David and I met at the door of the building, and we quickly set to work.
Mother had slowly been shifting responsibilities of the light to me. I was no less capable than she, and the events of the past year had seen her health decline as her slight frame collapsed in on itself and walking became more difficult. Most days she shuffled about stiffly in carefully masked pain, her movements restricted but her determination unbending. She remained sharp, her hands never idle, her expectations for order, routine, and propriety undiminished, her praise and affection understated.
She appeared on the front porch, one hand raised to her forehead, shading the nonexistent sun, in an attempt to discern the approaching menace. It crawled across the water, and by the time David and I had the engine fired up and the steam pressure sustained, the bank had swallowed the outlying islands and the mysterious world of Superior in fog. She nodded her approval and disappeared back inside to note the time in the logbook.
I climbed the tower and gazed back over the Lake. I could see the freighter now. She was five miles off, steaming east in the shipping channels, only her derricks and the top of her funnel reaching above the lowlying cloud that stretched for miles and miles in every direction. It appeared as though the surface of the Lake had risen, creating new islands from the tops of others and channels where there had been none before.
As darkness approached, David took the night watch and lit the lamp, adjusting the mantles on the four burners until the flames were steady and bright, winding the gears and setting in motion the weights and pulleys that would turn the reflectors, creating the illusion of the light blinking on and off. Mother, Emily, and I sat in our home beneath the tower, listening to the familiar sounds of the light’s clockworks and the intermittent calling of the horn.
I woke just after midnight to silence. The gears above me continued to turn, but I could no longer hear the horn. I pulled on my clothes and headed outside, expecting to be greeted by starlight, expecting the moon to shine a path on the water off the point. I did not expect to still be wrapped in dense, impenetrable fog.
David was already hard at work on the diaphone. He was stripped to the waist, lying on the floor, reaching around the boiler, struggling with a flywheel. There were tools and parts scattered about around him, and I could hear him cursing at the motor beneath his breath, his accent thick and strong and uninhibited.
“How long has it been out?” I asked.
He started, banging his head against the boiler as he slid out from beneath the machine. “Good lord, Lizzie! You scared the daylights out of me.” He wiped his forehead with an oily rag, leaving a streak of black. “Not more than twenty minutes. The flywheel’s cracked. I’m trying to reach the bolt to see if I can jerry-rig something together.” And he slid back under.
I knelt down beside him, looking up at the motor. My skills, while certainly adequate, could not match his.
“It’s thick out there,” he said. “We’ve got no choice. We need to fire up the hand signal.”
Together we hauled out the antiquated equipment and set it up outside on the rocky shore. It was an old ship’s horn, packed in a wooden case, stored and not likely used for decades. I checked the leather bellows for cracks, hoping that the brass bearings had not corroded, and then pressed the lever. It was a pitiful substitute, a peculiar resonance, whining and harsh, a sad sequel to the satisfying signal of the diaphone. But it would suffice. It would reach out a mile or more from the rocky point to say, We are here.
“I’ll take the first watch,” I offered.
I settled on the shore next to the horn, marking the time, setting a rhythm that was regulated by the cranking of the brass handle and the sound rushing from it out into the misty night. I had to imagine the islands around me, the shoals and rocks and channels. The ships. I knew that they were out there, listening, listening. Ghosts drifting past. So I called out to them, and I too listened for them to answer.
Dawn hovered below a nonexistent horizon, and the world grew just a little bit brighter in advance of the approaching sun. As the birds around me woke and called out greetings, stretching their voices, I caught an echo of my horn.
Between sounding the horn, I tuned my listening, ignoring the muttering of the Lake, the conversations of the warblers, and the frogs cavorting in the bog.
It came again, its direction indistinct but its pattern defined. Three short, three long, three short. Three short, three long, three short. The signal was unmistakable. The vessel was in distress.
I cranked the reply from our horn, two more cycles, straining to hear each time, getting a better bearing on the vessel. As soon as I completed the third blast, I ran, banging on David’s door to wake him, and then did the same to rouse Mother. I was back at the horn before the minute had elapsed, and didn’t miss sounding one signal.
Mother and David appeared, their approaching presence heralded by the feeble yellow glow of kerosene lamps. They stood on the rocky point gazing out at the murky wall of cloud that swallowed the light’s sweeping beam, straining to catch the call from the vessel hidden in the midst of it.
“She’s off course,” Mother said. “And not far from the shoal, by the sounds of it.”
“I can head out in Sweet Pea,” David replied. “See if I can help. She may have run up on the rocks.”
“Elizabeth will go, too. It’ll take the both of you to find your way back.”
I knew the water around the islands better than anyone. David was a better boat handler.
Mother settled herself next to the horn. “Best get on.”