  The lighthouse was a tall concrete finger, painted dazzling white with broad red rings around it. It stood on the top of a rock palisade which rose steeply from the beach. Steel stairs spiraled upward on the outside, leading to the strong glass-enclosed electric eye at the top. Eddie and Teena paused on the beach below and looked up. Crude steps hewn out of the rocks led up to the lighthouse. “I’ll carry the lunch,” Eddie volunteered. “And be careful. The sea spray can make those steps slippery.” They took their time getting to the top. Sandy went ahead, sniffing in every crevice on the way. “Phew!” Teena gasped as they reached the base of the lighthouse. “There seem to be more steps every time we climb it.” Eddie smiled and shifted the lunch sack to his other hand. “You’re getting old, Teena,” he teased. “Welcome aboard, mates,” a deep, kindly voice spoke from nearby. They turned and saw Captain Daniels standing outside the door of his living quarters, a tiny three-room cottage located about fifty feet from the base of the lighthouse. “Oh, hello, Captain Daniels,” Teena called. “Sure glad you’re home.” “Home?” the former sea captain said, smiling. “A lightkeeper is always home.” In Eddie’s opinion, Captain Daniels looked exactly like an old ship’s captain or a lightkeeper should look. He wore a fringe of white beard which formed a half-circle, starting under one ear and curving across his chin and up the other side. His bushy white hair fairly exploded from beneath the battered dark-blue seaman’s cap which he wore even while eating. Eddie sometimes wondered if Captain Daniels wore the cap to bed. The old mariner also had sharp blue eyes. Eddie pictured all stout seamen as having sharp blue eyes. “We brought a little lunch with us, Captain Daniels,” Teena said. “Hope you haven’t eaten already.” A twinkle came into Cap’s eyes. “I might have,” he said, “but I reckon I better confess that I saw you through my telescope coming up the beach. Thought I’d better hold off on lunch—just in case.” “Can we eat outside?” Teena asked. “The lawn’s nice and dry,” Cap said. “Let’s make it a picnic,” Eddie suggested. “Good idea, mate,” the retired seafarer said. Captain Daniels took great pride in his small patch of grass. It seemed to grow right out of the rock on which the lighthouse stood. However, Captain Daniels had hauled in topsoil from miles away and spread it carefully to make the lawn. He tended it, and the flower beds which bordered it, with an affection that seemed strangely out of place for a swashbuckling ship’s captain who had roamed the seven seas. The three of them sat down on the lawn. Teena passed around the sandwiches, opened the potato chips, and unwrapped the pickles and olives. They ate for a while in silence, looking off across the blue water of the bay toward the open ocean beyond. Eddie’s gaze followed the curving shore line to the north. Land’s end in that direction was Cedar Point, which stuck its rocky finger out into the ocean. It was wildly rugged country, difficult to get to except by boat across the bay. Eddie supposed that was why the lighthouse had been built on the smaller point located on the more civilized curve of the bay. Yet the lighthouse was high and plainly visible to ships at sea. Captain Daniels finished his lunch, dug a pipe from his pocket, and tamped tobacco into the bowl. “Mighty good,” he said. “Sure nice of you young folks to share your rations with me.” “Oh, we like to do it, Captain Daniels,” Teena said. “It’s so much fun coming up here to visit you.” “From what I’ve been reading in the papers,” the lightkeeper said, “I hardly expected to see you for a while.” “You mean the stolen isotope?” Eddie asked. “I don’t know much about isotopes,” Cap said, “but I do know that the newspapers have been making your father walk the plank for letting it be stolen.” “It really wasn’t his fault,” Eddie defended. “Of course not,” Captain Daniels agreed. “But someone always gets blamed. Just like those missing blueprints I read about in this morning’s paper. Teena’s father probably has nothing to do with guarding them, but when they turn up missing, he’s the one who gets lashed to the mast. The captain of a ship takes the blame for everything that happens aboard. Actually, that’s the way it should be, I suppose.” Eddie had to agree, but he didn’t like to think about the worry his father and Mr. Ross were going through. He had been trying not to think about it. Captain Daniels seemed to sense this. He quickly changed the subject. “Don’t seem to be many fishermen out today,” he said, looking off across the bay. “And there’s one boat out there that could just as well have stayed ashore. Won’t catch anything worth frying out there on top of the sand bar.” The rowboat had been anchored over the light-blue strip of water which marked the familiar sand bar stretching nearly a half mile across the middle of the bay. The sand bar lay about ten feet beneath the surface of the water. It was marked by three buoys, one at each end and one in the middle. Deep-draft boats avoided the sand bar. Fishermen kept away from it, as the larger fish lay in deeper water. “Isn’t that the boat with those two men, Eddie?” Teena asked. “I think so,” Eddie said, squinting through the sunlight. “What two men?” Cap asked. Quickly Eddie told him about the two strangers he and Teena had come across at the cove. Captain Daniels reached into his pocket and brought out a small telescope. He pulled its sections out to full length and handed it to Eddie. “See for yourself,” he invited. Eddie adjusted the lens to his vision. With the telescope it was easy to see that the two men in the rowboat were the tall one called Simms and the chunky one called Roy. “Anyway,” Eddie said, “they don’t seem to be pulling in any fish.” He passed the telescope to Teena. “It doesn’t look like they’re even trying,” Teena said. “There’s only one line in.” “Maybe they’re just relaxing,” Captain Daniels said. “Some people don’t care whether they catch any fish or not. They rent a boat, row it out and anchor it, and then sit around soothing their nerves. People build up a lot of tensions these days, you know. Folks have different ways of getting rid of them.” “They were nervous, all right,” Teena said. “Especially the tall one.” She handed the telescope back to Captain Daniels. “Well, let’s forget about them,” Eddie suggested. “Captain Daniels, would you like us to help polish the light again today?” “You know you’re always welcome to help with that,” the lightkeeper said, “but I don’t want you coming up here thinking I expect you to work.” “Oh, but that isn’t work,” Teena said. “It’s fun.” Eddie agreed with that. Not only was it fun, but it was a great thrill to climb up to the top of the lighthouse. Captain Daniels got some rags and a can of window cleaner out of a small tool shed at the foot of the lighthouse. “Why don’t you let us do it today, Captain Daniels?” Teena asked. “No use in your climbing all of those stairs.” “You win,” the lightkeeper said, smiling. “I’ll wait down here.” Eddie and Teena took the rags and cleaner and started up the steel stairs which spiraled up the outside to the top of the lighthouse. The stairs were perfectly safe, as a waist-high railing prevented any possibility of an accident. Reaching the top, they paused on the narrow steel balcony that circled the light. The view across the bay was spectacular—blue water and whitecaps as far as they could see. A couple of steamers dragged banners of smoke across the distant horizon. In the other direction they saw Oceanview sprawling out inland from the shore of the bay. Both Acme Aircraft Company and the college campus were in plain view. After filling themselves with the view, they got busy on the light. It was like polishing a giant lantern chimney. It had thick, wavy glass to magnify the beam of the enormous electric lamp which rotated inside, making three complete turns a minute. Being daytime, the light was turned off. In fact, Eddie never had seen the light up close at night. He imagined it would be very blinding, although he doubted if anyone ever would be foolish enough to climb up and look into it. It was bright enough, even from a distance, as it swept its white warning finger through the sky. He and Teena worked away at spreading the window cleaner. After it had dried on the thick glass, they went over it carefully with their soft rags. The dirt and the white deposit left from the salt spray came off easily, leaving the glass bright as crystal. “I guess that’s it,” Eddie said, after they had made a complete circle of the glass. He paused to take one last look around. “We’d better be getting back home, too,” Teena suggested. “It must be three o’clock.” Eddie glanced up at the sun. “You’re about right,” he said. They made their way back down the stairs. Cap was waiting at the bottom. “It’s as bright as the northern star, mates,” he said, craning his neck to get a good look at their handiwork. “I sure do thank you both.” “We’re the ones to thank you for letting us come out here to visit you, Captain Daniels,” Eddie said. “Any time,” the old mariner invited. “You’re always welcome. And I don’t expect you to bring a lunch or polish the light, either.” “We have to go now,” Teena said. “But we’ll come out to see you again before long. Come on, Sandy.” “I’ll be looking for you,” Captain Daniels called after them, as they started down the rock steps toward the beach. Later, when they reached the cove they noticed that the rowboat was no longer anchored out over the sand bar. Then Eddie saw it in close to shore, heading for Anderson’s Landing. He didn’t give it any more thought. As they approached Anderson’s Landing, the two strangers were tying up at the dock. “Let’s see if they caught anything,” Eddie suggested. “Let’s not,” Teena objected. “They weren’t very nice to us.” “They didn’t mean anything,” Eddie said. “Maybe someone should tell them that the fishing is no good over the sand bar.” “I’ll bet they found that out for themselves,” Teena said. But Eddie already had started walking out onto the plank boat dock. Teena followed. “Here, mister, I’ll help you,” Eddie offered as the heavy-set man removed the oars from the oarlocks and moved toward the prow of the boat. “O.K.,” the man said, trying to keep his balance in the rocking boat. Then he glanced up. “Hey, you’re the kids we saw earlier, aren’t you? You following us or something?” “No, sir,” Eddie said. “We were on our way home. Just thought we’d come out and see what kind of luck you had.” “We did all right, didn’t we, Roy?” the tall man said. “But where are your fish?” Teena asked. “We left them in the bay,” Roy, the portly man, said. “I guess so,” Eddie said, smiling. “No one ever catches any fish out over the sand bar. The fish hang around in the deeper water.” “Well, we don’t care much for fish, anyway,” Roy said. “Then why do you go fishing?” Teena wondered. “We do it to get away from kids who ask silly questions,” Simms said curtly. “Now beat it and leave us alone.” He tossed the two fishing poles onto the dock and climbed out of the boat. “Sure, mister,” Eddie said. “We didn’t mean to bother you.” “Don’t get sore, kids,” Roy said. “Simms is a little sunburned, that’s all. Makes him cranky.” The tall man was sunburned, all right. Eddie had noticed that. But then, he had expected it. Neither man boasted any kind of a tan, and the sun had been hot all afternoon. Eddie also had noticed something else. It struck him as strange, although he didn’t know what to make of it. The metal tube which he had noticed in the bottom of the boat when they had first met the men in the cove was no longer in sight. If it had contained a collapsible fishing rod as he had guessed, why wasn’t it still there in the bottom of the boat? Eddie was certain the men hadn’t put in to shore between the time they had left the cove and now. If they had he and Teena would have noticed it from the lighthouse. A metal tube like the one Eddie had seen earlier in the bottom of the rowboat simply would not disappear. Perhaps it hadn’t contained a collapsible fishing rod, as he had guessed. If not, what was in the cylinder? And where was it now? |
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