oices straight out to
sea, away from Wecanicut. The lanterns stood quite still for a
minute more, and then they bobbed away. At first I didn't believe
that they were really growing smaller and smaller. But they were,
and at last they were gone entirely, far down the shore.

"Are you crying, Chris?" Jerry said suddenly, in a queer, wheezy
voice. He'd been shouting even harder than I had.

"I think not," I said, and my own voice was very strange indeed.

Jerry whacked me hard on the back, and said:

"Good old Chris! _Good_ old Chris!"

The shore of Wecanicut was so black that we might have dreamed the
lanterns, but I still could hear the way Father's own voice had
sounded, calling "Chris-ti-ine!" We almost stumbled over Greg when
we crawled back to him, and he said: "Can we go home now, Chris?"

The wind gnashed around in a spiteful kind of way, and Jerry touched
my hand suddenly and said: "Chris, it's raining."

CHAPTER IX

It _was_ raining,--big cold splashes that came faster and faster. I
felt my blouse stick coldly to my shoulder in the places where it
was wet.

"We _can't_ let Greg lie there and have it rain on him," I said.

Jerry and I thought of the pirate cave at the same moment, but we
didn't see how we could possibly carry Greg to it in the dark. We
thought that as it wasn't his legs that were hurt he might be able
to walk there, if we helped him. He was very brave and quite willing
to try, though a little dazed about why we wanted him to, but when
we stood him carefully on his feet, he said, "Chris--no--" and we
had to lay him down again. By this time it was really raining, and I
put the skirt over Greg, instead of under him, while we tried to
think.

"It might work if we made a chair," Jerry suggested.

So we stooped down and clasped each other's wrists criss-cross, the
way you do to make a human chair, and got Greg on to it, with the
arm that wasn't hurt around my neck. The darkness was perfectly
pitchy, and we had to feel for every step to be sure that it was a
solid place and not the slippery edge that went straight down into
the sea. Greg cried a little and said, "_Please--_stop." I could
feel his hair against my face. It was all wet, and his cheek was
wet, too, and cold.

The rain blew a little way into the cave, but not much, and we put
Greg as far back as we could. The bottom of the cave was very jaggy
and not comfortable to lie on, but we made it as soft as we could
with the