The Airman's Beacon

Chapter Two

David looked up. 

Thomas rubbed his hand across the glass in the attempt to get a better view.  But the rain drops were on the other side.

“Did you hear me, Dave?  There’s someone on the rocks.”

“If you are lying…”

“No, I really see someone.  At least, I think I do.  It is a dark blob of a person, though.”

“Walking?” David was standing now.  He strode quickly across the room.

“No, he’s stretched out over the rocks.”

“I see him,” David murmured.  “How did he get out there?”

“How would I know?”  Thomas could not take his eyes off of the prone figure.

David took control of the situation.  “Get shoes on.  I will get coats,” he said.

Moments later they were out in the middle of the tempest, forcing their way through the winds raging around them.  Instantly their faces and hands were numbed by the biting cold of the rain flinging against their bodies.  The rain stung their eyes, forcing them closed.  They walked across the treacherous rocks almost completely blinded. 

With a horrendous crash, a wave slammed against the cliff wall, sending greyish foam rocketing into the sky.   The airmen cringed as it fell down upon them.

“He’s over here,” David shouted.

The man’s body appeared lifeless as they traversed the last few meters.  He lay with his face pressed against the rocks and his body twisted around him.  His clothes were torn and he wore a single glove on one of his hands.

“Is he dead?” Thomas hollered.

David bent over the body.

“No, I think he is still breathing.  Help me get him up.”

David hooked his hands under the man’s arms and Thomas grabbed his legs.  They began to progress back toward the lighthouse.

“Wait!” Thomas shouted.  “Wait, David. Look at his clothes!”

“We can examine him once we get inside.”

“Look at that!”

He pointed in great agitation at a silver eagle standing on a silver swastika that was pinned on the man’s shirt.

“He’s German!” Thomas shouted, releasing the man’s his legs in a sudden gesture of anger.  David stumbled forward, caught off guard by the sudden change in momentum.

“What are you doing?” he called.

“I am not about to help any Germans.  I’m leaving him here.”

“No, Thomas,” David called sternly.  “We will take him in and decide what to do after that.  Pick him up.”

Thomas obeyed, but not because he had changed his mind about the German, far from it.  But there had suddenly sprung into David’s eyes a strange light that warmed that the issue was not to be debated.

They laid the German out on the couch in the sitting room of the main house, but not before first covering it carefully with linens.  The German made no sound or showed any sign of waking as David began to peel away the shreds of clothing that covered the wounds below.  A cut running from the young man’s left shoulder to below his ribs on the right was slowly oozing blood.  Liquid crimson on his arms welled from long deep wounds that were neither clean nor smooth.  His face was scratched and bruised and dotted with specs of seaweed and drying salt.