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“Whenever I see your light shining, I’ll put up a prayer for its keeper, and thanking you for what you did for us, ma’am–if my little one’s a girl, she will be Ida Lewis!”

Up spoke his comrade: “My daughter’s twelve year old come September next, and I hope she’ll be your kind. It’d make a new kind of a world to have such!”

While such praise did not turn Ida’s very level head, or make her vain, it gave her a deep satisfaction and a tremendous sense of responsibility in her beloved occupation.

Two years went by, and Ida Lewis was a name which commanded respect throughout Rhode Island because of her work for the government, and there was scarcely a day when she did not direct some wandering boatman or give valuable aid to a distressed seafarer, but from the day she brought the men and their load of sheep to shore it was a year before there was any need of such aid as she had given them. Then on a day never to be forgotten by those to whose rescue she went, she saw two of the soldiers who were stationed at Fort Adams rowing toward the fort from Newport. A young lad was at the oars, and he showed that he was not in any way experienced as a boatman. A sudden squall overtook the small boat in mid-bay, and, as Ida Lewis looked at it, it capsized. At the moment Ida happened to be without hat or coat, or even shoes. Rushing to the boat-house, she took her staunch friend to the shore, and launched out in the wild squall under an inky-black sky; and she had to row against a wind that drove her back time after time. Finally she reached the wreck, only to find the boy had gone under. The soldiers were clinging to the bobbing keel of the boat, and Ida grasped them with a firm, practised hand, while at the same time managing to keep her own boat near enough so that when a wave washed them together she was able to help the exhausted soldiers to climb into it. They were unable to speak, and one of them was so exhausted that she feared she could not get him to land in time to resuscitate him.

With wind-blown hair, and eyes dark with determination, she rowed as she had never rowed before, and at last her boat touched the rocky home ledge. Out she jumped, and in less time than it takes to tell it, she had the men before her fire, wrapped in blankets. One of them was unconscious for such a long time that his rescuer was wondering what was best to do–to take the risk of leaving him and row to the mainland for a doctor, or to take the risk of doing for him with her own inexperienced hands. Just then his blue eyes opened, and after a drink of stimulant he slowly revived, and at last was able to talk coherently. The storm was still raging and the men remained on the lighthouse ledge with the girl rescuer, for whom they showed open admiration; then, when the clouds lifted and the moon shone wanly through the rift, they took their own boat and rowed off to the fort. But they were staunch friends of Ida Lewis from that day, and she enjoyed many a chat with them, and had more than one pleasant afternoon on the mainland with them when they were off duty.

At another time she was out in her boat in a bad storm, when through the dense darkness she heard cries of, “Help! help!” and, rowing in the direction from which the cries came, she found three men in the water clinging to the keel of an overturned boat. With her usual promptness in an emergency, she dragged them all into her boat and took them to shore. Another day, from the lighthouse tower, she saw the slender figure of a man clinging to a spindle which was a mile and a half from the lighthouse. In a very short time he would be too exhausted to hold on any longer. She must hurry, hurry! With flying feet she made her boat ready; with firm strokes she rowed out to the spindle, rescued the man and bore him safely to shore.