g to the rope, it was not long until
five men got to the top. The keeper, seeing how successful Eric's plan
had proved, ordered every man to cut for himself a good foothold in the
ice, and then, tailing on to the rope, they got the apparatus-cart up
the slope, two men behind trying to guide it from below. It was a
difficult haul, but at last they got the cart to the summit, and, in
order to keep it from sliding down, straddled the wheels atop.

[Illustration: RUSHING THE APPARATUS-CART.

Coast Guard Crew with life-gun, line-box, shots, hawser, breeches-buoy
and signal-lights, ploughing through heavy sand to wreck on beach a mile
away.

Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.]

The cart rocked unsteadily. Suddenly, as a particularly vicious blast
came whistling by, it canted as though it were going to fall. Eric, who
was a few feet away from the cart, jumped forward to save it, but missed
his footing and fell into the mush-ice twenty feet below, going clear
through.

There was no time for orders. Muldoon, quick as a wink, almost before
any one else had grasped the accident, knotted a line around the cart
and taking the other end in his hand jumped into the mush-ice after the
boy. So true was his eye that he struck almost the same point and a few
seconds later appeared above the surface with Eric. Neither was hurt,
but both were wet through, handicapping them for work on so cold a
night.

Eric's ruse in getting the apparatus-cart to the top of the cliff,
however, had solved the biggest part of the difficulty. By carefully
sliding the cart along the face of the cliff for ten yards or a little
more, they found themselves above the road leading out to the spit. It
was then merely a matter of lowering the cart to the other side.

Meantime Muldoon had raced the boy to the lighthouse for a chance to
change their clothes before they froze on them. No sooner did he knock
on the door than the lighthouse-keeper came out, and the open door
showed his daughter behind. Edith Abend was only seventeen years old,
but she had already saved two lives.

"You got here at last, then," said the lighthouse-keeper gruffly.

Edith, with a readier sense that help was needed, said quickly,

"What has happened? Is there anything wrong?"

"Nothin' wrong at all, darlint," said the Irishman, with his national
readiness to say nice things to a pretty girl, "only we've had a trifle
of a duckin' an' if there's annything like dhry clothes in this ho