longingly of joining her friends on Halloween night as they paraded through Bailey's Harbor in their costumes, threatening to pull pranks on neighboring homes. But of course, there were no other kids on Harris Island to go around with, and no nice neighbors to hand out cookies to the kids who went door to door as they had in Baraboo where the family had lived before coming to Harris Island.

William wasn't thinking much about Halloween by late afternoon, though. He could see that the winds were getting stronger and the waves on the lake higher and more unpredictable in their patterns—some of the larger waves seeming to overtake and engulf the smaller ones as they raced to the rocky shores around the island. To the northeast, the waves started to break much earlier as they encountered the shallow water created by the shoal that stuck out into the lake for a couple of hundred feet. But then they would seem to gather strength once more to make a final lunge for the shore. The misting rain that had greeted the family as it awoke for the morning had seemed to get a little heavier each hour and, as the temperature continued to drop, it was getting closer to sleet than rain.

William sat at the kitchen table, the gaslights turned up all the way so that he could do his homework. He noticed that his father had rushed up the tower stairs to the watch room to check the thermometer and the barometer three times in the space of an hour. After the third time, he came into the kitchen shaking his head.

"I've never seen the pressure drop so fast, not since we've been here anyway," he said solemnly to his wife.

"What does that mean?" she asked.

"That this rain...or sleet or whatever it is...isn't going to go away for a while. There's a change of weather coming in and it's coming fast. The winds are going to get worse. Let's just hope it doesn't get foggy. I've got the foghorn warming up, but visibility may not be the trouble tonight. I think the ships are going to be able to see all right, but they may not like what they're going to be looking at."

"Can I help?" asked William, already closing his book.

"Yes, you can. I want you to keep checking the foghorn, every fifteen minutes or so. We can't let a downdraft knock out that boiler tonight. Also, I might need some help later in scraping the ice off the windows of the lantern room," said his father.

"How in Heaven's name are you going to do that?" asked his mother, stopping her potato peeling in mid-stroke and turning around to face her husband.

"I can use the outside ladder that leads up to the watch room and the lamp room. I'll just stand on that and do a little scraping. I'll tie a rope around myself and William can hold me secure," explained Mr. Lester, trying to sound as casual as possible.

"But that's crazy! Why would you dangle yourself out the window in weather like this? It can't matter if there's a little ice on the window. The light from the lamp will surely get through," complained Mrs. Lester.

"It'll be seen, but for how far?" said Mr. Lester. "On a clear night, you should be able to see the Harris Island beacon for fifteen to eighteen miles out in the lake. But if there's a coating of ice on the outer windows...well, you're sure not going to be able to see it even fifteen miles away. And the blurrier the light is, the more difficult it'll be for a ship to see what the flashing pattern is. It's very important that I keep the light as visible as possible."

Mrs. Lester placed her paring knife down hard on the table. "And is this in your regulations book, hanging out of a window in an ice storm? Is this listed as one of your regular duties?"

"There's nothing in the book that tells you specifically to do that, but you have to do it if you want the beacon to work as effectively as it can. Mr. Morton told me that. You remember him. He's the keeper at the Bailey's Harbor lighthouse."

"Oh, so it's Mr. Morton who told you?" she said, the chill in her voice being overtaken by increasing anger. "Well then, why don't we have old Mr. Morton just come over to visit for a spell and he can hang out the window and scrape the ice off?"

"Ann, if his outside windows were freezing up and impairing the visibility of the beacon, then he'd go and scrape his own windows. He's told me that he's had to do that sometimes when faced with a big 'nor'easter' on a cold day. And, if you ask me, that's just what we've got shaping up tonight."

"Well, you'll do what you want. It doesn't matter what I say," she said curtly, spinning around to continue her work over the sink.

Mr. Lester paused. He began to address his wife but decided against it. Then he turned to William. "William, why don't you come up with me now? Maybe you can find something to do in the watch room."

They were both starting through the hallway that led to the tower when Mr. Lester stopped again and turned around.

"Ann, your eyes are better than mine, you know. If you get a chance to come up later on, well...we could sure use your sharp eyes."

"Maybe. I'll see," she said flatly, without turning her head.

A few minutes later, the lantern was lit and both William and his father were stationed in the watch room, staring out over increasingly rough seas. Twilight was fading when William and his father saw the first ship they had seen for three hours.

"Which one is that, Father?" William asked, pointing out to a large vessel that had just come into sight and was moving south.

"I'm not sure. You take a look through the telescope and I'll try the binoculars," his father said, grabbing them off the hook on the wall.

"I can't make out the name," said William, peering as intently as he could through the small telescope.

"Well, it's getting dark and the lens on that telescope isn't in great shape. It seems to me to be one of the newer steamers. Looks like she's loaded up pretty well, judging by the way she's riding. Probably got a load of coal for Milwaukee."

"Is she going to be all right?" asked William uncertainly. "Is the weather too rough for her?"

"I think she's going to be fine, William. She's a big ship and she can handle herself, even in this wind. She might have some trouble if it gets worse."

It did get worse. Just a half an hour later, it seemed to both of them that the wind, mostly from the northeast but with some gusts due east, was picking up fast. Mr. Lester had just expressed the hope that most ships had decided to seek refuge in a safe harbor rather than riding out the storm, when they both saw another ship...two ships—the first apparently hauling the second by a stout line—appearing before them out of the darkness.

"The fog's coming up quickly, too," he said to William. "And that sleet must be making visibility worse than we thought. Better get down to the fogbell as fast as you can, William. I tried the foghorn a couple of minutes ago and it's already losing pressure. We can't rely on it. But first, go down and tell your mother that I'm going to need her up here. Hurry please."

William glanced at the grim expression on his father's face long enough to realize that the situation must be getting very serious. He bolted down the circular stairs as fast as he could to tell his mother that her help would be needed, and then spun around quickly and headed to the fogbell, yanking the handle furiously for a full minute before he remembered the pattern he had been taught.

Mrs. Lester moved quickly up the circular stairs to find her husband, binoculars in hand, shaking his head slowly at the progress being made by the two ships.

"What's out there?" she blurted, still breathless from rushing up the stairs.

"A steamer...she's doing alright, but she's got a schooner-barge by a hawser and the barge is struggling," he answered quickly. "Here, take a look," he said, handing her the binoculars.

"Hawser?" she asked, peering through the glasses.

"It's the strong line that connects the two. The barge has sails but they don't do much good, especially in this weather. You can't really control the ship."

"Are you worried the line...the hawser...will break?"

"If they can keep the space between them steady, they might be alright. But I'm not sure they can. The barge is running light—it's already dumped its load—so the wind's pushing it around a lot. See how it swings way over to the side and the steamer has to tug it back in position? And now, he's not just tugging the barge, he's working against the wind and the waves as well. Besides, the hawser's probably coated with ice—it's three times heavier than it should be without being any stronger."

"What happens if it breaks?" asked Mrs. Lester, a wave of uncertainty passing over her face.

"She could get pushed right up to the rocks...right in front of us. She could come crashing right into our concrete pier right over there. If she can keep moving north, at least she'll get past us. It's probably headed through to La Porte des Morts...Death's Door...maybe on the way to the ore docks in Escanaba. The captain's a fool to try it, though. She'll never get through Death's Door in this storm."

The steamer kept struggling ahead and it appeared as if the immediate danger was past when suddenly a large wave picked her up and slanted here stern to the east at the same time the barge swung to the west. The line snapped. Within seconds, the two vessels were headed in opposite directions, the streamer disappearing for a moment into the sleet. But the barge was obviously getting closer to the northern tip of Harris Island. It seemed to bob up and down in place for a moment and then be carried sideways for several feet just to the north of the lighthouse. Its rudder was powerless to change its course, which was now at the mercy of the driving wind and waves.

"Oh my gosh," gasped Mrs. Lester. "What can we do? She's going to slide over into the shoal just north of the lighthouse."

Mr. Lester quickly grabbed the raincoat he had slung over a nearby hook. "I don't know if she can stay upright."

"How many people in the crew?"

"No more than six or eight—the steamers got a bigger crew but they'll probably be okay—unless they try to get in too close to help the barge. I've got to get out there...I've got to get out there with our large skiff. There'll be some people to pick up," he said, starting down the stairs.

Almost frantic, Mrs. Lester screamed, "You can't! You don't know what to do! You said yourself you hate that boat—that it's impossible to control on a rough day. You can't help them! You'll only kill yourself!"

Mr. Lester stopped and whirled around. "Ann, there is no one else to help them," he said in carefully measured tones. Then he disappeared quickly down the steps.

"Forget the bell, William," he barked to his son as he clambered down the steps. "Grab an extra lantern and all the extra ropes and meet me at the boathouse."

Mr. Lester flew out of the house and headed for the boathouse, moving as fast as he could with the lantern in his hands. The sleet was heavier than it had been all day and was sticking to the grass in places, making the footing treacherous. Twice he stumbled, the second time throwing his left hand out in front of him to stop himself from sprawling head first on the silvery-streaked grass. As he ran, he tried to listen carefully for signs of what was happening to the barge. But he could hear nothing over the wind and the pounding waves.

The wind seemed to have shifted almost completely over to the east now. That was good, he thought, since that meant it was less likely that the ship would be pushed further south on to the jagged rocks right in front of the lighthouse. But it hardly mattered, he thought. The wind and the pounding waves would start to take her apart eventually if she got stuck on the shoal, even if she could remain upright. And the steamer wouldn't be back to help since it couldn't risk getting so close to shore. The steamer would assume that the men on the barge would be rescued by someone at the lighthouse, and that meant him.

The boathouse was in sight now and he slowed his steps slightly as he started to turn over the situation in his mind. It wouldn't do much good to take the two-man dinghy out there since there would probably be at least five people trying to get off of the barge, which was by now probably propped up by the shoal and beginning to teeter dangerously. So he had to take the larger skiff. Unfortunately, experience had taught him that it was hard to handle, especially when there was a wind from the north that tended to push you toward the rocks guarding the island. But since the wind now appeared to be due east, he hoped he wouldn't have that problem.

Of course he would have to buck the direct force of the wind until he could get around to the eastern side of the island and that would take him at least five minutes. Once he turned that corner, he would be able to see the barge and get a better sense of what was happening. He knew that the crew might have decided to trust their luck to their own lifeboat long before he made it around the island and to a position where he could help them. That would be okay, but—unless they knew Harris Island well—they would have a hard time steering a course through the lacerating edges of the shoal that lurked right beneath the water line. He hoped they would not try it. He particularly hoped that they would not try to head for the big concrete pier jutting out in front of the lighthouse. Getting to it safely would be tough enough, but landing a small boat there was difficult even in moderate weather and, with the sleet cutting down visibility here, any attempt to dock at the concrete pier would be asking for trouble.

Moments later, Mr. Lester had lowered the larger skiff on to the track and pushed it out into the water. He plunged his right leg into the freezing lake waters briefly as he tried to position himself in the boat and instinctively gasped for breath from the shock of the cold. His mind instantly flashed back to an experience he'd had as a boy, when he accidentally fell through the ice while fishing with his father. He'd immediately been bundled in blankets and been sent home to bed in his warm house. But this time, he thought, it might not end that well. There was going to be a struggle ahead before he— or any of the barge's crew members— would find themselves in a warm bed again.

Now cast off from the boathouse pier and rowing hard into the wind, Mr. Lester found that he was actually making better time than he had figured. But every time he turned to get his bearings, the sleet dug into eyes and he had to lower his head. Still, he seemed to be keeping steady distance from the shore and within about two minutes he would be able to see the endangered barge.

It was less than that. Although he had to use his hand to cover his eyes to get a good look, he could see her a few seconds later. Only about fifty yards away now, he called out to her, although he figured he probably had no chance of being heard over the wind and the waves. As he had predicted, the barge was almost completely hung up on the shoal, buffeted by the wind and rolling slowly back and forth in the waves. She didn't seem to be damaged badly from what he could see but, as he drew closer, he could start to hear a low creaking sound coming from the innards of her hull. He knew that a sound like that meant trouble—that the pounding waves pushing her back and forth over the shallow reef were beginning to weaken the hull.

He looked to the barge's bridge and could see frantic activity. There were at least three men on the bridge and maybe two more on the foredeck. A few seconds later, he could see that they were trying to lower a lifeboat from the side. It was clearly a tricky business since the ship was hovering on the shoal and the deck was farther above water than normal. When the lifeboat was released, it slapped the water hard and immediately began rolling back and forth in the waves, some of which now topped off at six feet high. Two men gingerly climbed down into the heaving boat but a third lost his grip on the line too soon and fell into the surging waves.

Mr. Lester strained at his oars, trying to close the distance with the struggling crew members as quickly as possible. But now the waves were beginning to hit him broadside and so he had to repeatedly swing the bow of the skiff into the on-coming waves to keep them from rolling him over.

Squinting into the sleet, he could see that the two men in the lifeboat had managed to haul the third man into their boat and were now yelling up to the deck of the barge. Two more men appeared there, screaming something that was unintelligible to Mr. Lester. Then, one after the other, the two men wriggled down the line into the boat, while the men inside it struggled with their oars to keep it stable. Within a moment, the lifeboat was swollen with five passengers and started to push off from the teetering barge toward the closest land—the jagged rocks directly to the west of the lighthouse.

Mr. Lester knew that he had to somehow change their course. He knew that as soon as the lifeboat moved away from the barge, which had acted as a breakwater, sheltering them from the full brunt of the waves, it would be propelled fiercely toward the rocks guarding the shore. If they tried to veer off to their left to land at the lighthouse's concrete pier, they would be in even worse trouble, and would probably end up being smashed against the pier with the full force of the six foot waves.

Now only about twenty yards away from the lifeboat, Mr. Lester bellowed at the top of his lungs to get the men's attention. One of them, glancing over to the right and seeing Mr. Lester's boat, gestured to the other men and pointed in that direction. The two oarsmen paused for a moment to assess the situation. Mr. Lester was gesturing wildly for the men to change course and follow him as he turned his small skiff first into the on-coming waves and then north to move around to the side of the island and toward the less dangerous boathouse landing. The five men in the lifeboat hesitated; Mr. Lester's skiff was having as much difficulty negotiating the heaving waves as theirs was, so why should they follow him when land was no more than fifty yards away? The man in the stern of the lifeboat shook his head vehemently at Mr. Lester and stabbed his finger in the air in the direction of the nearby shoreline. "No!" screamed Mr. Lester. "You'll never make it that way. You'll be lost on the rocks!" The same man yelled something to the oarsmen and they stopped rowing, although the waves continued to send the small boat toward the rocks. The man cupped his hand over his ear to try again to hear Mr. Lester's message. "Follow me!" shouted Mr. Lester. "You can't land there! We have to move around to the side of the island. Come this way!"

Just then, the lifeboat was hurtled forward, the stern rising dramatically out of the water. All five men were thrown forward forcefully, three of them landing in the water with the other two clutching desperately to the side of the boat. The lifeboat had struck one of the many small rocks that surrounded the shoal and was now filling up quickly with water from the gash in its side and the large waves which came in over the top. The three men who had been thrown into the water first had now regained their bearings and started swimming with firm strokes toward Mr. Lester's skiff, now only ten yards away. The two men who had managed to hang on to the damaged lifeboat now left it and started for the skiff as well, although one was clearly a weaker swimmer and had to be helped by his companion. One by one the struggling men managed to claw their way into the skiff with Mr. Lester's help. By then the skiff—now carrying two more passengers than it was built for—had itself begun to slip dangerously toward the jagged shore and Mr. Lester tugged desperately against the oars to keep it on its course.

The trip around the island and toward the boathouse landing seemed endless. The skiff, now overloaded with six grim-faced men, had to be turned toward the on-coming waves time after time to avoid being swept over on its side. Mr. Lester's arms had stopped aching at this point and seemed dead to all feeling. He pulled the oars steadily, although he wasn't sure there remained any power in his stroke. He no longer seemed to have control over his muscles and was himself surprised when the little boat continued to make slow progress. Once around the side of the island, his task became easier; the wind and sleet were at his back and he had only to guide the skiff's course as the waves pushed it, sometimes violently, toward the boathouse dock. They would be there in a matter of minutes. So far, he thought, things had gone better than he'd had a right to hope they would. Getting a safe docking with an overloaded boat would be another matter though.

William had quickly found a lantern and two more ropes as he had hurried after his father, but by the time he was out the door and turned toward the boathouse, he could pick up only a fleeting glance of him disappearing into the darkness. As he had started to run after his father, he could hear his mother, standing in the doorway, yelling something at him, but he had no time to go back now. He had to get to the boathouse dock with those lines and he had to do it fast. With his feet slipping and sliding on the wet grass, he felt almost as if he were running in place, but eventually he could make out the outlines of the boathouse.

By the time he got out to the end of the dock, he could barely see his father's skiff moving off in the distance as he uncovered his eyes to take short glimpses before being blinded by the stinging sleet. Then he had seen nothing for several minutes. His mind had raced with thoughts of what might be happening. Would his father get there on time to save the barge's crew? Would he be able to stay away from the rocks himself? William knew that his father seldom took the skiff—he had said that it was clumsy to handle—so how could he handle it now...in a horrible storm like this one?

After what seemed like an hour of shivering on the dock, constantly pelted by the driving sleet, William finally caught a glimpse of what looked like the skiff. It was at least forty feet away but seemed to be heading for the dock. He grabbed one of the lines firmly in his hands and let the other drop by his feet. He might be called upon to use both before the night was done.

As Mr. Lester pulled toward the boathouse dock, one of the men in the skiff spoke for the first time. "You gonna try to land up there?"

"Yes," said Mr. Lester. "I'm going to get just about even with it, then pull to starboard and get her lined up on this side of the dock. I'll keep rowing against the waves to keep her steady and then you get yourselves out of the boat as quickly as you can."

"You got a line?" asked the crew member.

Mr. Lester glanced around quickly. In his hurry, he had forgotten to throw one into the boat. "No," he said. "My son will throw us one when we get close enough."

Less than two minutes later, the skiff was almost even with the dock, about twenty-five feet out from it. Mr. Lester swung the skiff to the right as quickly as he could and started pulling furiously for the pier. But he had underestimated the strength of the waves against him. Within seconds, he had been pushed in back of the pier, despite his frantic efforts to control the little boat.

"What are you doin', you fool!" roared another crew member who had just realized that the skiff was off-course.

"We'll make it," Mr. Lester said determinedly, "you just sit there."

Summoning every ounce of strength left to him, Mr. Lester swung the oars powerfully into the water and moved the skiff a couple of feet closer to the dock. "Throw us the line, William," he bellowed. William reacted quickly, heaving the rope as hard as he could in the direction of the bobbing skiff. One of the crew men grabbed it and quickly attached it to one of the oarlocks on the skiff while William secured the other end to the nearest post on the pier.

"You pull, I'll row," Mr. Lester ordered and two of the crew members quickly seized the line and starting tugging. "Steady now...let's come up as easy as we can."

With the skiff now only a few feet away, William tossed over the second line, which was immediately secured. Mr. Lester stopped rowing and he and the crew, pulling steadily on the two lines, managed to pull the boat up even with the dock. With Mr. Lester and one of the crew members holding the lines as taut as possible against the rolling waves, the four other crewmen scrambled to safety. The remaining crewman glanced uncertainly at Mr. Lester. "Jump for it," Mr. Lester commanded. "I can hold it here."

The last crewman clambered swiftly onto the dock and reached down to help Mr. Lester. Two minutes later, William and the six men were huddled in the boathouse, happy to be safe from the penetrating winds.

Chapter 11: Trial by Fire

The rescue of the five crewmen was all the news in North Bay and Sturgeon Bay in the days that followed. The Sturgeon Bay newspaper carried a colorful account of the rescue, which praised both Mr. Lester and William for their heroism. Mr. Lester did his best to minimize the attention paid to him, saying again and again that he was only doing his job as any lighthouse keeper would. When a local reporter asked him how confident he had been when he launched his small skiff into the ferocious winds in order to save the barge's crew, Mr. Lester had lied, saying that he had been perfectly confident he could rescue them all. In fact, he had been anything but confident that night. He hadn't even been sure that he could manage to maneuver his small boat into position without being tossed off course, and maybe even capsized by the heavy waves. He felt that he had never really taken a deep breath the whole time he was struggling to fight through the waves and, when he accidentally steered the boat beyond the boathouse pier, he had been seized by a desperate fear that all six men on board would drown. When the skiff had managed to secure the line that William had thrown from the pier and the crew was being pulled to safety, he began to believe for the first time that they might really all survive.

In response to what seemed like endless questions about the episode, Mr. Lester had repeatedly tried to focus attention on William's cool-headedness on the pier and his ability under great pressure to throw the line accurately to the distressed skiff. This pleased William greatly, of course, although he remained somewhat tongue-tied when the questions were shifted to him.

Mrs. Lester, not altogether pleased by the attention paid to her son, tried to shield William from the probing questions he received from the reporters, some of whom came from as far as Green Bay. She told the reporters that William had already answered as many questions as anyone had a right to expect, given the fact that he was just a child with chores and homework to occupy his time. When Mrs. Lester was asked how she herself felt about the "daring rescue" in which her husband and son had both played such a large part, she demurred, saying that she supposed that her husband was just doing his job. She neglected to mention the fact that she had herself warned him against even attempting the rescue, telling him he was likely to get himself killed in the process.

One of the unexpected results of all the attention given to the rescue of the five crewmen was that the lighthouse received a surprising influx of visitors—not just newspaper reporters, but families as well. It was not unusual for lighthouses to be objects of curiosity for local residents and casual visitors would often drop by the lighthouses in the area, just to chat and hear the keepers tell stories about their adventures. The previous keeper of the Harris Island lighthouse, Mr. Brown, was known widely to be a taciturn man who held himself aloof from visitors, and so the lighthouse had had relatively few callers over the recent years. That situation did not immediately change when the Lester family took up residence at the lighthouse, since none of the Lesters were known in the area and neighbors did not want to appear intrusive. But curiosity had now overwhelmed any such considerations and a number of families presented themselves without warning on the Lester's doorstep that Sunday, braving the several inches of water that covered the causeway that led out to the island.

Initially, Mrs. Lester simply directed them to her husband who, after finishing his daily duties, was in the parlor most of the day recounting the adventure time and again to a long line of admirers. But it soon became apparent that many of the visitors, mostly ladies, wanted to talk to Mrs. Lester as well. To many land-bound neighbors, life at the lighthouse seemed to hold a certain amount of mystery and perhaps even romance. Several of the ladies of the community wanted to hear what Mrs. Lester's part in all this was and, not incidentally, to see if she had improved the livability of the place from the rather low standards set by the former keeper.

And, although Mrs. Lester had felt herself frustrated at almost every turn in her attempt to make the lighthouse seem more "home-like," the fact was that she had made a number of changes—particularly in the kitchen—with the purpose of making the home both more serviceable and more attractive. It turned out that many of the ladies of the community—to her great surprise—were quite interested in these changes, and Mrs. Lester was more than a little flattered when several of them expressed admiration for what she had managed to accomplish in so short a time.

Forgotten in all this was Rebecca, who was quite upset about not being given any chance to win any glory for herself in the rescue enterprise. As the parade of visitors streamed through the house on Sunday, she found herself largely ignored or, at the most, given a light tap on the head accompanied by some vague remarks about what a "sweet little girl" she was by someone waiting in line to see Mrs. Lester. Of course, the visitors had no idea whether she really was a "sweet little girl" or not, and it was quite obvious to Rebecca that they really didn't care. Besides, Rebecca didn't care at all about being called "sweet," although she certainly wouldn't have minded being described as "bold" or "daring." Could she help it if circumstances had not allowed her to show what she could do?

Finally, when one of the visiting families happened to bring one of their children, Marion, who was a classmate of Rebecca's at North Bay school, Rebecca had a chance to vent her frustration. She explained to Marion in great detail what she would have done if given a chance to contribute to the rescue of the five crewmen, rather than being told to "stay in your room 'til the storm blows over." In her version of the rescue, Rebecca would have taken the little dinghy out and rowed alongside her father, thereby providing two rescue crafts instead of one to pick up the floundering crewmen from the barge. She would have allowed William to throw a line to her father's skiff to bring that boat safely to the pier, but her own dinghy would have needed no such assistance. She simply would have rowed her little boat right up to within five feet of the pier and then leapt the remaining distance before she herself tied up the boat and helped the survivors ashore.

Marion listened with her mouth open, half convinced that Rebecca could actually have accomplished this amazing feat if she'd had the chance. Of course, Rebecca was perhaps a little more prone to exaggerating her potential accomplishments at this point because, not only had she missed out on the great adventure, but because she was still upset about missing Halloween with her friends.

The day of Halloween had been a chaotic one for the Lester family. The five crewmen had still been recovering from their exhausting adventure of the night before and had to be tended to and fed by Mrs. Lester while Mr. Lester not only had his daily duties to perform, but had rowed out once again to the wrecked barge—now very much the worse for wear—to get a sense of whether salvage would be possible. The lake was much calmer now and it had not been as difficult a task, but it was one more obligation on a day that seemed over-stuffed with them.

After the rescue of the five men, William had again been sent to the closest farmhouse to call the police and by early afternoon they had come and taken the men, all now snuggly dressed in dry clothes, into town. The men had all expressed their gratitude to the Lesters at great length. There may have been some question in their minds the night before whether Mr. Lester, who did not seem terribly experienced to them, could really accomplish the rescue, but all that was forgotten now and there were smiles all around as the men took their leave.

At that point, it was time for Mr. Lester to start his next round of lighthouse duties and Rebecca knew that there was no point in asking her parents once again if she could join her friends for the Halloween festivities. So there Rebecca had sat...on Halloween night, without a friend in the world and with absolutely nothing to do.

But now she had Marion to talk to, and Marion was not only a good listener, but a source of good ideas. It was clear to both girls that they must somehow launch their own adventure, and Marion reminded Rebecca about the "leaf book" project for their teacher, Miss Montgomery. Rebecca had been going to look for leaves on the day she encountered the old man by the boathouse, but then had completely forgotten about it. Anyway, it would be much more fun to do the project with Marion, and it would give them both a chance to get out in the woods by themselves and see what they could find.

And so, a week later, having secured permission from Miss Montgomery to collaborate on the project, the girls were ready to go. Their expectations were high, although their mother had warned them that it was a bit late in the year for such a project and it might be difficult to find leaf samples that were still in good shape. Still, they were confident that they could find oak, elm, birch, poplar, fir and different types of maple leaves without any difficulty. And—just maybe—they might find leaves from some more "exotic" trees that even their teacher didn't expect them to find in northeastern Wisconsin. So off they went, dressed in their warm coats, with a large bag for the leaves in Rebecca's hands and their leaf identification book in Marion's arms.

Although Harris Island had a good sampling of trees, they decided they would try their luck on the mainland first, near the edge of the peninsula. And initially their luck was quite good. They quickly found good samples of several different types of leaves, which they deposited carefully in their storage bag. Despite the recent rain, the leaves still tended to be somewhat dry and brittle so they had to be careful with their specimens. But they had arranged to have little "pockets" in their storage bag for each of the different types of leaves and so far everything was working out well.

After about forty-five minutes, however, they starting running into the same types of trees over and over again and agreed that they would have to penetrate deeper into the mainland woods in order to find the variety of trees they needed for their project.

By this time, however, they were moving into territory that was new to both of them, even though they seemed to be following an old, abandoned trail of some sort. Rebecca was quite familiar with the area around the road on which she walked to school every day, but they were moving farther away from that road now and she couldn't find any landmarks that might give her some sense of where they were. Marion, who didn't know that area of the woods at all, was starting to feel just a little uncomfortable.

"Aren't we getting too far away from the places where your mother said we should look?" asked Marion uncertainly.

"Oh, we're not that far away," Rebecca said confidently as she stopped for a moment to gaze around her. "We've gone a little farther north...and a little farther west maybe...but I know where we are. And besides, Marion, we've got to look around a little...we've got to explore. Otherwise, we'll never find any really unusual trees."

"Maybe there aren't any unusual trees," said Marion. "We've found most of the leaves that Miss Montgomery said we'd find."

"Yes, but that's just the trouble," said Rebecca. "So far, we've only found the leaves that everybody else finds. I just know that, if we keep looking, we can find some new things that nobody else has ever found."

"Rebecca," said Marion wearily, "isn't that a little silly? I mean, we're not really explorers, you know, and this is not some new land that no one has ever discovered before."

"Maybe not, "said Rebecca, mildly annoyed, "but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to do things that nobody else has ever been able to do before. What fun is it just to follow everybody else?"

"Well, maybe someone else would know how to get home," said Marion, "and I'm not sure that we do."

"Of course we do," said Rebecca confidently. "We just have to walk northeast until we hit the road...or maybe the end of the peninsula. Either one is okay because we could always find our way back to the lighthouse."

"Well, if you say so," Marion said uncertainly. She paused for a couple of seconds, cocking her head slightly off to the side. "What's that, Rebecca?"

"What?"

"That sound. Could it be a deer?" asked Marion, peering intently into the trees.

"Oh sure, there's lots of deer around here," said Rebecca, continuing to walk forward as she slowly scanned the trees and ground for new leaves.

"Are you sure? Look over there," said Marion, pointing off to her left. "Something starts moving, then it stops again, but I can't really tell what it is."

"That's what deer do, silly. They stop and start again."

"No really...hold on for a minute. Look over there," said Marion, pointing again to her left.

Heaving a sigh, Rebecca stopped moving and turned in the direction Marion was pointing. "I don't see anything," she said, putting up her hand to keep the sun out of her eyes.

"It stopped moving how," said Marion. "But there was something there, and it wasn't a deer, unless deer can walk on two legs. I think it's a man."

"Oh, come on," said Rebecca impatiently. "It's nothing, and we've got to keep going if we're going to find all the leaves we need." Rebecca began to walk ahead briskly, with Marion following slowly and reluctantly.

After a few minutes, Rebecca admitted that they were probably not going to find any interesting new leaves in that part of the forest and suggested that they turn back. At that instant, Marion stopped and put her hand on Rebecca's arm. "Can you smell that, Rebecca"?

With a quizzical look on her face, Rebecca stopped and took a deep breath. "I guess I smell something. What is it?"

"It must be smoke," said Marion.

"Smoke? From where?" asked Rebecca, quickly scanning the woods.

"From there," said Marion, pointing south, to the part of the woods from which they'd just come.

"Oh my gosh, you're right," said Rebecca, nodding slightly. 'It is smoke. How did that get there? Well, if there's some sort of little brush fire over there, then we'd better get home another way. Here, follow me. We'll keep walking north for a while on this old trail, then we can head east if we can find any trail going that way."

The two girls hurried along more quickly now, although Rebecca still paused occasionally to examine a few leaves, usually with Marion tapping her foot impatiently by her side. But the smell of smoke, carried along by a light breeze, was getting stronger.

"Why do we keep going this way?" asked Marion impatiently. "This isn't the way to the lighthouse, is it?"

"Well, no," responded Rebecca carefully, "but we can't go in that direction if we don't find some sort of trail. We can't just push our way through all those branches."

"How about if we try making it to the Emerson's farm? Isn't it just over there?" asked Marion, pointing to their right. But as the two girls stopped and looked to the west, it was clear that the fire was spreading. Smoke was beginning to billow out from the trees in that direction as well.

"No," Rebecca said firmly. "We've got to go this way," she said, pointing straight ahead. "We'll find a path."

Eventually, the old trail did start to turn slightly to the east, although the undergrowth was getting thicker and it was no longer possible to move quickly. The smoke was getting heavier now, and both girls had to put their hands over their mouths as they made their way.

"I think that man set the fire," said Marion, pushing the branches away from her.

"We don't know that," said Rebecca. "Fires just sometimes start, especially in the fall when it's dry."

"This fire didn't start itself, Rebecca," said Marion, her voice trembling slightly. "That man started it. And I think he started it to scare us. Maybe it was the same man that..."

"It doesn't matter," said Rebecca. "We've just got to get home, that's all."

They trudged on more quickly now, both of them even more frightened at the thought that the fire could have been set purposely. And the fire was spreading faster now, edging ever closer to them.

"Where is this path going to end up?" asked Marion, gasping slightly for air.

"I'm not sure," said Rebecca, "but I think by the water, maybe close to Harris Island. As soon as we can get to the island, we'll be safe. The water will protect us."

But for now, the two girls could see only woods in front of them, woods that seemed to be closing in as the trail under their feet all but disappeared. The smoke was getting stronger and lower to the ground and the girls instinctively crouched down as they pushed along. Every now and then a burning leaf would come floating by and the heat was becoming more and more noticeable.

"When are we going to get there? When are we going to get to the water?" Marion exclaimed, a note of panic in her voice.

"It's got to be soon. We can't be far away," replied Rebecca, coughing now every few seconds.

But there was no end to the path in sight as the smoke continued to get thicker and the heat more intense.

"Rebecca!" Marion yelled. "We'll be burned to death!"

"No! We won't!" barked Rebecca. "Get down! Get down on the ground!"

Both girls fell quickly to their knees, dropping the leaf bag and the leaf identification book in the process. Moving on their knees now, with Rebecca in the lead and Marion following, they could see more clearly, although progress was slower and somewhat painful as the brittle twigs dug into their knees from time to time. Rebecca thought she could see a clearing ahead and maybe even hear the sound of waves breaking. Still, the fire was making a lot of noise and she couldn't be sure.

"I think we're close to the shoreline, Marion. Just a little bit farther," she said, as confidently as possible.

Marion said nothing but, setting her face grimly, started to crawl faster.

Less than two minutes later, they burst out onto the rocky shoreline, stood up, and looked behind at the forest, almost completely hidden now by the thick smoke.

"What will stop it, Rebecca? What will stop it?" Marion exclaimed shrilly.

"It will stop when it's run out of trees to burn, I guess, or when the wind changes," Rebecca responded with a sigh.

"But we can't stay here." Marion moaned. "The fire will come right up to the water's edge. If we go into the water, we'll freeze."

"We won't stay here," Rebecca asserted. "Let's run as quickly as we can along the shoreline toward the lighthouse. Maybe the fire's not spreading that way. Maybe we can outrun it to the lighthouse. Come on!"

The girls began moving along the lakeshore as quickly as they could in the direction of the lighthouse, half-stumbling again and again over the large, angular rocks. But the fire was always on their right, creeping more slowly now, but still inching toward the shoreline. Finally, Harris Island came into view as they turned a slight bend in the shoreline. But the fire had arrived ahead of them, extending in one area almost to the waterline as it consumed an outcropping of trees that hung over into the lake.

"Rebecca!" shouted Marion, reaching out to grab her arm. "We can't go that way! We're trapped!"

Rebecca stopped and quickly looked up and down the shoreline. "No we're not," she barked. "Look over there!" she said, pointing toward what appeared to be an old rowboat, nestled between two large piles of rocks. Rebecca dashed over to the small boat.

"But Rebecca," cried Marion. "This is so old. Will it even float?"

"It looks alright," said Rebecca, quickly eyeing the length of the craft as she reached out to touch its side. "And look! There's even an oar here!"

"But where will we go in it?" groaned Marion, clearly suspicious of the little craft.

"We'll shove it off here and row it over to the island, right around those trees over there," she said, pointing to the burning trees that blocked their way along the shoreline.

"But you're not a sailor...you can't do this," Marion said, shaking her head emphatically.

"Sure we can do this," Rebecca said in her jauntiest voice. "I've watched my father row a boat just like this and the waves aren't bad now. We don't have far to go, Marion. We just have to go a little farther around the bend and we'll be at the lighthouse where the fire can't reach us."

Rebecca pushed on the bow of the little rowboat with all her might but it didn't budge. "Come on, Marion. We've got to do this together."

Marion shook her head one last time and then lowered her shoulder into position next to Rebecca's. They pushed hard against the bow, but the boat refused to move an inch. Just then, a waft of wind sent a cloud of smoke blowing into their faces and they both started to cough harshly.

"Here," said Rebecca, moving around to the stern at the water's edge. "You push and I'll pull."

Rebecca tugged violently at the little boat, wiggling the stern back and forth to try to free it from the large rocks that wedged it in. "One...two...push!" yelled Rebecca and both girls strained with all of their power. The little rowboat jerked to the side and then slid toward the water a couple of inches. "I think it's free!" cried Rebecca. "Quick, let's both push it into the water."

With the combined weight of both girls on the bow, the boat slid easily now and, within seconds, was completely in the water.

"Get it! It's floating away!" yelled Marion, and Rebecca reached out quickly to grab the inside ridge of the bow as it started to drift out into the lake.

"I've got it. You climb in first," said Rebecca, nodding with her head toward the back seat of the little boat.

Looking uncertain, Marion waded into the water and scrambled into the boat, tearing her dress on the oarlock as she swung her right leg into the boat. "Oh no!" screamed Marion. "My dress!"

"Forget it, Marion. It's just a stupid dress," said Rebecca as she positioned herself to push the boat farther out from the shore. Rebecca grunted with the effort as she hurled her body against the bow, pushing the boat out five or six feet into the water. She quickly chased after it in the calf-deep water and catapulted herself into the small boat in one swift motion.

For a moment, they looked across at each other and said nothing as the boat floated farther out from shore. Although the water had felt ice cold to their bare skin, they were glad to get even a few feet away from the heat of the fire, which seemed almost to have reached the shoreline now.

"Okay," said Rebecca, trying to sound as calm as possible. "All we've got to do now is to row over to the island by the boathouse." She grabbed the single oar off the bottom of the boat and now noticed that it was cracked in the middle. She moved her right hand farther down on the oar to try to squeeze the cracked section together so that the oar wouldn't split completely in half. Rebecca carefully dipped the oar in the water on the right side of the rowboat, trying to figure out how much pressure the oar would take. With her hand squeezing the cracked section, the oar seemed sturdy enough, so she pulled hard on it and the bow of the boat moved over in the direction of Harris Island.

Progress was slow. With only one cracked oar available, Rebecca had to dip the oar first over one side and then the other, trying to keep her strokes as even as possible. Fortunately, the lake was very calm and the slight breeze, which had seemed so menacing as they tried to escape from the fire, now served to keep them away from the rocky shore. And they were moving in the right direction, even if not quickly.

Suddenly, Marion moved her foot and then quickly reached down her hand. There was water in the boat! It was coming in at one of the corners in the stern of the boat. "Water!" she cried. "Water's getting in!"

Rebecca leaned over from her seat. She could see now that water seemed to be leaking in at several of the joints and was already an inch deep in the bottom of the boat.

"It's not bad yet. We'll be all right. Cup your hands and try to bail," said Rebecca calmly.

Marion cupped her hands and tried to scoop some of the water out of the boat, but most of it slipped out from between her fingers. As Rebecca paddled harder, the water seemed to flow in faster.

"It's coming in all over," gasped Marion. "There's a really bad hole in back of you."

Rebecca glanced over her shoulder. Marion was right. The bow was leaking badly. She could see where one of the slats in the bow had started to pull away from the others. "I'll stop it!" she shouted. Dropping the oar, she quickly pulled off the nice woolen coat that her mother had just bought for her and stuffed it into the corner where the large hole had opened up. But the water in the boat was three inches deep now and seemed to be rising as they watched.

"Are we...going to drown?" asked Marion, her voice shaking.

"No!" snapped Rebecca. "Bail as fast as you can!"

But the boat, now beginning to fill with water, moved ahead very slowly, despite Rebecca's desperate stabs into the water. She looked around quickly and saw that they were almost twenty-five feet out from shore. The causeway to the island was just to their right. Another twenty feet and they would be able to reach safety.

"Don't bail, Marion! Paddle, paddle with your hands!" Rebecca commanded loudly. Marion reached both hands over the right side of the rowboat and started to paddle frantically. The boat, riding lower and lower in the water, gradually slowed to a stop. Then it started sinking.

"Swim! Swim for shore!" Rebecca screamed, tossing the oar away and grabbing for her coat.

Recovering their breath from the shock of the cold water, both girls began flailing their arms and kicking toward Harris Island. But the water was shallower than they thought and, after a few feet of churning up the water, they found their feet and starting groping slowly toward shore, the water almost up to their shoulders at first but dropping quickly. A few minutes later, they staggered up the rocky shore, both of them collapsing on the cold grass beyond it, shivering violently.

Marion rose to her feet first. "I can't believe we made it! I can't believe we're alive!" she cried joyfully.

Rebecca looked at her good wool coat, which hung over her arm like a shapeless, soggy dishrag. "My mother will be furious with me!" Rebecca said, shaking her head despondently. Then she put her arm around Marion and the two girls started trudging off in the direction of the lighthouse.

Chapter 12: Another Close Call

Rebecca's mother may not have been very pleased with the condition of Rebecca's new wool coat, but both she and Mr. Lester were overjoyed to see Rebecca and Marion trudge wearily into the house, even though they were soaking wet from head to foot and smelling slightly of smoke. Mrs. Lester had become increasingly worried about the two girls as she saw the smoke billowing forth from the woods on the mainland, so she was relieved when they finally made it back to the lighthouse, looking bedraggled and frightened.

When Mrs. Lester had first noticed the smoke, about an hour after the girls had started their leaf-hunting expedition, she had sent her husband into the woods looking for them. She had told him to stay by the main road because the girls had promised to stick close to it. They hadn't, of course. Although Mr. Lester had not been able to find them as he hurried along the main road near the end of the peninsula, neither he nor Mrs. Lester had been overly worried. They both assumed that Rebecca and Marion had simply walked farther down the road than originally planned. So Mrs. Lester had convinced herself that, however bad the fire might look from a distance, her daughter and Marion were nowhere near it.

So when Mrs. Lester heard the two girls tell their story and realized that they had in fact been extremely close to the fire, she was very upset. Rebecca had immediately tried to reassure her that they had never been in any "real" danger, but Marion had seemed not to agree with that assessment. And when it came to light that the two girls had to escape the fire by paddling for their lives in a broken down and abandoned rowboat which ended up sinking twenty feet from shore, Mrs. Lester could only sit down at the kitchen table and shake her head in disbelief.

Marion and Rebecca were quickly bundled into some warm, dry clothes while their soggy clothes hung on a rack by the fireplace to dry. The girls lamented at length about the fact that they had lost both their leaf bag and their leaf identification book in the confusion, but Mrs. Lester had reminded them that all of those things could be replaced and that they should be grateful that they had come out of a dangerous situation safely.

Marion had at one point tried to inform Mrs. Lester that the fire had been started by some "mysterious man" whom they had seen in the woods, but Rebecca immediately shushed her and changed the subject. She knew that if her mother heard about another "mysterious man" lurking in the woods, then Rebecca might never be let out of the house again.

So the crisis passed. In fact the fire had not been considered a particularly damaging one. Shortly after the girls had rowed to safety, the wind had changed direction, pushing the flames back over the burned section of the woods and the fire had petered out under a slow drizzle that had started up just after the girls had made it to shore. Fires of that sort in the mainland woods were by no means unusual this time of year and, in the end, no one outside of the Lester family and Marion had seemed to be too concerned about this one. There was no talk of the fire having been started by anyone, and that suited Rebecca just fine since she didn't want to get her mother and father worried. It was not easy keeping Marion quiet about the "mysterious man" at first, but she soon lost interest in the subject and no more was said about it by anyone.

There were plenty of other things to talk about that week, at least from Rebecca's point of view. She won her class spelling bee just a few days later—correctly spelling the word "catastrophe"—and was feeling pretty happy with herself. She and Marion continued to be best friends and even started planning more adventures together. Marion tended to be a little more conservative about the nature of these adventures; she wasn't terribly anxious to get caught in another fire or anything else that seemed dangerous, but the two of them still had great fun scheming together.

While William hadn't been winning any spelling contests, he too thought that school was going pretty well. He was enjoying some of his classes now more than ever, especially geography. He loved to hear about faraway lands and the exotic people and animals that lived in them. He was a little different than most of his classmates in this way—most of them were very "down to earth," thinking more about taking over the family farm someday than about traveling to see distant sights. That was okay, William thought. He could see why they felt the way they did. But there was something in him that made him yearn for something else—something beyond the little northeastern Wisconsin community in which he lived. And that was why, even now, months after moving into the lighthouse, he would still stand out on the concrete pier from time to time and scan the horizon. He did it in part to keep an eye out for ships, of course, just as his father did. But he also stared into the vast expanse of Lake Michigan because it reminded him that there was a lot out there in the world that he hadn't seen—big cities like Milwaukee and Chicago. He didn't know everything he wanted to do with his life yet, but he knew he wanted to spend some of it exploring the places that Lake Michigan could take you to. And he didn't want to take forever to do it, either.

Still, he was happy in school, far happier than he had been three months earlier. Not only was he starting to enjoy some of his classes, but he felt more like he was really a part of the class, even if he didn't come from a farming family like most of the other kids did. Jerry Van de Hoven was still his greatest friend and they were inseparable at school, but he was getting to know the other kids—at least the boys—better and better all the time.

He wasn't on great terms with everybody, of course. Bobby Brown, the grandson of the former keeper at Harris Island, still shot him dirty looks whenever he could get away with it. But no one paid much attention to Bobby and, besides, there wasn't a lot that Bobby could pick on him about. When word got around that William had played a big part in the rescue of the five men whose barge went down, he was treated almost like a hero at school. His teacher had asked him to relate his adventure to the class and he had done so, at first reluctantly, but with increasing enthusiasm as he went along.

Of course, the way William told the story, it was his father who was the only real hero. William had just stood on the boathouse pier and tossed a line out. Still, the other kids could tell that William was just being modest and that his contribution to the rescue of the five men had been an important one. Now he and Rebecca were known as the "lighthouse kids" and they didn't mind the nickname one little bit. Bobby Brown may not have liked it very much, but there was no way that even he could give William or his family a hard time about their latest adventure.

One of the things that everyone was happy about was the fact that Thanksgiving was approaching. It was the first major holiday for the family in their new home and their aunt and uncle from Baraboo, Margaret and George Wilson, were coming for a visit for the whole weekend.

Margaret Wilson was his mother's younger sister and the two of them had always been close, so Mrs. Lester was particularly looking forward to this visit. She had felt isolated from everyone living on Harris Island at first and had not become close friends with any of the local ladies, although that was beginning to change recently. But she still missed her old neighbors in Baraboo and she especially missed her sister and her children. So Thanksgiving couldn't come soon enough for Mrs. Lester.

When Thanksgiving did finally arrive, it was a beautiful one. Harris Island had had a streak of good weather—it had seemed more like early fall than late November—and the sun was shining brightly as the Wilsons pulled their car up at the end of the peninsula and slogged across the causeway to Harris Island. Actually, getting across the causeway was easier than usual since William and his father had built a wooden sidewalk across the passage in preparation for the Wilson's visit so, unless a particularly large wave swept over the area, it was now possible to cross over to the island without getting your feet wet.

Judging from their eager faces and enthusiastic words of greeting, the Wilsons were quite taken by both the island and the lighthouse. Of course, the world of a Lake Michigan lighthouse was completely new to them and they seemed very impressed by the cozy house (which Mrs. Lester had spent an enormous amount of time cleaning and decorating in the last couple of days before the Wilson's visit) and the lighthouse itself. The complex third order Fresnel lens in the lamp was clearly a wonder to Mr. Wilson. He had asked Mr. Lester to explain its workings again and again and never seemed to tire of being shown the clockwork mechanism that controlled the lamp's shutters. Of course, Mr. Lester was only too happy to oblige in these matters and took Mr. Wilson on a tour to see the fuel house and the boathouse as well, since Mr. Wilson had seemed so interested in the technical aspects of a lighthouse operation.

When Rebecca "just happened" to walk into the kitchen carrying a copy of the local paper celebrating the exploits of Mr. Lester and William, the Wilsons—the two children as well as the parents—showed themselves to be duly impressed by the paper's account of the most recent rescue. Asked by Mr. Wilson whether events of this sort were a regular occurrence at the lighthouse, Mr. Lester had replied that, fortunately, they were not, and that everything had been calm and routine lately.

As enthusiastic as Mr. Wilson was about the technical aspects of the lighthouse, Mrs. Lester's sister was even more intrigued about the little home itself. She professed herself to be wildly in love with the way Mrs. Lester had decorated the house and made it "into a real home."

"Ann," she cried enthusiastically, "however have you been able to do it? What a charming home! And the view! Lake Michigan is just marvelous!"

"It can be beautiful," Mrs. Lester replied carefully, "but it can be extremely dangerous as well. Once you've seen its power, you can never think of it just as beautiful scenery again."

"I'm sure you're right, of course," said Mrs. Wilson, "but if anyone can handle Lake Michigan, you and Richard can."

"Maybe," said Mrs. Lester, "but it can be lonely here, Margaret. I'm starting to know a few people, but it's not easy to be neighborly when most of the neighbors are five miles away. It's very different than Baraboo where everybody knew everybody else."

"Sure it's different," said Mrs. Wilson, "but I'm sure that people will be just as friendly here as they were in Baraboo, once you get to know them."

" _If_ I get to know them," sighed Mrs. Lester, as Mr. Wilson and her husband entered the kitchen.

"Well, ladies, have you been catching up on old times?" asked Mr. Lester, smiling broadly.

"We've been doing our best," said Mrs. Wilson.

"This lighthouse is an extraordinary place," exclaimed Mr. Wilson. "You've got to see the equipment, Margaret. It's just amazing."

"I'll just take your word on that, George," said Margaret, winking to her sister, "although I agree that this is a wonderful place."

"It is a wonderful place," said Mr. Lester, "but it's not perfect and certainly not convenient. It'd be different if we had a car and could get around a little better, but that's not going to happen for a while."

"Is your position secure, Richard?" asked Mr. Wilson. "I mean...can you rely on this job as a permanent thing?"

"Right now I'm on a probationary appointment," replied Mr. Lester. "We've had the inspector here once and he'll be dropping by a few more times in the next few months. If I pass all the inspections and they find me 'suitable for the position,' then the job is ours as long as we want it."

"Do you want it, Richard?" asked Mrs. Wilson. "It's far cry from being a teacher."

"It's a far cry for both of us," Mr. Lester answered, smiling gently at his wife. "And that's why I've been hatching an idea lately."

"An idea? Is this something new?" asked Mrs. Lester.

"Well, not brand new," Mr. Lester admitted. "I've had some people asking questions for me in North Bay for a couple of weeks and just got the answers in a letter we received yesterday."

"Questions? About North Bay? I'm afraid I must be missing something here," said Mrs. Lester, shaking her head slightly.

"Richard! Don't be so mysterious! Tell us what you're talking about," said Mrs. Wilson eagerly.

"Well, it's really very simple," said Mr. Lester, trying to sound as casual as possible. "The lighthouse keeper is obligated to stay in residence here at the lighthouse only until there's too much ice on the lake to sail and the shipping season is officially over. That usually happens around the second week of December or so. After that point, some keepers stay and winter in the lighthouse but some don't. I've been told that quite a few find a place to stay on Washington Island or North Bay until the shipping starts again in March and the keeper has to return to his duties. So anyway, I thought I'd do a little investigating and see if there was a place in North Bay we might move into for a few months and see what it's like to live in a real town again...for a few months at least. It's a lot closer to the kid's school."

"And you found something?" Mrs. Lester asked eagerly.

"I sure did," said Mr. Lester triumphantly. "A nice three bedroom house for rent, right in the middle of town. Of course, it's a very small town and we wouldn't have such a nice view of Lake Michigan there, but I think we could manage. And I also found out that there's a good possibility that Ann might be able to get a position as a substitute teacher in the North Bay school for the winter months."

"You mean...are you sure we can afford this...moving to North Bay for the winter?" asked Mrs. Lester hopefully.

"Oh, we may not be giving as many fancy parties as some of our neighbors, but I think we'll do okay," said Mr. Lester, walking over to hug his wife.

"Thank you, Richard...thank you," Mrs. Lester said softly.

"My sister, getting sentimental over moving to North Bay?" said Mrs. Wilson with a gleam in her eye.

"Oh, be quiet, you," said Mrs. Lester, smiling happily, "or I'm actually going to make you do some work around here."

As the two families sat down to Thanksgiving dinner, Richard and Rebecca kept looking at each other in amazement. They had not seen their mother so happy for months, not since they had moved to Harris Island. She laughed constantly, made funny remarks, and didn't once tell them to be sure to finish their vegetables. In fact, the children could never remember the grownups seeming so happy, their father and aunt and uncle as well as their mother. It was a wonderful time.

The Wilsons stayed for the whole weekend and each day was more fun than the one before. The two children, Sammy and Alice, were impressed by everything that William and Rebecca showed them—especially the boathouse. By the time the Wilsons drove off the next Monday morning amid a flurry of farewells, the two Lester children were feeling pretty happy about living at a lighthouse. In fact, they weren't so sure they wanted to move into town over the winter. In North Bay, they'd feel just like everyone else. They wouldn't be the "lighthouse kids" anymore and they'd miss that. Of course, they wanted their mother to be happy and if moving into town for a few months would do that, it would be worth it. Still, thought William, everything was going so well at the lighthouse, it seemed a shame to leave it behind, even for a few months.

Chapter 13: Danger Lurking

Winter was very much in the air on Harris Island in early December. There had been snow flurries two or three times, and one time the snow had actually stayed on the ground for a couple of days. It had been unusually cold, and parts of North Bay and Sturgeon Bay had already started to ice over in places. The number of ships passing by the lighthouse had dropped sharply since mid-November, but there were a few hardy steamers still plying their trade on Lake Michigan. And, while the Lester family was looking forward eagerly to the day when shipping would officially come to an end and the lighthouse could be closed down for the winter, Mr. Lester knew that the next few weeks could be treacherous ones for ships sailing the lake. The Harris Island lighthouse had to be on its guard at all times since this was the time of the year that snow squalls could appear on the lakes at a moment's notice, limiting visibility severely for the ships. The month of November had produced only one significant storm off Door County, but the other keepers in the area, with whom Mr. Lester now chatted frequently, all warned him that Lake Michigan might try to make up for lost time in the first couple of weeks of December.

Mr. Lester worked hard to be ready. He struggled daily with the foghorn to keep it in operating shape should it be needed, and checked the lantern mechanism three times each day to make sure that it would run smoothly when called upon. In a snowy December squall, the lantern—which was lit earlier every day because of the dwindling daylight hours—might even be lit before twilight, although it was hard to say how much it would penetrate through swirling snow. And, of course, there were worse things to fear than a mere snow squall. Late November and early December often saw some of the lake's most formidable gales, with winds up to eighty miles an hour and with waves which topped off at eight feet or even higher. So while the entire family was eager for the next few weeks to pass, Mr. Lester had a strong suspicion that there might be a lot more bad weather coming their way before the season was over.

It was the first Friday in December when the wind seemed to stiffen, making even the light snow seem bitter when it caught you full in the face. Although Mr. Lester had made no ominous remarks about the weather as the day passed into early evening, William could tell he was worried. He had tested the foghorn at least a dozen times, at one point blowing it intermittently for about a half an hour in the late afternoon when the on-again—off-again snow squall seemed to be at its worst. But then the snow lightened up and, as so often after a period of hard use, the foghorn's steam engine failed. Mr. Lester had sighed loudly as usual, and peered keenly into the sky over the lake as if trying to read its intentions. He checked the plunging barometer dial frequently, even tapping it with his finger once or twice to check if it really meant what it seemed to.

What made it all worse was that Mrs. Lester was gone—visiting her sister in Baraboo who was recovering from pneumonia. Mrs. Lester had insisted on coming to her sister's aid and left for Baraboo the same day she received word of her illness. Five days later, Mr. Lester had received a letter from his wife saying that her sister was feeling very much better and that Mrs. Lester would be able to return to Harris Island very soon, perhaps in a day or two. But today they could expect no help from Mrs. Lester.

As night fell, the wind seemed to increase somewhat in intensity and William, as he lay in his bedroom reading, could hear the lighthouse creaking more angrily than usual.

It was a difficult night for Mr. Lester. On calm nights with good visibility, Mr. Lester could take a nap now and again, confident that the lamp would be fine and there would be no problems to deal with. But Friday night was different. Long after everyone else had gone to bed, he stared into the gloom, increasingly aware of the ever-stronger gusts of wind that buffeted the tower. Those gusts also caused some problems with the light. The louvers that fed the air into the flame had to be constantly readjusted. At times the flow of air would be too strong and would threaten to extinguish the light with a single burst. But if the louvers were closed too tightly, the flame would be starved and eventually flicker out. Mr. Lester was forced to adjust the louvers from time to time in the past, but had never had so much difficulty with them. Never had they demanded constant attention as they did on this night.

Mr. Lester had seen few ships during the day on Friday and, that evening, he could only make out one, which stayed out too far to be recognizable. He wondered if the bad weather was keeping the ships off the lake, keeping them bottled up in North Bay or some safe harbor. But he figured that the weather probably wasn't bad enough yet to keep everyone off the lake. Time was money to the owners of the big steamers and he knew that the more aggressive captains—the ones who took their cargoes out on the lake regardless of weather—were the ones who found the greatest favor with the shipping companies. Some of those captains had the reputation of braving any weather short of a full-fledged gale. But Mr. Lester began to wonder if that might not be what Harris Island would be facing, perhaps even within the next few hours.

When daybreak came, William flung himself out of bed and dressed quickly. Immediately, he could see that things had gotten worse. There was little snow visible in the sky now, but the wind had become substantially worse. As he looked out his second floor window, he saw something he had never seen in the months he had lived at the lighthouse—water was running in thin sheets over parts of the grass lawn to the side of the lighthouse. At first he thought there must have been some heavy thunderstorm and he had just slept through it. Then he realized that the water was coming from the waves...waves that were being driven by the sharp winds to break further up on the rocks than he had ever seen. The water skimming the surface of the grass was from Lake Michigan! He ran downstairs quickly and headed for the kitchen door.

"No, William!" snapped Rebecca, who had awoken early because of the noise from the wind and was standing at the kitchen counter making oatmeal. "Don't go out there! Father says that a bad gale is developing and that it's too dangerous to be out there. He says the water's getting too high."

"But how are we going to get to the fogwhistle?" protested William, still standing by the door and peering out.

"I don't know, but you're supposed to stay here with me," Rebecca said plaintively.

"So, are we stuck in here?" asked William, slowly turning around and taking a seat at the kitchen table. Rebecca shrugged. "Well, I'm not going to just sit here all day," said William, starting toward the door that led into the lighthouse tower. William dashed up the spiral stairs of the tower so quickly that he almost became dizzy. Did the stairs move? Did the tower move a little? He figured it must have been his imagination and quickly darted up the rest of the stairs to the watch room.

Mr. Lester was there, staring into the lantern's clockwork mechanism. He looked tired.

"What's happened, Father?" William blurted quickly.

"We're okay for now," his father replied slowly. "The foghorn's out. Too much water got in through the vents. It's going to take a while to dry out before it'll work again. I may ask you to man the fogbell later, if we see a ship getting too close. This is a bad storm and it may well get worse. I've never had so many problems with the louvers here for the lamp. If the air mixture isn't just right for the vapor burner, it can get temperamental, you know. I may even have to light up the old wick light. The mechanism is running a little noisy but at least it's still running. You probably noticed that the tower moves a little from time to time, but it's done that before. If it doesn't get any worse, we're all right."

William swallowed quickly. "What can I do to help?"

"Well, for now you can do two things. Go downstairs and stay with your sister. She's a little anxious, all the more because your mother's not here," said Mr. Lester. "But stay alert. I may need you on that fogbell any minute."

William sighed and walked slowly down the circular steps. "Hold on, Rebecca, I'll be with you in a minute."

The two hoboes moved swiftly down the road, heading in the direction of Harris Island.

"Hurry up, darn ya," grumbled Sam. "We don't want to stay out in this weather any longer than we have to."

"Well, I don't know why you're in such a gall darn hurry. We ain't goin' nowhere special that I can see," said Elmer.

"Sure we are," said Sam. "We're gonna pay another visit to our friends at the lighthouse out there on Harris Island. You remember them."

"All I remember is that we legged it all the way out there once before and got nothin' for it. I don't see why you're in such a big hurry to do that all over again," said Elmer, shaking his head disgustedly.

"Humph!" Sam grunted. "Let me tell you two things. First, of all, I'm sick of freezing out here and I'm gonna find me someplace where it's warm. Second, I ain't really in the mood to give our friends at the lighthouse much of a choice in this matter. Now, in case you ain't noticed, it's cold, it's windy and it's Saturday. And the last time you and I ate was Friday. Now that's no way for you and me to stay happy and healthy. We're gonna eat today and it's gonna be in that nice warm lighthouse over there about two miles away. I'm not saying that the family is gonna want to feed us, but I'm tellin' you that they're gonna feed us whether they want to or not."

"Easy to say," said Elmer, "but just how you gonna arrange that?"

"You leave that up to me," said Sam, "but you're gonna have to back me up on this. We ain't takin' no for an answer this time, and you gotta stick with me on that."

"Hey, I don't want no trouble with the law, you hear? I've been clean for two years and I got no interest in goin' back to jail just for a square meal," said Elmer, planting his feet firmly and refusing to budge.

"Then you're gonna freeze to death before you starve to death," barked Sam angrily. "Those people have got to take us in with this weather. And they're not only gonna take us in, they're gonna give us a little something for the road, even if I have to use my blade to get it."

"And then we'd be hightailing it from the law in this weather? That's the dumbest thing..."

Sam grabbed the collar of Elmer's frayed old coat. "You shut up! I don't wanna hear no more about that! We're goin' in there and we're gonna take what we want, you hear? And then we're gonna take one of their boats and we're gonna get out of here. There ain't nothin' to keep us here. We both said we wanted to leave this area...well, now's the time to do it—with a sack full of provisions and a boat to take 'em in. And if we can't sail the boat, we'll sell the thing and come up with some extra cash. But we're goin' to that lighthouse and we're gonna take what we need. So get a move on before we freeze to death." Sam pushed Elmer ahead roughly.

"Okay, okay! But I ain't too happy about this," Elmer said, lurching down the road.

"William," said Mr. Lester, looking down at his son who had just sprinted up the lighthouse steps to the watch room, "we're going to have to do something that I don't want to do. We need to bring more kerosene up here."

"But you brought all the kerosene up this morning, didn't you?" William asked uncertainly, startled by how loud the wind sounded up this high in the tower.

"I brought the usual amount up, William, but we're having more and more problems with the vapor burner now and I think we might have to light the stand-by wick at any point," explained Mr. Lester. "It's going to need some extra fuel and it's too risky to try to take any from the vapor burner. We're only going to need a couple of cans, but it's real bad out there now and I won't be able to do it by myself. I'm going to need your help."

William and his father moved down the stairs slowly as Mr. Lester explained his plan. "I've got to get to the fuel house but it's not going to be easy. The winds are just about gale-force now—worse than we've ever seen, that's for sure—and the waves are breaking up on the island itself so there's a lot of water out there. So I'm going to tie a rope to myself and have you stay by the kitchen door and hold on to the other end. That way, if I get knocked off my feet, I'll be able to steady myself by the rope. But you'll have to tie it tight somewhere. You won't be able to pull my weight all by yourself."

Almost at the bottom of the stairwell, they heard Rebecca scream. "Father! Father! The water's getting inside the house!" They quickly dashed down the rest of the stairs, through the door and into the kitchen. It was true. As Rebecca stood, flattened again the far kitchen wall, water was coming under the kitchen door in sheets.

"Rebecca," cried her father. "You get upstairs to the second floor. You'll be safe there."

Rebecca gritted her teeth. "I can help," she said determinedly. "I can help down here."

"Maybe later, Rebecca," said her father, struggling to sound as calm as possible. "But for now, it's best to go upstairs." Rebecca turned quickly, stifling a sob, and bolted for the stairs that led to her second story bedroom.

Mr. Lester had grabbed a long line and was now tying it firmly around his waist. "It looks like we'd better hurry. If we've got any chance of getting out to the fuel house, it'll be now." Mr. Lester yanked the kitchen door open and a gush of water flowed into the kitchen. "Don't worry about that," he commanded William, who froze motionless, watching the water lap around his ankles. "We can always move up to the second floor. The water will never rise that high. And we've got to get those cans of kerosene up to the lantern."

William nodded his head mutely and started unraveling the other end of the line. "Where'll I tie the other end?" he shouted over the wind's roaring.

Mr. Lester looked around quickly. "Tie it to the leg of the stove over there," he said, indicating the big black iron stove on the opposite side of the room. "That thing's not going to float away."

William quickly wound the end of the line around the stove leg several times and tugged a firm knot into place. His father, the other end of the line secured around him, stepped carefully out into the storm. He slowly took a few steps in the direction of the fuel house. "It'll be okay," he shouted back to William, standing a couple of feet inside the door. Just then, a gust of wind pushed Mr. Lester quickly to his left. He lost his balance briefly, regained it, then tumbled swiftly over into what appeared to be about a foot of water.

Instinctively, William started to pull on his end of the line, but that seemed only to make things worse as his father floundered, trying to reclaim his footing in the fierce winds. "No! Don't pull on the line! I'll be alright," his father bellowed. He managed to get to his feet and moved slowly, crouching down, toward the fuel house. William let the line in his hands play out completely as his father moved farther away from him.

After a couple of minutes, Mr. Lester reached the fuel house, although another gust pushed him roughly into the door just as he was about to open it. He managed to get the door open and disappeared inside the little stone building, re-emerging a minute later with two cans of kerosene. He set them by the door and then removed the rope from around his waist, first pulling the rope taut and then tying it firmly to the metal handle on the fuel house door. Now the rope hung there, like a low clothesline, dangling four feet over the ground by the fuel house but getting lower as it approached the kitchen door. Mr. Lester, carrying a can of kerosene in each hand, slipped his left elbow over the suspended line, pinning it to his side to use as a guide to bring him back to the house. But now, on the way back, the fierce winds were hitting him directly in the face and he had to turn his head away to draw a good breath every few seconds. Still, he made progress and within a couple of minutes had managed to come within ten feet of the kitchen door, still propped open by William's foot. But then the wind threw him back briefly and he spun backwards and to his right, one of the cans flying up in the air and landing almost fifteen feet from the door.

Without thinking, William left the relative safety of the kitchen and scrambled out to pick up the fallen can. "No!" he father shouted, "I can get it!" But William was to it already, clutching it against his chest. "Here! Come here!" he father cried. "Grab my hand!" William moved slowly, fighting against the wind, but managed to grab his father's outstretched fingers with his free hand. Now both of them huddled together, each grasping desperately to a kerosene can, and attempting to move as one toward the kitchen door only a few feet away. But William slipped hard on the grass, now covered with more than a foot of rushing water, the can of kerosene smashing into the water. Mr. Lester, who had been able to keep his feet, reached down again for William's arm and propped him up. Finally, after what seemed like several minutes, they stood in the kitchen, gasping for breath, the two cans of kerosene sitting on the kitchen table.

"William," his father said quietly, between deep breaths, "that was brave but foolish. I'm heavier than you...I can get through that wind better. You could have been in real trouble." William looked down toward his trousers, now soaking wet all the way up to his belt. "But forget about it," he added. "You did well. We've got the kerosene and now I've got to get you dry quickly. You go upstairs to your room and try to find some new clothes. That's the last time we're going outside in this weather if we can help it."

**Chapter 14: Terror at the Lighthouse**

"There!" yelled Sam. "There's the lighthouse! See? Right over there!"

The two men struggled against the wind as they staggered toward the shoreline at the tip of the peninsula.

"How in blazes are we gonna get there?" bellowed Elmer. "There's got to be four feet of water over the causeway. We'll drown if we don't get blown away first."

"You ain't gonna drown in a couple of feet of water, Elmer," gasped Sam, struggling for breath against the fierce gusts of wind. "And we don't have a lot of choice here in case you haven't noticed. I'm not happy about goin' wading in Lake Michigan, but it ain't very pleasant out here either, and that lighthouse is the only place we can go. We'll make it...just get a move on!"

Sam stepped energetically down the sloping hill into the flooded causeway. "Dang! This water is ice cold! I'm tellin' you...this little visit had better be worth it. Come on, Elmer!"

Leaning on one another for support, the men moved slowly across the causeway, the swirling water almost up to their chests.

"I don't remember this darn causeway bein' so long," said Sam angrily.

"Don't you get it, Sam?" said Elmer. "The whole island's just about underwater from this storm!"

"Yeah," Sam replied with a sneer, "well, the lighthouse ain't under water and that's all we care about."

William could clearly feel the lighthouse moving beneath him now as he made his way down the circular stairs. It was hard to say if it was swaying more than a few inches one way or the other, but there was no question that it was moving. The groaning sound that had started coming from the lower level of the tower yesterday was much louder now, and William thought he could also heard a scraping sound from inside the metal cylinder containing the clockwork mechanism cables. The mechanism that determined the pattern of flashes for the lantern had frozen three times now. Each time his father was able to free the gears up by hand, but it was clear that they were grinding together jaggedly every time the tower—pushed about by the gale force winds—moved back and forth. Meanwhile, the operation of the incandescent lamp was becoming more precarious with each passing minute and Mr. Lester was sure they would have to light the old wick lamp soon, just so the Harris Island lighthouse would have some light to show in the storm.

As his father struggled with the lamp mechanisms, William thought he glimpsed a large ship fighting against the wind, probably about two hundred yards off the island.

"Father...look!" cried William. "That ship! Is it...off course?"

Mr. Lester whirled around and stared out into the lake. "They're fools to be out in this storm. This gale's been developing for a couple of days. They've had plenty of time to reach shelter. Looks like they're going to try to ride it out in North Bay, but they're barely making any headway at all. I hope they don't think we're the North Bay lighthouse. If they do, they're going to be in for an unpleasant surprise when they hit our shallows."

Rebecca had moped gloomily in her room for about half an hour when she decided to take matters into her own hands. If there was going to be a crisis, she had as much right as anyone else to be in on it. And if this stupid storm was going to blow the lighthouse off the island or drown everybody in the rising water...well, at least she wasn't going to just sit there and wait for it to happen. She couldn't go up to the watch room with her father and brother because they'd just tell her to be a good girl and go back to her room. No...she'd go back downstairs. Somebody had to save the food in the kitchen before the water got too high. Nobody wanted to starve to death, did they?

So Rebecca tiptoed quietly down the stairs leading to the kitchen. After everything was said and done, she thought, her father—and especially her mother—would thank her for taking action and saving what could be saved.

Before she had descended the stairs completely, Rebecca realized that the flooding on the first floor had gotten worse. The water was not just covering the kitchen floor but was up almost to the first landing of the staircase. Undaunted, she plunged ahead, telling herself that her shoes were already wet and, besides, her shoes were less important than all of the things she would be able to save. Rebecca sloshed quickly over to the kitchen cupboard. There she quickly grabbed the bread from the bread drawer and started choosing which cans and jars would be the most important to take upstairs.

In that instant there was a banging against the kitchen door. A few seconds later, it flew open, and two men in ragged, wet clothes came tumbling in and start jabbering to each other angrily.

"Geez! I tell you that if I didn't drown just now, I ain't never gonna drown," bellowed Elmer, getting to his feet and starting to shake the sleeves of his old coat.

"Oh, stop your complaining," grunted Sam, still getting to his feet. "I told you I'd get you to the lighthouse and that's where we are."

Rebecca gave an involuntary little gasp and backed flush against the cupboards. Both men looked up and saw her at the same time.

"Well, well, now, and just who is this precious little miss?" said Sam, a sneer on his lips.

"Maybe it's the lady of the house, Sam," said Elmer, smiling foolishly. "Pleased to make your acquaintance, ma'am."

"And we'll be a lot more pleased when you can get us some food and a place to dry off," Sam said curtly. "Where's your mother and father?"

Rebecca stared blankly into the faces of the two men for a few seconds. "My mother's not here right now. My father's upstairs...in the lighthouse tower."

"And that's just where he should stay right now," said Sam smugly. "You got any dry rooms in this house?"

"Upstairs is dry. Everything's wet down here," replied Rebecca passively.

"We can see that, missy," said Elmer. "I see you've already been collecting some food. Well, now... that's mighty convenient."

"We're taking it," grunted Sam. "This place ain't worth stayin' in, but we're taking your food."

"We ain't stayin'?" whined Elmer. "We ain't really goin' back out there in that weather, are we?"

"Darn place's fallin' apart anyway," grumbled Sam, looking around the room and shaking his head. "No use hangin' around here. We get inland a couple of miles, we'll be fine. But we're not goin' empty handed. We're taking that food, little girl, and we're taking your money. Where do your mother and father keep it?"

Rebecca's face grew white. Her mouth wouldn't open.

"I said, where do they keep their money," said Sam, pulling out a large pocketknife.

Rebecca put her hands to her face and screamed, "Father! Help! Robbers!"

Mr. Lester came charging down the stairs, with William trailing behind. "What's going on?" demanded Mr. Lester as he rushed into the kitchen, stopping short when he saw the two hoboes. He quickly walked over to stand beside his daughter, putting his arm around her. "Who are you? What is the meaning of this?"

Elmer cleared his throat. "Well, you see, sir, we're just a couple of gentlemen down on their luck, you see and..."

Mr. Lester looked stony faced over at the knife that Sam held opened in his hand.

"Stow it, Elmer," said Sam, turning to his partner. "Don't bother. We don't have time for that right now." Sam turned directly to Mr. Lester. "I'll give it to you straight. We're here to get some food and some money. We've come a long way and we're not leaving without it. You see this knife? I've used this before and I'll be happy to use it again."

Mr. Lester spoke calmly, "Rebecca, go to your room and lock the door."

Rebecca hesitated, but her father gave her a gentle nudge. She slipped cautiously away, heading toward the parlor rather than the staircase. "As far as you two are concerned, there's not much I can do for you and I don't like being threatened. It's a bad night to be out, and I'll let you take some food with you. But you can't stay here and food's all you're going to get when you go."

Sam sneered. "Well, mister, I don't think you're really in a good position to be givin' orders."

"Nevertheless," said Mr. Lester coolly, "those orders are the only thing you're going to get from me. Now you help yourself to some of that food over there and then you hit the road. I've got some real serious problems with my beacon light right now and there's a ship out there that needs this lighthouse very badly. I don't have time to escort you out because I've got to get back up there to the watch room. But I expect that you'll be long gone by the time I come back."

Mr. Lester turned and walked through the door leading to the lighthouse stairwell and started toward the circular stairs. After a few seconds of stunned silence, Sam shouted at his back, "The deuce we will!" He tossed his knife to the side and grabbed an oar hanging up on the wall. Leaping through the doorway, he swung it as hard as he could across the back of Mr. Lester's head just as he started to ascend the stairs. Mr. Lester immediately sagged into unconsciousness, collapsing backwards. But his ankle caught in the open iron stairway, twisting his leg cruelly as he fell backwards. He gave out a slight moan and collapsed into the water at the base of the stairwell.

William, who had watched the attack from the second floor landing, now leapt to the bottom of the stairs and knelt down by his father's unconscious body. He carefully lifted Mr. Lester's head out of the water and starting tugging him away from the stairwell. His father moaned again, and then William saw why. His ankle was broken—terribly—the bone protruding slightly through the skin with blood gushing freely.

"I guess he'll pay a little more attention to his visitors next time," sneered Sam, ignoring William's efforts to move his unconscious father.

"Geez," moaned Elmer, 'Why'd you have to do that? He's hurt bad. If we get caught now, it's jail time for sure."

"We ain't gonna get caught. But we got find some cash. Let's split up. You search the bedrooms...and while you're at it, grab some pillowcases so we have something to carry the loot in. I'll look and see if there's any office around here. A lighthouse keeper's got to have an office somewhere and that's probably where they keep the money."

"Yeah, if there's any money to keep," muttered Elmer.

"You just shut up and look," said Sam. "We'll find it."

After seeing the severity of his father's injury, William had shuddered and paused for a few seconds. But then he realized he must do two things—keep his father's head upright and get something to stop the bleeding. He looked wildly around for a few seconds and then crumpled up his jacket, placing it under his father's head. Then he rushed into the parlor and grabbed the pillows from the sofa. He saw Rebecca there, in a corner, trembling with fear.

"Rebecca," he whispered harshly, "get upstairs and hide quick!"

"What's happened to Father?" she asked, her voice shaking noticeably.

"He's hurt bad, but I'll take care of him. You get upstairs."

William ran back to his father and placed the pillows under his head, propping him up well above the water line. Then he dashed quickly off to the bathroom, grabbing every towel he could find. He applied pressure gently but firmly on the open wound. Mr. Lester moaned but the blood flow seemed to lessen.

But now a thought flashed through William's mind—what about the ship? What would happen to the ship struggling out there on Lake Michigan? By now the incandescent light might have failed completely. His father had said they would have to light the back-up wick...that at least would keep some light coming from the lighthouse. But William had never done it. He had only seen his father do it once—to show him how. That didn't matter now. William had no choice. Besides, it had seemed easy when his father did it—just like lighting a big candle. And the long matches were always stored nearby. He knew just where they were.

He quickly took off his belt and wrapped it around his father's ankle, keeping the pressure on the wound. Then he stood up straight and started toward the circular staircase leading to the watch room.

Just then, Elmer came into the room. "I can't find nothin' here...no cash anyway. Hey...maybe we should ask the boy. Maybe he knows something."

"Good idea. Hey, kid," said Sam, gesturing to William. "Come over here for a minute. Tell us where your old man keeps his money."

William turned to face Sam. "I don't know anything about it," he said quietly.

"Oh, so you want me to ask your father again? He's in pretty bad shape, kid, but it could be worse."

"He's unconscious," William snapped. "He can't tell you anything. I don't know where any money is. I've got to go back to the watch room. I've got to fix the light."

"Forget about the light, kid. Who cares about the light?" said Sam angrily. "You come back here and show us where your father keeps his money."

William paused for a second, looking Sam in the face. Then he quickly turned and started up the stairs.

"I said, get down here right now!" bellowed Sam.

"Sam...let the kid go," pleaded Elmer. "He probably don't know nothin'. We already got enough problems."

"I'll give it another five minutes," said Sam, "but if we don't find the dough in five minutes, I'm gonna bring that kid down here and make him tell me where his old man keeps his money."

As William sped up the steps he could feel that the tower was not only moving, but was actually beginning to shake. These winds were even worse than his father had thought. Maybe this was the worst storm ever to hit Harris Island. What if it destroyed the lighthouse completely? Just knocked it down into the water? But William had to keep going. He had work to do.

When he got to the watch room, he realized that one of his fears had come true. The beacon was dark. The incandescent lamp was cold. He would have to try to light the wick for the back-up lamp. He reached down to find the metal box containing the long matches. Where was it? His fingers searched frantically in the dark. Meanwhile, he thought he could hear the ship's horn from the steamer. How close was it?

He didn't have time to look. He had to light the wick. After a few more seconds, he found the box, wiggled it open, and clutched one of the long wooden matches in his fingers. He tried to strike it on the box, but the match broke in two. He grabbed for another match and felt for a place to strike it. The floor was too wet. His hands found a dry place on the wall. He scraped the match briskly on the dry spot. The match flickered a couple of times, then the flame held. He reached carefully in back of the incandescent lamp to light the old wick. The match came in contact with the wick but nothing happened. Was the wick itself wet? He couldn't reach it to dry it off—his arms weren't long enough. He could barely reach it at all, even with the long-handled match. He breathed deeply, steadied himself and tried again. The match was starting to burn more weakly now, but for some reason the wick lit this time. It burned so dimly at first that William couldn't believe that he had really done it. But as the flame spread across the wick, the light increased. And as the light became reflected and focused by the numerous surfaces of the lens, the light grew from a faint glimmer to a steady stream. It was not as bright as the light given off by the newer incandescent lamp, but it might be enough to do the trick.

William peered out the watch room windows at the ship. Perhaps it had been closer a moment ago, but it was now keeping its distance, even if its progress toward North Bay seemed as slow as ever.

Suddenly, William thought of Rebecca. She might still be hiding in the parlor! He had to lead them away from her so she could slip away! If she could only get to her room...maybe they wouldn't even look in her room! And what about his father? Was he still unconscious? Had the bleeding gotten worse?

He had to get back downstairs. The beacon was burning now. There was nothing more he could do here.

William started once more down the circular stairs. Again, he felt a shaking movement as he descended. Was the whole tower moving in the wind or was it just the stairs that were moving? As he started to leap down the last few steps into the water, Sam came over to the stairwell to meet him, blocking the bottom rung.

"We've played enough games, kid," said Sam menacingly. "Your father's still unconscious so you're going to have to show me where your family hides the money."

"I told you," shouted William. "I don't know anything about it. Please get out of my way. I've got to see if my father is alright."

" _You're_ not gonna be alright in a minute if you don't do what I say. So get over here and show us where the money's hid," growled Sam.

"Rebecca," William shouted, "hide! Hide upstairs!" Then William turned quickly and started back up the circular stairs.

"I said, come here, you brat!" screamed Sam, starting up the stairs after William.

"Yeah...where is that other kid?" asked Elmer, strolling into the hallway, looking right and left. But Rebecca was behind him. She picked up the oar that Sam had used to strike her father and brought it down on Elmer's head with all her strength. The oar crashed across his skull with a loud thud and Elmer collapsed in a heap. She quickly pulled a chair in from the kitchen and propped up Elmer's unconscious head on one of the rungs so his face wouldn't be in the water. Then she grabbed some small bits of rope from a kitchen drawer and bound Elmer's hands to the chair, messily but thoroughly. Rebecca then went to her father, who was just regaining conscious.

"Honey," said Mr. Lester to Rebecca. "I'm not sure I can move. It's a bad break. Are you alright? Where's William?"

"I'm okay," she said, trying to sound as calm as possible as she stroked his head. "I knocked one of them on the head. But the other one took off up the lighthouse stairs after William."

William easily outdistanced Sam as he raced up the stairs, but he stopped at the second landing, waiting to hear if he were really being followed. It was difficult to hear anything with the roar of the wind in his ears, but seconds later, he could see Sam, clutching on to the railing while lumbering slowly along. Then he saw Sam stop. He had picked up his jackknife again and was opening it up. Sam bellowed up the steps at William, "I'm not chasin' you kid. If I have to chase you, you're gonna be sorry when I catch you, 'cause I'm gonna do the catchin' with my knife. And then I'm gonna go back down and take care of your father and sister."

William said nothing but turned and headed back up the stairs, moving swiftly and determinedly. "If," he thought, "I could get him to throw his knife and miss..."

In that instant, the spiral staircase started to give way. William was spun around violently and his back was hurled against the wall. He was stunned by the blow for a few seconds, then blinked and shook his head. He looked up to the watch room. The last section of the circular stairs had become partially detached. One side had pulled away from the wall, probably because of the tower's almost constant movement in the gale-force winds. William grasped the railing behind him and gingerly put his foot on the next higher rung. It seemed sturdy enough, but he'd have to go very slowly now. If the other side of the stairwell pulled loose from the wall, he and the hobo would both fall forty feet to the concrete floor.

William could see Sam coming up the stairs carefully. He seemed to be breathing heavily—maybe he had been bounced against the wall, too—but he still clutched his knife in his hand. The remainder of the race was going to be in slow-motion now. William moved slowly and carefully up the steps, careful not to shift his weight too quickly. Sam kept coming. He stopped for an instant, seeming to judge whether he had a good angle to throw his knife, and then continued.

William got to the watch room first. He could see that the beacon was still shining, although the clockwork mechanism had finally ground to a halt and the light was no longer flashing the distinctive Harris Island pattern. He looked down at the hobo. He was only about ten feet below William, and was moving slowly but steadily up the circular stairs. Could William possibly do something to unfasten the stairs on the other side?

The hobo would certainly plummet to his death. William dismissed the idea from his mind.

As Sam was climbing the last section of the staircase, William started to panic for the first time. He threw the pair of binoculars that he and his father had used at the hobo but they missed and went clattering down the stairwell. He even kicked at Sam, who almost grabbed his leg as he did it. But as he reached to grab the boy, Sam shifted his weight and the other part of the stairs broke free from the cement wall. With a terrible twisting sound, the iron stairway collapsed down on itself. But Sam had somehow managed to reach the floor of the watch room and was even now struggling to get to his feet.

But William knew the lighthouse well and he knew that he had one chance left. He quickly sprang up the ladder leading to the beacon room. Sam flung his knife wildly at William's back, but it missed badly and clattered to the floor. Once in the beacon room, William unfastened the window and reached his hand out to feel for the iron rungs that had been built into the outside of the tower, an external ladder used by workers cleaning the beacon windows from the outside. The wind and rain bit at William's hand as he searched for the iron bars. He knew they were out there—he had seen his father slip out this window to hang from the bars and clean the windows. They had to be there! Suddenly he felt one of the bars, just as Sam's head appeared, coming up the ladder from the floor below. The hobo wouldn't dare follow him out there—not hanging on the outside of the building in a storm like this. If he could just hang on out there for a couple of minutes, the hobo might just give up the chase. And by then Rebecca might have found a safe place to hide. Then, when the two hoboes were really gone, he could climb down...maybe all the way to the ground and look after his father. He had to do it...now!

William swung his body out through the open window, grabbing the iron bar first with one hand, then with both. The roar of the wind and waves was thunderous. The wind, coming from the east, pinned his body tightly against the lighthouse. It was almost as if he didn't have to hold on...the wind pressed him so firmly against the outer wall of the lighthouse. Although he struggled to get a good breath, he thought, "I can do this...I can do this if I don't have to move."

But then he saw the hobo's big hand grabbing at him through the window. Very slowly, William inched down the steps of the latter, rung by rung. The hobo managed to reach down and grab the shoulder of his jacket for a second, but William yanked his shoulder away slightly and broke free. William inched down the ladder even farther. The he saw Sam raising himself up as if to step out of the window and climb on to the small iron bars.

He couldn't believe it! Was the hobo going to climb down after him? Maybe so. He wouldn't want to be stuck up there either ,and he probably figured that William knew the only way down. William cast his eyes downward. The lighthouse beacon cast relatively little light straight down at the bottom of the tower, but William could see the water thrashing around fifty feet below him. Somehow, William was going to have to get down there. He began to move more quickly down the ladder, but the wind seemed to be changing direction slightly. It caught one of his shoulders and now seemed to be pushing it away from the tower wall.

William clutched tightly onto the iron wrung, forcing his body flat against the tower. Then he looked up. Somehow the hobo had managed to get out on the ladder and was starting to come down after him. But the shift in wind had caught him too, pushing him away from the ladder. As the hobo tried to lower his right foot on the rung below, he missed, and his weight shifted. His left hand let go for an instant. He scraped at the iron bars to regain his balance but failed. He screamed, then fell...his arm brushing William's back briefly as he did.

With all the noise from the wind and waves, William was not sure he could hear his body strike the rocks below.

Chapter 15: To the Rescue

It was a long and miserable night for the three members of the Lester family. William managed to crawl up the iron rungs and slip back inside the watch room. There he sat, huddled against the cold, unable to get down to the house below because of the collapsed circular stairwell. Fortunately, the lighthouse lamp continued to burn throughout the night with no more problems and no ships appeared in view until early the next morning with the sun shining brightly.

Rebecca had managed to yell up to William from the bottom of the lighthouse tower that their father was hurt badly but resting quietly. William let his sister know that he was all right and no longer in danger. With Rebecca's help, Mr. Lester had been able to drag himself to a sofa in the parlor, lifting himself out of the several inches of water that now covered the first floor of the house. As the gale spent its force and the ten-foot waves stopped breaking over the surface of Harris Island, the water level eventually declined. By three o'clock in the morning, most of the standing water had found its way out of the house, although it remained terribly damp and miserable inside.

While Mr. Lester remained in great pain, Rebecca managed to change the bandages a couple of times and the bleeding was kept under control. Warmed up as much as possible by several blankets from the upstairs bedrooms, Mr. Lester fell in and out of consciousness, awakening briefly to tell Rebecca to go to her room and try to get some sleep until help came. But Rebecca had no intention of sleeping. After Elmer woke up from the bump on the head that Rebecca had given him, she continued to threaten him with dire consequences should he try to escape from the ropes tying him to the kitchen chair. More than once, she lifted the oar high in the air, describing in colorful terms how she would be happy to once again bring it crashing down on his head if he didn't stop wiggling around. These warnings proved to be very effective. Elmer muttered angrily for hours but didn't budge from his position, eventually falling asleep. Once, he asked Rebecca what had happened to his partner, but she said nothing.

It wasn't until about 8:30 the next morning that help arrived when Mrs. Lester, loaded with suitcases and accompanied by her brother-and-law, hurried up to the kitchen door. It was obvious from the condition of the wooden sidewalks and the torn and broken branches scattered around the yard that Harris Island had been ravaged by a terrible storm, and Mrs. Lester's voice rang with anxiety as she called out to her husband and children. Rebecca greeted her at the door, trying to tell ten stories at once while dragging her in to see Mr. Lester.

Mrs. Lester was shocked to see her husband, awake but exhausted, propped up on the parlor sofa, his ankle bandaged heavily but still bleeding slightly. But she recovered quickly, collecting additional blankets to place over him.

Seeing Mr. Lester's badly broken ankle, his brother-in-law announced he would immediately go for a doctor. Mr. Lester explained that they would need the police as well, pointing to Elmer, sitting in the corner, tied to a chair, and perhaps even the local fire department, since William was stuck in the watch room of the tower with no way of getting down. Mrs. Lester had turned pale at this news but once again recovered her composure quickly. She sent her brother-in-law off to get his car, which had been parked right across the causeway on the mainland, and walked quickly to the circular stairwell leading up to the watch room. She swallowed hard as she saw that the stairs were now little more than a sagging and twisted mass of iron. Gazing up at the door to the watch room, almost fifty feet over her head, she cupped her hand over her mouth and yelled up to her son. William was overjoyed to hear her voice. He screamed down to her, "Mom, I'm okay! Really! Don't worry! But Mom...could you get me down from here?"

She said she would...soon...as quickly as the fire department could get a ladder up to him. She told him that she loved him very much and they would all be together in just a few minutes.

It was actually almost two hours later when the fire department arrived on the scene with a ladder long enough to reach the watch room. It was a tricky job since they had to maneuver the ladder around the wreckage of the old circular stairs, but they finally managed to do it and a fireman carefully guided William slowly back down to the floor of the tower.

The police had actually arrived a half an hour earlier than the firemen. They had quickly bundled Elmer into the police car while he complained loudly that he had been wrongly accused and mistreated by the Lester family. He explained that he and his pal had just dropped by for a handout and had been assaulted by various members of the Lester family for no good reason whatsoever. When the burly policemen ignored his protests, handling him somewhat roughly as they pushed him out the kitchen door and toward the waiting police car on the mainland, Elmer had quickly changed his story. He said that the attempt to rob the Lester family had all been Sam's idea. He had tried to talk Sam out of it, but Sam was determined and there was nothing Elmer could do about it.

The police found Sam's body where they were told they would—lying on the rocks near the bottom of the lighthouse tower. As the policemen carried the body, covered by a white blanket, across the island to the waiting ambulance, Elmer gazed intently at it. He choked back a sob. "The fool...now he's gone and gotten himself killed."

The police didn't get the full story of what had happened until William had been brought down from the watch room. It was a complicated story and none of the three Lesters could tell it all by themselves. It turned out that Mr. Lester had the least to say. He described how he came down to talk to the two hoboes, telling them they could take some food with them but ordering them to then leave the house. When he had turned his back on the two men to go up to the watch room, he had obviously been hit on the head and knocked unconscious. From that point on, he could remember very little, although he could recall Rebecca struggling to bandage up his wound with the bathroom towels.

At that point in his description, he looked over to Rebecca and smiled gently. "Rebecca, you are a remarkably brave little girl. I don't know how you managed to fix up my ankle the way you did."

Rebecca, who had been standing quietly next to her mother, listening to her father's story, immediately became animated. "That wasn't the hard part, Father, "she bubbled. "The hard part was knocking that mean old hobo on the head and then tying him up. The knocking part wasn't so hard, "she said, demonstrating the swinging motion she had used to dispatch her enemy, "but the tying part was real hard. I'm not good at knots so I had to use about ten of them."

Her father smiled broadly. "Well, I don't know how you did it, but you did a wonderful job."

Rebecca, grinning from ear to ear, walked over to her father and kissed him on the cheek. Then she went back to stand by her mother who, smiling happily, put her arm around Rebecca's shoulder.

William seemed more reluctant to tell his part of the story. He seemed almost embarrassed by the fact that he had stayed in the background as his father had charged down the circular stairs to deal with the hoboes. He seemed ashamed that he had not been able to do more to help his father after he had been knocked unconscious.

He remembered being afraid that he wouldn't be able to light the wick after the incandescent light failed. Thinking back, he wasn't sure how he did it. He just remembered jabbing a long match into the wick and then taking a few steps back from it as the light took hold and re-illuminated the beacon. But when the clockwork mechanism had jammed—the one that controlled the beacon's flashing pattern—he had felt useless because he didn't know how to fix it.

His memory was very uncertain when it came to describing the chase up the circular stairway to the watch room. He could remember being smashed against the wall when part of the stairway broke free from the wall near the top of the tower. But he had a hard time remembering what happened after that. He thought he remembered the hobo raising a knife to throw at him. But maybe he didn't. He didn't seem to want to talk about that.

He had only a vague recollection of the collapse of the entire circular stairway. Now, as he gazed up into the tangled mass of iron from the bottom of the tower the next morning, he realized he was not quite sure when it had happened.

Neither did he remember much about climbing out onto the ladder on the outside of the tower. He faintly recalled a ferocious wind whistling in his ears and seeming to pin him against the rungs of the ladder, almost as if it were an unseen hand. He realized now that the hobo must have followed him out there, eventually falling to his death, but he couldn't really remember any of that.

By early that evening, life at the lighthouse had become somewhat normal again. Mr. Lester had returned from the doctor with a huge cast on his ankle. The doctor had wanted to keep Mr. Lester in the Sturgeon Bay hospital for a few days, but Mr. Lester had refused, saying that both his family and the lighthouse needed him. But in fact there wasn't much that Mr. Lester or any of the members of his family could do for the lighthouse at that point. The water had caused major damage to the first floor of the home and so the Lesters tried to crowd into the children's bedrooms on the second floor, which had remain unflooded.

Mrs. Lester, after several unsuccessful tries, had managed to get the wood-fired stove in the kitchen working again and was able to prepare a modest supper for the family. The family ate quietly, still somewhat stunned by the recent events and with Mr. Lester still in obvious pain. Still, Mrs. Lester remained as cheerful as possible. She reminded the rest of the family that, although Thanksgiving had just passed, the family still had a great deal to be thankful for, especially the fact that the two children had survived great danger and were still safe and sound.

But, as the family surveyed the damage the next day, it was clear that the lighthouse beacon would not be in working order again for some time. Workers would have to be brought in to clear away the wrecked circular stairwell and replace it with a brand new one. When the neighboring keeper, Mr. Morton, climbed up to the watch tower using the outside ladder the next day, he discovered that the mechanism that triggered the flashing pattern was badly jammed. The back and forth movement of the tower, as it swayed in the gale-force winds, had seriously damaged the gears and some parts of the mechanism would have to be completely replaced.

Two days after the great gale had taken its toll, the Lighthouse Board district inspector visited the premises. After touring the grounds and viewing the lantern and the other equipment, he declared firmly that the lighthouse beacon was completely inoperable and the lighthouse would have to be closed down for the season, even though some shipping might continue for another two or three weeks into December. A crew would be sent to the lighthouse immediately to begin repairs on the house and the circular stairwell while another crew would come later to repair the beacon light itself.

Mr. Lester had expected this decision and, while he wasn't sure where his family would stay for the next few weeks, he welcomed it. Initially, he had feared that, with all the damage done to the lighthouse, the board would decide to shut the lighthouse down permanently rather than spend the money to repair it. Once he was assured that the lighthouse would re-open next season after being repaired, he breathed much easier.

Since the repair crew would be coming to the island in a matter of days, the Lester family now had to pack up their essential belongings and prepare to move quickly. Through a stroke of great fortune, the house in North Bay that Mr. Lester had intended to rent once the shipping season was over turned out to be available earlier. If the Lester family could be ready to move in two days, the house would be ready for them.

But it was soon clear that packing up would take the family longer than they thought because, once again, the reporters descended on them like locusts. Mr. Lester's rescue of the crewmen from the wrecked barge had been exciting news throughout the northeastern Wisconsin area, but the news of this attempted robbery, together with the heroic story of a twelve-year old boy struggling to re-light the beacon as his father lay badly hurt, was too much for any newspaper to resist. By the afternoon of the second day after the gale, dozens of reporters had arrived, pumping every member of the family for any information they could get.

Mr. Lester was as forthcoming as he could be with the reporters, but he admitted that he had spent much of the incident fading in and out of consciousness. Mrs. Lester was reluctant to allow Rebecca to talk to any reporters at all, but Rebecca refused to hold back, bursting through her mother's restraining arms again and again to describe to the reporters with great relish how she had defended her home and family by dispatching one of the villains with a single blow from the oar. And, behind her mother's back, she even posed for pictures, one particularly lively recreation of her mighty swing eventually gracing the pages of a number of regional newspapers.

The reporters had, of course, been particularly interested in hearing William's story of what had happened. How had he felt as he raced up the lighthouse stairwell, only a few feet ahead of the hobo who was pursuing him with knife in hand? Had he been involved in the death of the hobo, who had plummeted off the side of the tower that stormy night? Had he pushed the man? How could the young boy possibly have overpowered him?

But, unlike Rebecca, William wanted no part of their questions. When the more aggressive reporters pushed their way into the kitchen despite Mrs. Lester's protests, he retreated to his bedroom on the second floor. When the reporters expressed a desire to pursue him to his sanctuary, Mrs. Lester had planted herself firmly in front of the stairs to the second landing, threatening that she would call the police if any one of them placed as much as a single foot on the stairs.

Eventually, sensing that there was no more to be squeezed out of this particular story, the reporters started drifting off. The family could once again return to their packing and, a day later, were able to make the move to their new quarters with the kind help of Mrs. Lester's brother-in-law, who had managed to borrow a truck for the move to North Bay.

Chapter 16: Looking Ahead

A few days later, the Lesters were in their new North Bay home and starting to get comfortable. There were still numerous courtesy calls from residents of North Bay and Sturgeon Bay, but the prying eyes and ears of the newspaper men were now gone and the entire family felt a keen sense of relief.

Although it was by no means a large village, there were some advantages to living in North Bay. The walk to school was now much shorter than it had been from the lighthouse, and Rebecca could now visit freely with many of her friends after school. In fact, Rebecca was now in her element. She had welcomed the reporter's questions about her brave deeds in the first few days after the gale, and now did nothing to discourage the curiosity of her classmates as to what really happened on that dramatic day at the lighthouse. Borrowing the teacher's blackboard pointer, she gave innumerable demonstrations of her oar-swinging technique, so many that her teacher at one point kindly suggested to Rebecca that it might not be necessary to repeat the performance again since every child in the school had witnessed the display at least a dozen times.

Mrs. Lester was also very happy, although quietly so. She knew her husband, whose recovery would take a fair amount of time, would be restless and unhappy until he was back on his feet again. But she was at peace. She quickly got on speaking terms with her closest neighbors and enjoyed chatting with them. She no longer felt isolated as she had at the lighthouse. And the possibility of doing some part-time teaching at the North Bay school was getting to look more and more like it would become a reality. One of the two teachers at the school would be having a baby and would be taking the rest of the winter months off from teaching school. It seemed certain that Mrs. Lester would be asked to fill in for her.

A couple of weeks later, only days before Christmas, William found that he too felt content for the first time since the gale and all the events that had gone along with it. The kids in his class had been just as curious about his role in all the excitement as they had been about his sister's but, unlike Rebecca, he had said almost nothing about it. At one point, he told Jerry Van de Hoven, his best friend, that he didn't feel like a hero—not like he had when he'd help rescue the members of the barge crew—and he wished that none of it had ever happened.

He particularly wished that the hobo had not fallen to his death. He knew that it had not been his fault, but he hated that it had happened at all.

Of course William looked forward to Christmas. He was whittling a tiny little lamb to go along with his sister's wooden nativity set and was gathering pinecones for a wreath to give his mother. He wasn't sure what he was going to make for his father yet, but he knew he'd think of something.

And yet, he was looking ahead as well...looking ahead to March when he and his family would return to the lighthouse at the start of a new shipping season. Somehow he felt there was unfinished business there, maybe because the lighthouse had been forced to close down early due to the gale. The family had met every challenge it had faced to that point, but the gale had beaten them—had forced them to close down. But his family would be back in March, back again to do battle with the weather and anything else that tried to prevent them from running the lighthouse. He felt that this next time, nothing would stop them.

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If you enjoyed _Terror at the Lighthouse_ , you might want to check out other books by the author, especially _Due North to Freedom_ , and _King Arthur Returns_ , both available through all major eBook sellers.
