The Project Gutenberg eBook of Dot ... dot ... dash ... dot—"Fire!"

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Title: Dot ... dot ... dash ... dot—"Fire!"

Author: Clarice Detzer

Illustrator: Robb Beebe

Release date: October 26, 2025 [eBook #77129]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: The American Girl, 1929

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77129

Credits: Roger Frank

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DOT ... DOT ... DASH ... DOT—"FIRE!" ***

Quickly, and with her red and white flags under her arm, Edna started for the hotel.

Dot ... Dot ... Dash ... Dot—“Fire!”

By Clarice Detzer

Illustrations by Robb Beebe

Captain Eli James, commander of Whitefish Bay coast guard station, slammed his big right hand down on the desk and agreed enthusiastically.

“It’s what Edna needs, and she’ll do it!” he sang out. “That gal’s been hanging around life saving stations too long. Sure, and I can see it! All her life, leastwise since I’ve had the care of her, she’s been stuck off at the end o’ creation with a parcel o’ life savers, and not another gal her age in twenty miles. She’ll go, this time.” He looked around challengingly at the men of his crew. “Think you fellows can get along ’thout her for a short time?” he demanded.

Miss Mills, captain of the Whitefish City Girl Scout troop, arose briskly.

“It’s agreed,” she said. “It’ll do her good, Captain. Getting out with other girls will make Edna less....” she checked herself quickly. She had started to say “less awkward.”

“Make her a great deal more happy,” she amended. It would never do to call Edna James awkward before this adoring uncle.

“Happy’s what I want,” Captain James said.

“And by jumpin’ whales, you deserve it!” he told Edna heartily that night. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull sailor boy.” He rumpled up her short brown hair affectionately. “Get your outfit ready,” he commanded. “Anybody steerin’ out o’ Whitefish Bay has to look slick.”

And so it happened that on the first Friday evening in August, Edna James went into camp at Cummings Point with fifteen other members of Girl Scout Troop Number One, none of whom she knew. They had ridden since noon, to the end of a little logging railroad, and then carried their gear a mile across grassy hills to the beach. Now, at five o’clock, the three brown duck tents had been pitched, kettles swung over the blazing fires of the two patrols, and camp routine had begun. Two of the girls were digging a well on the sandy beach, four Tenderfoot Girl Scouts were bringing in driftwood, the patrol leaders were overseeing the supper arrangements, and Edna James, feeling very miserable and very worthless, was searching for something to do.

“What are you looking so disconsolate about?” Miss Mills demanded when she came in from her first inspection trip. “Why, you look just like a poor little lost lamb.”

Edna did not reply at once, only swallowed hard. She was a short, stocky, brown-skinned girl, just turned sixteen, with blue eyes that made a habit of squinting, eyes that had spent their whole life peering out into the wide blowy spaces of Lake Michigan.

“I don’t know....” she laughed uncomfortably. “I don’t know my duties. I feel useless. I don’t know what to do next.”

“Help the girls get in driftwood,” the troop captain suggested briskly. “We’ll need a lot of it. Nights are cold up here.”

Edna obeyed willingly. She knew all about cold nights. And cold days, too, for that matter. Work at the coast guard station was no respecter of weather. Day and night, winter and summer, the eight men of her uncle’s crew must take turns patrolling the rocky coast, and standing look-out in a queer little box of a room high on stilts upon the beach. A dozen times, with the wind screaming out of the Northwest and breakers thundering against the shore, Edna had climbed up to the lookout tower and watched her uncle Eli and his men launch their boats against the bellowing wrath of the lake, to come in, hours later, bringing a handful of thankful, frosted sailors. And a hundred times in calmer weather, she had stood watch while they searched for lost boats and vessels and missing pleasure craft.

Edna knew her duty then, all right! She must keep a sharp eye on the lake for signals. Must listen for the telephone. Must get hot fires roaring in the stoves. Must get out dry blankets, make up emergency beds for survivors, should there be any. Must notify coast guard stations north and south that there was a wreck. Must call a doctor. And must make coffee, great, strong, steaming pots of it, blacker than midnight, and have it bubbling when the men come in. If the wet, winded crew should return to quarters and find no hot coffee, no dry clothes awaiting them, Edna James would have fallen down on her job, that was all!

Sitting around the great fire that evening, Edna found it hard to join the conversation. The girls talked of things about which she knew nothing. Helen Thomas, her patrol leader, had spent the winter in Italy. Edna discovered that she was not familiar with Italian art, or gondolas on the Grand Canal, or the curve of the Bay of Naples, or any of the other subjects Helen was mentioning so lightly. She sat back uncomfortably while talk drifted to cars, dancing, parties, to the intimate life of the little city of Whitefish, and back again to cars ... straight eights, coupés, miles per gallon, to rides into the country, to traffic in cities.

“Must be hard driving in sand down to your station,” a girl said to Edna. It was Bess Henry, the youngest, and prettiest girl in either troop.

“I’ve never driven a car,” Edna admitted.

“Never drove! You mean you don’t know how?”

“No,” Edna confessed. She felt her cheeks coloring. “I don’t know how. I can sail a boat ... any small boat....”

“When we were at Miami,” Ruth Berger broke in, “we sailed a lot. A friend of Dad’s had a steam yacht....”

But this wasn’t the kind of sailing Edna understood. However, she found that time helped. She could listen with more interest. She became more accustomed to camp life after that first day. In one thing she excelled—she could swim. No matter how high the surf, she could tumble out into it, and swim far away from the others. The third day, when a villager towed a diving raft down from town and anchored it opposite the camp, according to Miss Mills’ directions, it was Bess Henry who first climbed the short ladder ... and dived like a swooping gull. Edna never had considered it important to be able to dive. It was swimming, good old-fashioned swimming, she had learned from her uncle Eli and the men of the coast guard crew. Although she could swim better than any other girl in camp, her diving was awkward.

No matter how high the surf. Edna could tumble into it and swim far away from the others.

She found that she got tired on the first hike, miserably and unbelievably tired. But she gritted her teeth and stuck it out. Stayed right through to the end, and next morning could hardly move her feet. In camp life, in first aid, in cooking, in the thousand details she did very well ... not brilliantly, understand, just very well.

“I’m not a complete failure,” she wrote her uncle Eli, “nor complete success. I merely get on!”

On the fourth day she was elected to remain behind as camp watchman while the others hiked in the woods. Each day someone must stay, to protect the camp from chipmunks and rabbits and porcupines and other small marauders. The assignment pleased her, to the surprise of the other girls. Loneliness held no terrors for her.

It was midmorning when she heard a step on the path; it was early for the girls to be returning.

Beyond the ashes of last night’s fire, looking critically over the camp site, stood a rather heavy, middle-aged man in a checked golf suit. He approached Edna deliberately.

“This your outfit?” he demanded. He spoke harshly.

“Whitefish Troop Girl Scouts,” Edna replied. She did not like the scowl on his red face.

“You the girls that have been wandering all over my property up there?” the man asked. He waved toward the north. “Making yourselves at home?”

“I don’t know anything about your property,” Edna answered. Life at a coast guard station had taught her to respond quickly when spoken to, and she knew well enough that decent men sometimes had rough voices. But before she could continue the stranger said:

“Well, I’ll tell you something about it, young lady. This is my property right here where you’re standing. Bought it yesterday. Bought it to keep campers off. To get rid of outfits like this. My name’s Vanbalken. I run the Ridge View Hotel up the shore. Guests are complaining. Say you’re wandering all over the place.”

Edna waited politely until he was through talking.

“Miss Mills is our captain,” she explained. “You’d better see her. She’ll be back soon. Do you mind waiting?”

“I can’t wait. Too busy to worry about trespassers. If she wanted to camp, she ought to have asked permission.”

“She got permission.”

“From the other owners. Weeks ago, before I bought it. Not from me.”

“She wouldn’t have come if she’d known you didn’t want us. Of course we can move ... in an hour....”

“Who said anything about moving?” Again he surveyed the camp. “But keep away from the golf links. It annoys the golfers to have a lot of girls tramping down the fairway.”

He went off growling, without so much as a nod over his shoulder. Edna watched him with growing anger. At least he could have been less like a bear. She laughed when she thought that Mr. Vanbalken never could have won a merit badge for performing the duties of a hostess properly. She wondered if she had been as tactful as she should have been.

At noon when the troop returned, Edna had the fires blazing, the skillets hot, and a great kettle of water boiling. She had cleaned up the camp site, had raked the coarse sand grass, had drawn water from the shallow well on the sandy beach, had washed and hung out the kitchen towels. They were drying rapidly. Wind, that had been direct westerly at daybreak, had shifted to the northwest by ten o’clock. Clouds were rolling in from the lake. The water turned green, with streaks of drab.

But it was Bess Henry who first climbed the short ladder and dove like a swooping gull. Edna could not dive.

Edna told Miss Mills at once of the morning visitor; to her surprise, the troop captain seemed disturbed.

“Vanbalken?” she asked. “Yes, I know him. His hotel’s a full mile from here. He’s a queer sort. But as to owning this place....”

“He said he’d bought it just to keep trespassers off.”

“I’ll have to see him this afternoon,” Miss Mills said.

“This afternoon?”

“Why not?”

“There’s a squall coming,” Edna predicted. She had watched preparations for a storm often enough at the coast guard station to know the ugly symptoms. “Going to blow hard before night.”

“That’ll be interesting,” Bess Henry cried. “I’d like to be out in a real storm ... camping, I mean!”

Edna stared at her unbelievingly. “You really want to?” she asked.

“Of course!” Bess Henry answered. “Wouldn’t you?”

Edna shook her head. “No ... no, I wouldn’t,” she admitted.

“Afraid?” Bess Henry asked. Her tone was slightly superior.

Edna flushed. Afraid? She hadn’t thought of that!

“Well, hardly,” she answered with some heat. She thought swiftly of all the times she’d walked the beach in storms so ferocious that the life boat had been beaten back to shore. One learned to have no liking for storms at a coast guard station ... storms that meant sunken ships, drowned crews, wet, tired, winded coast guardsmen. “I’m not afraid,” she repeated stoutly.

“Afraid?” echoed the troop captain. “Why, she lives at a coast guard station, Bess!” Miss Mills changed the subject quickly. “I’m going over to the hotel to talk to Edna’s caller, now,” she said. “I’d planned signal practice this afternoon.” She paused, thinking. “We’ll have it anyway,” she decided. She looked at Edna. “Can you wigwag?”

Edna nodded. She knew what was in Miss Mills’ mind. She was wondering whether to leave her again as guard or send her out with the others. She never had joined the girls in signal practice; never had told them that she knew signaling, both wigwag and semaphore.

“I can signal a little.”

Miss Mills turned to Helen. “I suggest you put Edna on that hill,” she directed. “Stay in sight of camp, Edna. The rest of the girls will stretch out on the beach. Sure you know the signals, Edna?”

“I ought to,” Edna answered. She stooped to retie her canvas shoes without explaining what she meant. Couldn’t drive a car. Couldn’t dive. Couldn’t talk about Italy. And therefore couldn’t wigwag? Her cheeks were hot as she started up the hill. Maybe she’d never heard of straight eights, but she knew how to signal with flags. Captain Eli James had taught her that much!

She came out breathlessly into the open, where a sloping field lifted gently to the ridge. The sod was neat here, as if it had been cropped by sheep. From the great height to which she had climbed, she had a wide view of land and of Lake Michigan. Behind, and not a mile off, loomed the red roofs of a hotel ... the Ridge View, no doubt, whose owner was causing Miss Mills such uneasiness. Men and women in gay, colorful clothes wandered aimlessly below her. She turned her attention south, where the sky looked stormy.

Other hillocks arose over the landscape, lake-shore dunes covered with second-growth timber or bare humps of sand. On the nearest of these Helen Thomas had taken her post. She waved one of her flags. Edna spelled out the words:

“A r e  y o u  r e a d y?”

“Y e s,” Edna answered.

Again she waited. How slow they were. The storm rolled closer. Cars began to scurry on the hotel road. The men and women in gay blazers on the rolling fields below Edna’s hilltop were rushing for shelter. Edna watched the clouds dubiously.

Helen Thomas was waving again.

“A t t e n t i o n!” the red and white flags in her hand signaled repeatedly. Edna replied. Behind the patrol leader black clouds made a dark background. She began to spell slowly with one flag ... left and right, with short arcs.

“A l l  r e a d y!”

Edna replied, whipping her own flag rapidly.

“Hey, there!” an angry voice cried behind her.

She glanced backward. Two men and a woman stood at the foot of the hill. They were shouting at her, waving their arms. “Fore!”

Beyond them a fourth figure was walking rapidly toward her. She recognized him at once. It was her visitor of the morning, Mr. Vanbalken, the hotel owner. His red face was redder. He was shaking his fist as he climbed up to her. Edna was tempted to run. She realized too late she must be on the golf course.

“You!” Vanbalken shouted. He was puffing hard. “How many times must I tell you to keep off?”

“I'm sorry....” Edna began. She looked hastily toward her patrol leader. She mustn't fumble this signaling! They’d say she couldn’t even wigwag!

“You ought to be sorry!” the man cried. “Didn't I warn you this morning? And your chaperon, whatever you call her, down there not half an hour ago promising to keep you off the links!”

“I didn't know this was your links.”

“And she didn't know that was my ground where you’re camping! I’m through! Off you go! You and your camp and all this fol-de-rol!”

A flash of lightning interrupted him. It spit out of the rolling black cloud and thrust a long, blue-white finger into the dark pitching waters of the lake. Edna glanced across the lowlands to the opposite hill. Helen Thomas was waving her flag frantically. “P a y  a t t e n t i o n” she was signaling.

Rain spattered in large drops upon the close-cropped grass. “I’m sorry,” Edna began again. But Vanbalken had left at the first lightning. He was tramping rapidly down the hill now, forty feet away, and not looking back. The rain drops were smaller and fell with a cold, biting intensity. The black cloud rolled directly overhead.

Edna glanced up at it. Even in the moment she saw a burst of fire in its midst, saw the white flaming arm of lightning strike down from the sky. She heard a terrific crash, like a burst of dynamite.

At the foot of the slope, and midway to the Ridge View, other lightnings ran backward and forward along the ground. An electric line had taken the shock.

Edna, her ears aching with the report, saw Vanbalken halt, saw him start running toward the hotel, then halt again.

A cloud of yellow smoke puffed up among the birch trees below the hotel roof. Wind whipped it along the tree tops. New smoke piled in its place.

Vanbalken saw it even before she did.

“Fire!” he shouted. “Fire!”

Was he talking to her? Edna started to run. New smoke clouds, yellow against the black sky, rolled upward through the rain. Edna halted. What was she doing? She couldn’t help down there. And hadn’t emergency been her daily fare, all her sixteen years? Hadn’t she seen her uncle and the men of his crew face it calmly, every time? “Afraid of storms?” Bess Henry had asked her.

Swiftly she turned back to the hill. Helen Thomas was deserting the other hilltop. Edna whipped up her signal flags. The patrol leader looked once, halted, ran back and waved in reply. Down on the beach other girls, out of Edna’s view, were ready to give up the practice. There was nothing in the code book that said they must wigwag in rain!

Left and right Edna swished her flag, spelling out quick dots and dashes. Helen would have to read fast!

Dot-dot-dash-dot ... dot-dot ...  dot-dash-dot ... dot.

Then a pause. And on again.

F i r e  a t  R i d g e  V i e w....

Helen wagged once, turned her back, and began to relay the message. Ten seconds it had taken Edna. In fifteen more Helen had finished. It carried along the beach ... Edna waited nervously. It must reach Miss Mills at the post office in time to send help!

Quickly, with her red and white flags under her arm, Edna started toward the hotel. Panting, she sped over the cropped grass. Men were carrying buckets across the hotel porch. And down the wind a new sound was whining, the shrill cry of a fire department siren. A crimson truck swung into the grounds.

The message had gone through. Cummings Harbor had sent aid!

The engine hummed. The thrash of a stream sounded above the noise of storm and fire. Edna charged up the steps. She was conscious of Helen Thomas running breathlessly behind her. Guests, in panic, were dragging trunks to the porch. Two boys carried a girl out.

“Hurt?” Edna cried.

“Shock ... telephone operator ... switchboard blew to pieces....”

“First aid, Helen!” Edna said. “Girl has electric shock!”

Twenty minutes later, when the captain of the Whitefish City Troop arrived in a car commandeered in town, volunteer firemen were rolling up their wet hose and the wide lobby was clearing of smoke. It was Vanbalken who reached Miss Mills first. Before Edna or Helen could speak, he had taken her aside and was talking rapidly. She shook her head once; Vanbalken shook his.

“Cold!” Edna heard him say, and then: “Plenty of room....”

A wet, breathless girl in a wrinkled uniform staggered up the steps. It was Bess Henry, the guard, who had been left at camp.

“Camp blew down!” she sobbed. “Did my best ... the wind....”

“The wind just helped evict us,” Miss Mills said. “We’re put out, girls. But Mr. Vanbalken has asked us here as his guests ... here ... yes, for dinner ... and for the night. Till our outfits dry out. And he asks us to camp there again next year ... certainly he does. He wishes to apologize in the meantime. Particularly to you, Edna. Oh, yes, he understands it all. And I want to congratulate you too. You’re certainly not ...” she turned quickly, searching the group.

“Bess Henry, I call you to witness. Edna James is not afraid of storms!”

Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the August, 1929 issue of The American Girl magazine.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DOT ... DOT ... DASH ... DOT—"FIRE!" ***

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