FullReads

At this time Ida Lewis was so well known as being always on hand in any emergency that it was taken as a matter of course to have her appear out of the sky, as one’s preserver, and the man, though extremely grateful, did not seem as astonished as he might have otherwise been to be saved from such a death by a young girl who apparently dropped from the skies just to rescue him.

In all of these experiences, when she was able to save men’s lives at the risk of her own, and was successful by reason of her quick wit and self-forgetful courage, despite the grave chances she took, she never had a single fright about her own safety, but simply flew across the bay at any time of day or night at the sight of a speck on the water which to her trained eye was a human being in danger.

Winter’s hand had laid its glittering mantle of ice on Baker’s Bay, and on a glorious sunlit morning Ida was ready to start to Newport to make some necessary purchases. When she was just about to push her boat off the rocks she looked over the bay with the intent, piercing glance for which she was famous among fisher-folk, who declared she could “see out of the back of her head,” and caught a glimpse of uniforms, of struggling figures in that part of the bay which was so shallow as to be always frozen in mid-winter, and which the soldiers all knew to be dangerous to cross. But there were two of them, waving their arms in frantic appeal for help, as they tried to keep from going under in the icy water of the bay.

There was not a moment to lose. Ida put out from shore, rowed swiftly to a point as near the drowning and freezing men as was possible, then with her oars broke the ice sufficiently to make a channel for her boat. As she came near to them she found that the insecure ice, melted by the strong sun, had given way under them, while they were evidently trying to take a short cut to Fort Adams from Newport.

It was hard work and quick work for Ida’s experienced hands to get them into the life-boat; and so nearly frozen were they that she was obliged to rest on her oars, at the same time rubbing their numb limbs as well as she could. Then she rowed for shore faster than she had ever rowed but once before, and, as she told afterward:

“I flew for restoratives and hot water, and worked so hard and so fast, rubbing them and heating them, that it was not long before they came to life again and were sitting up in front of the fire, apologizing for their folly, and promising that they would never again give me such a piece of work to do, or cross the bay in winter at a point where they knew it was a risk.” She added, naively: “They were as penitent as naughty children, so I took advantage of it and gave them a lecture on things soldiers ought not to do, among them drinking whisky–even with the good excuse of being cold–and showing them quite plainly that this scare they had had came from that bad habit. They seemed very sorry, and when they got up to go, they saluted me as if I were their captain. Then off they went to the fort.”

Several days later she received a letter of thanks from the officers at Fort Adams, and a gold watch from the men she had rescued “in grateful appreciation of a woman’s heroism.”

On through the long years Ida Lewis, with hair growing slowly a little grayer, and with arms a little less equal to the burden of rowing a heavy boat through fierce winter gales, was faithful to her duties as keeper of the light, now never spoken of as the Lime Rock Light, but always as the Ida Lewis Light; and, although she was always averse to notoriety, yet she was forced to accept the penalty of her brave deeds, and welcome the thousands of tourists who now swarmed daily over the promontory and insisted on a personal talk with the keeper of the light. Had it not been for Mrs. Lewis, both aged and feeble, but able to meet and show the visitors over the island, Ida would have had no privacy at all and no time for her work.