owing dark fast.
The schooner was beating about uncertainly, yet evidently determined to
reach the island.

Lloyd had made up his mind. There was no way to give her warning. All
he could do was to guide her, if possible, into the safe channel.

He went down to the landing opposite Cook's Crack, and began making a
half-circle of bits of rock and sand, to keep off the wind from the
fire he meant to make.

Then he began collecting sticks, dried grass, and bits of old wrecks,
with which the beach was strewed.

Now, making a bonfire no doubt appears to you, boys, to be only fine
fun, and you think Lloyd a very lucky fellow to have the chance. But a
bonfire in the street, on a summer night, or down in a vacant lot, is a
very different matter from Lloyd's work, alone, on a December night,
with the salt water plashing about his legs, and his breath freezing
about his mouth. Besides, he knew that the lives of the ship's crew
depended on what he did, or left undone. And he was not a man, to be
sure he was right, but a boy, only thirteen years old.

He heaped up the wood on the light pile of drift, struck a match and
put it to it, and in a minute the big flames flashed out all over the
dark rocks, and the black, seething plane of the sea, and the wedges of
ice that lay along shore. It was very cheery at first. Lloyd gave a
grand hurrah! and capered about it. But one does not care to hurrah and
caper alone. He thought the schooner would be in, now, in half an hour.

"They'll make straight for the fire," he said.

But half an hour, an hour passed, and, strain his eyes as he would, he
could see nothing but inky darkness, and hear nothing but the dull
swash, swash of the tide upon the sand. The fire was dying down. He
went groping up and down the beach for wood, and built it up again.

Two hours. Three.

It was terribly cold. Overhead there was neither moon nor star, only a
flat of black fog descending lower and lower. Surely the schooner had
gone. Suddenly he heard a cry.

It was Jem.

"Why, Lloyd! Are you crazy? Do you know this is the coldest night this
year on the island? My father says so."

"It's not so very cold," said Lloyd, beginning to hop about the fire,
and sing. "That schooner's due now, I should say." It heartened him so
to hear anybody's voice.

"The schooner's gone hours ago, I dare say. You'd have heard from her
before now if she meant to run in."

"Did the men go out?"

"No. It was dark when I rea