LUCKY TOM'S SHADOW; OR, THE SEA-GULLS' WARNING. BY FRANK H. TAYLOR. A LIFE-SAVING STATION.

"Be still, Meg, be still. Don't trouble me. Go and play. Young 'uns like you are good for naught else;" and so saying, Meg's grandmother turned fretfully toward the window of the cottage, and resumed her listless watching of the sea-gulls across the inlet, as they fluttered, dipped, and arose over the wavelets, picking their dinner from the shoals of little fish the mackerel had chased inshore.

"But I'm of some use, granny; you said so yesterday, when I fetched the blueberries. An' I'll go fur some more if you like. I know where there's lots of 'em—acres of 'em."

"Do as you please, child, but don't tease your granny," replied the old woman.

There was little need to tell Maggie, or "Meg," as she was generally called, to "do as she pleased," for in all of her short life of ten years she had never done otherwise. She had roamed unmissed all the days among the sand-hills of the beach, wading in the "mash" for lily pods, or hunting in the scrub for birds' eggs. Such a place as school had never been named to her. The alphabet was unknown to her, but she understood the rough talk of the fishermen, and could mend a net or 'tend a line with the best man among them.

Meg lived with her "granny" in a little unpainted hut made from ships' planking, and set among a few low twisted pines, within a short distance of a cove where Lucky Tom, her father, who was a pilot, kept his boats and moored his sloop, when not sailing out on the blue sea watching for ships to give him employment.

Meg's mother had died while she was a baby; her "granny" was almost always cross; so the child had grown up with but a single affection. It was all for her father, and he returned it in a rough, good-natured way. So these two were seldom apart when the pilot was ashore, and Meg came to be known among the beach people as "Lucky Tom's Shadow."

Now just why the pilot was called "Lucky Tom" does not appear: but it was said among the folks on the coast that fish would nibble at his hooks, and obligingly allow themselves to be caught by the dozen, when nobody else could catch even a porgy.

Near the cottage, Lucky Tom had raised the mast of a ship once wrecked on the bar, and made a platform at the top, with steps leading to it; and Meg was never so happy as when she sat high up in her "bird's nest," as she called it, with her father, and listened to his surprising yarns about foreign ports, while they scanned the horizon with a glass for incoming ships.

Meg tried hard to behave kindly toward her grandmother; but the old woman never smiled, and seldom troubled herself about Meg's goings or comings.

"She's purty certain to git 'round at meal-times, an' that's often enough," was about all she would say when Lucky Tom scolded about the child's "bringin' up."

Nearly twenty years before, Lucky Tom's father, Jack Bolden, had gone off in his schooner, the Petrel, to catch cod, and from that day neither the Petrel nor her crew were ever seen. After months had gone by, poor Mrs. Bolden fell into a fever, and when she was able to move about, she sat all day by the window, looking out upon the waves, and the neighbors gazed at her sorrowfully, for they said she had lost her reason; but in Meg's eyes, to whom she had always been the same, she was a very wise and mysterious person, and the tales she repeated to the little girl, woven from her deranged fancy, were full of strange sea-monsters, talking fish, and birds that whispered secrets to those who watched for long-absent friends. All these were listened to and believed with the full confidence of childish innocence.

Meg tied on her old and faded bonnet, picked up her basket, and walked away with a light step to the blueberry pasture.

She soon became so busy picking the clusters of round little fruit, as they peeped from beneath the dark and glossy leaves, that she did not see how dark the eastern sky had become, until a cool gust of wind caught her sun-bonnet, and sent it half across the field. Then she noticed that the sun was already hidden by the advancing clouds, and away out across the black fretted sea a long line of foam revealed the white-caps leaping in great haste over each other, just like a flock of sheep, in their race to reach the sands.

The only near refuge for poor Meg was the Life-saving Station—one of those lonely buildings that the government has placed along the coast, with boats and crews, whose duty keeps them on the watch all winter for shipwrecks. It was midsummer now, and the station was locked up tight; but Meg knew how to get the better of locks and bars. She reached the building just in time to escape a wetting from the thick rain that now shut out the sea and land alike, beating fiercely against the stout structure, and running in many little rivulets down the sand, to be swallowed up, as all water is at last, by the great ocean.

At one corner the winds had blown away the sand, so Meg found room to crawl with her basket beneath the floor, and a loose board she had long ago discovered admitted her to the interior. What a gloomy, close place in contrast with the wildness of the scene outside! Have you ever visited a station of the Life-saving Service? No? Well, then, I'll try, with the aid of the picture, to explain what it is like.

First, there is the life-boat, light but very strong, and shaped so it will rise over the tops of the waves rather than go through them. This one is handled by about six men; one, the captain, to steer, four men to row, and one with a pike-staff and lines in the bow. You notice that the wheels of the truck holding the boat are very wide; that allows them to roll over the sand without sinking into it. Under the boat is a leathern bucket, a coil of rope, and a grapnel or hook, and in front an ingenious device, consisting of a board with a row of pegs about the edge, upon which a line many hundreds of feet in length is placed, with the end tied to a projectile in the queer-looking cannon above. This is intended to be shot over the rigging of ships ashore, and used to haul out the larger rope upon the cart to the left of the picture, and to which the canvas bags hanging from the ceiling are fastened, to bring people from the wreck. Back of the cart you see rockets and signal torches, with a long tin trumpet, all neatly kept in a rack. There are lanterns too, and against the partition a mortar and some balls, two axes, and many other tools. With all of these and their uses Meg was well acquainted. Sometimes she had seen the crew run with the boat down to the water, and go through with their drill, when the Superintendent came there; and once the men hauled it out in the night, everybody greatly excited, and put out into the waves to pick up the crew of a sinking steamer; but a schooner was there first, and they only brought back a woman and little girl. How scared they did look, the poor things! and how thankful the child was for the use of Meg's only spare frock!

There seemed no prospect of the rain ceasing, and so Meg sat down in the back room upon a bench; and as it was not in the nature of such an active little girl to sit still long and keep awake, she very soon fell asleep.

When she started up from a dream full of strange sea-goblins, it was to find that everything was dark. The rain had ceased, and Meg, after rubbing her eyes, concluded to go home. When she lifted the board she discovered, to her terror, that the rain had washed her burrow full of sand, and she was a prisoner. The strong doors and windows resisted her puny efforts, so she sat down upon a coil of rope to consider the situation.

Now most children would have cried; but Meg hadn't done such a thing since she was teething. No, she only taxed her little head for some means of escape. First, she must have a light. She well knew where the matches were kept, and in a moment she had a lantern burning brightly. Then it occurred to her to try the roof. It was a difficult matter to lift the heavy trap leading to the little platform from which the men usually watched during the winter days; but she soon stood out in the bleak night, the salt spray driving against her face, and the gale rushing by, as though it would tear her hold from the railing to which she clung.

White sea-gulls whirled about her head, attracted by the light, screaming hoarse and discordant notes in her ears. They terrified her at first, but she soon recalled what her "granny" had said, and felt sure the birds were trying to tell her something, and that it must be about her father, who was still out in the terrible storm, unable to find the inlet.

From far out on the sea the wind brought a moaning sound, as though some unhappy creature called in vain for help. It came nearer and more distinct from the northward, finally dying away in the distance upon the other hand.

Fierce lightning flashes broke from the retreating storm-clouds, and by the weird electric glare Meg saw a wild figure, with arms upraised, which seemed to come out of the surf, and speed along the sands. By the same light she thought she saw the topmasts of a vessel on the sea.

The gulls wheeled and screamed now more excitedly than ever. Meg was nearly overcome with terror, but losing not a moment, she sprang down the stairs, returning with an armful of torches. And now the lurid flare of the life-saving signal burned up fiercely, the winds catching the flame, and bearing thousands of dancing sparks away across the beach, while the shape of the station and the heroic little girl upon the roof stood out boldly, just in time for Lucky Tom to put his helm down, and head his boat away from the fatal breakers he was nearing in the darkness.

And now suppose we let good-natured Lucky Tom tell the rest of the story in his own style.

"Well, sir, you see, the blow came up kind o' unexpected like, an' I knowed we couldn't make port; but I didn't much care for that, as pilots has to take all sorts o' weather, but we reckoned we could keep the craft off an' on about the blowin' buoy; but, bless you! the buoy got adrift, an' floated away down the beach. We heard it groanin' ahead of us all the time, an' afore we knowed where we was, we got nigh into the breakers. Just then I seen a twinkle on the beach, an' shortly a torch showed us the station, with an angel o' mercy a-wavin' it from the roof; an' it wa'n't a minnit too soon, nuther.

"We kept away till daylight a-watchin' an' wonderin' at the torches burnin' all the time from atop o' the station, and then we made the inlet. Mebbe it'll seem queer to you, but none of us thought of Meg when we saw the light; but the whole thing was plain enough when one of the crew came runnin' to the house, after we'd been ashore a bit, an' hollered:

"'Why, Lucky Tom, the angel we saw was nobody but your own Shadow, little Meg, an' she's there yit, wavin' a flag.' So we went over an' let her out. The young'un told us all about hearin' the sound o' complainin' on the sea, the black figure that ran along the beach, an' the warnin' the birds give her. You see, that was a notion her granny put into her head, the one about the birds. Speakin' of the old woman, there was another queer thing that happened on the same night. We couldn't find marm high nor low; but when Meg spoke of the wild spirit on the beach, we knowed it must be her, and sure enough we found the poor old body 'way up by the point, 'most dead. She had an idee, you see, that when it blowed hard the Petrel would come ashore, though I reckon the Petrel has been at the bottom more'n twenty years now. We took her home an' 'tended her, but she didn't last long after that."

The story of Meg's adventure came to the ears of a lady on the mainland, and she soon afterward paid a visit to the little girl, who was now left all alone when her father went away, and it was arranged that she should live in the lady's house, and go to school. And now the school-master says she promises to prove as bright as she is brave.

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