CHAPTER XXV.
THE WRECK OF THE "SAMARITAN." Taffy stood for a moment listening.

He judged the wreck to be somewhere on the near side of the light-house, between it and the mouth of the creek; that was, if she had already struck.

If not, the gale and the set of the tide together would be sweeping her eastward, perhaps right across the mouth of the creek.

And if he could discover this his course would be to run back, intercept the coast-guard, and send him around by the upper bridge.
He waited for a second signal to guide him--a flare or a rocket: but none came.

The beach lay in the lew of the weather, deep in the hills' hollow and trebly land-locked by the windings of the creek, but above him the sky kept its screaming as though the bare ridges of the headland were being shelled by artillery.
He resolved to keep along the lower slopes and search his way down to the creek's mouth, when he would have sight of any signal shown along the coast for a mile or two to the east and north-east.