24685	----	None 
21744	----	THE LIFEBOAT, BY R.M. BALLANTYNE. CHAPTER ONE. THE BEGINNING--IN WHICH SEVERAL IMPORTANT PERSONAGES ARE INTRODUCED. There existed, not many years ago, a certain street near the banks of old Father Thames which may be described as being one of the most modest and retiring little streets in London. The neighbourhood around that street was emphatically dirty and noisy. There were powerful smells of tallow and tar in the atmosphere, suggestive of shipping and commerce. Narrow lanes opened off the main street affording access to wharves and warehouses, and presenting at their termini segmentary views of ships' hulls, bowsprits, and booms, with a background of muddy water and smoke. There were courts with unglazed windows resembling doors, and massive cranes clinging to the walls. There were yards full of cases and barrels, and great anchors and chains, which invaded the mud of the river as far as was consistent with safety; and adventurous little warehouses, which stood on piles, up to the knees, as it were, in water, totally regardless of appearances, and utterly indifferent as to catching cold. As regards the population of this locality, rats were, perhaps, in excess of human beings; and it might have been observed that the former were particularly frolicsome and fearless. Farther back, on the landward side of our unobtrusive street, commercial and nautical elements were more mingled with things appertaining to domestic life. Elephantine horses, addicted to good living, drew through the narrow streets wagons and vans so ponderous and gigantic that they seemed to crush the very stones over which they rolled, and ran terrible risk of sweeping little children out of the upper windows of the houses. In unfavourable contrast with these, donkeys, of the most meagre and starved aspect, staggered along with cartloads of fusty vegetables and dirty-looking fish, while the vendors thereof howled the nature and value of their wares with deliberate ferocity. Low pawnbrokers (chiefly in the "slop" line) obtruded their seedy wares from doors and windows halfway across the pavement, as if to tempt the naked; and equally low pastry-cooks spread forth their stale viands in unglazed windows, as if to seduce the hungry. Here the population was mixed and varied. Busy men of business and of wealth, porters and wagoners, clerks and warehousemen, rubbed shoulders with poor squalid creatures, men and women, whose business or calling no one knew and few cared to know except the policeman on the beat, who, with stern suspicious glances, looked upon them as objects of special regard, and as enemies; except, also, the earnest-faced man in seedy black garments, with a large Bible (_evidently_) in his pocket, who likewise looked on them as objects of special regard, and as friends. The rats were much more circumspect in this locality. They were what the Yankees would call uncommonly "cute," and much too deeply intent on business to indulge in play. In the lanes, courts, and alleys that ran still farther back into the great hive, there was an amount of squalor, destitution, violence, sin, and misery, the depth of which was known only to the people who dwelt there, and to those earnest-faced men with Bibles who made it their work to cultivate green spots in the midst of such unpromising wastes, and to foster the growth of those tender and beautiful flowers which sometimes spring and flourish where, to judge from appearances, one might be tempted to imagine nothing good could thrive. Here also there were rats, and cats too, besides dogs of many kinds; but they all of them led hard lives of it, and few appeared to think much of enjoying themselves. Existence seemed to be the height of their ambition. Even the kittens were depressed, and sometimes stopped in the midst of a faint attempt at play to look round with a scared aspect, as if the memory of kicks and blows was strong upon them. The whole neighbourhood, in fact, teemed with sad yet interesting sights and scenes, and with strange violent contrasts. It was not a spot which one would naturally select for a ramble on a summer evening after dinner; nevertheless it was a locality where time might have been profitably spent, where a good lesson or two might have been learned by those who have a tendency to "consider the poor." But although the neighbourhood was dirty and noisy, our modest street, which was at that time known by the name of Redwharf Lane, was comparatively clean and quiet. True, the smell of tallow and tar could not be altogether excluded, neither could the noises; but these scents and sounds reached it in a mitigated degree, and as the street was not a thoroughfare, few people entered it, except those who had business there, or those who had lost their way, or an occasional street boy of an explorative tendency; which last, on finding that it was a quiet spot, invariably entered a protest against such an outrageous idea as quietude in "the City" by sending up a series of hideous yells, and retiring thereafter precipitately. Here, in Redwharf Lane, was the office of the firm of Denham, Crumps, and Company. Mr Denham stood with his back to the fire, for it was a coldish autumn day, with his coat-tails under his arms. He was a big bald man of five-and-forty, with self-importance enough for a man of five-hundred-and-forty. Mr Crumps sat in a small back-office, working so diligently that one might have supposed he was endeavouring to bring up the arrears of forty years' neglect, and had pledged himself to have it done before dinner. He was particularly small, excessively thin, very humble, rather deaf, and upwards of sixty. Company had died of lockjaw two years previous to the period of which we write, and is therefore unworthy of farther notice. A confidential clerk had taken, and still retained, his place. Messrs. Denham, Crumps, and Company, were shipowners. Report said that they were rich, but report frequently said what was not true in those days. Whether it has become more truthful in the present days, remains an open question. There can be no question, however, that much business was done at the office in Redwharf Lane, and that, while Denham lived in a handsome mansion in Russell Square, and Crumbs dwelt in a sweet cottage in Kensington, Company had kept a pony phaeton, and had died in a snug little villa on Hampstead Heath. The office of Denham, Crumps, and Company was small and unpretending, as was the street in which it stood. There was a small green door with a small brass plate and a small brass knocker, all of which, when opened by their attendant, a small tiger in blue, with buttons, gave admittance to a small passage that terminated in a small room. This was the outer office, and here sat the four clerks of the establishment on four tall stools, writing in four monstrous volumes, as furiously as if they were decayed authors whose lives depended on the result. Their salaries did, poor fellows, and that was much the same thing! A glass door, with scratches here and there, through which the head of the firm could gaze unseen, separated "the office" from Denham's room, and a wooden door separated that from Crumps' room, beyond which there was a small closet or cell which had been Company's room before that gentleman died. It was now used as a repository for ancient books and papers. "Very odd," said Mr Denham, and as he said so he touched a small silver bell that stood on his writing-table. The tiger in blue and buttons instantly appeared. "Here, Peekins, post these letters. Has no one called this afternoon; I mean, no one resembling a sailor?" The boy in blue started, and his face became very red. "Why, what's the matter, boy? What do you mean by staring at me, instead of answering my question?" "Please, sir," stammered Peekins meekly, "I didn't mean no 'arm, sir, but you see, sir, his face was so drefful fierce, and he looked sich a wild--" "Boy, are you mad?" interrupted Mr Denham, advancing and seizing the tiger by his blue collar; "what are you talking about? Now, answer my question at once, else I'll shake the little life you have out of your body. Did any sailor-like man call at the office this afternoon?" "Oh, sir, yes, sir,--I--I--thought he was drunk and wouldn't let 'im in, sir; he's bin a standin' stampin' at the door for more than--" The end of the sentence was cut short by Mr Denham suddenly ejecting the boy from the room and shouting, "Let him in!" In a few seconds a heavy tread was heard in the outer office, and the boy ushered in a tall young man, of unusually large proportions, with extremely broad shoulders, and apparently about twenty-three years of age, whose rough pilot-coat, wide pantaloons, and glazed hat bespoke him a sailor. His countenance was flushed, and an angry frown contracted his brow as he strode into the room, pulled off his hat and stood before the head of the house of Denham, Crumps, and Company. "I beg pardon, sir," began the sailor, somewhat sharply, yet without disrespect, "when I am asked to come--" "Yes, yes, Bax," interposed Mr Denham, "I know what you would say. Pray calm yourself. It is a pity you should have been kept waiting outside, but the fact is that my boy is a new one, and apparently he is destitute of common sense. Sit down. I sent for you to say that I wish you to take the `Nancy' to Liverpool. You will be ready to start at once, no doubt--" "Before the schooner is overhauled?" inquired Bax, in surprise. "Of course," said Denham, stiffly; "I see no occasion for _another_ overhaul. That schooner will cost us more than she is worth if we go on repairing at the rate we have been doing the last two years." "She needs it all, sir," rejoined Bax, earnestly. "The fact is, Mr Denham, I feel it to be my duty to tell you that there ain't a sound plank or timber in her from stem to stern, and I'm pretty sure that if she costs you money, she's likely to cost me and the men aboard of her our lives. I strongly advise you to strike her off the books, and get a new one." "Mr Bax," said Denham, pompously, "you are too young a man to offer your advice unless it is asked. I believe the engineer employed by me to examine into the condition of my vessels is quite competent to judge in these matters, and I have unbounded confidence in him. When I placed you in command of the `Nancy,' I meant you to navigate, not to criticise her; but if you are afraid to venture--" "Afraid!" cried the young sailor, reddening. "Is anxiety about the lives of your men and the safety of your property to be called fear? _I_ am willing to sail in the `Nancy' as long as a plank of her will hold to her ribs, but--" Bax paused and bit his lip, as if to keep back words which had better not be spoken. "Well, then," rejoined Mr Denham, affecting to disregard the pause, "let me hear no more about repairs. When these require to be done, they _shall_ be done. Meanwhile, go and make preparation to sail by the morning tides which serves about--what hour, think you?" "Flood at half after six," said Bax, curtly. "Very well, come up here at half-past five, one of the clerks will see you. You will have to run down to Dover in the first place, and when there my agent will give you further instructions. Good afternoon!" Bax rose and quitted the room with a stern "Good day, sir." As he passed through the outer office he was arrested by one of the clerks laying a hand on his shoulder. "Well, Mr Foster," said Bax, a bright smile chasing the frown from his face, "it seems we're to swim if we can, or sink if we can't this winter;--but what want ye with me?" "You are to call me Guy, not _Mister_ Foster," said the lad, gaily. "I want to know where you are to be found after six this evening." "At the `Three Jolly Tars,'" answered Bax, clapping on his glazed hat. "All right, I'll look you up. Good-day." "Guy Foster," shouted Mr Denham from the inner room. "Yes, uncle," and in another moment the youth was standing, pen in hand, in the august presence of his relative, who regarded him with a cold stare of displeasure. There could scarcely have been conceived a stronger contrast in nature than that which existed between the starched, proud, and portly uncle, and the tall, handsome, and hearty young nephew, whose age was scarcely twenty years. "How often am I to tell you, sir," said Mr Denham, "that `yes, uncle,' is much too familiar and unbusinesslike a phrase to be used in this office in the hearing of your fellow-clerks?" "I beg pardon, uncle, I'm sure I had no intention of--" "There, that will do, I want no apology, I want obedience and attention to my expressed wishes. I suppose that you expect to get away for a few days' holiday?" "Well, unc--, sir, I mean, if it is quite convenient I should--" "It is _not_ quite convenient," interrupted the uncle. "It cannot possibly, at any time, be convenient to dispense with the services of a clerk in a house where no supernumeraries are kept to talk slang and read the newspapers. I see no reason whatever in young men in ordinary health expecting as a right, two or three weeks' leave each year without deduction of salary. _I_ never go to the country or to the sea-side from one year's end to the other." "You'd be much the better for it if you did, uncle," interposed Guy. "That, _sir_," retorted Denham with emphasis, "is _your_ opinion, and you will allow me to say that it is erroneous, as most of your opinions, I am sorry to find, are. _I_ find that no change is necessary for my health. I am in better condition than many who go to Margate every summer. I thrive on town air, sir, and on city life." There was much truth in these observations. The worthy merchant did indeed seem to enjoy robust health, and there could be no question that, as far as physical appearances went, he did thrive on high living, foul air, and coining money. Tallow and tar sent forth delicious odours to him, and thick smoke was pleasant to his nostrils, for he dealt largely in coal, and all of these, with many kindred substances, were productive of the one great end and object of his life--gold. "However," pursued Mr Denham, leaning back on the mantle-piece, "as the tyrannical customs of society cannot be altogether set at nought, I suppose I must let you go." "Thank you, unc--sir," said Guy, who, having been chained to the desk in the office of Redwharf Lane for the last eleven months, felt his young heart bounding wildly within him at the prospect of visiting, even for a brief period, his mother's cottage on the coast of Kent. "You have no occasion to thank _me_," retorted Mr Denham; "you are indebted entirely to the tyrannical customs and expectations of society for the permission. Good-bye, you may convey my respects to your mother." "I will, sir." "Have you anything further to say?" asked Mr Denham, observing that the youth stood looking perplexedly at the ground, and twirling his watch-key. "Yes, uncle, I have," answered Guy, plucking up courage. "The fact is-- that, is to say--you know that wrecks are very common off the coast of Kent." "Certainly, I do," said Denham with a frown. "I have bitter cause to know that. The loss occasioned by the wreck of the `Sea-gull' last winter was very severe indeed. The subject is not a pleasant one; have you any good reason for alluding to it?" "I have, uncle; as you say, the loss of the `Sea-gull' was severe, for, besides the loss of a fine vessel and a rich cargo, there was the infinitely more terrible loss of the lives of twenty-two human beings." As Mr Denham had not happened to think of the loss of life that occurred on the occasion, and had referred solely to the loss of ship and cargo, which, by a flagrant oversight on the part of one of his clerks, had not been insured; he made no rejoinder, and Guy, after a moment's pause, went on-- "The effect of this calamity was so powerful on the minds of the people of Deal and Walmer, near which the wreck took place, that a public meeting was called, and a proposal made that a lifeboat should be established there." "Well?" said Mr Denham. "Well," continued the youth, "my mother gave a subscription; but being poor she could not give much." "Well, well," said Mr Denham impatiently. "And--and _I_ gave a little, a very little, towards it too," said Guy. "Your salary is not large; it was very foolish of you to waste your money in this way." "Waste it, uncle!" "Come, sir, what does all this tend to?" said Denham, sternly. "I thought--I hoped--indeed I felt assured," said Guy earnestly, "that _you_ would give something towards this good object--" "Oh, did you?" said the merchant, cutting him short; "then, sir, allow me to say that you were never more mistaken in your life. I never give money in charity. I believe it to be a false principle, which tends to the increase of beggars and criminals. You can go now." "But consider, uncle," entreated Guy, "this is no ordinary charity. A lifeboat there might be the means of saving hundreds of lives; and oh! if you could have seen, as I did, the despairing faces of these poor people as they clung to the rigging scarcely a stone's-cast from the shore, on which the waves beat so furiously that no boat except a lifeboat could have lived for a moment; if you could have heard, as I did, the wild shriek of despair as the masts went by the board, and plunged every living soul into the raging sea, I am certain that you would gladly give a hundred pounds or more towards this philanthropic object." "Nephew," said Denham, "I will not give a sixpence. Your inexperience and enthusiasm lead you astray, sir, in this matter. Lifeboats are capable of being upset as well as ordinary boats, and there are cases on record in which the crews of them have been drowned as well as the people whom they recklessly went out to save. My opinion is, that persons who devote themselves to a sea-faring life must make up their minds to the chances and risks attending such a life. Now you have my answer--good-bye, and give my best regards to your sister. I will expect you back next Saturday week." "I have still another favour to ask, sir," said Guy, after some hesitation. "Has it anything to do with what you are pleased to term a philanthropic object?" "It has." "Then," said Mr Denham, "save me the trouble of refusing, and yourself the pain of a refusal, by holding your tongue,--and retiring." Guy coloured, and was about to turn away in disgust, but, repressing his indignation by a powerful effort, he advanced with a cheerful countenance, and held out his hand. "Well, good-bye, uncle. If ever you go to the coast, and happen to see a storm and a shipwreck, you'll change your mind, I think, in regard to this matter." Mr Denham did go to the coast, and, did see a storm and a shipwreck, but whether this prediction ever came true is a point that shall not be revealed at this part of our narrative. CHAPTER TWO. IN WHICH MORE IMPORTANT PERSONAGES ARE INTRODUCED, AND DISPLAY THEIR CHARACTERS BY THEIR ACTIONS MORE OR LESS. The "Three Jolly Tars" was one of those low taverns where seamen were wont to congregate--not _because_ it was a low tavern, but because there was no other sort of tavern--high or low--in that neighbourhood. The world (that is to say, the delicately-nurtured and carefully-tended world) is apt to form erroneous opinions in regard to low taverns, and degradation, and sin in general,--arising from partial ignorance and absolute inexperience, which it is important that we should correct in order that the characters of our story may not be falsely judged. God forbid that it should be for a moment supposed that we have a word to say in favour of low taverns. Our aim just now is, not to consider these, but, to convince the reader, if possible, that every man who enters one of them is not necessarily a lost or utterly depraved creature. It is undoubtedly true that these low taverns are moral pig-sties. Nay, we owe an apology to the pigs for the comparison. _Sties_ appear to be places of abode suited to the nature and tastes of their occupants, and the grumps who inhabit them seem not only to rejoice in them (for this alone would be no argument, inasmuch as the same may be affirmed of men who rejoice in low taverns), but to be utterly incapable of higher enjoyment out of them. Let a pig out of his stye, afford him every conceivable opportunity of intellectual and physical improvement, and he will carefully search out the nearest mudhole--unhappy until he finds it--will thrust not only his nose but his body into it, and will find supreme enjoyment in wallowing in the mire; and no blame to him for this; he is grumpish by nature. Yes, a low tavern is beneath the level of a pig-stye! Nevertheless, as it is possible that, _for a time_, man may, through sin, or circumstances, or both, be reduced to such a condition as to take shelter in a pig-stye, without exposing himself to the charge of being a pig; so, it is possible that a man may frequent a low tavern, _not_ without detriment, but, without becoming thereby worthy of being classed with the lowest of the low. Do not misunderstand us, gentle reader. We do not wish in the slightest degree to palliate the coarse language, the debasement, the harsh villainy, which shock the virtuous when visiting the haunts of poverty. Our simple desire is to assure the sceptical that goodness and truth are sometimes found in strange questionable places, although it is undoubtedly true that they do not deliberately search out such places for an abode, but prefer a pure atmosphere and pleasant companionship if they can get it. It must not be supposed, then, that our friend John Bax--sometimes called "captain," sometimes "skipper," not unfrequently "mister," but most commonly "Bax," without any modification--was a hopeless castaway, because he was found by his friend Guy Foster in a room full of careless foul-mouthed seamen, eating his bread and cheese and drinking his beer in an atmosphere so impregnated with tobacco smoke that he could scarcely see, and so redolent of gin that he could scarcely smell the smoke! In those days there were not so many sailors' homes and temperance coffee-houses as there are now. In the locality about which we write there were none. If Jack wanted his lunch or his dinner he found the low tavern almost the only place in which he could get it comfortably. Tobacco smoke was no objection to him;--he rather liked it. Swearing did not shock him;--he was used to it. Gentle folk are apt to err here too. Being _shocked_ at gross sin does not necessarily imply goodness of heart; it implies nothing more than the being unused to witness gross sin. Goodness of heart _may_ go along with this capacity of being shocked, so, equally, may badness of heart; but neither of them is implied by it. What a grand thing is truth--simple abstract truth! and yet how little do we appreciate it in regard to the inconceivably important matter of _reasoning_. We analyse our chemicals and subject them to the severest tests in order to ascertain their true properties;--truth is all we aim at; but how many of us can say that we analyse our thoughts and subject our reasoning to the test of logic in order simply to ascertain _the truth_. "Smoke for ever! I say, Bill, open that there port a bit, else we'll be choked," cried a stentorian voice, as Guy entered the little apartment, where some dozen of noisy sailors were creating the cloud, which was a little too strong for them. For some moments Guy glanced round inquiringly, unable to pierce the dim curtain that enshrouded everything, as with a veil of dirty gauze. "Lost your reckoning, I guess," drawled a Yankee skipper. "Never mind, let go your anchor, my lad," cried a voice from the densest quarter of the smoke, "it's not a bad berth, and good holdin' ground." "What'll you take to drink, my boy, supposin' you gits the offer?" inquired another man, giving him a facetious poke in the ribs. "Is John Bax here?" inquired Guy. "Hallo, messmate--here you are, port your helm and heave a-head--steady! rocks to leeward; starboard hard! ah, I knew you'd never clear these rocks without touchin'," said Bax, as his young friend tripped over three or four spittoons, and plunged into the corner from which the sailor's deep bass voice issued. "There now, sit down; what'll you have?" "Nothing, Bax; what a horrible hole to feed in! Couldn't you come out and talk with me in the fresh air?" It must indeed have been a wonderfully impure place when Guy could venture by contrast to speak of the air outside as being fresh. "Couldn't do it, my lad," replied Bax, with his mouth full. "I haven't had a bit since six o'clock this morning, and I'm only half through." The fact was evident, for a large plate of biscuit and cheese stood on the small table before the seaman, with a tumbler of hot gin and water. So Guy sat down, and, observing that the waiter stood at his elbow, ordered half a pint of stout. Guy did not drink spirits, but he had no objection to beer, so he took occasion to remonstrate with Bax on his tendency to drink gin, and recommended beer instead, as it would "do him more good." It did not occur to Guy that a young man in robust health does not require physical good to be done to him at all, beyond what food, and rest, and exercise can achieve, and that, therefore, artificial stimulant of any kind is unnecessary! "Skipper ahoy!" shouted, a gruff voice in the doorway. "Ay, ay!" cried several of the party in reply. "Is John Bax in this here port?" "Here you are," replied the man in request, "port your helm, old boy! rocks on the lee bow, look out!" "Steady, so," said a fat burly seaman, as he steered in obedience to these sailing directions, and finally "cast anchor" beside our two friends. "How are ye, Captain Bluenose?" said Bax, holding out his hand. "Same to you, lad," replied the Captain, seizing the offered hand in his own enormous fist, which was knotty and fleshy, seamed with old cuts and scars, and stained with tar. "Hallo! Guy, is this you?" he added, turning suddenly to the youth. "Why, who'd 'a thought to see _you_ here? I do b'lieve I han't seen ye since the last time down at the coast. But, I say, Guy, my boy, you han't took to drinkin', have ye?" "No, Captain," said Guy, with a smile, "nothing stronger than beer, and not much of that. I merely came here to meet Bax." Captain Bluenose--whose name, by the way, had no reference to his nose, for that was small and red--scratched his chin and stared into vacancy, as if he were meditating. "Why, boy," he said at length, "seems to me as if you'd as good cause to suspec' me of drinkin' as I have to suspec' you, 'cause we're both _here_, d'ye see? Howsever, I've been cruisin' after the same craft, an' so we've met, d'ye see, an' that's nat'ral, so it is." "Well, and now you have found me, what d'ye want with me?" said Bax, finishing the bread and cheese, and applying to the gin and water. "Shipmet, I'm goin' home, and wants a berth a-board the `Nancy,'" said Bluenose. "Couldn't do it, Captain," said Bax, shaking his head, "'gainst rules." "I'll go as a hextra hand--a suppernummerary," urged the Captain. "Why, Captain," said Guy, "is it not strange that I should have come here to make the very same request? Come, Bax, you're a good fellow, and will take us both. I will guarantee that my uncle will not find fault with you." "Ah, that alters the case," said Bax, "if you choose to take the responsibility on your own shoulders, Guy, you're welcome to the best berth a-board the old `Nancy.' D'ye know, I've a fondness for that old craft, though she is about as unseaworthy a schooner as sails out o' the port of London. You see, she's the only craft bigger than a Deal lugger that I ever had command of. She's my first love, is the old `Nancy,' and I hope we won't have to part for many a day." "Quite right, young man," said Captain Bluenose, nodding his head approvingly, and filling his pipe from a supply of tobacco he always carried in the right pocket of his capacious blue waistcoat. The Captain gazed with a look of grave solemnity in the manly countenance of the young sailor, for whom he entertained feelings of unbounded admiration. He had dandled Bax on his knee when he was a baby, had taught him to make boats and to swim and row when he became a boy, and had sailed with him many a time in the same lugger when they put off in wild storms to rescue lives or property from ships wrecked on the famous Goodwin Sands. "Quite right, young man," repeated the Captain, as he lighted his pipe, "your sentiments does you credit. W'en a man's got his first love, d'ye see, an' finds as how she's all trim and ship-shape, and taut, and well ballasted, and all that sort o' thing, stick to her to the last, through thick and thin. That's wot _I_ say, d'ye see? There's no two ways about it, for wot's right can't be wrong. If it can, show me how, and then I'll knock under, but not before." "Certainly not, Captain," cried Bax, laughing, "never give in--that's my motto." "There," said Bluenose, gravely, "you're wrong--'cause why? You're not right, an' w'en a man's not right he ought always to give in." "But how is a fellow to know when he's right and when he's wrong?" asked Bax. "Con-sideration," said Bluenose. "Bravo! Captain," cried Guy, with a laugh, "if it be true that `brevity is the soul of wit,' you must be the wittiest fellow on Deal beach." "I dun-know," retorted the Captain, slowly, "whether it's the soul or the body o' wit, an' wot's more, I don't care; but it's a fact, d'ye see, that consideration'll do it; least-wise if consideration won't, nothin' will. See now, here it is,"--(he became very earnest at this point),--"w'en a thing puzzles people, wot does people do? why, they begins right off to talk about it, an' state their opinions afore they han't got no opinions to state. P'raps they takes the puzzler up by the middle an' talks wild about that part of it; then they give a look at the end of it, an' mayhap they'll come back and glance at the beginnin', mayhap they won't, and then they'll tell you as grave as owls that they've made up their minds about it, and so nail their colours to the mast." At this stage in the elucidation of the knotty point, Bluenose observed that his pipe was going out, so he paused, pulled at it vigorously for a few seconds, and then resumed his discourse. "Now, lads, wot _ought_ you for to do w'en you've got hold of a puzzler? Why, you ought to sit down and consider of it, which means you should begin at the beginnin'; an' let me tell you, it's harder to find the beginnin' of a puzzler than p'raps you suppose. Havin' found the beginnin', you should look at it well, and then go on lookin', inch by inch, and fut by fut, till you comes to the end of it; then look it back, oncommon slow, to the beginnin' again, after which turn it outside in, or inside out,--it don't much matter which way,--and go it all over once more; after which cram your knuckles into yer two eyes, an' sit for half-an-hour (or three-quarters, if it's tremendous deep) without movin'. If that don't do, and you ha'nt got time to try it over again, give in at once, an haul your colours down, but on no occasion wotiver nail them to the mast,--'xceptin' always, w'en you're cocksure that you're right, for then, of coorse, ye can't go far wrong." This little touch of philosophy convinced Bax that if he did not wish to sit there half the night, the sooner he changed the subject the better, so he called the waiter, and paid his bill, saying to his companions that it was time to go aboard if they wanted a snooze before tripping the anchor. "What have you had, sir?" said the waiter, turning to Bluenose. The man said this with a sneer, for he knew that the captain had taken nothing since he entered the house, and was aware, moreover, that he was a water-drinker. "I've had nothin'," replied the Captain, "nor don't want any, thank 'ee." "Oh! beg pardon, sir," the waiter bowed and retired impressively. "The house couldn't keep goin' long with _some_ customers," stammered a rough-looking, half-tipsy fellow who had overheard these remarks. "Might do something for the good of the house," said another, who was equally drunk. "Who bade _you_ put in your oar?" cried the first speaker fiercely, for he had reached that condition of intoxication which is well known as the fighting stage. The other man was quite ready to humour him, so, almost before one could understand what had been said, a savage blow was given and returned, oaths and curses followed, and in two seconds one of the combatants had his opponent by the throat, threw him on his back, with his neck over the fender and his head thrust into the ashes. Instantly the room was a scene of wild confusion, as some of the friends of both men endeavoured to separate them, while others roared in drunken glee to "let 'em have fair play, and fight it out." The result of this quarrel might have been serious had not Bax thrust the yelling crowd aside, and, exerting to the utmost the extraordinary muscular power with which he had been endowed, tore the combatants asunder by main force, and hurled them violently to opposite sides of the room. "Shame on you; lads," said he, "can you not drink your grog without quarrelling about nothing?" The towering size and the indignant look of Bax, as he said this, were sufficient to quell the disturbance, although some of the more irascible spirits could not refrain from grumbling about interference, and the Yankee roundly asserted that "before he'd go into a public, and sit down and smoke his pipe without doin' somethin' for the good o' the 'ouse, he'd like to see himself chawed up pretty slick, he would." "Waiter a-hoy!" shouted Captain Bluenose sternly, on hearing this. "Yes-sir." "Bring me a tumbler o' gin and a pot o' _cold water_." "Tum'ler--o'--gin--sir--an'--a--por--o'--col' wa'r, sir? Yes--sir." The waiter stopped suddenly and turned back. "_Mixed_, sir?" "No, _not_ mixed, sir," replied Bluenose, with a look and tone of withering sarcasm; "contrairywise, wery much separated." When the gin and water were placed on the table, the Captain quietly took up the former and cast it, glass and all, under the grate, after which he raised the pot of water to his lips, and, looking round on the company with a bland smile, said:-- "There, I've took somethin' for the good of the house, and now, lads, I'll drink to your better health and happiness in my favourite tipple, the wich I heartily recommend to _you_." Bluenose drained the pot, flung a half-crown on the table, and swaggered out of the house with his hands deep in the pockets of his rough pea-jacket. The fact was that the worthy Captain felt aggrieved, and his spirit was somewhat ruffled at the idea of being expected to drink in a house where he had oftentimes, for years past, regaled himself with, and expended his money upon, bread and cheese and ginger-beer! CHAPTER THREE. IN WHICH THE INTRODUCTION OF IMPORTANT PERSONAGES IS CONTINUED, IN RATHER EXCITING CIRCUMSTANCES. "Where away's the boat, lad?" said Captain Bluenose to Bax, on recovering his equanimity. "Close at hand; mind the fluke of that anchor. The owner of this spot should be put in limbo for settin' man-traps. Have a care of your shins, Guy; it's difficult navigation here on a dark night." "All right, Bax," replied Guy; "I'll keep close in your wake, so if you capsize we shall at least have the comfort of foundering together." The place through which the three friends were groping their way was that low locality of mud and old stores, which forms the border region between land and water, and in which dwelt those rats which have been described as being frolicsome and numerous. "Hold hard!" roared Bluenose, as he tripped over the shank of an anchor, "why don't you set up a lighthouse, or a beacon o' some sort on these here shoals?" "Starboard, old boy, starboard hard, steady!" cried Bax. With seaman-like promptitude the Captain obeyed, and thus escaped tumbling off the end of the wharf at which they had arrived. "Nancy, a-hoy!" cried Bax in a subdued shout. A juvenile "Ay, ay, sir!" instantly came back in reply from the dark obscurity that overhung the river. The sound of oars followed. "Smart little fellow that nephew of yours; he'll do you credit some day," said Bax, turning towards Bluenose, who, although close at his side, was scarcely visible, so dark was the night. The Captain's rejoinder was cut short by the boy in question sending the bow of the boat crash against the wharf, an exploit which had the effect of pitching him heels over head into the bottom of it. "Why didn't you give us a hail, uncle?" remonstrated the boy, as he rose and rubbed his elbows. "Good practice, my lad, it's good practice," replied Bluenose, chuckling, as he stepped in. A few seconds sufficed to take them alongside of the "Nancy," in two narrow berths of which the Captain and Guy were quickly stowed away and sound asleep, while Bax paced the deck slowly overhead, having relieved the watch and sent him below. Just half an hour or so before dawn--that mysterious, unreal and solemn period of the night or morning--Captain Bluenose came on deck minus his coat and shoes, in order to have a look at "how things were getting on,"--as if the general operations of nature had been committed to his charge, and he were afraid lest the sun should not be able to rise without his assistance. "Light air, west-sou'-west," muttered the Captain as he stepped on deck, cast a glance up at the vane on the mast-head, and then swept his eye round the (imaginary) horizon. There was not much to be seen, except the numerous lights of the shipping, and the myriad lamps of the great city, whose mighty hum of life had not yet begun to awaken. It was the deadest hour of night (if we may use the expression), although advanced towards morning. The latest of late sitters-up had gone to bed and got to sleep, and the earliest of early risers had not yet been aroused. None save night-workers and night-watchers were astir, and these did not disturb in any appreciable degree the deep quiet of the hour. While Bax and his friend were conversing in subdued tones near the binnacle, they were startled by a piercing shriek, followed by a heavy plunge in the water, which, from the sound, appeared to be not far distant. They sprang to the bow, which was pointing down the river,-- the flood-tide was running strong up at the time. On reaching it they heard a gurgling cry, not twenty yards ahead of the vessel. "Hold on!" cried Bax to Bluenose, sharply, at the same time fastening the end of a rope round his waist with the speed of thought, and plunging over the side head-foremost. The cry and the plunge brought Guy Foster on deck instantly. He found the Captain holding on with all his might to the end of the rope, on which there seemed to be a tremendous strain. "Take a turn round that belayin' pin," gasped the Captain. Guy obeyed, and the moment his companion was relieved, he shouted, "All hands a-hoy!" It was unnecessary. The four men who formed the crew of the "Nancy" were already springing up the fore-hatch. There was bustle among the shipping too. Lights danced about, the sound of oars was heard in various directions, and sharp eager shouts, as of men who felt that life was in danger, but knew not where to hasten in order to afford aid. "Haul now, lads, with a will," cried the Captain; "so, steady, avast heaving. Ah! that's a smart lad." While the men were hauling on the rope, little Tommy had bounded over the side into the boat, which he quickly brought close to the rope, and, seizing it, guided his craft to the end to which Bax was fastened. He found him buffeting the strong current stoutly, and supporting a head on his shoulder in such a way that the mouth should not get below water. "All right, Tommy," said Bax, quietly. "Don't get excited, my lad; lend a hand to raise her a bit out o' the water. Now, can you hold her there for one moment?" "Yes, if you just give me the end of that shawl in my teeth,--so." Tommy could say no more, for he was squeezed flat against the gunwale of the boat, with his stout little arms tight round the neck and waist of a female figure, the fingers of his left hand grasping her hair, and his legs twisted in a remarkable manner round the thwart to keep him from being dragged out of the boat, besides which his mouth was full of the shawl. Bax at once grasped the gunwale, and moved hand over hand to the stern, where, by a powerful effort, he raised himself out of the water and sprang inboard. A few minutes more sufficed to enable him to drag the female (a young girl) into the boat, and place her in safety on the schooner's deck. The whole thing was done in much less time than is required to tell it. Only one of the boats that were out searching discovered the schooner, just as the female was got on board. "All right?" inquired one of the men. "All right--saved," was the answer, and the boat pulled away into the obscurity of the morning mist with a cheer of congratulation. Then all was again silent, and the sluggish tide glided slowly past the dark hulls that rested on the bosom of the Thames. On carrying the girl into the small cabin of the "Nancy" it was found that she was still in a state of insensibility. The dim light of the swinging lamp fell on her pale face, and revealed to the surprised and sympathetic beholders features of great beauty and delicate form, over which masses of dark brown hair straggled in wild confusion. "Now, lads, clear out o' the way," cried Captain Bluenose, pulling off his coat energetically. "Leave this here little craft to me. I know 'xactly wot's got to be done, d'ye see. Turn her on her face--there; never go for to put a drownded body on its back, be it man or woman. Stick that coat under her breast, and her arm under her forehead. So, now we'll go to work." There is no doubt that the worthy captain understood precisely what he meant to do, and was working on a systematic plan; but what the result of his labours might have been it is impossible to say, for at that moment he was interrupted by the tread of hurried footsteps on deck, and the sudden entrance of a silvery-haired man, whose black coat, vest, and pantaloons contrasted strangely with his heavy oilskin coat and sou'-wester, and tended to puzzle the beholder as to whether he was a landsman in nautical outer garments, or a seaman clothed partly in what Jack calls "shore-going toggery." There was an expression of wild anxiety on the man's face as he sprang towards the prostrate form of the girl, fell on his knees, and, seizing her hand, exclaimed, "Lucy, dearest Lucy!" He stopped suddenly as if he had been choked, and, bending his ear close to Lucy's lips, listened for a few seconds with knitted brow and compressed lips. At that moment there was a flutter on the eyelids of the girl, and a broken sigh escaped her. The man kneeling at her side sprang convulsively to his feet, raised his hands high above his head, and exclaimed, "O God, in Christ's name I thank thee," in tones so fervent, as almost to approach to a shout. With this irrepressible cry of gratitude every trace of strong emotion appeared to vanish from the countenance and the manner of the stranger. Turning to Bluenose, who had been gazing at this scene in much surprise, not unmingled with anxiety, he said in a calm but quick voice:-- "My friend, this child is my daughter. Pray leave me alone with her for a few minutes." "Excuge a oldish man, sir," said the Captain; "p'raps you'd better let me stay, 'cause why, I knows how to treat drownded--" "Thank you, it is unnecessary," said the stranger. "Besides, I myself am acquainted with the rules of the Humane Society. But you can aid me by getting hot blankets and warm coffee." "Come along, Captain," cried Bax, seizing his friend by the arm and dragging him out of the cabin. Guy had quitted it, followed by Tommy, the instant the old man had expressed a wish to be left alone with his child. "There, now, you obstinate man," cried Bax, relaxing his grasp on gaining the foot of the companion ladder; "up with you, and send Tommy to look after coffee and blankets. He knows where to get 'em. I'll go and put on dry toggery; the best thing that _you_ can do, is to keep out of people's way." This latter piece of advice was not very agreeable to one whose heart was tender, and his desire to engage in works of active benevolence very strong. But feeling that the advice was good, and thoroughly appreciating the fact that, having shipped as a "suppernummerary hand," he was bound to obey his young commander, he went on deck without remonstrance, walked aft to the binnacle, and began to fill his pipe. Guy and Tommy were already there, engaged in earnest conversation. The ruddy light of the binnacle lamp streamed up in the face of the latter, and revealed his curly fair hair clustering in wild disorder over his flushed brow, as, with fire gleaming in his blue eyes, he stared up in his companion's face and related how that Bax, in the coolest manner possible, had kept treading water with the girl in his arms, knowing quite well that not even _his_ strength, great though it was, could enable him to pull himself by the rope to the ship against the tide, and knowing that, in a few minutes, some one would get into the boat and pick them up. "And so _some one_ did, and very cleverly and bravely done it was, Tommy," said Guy, laying his hand kindly on the boy's shoulder. "Well, I don't think much o' that," replied Tommy. "It don't call for much courage to jump into a boat of a fine night, twist your legs round a thort, and hold on to a girl by claws and teeth till somebody comes to yer help." It was all very well for Tommy to disclaim credit for what he had done; but the glad triumphant expression of his face, and his firm erect gait, proved that he was very much satisfied indeed with the share he had had in that night's adventure. "Ah, sir," continued the boy, "there never was a man like Bax!" "You appear to admire him very much," said Guy; "and from the little that I have seen of him I think you have good reason." "Admire him!" cried Tommy, with a look of scorn; "no, I don't. I _like_ him. He's a trump!" "Who's a trump?" inquired Bluenose, coming up at that moment. "Bax," replied the boy, with the air of one who takes up an impregnable position, and defies the whole world in arms to overthrow him. "So he is, so he is, a reg'lar trump," said the Captain, "an' wot's more, there ain't no more of them there trumps in the pack, for he's the king of 'arts, he is. An' you're a trump, too, Tommy; you're the _knave_ of 'arts, you are, ye little beggar. Go and git blankets and hot coffee for that gal, and look sharp, my lad." "I have heard you speak once or twice of Bax and his exploits," said Guy Foster, when the boy left them, "but this is the first time I have seen him perform. I did not see much of him when down on the coast last summer, but I saw enough to make me like him. Is he really the wonderful fellow that Tommy makes him out to be?" "Wonderful?" echoed the Captain, puffing his pipe vigorously, as was his wont when a little puzzled for an expression or an idea. "No, he ain't wonderful; that's not the word. He's a _life-preserver_, that's wot he is. None o' your hinflated injinrubber or cork affairs, but a reg'lar, hanimated, walkin', self-actin' life-preserver. Why, I've know'd him, off and on, since he was the length of a marline spike, d'ye see--an' I've seed him save dozens, ay _dozens_, of lives--men, women, and children,--in lifeboats, an' in luggers, an' swimmin'. Why, he thinks no more o' that wot he's done to-night, than he does of eatin' salt junk. He's got a silver medal from the Royal Life-Boat Institution, an' another from the Queen of Spain, and a gold 'un from some other king or queen, I don't 'xactly know who--besides no end o' thanks, written on paper, also on wot they calls wellum, in beautiful German text and small-hand;--ho! you know, nobody knows wot that feller's been a-doin' of all his life. If he was hung round with all the gold and silver medals he _deserves_ to have, he'd go to the bottom--life-preserver though he is--like the sheet-anchor of a seventy-four, he would." "What's that about going to the bottom?" said Bax, who came aft at the moment. "That's just wot you've got nothin' to do with," replied Bluenose, resuming his pipe, which, in the ardour of his discourse, he had removed from his lips, and held out at arm's length before him. "Well, I have _not_ much to do with going to the bottom," said Bax, laughing. "But where's Tommy?--oh! here you are. Have you attended to orders?" "Blankits, hot, just bin sent in. Coffee, hot, follers in five minits." "Brayvo," ejaculated Bluenose, with an approving smile. "I wonder who the old man is?" said Guy. "He neither looks like a landsman nor a seaman, but a sort of mixture of both." "So he is," said Bax. "I happen to know him, though he does not know me. He is a Scripture reader to sailors (Burton by name), and has spent many years of his life at work on the coast, in the neighbourhood of Ramsgate. I suppose he was goin' down the coast in the vessel out of which his daughter tumbled. I didn't know he had a daughter. By the way, she's not a bad one to begin with, Tommy; a regular beauty," continued Bax, with a smile. "You've often wondered whether the first would be a man, or a woman, or a child. The point is settled now!" "Yes," replied the boy, with a grave meditative look. "I suppose I _may_ say she's my _first_, for you know you could not have done it without me." There was something ludicrous, as well as sublime, in this little chip of humanity gravely talking of poor Lucy Burton being "his first," as if he had just entered on a new fishing-ground, and were beginning to take account of the creatures he had the good fortune to haul out of the sea! And in very truth, reader, this was the case. Under the training of a modest, lion-hearted British sailor, the boy was beginning to display, in unusual vigour, those daring, enthusiastic, self-sacrificing qualities which, although mingled with much that is evil, are marked characteristics of our seamen; qualities which have gone far to raise our little island to her present high position of commercial prosperity and political importance, and which, with God's blessing, will continue to carry our flag, our merchandise, and our bibles, to the ends of the earth, and guard our shores, as in days of old, from the foot of every foreign foe. England can never fully appreciate how much she owes to her seamen. The thousands of our inland population have a very inadequate conception of the race of heroes by which our coasts are peopled. Bax is no exaggerated specimen, got up, in these sensation days, for effect. It is a glorious fact,--proved by the hard and bare statistics furnished annually by the Board of Trade, and from other sources,--that his name is legion, and that the men of whom he is a type swarm all round our coasts, from the old Ultima Thule to the Land's End. Yes, Tommy was in good training. He had begun well. He was evidently a chip of the elder block. It did not, indeed, occur to his young imagination to suppose that he could ever become anything in the most distant degree resembling his idol Bax. Neither did he entertain any definite idea as to what his young heart longed after; but he had seen life saved; he had stood on the sea-shore when storms cast shattered wrecks upon the sands, and had witnessed the exploits of boatmen in their brave efforts to save human life; he had known what it was to weep when the rescuer perished with those whom he sought to save, and he had helped to swell with his tiny voice, the bursting cheer of triumph, when men, women, and children were plucked, as if by miracle, from the raging sea! To take part in those deeds of heroism was the leading desire in the boy's life; and now it seemed as if his career were commencing in earnest, and the day-dreams in which he had so long indulged were at last about to become waking realities. CHAPTER FOUR. IN WHICH INTRODUCTIONS STILL GO ON, AND COMING EVENTS CAST THEIR SHADOWS BEFORE. Mrs Maria Foster,--the widow of James Foster (formerly captain in the merchant service), the mother of Guy Foster (clerk in the firm of Denham, Crumps, and Company), and the promoter or supporter of every good cause,--was a little woman of five-and-forty or thereabouts, with mild blue eyes, a philanthropic heart, and pale blue ribbons in her cap. Mrs Foster may be said to have been in easy circumstances. That is to say, she had sufficient (being a thrifty and economical lady) to "make the two ends meet," even to overlap somewhat, though not,--as a friend of ours once observed,--to tie in a handsome bow, so that she had a little to spare for charitable purposes. It must not be supposed, however, that the good lady was possessed of a small fortune. The "circumstances," which were easy to her, would have proved remarkably uneasy to many; but she possessed the rare and tailorly quality of being able and willing to cut her coat according to her cloth. There was no deeper mystery than that in the "ease" with which we have characterised her "circumstances." The coast of Kent was her locality; the environs of the town of Deal, her neighbourhood; and a small--almost miniature but pretty--cottage, her habitation. The cottage stood in the middle of a little garden, close to that wide extent of waste land, lying to the north of Deal, which is known by the name of the Sandhills, and on the seaward edge of which formerly stood the pile--and now lie the remains--of Sandown Castle. Everything in and around the cottage was remarkably neat--including its mistress, who, on the evening of the day in which her son sailed with Bax in the "Nancy," was seated at a little table in her small parlour, summing up an account on a sheet of note-paper,--an operation which appeared to cause her much perplexity, if one might judge from her knitted brows, her deep sighs, and her frequent remarks of "it won't do," and "what _can_ it be?" These observations were apparently addressed to the cat, which sat in front of the fire, watching the tea-kettle and the buttered toast; but although the good lady was addicted to talking to her cat, in a general way, about her love for it and its state of health, we cannot suppose that she really appealed to it on such a grave subject as arithmetical calculation. If she did she got no answer from the cat--not even a sign of recognition; but she did from a bright-faced, fair-haired girl, of about eighteen, who at that moment entered the room, with a teapot in one hand, and a cream-jug in the other. "What is it that puzzles you, mamma?" said the girl, setting down the pot and jug, and preparing to attend to the duties of the tea-table. To this Mrs Foster replied, in an absent way, that she didn't know, that it was quite beyond her comprehension, and that she was utterly perplexed; but that she _would_ find it out, if she should sit all night over it. Whereupon she proceeded to state that "three and two made five, and seven made--made"--she wasn't quite sure how much that made, until her companion told her it made twelve; which piece of information she received with an--"Oh! of course it does. Dear me, Amy, how silly I am!"--just as if she had known the fact all her life, and had only forgotten it at that moment, unaccountably, for the first time! Mrs Foster then went on to add a variety of other figures to this,--with an occasional word of assistance from Amy,--until the whole amounted to the sum of one hundred and thirty-three. "There," said Mrs Foster, with a pleased expression, as she put the figures down, "now how many twelves are in that--eh? let me see. Twelve times twelve are a hundred and forty,--no, that's too much; twelve times eleven--how much is twelve times eleven?" Mrs Foster did not ask this of Amy; no, she gazed up at the ceiling, where an uncommonly large spider was affixing its web,--with the design, no doubt, of lowering itself down to the tea-table,--and demanded the solution of the problem, apparently, from that creature. "I think it is a hundred and thirty-two, mamma," said Amy, pouring out the tea. "Oh, _of course_, how stupid!" said Mrs Foster, who was quite struck with the obviousness of the fact--on being told it. "There now, that comes to eleven shillings and one penny, which settles the Soup Kitchen. One pound two does the Hospital for the Blind, and there's one pound due to the Sailors' Home. But still," continued Mrs Foster, with a return of the perplexed expression, "that does not get me out of my difficulty." "Come to tea, dear," said Amy, "and we will try to clear it up together afterwards." "Impossible, child. I could not eat with appetite while this is puzzling my brain. Let me see; there were fifteen pounds, _apparently_, spent last year, when I put it on paper, and yet here is a sovereign over," said Mrs Foster, holding up the coin, and looking at it reproachfully, as if the blame lay with it and not with herself. "Well, mamma," said Amy, laughing, "but where is your difficulty?" "Don't you see, child? by rights I ought to give fifteen pounds away; well, my book tells me that fifteen pounds _have_ been given, and yet here is a sovereign left over to give!" "Then don't give it, mamma, just put it back into your purse, and that will make the thing right, won't it?" "No, dear, it won't, because, you see, the money _must_ be right, so the book _must_ be wrong; oh! here it is. I declare I have forgot to carry _one_. There, that's right. Now, dear, we shall have tea." It may be necessary to explain here, that although Amy called Mrs Foster "mamma," she was in fact not related to her at all, being only an adopted daughter. Poor Amy Russell was a child of the sea. Two years previous to the time of which we write, she, with her father and mother, had been wrecked on the coast of Kent while returning from a long residence in New Zealand. Their vessel filled the moment she struck, and the seas buried the hull so completely that passengers and crew were obliged to take to the rigging. Here they remained all night exposed to the fury of the storm. Many of the unfortunates, unable to withstand the exposure of that terrible night, fell or were washed out of the rigging and perished. Among these were Amy's father and mother. Amy herself was taken care of by the captain, with whom she was a great favourite, and, along with those who remained until the morning, was saved by one of the lifeboats stationed on that coast. They had a narrow escape from drowning even after being taken into the boat, for, just as they were approaching the entrance to the harbour, where crowds of the inhabitants of the town were anxiously watching them, a tremendous sea completely filled the boat, swept away the starboard oars, and carried several of the wrecked passengers overboard, Amy being one of them. This happened close under the head of the pier. All the passengers were recovered by the lifeboat's crew in a few seconds, with the exception of Amy, who, being exhausted by previous exposure, began to sink at once. The boatmen, in the turmoil of raging water and howling wind, did not observe this, and a cry of consternation was uttered by the people on the pier, who saw the whole thing clearly from their elevated position; but the cry was either drowned by the noise of the tempest, or not understood by the boatmen. At that moment a tall stripling on the pier raced to the edge of it, shot like a rocket head-foremost into the sea, and in a second or two reappeared with the young girl in his arms. They were both dragged into the lifeboat, amid ringing cheers of delight and admiration. The stripling who did this brave deed was none other than our friend Guy Foster, who chanced to be lodging with his mother in the neighbouring town at that time. Guy insisted on having Amy conveyed to his mother's place of abode. Mrs Foster soon discovered that the poor orphan had neither relations nor friends in England, and having taken a fancy to her, adopted her as a daughter. Thus did she come to call Mrs Foster "mamma," and to preside at the tea-table in Sandhill Cottage. But, to return from this digression:--Mrs Foster was congratulating herself on having discovered the error in her accounts, when the door opened and a stout florid woman, of fifty or thereabouts, with a shiny red skin, presented herself and said: "Please, ma'am, here's a gentleman as wants to see you, and won't go away, though I told him you was at tea, w'ich is a fact, though it had no impression whatever on him, such is his imprence, goin' for to reflect on my character for truth, as never told a lie since I was a baby in long frocks, so I didn't; but it's always the way with these men that go tax-gatherin', though I don't know that he's that neether, so I don't; what shall I say, ma'am?" Mrs Laker, having uttered the foregoing without pause or inflection of voice from beginning to end, came to an abrupt stop. Whether from want of breath or ideas it is difficult to say; perhaps from both. "Show the gentleman in, Laker," said Mrs Foster; "no doubt he has good reason for wishing to see me." Laker vanished. She was impulsive in her actions as well as in her words. She was her mistress's factotum--her cook, housemaid, sempstress, and confidential adviser; in addition to which she was somewhat of a bore, being stubborn and opinionated, but a good and faithful servant on the whole. The individual who was presently introduced was a bustling little old gentleman with a shining bald head and a cheerful countenance. "Excuse my rudeness--madam--" he began, bowing low, as he advanced with a hesitating step--"this intrusion, really--" "Do not mention it, sir, pray be seated," said Mrs Foster; "you are welcome--surely I have met with you before?" She put on a pair of gold spectacles as she said this, and looked earnestly at her visitor, who, having placed his hat on the floor and bowed to Amy, sat down and pulled out a bundle of papers. "You have, madam," replied the visitor. "My name is Summers--David Summers, ma'am, at your service. I had the pleasure of being introduced to you at a meeting in a town not far distant, where an effort was being made to raise contributions towards the establishment of a lifeboat--" "Oh! I recollect," cried Mrs Foster, whose sympathetic heart at once opened to the man who had made (as she had thought) such an eloquent appeal at the meeting in question; "I am delighted to see you, Mr Summers. If I mistake not, I invited you to come and see me when you should visit this part of the coast." "You were kind enough to do so, madam, hence my venturing to call at this hour. I quit Deal to-morrow, early, and I am anxious to re-plead my old cause with you; but indeed I know this to be unnecessary, your own sympathies being already enlisted in my favour." Mrs Foster assured Mr Summers that he was right, but begged of him, notwithstanding, to plead with her as if she were an enemy, in order that she might hear all he had to say on the subject, adding, that she hoped he would stay and have a cup of tea. Hereupon Mr Summers bowed, drew in his chair, remarked to Amy that the lifeboat service was one of the most interesting and important topics of the day, and the National Lifeboat Institution one of the most valuable institutions in the kingdom, and at once launched into his favourite theme with all the gusto of an enthusiast who has gained the ear of a sympathetic audience. We will, however, spare the reader the details and statistics which afforded so much pleasure to Mrs Foster and her adopted daughter, knowing full well that there is an immense difference between these when set down in hard type, and when poured forth in rich energetic tones, backed by twinkling eyes and a beaming countenance. "Do you really mean to tell me, Mr Summers," said Mrs Foster--when the old gentleman came to the end of a long statement, "that about a thousand ships are wrecked, and nearly a thousand lives lost, besides more than a million pounds worth of property, on the shores of this country _every year_?" "It is a sad but incontrovertible fact," replied Mr Summers. "Official lists are drawn up annually by the Board of Trade, which give the number and positions of wrecks--cold dry lists they are too. Matter-of-fact columns and figures, without a touch of softness about them. They are not meant to appeal to the feelings; they are a mere record of facts. So many vessels went ashore in such and such a gale--they were sunk, dismasted, dashed to pieces. So many persons were saved, so many drowned,--that is all. Ah! who can picture to himself the awful realities that are condensed in those brief accounts? "When a magnificent steamer, after a fine voyage from the antipodes, comes within hail of port, is caught in a fearful hurricane, cast ashore and dashed to pieces, leaving hundreds of passengers, men, women, and children, to perish in the dark night, grasping the very rocks of their native land, the event is too awful to escape notice. So numerous are the crushed and broken hearts in the land, that their cry awakens public attention, and the newspapers teem for a time with graphic details of the wreck; details which, graphic though they be, fall inconceivably short of the dread reality; but no notice is taken, except in the way of brief record, of the dozens of small coasting vessels that shared the fate of that steamer in the same terrific gale. No one reads the fate of yonder little schooner, one mast of which is seen just peeping out of the sea under that frowning cliff, and yet there is a terrible tale connected with it. Who shall tell or conceive of the agonies endured, before the morning light came, by the skipper and his crew of four men and a boy, as their little ship was lifted and flung upon the rocks by each succeeding wave? And who can conceive their feelings when the longed for light _did_ come at last, and daring fishermen on the shore sought to render aid in vain, for their boats were overturned and cast back upon the beach, and themselves barely escaped with their lives, and so the perishing men stood in helpless misery and gazed landward in despair until a mighty wave carried away the mast to which they clung, and, with a last wild shriek they sank in sight of friends and home, because _there was no lifeboat there_." "Can this be true?" said Mrs Foster, in a tone of deep sympathy. "True!" echoed Mr Summers, "would God that it were not. I have mentioned but one case, yet it is a fact that for _every_ gale that blows _dozens_ of wrecks take place on our coasts, each with its more or less tragic history. You remember the last gale? It is not three weeks since it blew. No fewer than one hundred and ninety-five wrecks took place on the shores of the United Kingdom on that night and the following day, and six hundred and eighty-four lives were lost, many of which would undoubtedly have been saved had there been a sufficient number of lifeboats stationed along our shores; for you must bear in remembrance, that although hundreds of lives are annually saved by ordinary shore boats, and by ships' boats, hundreds also are saved by lifeboats in circumstances in which ordinary boats would be utterly useless. "Here is a newspaper paragraph," continued the old gentleman, unfolding a paper and preparing to read, "which shows the brief way in which the public prints at times notice events of the most stirring and heroic nature:--`On the morning of the 3rd December last, after a stormy and rainy night, the wind shifted to the North West and blew a hurricane. Many vessels got on shore near Holyhead, from various causes. The lifeboat of the National Lifeboat Institution was launched and proceeded to their assistance. She got ahead of one, a schooner, and anchored, but the intense violence of the wind blew her to leeward, anchor and all, and she was unable to communicate, and had great difficulty in returning ashore. She again put off to the schooner _Elizabeth_ of Whitehaven, which had a signal of distress flying, having parted one chain, and brought her crew of four men on shore. The hurricane continued unabated well into the night. The weather having moderated, the lifeboat was despatched at 2 a.m., and brought on shore twenty-three men from the _Confiance_ of Liverpool; then again put off and brought ashore nineteen men from the barque _Elizabeth Morrow_ of Glasgow; next proceeded to the schooner _L'Esperance_ of Nantes, and saved two men, making altogether a total of forty-eight lives saved by the lifeboat in this hurricane only.' "Dear madam," observed Mr Summers, looking at Mrs Foster over his spectacles, "surely it is unnecessary for me to point out that this brief narrative does not give us the most distant conception of the terrors, the endurance, the heroism, incident to that night! Permit me to read you another paragraph. It is given more in detail and does better justice to the scene." The old gentleman selected another paper, opened it, and read as follows:-- "`The sum of 9 pounds has recently been given by the National Lifeboat Institution to a boat's crew, in appreciation of their gallant conduct in putting off in a salmon-coble, during a heavy gale of wind, and rescuing, at great risk of life, the crew of four men of the schooner _Thankful_ of Sunderland, which was totally wrecked off Burghead, n.b., on the 19th July. Every moment the position of the ship was becoming more dangerous as the advancing tide drove her in among the small rocks at the back of the sea-wall, and no boat could live in the terrible surge that was fast breaking up the vessel. The crew, four in number, along with the pilot, took to the fore-rigging, and in a short time the beach was strewn with pieces of the wreck--the bulwarks were nearly all destroyed--the boat washed overboard--and the deck broken up. Though only forty yards from the pier, not the least assistance could be rendered to the crew, whose faces were quite distinguishable as they clung to the swaying rigging. At twenty minutes past six the fore-mast cracked, and its living freight had hardly time to crawl down to the only bulwark above water (for the schooner now lay on her beam-ends with her bilge towards the sea), when it fell by the board. In about five minutes more the main-topmast was snapped by the gale as if it had been a reed, while the bowsprit and other gear were carried away, leaving nothing but the gutted hull with the mainmast standing. Another hour of awful suspense passed, during which the five men lashed themselves to the bulwark, the sea every other minute breaking over their heads in huge masses. At half-past seven, one of the sailors, a young man, was washed from the wreck, but fortunately succeeded in catching the floating rigging, by which he was able to regain his former position. Another young heroic sailor seemed to be the life of the whole company in this trying emergency, and his efforts to keep up the spirits of his companions were signally successful. About eight o'clock the waves broke over the ship with renewed violence, but still those on the shore could return no answer in the affirmative to the piercing cry that came from the wreck, "Can't we get a boat?" The voice was that of the gallant sailor already referred to; the others were too much exhausted to utter a word. McIntosh, the pilot from Burghead, expired from sheer cold and exhaustion. None who saw him perish soon forgot the fearful agony of his daughter as she bade her father farewell from the parapet of the breakwater. After renewed efforts a boat was got over the breakwater, and at great risk succeeded in saving the other men, who were in a very exhausted condition.' "And now, dear madam," pursued the old gentleman, tying up his papers, "I will not run the risk of wearying you with more details, but come to the point at once by soliciting from you a contribution towards the establishment of a lifeboat on the coast here, where I am sure you must be well aware there is very great need for one." "I am sure there is," said Mrs Foster, opening her box; "alas! I fear the wind is rising even now. The rattling of the window-frames will bring what you have told me to remembrance ever after this night. How much does it require to establish a lifeboat?" "Between five and six hundred pounds," replied Mr Summers. "After which about twenty pounds annually will suffice to maintain it in working order." "So much!" exclaimed Mrs Foster. "I fear that you will find it difficult to raise so large a sum." "I trust not, but if we raise a pretty large proportion of it, the Lifeboat Institution will make up the balance. Perhaps"--here the old gentleman paused and looked dubiously at Mrs Foster--"perhaps you would like to know the precise nature of the objects for which the Lifeboat Institution has been founded. Will you do me the favour to listen for five minutes longer? The operations of the Institution are of deep importance to the national welfare." Mrs Foster at once expressed her willingness to listen, and the old gentleman, re-opening his bundle of papers, selected one from which he read sundry interesting details regarding the National Lifeboat Institution. It need scarcely be said, that with such a sympathetic mind to address as that of Mrs Foster, Mr Summers prolonged his visit for another hour, and it is perhaps equally unnecessary to say that the worthy lady found a suitable object on which to bestow the sovereign which had perplexed her so much at an earlier part of the evening. She not only gave the money with the air of a "cheerful giver," but she begged Mr Summers to send her as many papers on the subject of lifeboats and wrecks as he happened to be possessed of, and promised to become an active agent in pleading with her friends in behalf of the object he had in view. The wind was rising while the party in Sandhill Cottage were thus engaged. It came in ominous and heavy gusts, rattling the window-frames and moaning in the chimneys to such an extent that Mrs Laker, who was of a timid and superstitious nature, was fain to sit outside the parlour door in order to be near the other inmates of the cottage. "About a thousand lives lost in each year on the shores of this kingdom!" thought Mrs Foster, as she lay in bed that night listening to the rising storm with feelings of awe and solemnity which she had never before experienced. If Mrs Foster had been acquainted with the subject in detail, she might have had further food for solemn reflection in the fact that the greater part of those lives were lost _unnecessarily_; that their loss was owing not nearly so much to the direct providence of God as to the incompetence, the ignorance, the false economy, and the culpable carelessness of man. Mrs Foster's head lay on a soft pillow while the tempest raged around her humble dwelling. She little thought that one around whom her heart-strings were entwined was out on the wild sea that night, exposed to its utmost fury and in urgent need of the aid of that species of boat which had filled her thoughts that evening, and still continued to influence her dreams. CHAPTER FIVE. THE GALE--FALSE ECONOMY AND ITS RESULTS--A WRECK ON THE GOODWIN SANDS. What seamen style a "whole gale" seemed to be brewing when the "Nancy" tripped her anchor and shook out her sails. Sailors have a quiet, matter-of-fact, and professional way of talking about the weather. Landsmen would be surprised (perhaps something more!) if exposed to what Jack calls a stiff breeze, or a capful of wind. A "whole gale" may sound peculiar to some ears, but if the said gale were to sound _in_ the same ears, the hearers would be apt to style it, in consternation, "a most tremendous hurricane!" On board the "Nancy," Bax and Bluenose had some suspicion that _something_ was brewing, but whether a "whole gale," or "half a gale," or a "stiff breeze," they could not be expected to divine, not being possessed of supernatural gifts. Had they been possessed of a good barometer they would have been able to foretell what was coming without supernatural gifts; but Messrs. Denham, Crumps, and Company were economical in their tendencies, and deemed barometers superfluous. Being, to some extent, ignorant of nautical affairs (as well as of scientific), and being to a large extent indifferent to the warning voices of those who knew better, they thought fit to intrust the "Nancy" to the unaided wisdom of the intelligent young seaman who commanded her. Of course, being acute men of business, they took every "needful" precaution, and being men of experience, they were not blind to the fact that many vessels were annually lost; they therefore insured schooner and cargo to their full value. Having done so, Messrs. Denham, Crumps, and Company felt at ease. If the "Nancy" should happen to go down--no matter; it would perhaps be a more rapid and satisfactory way of terminating a doubtful venture! It was just possible that in the event of the "Nancy" going down _lives_ might be lost, and other lives rendered desolate. What then? The "Firm" had nothing to do with that! The lives embarked in the "Nancy" did not belong to Denham, Crumps, and Company. If they should go to the bottom, there would be nothing to lose, and nothing to pay; perhaps a trifle to the widows and children, that was all! In regard to this also they felt quite at ease. On the strength of such views and opinions the tackling of the "Nancy" was allowed to become rotten; the cables and the anchors of the "Nancy" were economically weak and insufficient; the charts of the "Nancy" were old and inaccurate, and the "Nancy" herself was in all respects utterly unseaworthy. It could scarcely be expected, however, that the operations of Nature were to be suspended because of the unprepared condition of this vessel; not to mention hundreds of others in similar condition. The gale continued to "brew." A stiff breeze carried the "Nancy" down the Thames towards the open sea; then a sudden calm left her to float without progressive motion on the water. As evening approached the breeze sprang up again and freshened. Then it chopped round to the east, and when night fell it began to blow hard right in the teeth of the little vessel. Bax was a good and a bold seaman. He knew the coast well, and hoped, in due course, to double the North Foreland, and find shelter in the Downs. He knew the channels and buoys thoroughly, and had often run the same course in stormy weather. But the gale which now began to buffet the little schooner was of more than ordinary violence. It was one of those fierce hurricanes which, once in a year, or, it may be, once in three or four years, bursts upon our island, strews the coast with wrecks, fills many homes and hearts with desolation, and awakens the inhabitants of the inland counties to a slight sense of the terrible scenes that are of constant occurrence on the shores which form the bulwark of their peaceful homes. "We shall have rough weather to-night, I fear," observed Mr Burton, coming on deck some time after sunset, and addressing Bax; "doubtless you know the channels well, young sir?" "I do," replied the sailor, with a peculiar smile. "Twelve years' experience has not been altogether thrown away on me. I have sailed these waters in old Jeph's lugger since I was a little boy." "Is that old Jeph the smuggler, sometimes called the mad philosopher, from the circumstance of his mind being much taken up with odd notions about lifeboats?" inquired the missionary. "The same," replied Bax, "though I'll go bound for it there's not an honester man in Deal than old Jeph is now, whatever he may have done in the smuggling way when he was young. I have known him only as a good old man; and in regard to these same notions he has about lifeboats, it's my firm belief that we'll see his plans, or something like them, carried out before long. He's not so mad as folk think, and certainly not half so mad as the people who give no thought whatever to these subjects." Bax said this warmly, for there was a strong bond of sympathy between him and his old friend, whom he could not bear to hear mentioned in a slighting manner. "I meant not to say a word against old Jeph," replied Mr Burton, quickly. "I merely spoke of him in the way in which seamen in these parts commonly refer to him. It pleases me much to hear so good a character of him from one who, I have no doubt, has had good opportunity of judging." Here Guy Foster, who was standing near the binnacle, turned round and said earnestly:-- "I can testify to the fact that old Jeph is a good Christian man; at least if love to our Saviour, and anxiety for the salvation of souls, is to be accepted as evidence." The missionary said that there was no better evidence than that, and was about to question Bax further in regard to the old man who bore such a peculiar character, when a loud peal of thunder drew the attention of all to the threatening aspect of the weather. "Heave the lead, Bill!" cried Bax to one of the men. "Ha! that's wot I've been lookin' for," observed Bluenose, spitting his quid over the lee bulwarks, and replacing it with a fresh one. "I've never got no confidence in a skipper as don't keep his lead a-goin' in shoal water. Specially in sich waters as them 'ere, wot shifts more or less with every gale." The command to heave the lead was followed by an order to reduce sail, and as the gale freshened and the night closed in, this order was repeated more than once, until the schooner was beating to windward under the smallest possible amount of canvas. An anxious expression rested on Bax's face as he stood by the steersman, glancing alternately at the sails and at the horizon where clouds of the blackest kind were gathering. "Does your barometer indicate very bad weather?" inquired Mr Burton. "I have no barometer," replied Bax, bitterly. The missionary looked surprised, and Guy Foster bit his lip, for he felt that this piece of false economy was a blot on the firm to which he belonged. In order to change the subject, he inquired for Lucy, who, since the time of her rescue, had remained in bed. "My daughter does well, thanks be to God!" said Burton. "I think that no evil will flow from her accident, for she was but a short time in the water; thanks to _you_, friend Bax." "And to my 'prentice, Tommy Bogey," said Bax, with an arch smile which was peculiar to him when he felt humorously disposed. The smile fled, however, and was replaced by an anxious look, as Tommy himself came aft and reported that the schooner had sprung a leak. Bax instantly went below, and returned with the assurance that the leak was trifling. "The `Nancy' is a sorry old hulk," said he, "but half an hour more on this tack, and I'll 'bout ship and run for the Downs, where we will be comparatively safe." The gale had by this time increased so much that the little craft lay over with her lee bulwarks almost under water at times. Little fear would her gallant commander have felt had she been tight, and trim and sound; but he knew that her rigging was old, and one of her masts unsound, and he felt that the best seamanship could be of no avail whatever against her numerous defects. His experienced eye told him that a storm of no ordinary severity was coming, and he trembled for the life of the young girl who had been so unexpectedly placed under his care. Had the dangers attendant upon an unseaworthy vessel and the difficulty of navigating the channels of these celebrated Sands, been all that Bax had to fear, he would have felt comparatively at ease; but the economical spirit of Denham, Crumps, and Company had supplied him with anchors and chains which he feared were neither new enough nor sufficiently powerful to hold his vessel after she had gained her anchorage-ground. In these circumstances, he resolved to run for the shelter of Ramsgate Harbour. Before he could carry out his intentions the wind chopped round to the north, and for some time blew so hard as to threaten the capsizing of the schooner. The cross sea also rendered her almost unmanageable, so that, ere long, she was driven to leeward of the outer lightship that marks the north end of the Goodwins. Again the wind shifted a few points to the eastward, and soon the "Nancy" was flying like a racehorse towards the shore. Pilots and seamen alone can properly comprehend the peculiar dangers that attend the navigation of this part of our coast. It would only perplex a landsman to be told in detail the proceedings of the "Nancy" and her crew after this point. Suffice it to say that Bax handled her with consummate skill, and did all that man could do for the safety of his vessel, and the human lives that were dependent on his knowledge and care. "Is your daughter dressed?" inquired Bax of Mr Burton, as a fiercer gust than usual nearly laid the schooner on her beam-ends, and deluged the decks with water. "No, she sleeps soundly, and I am loth to disturb her. Do you think we are in much danger?" "In none, if the schooner were seaworthy, but in much, seeing that she has not got a sound plank or spar. Go down, sir, and get her dressed at once; and, harkee, let her put on every wrap she happens to have with her." The missionary needed no second bidding. He went below to rouse and assist Lucy, while Bluenose, Guy, and the rest of those on board, held on to ropes, and belaying pins, and awaited the result in silence. The noise of the wind, and the peals of thunder that seemed to tear the heavens asunder, rendered conversation impossible. They all felt that a few minutes would decide whether this terrible rush landward would terminate in safety or disaster, and they knew that everything, as far as human skill had to do with it, depended on Bax. With a look of calm, sober gravity the young seaman stood grasping the weather-shrouds of the mainmast, and looking intently towards the light-ship called the Gull Light, which is anchored off the North-sand-head. During this period of suspense the lead was kept constantly going, and reported almost every half-minute. Precious, significant, half-minutes those, as much so as are the last few grains of sand in the hour-glass! "Keep her away two points," cried Bax. "Ay, ay, sir," answered the steersman. At that moment a violent gust snapped the topsail-yard, and the sail was instantly blown to ribbons. The dashing of this spar about carried away the foretop-mast, and almost as a necessary consequence, the jib with the jib-boom went along with it. The schooner instantly became unmanageable, and was driven bodily to leeward. Seizing an axe, Bax, with the prompt assistance of the crew and his friends, soon cleared away the wreck, and once more got the head of his vessel round towards the Gull Light, the lanterns of which were seen faintly gleaming through the murky atmosphere. But it was too late. The breakers of the North-sand-head were already roaring under their lee, and also right ahead of them. "Port! port! hard a-port!" shouted Bax. "Port it is," replied the steersman, with that calm professional sing-song tone peculiar to seamen. At that instant, the schooner struck the sand, passed over the first line of breakers, and rushed onwards to certain destruction. "Bring Lucy on deck," cried Bax. Mr Burton ran below to obey, but the words had scarce been spoken when Guy Foster entered the cabin, and seizing the trembling girl in his arms, bore her gently but swiftly to the deck. Here the scene that met her gaze was truly awful. It seemed as if above and below there were but one wild chaos of waters over which brooded a sky of ebony. The schooner had by this time got into the hideous turmoil of shallow water, the lurid whiteness of which gleamed in the dark like unearthly light. As yet the vessel was rushing fiercely through it, the rudder had been carried away by the first shock, and she could not be steered. Just as Lucy was placed by Bax in a position of comparative shelter under the lee of the quarter-rails, the "Nancy" struck a second time with fearful violence; she remained hard and fast on the sands, and the shock sent her foremast overboard. If the condition of the little vessel was terrible before, its position now was beyond description awful. The mad seas, unable to hurl her onward, broke against her sides with indescribable fury, and poured tons of water on the deck; so that no one could remain on it. Having foreseen this, Bax had prepared for it. He had warned all on board to keep close by the main shrouds, and take to the mast when the schooner should strike. He himself bore Lucy aloft in his strong arms as if she had been a little child, and placed her on the main cross-trees. Here she clung with a convulsive grasp to the main-topmast, while Guy secured her in her position with a rope. Sitting down on the cross-trees and holding on to them by his legs--a matter of no little difficulty, as the vessel was rolling violently from side to side, Bax began to strip off his thick pilot-coat, intending to cover the girl with it. But he was arrested by the boy Tommy Bogey. "Hold on," he shouted into his commander's ear, "I fetched up this un; I know'd ye'd want it for 'er." Tommy had thoughtfully carried up one of Bax's spare coats, and now handed it to his master, who, assisted by Mr Burton, wrapped it carefully round Lucy, and then descended the rigging to examine the state of the vessel. She heeled very much over to leeward, but the form of the bank on which she lay fortunately prevented her being thrown altogether on her beam-ends. Had this happened, the cross-trees would have been buried in water, and all must have perished. When Bax re-ascended the mast, Bluenose put his mouth close to his ear and shouted: "Couldn't ye send up a rocket?" "Han't got any," replied Bax. There had been a signal-gun aboard, but at the first shock it tore its fastenings out of the old planks, and went crashing through the lee bulwarks into the sea. "Couldn't we get up a glim no-how?" pursued Bluenose. "Ay, couldn't that be done?" cried Guy, who clambered towards them in order to take part in the consultation, for the shrieking of the storm rendered every voice inaudible at the distance of anything more than an inch or two from the ear. "The matches were in the cabin, and that's flooded now," said Bax. Guy replied by taking a tin box from his pocket, in which were a few matches. "Ha! that'll do," cried Bax eagerly, "there's a can of turpentine just under the fore-hatch, which can't have been damaged by water. I'll go and fetch it." "Stay, _I_ will go. Do you look after Lucy and her father," said Guy; and, without waiting for a reply, he slid down one of the back-stays and gained the deck. To traverse this was an act involving great danger and difficulty. The waves broke over it with such force that Guy's arms were nearly torn out of their sockets while he held to the bulwarks. He attained his object, however, and in a short time returned to the cross-trees with the can. Bax had in the meantime cut off some of the drier portions of his clothing. These, with a piece of untwisted rope, were soaked in turpentine, and converted hastily into a rude torch; but it was long before a light could be got in such a storm. The matches were nearly exhausted before this was accomplished. Only those who have been in similar circumstances can adequately appreciate the intense earnestness with which each match was struck, the care with which it was guarded from the wind, and the eager anxiety with which the result was watched; also the sinking of heart that followed each effort, as, one by one, they flared for an instant and went out! At last the saturated mass caught fire, and instantly a rich flame of light flashed over the wild scene, and clearly revealed to them the appalling circumstances in which they were placed. Poor Lucy shuddered, and covering her eyes cast herself in prayer on Him who is "mighty to save." Bax raised the burning mass high over his head, and waved it in the black air. He even clambered to the top of the broken mast, in order to let it be seen far and wide over the watery waste. The inflammable turpentine refused to be quenched by the raging storm, and in a few seconds they had the comfort of seeing the bright flame of a rocket shoot up into the sky. At the same moment a flash in the distance showed that their signal had been observed by the light-ship. The sound of the gun was not heard by those on the wreck, but both it and the rocket were observed from the shore, where many a hardy seaman and pilot, knowing full well the dangers of such a night, kept watch and ward in order to render prompt assistance to their fellow-men in distress. It would be a matter of some interest to ascertain how many of the inhabitants of this busy, thickly-populated isle are aware of the fact that during every storm that blows, while they are slumbering, perchance, in security and comfort in their substantial dwellings, there are hundreds, ay, thousands, of hardy seamen all round our coasts, standing patiently in such sheltered spots as they can find, encased in oilskin, and gazing anxiously out into the dark sea, regardless of the pelting storm, indifferent to the bitter cold, intent only on rendering aid to their fellow-men, and ready at a moment's notice to place life and limb in the most imminent jeopardy,--for what? Can any one suppose that they do this for the sake of the silver medal, or the ten or twenty shillings awarded to those who thus act by the Lifeboat Institution? Do men in other circumstances hold their lives so cheap? Assuredly there is a higher, a nobler motive that prompts the heroes of our coast to their deeds of self-sacrifice and daring. To those who clung to the main-top of the "Nancy" these signals were a bright gleam of hope, with the exception of Lucy, whose spirit sank when she endeavoured in vain to penetrate the thick darkness that followed. Suspecting this, Bluenose, who clung to the cross-trees beside the missionary, and assisted him to shelter his daughter from the storm, shouted in her ear to keep her mind easy, "for the people on shore would be sure to send off the lifeboat, and there would be no danger if the mast held on!" "If the mast held on!" Ha! little did Lucy know how much anxiety filled the heart of Bax in regard to the mast holding on! With much difficulty he had persuaded Denham, Crumps, and Company, about a year before the events we are now relating, that the mainmast of the "Nancy" was utterly useless, and obtained their unwilling consent to have it renewed. But for this it would have shared the fate of the foremast, and those who now clung to it would have been in eternity. But although the mast was strong, its step and holdfasts, Bax knew, were the reverse of sound; and while he stood there cheering his companions with hopeful remarks, he alone knew how frail was the foundation on which his hopes were founded. Fortunately for Lucy and her father, they looked to a higher source of comfort than the young skipper of the "Nancy." They knew that it was no uncommon thing for men, women, and children to be saved, on the coasts of Britain, "_as if_ by miracle," and they felt themselves to be in the hands of Him "whom the winds and the sea obey." Guy held on to the weather-shrouds close to Bax. Speaking so as not to be heard by the others, he said: "Is there much chance of a boat putting off to us?" "Not much," replied Bax. "A lugger could scarcely live in such a sea. Certainly it could not come near us in this shoal water. I doubt even if the lifeboat could come here." For two hours after this they remained silently in their exposed position, their limbs stiffening with cold, drenched continually with spray, and occasionally overwhelmed by the crest of a monstrous wave. Sometimes a rocket from the lightship shot athwart the dark sky, and at all times her lights gleamed like faint stars far away to windward. When the sea broke around them in whiter sheets than usual, they could see the head of the broken foremast drawn against it like a black line to leeward. Everything else above and below, was thick darkness. One of the seamen, who had been for some time in bad health, was the first to give way. Without uttering a word he loosened his hold of the shrouds and fell backwards. Guy saw him falling, and, making a desperate grasp at him, caught him by the breast of his shirt, but the garment gave way, and next moment he was down in the boiling flood. Guy, with an impulse that was natural to him, was about to leap off to his rescue, but Bluenose caught him by the collar and held him forcibly back. In another moment the man was gone for ever. So silently did all this pass, and so furious was the tumult of the storm, that Lucy and her father were not aware of what had occurred. Our brave little friend Tommy Bogey was the next who failed. Whether it was that witnessing the seaman's death had too powerful an effect on his spirit, or that the cold acted more severely on his young muscles than on those of his companions, it is impossible to say, but, soon after the loss of the man, the boy felt his strength giving way. Turning with instinctive trust to his friend in this extremity, he shouted:-- "Bax, give us a hand!" Before his friend could do so, his grasp relaxed and he fell back with a piercing shriek that rose above even the howling wind. Almost an instant after he struck the water, Bax dived head-foremost into it, and came up with him in his arms. Both man and boy went to leeward instantly. The former had counted on this. The fate of the seaman who had just perished had led him to reflect that a vigorous effort might have enabled him to gain the stump of the fore-mast, which still stood, as we have said, to leeward of the main-mast. Acting on this thought, he had plunged without hesitation when the moment for action came, although it did come unexpectedly. A faint shout soon told his horror-stricken companions that he had gained the point of safety. "It won't do to leave 'em there," cried Bluenose, starting up, and clambering as far out on the cross-trees as he dared venture; "even if the mast holds on, them seas would soon wash away the stoutest man living." "Oh! save my preserver!" cried Lucy, who, regardless of the storm, had sprung wildly up, and now stood clinging to a single rope, while her garments were almost torn from her limbs by the fury of the hurricane. "Can nothing be done to save them?" cried the missionary as he kindly but firmly dragged his daughter back to her former position. "Nothin', sir," said one of the sailors. "There ain't a cask, nor nothin' to tie a rope to an' heave to wind'ard--an' it's as like as not it wouldn't fetch 'em if there wos. They'd never see a rope if it wos veered to 'em--moreover, it wouldn't float. Hallo! Master Guy, wot are ye up to?" Guy had hauled in the slack of one of the numerous ropes attached to the main-mast that were floating away to leeward, and was fastening the end of it round his waist. Bluenose and the missionary turned quickly on hearing the seaman's shout, but they were too late to prevent the bold youth from carrying out his design, even if they had wished to do so. Taking a vigorous spring to windward, Guy was in the sea in a moment. In another instant he was lost to view in darkness. Bluenose seized the end of the rope, and awaited the result in breathless suspense. Presently a shout so faint that it seemed miles away, was heard to leeward, and the rope was jerked violently. "Now lads, all hands a-hoy!" cried Bluenose in wild excitement. "Just give 'em time to haul in the slack, and tie it round 'em, and then pull with a will." The incident and the energy of the Captain seemed to act like a spell on the men who had up to this time clung to the shrouds in a state of half-stupor. They clustered round Bluenose, and each gaining the best footing possible in the circumstances, seized hold of the rope. Again the rope was shaken violently, and a heavy strain was felt on it. The men pulled it in with difficulty, hand over hand, and in a short time Bax, Guy, and Tommy were once more safe in their former position on the cross-trees. Terrible indeed their danger, when such a position could be spoken of as one of safety! Another hour passed away. To those who were out on that fatal night the minutes seemed hours--the hours days. Still no succour came to them. The storm instead of abating seemed to be on the increase. Had it not been for the peculiar form of the shoal on which they lay, the old vessel must have been dashed to pieces in the first hour of that terrible gale. Gradually Bax ceased to raise his encouraging voice--indeed the whistling wind would have rendered it inaudible--and the party on the cross-trees clung to their frail spar almost in despair. As the gale increased so did the danger of their position. No chance of deliverance seemed left to them; no prospect of escape from their dreadful fate; the only ray of hope that came to them fitfully through the driving storm, was the faint gleaming of the lightship that guards the Goodwin Sands. CHAPTER SIX. HEROES OF THE KENTISH COAST--THE LIFEBOAT--THE RESCUE. Deal beach is peculiar in more respects than one. There are a variety of contradictory appearances about it which somewhat puzzle a visitor, especially if he be accustomed to sea-coast towns and villages in other parts of the country. For one thing, all the boats seem hopelessly high and dry on the beach, without the chance, and apparently without any intention, of ever being got off again. Then there is, at certain seasons of the year, nothing whatever doing. Great hard-fisted fellows, with nautical garments and bronzed faces, are seen lounging about with their hands in their pockets, and with a heavy slowness in their gait, which seems to imply that they are elephantine creatures, fit only to be looked at and wondered at as monuments of strength and laziness. If the day happens to be fine and calm when the stranger visits the beach, he will probably be impressed with the idea that here is an accumulation of splendid sea-going _materiel_, which has somehow got hopelessly stranded and become useless. Of course, in the height of summer, there will be found bustle enough among the visitants to distract attention from the fact to which I allude; but in spring, before these migratory individuals arrive, there is marvellously little doing on Deal beach in fine weather. The pilots and boatmen lounge about, apparently amusing themselves with pipes and telescopes; they appear to have no object in life but to kill time; they seem a set of idle hulking fellows;--nevertheless, I should say, speaking roughly, that at least the half of these men are heroes! The sturdy oak, in fine weather, bends only its topmost branches to the light wind, and its leaves and twigs alone are troubled by the summer breeze; but when the gale lays low the trees of the forest and whirls the leaves about like ocean spray, then the oak is stirred to wild action; tosses its gnarled limbs in the air, and moves the very earth on which it stands. So the heroes on Deal beach are sluggish and quiescent while the sun shines and the butterflies are abroad; but let the storm burst upon the sea; let the waves hiss and thunder on that steep pebbly shore; let the breakers gleam on the horizon just over the fatal Goodwin Sands, or let the night descend in horrid blackness, and shroud beach and breakers alike from mortal view, then the man of Deal bestirs his powerful frame, girds up his active loins, and claps on his sou'-wester; launches his huge boat that seemed before so hopelessly high and dry; hauls off through the raging breakers, and speeds forth on his errand of mercy over the black and stormy sea with as much hearty satisfaction as if he were hasting to his bridal, instead of, as is too often the case, to his doom. Near the north end of Deal beach, not very far from the ruins of Sandown Castle, there stood an upturned boat, which served its owner as a hut or shelter whence he could sit and scan the sea. This hut or hovel was a roomy and snug enough place even in rough weather, and although intended chiefly as a place of out-look, it nevertheless had sundry conveniences which made it little short of a veritable habitation. Among these were a small stove and a swinging oil lamp which, when lighted, filled the interior with a ruddy glow that quite warmed one to look at. A low door at one end of the hovel faced the sea, and there was a small square hole or window beside it, through which the end of a telescope generally protruded, for the owners of the hovel spent most of their idle time in taking observations of the sea. There was a bench on either side of the hut which was lumbered with a confused mass of spars, sails, sou'westers, oil-skin coats and trousers; buoys, sea-chests, rudders, tar-barrels, and telescopes. This hovel belonged jointly to old Jeph and Captain Bluenose. Bax had shared it with them before he was appointed to the command of the "Nancy." In the olden time the owners of these nautical huts dwelt in them, hence the name of "hoveller" which is used at the present day. But with the progress of civilisation the hovellers have come to reside in cottages, and only regard the hovels as their places of business. Hovellers, as a class, do little else than go off to ships in distress and to wrecks; in which dangerous occupation they are successful in annually saving much property and many human lives. Their livelihood from salvage, as may be supposed, is very precarious. Sometimes they are "flush of cash," at other times reduced to a low enough ebb. In such circumstances it almost invariably follows that men are improvident. Not many years ago the hovellers were notorious smugglers. Many a bold deed and wild reckless venture was made on Deal beach in days of old by these fellows, in their efforts to supply the country with French lace, and brandy, and tobacco, at a low price! Most of the old houses in Deal are full of mysterious cellars, and invisible places of concealment in walls, and beams, and chimneys; showing the extent to which contraband trade was carried on in the days of our fathers. Rumour says that there is a considerable amount of business done in that way even in our own days; but everybody knows what a story-teller Rumour is. The only thing that gives any colour to the report is the fact that there is still a pretty strong coast-guard force in that region; and one may observe that whenever a boat comes to the beach a stout fellow in the costume of a man-of-war's man, goes up to it and pries into all its holes and corners, pulling about the ballast-bags and examining the same in a cool matter-of-course manner that must be extremely irritating, one would imagine, to the owner of the boat! At night, too, if one chances to saunter along Deal beach by moonlight, he will be sure to meet, ere long, with a portly personage of enormous breadth, enveloped in many and heavy garments, with a brace of pistols sticking out of his breast pockets, and a short cutlass by his side. But whatever these sights and symptoms may imply, there can be no question that smuggling now is not, by any means, what it was thirty or forty years ago. On the night of the storm, described in the last chapter, the only individual in old Jeph's hovel was old Jeph himself. He was seated at the inner end of it on a low chest near the stove, the light of which shone brightly on his thin old face and long white locks, and threw a gigantic black shadow on the wall behind. The old man was busily engaged in forming a model boat out of a piece of wood with a clasp knife. He muttered to himself as he went on with his work, occasionally pausing to glance towards the door, the upper half of which was open and revealed the dark storm raging without. On one of these occasions old Jeph's eyes encountered those of a man gazing in upon him. "Is that you, Long Orrick? Come in; it's a cold night to stand out i' the gale." He said this heartily, and then resumed his work, as if he had forgotten the presence of the other in an instant. It is not improbable that he had, for Jeph was very old. He could not have been far short of ninety years of age. Long Orrick entered the hovel, and sat down on a bench opposite the old man. He was a very tall, raw-boned, ill-favoured fellow, of great muscular strength, and with a most forbidding countenance. He was clad in oiled, rough-weather garments. "You seem busy, old man," said he abruptly. "Ay, I had need be busy," said old Jeph without looking up; "there are many lives to save; many lives bein' lost this very night, and no means of savin' 'em; leastwise not sufficient." "Humph! ye're eternally at that bit o' humbug. It's bam, old man, all bam; bosh and gammon," said Orrick. "It'll never come to no good, _I_ tell ye." "Who knows?" replied the old man meekly, but going on with his work not the less diligently because of these remarks. "Jeph," said Orrick, leaning forward until his sharp features were within a few inches of his companion's face, "Jeph, will ye tell me where the `hide' is in yer old house?" "No, Long Orrick, I won't," replied the old man with an amount of energy of which he seemed, a few seconds before, quite incapable. The reply did not seem to please Long Orrick, neither did the steady gaze with which it was accompanied. "You won't?" said Orrick between his set teeth. "No," replied the old man, dropping his eyes on the little boat and resuming his work. "Why not," continued the other after a pause, "you don't require the hide, why won't you lend it to a chum as is hard up?" "Because I won't encourage smugglin'," said Jeph. "You've smuggled enough in yer young days yerself, you old villain; you might help a friend a bit; it won't be you as does it." "It's because I have smuggled w'en I was young that I won't do it now that I'm old, nor help anyone else to," retorted Jeph; "besides, you're no friend o' mine." "What if I turn out to be an enemy?" cried Orrick, fiercely; "see here," said he, drawing out a long knife, and holding it up so that the light of the stove glittered on its keen blade, "what if I give you a taste of this, old man?" "You won't," said Jeph, calmly. "No! why not?" "Because you're a coward," replied Jeph, with a quiet chuckle; "you know that you wouldn't like to be hanged, ha! ha! and you know that Bax would be down on you if you touched my old carcase." Long Orrick uttered a savage oath, and said, "I'm brave enough, anyhow, to let you taste the cold steel to-night--or desperate enough if ye prefer it." He seized Jeph by the throat as he spoke, and pressed the blade of the knife against his breast. The old man did not shrink, neither did he struggle. He knew that he was in the hands of one whose type is but too common in this world, a bully and a coward, and, knowing this, felt that he was safe. It seemed, however, as if the very elements scorned the man who could thus raise his hand against unprotected age, for the wind shrieked louder than usual in its fury, and a blinding flash of lightning, accompanied by a deep crash of thunder, added to the horror of the scene. Just then an exclamation was heard at the door of the hovel. Long Orrick released his hold hastily, and turning round, observed a round ruddy visage scowling at him, and the glittering barrel of a pistol levelled at his head. "Ha! ha!" he laughed hoarsely, endeavouring to pass it off as a jest, "so you've caught us jokin', Coleman,--actin' a bit--and took it for arnest, eh?" "Well, if it _is_ actin', it's oncommon ugly actin', _I_ tell ye; a deal too nat'ral for my tastes, so I'd advise ye to drop it here, an' carry yer talents to a theaytre, where you'll be paid according to your desarts, Long Orrick." "Ah! the night air don't agree with ye, Coleman, so I'll bid ye good-bye," said the other, rising and quitting the hut. "Wot's he bin' a doin' of, old man?" inquired Coleman, who was a huge, ruddy, good-humoured coast-guardsman, with the aspect of a lion and the heart of a lamb; whose garments were of the roughest and largest kind, and who was, to adopt a time-honoured phrase, armed to the teeth,--that is to say, provided with a brace of pistols, a cutlass, and a port-fire, which last could, on being struck against a rock, burst into flame, and illuminate the region for many yards around him. "Oh, he's bin' actin'," replied the old man, with a quiet chuckle, as he resumed his work on the boat; "he's bin' actin', that's all." At this moment the boom of a gun fired by the Gull lightship broke on the ears of the men of Deal, and a moment later the bright flash of a rocket was seen. It was the well-known signal that there was a ship in distress on the sands. Instantly the hardy boatmen were at work. One of their largest boats was launched through the wild surf, as if by magic, and its stout crew were straining at the oars as if their lives depended on the result. The boat happened to be the one belonging to Captain Bluenose and his comrades, and the first man who leaped into her, as she was driven down into the sea, was Long Orrick; for, bad man though he was, he was not without his redeeming points, and, coward though he was before the face of man, he was brave enough in facing the dangers of the sea. It was a fearful struggle in which the Deal lugger engaged that night. The sea threatened to bury her altogether as she pushed off through the breakers, and some of the men seemed to think it would be too much for them. A man named Davis took the helm; he had saved many a life on that coast in his day. The intense darkness of the night, coupled with the fury of the winds and waves, were such that no men, save those who were used to such scenes, would have believed it possible that any boat could live in so wild a storm. In addition to this the cold was excessive, and the spray broke over them so continuously that the pump had to be kept going in order to prevent their getting filled altogether. It was a long weary pull to the Gull light-ship. When they reached it they hailed those on board, and asked where away the wreck was. "Right down to leeward, on the Sand-head," was the reply. Away went the lugger before the gale with just a corner of the foresail hoisted. It was not long before they came in sight of the breakers on the Sands. Here they were obliged to put out the oars and exercise the utmost caution, lest they should incur the fate from which they had come out to rescue others. Davis knew the shoals and channels well, and dropped down as far as he dared, but no wreck of any kind was to be seen. "D'ye see anything?" shouted Davis to Long Orrick, who was in the bow. Orrick's reply was inaudible, for the shrieking of the gale, and the roar of breakers drowned his voice. At that moment a huge wave broke at a considerable distance ahead of them, and against its white crest something like the mast of a vessel was discerned for an instant. "God help them!" muttered Davis to himself; "if they're as far as that on the sands there's no chance for them, unless, indeed, the Broadstairs or Ramsgate lifeboat finds 'em out. Let go the anchors!" he shouted; "look sharp, lads!" The anchor was let go, and the lugger was veered down by its cable as far in the direction of the wreck as possible, but the boat was so large and drew so much water that they could not even get within sight of the wreck. In these circumstances the men nestled as they best might under the lee of the boat's sides, and prepared to ride out the storm, or at least to remain at anchor there until day-light should enable them to act with more precision and safety. Fortunately for all parties concerned, other eyes and ears had been on the watch that night. At Broadstairs, which lies a little to the north of Deal, the crew of the lifeboat had been on the look-out, and no sooner did they see the rocket and hear the gun, than they launched their boat and put off to the rescue. It is generally found that there are more men to man the lifeboats on many parts of our coasts than are required, and this is specially the case on the Kentish coast. Hence, when the signal-rocket goes up on a stormy night, many eager eyes are on the watch, and there is a rush to the boat in order to secure a place. On this occasion there were one or two men who, rather than wait to pull on their oilskin coats and pantaloons, had run down just as they happened to be clothed at the time, and in a very unfit state to face the inclemency of a night which might involve hours of unremitting and exhaustive labour. These jumped into their places, however, and their less fortunate comrades, who arrived too late, supplied them with garments. In five minutes the lifeboat was flying under sail towards the Goodwin Sands. Seldom had the Broadstairs boat faced so wild a storm as that which blew on this occasion. The sea broke over her in cataracts. Again and again she was more than half-filled with water, but this was speedily got rid of, and in the course of an hour she was beside the lugger. "Where away?" shouted the coxswain of the lifeboat as they passed. "Right ahead, not two cables' lengths," roared Davis. The sails of the lifeboat had already been lowered, and the oars were out in a second. Gradually and slowly they dropped down towards the breakers, and soon caught sight of the mast of the "Nancy," still towering up in the midst of the angry waters. The danger to the lifeboat was now very great, for there was such a wild chopping sea on the sands that it ran great risk of being upset. The boat was one of the old-fashioned stamp, which, although incapable of being sunk, was not secure against being overturned, and it did not possess that power of righting itself which characterises the lifeboats of the present day. In a few minutes they were near enough to see the mast of the "Nancy" dimly in the dark. The coxswain immediately gave the order to let go the anchor and veer down towards the wreck. Just as he did so, a terrific sea came rolling towards them like a black mountain. "Look out, men!" he shouted. Every man let go his oar, and, throwing himself on the thwart, embraced it with all his might. The wave went right over them, sweeping the boat from stem to stern; but as it had met the sea stern-on it was not overturned. It was completely filled however, and some time was necessarily lost in freeing it of water. The oars, being attached to the sides of the boat by lanyards, were not carried away. In a few minutes they had veered down under the lee of the wreck. The crew and passengers of the "Nancy" were still clinging to the cross-trees, benumbed and almost unable to speak or move when the lifeboat approached. With the exception of Bax and Bluenose, they were all so thoroughly exhausted as to have become comparatively indifferent to, and therefore ignorant of, all that was going on around them. All their energies were required to enable them simply to retain their position on the rigging. At first the sight of the rockets from the light-ship, and her lanterns gleaming in the far distance, had aroused feelings of hope, but as hour after hour passed away the most of the unhappy people fell into a sort of stupor or indifference, and the lights were no longer regarded with hopeful looks. When the lugger came towards them and anchored outside the Sands, it was so dark that none but sharp eyes could make her out through the blinding spray. Bax and Bluenose descried her, but both of them were so well aware of the impossibility of a large boat venturing among the shoals and breakers that they tacitly resolved not to acquaint their comrades with its presence, lest they should raise false hopes, which, when disappointed, might plunge them into still deeper despair. Very different, however, were the feelings with which they beheld the approach of the lifeboat, which the practised eye of Bax discerned long before she came alongside. "The lifeboat!" said Bax sharply in the ear of Bluenose, who was close beside him. "Look! am I right?" "So 'tis, I _do_ believe," cried the captain, staring intently in the direction indicated by his friend's outstretched hand. "Lifeboat ahoy!" shouted Bax, in a voice that rang loud and strong above the whistling winds, like the blast of a brazen trumpet. "Wreck ahoy!" cried the coxswain of the boat, and the cry, borne towards them by the gale, fell upon the ears of those on the mast like the voice of Hope shouting "Victory!" over the demon Despair. "Cheer up, Lucy! Ho! comrades, look alive, here comes the lifeboat!" Bax accompanied these words with active preparations for heaving a rope and otherwise facilitating their anticipated escape. Guy was the first to respond to the cry. Having placed himself in a very exposed position in order that his person might shelter Lucy Burton, he had been benumbed more thoroughly than his comrades, but his blood was young, and it only wanted the call to action to restore him to the full use of his powers and faculties. Not so with the missionary. He had become almost insensible, and, but for the effort to protect his child which animated and sustained him, must certainly have fallen into the sea. Some of the men, too, were utterly helpless. Their stiffened hands, indeed, maintained a death-like gripe of the ropes, but otherwise they were quite incapable of helping themselves. As for Lucy, she had been so well cared for and protected from the bitter fury of the wind, that, although much exhausted, terrified, and shaken, she was neither so be-numbed nor so helpless as some of her less fortunate companions. Presently the lifeboat was close on the lee side of the mast, and a cheer burst from her crew when they saw the number of survivors on the cross-trees. "Look out!" cried the man in the bow of the boat, as he swung a heavily-loaded stick round his head, and flung it over the mast. The light line attached to this was caught by Bax, and by means of it a stout rope was drawn from the boat to the mast of the "Nancy" and made fast. And now came the most dangerous and difficult part of the service. Besides the danger of the mast being broken by the violence of the increasing storm and hurled upon the lifeboat, an event which would have insured its destruction, there was the risk of the boat herself being stove against the mast by the lashing waves which spun her on their white crests or engulfed her in their black hollows, as if she had been a cork. The greatest care was therefore requisite in approaching the wreck, and when this was accomplished there still remained the difficulty of getting the exhausted crew into the boat. Had they all been young and strong like Bax or Guy, they could have slid down the rope at the risk of nothing worse than a few bruises; but with several of them this method of escape was impossible;--with Lucy and her father it was, in any circumstances, out of the question. A block and tackle was therefore quickly rigged up by Bluenose, by which they were lowered. Poor Lucy had not the courage to make the attempt until one or two of the seamen had preceded her, it seemed so appalling to be swung off the mast into the black raging chaos beneath her feet, where the lifeboat, shrouded partially in darkness and covered with driving spray, appeared to her more like a phantom than a reality. "Come, Miss Lucy," said Bax, tenderly, "I'll fasten the rope round myself and be swung down with you in my arms." Lucy would not hear of this. "No," said she, firmly, "I will conquer my silly fears; here, put the rope round me." At that moment a wave tossed the boat so high that it came up almost to the level of the mast-head, and an involuntary cry rose from some of the men, who thought she must infallibly be dashed against it and upset. One of the men on the mast, seeing the boat at his very feet, made a sudden spring towards it, but it plunged into the hollow of the passing wave, and, missing his grasp, he fell with a wild shriek into the water. He was swept away instantly. This so unnerved Lucy that she almost fainted in her father's arms. "Come," cried Bax, putting the end of the rope round his waist, "we must not trifle thus." "The rope won't bear ye both," said Bluenose. "You're too heavy, lad." "True," interrupted Guy, "let me do it. I'm light, and strong enough." Bax, at once admitting the force of the argument, undid the rope without hesitation, and fastened it quickly round Guy's waist. The latter seized Lucy in his arms, and in a moment they were both swinging in the air over the wild sea. Every incident in this thrilling scene now passed with the speed almost of thought. The boat rose under them. Bax at once let the rope run. Down they went, but a swirl in the treacherous waves swept the boat two or three fathoms to leeward. Instantly they were both in the sea, but Guy did not loosen his hold or lose his presence of mind for a moment. Bax hauled on the rope and raised him half out of the water for a few seconds; the boat made a wild sheer towards them, and the missionary uttered a cry of agony as he fancied his child was about to be run down, perhaps killed, before his eyes; but the cry was transformed into a shout of joy and thanksgiving when he saw one of the lifeboat's crew seize Guy by the hair, and another catch his daughter by a portion of her dress. They were quickly pulled into the boat. To save the remainder was now a matter of less difficulty. The missionary was the only one left on the mast who was not able more or less to take care of himself; but the joy consequent on seeing his daughter saved infused new vigour into his frame. He and the others were finally got off--Bax being the last to quit the wreck--and then the lifeboat pulled away from the dangerous shoals and made for the land. Finding it impossible to reach Broadstairs, owing to the direction of the gale, they pulled in an oblique direction, and, after narrowly escaping an upset more than once, gained Deal beach not far from Sandown Castle, where the boat was run ashore. Here there was a large concourse of boatmen and others awaiting them. The men in the lugger,--seeing the lifeboat come up and feeling that the storm was almost too much for them, and that their services were not now required,--had returned to the shore and spread the news. The instant the lifeboat touched the shingle, a huge block and tackle were hooked on to her, the capstan connected with these was already manned, and the boat was run up high and dry with the crew in her. The cheers and congratulations that followed were checked however, when the discovery was made that Guy Foster was lying in a state of insensibility! When the boat sheered towards him and Lucy, as already described, he had seen the danger and warded it away from the girl by turning his own person towards it. No one knew that he had been hurt. Indeed, he himself had scarcely felt the blow, but a deep cut had been made in his head, which bled so copiously that he had lain down and gradually became insensible. His head was bandaged by Bluenose in a rough and ready fashion; a couple of oars with a sail rolled round them were quickly procured, and on this he was borne off the beach, followed by his friends and a crowd of sympathisers. "Where to?" inquired one of the men who supported the litter. "To Sandhill Cottage," said Bax; "it's his mother's house, and about as near as any other place. Step out, lads!" Before they were off the beach the dull report of a cannon-shot was heard. It came from the light-ship, and immediately after a rocket flew up, indicating by the direction in which it sloped that another vessel was in distress on the shoals. All thought of those who had just been rescued was forgotten by the crew of the lifeboat. Those of them who had not been too much exhausted by previous toil and exposure leaped into their seats. The places of those who were unable to go off again were instantly filled by eager boatmen. Dozens of stout arms thrust her--crew and all seated as they were--down into the lashing surf. There was a short sharp struggle between the sturdy men and the heavy rollers, which threatened not only to swamp the boat but to hurl her back, stem over stern, upon the shingle, and in a few minutes more she was forcing her way through wind, and waves, and spray, on this her second errand of mercy that night to the Goodwin Sands. CHAPTER SEVEN. THE WIDOW'S COTTAGE. "About a thousand ships are wrecked, and nearly a thousand lives are lost on the shores of this country _every year_," was still the burden of Mrs Foster's dreams when she was aroused by a loud knocking at the door of her cottage, and the sound of confused voices and trampling of many feet outside. "Ho! goodness gracious me, ma'am," cried worthy Mrs Laker, bursting into her mistress's apartment--"if here ain't a thousand robbers as is come for to pillidge the ouse an' trample down the garding. It's from the hattic winder, I see 'em with the moon, if w'ant the lightenin' a glanshin' on their 'orrid faces as is never shaved nor washed, and it's bin my dream from the years of unsuspectious hinfancy, as is come for to pass now in the days of my womanhood, with dead bodies carryin' too, w'ich is wuss. Ho! dear, wot _shall_ I do!" "Go and put on your clothes while I open the door," said Amy Russell, entering hastily at the moment in a state of comparative dishabille, with a shawl thrown round her. "Dear mamma, don't be alarmed; it must be a mistake. They cannot mean us any harm, I am certain. May I go and open the door?" "Open the door!" shrieked Mrs Laker in the tone of one almost paralysed by astonishment; "open the door to a thousand robbers with swords, and guns, and blood, and dead bodies!" As Mrs Laker was robed in her night-gown, and stood erect, with her arms extended and her hair dishevelled, she looked dreadfully tragic and awful, while these fearful words flowed from her pale lips. "Hush, Laker," said Mrs Foster, hastily throwing on her garments with trembling hands, while she made a strong effort to restrain her agitation, "go, dear Amy, and ask what they want; but don't open the door." She followed Amy to the landing outside, leaving Mrs Laker, glaring in sceptical amazement, in the middle of the room. Presently, Amy was heard downstairs speaking through the key-hole. A man's voice replied; there was a suppressed scream and immediately the outer door was unlocked, the chain removed, and the bolts withdrawn. This was followed by the heavy tramp of men in the passage below, and a wild shriek from Mrs Foster. Mrs Laker, still standing with uplifted arms in the middle of the bedroom, and livid with terror, glared round in search of a place of refuge, and gasped horribly. Her eye fell on the bed from which her mistress had issued. With a spring that would have done her credit in the days of her girlhood, she plunged into it, head first, and rolled herself tight up in the clothes, where she lay, quaking and listening intently. "It's only a cut on the head, and a little blood, ma'am, don't be alarmed," said the gruff voice of Bluenose, as the footsteps ascended the stair, and approached the bedroom. "Cut" and "blood" were the only words in this speech which made any impression on poor Mrs Laker, who trembled so violently that the curtains around her shook again. "Lay him in my bed," said Mrs Foster, in an agitated voice. "W'y, the bed's all alive--O!" exclaimed Bluenose, in surprise. "O Laker! what _are_ you doing there? get out, quick." "Mercy, good men, mercy; I--" The sentence was cut short by a wild yell, as her eye fell on the pale and bloody face of Guy. She tumbled, clothes and all, over the side of the bed in a dead faint, and rolled, in a confused white heap, to the very feet of her astounded brother, Captain Bluenose. "Well, if this don't beat Trafalgar all to sticks!" exclaimed the Captain. "Come, attend to Guy," said Bax, in a deep, commanding voice. He lifted up Mrs Laker and the bed-clothes as if she had been a large washing, and carried her down to her own apartment,--guided by Tommy Bogey, who knew the way,--where he placed her in bed, and left her to recover as she best might. Bax had taken the precaution to despatch a messenger for a doctor before they left the beach, so that Guy's hurt was soon examined, dressed, and pronounced to be a mere trifle which rest would heal in a few days. Indeed, Guy recovered consciousness soon after being brought into the cottage, and told his mother with his own lips that he was "quite well." This, and the doctor's assurances, so relieved the good lady, that she at once transferred much of her anxious care to the others who had been wrecked along with her son. Lucy was placed in the hands of the sympathetic Amy Russell, and conducted by her to her own room, where she obtained dry clothing. As for the others, they dried themselves by the kitchen fire, which was stirred up vigorously by the now restored and repentant Laker, who also busied herself in spreading a repast for the shipwrecked men. Mrs Foster did the same for a select few, whom she meant to entertain in the parlour. "Who is that handsome sailor," said Amy, as she assisted Lucy Burton to dress, "the one, I mean, who came up with Guy?" "There were four who came up with Guy," replied Lucy, smiling. "True," said Amy, blushing (she blushed easily), "but I mean the very tall, dark man, with the black curling hair." "Ah! you mean the man who carried good Mrs Laker downstairs in a bundle," said Lucy, with a merry laugh. "Yes," cried Amy, echoing the laugh, "who is he?" "Why, you ought to know him," said Lucy, with a look of surprise, "he resides near you; at least he was one of the boatmen of your own coast, before he became captain of the `Nancy'. His name is Bax." "Bax!" echoed Amy. "Is _he_ Bax? Oh, I know Bax well by name. He is a friend of Guy, and a celebrated man on this coast. He is sometimes called the Stormy Petrel, because he is always sure to be found on the beach in the wildest gales; sometimes he is called the Life Preserver, on account of the many lives he has saved. Strange," said Amy musingly, "that I should have pictured him to myself so like what he turns out to be. He is my _beau-ideal_ of a hero!" "He _is_ a hero," said Lucy, with such sudden enthusiasm that her new friend looked up in her face in surprise. "You do not know," continued Lucy, in some confusion, "that he saved my life not much more than twenty-four hours ago." Amy expressed deep interest in this matter, and begged to hear all about it. Lucy, nothing loath, related the event circumstantially; and Amy, gazing earnestly in her beautiful animated countenance, sighed and regarded her with an expression of sad interest,--also with feelings which she herself could not understand. "But how comes it that you have never seen Bax till to-night?" inquired Lucy, when she had finished her narrative. "Because I have not been very long here," said Amy, "and Bax had ceased to dwell regularly on the coast about the time I was saved, and came to live with Mrs Foster." "Saved!--Mrs Foster!" exclaimed Lucy. "Yes, Mrs Foster is not my mother." "And Guy is not your brother?" said Lucy, with a glance so quick and earnest, that Amy felt a little confused. "No, he is not," said she, "but he saved my life at the end of Ramsgate pier, and ever since then I have lived with his mother." It was now Lucy's turn to express deep interest. She begged to have the circumstances related to her, and Amy, nothing loath, told her how Guy had plunged into the sea when no one else observed her danger, and caught her just as she was sinking. As Amy told her story with animation, and spoke of Guy, with sparkling eyes, and a rich glow on her fair cheek, Lucy gazed at her with grave interest, and felt sensations in her breast, which were quite new to her, and altogether incomprehensible. Three times had Mrs Laker been sent to knock at Amy's door, and inform the young ladies that supper awaited them, before they completed their toilet, and descended to the drawing-room. Laker called it supper, because she could not conscientiously give the name of breakfast to a meal extemporised about four o'clock in the morning! Mr Burton and Bluenose were already seated at the table. Bax stood near the fireplace bending down to Mrs Foster, who was looking up in his face, shaking his hand, and thanking him, with tears in her eyes, for having saved her son's life! Bax was much perplexed by this view of the matter, taken and obstinately held to by the widow. "Really, ma'am," said he, with a deprecatory smile, "you are mistaken, I assure you. I did not save Guy's life--on the contrary, he saved mine this night; for if he had not jumped well to wind'ard with the line and caught hold of the old foremast, where Tommy and I were perched like two birds--" "Ha," interrupted Bluenose, bluntly, "you'd both's bin in Davy Jones' locker by this time; for I seed the old stick myself, not three minits arter, go by the board like the stem of a baccy pipe." It was just as Bluenose concluded this speech that the young ladies entered the room. "Come," cried Bax, turning quickly towards Lucy, who advanced first, "here is another witness to the fact. Do try, Miss Burton, to convince Mrs Foster that I did not--" Bax paused, for his glance fell at that moment on Amy Russell, whom he had not observed in the confusion of their first appearance in the cottage. "My adopted daughter," said Mrs Foster, taking Amy by the hand and leading her forward; "shake hands with Mr Bax, darling, who has saved Guy's life to-night." Bax held Amy's white little hand for one moment as tenderly as if he were afraid his own iron muscles might injure it. "I see," said he, with a smile, "that I must submit to be misrepresented until Guy himself comes to defend me." Amy glanced at Lucy and blushed. Lucy glanced at Amy and looked confused; then the whole party laughed, and Bluenose said that for his part he didn't see no savin' o' life one way or other, 'xcepting as regarded the lifeboat, which he wos bound for to say had saved the whole lot of 'em, and that was all about it; whereupon they all sat down to supper, and the missionary asked a blessing; thanking God for their recent deliverance, and praying in a few earnest words for continued favour. Bluenose was a man of peculiar and decided character. He did not at all relish his position in the drawing-room when he thought of his sister Mrs Laker supping in the kitchen. Being an impulsive man, he seized his cap, and said abruptly to his hostess: "I'll tell 'ee wot it is, marm, I aint used to this 'ere sort o' thing. If you'll excudge me, marm, I'll go an' 'ave my snack with Bess i' the kitchen. Bax, there, he's a sort o' gen'leman by natur' as well as hedication; but as for me I'm free to say as I prefers the fo'gs'l to the cabin--no offence meant. Come along, Tommy, and bring yer pannikin along with 'ee, lad, you're like a fish out o' water too." So saying, Captain Bluenose bowed to the company with what he meant to be an affable and apologetic air, and quitted the room without waiting for a reply. "Ah, Bluenose," said Mrs Laker, as her brother entered, cap in hand, and seated himself among the men of the "Nancy," who were doing full justice to Mrs Foster's hospitality, "I thought ye wouldn't be long in the parlour, for you aint bin used to 'igh life, an' w'y should you? as was born of poor but respectible parients, not but that the parients of the rich may be respectible also, I don't go for to impinge no one, sit down, Tommy, my dear child, only think! ee's bin 'alf drownded, an' 'is mother dead only two year next Whitsuntide; sit down, Tommy, wot'll ye 'ave?" Tommy said he would have a bit of beef-steak pie;--got it, and set to work immediately. It may be as well to state here that Mrs Laker was not a married woman, but, having reached a certain age, she deemed it advisable, in order to maintain the dignity of her character and personal appearance (which latter was stout and matronly) to dub herself Mrs--Laker being her maiden name. This statement involves a further explanation, inasmuch as it establishes the fact that Bluenose ought, in simple justice and propriety, to have gone by the name of Laker also. But on the beach of Deal justice and propriety in regard to names are not necessarily held in great repute. At least they were not so a few years ago. Smuggling, as has been said, was rather prevalent in days gone by. Indeed, the man who was not a smuggler was an exception to the rule, if such a man ever existed. During their night expeditions, boatmen were often under the necessity of addressing each other in hoarse whispers, at times and in circumstances when coast-guard ears were uncommonly acute. Hence, in order to prevent inconvenient recognition, the men were wont to give each other nicknames, which nicknames descended frequently to their offspring. The father of Captain Bluenose and of Mrs Laker had been a notorious scamp about the beginning of this century, at which period Deal may be said to have been in full swing in regard to smuggling and the French war. The old smuggler was uncommonly well acquainted with the towns of Calais, Gravelines, Dunkerque, Nieuport, and Ostende--notwithstanding that they lay in the enemy's country. He had also enough of bad French to enable him to carry on his business, and was addicted to French brandy. It was the latter circumstance which turned his nose purple; procuring for him, as well as entailing on his son, the name of Bluenose, a name which our Captain certainly did not deserve, seeing that his nose was fiery red in colour,--perhaps a little too fat to be styled classic, but, on the whole, a most respectable nose. Few of the boatmen of Deal went by their right names; but such soubriquets as Doey, Jack Onion, Skys'lyard Dick, Mackerel, Trappy, Rodney Nick, Sugarplum, etcetera, were common enough. Perchance they are not obsolete at the present day! While the crew of the "Nancy" were making merry in the kitchen, the parlour bell rang violently, and Laker disappeared from the scene. "You're wanted, Tommy, darling," said the worthy woman, returning promptly. Tommy rose and was ushered into the parlour. "Little boy," said Mrs Foster, "my son Guy has sent a message requiring your attendance. I tried to prevent him seeing you; but he insists on it. Come, I will take you to his room. You must try, child, and not encourage him to talk. It will be bad for him, I fear." "Leave us, mother, dear," said Guy, as they entered; "I wish to be alone with Tommy, only for ten minutes--not longer." Mrs Foster tried to remonstrate, but an impatient gesture from her son induced her to quit the room. "You can write, Tommy?" "Yes, sir. I--I hope you ain't much hurt, sir?" "Oh no!--a mere scratch. It's only the loss of blood that weakens me. I'll be all right in a few days. Now, sit down at that table and take a pen. Are you ready?" Tommy said that he was, and Guy Foster dictated the following note to Mr Denham, of the house of Denham, Crumps, and Company:-- "Deal. "Dear Uncle,--I'm sorry to have to inform you that the `Nancy' has become a total wreck on the Goodwin Sands. The cargo has been entirely lost--also two of the hands. "I am at present disabled, from the effects of a blow on the head received during the storm. No doubt Bax will be up immediately to give you particulars. "The cause of the loss of your schooner was, in _my_ opinion, _unseaworthiness of vessel and stores_. "Your affectionate nephew, GUY FOSTER." "Hallo!" thought Tommy, "that's a stinger!" "There," said Guy, as he attached his signature, "fold and address that, and be off with it as fast as you can to the post." Tommy vanished in an instant, and was quickly at the post-office, which stood, at that time, near the centre of the town. He dropped the letter in, and having thus fulfilled his mission, relapsed into that easy swagger or roll that seems to be the natural and characteristic gait of Jack when ashore. He had not proceeded far when the sound of voices in dispute attracted his ear. The gale was still at its height, and the noise occasioned by its whistling among the chimneys and whirling round street corners was so great that the words uttered by the speakers were not distinguishable. Still there was some peculiarity in the tone which irresistibly attracted the boy. Perhaps Tommy was unusually curious that night; perhaps he was smitten, like Haroun Alraschid, with a desire for adventure; but whatever was the truth in regard to this, it is certain that, instead of passing on, as most people would naturally have done, Tommy approached the place whence the sounds proceeded with cautious steps--keeping as much in the shade of the houses as possible, although owing to the darkness of the night, this latter precaution was unnecessary. CHAPTER EIGHT. THE LIVING LEFT AMONG THE DEAD--A WILD CHASE ON A WILD NIGHT STOPPED BY A GHOST. On turning the corner of one of those houses on the beach of Deal which stand so close to the sea that in many cases they occupy common ground with the boats, Tommy found himself suddenly close to a group of men, one of whom, a very tall man, was addressing the others in an excited tone. "I'll tell 'ee wot it is, lads, let's put 'im in a sack an' leave him in the Great Chapel Field to cool hisself." [The "Great Chapel Field" was the name formerly applied by the boatmen to Saint George's Churchyard.] "Sarve him right, the beggar," said another man, with a low laugh, "he's spoilt our game many a night. What say, boys? heave 'im shoulder high?" The proposal was unanimously agreed to, and the party went towards an object which lay recumbent on the ground, near to one of those large capstans which are used on this part of the Kentish coast to haul up the boats. The object turned out to be a man, bound hand and foot, and with a handkerchief tied round the mouth to insure silence. Tommy was so near that he had no difficulty in recognising in this unfortunate the person of old Coleman, the member of the coast-guard who had been most successful in thwarting the plans of the smugglers for some years past. Rendered somewhat desperate by his prying disposition, they had seized him on this particular night, during a scuffle, and were now about to dispose of him in a time-honoured way. Tommy also discovered that the coast-guard-man's captors were Long Orrick, Rodney Nick, and a few more of his boatmen acquaintances. He watched them with much interest as they enveloped Coleman's burly figure in a huge sack, tied it over his head, and, raising him on their shoulders bore him away. Tommy followed at a safe distance, but he soon stopped, observing that two of the party had fallen behind the rest, engaged apparently in earnest conversation. They stood still a few minutes under the lee of a low-roofed cottage. Tommy crept as close to them as possible and listened. "Come, Rodney Nick," said one of the two, whose height proclaimed him to be Long Orrick, "a feller can't talk in the teeth o' sich a gale as this. Let's stand in the lee o' this old place here, and I'll tell ye in two minits wot I wants to do. You see that old sinner Jeph refuses pint-blank to let me use his `hide;' he's become such a hypocrite that he says he won't encourage smugglin'." "Well, wot then?" inquired Rodney Nick. "W'y, I means to _make_ 'im give in," returned Long Orrick. "An' s'pose he won't give in?" suggested Rodney. "Then I'll cut his throat," replied Orrick, fiercely. "Then I'll have nothin' to do with it." "Stop!" cried the other, seizing his comrade by the arm as he was turning to go away. "A feller might as well try to joke with a jackass as with you. In coorse I don't mean _that_; but I'll threaten the old hypocrite and terrify him till he's half dead, and _then_ he'll give in." "He's a frail old man," said Rodney; "suppose he should die with fright?" "Then let him die!" retorted Long Orrick. "Humph; and s'pose he can't be terrified?" "Oh! get along with yer s'posin'. Will ye go or will ye not? that's the question, as Shukspere's ghost said to the Hemperer o' Sweden." "Just you an' me?" inquired Rodney. "Ain't we enough for an old man?" "More nor enough," replied Rodney, with a touch of sarcasm in his tone, "if the old boy han't got friends with him. Don't ye think Bax might have took a fancy to spend the night there?" "No," said Long Orrick; "Bax is at supper in Sandhill Cottage, and _he_ ain't the man to leave good quarters in a hurry. But if yer afraid, we'll go with our chums to the churchyard and take them along with us." Rodney Nick laughed contemptuously, but made no reply, and the two immediately set off at a run to overtake their comrades. Tommy Bogey followed as close at their heels as he prudently could. They reached the walls of Saint George's Church, or the "Great Chapel," almost at the same moment with the rest of the party. The form of the old church could be dimly seen against the tempestuous sky as the smugglers halted under the lee of the churchyard wall like a band of black ghosts that had come to lay one of their defunct comrades, on a congenial night. At the north end of the burying-ground of Saint George's Church there is a spot of ground which is pointed out to visitors as being the last resting-place of hundreds of the unfortunate men who fell in the sea-fights of our last war with France. A deep and broad trench was dug right across the churchyard, and here the gallant tars were laid in ghastly rows, as close together as they could be packed. Near to this spot stands the tomb of one of Lord Nelson's young officers, and beside it grows a tree against which Nelson is said to have leaned when he attended the funeral. It was just a few yards distant from this tree that the smugglers scaled the wall and lifted over the helpless body of poor Coleman. They did it expeditiously and in dead silence. Carrying him into the centre of the yard, they deposited the luckless coast-guard-man flat on his back beside the tomb of George Philpot, a man who had done good service in his day and generation--if headstones are to be believed. The inscription, which may still be seen by the curious, runs thus:-- A TRIBUTE TO THE SKILL AND DETERMINED COURAGE OF THE BOATMEN OF DEAL, AND IN MEMORY OF GEORGE PHILPOT, WHO DIED MARCH 22, 1850. "FULL MANY LIVES HE SAVED WITH HIS UNDAUNTED CREW; HE PUT HIS TRUST IN PROVIDENCE, AND CARED NOT HOW IT BLEW." In the companionship of such noble dead, the smugglers left Coleman to his fate, and set off to finish their night's work at old Jeph's humble cottage. Tommy Bogey heard them chuckle as they passed the spot where he lay concealed behind a tombstone, and he was sorely tempted to spring up with an unearthly yell, well knowing that the superstitious boatmen would take him for one risen from the dead, and fly in abject terror from the spot; but recollecting the importance of discretion in the work which now devolved on him, he prudently restrained himself. The instant they were over the wall Tommy was at Coleman's side. He felt the poor man shudder, and heard him gasp as he cut the rope that tied the mouth of the sack; for Coleman knew well the spot to which they had conveyed him, and his face, when it became visible, was ghastly white and covered with a cold sweat caused by the belief that he was being opened out for examination by some inquisitive but unearthly visitor. "It's only me," said Tommy with an involuntary laugh. "Hold on, I'll set you free in no time." "Hah!" coughed Coleman when the kerchief was removed from his mouth, "wot a 'orrible sensation it is to be choked alive!" "It would be worse to be choked dead," said Tommy. "Cut the lines at my feet first, lad," said Coleman, "they've a'most sawed through my ankle bones. There, that's it now, help me to git up an' shake myself." A few minutes elapsed before he recovered the full use of his benumbed limbs. During this period, the boy related all he had heard, and urged his companion to "look alive." But Coleman required no urging. The moment he became aware of what was going on he felt for his cutlass, which the smugglers had not taken the trouble to remove, and, slapping Tommy on the back, stumbled among the tombs and over the graves towards the wall, which he vaulted with a degree of activity that might have rendered a young man envious. Tommy followed like a squirrel, and in a very few minutes more they were close at the heels of Long Orrick and his friends. While they hurried on in silence and with cautious tread Coleman matured his plans. It was absolutely necessary that the utmost circumspection should be used, for a man and a boy could not hope to succeed in capturing six strong men. "Run, Tommy, to the beach and fetch a friend or two. There are sure to be two of the guard within hail." Tommy was off, as he himself would have said, like a shot, and on gaining the beach almost ran into the arms of a young coast-guard-man named Supple Rodger, to whom he breathlessly told his tale. "Stop, I'll call out the guard," said Rodger, drawing a pistol from the breast-pocket of his overcoat. But Tommy prevented him, explained that it was very desirable to catch the villains in the very act of breaking into old Jeph's cottage, and hurried him away. At the back of the cottage they found Coleman calmly observing the proceedings of the smugglers, one of whom was calling in a hoarse whisper through the keyhole. Apparently he received no reply, for he swore angrily a good deal, and said to his comrades more than once, "I do b'lieve the old sinner's dead." "Come, I'll burst in the door," said the voice of Long Orrick, savagely. The words were followed by a crash; and the trampling of feet in the passage proved that the slender fastenings of the door had given way. "Now, lads," cried Coleman, "have at 'em!" He struck a species of port-fire, or bluelight, against the wall as he spoke; it sprang into a bright flame, and the three friends rushed into the cottage. The smugglers did not wait to receive them. Bursting the fastenings of the front window Long Orrick leaped out into the street. Supple Rodger dashed aside the man who was about to follow and leaped after him like an avenging spirit. All the men but two were over the window before Coleman gained it. He seized the man who was in the act of leaping by the collar, but the treacherous garment gave way, and in a moment the smuggler was gone, leaving only a rag in Coleman's grasp. Meanwhile Tommy flung himself down in front of the only man who now remained, as he made a dash for the window. The result was that the man tumbled over the boy and fell to the ground. Having accomplished this feat, Tommy leaped up and sprang through the window to aid in the chase. As the smuggler rose, the disappointed Coleman turned round, flourished the rag in the air with a shout of defiance, and hit his opponent between the eyes with such force as to lay him a second time flat on the floor. A fierce struggle now ensued, during which the light was extinguished. The alarmed neighbours found them there, a few minutes later, writhing in each other's arms, and punching each other's heads desperately; Coleman, however, being uppermost. When Tommy Bogey leaped over the window, as has been described, all the smugglers had disappeared, and he was at a loss what to do; but the faint sound of quick steps at the north end of the street led him to run at the top of his speed in that direction. Tommy was singularly fleet of foot. He ran so fast on this occasion that he reached the end of the street before the fugitive had turned into the next one. He saw distinctly that two men were running before him, and, concluding that they were Long Orrick and Supple Rodger, he did his best to keep them in view. Long Orrick and his pursuer were well matched as to speed. Both were good runners; but the former was much the stronger man. Counting on this he headed for the wild expanse of waste ground lying to the north of Deal, already mentioned as the sand hills. Here he knew that there would be no one to interfere between him and his antagonist. Tommy Bogey thought of this too, as he sped along, and wondered not a little at the temerity of Supple Rodger in thus, as it were, placing himself in the power of his enemy. He chuckled, however, as he ran, at the thought of being there to render him assistance to the best of his power. "Ha!" thought he, "for Long Orrick to wollop Supple Rodger out on the sandhills is _one_ thing; but for Long Orrick to wallop Supple Rodger with me dancin' round him like a big wasp is quite another thing!" Tommy came, as he thought thus, upon an open space of ground on which were strewn spare anchors and chain cables. Tumbling over a fluke of one of the former he fell to the earth with a shock that well-nigh drove all the wind out of his stout little body. He was up in a moment, however, and off again. Soon the three were coursing over the downs like hares. It was difficult running, for the ground was undulating and broken, besides being covered in a few places with gorse, and the wind and rain beat so fiercely on their faces as almost to blind them. About a mile or so beyond the ruins of Sandown Castle there is an old inn, called the "Checkers of the Hope," or "The Checkers," named after, it is said, and corrupted from, "Chaucer's Inn" at Canterbury. It stands in the midst of the solitary waste; a sort of half-way house between the towns of Sandwich and Deal; far removed from either, however, and quite beyond earshot of any human dwelling. This, so says report, was a celebrated resort of smugglers in days gone by, and of men of the worst character; and as one looks at the irregular old building standing, one might almost say unreasonably, in that wild place, one cannot help feeling that it must have been the scene of many a savage revelry and many a deed of darkness in what are sometimes styled "the good old times." Some distance beyond this, farther into the midst of the sandhills, there is a solitary tombstone; well known, both by tradition and by the inscription upon it, as "Mary Bax's tomb." Here Long Orrick resolved to make a stand; knowing that no shout that Rodger might give vent to could reach the Checkers in the teeth of such a gale. The tale connected with poor Mary Bax is brief and very sad. She lived about the end of the last century, and was a young and beautiful girl. Having occasion to visit Deal, she set out one evening on her solitary walk across the bleak sandhills. Here she was met by a brutal foreign seaman, a Lascar, who had deserted from one of the ships then lying in the Downs. This monster murdered the poor girl and threw her body into a ditch that lies close to the spot on which her tomb now stands. The deed, as may well be supposed, created great excitement in Deal and the neighbourhood; for Mary Bax, being young, beautiful, and innocent, was well known and much loved. There was, at the time this murder was perpetrated, a youth named John Winter, who was a devoted admirer of poor Mary. He was much younger than she, being only seventeen, while she was twenty-three. He became almost mad when he heard of the murder. A little brother of John Winter, named David, happened to be going to the Checkers' Inn at the time the murder was committed and witnessed it. He ran instantly to his brother to tell him what he had seen. It was chiefly through the exertions of these two that the murderer was finally brought to justice. John Winter rested neither night nor day until he tracked the Lascar down, and David identified him. He was hanged on a gallows erected close to the spot where he murdered his innocent victim. On the exact spot where the murder took place Mary's grave was dug, and a tombstone was put up, which may be seen there at the present time, with the following inscription upon it:-- ON THIS SPOT, AUGUST THE 25TH 1782, MARY BAX, SPINSTER, AGED 23 YEARS, WAS MURDERED BY MARTIN LASH, A FOREIGNER, WHO WAS EXECUTED FOR THE SAME. Poor John Winter left the country immediately after, and did not return until thirty years had elapsed, when the event was forgotten, and most of his old friends and companions were dead or gone abroad. His little brother David was drowned at sea. This Mary Bax was cousin to the father of John Bax, who figures so conspicuously in our tale. At the tomb of Mary Bax, then, as we have said, Long Orrick resolved to make a stand. Tommy Bogey had, by taking a short cut round a piece of marshy ground, succeeded in getting a little in advance of Orrick, and, observing that he was running straight towards the tombstone, he leaped into the ditch, the water in which was not deep at the time, and, coursing along the edge of it, reached the rear of the tomb and hid himself there, without having formed any definite idea as to what course he meant to pursue. Whatever the intentions of the smuggler were, they were effectually frustrated by an apparition which suddenly appeared and struck terror alike to the heart of pursuer and pursued. As Long Orrick approached the tomb there suddenly arose from the earth a tall gaunt figure with silver hair streaming wildly in the gale. To Tommy, who crouched behind the tomb, and Rodger and Orrick, who approached in front, it seemed as if the spirit of the murdered girl had leaped out of the grave. The effect on all three was electrical. Orrick and Rodger, diverging right and left, fled like the wind in opposite directions, and were out of sight in a few seconds, while Tommy, crouching on the ground behind the tomb, trembled in abject terror. The spirit, if such it was, did not attempt to pursue the fugitives, but turning fiercely towards the boy, seized him by the collar and shook him. "Oh! mercy! mercy!" cried poor Tommy, whose heart quaked within him. "Hallo! Tommy Bogey, is it you, boy?" said the spirit, releasing the lad from a grasp that was anything but gentle. "What! old Jeph, can it be _you_?" exclaimed Tommy, in a tone of intense surprise, as he seated himself on the tombstone, and wiped the cold perspiration from his forehead with the cuff of his coat. "Ay, it _is_ me," replied the old man, sadly, "although I do sometimes doubt my own existence. It ain't often that I'm interrupted--but what brings ye here, lad, and who were these that I saw running like foul fiends across the sandhills on such a night as this?" "They were Supple Rodger and Long Orrick," replied Tommy, "and a foul fiend is one of 'em, anyhow, as you'd have found out, old Jeph, if ye'd bin at home this evenin'. As for bein' out on sich a night as this, it seems to me ye han't got much more sense to boast of in this respect than I have. You'll ketch your death o' cold, old man." "Old man!" echoed Jeph, with a peculiar chuckle. "Ha! yes, I _am_ an old man, and I've bin used to such nights since I wos a _young_ man. But come away, lad, I'll go home with ye now." Old Jeph took the boy's hand as he said this, and the two went over the moor together--slowly, for the way was rough and broken, and silently, for the howling of the gale rendered converse almost impossible. It is not to be supposed that Tommy Bogey had such command over himself, however, as altogether to restrain his curiosity. He did make one or two attempts to induce old Jeph to explain why he was out in such a stormy night, and on such a lonely spot; but the old man refused to be communicative, and finally put a stop to the subject by telling Tommy to let other people's business alone, and asking him how it happened that Long Orrick came to make an attempt on his house, and how it was he failed? Tommy related all he knew with alacrity and for a time secured old Jeph's attention, as was plain from the way in which he chuckled when he heard how his enemy had been outwitted; but gradually the narrative fell on uninterested ears, and before they regained the town the old man's countenance had become grave and sad, and his mind was evidently wandering among the lights--mayhap among the shadows--of "other days." CHAPTER NINE. UNBUSINESSLIKE PROCEEDINGS IN "THE OFFICE"--PEEKINS GROWS DESPERATE AND TAKES REFUGE IN THE "THREE JOLLY TARS." Mr Denham stood in front of his office fire with a coat-tail, as usual, under each arm; his feet planted on two little roses that grew on each side of a large bouquet which flourished perennially on his rug, and his eyes fixed on the ceiling. He had just arrived at Redwharf Lane, and looked quite fresh and ruddy from the exercise of walking, for Denham was a great walker, and frequently did the distance between his house and his office on foot. Mr Crumps sat shivering in his own room, looking the reverse of ruddy, for Crumps was old and his blood was thin, and there was no fire in his room. It is but justice to say, however, that this was no fault of Denham's, for the apartment of his junior partner did not possess a fireplace, and it could not be expected that a fire should be lit, _a la_ Red Indian, on the middle of the floor. At all events Crumps did not expect it. He was not, therefore, liable to disappointment in his expectations. He contented himself, poor old man, with such genial gusts of second-hand warmth as burst in upon him from time to time from Denham's room when the door was open, or poured in upon him in ameliorating rivulets through the keyhole, like a little gulf-stream, when the door was shut. "The letters, sir," said Peekins, the meek blue tiger in buttons, entering at that moment and laying a pile of letters on the table. Had Peekins been a little dog without a soul, capable of wagging his tail and fawning, Denham would have patted him, but, being only a boy in blue with a meek spirit, the great man paid no attention to him whatever. He continued to gaze at the ceiling as if he were reading his destiny there. Perhaps he would have looked as blank as the ceiling had he known what that destiny was to be; but he did not know, fortunately (or unfortunately, if the reader chooses), hence he turned with a calm undisturbed countenance to peruse his letters after the boy had retired. We do not say that Denham was a hard man; by no means; he was only peculiar in his views of things in general; that was all! For some time Denham broke seals, read contents, and made jottings, without any expression whatever on his countenance. Presently he took up an ill-folded epistle addressed to "Mister Denham" in a round and rather rugged hand. "Begging," he muttered with a slight frown. "`Dear Uncle' (`eh!' he exclaimed,--turned over the leaf in surprise, read the signature, and turned back to the beginning again, with the least possible tinge of surprise still remaining), `I'm sorry' (humph) `to have to inform you that the _Nancy_ has become a total wreck,' (`indeed!') `on the Goodwin Sands.' (`Amazing sands these. What a quantity of wealth they have swallowed up!') `The cargo has been entirely lost,'--(`ah! it was insured to its full value,') `also two of the hands.' (`H'm, their lives wouldn't be insured. These rough creatures never do insure their lives; wonderfully improvident!') `I am at present disabled, from the effects of a blow on the head received during the storm.' (Very awkward; particularly so just now.) `No doubt Bax will be up immediately to give you particulars.'" (Humph!) "`The cause of the loss of your schooner was, in _my_ opinion,' (Mr Denham's eyebrows here rose in contemptuous surprise), `_unseaworthiness of vessel and stores_.'" Mr Denham made no comment on this part of the epistle. A dark frown settled on his brow as he crumpled the letter in his hand, dropped it on the ground as if it had been a loathsome creature, and set his foot on it. Denham was uncommonly gruff and forbidding all that day. He spoke harshly to old Mr Crumps; found fault with the clerks to such an extent, that they began to regard the office as a species of Pandemonium which _ought_ to have smelt sulphurous instead of musty; and rendered the life of Peekins so insupportable that the poor boy occupied his few moments of leisure in speculating on the average duration of human life and wondering whether it would not be better, on the whole, to make himself an exception to the general rule by leaping off London Bridge at high water--blue-tights, buttons, and all! Things continued in this felicitous condition in the office until five in the afternoon, when there was a change, not so much in the moral as in the physical atmosphere. It came in the form of a thick fog, which rolled down the crooked places of Redwharf Lane, poured through keyholes, curled round the cranes on the warehouses, and the old anchors, cables, and buoys in the lumber-yards; travelled over the mudflats, and crept out upon the muddy river among the colliers, rendering light things indistinct, black things blacker, dark places darker, and affording such an opportunity for unrestrained enjoyment to the rats, that these creatures held an absolute carnival everywhere. About this period of the day Mr Denham rose, put on his hat and greatcoat, and prepared to go. Peekins observed this through a private scratch in the glass door, and signalised the gladsome news in dumb-show to his comrades. Hope at once took the place of despair in the office, for lads and very young men are happily furnished with extremely elastic spirits. The impulse of joy caused by the prospect of Denham's departure was so strong in the breast of one youth, with red hair, a red nose, red cheeks, large red lips, blue eyes, and red hands (Ruggles by name), that he incontinently seized a sheet of blotting-paper, crumpled it into a ball, and flung it at the head of the youngest clerk, a dark little boy, who sat opposite to him on a tall stool, and who, being a new boy, was copying letters painfully but diligently with a heavy heart. The missile was well aimed. It hit the new boy exactly on the point of the nose, causing him to start and prolong the tail of a y an inch and a quarter beyond its natural limits. This little incident would not have been worth mentioning but for the fact that it was the hinge, so to speak, on which incidents of a more important nature turned. Mr Denham happened to open his door just as the missile was discharged and saw the result, though not the thrower. He had no difficulty, however, in discovering the offender; for each of the other clerks looked at their comrade in virtuous horror, as though to say, "Oh! how could you?--please, sir, it wasn't _me_, it was _him_;" while Ruggles applied himself to his work with an air of abstraction and a face of scarlet that said plainly, "It's of no use staring in that fashion at me, for I'm as innocent as the unborn babe." Denham frowned portentously, and that peculiarly dead calm which usually precedes the bursting of a storm prevailed in the office. Before the storm burst, however, the outer door was opened hastily and our friend Bax stood in the room. He was somewhat dishevelled in appearance, as if he had travelled fast. To the clerks in that small office he appeared more fierce and gigantic than usual. Peekins regarded him with undisguised admiration, and wondered in his heart if Jack the Giant-Killer would have dared to encounter such a being, supposing him to have had the chance. "I'm glad I am not too late to find you here, sir," said Bax, puffing off his hat and bowing slightly to his employer. "Humph!" ejaculated Denham, "step this way." They entered the inner office, and, the door being shut, Ruggles internally blessed Bax and breathed freely. Under the influence of reaction he even looked defiant. "So you have lost your schooner," began Denham, sitting down in his chair of state and eyeing the seaman sternly. Bax returned the gaze so much more sternly that Denham felt disconcerted but did not allow his feelings to betray themselves. "The schooner _has_ been lost," said Bax, "and I am here to report the fact and to present these letters, one from the seamen's missionary at Ramsgate, the other from your nephew, both of which will show you that no blame attaches to me. I regret the loss, deeply, but it was un--" Bax was going to have said unavoidable, but he felt that the expression would have been incorrect, and stopped. "Finish your remark," said Denham. "I merely wished to say that it was out of _my_ power to prevent it." "Oh!" interjected Denham, sarcastically, as he read the letters. "The seamen's missionary is one of whom I know nothing. His opinion, therefore, carries no weight. As to my nephew, _his_ remarks are simply unworthy of notice. But you say that no blame attaches to _you_. To whom then does blame attach, if not to the skipper of the vessel? Do you mean to lay it at the door of Providence?" "No, sir, I do not," replied Bax. "Have you, then, the presumption to insinuate that it lies with _me_?" Bax was silent. "Am I to expect an answer?" said Denham. "I make no insinuations," said Bax, after a short pause; "I do but state facts. If the `Nancy' had been fitted with a new tops'l-yard and jib-boom, as I advised last summer, I would have carried her safe into the Downs." "So," said Denham, in a tone of increasing sarcasm, "you have the hardihood to insinuate that it was _my_ fault?" Bax reddened with indignation at the tone of insult in which these words were uttered. His bass voice grew deeper and sterner as he said:-- "If you insist on plain speaking, sir, you shall have it. I _do_ think the blame of the loss of the `Nancy' lies at your door, and worse than that, the loss of two human lives lies there also. There was not a sound timber or a seaworthy article aboard of the schooner from stem to stern. You know well enough that I have told you this,--in more civil language it may be,--again and again; and I hope that the telling of it now, flatly, will induce you to consider the immense responsibility that lies on your shoulders; for there are other ships belonging to your firm in much the same condition--ships with inferior charts and instruments, unsound spars, not enough of boats, and with anchors and chains scarce powerful enough to hold a Deal lugger in a moderate gale." Mr Denham was not prepared for this sudden and wholesale condemnation of himself and his property. He gazed at the seaman's flushed countenance for a few seconds in mute surprise. At last he recovered self-possession, and said in a calm voice-- "You applied last year, if I remember rightly, for the situation of mate aboard our ship the `Trident'--now on her second voyage from Australia?" "I did," said Bax, shortly, not knowing how to take this sudden change of subject. "Do you suppose," said Denham, with a peculiar curl of his lip, "that this interview will tend to improve your chance of obtaining that situation?" Denham put the question with the full expectation of humbling Bax, and with the further intention of following up his reply with the assurance that there was much greater probability of the moon being turned into green cheese than of his promotion taking place; but his intentions were frustrated by Bax starting, and, in a voice of indignation, exclaiming--"Sir, do you suppose I have come here to beg? If you were to offer me the _command_ of the `Trident,' or any other ship that you possess, I would refuse it with scorn. It is bad enough to risk one's life in the rotten craft you send to sea; but that would be nothing compared with the shame of serving a house that thinks only of gain, and holds human life cheaper than the dirt I tread under my feet. No, sir; I came here to explain how the `Nancy' was lost. Having done so, I take my leave." "Stay," said Denham, as Bax turned to go. "Perhaps you will do me one more service before we part. Will you kindly inform my nephew that he need not be in a hurry to come back here. I extend his leave. He may continue to absent himself as long as he pleases--to all eternity if it suits him." Mr Denham flushed up with anger as he said the last words. Bax, without deigning a reply, turned on his heel and strode out of the room, slamming the glass-door behind him with such violence that every panel in it was shivered to atoms! He wheeled round and re-entered the room. Denham grew pale, supposing that the roused giant was about to assault him; but Bax only pointed to the door, and said sternly--"Part of the wages due me will pay for that. You can keep the balance, and buy yourself a Bible with it." Next moment he was gone, and Peekins stood staring at his master through the shattered door, trembling from head to foot. Immediately afterwards Denham took his hat and stick, and passed through the office. Pausing at the door he looked back:-- "Ruggles." "Yes, sir." "There are five or six foreign letters in my desk for tomorrow's post. Copy them out to-night. See that you do it _to-night_. Peekins will remain with you, and lock up after you have done." Ruggles, who knew that this involved work till near midnight, humbly replied, "Yes, sir." Having thus secured the misery of at least two human beings, Denham went home, somewhat relieved, to dinner. Bax unconsciously, but naturally, followed his example. He also went to dinner, but, having no home in that quarter, he went to the "Three Jolly Tars," and found the landlord quite willing to supply all his wants on the shortest possible notice, namely, three-quarters of an hour. In a snug box of that celebrated place of entertainment, he found Tommy Bogey (whom he had brought with him) awaiting his appearance. The precocious youth was deeply immersed in a three-days'-old copy of _The Times_. "Hallo! Bax, you've been sharp about it," said Tommy, laying down the paper and pulling a little black pipe out of his pocket, which he proceeded coolly and quietly to fill just as if he had been a bearded and grey-headed tar; for Tommy, being a worshipper of Bax, imitated, as all worshippers do, the bad as well as the good qualities of his hero, ignorant of, as well as indifferent to, the fact that it would have been more noble to imitate the good and avoid the bad. "Ay, we've settled it all slick off in no time," said Bax, sitting down beside his young companion, and proceeding also to fill his pipe. "An' wot about the widders and horphans?" inquired Tommy, beginning to smoke, and using his extremely little finger as a tobacco-stopper in a way that might have surprised a salamander. "The widows!" exclaimed Bax. "Ay, the widders--also the horphans," repeated Tommy, with a grave nod of the head. "I 'ope he's come down 'andsome." "Tommy," said Bax, with a disconcerted look, "I've forgot 'em altogether!" "Forgot 'em? Bax!" "It's a fact," said Bax, with much humility, "but the truth is, that we got to loggerheads, an' of course you know it was out of the question to talk on such a subject when we were in that state." "In course it was," said Tommy. "But it's a pity." The fact was that Bax had intended to make an appeal to Mr Denham in behalf of the widows and children of the poor men who had been drowned on the night when the "Nancy" was wrecked; but the unexpected turn which the conversation took had driven that subject utterly out of his mind. "Well, Tommy, it can't be helped now; and, after all, I don't think the widows will come by any loss by my forgetfulness, for certain am I that Denham would as soon supply a best-bower anchor to the `Trident' as give a sovereign to these poor people." Bax and his young friend here relapsed into a state of silent fumigation from which they were aroused by the entrance of dinner. This meal consisted of beef-steaks and porter. But it is due to Bax to say that he advised his companion to confine his potations to water, which his companion willingly agreed to, as he would have done had Bax advised him to drink butter-milk, or cider, or to go without drink altogether. They were about done with dinner when a weak small voice in the passage attracted their attention. "Is there one of the name of Bax 'ere," said the meek voice. "Here I am," shouted Bax, "come in; what d'ye want with me?" Peekins entered in a state of great agitation. "Oh! sir, please sir,--I'll never do it again; but I couldn't help it indeed, indeed--I was dyin', I was. It's a great sin I knows, but--" Here Peekins burst into tears, and sat down on the seat opposite. "Wot a green 'un!" muttered Tommy, as he gazed at the tiger in blue through a volume of tobacco smoke. "What's the matter, boy?" inquired Bax, in some surprise. "Anything wrong at Redwharf Lane?" "Ye-es--that's to say, not exactly, only I've run'd away." "You han't run far, then," said Bax, smiling. "How long is't since you ran away?" "Just ten minutes." Tommy burst into a laugh at this, and Peekins, feeling somewhat relieved, smiled idiotically through his tears. "Well now, my lad," said Bax, leaning forward in a confidential way which quite won the affection of the tiger, and patting him on the shoulder, "I would advise you strongly to go back." "Oh! sir, but I can't," said Peekins dolefully. "I dursn't. My life is miserable there. Mr Denham is so 'ard on me that I feels like to die every time I sees 'im. It ain't o' no use" (here Peekins became wildly desperate), "I _won't_ go back; 'cause if I do I'm sure to die slow; an' I'd rather die quick at once and be done with it." Bax opened his eyes very wide at this. It revealed a state of things that he had never before imagined. Tommy Bogey puffed so large a cloud that his face was quite concealed by it, and muttered "you _air_ a rum 'un!" "Where d'ye stop, boy?" inquired Bax. "In lodgin's in Fenchurch Street." "D'ye owe 'em anything at the office?" "No, nothin'; they owes me seventeen and six." "D'ye want it very much?" "O no, I don't mind _that_, bless ye," said Peekins, earnestly. "What d'ye mean to do?" inquired Bax. "Go with _you_--to sea," replied the tiger, promptly. "But I'm not going to sea." "Then, I'll go with you wherever you please. I like you," said the boy, springing suddenly to his side and grasping his hand, "I've no one in the world to care for but you. I never heard any one speak like you. If you'll only let me be your servant, I'll go with you to the end of the world, and--and--" Here poor Peekins was again overcome. "Bray_vo_!" shouted Tommy Bogey in admiration. "You're not such a bad fellow after all." "Poor boy," said Bax, stroking the tiger's head, "you are willing to trust too easily to a weak and broken reed. But, come, I'll take you to the coast. Better to go there, after all, than stop with such a tender-hearted Christian as Mr Denham. Here, take a bit of dinner." Having tasted no food since breakfast, Peekins gladly accepted the invitation, and ate heartily of the remnants of the meal, to the great satisfaction of his companions, especially of Tommy, who regarded him as one might regard a pet canary or rabbit, which requires to be fed plenteously and handled with extreme gentleness and care. CHAPTER TEN. THE "HOVEL" ON DEAL BEACH--A STORM BREWING--PLANS TO CIRCUMVENT THE SMUGGLERS. On a calm, soft, beautiful evening, about a week after the events narrated in the last chapter, Guy Foster issued from Sandhill Cottage, and took his way towards the beach of Deal. It was one of those inexpressibly sweet, motionless evenings, in which one is inclined, if in ordinary health, to rejoice in one's existence; and in which the Christian is led irresistibly to join with the Psalmist in praising God, "for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men." Young Foster's thoughts ran for a considerable time in this latter channel; for he was one of those youthful Christians whose love to our Saviour does not easily grow cold. He was wont to read the Bible as if he really believed it to be the Word of God, and acted in accordance with its precepts with a degree of bold simplicity and trustfulness, that made him a laughing-stock to some, and a subject of surprise and admiration to others, of his companions and acquaintance. In short, he was a Christian of a cheerful, straightforward stamp. Yet Guy's course was not all sunshine, neither was his conduct altogether immaculate. He was not exempt from the general rule, that "through much tribulation" men shall enter into the Kingdom. As he walked along, rejoicing in his existence and in the beauty of that magnificent evening, a cloud would rise occasionally and call forth a sigh, as he recollected the polite intimation of his uncle, that he had extended his leave of absence _ad_ _infinitum_! He could not shut his eyes to the fact that a brilliant mercantile career on which he had recently entered, and on which he might naturally look as the course cut out for him by Providence, was suddenly closed against him for ever. He knew his uncle's temper too well to expect that he would relent, and he felt that to retract a statement which he knew to be true, or to express regret for having boldly told the truth as he had done, was out of the question. Besides, he was well aware that such a course would not now avail to restore him to his lost position. It remained, therefore, that, being without influential friends, he must begin over again and carve his own way in the world. But what then? Was this not the lot of hundreds of thousands? Little time had been lost; he was young, and strong, and hearty. God had written, "Commit thy way unto the Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass." "Whatever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might, as unto the Lord, and not unto men." Under the influence of such thoughts the clouds cleared away from Guy's brow, and he raised his eyes, which for some minutes had been cast down, with a hopeful gaze to the heavens. There he soon became lost in admiration of the clouds that were floating in masses of amber and gold; rising over each other--piled up, mass upon mass--grotesque sometimes in form, solid yet soft in aspect, and inexpressibly grand, as a whole, in their towering magnificence. There were signs, however, among the gorgeous beauties of this cloud-land, that were significant to eyes accustomed to read the face of the sky. Various lurid and luminous clouds of grey and Indian-red hues told of approaching storm, and the men of Deal knew that the sea, which just then pictured every cloud in its glassy depths as clearly as if there had been another cloud-land below its surface, would, ere long, be ruffled with a stiffish breeze; perhaps be tossed by a heavy gale. Men in general are not prone to meditate very deeply on what is going on around them beyond the reach of their own vision. This is natural and right to some extent. If we were to be deeply touched by the joys, sorrows, calamities, and incidents that at all times affect humanity, we should cease to enjoy existence. Life would become a burden. The end of our creation would not be attained. Yet there is an evil of an opposite kind which often mars our usefulness, and makes us unconsciously participators in acts of injustice. This evil is, partial ignorance of, and indifference to, much that goes on around us beyond the range of our vision, but which nevertheless claims our attention and regard. Every one who reflects will admit that it is pleasant to think, when we retire to rest, that a splendid system of police renders our home a place of safety, and that, although there are villains more than enough who would do their best to get at our purses and plate, we need not make ourselves uneasy so long as the stout guardians of the night are on the beat. Do we not congratulate ourselves on this? and do we not pay the police-tax without grumbling, or at least with less grumbling than we vent when paying other taxes? Should it, good reader, be less a subject of pleasant contemplation that, when the midnight storm threatens to burst upon our shores, there are men abroad who are skilled in the perilous work of snatching its prey from the raging sea; that, when the howling gale rattles our windows and shakes our very walls, inducing us perchance to utter the mental prayer, "God have mercy on all who are on the sea this night," that then--at that very time--the heroes of our coast are abroad all round the kingdom; strong in the possession of dauntless hearts and iron frames, and ready to plunge at any moment into the foaming sea to the rescue of life or property? Who can say, during any storm, that he may not be personally interested in the efforts of those heroes? We knew a family, the members of which, like those of all the other families in the land, listened to the howling of that fearful storm which covered our shores with wrecks on the 25th of November, 1859. Their thoughts were sad and anxious, as must be the case, more or less, with all who reflect that in such nights hundreds of human beings are _certainly_ perishing on our shores. But ah! what would the feelings of that family have been had they known--as they soon came to know--that two stalwart brothers of their own went down that night among the 450 human beings who perished in the wreck of the "Royal Charter?" In regard to the "Royal Charter," it may be truly said that there was no necessity for the loss of that vessel. God did not send _direct_ destruction upon her. The engines were too weak to work her off the land in the face of the gale, and the cables could not hold her. These were among the causes of her loss. And when she did get ashore, every life might have been saved had there been a lifeboat or rocket apparatus at hand. We know not why there were neither; but may it not have been because lifeboats and rockets are not sufficiently numerous all along our shores? How many bleeding hearts there were that would have given drops of their life-blood to have provided the means of saving life on the coast of Anglesea on that terrible night! A few small coins given at an earlier date might have saved those lives! No individual in the land, however far removed from the coast, can claim exemption from the dangers of the sea. His own head may indeed lie safe from the raging billow, but at any moment the sea may grasp some loved one, and thus wreck his peace of mind, or engulf his property and wreck his fortune. Why, then, should not the whole nation take the affairs of the coast nearer to its heart? The Lifeboat Institution is not supported by taxation like our police force. It depends on the charity of the people. Don't you think, reader, that it has a strong claim on the sympathies, the prayers, and the purse of every living soul in the kingdom? But to return, with many apologies, from this digression. Guy Foster noted the peculiar appearance of the clouds, and concluded that "something was brewing." All along the shores stout men in glazed and tarry garments noted the same appearances, and also concluded that it would be dirty weather before long. The lifeboat men, too, were on the _qui vive_; and, doubtless, the coxswain of each boat, from John o' Groat's to the Land's-end, was overhauling his charge to see that all was right and in readiness for instant service. "It's going to blow to-night, Bax," said Guy, on entering the hovel of the former. "So 'tis," replied Bax, who was standing beside his friends Bluenose and Tommy Bogey, watching old Jeph, as he busied himself with the model of his lifeboat. Jeph said that in his opinion it was going to be a regular nor'-easter, and Bluenose intimated his adherence to the same opinion, with a slap on his thigh, and a huge puff of smoke. "You're long about that boat, Jeph," said Bluenose, after a pause, during which he scanned the horizon with a telescope. "So I am. It ain't easy to carry out the notion." "An' wot may the notion be?" inquired Bluenose, sitting down on a coil of rope, and gazing earnestly at the old man. "To get lifeboats to right themselves w'en they're upset," replied Jeph, regarding his model with a look of perplexity. "You see it's all very well to have 'em filled with air-chambers, which prevents 'em from sinkin'; but w'en they're upset, d'ye see, they ain't o' no use till they gets on their keels again; and that ain't easy to manage. Now I've bin thinkin' that if we wos to give 'em more sheer, and raise the stem and stern a bit, they'd turn over natural-like, of their own accord." "I do believe they would," said Bax. "Why, what put that into yer head, old man?" "Well, it ain't altogether my own notion," said Jeph, "for I've heard, when I was in the port o' Leith, many years ago, that a clergyman o' the name of Bremer had made a boat o' this sort in the year 1792, that answered very well; but, somehow or other, it never came to anything. There's nothin' that puzzles me so much as that," said the old man, looking up with a wondering expression of countenance. "I don't understand how, w'en a good thing is found out, it ain't made the most of _at once_! I never could discover exactly what Mr Bremer's plan was, so I'm tryin' to invent one." As he said this, Jeph placed the model on which he was engaged in a small tub of water which stood at his elbow. Guy, who was much interested in the old man's idea, bent over him to observe the result of the experiment. Tommy Bogey sat down beside the tub as eagerly as if he expected some wonderful transformation to take place. Bax and Bluenose also looked on with unusual interest, as if they felt that a crisis in the experimental labours of their old comrade had arrived. "It floats first-rate on an even keel," cried Tommy, with a pleased look as the miniature boat moved slowly round its little ocean, "now then, capsize it." Old Jeph quietly put his finger on the side of the little boat, and turned it upside down. Instead of remaining in that position it rolled over on one side so much, that the onlookers fully expected to see it right itself, and Tommy gave vent to a premature cheer, but he cut it suddenly short on observing that the boat remained on its side with one of the gunwales immersed, unable to attain an even keel in consequence of the weight of water inside of it. "I tell ye wot it is, Jeph," said Bluenose, with emphasis, "you'll do it yet; if you don't I'll eat my sou'-wester without sauce, so I will. As the noospapers says, you'll inaggerate a new era in lifeboats, old boy, that's a fact, and I'll live to see it too!" Having delivered himself of this opinion in tones of much fervour, the captain delivered his mouth of a series of cloudlets, and gazed through them at his old friend with unfeigned admiration. Guy and Bax were both impressed with the partial success of the experiment, as well as with Jeph's idea, and said to him, encouragingly, that he had very near hit it, but Jeph himself only shook his head and smiled sadly. "Lads," said he, "_very near_ is sometimes a long way farther off than folk suppose. Perpetual motion has bin _very nearly_ discovered ever since men began to try their hands at engineerin', but it ain't discovered yet, nor never will be--'cause why? it ain't possible." "Ain't poss'ble!" echoed Bluenose, "you're out there, old man. I diskivered it, years ago. Just you go up to Sandhill Cottage, and inquire for one Mrs Laker, a hupright and justifiable sister o' mine. Open that 'ooman's mouth an' look in (she won't bite if ye don't bother her too much), and lyin' in that there cavern ye'll see a thing called a _tongue_,--if that ain't an engine of perpetooal motion, shiver my timbers! that's all." Just as the captain made this reckless offer to sacrifice his timbers, Peekins--formerly the blue tiger--entered the hovel, and going hastily to Bluenose, whispered in his ear. A very remarkable transformation had taken place in the outward man of poor Peekins. After coming with Bax to Deal he had been adopted, as it were, by the co-partners of the hovel, and was, so to speak, shared equally by Bax, Bluenose, old Jeph, and Tommy. The wonderfully thin and spider-like appearance which he presented in his blue-tights and buttons on his arrival, created such a howl of derisive astonishment among the semi-nautical boys of Deal, that his friends became heartily ashamed of him. Bax, therefore, walked him off at once to a slop-shop, where sea-stores of every possible or conceivable kind could be purchased at reasonable prices, from a cotton kerchief, with the Union Jack in the middle of it, to the old anchor of a seventy-four gun ship, with a wooden stock big enough to make a canoe. Here Peekins was disrobed of his old garments, and clad in canvas trousers, pilot-cloth jacket and vest, with capacious pockets, and a sou'-wester; all of which fitted him so loosely that he felt persuaded in his own mind he could easily have jumped out of them with an upward bound, or have slipped out of them downwards through either leg of the pantaloons. He went into that store a blue spider, he came out a reasonable-looking seafaring boy, rather narrow and sloping about the shoulders, it is true, but smart enough and baggy enough--especially about the nether garments--to please even Bax, who, in such matters, was rather fastidious. The whispered communication, above referred to, had the effect of causing Bluenose to spring up from the coil of rope, and exclaim--"You don't say so!" Then, checking himself, and looking mysterious, he said he wanted to have a word with Bax in private, and would be obligated if he'd go with him a bit along shore. "Well, what's the news?" inquired Bax, when they were alone. "We've heerd of Long Orrick," said Bluenose, eagerly. "That's not much news," said Bax; "you told me there wasn't enough witnesses to swear to him, or something o' that sort, and that it would be no use attempting to put him in limbo, didn't you?" "Ay," replied the other, striking his clenched right hand into the palm of his left, "but the villain don't the less deserve to be tied up, and get twelve dozen for all that. I'd content myself with knocking out both his daylights for his cowardly attempt to badger an old man, but that wouldn't be safe; besides, I know'd well enough he'd take to smugglin' again, an' soon give us a chance to nab him at his old tricks; so Coleman and I have been keepin' a look-out on him; and we've found that small yard o' pump-water, Peekins, oncommon clever in the way o' watchin'. He's just brought me word that he heard Long Orrick talkin' with his chum Rodney Nick, an' plannin' to run their lugger to-night into Pegwell Bay, as the coast at the Fiddler's Cave would be too well watched; so I'm goin' down to Fiddler's Cave to-night, and I wants you to go with me. We'll get Coleman to help us, for he's savage to get hold of Long Orrick ever since the night they put him in a sack, an' left him to air his timbers in the Great Chapel Field." "But if," said Bax, "Long Orrick said he would run to Pegwell Bay, which is three or four miles to the nor'ard o' this, and resolved that he would _not_ go to Fiddler's Cave, which is six miles to the s'uth'ard, why should you go to the very place he's not likely to be found at?" "Because I knows the man," replied Bluenose, with a wink of deep meaning; "I knows him better than you do. W'en Long Orrick is seen bearin' away due north with flying colours, you may take your Davy that his true course lies south, or thereby." Bax smiled, and suggested that they should take Guy Foster with them, and when Tommy Bogey heard what they were about he volunteered his services, which were accepted laughingly. Being of a sociable disposition, Tommy deemed it prudent to press Peekins into the service, and Peekins, albeit not pugnacious by nature, was quite willing and ready to follow wherever his sturdy little friend chose to lead. So they all set off, along the road that skirts the beach, towards Saint Margaret's Bay. The sun was just sinking as they started, and the red clouds were beginning to deepen in their colour and look ominous, though the sea was still quiet and clear like a sheet of glass. After following the road for some time, they diverged into the footpath that leads to, and winds along the giddy edge of, the chalk cliffs which rise abruptly from the shore at this part of the Kentish coast to the height of several hundred feet. The path being narrow, they were obliged to walk in single file, Bax leading, Bluenose and Guy following, and Tommy with his meek friend bringing up the rear. The view seawards was indescribably magnificent from the elevated ridge along which they hastened. The Downs was crowded with hundreds of vessels of every form and size, as well as of every country, all waiting for a favourable breeze to enable them to quit the roadstead and put to sea. Pilot luggers and other shore-boats of various kinds were moving about among these; some on the look-out for employment, others intent on doing a stroke of business in the smuggling way, if convenient. Far away along the beach men of the coastguard might be seen, like little black specks, with telescopes actively employed, ready to pounce on and overhaul (more or less stringently according to circumstances) every boat that touched the shingle. Everything in nature seemed silent and motionless, with the exception of the sea-mews that wheeled round the summits of the cliffs or dived into the glassy sea. All these things were noted and appreciated in various degrees by the members of the party who hastened towards Saint Margaret's Bay, but none of them commented much on the scenery. They were too well accustomed to the face of nature in every varying mood to be much struck with her face on the present occasion. Perhaps we may except Guy Foster, who, being more of a city man than his companions, besides being more highly educated, was more deeply impressed by what he saw that evening. But Guy was too much absorbed by the object of the expedition to venture any remark on the beautiful aspect of nature. "D'ye see that lugger, Bax?" said Bluenose, pointing to a particular spot on the sea. "Between the Yankee and the Frenchman?" said Bax, "I see it well enough. What then?" "That's Long Orrick's boat," replied the Captain, "I'd know it among a thousand. Depend on it we'll nab him to-night with a rich cargo of baccy and brandy a-board. The two B's are too much for him. He'd sell his soul for baccy and brandy." "That's not such an uncommon weakness as you seem to think," observed Guy. "Every day men sell their souls for more worthless things." "D'ye think so?" said Bluenose, with a philosophical twist in his eyebrows. "I know it," returned Guy; "men often sell both body and soul (as far as we can judge) for a mere idea." Here Bax, who had been examining the lugger in question with a pocket-telescope, said that he had no doubt whatever Bluenose was right, and hastened forward at a smarter pace than before. In less than two hours they descended the steep cliffs to the shingle of Saint Margaret's Bay; and at the same time the wind began to rise, while the shades of night gradually overspread the scene. Saint Margaret's Bay is one of those small, quiet, secluded hamlets which are not unfrequently met with along our coasts, and in regard to which the stranger is irresistibly led to ask mentally, if not really, "Why did people ever come to build cottages and dwell here, and what do they do? How do they make a livelihood?" No stranger ever obtains a satisfactory answer to these questions, for the very good reason that, short though they be, the answers to them would involve almost a volume, or a speech equal in length to that with which the Chancellor of the Exchequer introduces his annual budget. There would be various classes to describe, numerous wants to apprehend, peculiar circumstances and conditions of social life to explain; in short, the thing is a mystery to many, and we merely remark on the fact, without having any intention of attempting to clear the mystery away. So narrow is the strip of shingle that lies between the sea and the cliffs in Saint Margaret's Bay, that the cottages have been built close up to the latter--much too close, we venture to think, for safety; but perhaps men who live in constant peril of their lives, count the additional risk of being crushed along with their families under twenty or thirty tons of chalk, unworthy of consideration! On descending to the beach the first thing our party saw was the burly figure of Coleman seated on his "donkey" by the "sad sea waves." It must not be supposed that the coast-guard-man was literally astride of a live ass! No; his "donkey" was an exceedingly ingenious contrivance invented specially for the use of a class of men who, being human, cannot avoid becoming fatigued--yet who, being sentinels, must not on any account whatever be permitted to encourage sleep. The men of the coast-guard are subject to prolonged and frequent periods of watching, by night as well as by day, hence they are liable to become wearied. It has been wisely considered that the most self-denying mortal alive will, when hard pressed, sit down on a rock or on the ground, if need be, just to relieve his legs a little. The same wise consideration has recalled the fact that when men do this they become helplessly incapable of resisting the drowsy god, and will assuredly go to sleep, against their will and their judgment. To meet this case, some truly great mind invented the "donkey." This contrivance is simply a stool with _one_ leg. The top of the stool is not round, but oblong, and very small. A hole in the centre receives the solitary leg, which is attached to it by a piece of cord, and can be pulled out when occasion requires, and the machine thrown over the arm as one would throw a cloak or scarf. The beauty of the donkey is, that it forms an excellent seat on which a man can balance himself and rest with great comfort as long as he keeps awake; but should he fall asleep, even for one instant, he infallibly comes to the ground with a shock so severe that he is quite certain to remain wakeful during the remainder of his vigil! "What, ho! Coleman," cried Bax, as he and his friends drew near, "have you actually acquired the art of sleeping on a donkey?" Coleman rose and turned round with a good-humoured smile on his ruddy visage: "Nay, not quite that," said he, "but the hiss of the waves is apt to dull the hearin' a bit, an' one don't naturally look for enemies from land'ard, d'ye see?" "Mayhap not," said Bluenose, taking a fresh quid of tobacco out of a brass box which he carried at all times in his waistcoat pocket; "but I expect an enemy from seaward to-night who'll be oncommon glad to make your acquaintance, no doubt!" Here the Captain chuckled, engulfed his fresh quid, and proceeded to explain the nature of their errand. Having done so, he asked Coleman what he thought of it. The worthy coast-guard-man scratched his nose and stared at the shingle for some minutes before venturing to reply. "I think," said he at length, "that we'll cook his goose to-night; that's wot it is." Coleman paused, and looked thoughtfully at Bluenose. The Captain nodded his head pleasantly, but said nothing, and Coleman proceeded:-- "He'll come in with the flood-tide no doubt, if the gale don't drive him in sooner, an' run ashore as near to the cave as possible; but he'll be scared away if he sees anything like unusual watchin' on the shore, so you'd better get out o' sight as fast as ye can, and keep there." "Don't you think it would be as well that you also should keep out of sight, and so leave the coast clear for him?" suggested Bax. "Not so," said Coleman with a grin, "he'd see that I'd done it for an object. Long Orrick keeps his weather eye too wide open to be caught so easy as that comes to." "Well, but come up for half-an-hour, and have a glass of beer while we talk over the business," said Bax. Coleman shook his head, "Can't quit my post; besides, I don't drink no beer." "Brayvo! old feller," cried Bluenose, "give us your flipper. Water, cold, for ever! say I, as the whale remarked to the porpoise. But let's go under the lee o' the boat-'ouse an' talk it out, for we shan't nab Long Orrick this night, if we doesn't go at 'im like a cat at a mouse." "Just listen to that old codfish," said Tommy Bogey to Peekins, "takin' credit to his-self for not drinkin', though he smokes like a steam-tug, an' chews like--like--I'm a Dutchman if I know what, unless it be like the bo'sun of a seventy-four gun ship." "Do bo'suns of seventy-four gun ships chew very bad?" inquired Peekins. "Oh! don't they!" exclaimed Tommy, opening his eyes very wide, and rounding his mouth so as to express his utter inability to convey any idea of the terrific powers of bo'suns in that particular line. "But Bluenose beats 'em all. He'd chew oakum, I do believe, if he didn't get baccy, and yet he boasts of not drinkin'! Seems to me he's just as bad as the rest of us." "D'you think so?" said Peekins, with a doubtful look; "don't you think the man who does only two nasty things is better off than the one that does three?" "Nasty things!" exclaimed Tommy in a tone of amazement. "Don't Bax drink and smoke, and d'ye think _he'd_ do one or t'other if they was nasty? Peekins, you small villian as was a blue spider only a week since, if you ever talks of them things being nasty again, I'll wop you!" "You hear that, Bax?" said Guy Foster, who, being only a few paces ahead of the boys, had overheard the remark, spoken as it was in rather a loud key. Bax nodded his head, and smiled, but made no reply. It is but just to say that Tommy's threat was uttered more than half in jest. He would as soon have thought of "wopping" a little girl as of maltreating his meek companion. But Peekins was uncertain how to take his threat, so, not being desirous of a wopping, he held his tongue and humbly followed his comrades. The party walked for some time at the foot of the cliffs under the lee of a boat-house, engaged in earnest conversation as to the best mode of proceeding in the meditated enterprise. It was evident to all of them that the hour for action could not now be far distant; for the gale increased every moment; the light on the South Foreland was already sending its warning rays far and wide over the angry sea, whence the floating lights that mark the sands sent back their nightly greeting, while dark thunderous clouds mantled over the sky and deepened the shades of night which, ere long, completely overspread land and sea. CHAPTER ELEVEN. THE SMUGGLERS' CAVE--A SURPRISE, A DECEPTION, A FIGHT, AND AN ESCAPE. The Fiddler's Cave, _alias_ Canterbury Cave, _alias_ the Smugglers' Cave, is a cavern of unknown extent situated under the high chalk cliffs at the southern extremity of Saint Margaret's Bay. Tradition informs us that its first appellation was bestowed in consequence of a fiddler having gone into it with his dog many years ago, and never having come out again. Four days afterwards the dog crept out in a dying condition. It is supposed that the man must have wandered too far into the cavern, and been overpowered by foul air. Tradition also says that there is a passage from it, underground, all the way to Canterbury, a distance of eighteen miles; hence its second name. No one, however, seems to have verified this report. The Kentish smugglers, from whom the cave derives its last title, have undoubtedly made much use of it in days of old. At the period of our story, the entrance to Fiddler's Cave was so much obstructed by rubbish and sand that a man had to stoop low on entering the passage which led to the interior. At the present day the entrance is so nearly closed up that a man could not creep along it even on his hands and knees. Here, on the threatening night of which we are writing, a boatman stood on the watch, close under the rocks that overhung the entrance to the cavern. The man was habited, like most of his brethren of the coast, in rough garments, with long boots, sou'-wester cap, and oiled, tarred, and greased upper garments, suitable to the stormy night in which he had seen fit to hold his vigil. A feeble ray of light that struggled in the cavern showed that the man clutched a pistol in his right hand, and with a frown on his brow, glanced alternately out to sea where all was darkness, and along shore where the only visible living object was the figure of old Coleman seated on his "donkey." It need scarcely be added that the sight of the coast-guard-man was the cause of the smuggler's frown. The gale was now blowing stiffly, and rolling black clouds so covered the sky that the moon was entirely obscured by them, save when an occasional break permitted a few rays to stream down and reveal the elemental strife that was going on below. Coleman, regardless of the storm, maintained his position on his one-legged companion, and bending his body to the blast, endeavoured to pierce the gloom that enshrouded everything seaward beyond the large breakers that sent their foam hissing up to his very feet. While he sat there he thought, or muttered, thus:-- "It's odd, now, I'd ha' thought he'd have run ashore afore this; seein' that I've sat on this here donkey for more nor an hour, a-purpose to let him see that I'm only watchin' _here_, and nowhere else. He can't but see there's a goodish lump o' the coast free to him so long as I sit here. But he's a sly feller; p'raps he suspects somethin'. An' yet, I'll go bound, he don't guess that there's six or seven of his worst enemies hidin' all along the coast, with eyes like needles, and ears on full cock! How'sever, it won't do to sit much longer. If he don't come in five minutes, I'll git up an' walk along in an easy unsuspectin' way. Dear me, wot a set o' hypocrites we've got to be in the hexecution of our dooty!" While Coleman moralised thus, in utter ignorance of the near proximity of an eye-witness, the smuggler at the mouth of the cave, who was no other than Orrick's friend, Rodney Nick, muttered some remarks between his teeth which were by no means complimentary to the other. "What are ye sittin' there for, ye old idiot?" said he savagely. "I do b'lieve ye've larned to sleep on the donkey. Ha! there's two of ye together, an' the wooden one's the best. Wouldn't I just like to be yer leftenant, my boy? an' I'd come to know why you don't go on your beat. Why, there may be no end o' cats and galleys takin' the beach wi' baccy an' lush enough to smother you up alive, an' you sittin' there snuffin' the east wind like an old ass, as ye are." The smuggler uttered the last sentence in deep exasperation, for the time appointed for signalising his comrades at sea had arrived, and yet that stolid coast-guard-man sat there as if he had become fastened to the shingle. "I've a good mind to run out an' hit ye a crack over yer figure-head," he continued, grasping his pistol nervously and taking a step forward. "Hallo! one would a'most think you'd heard me speak," he added and shrank back, as Coleman rose from his seat (the five minutes having expired), and sauntered with a careless air straight towards the cave. On reaching it he paused and looked into it. Rodney Nick crouched in the shadow of a projecting rock, and grasped his pistol tightly for a moment, under the impression that he was about to be discovered. He was one of those fierce, angry men who are at all times ready to risk their lives in order to gratify revenge. Old Coleman had more than once thwarted Rodney Nick in his designs, besides having in other ways incurred his dislike, and there is no doubt that had the coast-guard-man discovered him at that moment, he would have paid for the discovery with his life. Fortunately for both of them Coleman turned after standing a few seconds at the mouth of the cave, and retraced his steps along the beach. He prolonged his walk on this occasion to the extremity of his beat, but, long before reaching that point his figure was lost to the smuggler's view in darkness. "At last!" exclaimed Rodney Nick, taking a dark lantern from his breast, and peering cautiously in every direction. "Now then, Long Orrick, if ye look sharp we'll cheat 'em again, and chew our quids and drink our grog free of dooty!" As he muttered his words the smuggler flashed the lantern for an instant, in such a manner that its brilliant bull's-eye was visible far out at sea. Again he let its light shine out for one instant; then he closed the lid and awaited the result. Out upon the sea, not far from the wild breakers that thundered and burst in foam on the south end of the Goodwin Sands, a boat, of the size and form styled by men of the coast a "cat," was tossing idly on the waves. The men in her were employed in the easy task of keeping her head to the wind, and in the anxious occupation of keeping a "bright look-out" on the shore. "Time's up," said one of the men, turning suddenly towards his companions, and allowing the light of a dark lantern to fall on the face of a watch which he held in his hand. "Dowse the glim, you lubber," cried the angry voice of Long Orrick, "and keep a sharp look-out for the signal. If it don't come we'll run for Old Stairs Bay, an' if they're too sharp for us there we'll make for Pegwell Bay, and drop the tubs overboard with sinkers at 'em." For nearly quarter of an hour the party in the boat watched in silence. It was evident that Long Orrick was becoming impatient from the way in which he turned, now to windward, to scan the threatening sky, and then to land-ward, to look for the expected signal. He felt, on the one hand, that if the gale continued to increase, it would be necessary to run for the nearest place of safety; and he felt, on the other hand, that if he did not succeed in landing the goods at Fiddler's Cave, there would be small chance of his getting them ashore at all. "There's the glim," cried one of the men. "All right! up with a bit o' the sail," said Long Orrick, seizing the tiller from the man who held it. In a second or two they were driving before the wind straight for the shore. With such a stiff breeze the boat was soon close to the breakers, and now the utmost care was necessary in order to prevent it from broaching-to and being capsized. No anxiety was felt, however, by the crew of the little craft. Deal boatmen are noted for their expertness in beaching their boats and in putting off to sea in rough weather, and the man who held the tiller of the little boat which danced on the white crests of the waves that night had many and many a time come through such trifling danger scatheless. "Look out, Bill," cried Orrick, as the thunder of the waves on the beach sounded in his ears, and the great chalk cliffs rose up, ghostlike and dim, before him. To one unaccustomed to such scenes it might have appeared an act of madness to run ashore on such a night. But the danger was not so great as it seemed. The man at the bow stood ready with a boat-hook. In a moment the keel grated on the shingle. Instantly the men were over the side, and the boat was hauled up the beach. "Now, then, for the tubs. Make for the cave straight. Rodney Nick will be here in a minute. Ah, here he comes! Well, Rodney, we've done it pretty smart," said Long Orrick, wading with a keg of brandy towards a figure which approached him from the beach. "Here you are! there's lots more of 'em. We're in luck. Look alive. The coast's clear, I suppose?" "Hall right," said the dark figure in a hoarse whisper, which terminated in a low chuckle, as Long Orrick placed the keg innocently in the arms of old Coleman and returned to the boat for more! It may be as well to remark here--in order to clear up this mystery-- that although Coleman had not observed the flash of Rodney Nick's lantern, his sharp eye had observed the gleam of the light in the boat, when one of the men, as already mentioned, threw it on the face of his timepiece. Supposing, erroneously, that this latter was a signal to the shore, Coleman, nevertheless, came to the correct conclusion that some one must be awaiting Long Orrick near at hand, and felt convinced that the Smugglers' Cave must needs be the rendezvous. Hastening cautiously to Bax, whose station was not far distant from the cave, he communicated his suspicions, and they went together towards the place. "I'll go in first," said Coleman, "'cause I know the place better than you do." "Very good," assented Bax, "I'll stand by to lend a hand." Arrived at the cavern, Bax waited outside, and Coleman went in so stealthily that he was at Rodney Nick's side before that worthy had the smallest suspicion of his presence. Indeed, Coleman would certainly have run against the smuggler in the dark, had not the latter happened to have been muttering savage threats against wind and tide, friends and foes, alike, in consequence of the non-appearance of the boat. Seizing him suddenly from behind, Coleman placed his knee in the small of his back, forced him almost double, and then laid him flat on the ground. At the same moment Bax knelt by his side, put one of his strong hands on the smuggler's right arm--thereby rendering it powerless--and placed the other on his mouth. So quickly was it all done that Rodney was bound and gagged in less than two minutes. Coleman then ran out just in time to receive the first instalment of the brandy, as already related. Being much the same in build and height with Rodney Nick, he found no difficulty in passing for him in the darkness of the night and violence of the wind, which latter rendered his hoarse whispers almost unintelligible. In this way several kegs of brandy, boxes of cigars, and bundles of tobacco were landed and conveyed to the cavern by Coleman, who refused to allow Bax to act as an assistant, fearing that his great size might betray him. On the fifth or sixth trip he found Long Orrick waiting for him somewhat impatiently. "You might have brought a hand with ye, man," said the latter, testily. "Couldn't git one," said Coleman, taking the keg that was delivered to him. "What say?" cried Orrick. "Couldn't git one," repeated the other, as loudly and hoarsely as he could whisper. "Speak out, man," cried Long Orrick, with an oath; "you ain't used to have delicate lungs." "I couldn't git nobody to come with me," said Coleman, in a louder voice. The tone was not distinct, but it was sufficient to open the eyes of the smuggler. Scarcely had the last word left his lips when Coleman received a blow between the eyes that laid him flat on the beach. Fortunately the last wave had retired. There was only an inch or so of foam around him. Long Orrick knelt on his foe, and drew a knife from his girdle. Before the next wave came up, Coleman with one hand caught the uplifted arm of his adversary, and with the other discharged a pistol which he had drawn from his breast. In another instant they were struggling with each other in the wave which immediately swept over the beach, and Bax was standing over them, uncertain where to strike, as the darkness rendered friend and foe alike undistinguishable. The men in the boat at once rushed to the rescue, omitting to take weapons with them in their haste. Seeing this, Bax seized the struggling men by their collars, and exerting his great strength to the utmost, dragged them both high upon the beach. He was instantly assailed by the crew, the first and second of whom he knocked down respectively with a right and left hand blow; but the third sprang on him behind and two others came up at the same moment--one on each side-- and seized his arms. Had Bax been an ordinary man, his case would have been hopeless; but having been endowed with an amount of muscular power and vigour far beyond the average of strong men, he freed himself in a somewhat curious manner. Bending forward, he lifted the man who grasped him round the neck from behind quite off his legs, and, by a sudden stoop, threw him completely over his head. This enabled him to hurl his other assailants to the ground, where they lay stunned and motionless. He then darted at Coleman and Long Orrick, who were still struggling together with tremendous fury. Seeing his approach, the smuggler suddenly gave in, relaxed his hold, and exclaimed, with a laugh, as Bax laid hold of him-- "Well, well, I see it's all up with me, so it's o' no use resistin'." "No, that it ain't, my friend," said Coleman, rising and patting his foe on the back. "I can't tell ye how pleased I am to meet with ye. You're gettin' stouter, I think. Smugglin' seems to agree with ye!--hey?" He said this with a leer, and Bax laughed as he inspected Long Orrick more narrowly. The fact was that the smuggler's clothing was so stuffed in all parts with tobacco that his lanky proportions had quite disappeared, and he had become so ludicrously rotund as to be visibly altered even in a dark night! "Well, it does agree with me, that's a fact," said Long Orrick, with a savage laugh; in the tone of which there was mingled however, quite as much bitterness as merriment. Just at this moment the rest of Coleman's friends, including Tommy Bogey and Peekins, appeared on the scene in breathless haste, having been attracted by the pistol-shot. In the eager question and answer that followed, Long Orrick was for a moment not sufficiently guarded. He wrenched himself suddenly from the loosened grasp of Bax, and, darting between several of the party, one of whom he floored in passing with a left-handed blow, he ran along the shore at the top of his speed! Bax, blazing with disappointment and indignation, set off in fierce pursuit, and old Coleman, bursting with anger, followed as fast as his short legs and shorter wind would permit him. Guy Foster and several of the others joined in the chase, while those who remained behind contented themselves with securing the men who had been already captured. CHAPTER TWELVE. THE STORM--THE WRECK OF THE HOMEWARD BOUND--THE LIFEBOAT. A stern chase never was and never will be a short one. Old Coleman, in the course of quarter of a mile's run, felt that his powers were limited and wisely stopped short; Bax, Guy, and Tommy Bogey held on at full speed for upwards of two miles along the beach, following the road which wound along the base of the chalk cliffs, and keeping the fugitive well in view. But Long Orrick was, as we have seen, a good runner. He kept his ground until he reached a small hamlet named Kingsdown, lying about two and a half miles to the north of Saint Margaret's Bay. Here he turned suddenly to the left, quitted the beach, and made for the interior, where he was soon lost sight of, and left his disappointed pursuers to grumble at their bad fortune and wipe their heated brows. The strength of the gale had now increased to such an extent that it became a matter not only of difficulty but of danger to pass along the shore beneath the cliffs. The spray was hurled against them with great violence, and as the tide rose the larger waves washed up with a magnificent and overwhelming sweep almost to their base. In these circumstances Guy proposed to go back to Saint Margaret's Bay by the inland road. "It's a bit longer," said he, as they stood under the lee of a wall, panting from the effects of their run, "but we shall be sheltered from the gale; besides, I doubt if we could pass under the cliffs now." Bax made no reply, but, placing his hand on his friend's arm, stood for a few seconds in the attitude of one who listens with profound attention. "There it is," said he at last. "Do ye hear that, Guy?" "_I_ hear it," cried Tommy Bogey, with some excitement. "I hear nothing but the howling of the wind," said Guy, "and the roaring of the sea." "Hush! listen! the minute-gun," said Bax in a low voice; "it comes from Saint Margaret's Bay; there, did you not--" "Ah! I heard it," cried the other; "come, let us run down along the beach a bit, and see if we can make out whereabouts she is." Guy spoke as if he had no doubt whatever of the cause of the sounds which had attracted the attention of himself and his friends. Without another word they all bent their heads to the storm, and forced their way out upon the exposed beach, where they found some fishermen assembled in the lee of a boat-house, looking eagerly towards the direction whence the sounds came. "I'm afear'd she's got on the rocks to the nor'ard o' the bay," said one of the men, as Bax and his companions ran towards them; "there goes another gun." A faint flash was seen for an instant away to the southward. It was followed in a few seconds by the low boom of a distant gun. Almost at the same moment the black heavens seemed to be cleft by a sheet of vivid flame, which towered high into the sky, and then went out, leaving the darkness blacker than before. "That's a rocket," cried the fishermen. "Heaven help them," said Bax, as he hastily buttoned his oilskin coat close up to his chin. "Come, Guy, we'll away and do what we can. Will any of you lads join us?" Most of the younger men on the ground at once volunteered. "Stop," cried one of the older men, "the tide's too high; ye can't pass the cliff, I tell ye." The man was left abruptly by the whole party, for they knew well enough that if they took the inland road they might be too late to render effectual assistance, and any needless delay in attempting the beach road could only make matters worse. There was no lifeboat on this part of the Kentish coast at that time, and the great distance of the spot from Ramsgate or Broadstairs rendered it highly improbable that either of the lifeboats belonging to these ports could be in time to render effectual assistance. Besides, the men knew well that on such a night the crews of these boats would have enough of work to do in attending to the wrecks in their own immediate neighbourhood. They followed Bax, therefore, at a steady trot until they reached a part of the perpendicular cliff which projected somewhat towards the sea. At the foot of this the waves which on this coast roll to the shore with tremendous volume and power, burst with a loud roar and rushed up in thick foam. "Don't any of you come on that don't feel up to it," cried Bax, as he awaited the retreat of a wave, and prepared to make a dash. At that moment he wheeled round with the look and air of one who had forgotten something. "Tommy," said he, laying his hand on the boy's head, "go back, lad, round by the land road." "No, Bax, _I won't_," replied Tommy, with a fervour of determination that would at any other time have raised a laugh in those who heard it. "Come along, then, you obstinate beggar," said Bax, sternly, seizing the boy by the arms, and throwing him over his shoulder as if he had been a lamb! Tommy's dignity was hurt. He attempted to struggle, but he might as well have hoped to free himself from the hug of a brown bear as to escape from the vice-like grip of his big friend. In another moment Bax was whelmed in spray and knee-deep in rushing water. It was a short dangerous passage, but the whole party got round the cliff in safety, and hastened as rapidly as possible towards the scene of the wreck. We must now beg the reader to follow us to another scene, and to go back a few hours in time. Shortly after the sun set that night, and before the full fury of the storm broke forth, a noble ship of two thousand tons' burden beat up the Channel and made for the Downs. She was a homeward bound ship, just arrived from Australia with a valuable cargo, and between two and three hundred passengers, many of whom were gold-diggers returning to their native land, and nearly all of whom were possessed of a considerable sum in nuggets and gold-dust. The ship was owned by the house of Denham, Crumps, and Company. Her arrival had been already telegraphed to the firm in Redwharf Lane. There was rejoicing that evening on board the "Trident." Men and women and children crowded the high sides of the weather-worn ship, and, holding on by shrouds, ratlines and stays, standing on tip-toe, clambering on carronades, and peeping through holes, gazed long and ardently at the white cliffs of dear Old England. Some of them had not set eyes on the "old country," as it is affectionately called in our colonies, for many years. Some there were who had gone out as boys, and were returning bald-headed and grey-bearded men. There were others who had been out only a few years, but who, happening to be on the spot when the goldfields were discovered, had suddenly made fortunes. They were returning to surprise and gladden the hearts of those who, perchance, had sent them off to seek their fortunes with the sad feeling that there was little chance of seeing them again in this world. There were ladies, also, who had gone out to the distant land with an unbelieving, almost despairing, hope of finding employment for those talents which they had, alas! found to be of but little value at home. These were, in some cases, returning with lucky gold-diggers and blooming children to their native land. In other cases they were merely about to visit home to induce some parent or sister, perhaps, to venture out to the land of gold. But all, whether young or old, male or female, gentle or simple, were merry and glad of heart that night as they clustered on the bulwarks of the "Trident," and gazed at the longed-for and much loved shore. There was no distinction of ranks now. The cabin and the 'tween-deck passengers mingled together and tried to relieve the feelings of their hearts by exchanging words of courtesy and goodwill. The stormy and threatening aspect of the sky had no terrors now for the passengers on board the "Trident." For weeks and months they had tossed on the bosom of the great deep. They were familiar with the varied moods of wind and wave; they had faced the dangers of the sea so often that they scarce believed that any real dangers could exist. The very children had become sailors; they were precociously weather-wise, and rather fond of being tossed on the waves than otherwise. The prospect of a storm no longer filled them with alarm, as it used to do at the beginning of the voyage, for they had encountered many storms and weathered them all. Yes, they had experienced all the dangers of the sea, but it was reserved for that night--that last night of the long, long voyage--to teach them the dangers of the land; the terrors of a storm in narrow waters, among shallows and on a lee-shore,--and to convince them that for man there is no real safety whatever in this life, save, only, in the favour and love of God. There were some on board the "Trident," however, who knew the danger of their position full well, but who were too considerate of the feelings of the women and children to let their knowledge appear even in their looks. The sailors knew the danger of a lee-shore; but sailors are to a large extent a reckless and hopeful class of men, whose equanimity is not easily upset. The captain, too, and the pilot, were alive to their critical position, but both were sanguine and hoped to get into the Downs before the storm should break. A few of the male passengers also seemed to be aware of the fact that approaching the Downs on such a night was anything but matter of gratulation. One in particular, a tall strong man of about forty, with a bushy black beard and a stern aspect, walked about the quarterdeck with a frown on his countenance that betokened a mind ill at ease. Going up to the captain, who stood near the wheel, this man asked him what he thought of the weather. "It don't look well; we shall have a dirty night, I fear," replied the captain. "Do you expect to make the Downs before the storm breaks?" inquired the passenger. "Well, I _hope_ so," said the Captain. "Supposing you do," continued the dark man, "do you consider your cables and ground-tackle strong enough to hold the ship in the face of an easterly gale?" "Why do you ask that?" said the Captain in surprise. "Because," replied the passenger, "I have my doubts on the point." "Well, to tell you the truth," said the other, in a low tone, "I confess that my mind is more uneasy on that score than on any other. The cables are fit enough to hold her in ordinary weather; but if we were obliged to anchor off a lee-shore in a heavy gale on an exposed coast like this I would be somewhat anxious." "Why is the ground tackle _not_ strong enough?" asked the passenger. "Well, it's not easy to answer that," replied the Captain, with a smile, "and yet it ain't difficult to conceive that it would cost a good deal to supply new and heavier chains and anchors to the ship." "Ay, the old story--_economy_!" said the passenger bitterly, almost fiercely; "a set of selfish land-lubbers who know nothing whatever about the sea, and care for nothing on earth but their own pockets and bellies, are allowed by the Government of this land to send ships loaded with human beings to sea in such a state that it almost calls for the performance of a miracle to secure their safe arrival in port. This is pointed out again and again to them without effect. The sea throws its dead by dozens on our shores every gale that blows, crying out, `Look here at the result of economy and selfishness!' Goods to the extent of thousands of pounds are destroyed annually, and the waves that swallow them belch out the same complaint. Even the statistics that stare in the face of our legislators, and are published by their own authority, tell the same tale,--yet little or nothing is done to prevent misers from sending ships to sea in a totally unfit condition to face even ordinary dangers. Bah! the thing is past remedy, for the men who should act are deaf and blind. Mark my words, Captain; if we don't weather the South Foreland before ten o' the clock this night, the `Trident' will be a total wreck before morning." The passenger turned on his heel with an angry fling and went below, while the Captain, who was somewhat overawed by his vehemence, walked aft to converse with the pilot. The gale soon burst on the ship, sending nearly all the passengers below, and compelling the Captain to reduce sail. Darkness overspread the scene, and as the night wore on, the gale increased to such a degree that the ship laboured heavily. Soon the lights on the South Foreland were descried and passed in safety. "Get the anchors clear," said the pilot. "Ready about there!" No one ever knew the reason of the order given at that time. Perhaps the pilot thought he was a little too near the land, and meant to haul off a little; but whatever the reason might have been, the command was only half carried out when the sheet of the jib gave way; the loosened sail flapped itself to shreds in a second, and the ship, missing stays, fell off towards the shore. "Better wear ship," cried the Captain, springing in alarm to the pilot's side. "Too late for that. Shore's close under our lee. Let go the anchors!" The shout with which the command was given proved the necessity of its being instantly obeyed; but the men needed no urging, for at that moment a temporary lull in the furious blast allowed them to hear the roaring of the breakers at the foot of the cliffs. Two anchors were at once let go, and the ship was brought up with a tremendous shock. And now commenced that prolonged struggle for life which is, alas! too often the lot of those who venture out upon the stormy sea. Yet it was some time before the passengers of the "Trident" could be brought fully to realise their danger. It was hard to believe that, after weathering the cyclones of the southern seas, and the gales of the Atlantic, they had reached home at last to be cast a wreck upon their own threshold, and to perish within hail almost of relatives and friends. For a long time they refused to credit the appalling truth that their case was all but hopeless,--anchored as they were close to a lee shore, with inadequate ground tackle, and an increasing gale. When the chain of the smaller anchor snapped, and the Captain ordered the minute-gun to be fired, and rockets to be thrown up, then the wail of terror began:-- "Then shrieked the timid, and stood still the brave." "You'd better order the boats to be lowered," said the dark passenger to the Captain, with a sneer that seemed unnatural as well as unfeeling in the circumstances. The Captain, who was standing by the starboard mizzen shrouds at the time, glanced angrily at him for a moment, and said:-- "Ha! You know well enough that there ain't boats enough in the ship to carry all the passengers, and if there were, they could not live for a moment in such a sea." "Yes," replied the dark man, vehemently, "I know that well enough; and I know, too, that there's no lifeboat of any kind aboard, nor life-jackets, nor life-buoys, beyond what would suffice to float some half dozen men; and the owners knew this before sending their ship to sea, and, knowing it, they cared not a rap, because they had insured ship and cargo to the full value. Human life, not being counted part of the cargo, is of no value whatever to _them_." "Come, Mr Clelland," said the Captain, reproachfully, "is this a time for a Christian man to encourage bitter feelings against his fellows because of systems and customs, bad or good?" "Ay, it _is_ the time," answered the other; "at least if I don't let out my mind now, it's not likely I'll find a fitter time to do it in this world." He said this somewhat sadly, and turned away, just as the Captain gave orders to throw up another rocket. Far along that stormy coast the rocket was seen by hundreds who knew well what the signal meant, and many of whom, no doubt, offered up prayer to God for those who were in danger. Most of them, however, felt that they could do nothing in the way of affording aid. Our friend Bax and his companions were not of this mind, as we have seen. Some of the stout-hearted boatmen of Deal also thought that something might be done, and launched their luggers, but were in some cases obliged to desist owing to the ever-increasing fury of the storm. The rockets were seen also by another party of seamen, who stood grouped under the lee of a boat-house far away to the southward. This was the crew of a small lifeboat which stood ready to be launched. The boat was quickly run out of its house by command of its coxswain, and the crew hastily equipped themselves for their dangerous work. They put on life-jackets made of a number of pieces of cork sewed on canvas, in such a way as to cover their bodies from shoulder to waist without interfering with the play of the arms. Some of the men objected to put these on at first, feeling afraid lest their courage should be called in question, in consequence of their using a contrivance which was not in such general use at that time as it is now. Their objections were overcome, however, except in the case of one young man, who exclaimed, "No, no, none o' yer floats for me. When my time comes I must go, and them things won't save me." The poor man did not see that the same argument, if correct, would have justified his going off in a coble instead of a lifeboat. The want of perception on this point, and false pride, cost him his life. Several young women, wives of some of the men, had assembled there to dissuade their husbands from going out on such a terrible night. These were so alarmed at the terrific thunder of the surf on the shores of the little bay, and the howling of the wind, that they clung to the men and entreated them with tears not to venture. Is it a matter of wonder that these bold fellows, who could not be appalled by the storm, found it difficult to resist the power of woman's tears? They wavered for a few seconds; but when the coxswain, who was a cool, intrepid old man-of-war's man, cried in a hearty voice, "Now then, lads, look alive; shove off and jump in!" every man sprang to his post, and the lifeboat was afloat in an instant. Through some mismanagement, however, she turned broadside to the sea, was overturned instantly, and rolled over on the beach. The women shrieked; the men on shore ran to the rescue, and fortunately saved every man with the exception of the one who had refused to put on the life-jacket, and who being less able to support himself than his companions when washed back into deep water by each retiring wave, became at length exhausted and ceased to struggle for life. When he was at last laid hold of and dragged ashore, he was dead. While some of the men were engaged in fruitless efforts to save this man, the rest of the crew, having suffered little, were about to launch the boat a second time, when the women again rushed forward and clung to them with such eager entreaties, that they began at last to entertain the idea of the storm being too wild for them to venture off. Lest the reader should unjustly censure these men, we must remind him of the fact that the self-righting principle not having at that time been discovered, the danger incurred in case of an upset was very great, and the boat about which we are writing, being small, ran considerable risk of being capsized by the heavy seas. In fact, almost the only difference between lifeboats and ordinary boats, at this time, was the incapacity of the former to sink when filled with water, owing to the buoyancy of the air-chambers fitted round their sides. If filled by a sea, much valuable time had to be lost in baling out the water before the oars could be effectively resumed, and if overturned it was a matter of the greatest difficulty for the men in the water to right them again; in some cases it had proved impossible. All these defects are remedied now-a-days; but more on this head hereafter. While the men were in this undecided state of mind, regardless alike of the commands and the taunts of the coxswain, two men were seen to leap down the slope that lay between the cliffs and the sea, and make for the group of boatmen at full speed. As they drew near they were recognised to be Mr Hamilton, a young midshipman, then on leave of absence, and his friend Thompson, an old college companion. They ran straight to the boat, the former shouting, as he came up:-- "Ho! get her off, lads; a large ship ashore in Saint Margaret's Bay; now then, all together, and with a will!" So powerful was the influence of the young middy's clear voice and prompt action, that the men with one accord shoved the lifeboat into the sea; succeeded in keeping her stern to the waves until they were beyond the roughest of the breakers; and then, laying to their oars manfully, pulled away for the scene of the wreck. They were soon lost in darkness, and the poor women returned weeping to their homes, there to throw on some additional covering, and hasten towards the same spot by land. CHAPTER THIRTEEN. SAVING THE PASSENGERS AND CREW--OUR HEROES DISTINGUISH THEMSELVES. When Bax and his party arrived at Saint Margaret's Bay, the scene of wreck and death had already begun. The vessel was just discernible in the midst of the turmoil of warring elements that filled the dark air with misty spray. A boat had tried to reach the shore with a number of passengers--chiefly men--in her. Her fate was quickly sealed. A huge breaker upset her, and six of the dead bodies of her crew had already been plucked from the sea, and laid on the shingle. The rest were being hurled on the land and swept back by the force of the returning waves, until the people assembled there caught and dragged them also beyond their reach. Messengers had already been sent to the nearest lifeboat stations, and the people who remained behind were either occupied in attempting to recover the bodies of the drowned, as above described, or in suggesting impossible plans for conveying a line on board the ill-fated vessel. "Ha! here comes the man as'll tell us wot's to be done, and do it too!" cried one of the boatmen, "wot say, Bax, can we git a line off, think 'ee?" Bax stood on the edge of the roaring sea, silent and motionless, with his arms crossed on his broad chest, and his bold gaze directed to the wreck. "No," said he, after standing a few moments thus, "it can't be done. No mortal man could cross the surf on the inner rocks; but there's a point o' rocks not far to the nor'ard; does any one know how far the tide may cover 'em just now?" "About half," answered several voices eagerly. "Ay, so't does," observed a coast-guard-man, "but with sich a surf beatin' on 'em there ain't a rock on the whole pint above water this minute." "Come, let's go see," cried Bax, snatching a coil of light rope from the hand of a man who stood close by, and hastening away with it in the direction of the rocky point referred to. In a few seconds he stood on its outer extremity, with Guy Foster, Coleman, and a few of the more courageous men at his side. The point on which Bax stood was indeed a position of great danger. Besides being whelmed in driving spray, so that it was a matter of extreme difficulty to see more than a few yards in any direction, the waves at times rushed up to and over them with such violence as to reach the knees of those who stood there, and threatened to wash them off. Nevertheless, from this point Bax thought it possible that the end of the line might be conveyed on board the "Trident," which could be seen looming high and black in the murky air, lifting and falling with a heavy crash as each successive billow broke under and over her, carrying on with irresistible violence the work of destruction. Both chains had given way, and she was now rolling a helpless wreck on the rocks. "D'ye mean to try it?" said Guy, anxiously, as he observed his friend fastening the line round his waist. "Hold the end of it, Guy, and pay out," said Bax, "mind you don't haul in unless you're _sure_ I'm goin' down." With this caution, Bax plunged into the surf, and struck out for the wreck, having previously placed an open clasp-knife between his teeth. A cheer broke from the nearest group on the rocks when they witnessed this bold act. It was taken up and re-echoed by those farther up the beach, who knew that some hopeful effort was being made, although they were unable to perceive the precise nature of it. The people on the wreck also heard the cheer, and looked eagerly landward. But to them all was shrouded in darkness. Even Guy quickly lost sight of his friend, and was only made aware of his safety and onward progress by the continued running out of the line. Suddenly it stopped. "He's a-board," cried Coleman. "He would jerk on it if he was," said Guy, with a doubtful shake of the head. "He's sunk," cried one of those who stood by and held the slack of the rope. A panic seemed to seize the others who stood by. "Haul 'im in!" cried one. "Look alive!" shouted another, "he's a gone man." Before Guy could interfere, they acted on the impulse, and drew in two or three fathoms. Twisting his left arm suddenly round the rope, Guy planted his foot on a rock and stopped it; at the same time he raised his right hand, and threatened to fell the man nearest to him. The result was that the men desisted from hauling, but when the rope was again felt it became evident that there was no weight at the farther end of it. Guy's heart sank with horror as the empty line was drawn in. For a moment he felt all the agony of despair; but a gleam of hope rushed in upon him on observing that the end of the rope was _cut_, as if with a sharp knife, not by the edge of a rock. Animated by this hope he hastened back to the beach in quest of another line, resolved himself to attempt to carry it to the wreck. Guy was right in his conjecture that Bax had cut the rope. On nearing the ship the latter had come unexpectedly on a large rock, under the lee of which he paused to recover breath before making the last gallant struggle towards the wreck. It was this pause that caused the alarm of those on shore. When Bax felt himself dragged violently back to the land, he at once divined the cause, and, knowing that there was no other resource, he seized the clasp-knife, and cut the rope. A few minutes later he swam under the lee of the wreck, and, catching hold of the rigging of the foremast, which had gone by the board when the ship struck, he clambered up the side and soon stood on the quarter-deck. The hope raised among the passengers by the sudden appearance of the gigantic stranger in the midst of them, was quickly dispelled when he told them how he had failed in the main object of his effort. But it revived somewhat when they observed the active and energetic way in which Bax set about preparations for returning to the shore with a line from the ship. His first act was to ask for a blue-light, which after a few minutes was produced. This he set fire to, and, springing into the main rigging, held it aloft, and sent a bright glare for a few minutes, far and wide, over the scene. The effect of this was twofold. It revealed to the shipwrecked people the dangers by which they were surrounded, and the active efforts that were being made by land and water for their deliverance. On shore, they saw crowds of men and women surrounding an instrument, which Bax, after giving vent to a hopeful cheer, explained was a rocket apparatus. Scarcely had they learned this, when Bax shouted and waved his hand seaward. On turning their eyes in that direction, they beheld a lifeboat bearing down towards them, her white-painted sides gleaming like the wings of an angel of light in the midst of the dark tempest. The lifeboat was also seen by the people on shore, and Guy, who at once recognised the figure, and the _vigour_, of his friend with the blue-light, lent able assistance to those who managed the rocket. Dennett's Rocket Apparatus, which was being placed in position on the rocks, is an invention by which many human lives are saved on our coasts every year. Like Manby's Mortar Apparatus, it is simple in its action and most effective in operation. The grand difficulty in the case of a wreck near shore is to establish a communication, by means of a rope, between the wreck and the land; and this difficulty is, of course, much increased when the wreck occurs off a coast lined with rocks or steep cliffs. To swim off from the shore to the wreck, or _vice versa_, is, in most cases, an absolute impossibility. The rocket apparatus has been devised for the purpose of overcoming this difficulty. By means of it a light "line" as it is called, or rope, the thickness of the point of one's little finger, can be thrown over a wreck lying at a distance of several hundred yards from the beach. This line, when caught, is the means by which many a life has been saved from the devouring sea. The _modus operandi_ will be seen in the sequel. The apparatus consists of five parts; the rocket, the stand, the line, the whip, and the hawser. The rocket is a strong metal cylinder, of about eighteen inches in length, and more than two in diameter. When about to be used a long stick is attached to it, and the principle on which it acts is precisely similar to that of the small rockets used in our pyrotechnic displays. The stand is a tripod supporting a rest for the rocket. The line, which is made of the best material, is coiled in a large box in a zig-zag manner on a number of pegs; these pegs, when withdrawn in a mass by removing the bottom of the box to which they are attached, leave the line loose and free to fly out with the utmost rapidity. The end of the line is fastened to the head of the rocket. Any one who has stood near an ordinary rocket when it was being fired, can form some conception of the force and furor with which this iron monster springs into the air and dashes out to sea in the teeth of the wildest storm. So tremendous is the gush of fire and smoke, that it has to be let off by means of a lock, the trigger of which is pulled by a man standing some yards distant with a cord attached to it in his hand. Before the rocket was quite ready for action, the lifeboat had approached the wreck, a hundred yards or so to windward of her. Here they cast anchor in such a position that by paying out cable they could veer down towards her slowly and endeavour to range up under her lee. Every different operation the lifeboat had to perform was fraught with extreme danger. The mere being overwhelmed by the furious sea and filled was comparatively a trifling risk. This it had been twice already, and, but for the time lost in bailing out, it would have been much earlier on the scene. While paying out cable there was the fear of the rope breaking or the anchor dragging; then, on nearing the wreck, there was the risk of being dashed to pieces on the rocks, and after getting under her lee, the surging of the waves kept them constantly on the verge of being hurled against the rigging. The wreck of the foremast, too, which still lay rolling alongside, was a source of constant anxiety, and the rolling of the ship itself rendered it probable that one or both of the remaining masts would give way and fall over the side, in which case the destruction of the boat would be almost inevitable. Add to this the intense darkness, the terrible uproar of wind and water, and the difficulty of acting effectively in a boat that pitched and swooped wildly on the broken seas like the plungings of a fiery charger,--and some faint idea may be formed of the horrors, as well as the dangers of the lifeboat service. Gradually, but surely, the boat dropped nearer and nearer to the doomed ship, under the guidance of her able coxswain. As it passed under the stern a cheer burst from the crowd of eager faces that gazed over the side of the "Trident." Yet there were many hearts there that grew faint and chill when they beheld the little white speck that seemed to be their only hope of rescue in that dark hour. "What hope was there that such a nutshell should save them all?" they thought, perchance, on seeing it approach. They little knew the wonderful vitality of a lifeboat! Just as it passed under the quarter, a sea swept it right up into the mizzen-chains. The utmost efforts of the crew to fend off were unavailing. As the billow rolled on, the boat dropt swiftly, scraping against the ship's side as it fell into the trough of the sea, and escaping an upset almost by a miracle. "Throw a line aboard!" shouted Bax, who stood on the lee bulwarks, high above the crowd, holding on by the mizzen-shrouds. The middy caught up the instrument used for this purpose, and threw a line on board at once. This steadied the boat a little, and, watching their opportunity, they succeeded in lowering three women and a child into it by means of a bow-line. In this way, one by one, the females and children were placed in the boat until it was full. Then there was a cry to shove off, and a rush was made by the more timid and ignorant among the passengers, who thought they were about to be forsaken. Bax had foreseen this. He and several of the sailors met and checked the crowd, and before any mischief could be done the boat was away. It made straight for the shore where hundreds of stout arms were ready to seize it. The midshipman stood on the bow with a rope in his hand. The sea through which they rushed was milk white with foam. To prevent the boat broaching-to and being rolled over on the beach was now the main effort of the coxswain. On they went steadily. A wave broke under them, carried them on its boiling crest with lightning speed, and launched them with a roar like thunder on the shingle. The rope was thrown before they touched. It was seized and manned; and before the retiring wave could suck them back, the lifeboat with her living freight was run high upon the beach. She was soon emptied and relaunched, for there was no time to waste. Many lives were still in danger, and the "Trident" could not be expected to hold together long. It was just as the boat quitted the side of the wreck, as above described, that the rocket was got in readiness to act. "Stand by to fire," said the coast-guard-man who had been engaged for some minutes in adjusting it carefully. "Keep back! clear out o' the road," cried several of the seamen, as they pushed back the more curious among the crowd. There was a flash, a mighty burst of flame and smoke, as the rocket trembled for an instant on its stand; then, with an impulse that seemed irresistible, and a hissing shriek that rose above the storm, it sprang into the air and described a bright curved line of light against the black sky. Its own wild blaze served to show that it had been well aimed, and that the line had fallen across the wreck. This was all that could be done by the people on shore, until those on the wreck had performed their part of the work. But while they stood anxiously awaiting the result, they had no cause to fear that the ignorance of those whom they sought to rescue would render their efforts useless (as has unfortunately been the case more than once), for it was known now that Bax was on board. The ignorance of some seamen as to what should be done with the line when it is caught, has been the cause of loss of life several times. On one occasion five men, the crew of a small vessel, being ignorant on this point, tied the rocket-line round them and leaped together into the sea! Of course those on shore could do nothing but haul them to land as quickly as possible; when they had done so, all were found to be drowned except one. On the present occasion Bax seized the line as soon as it fell on the wreck and began to haul it in-board. Guy had attached to it a pulley or block with a stoutish rope rove through it, and soon those on shore had the satisfaction of seeing this second and double line (named the "whip"), hauled out by the people on the wreck. After a time it ceased to run out, and then they knew that Bax had got hold of the pulley, and would quickly attach it to the ship. This was soon done. Bax fastened the pulley to the mainmast, and then caused a lantern to be shown for a moment, to indicate that all was ready. Still those on shore delayed to act for a minute, in order to make quite sure that ample time had been allowed for the fastening of the pulley. And now the all-important operation of conveying a thick hawser to the wreck was begun. With the tackle already fast to the ship this was comparatively easy. The _whip_ being rove through a pulley, both ends were kept on shore and fastened together. It thus became a sort of endless rope, by which things could be passed to the wreck and back again. Even without any hawser at all, many lives might have been saved by this rope; but, being small, it was liable to get broken, therefore the end of the thick hawser was sent out and received by Bax, who bound it also securely to the mainmast close to the pulley, about fifteen feet above the deck. The reader will understand that two ropes were now fastened to the mainmast of the "Trident," their other ends being fixed to a heavy anchor buried in the sand on shore. One of these ropes was the thick hawser, the other the whip; but as this whip was an endless or revolving rope, as has been explained, to an onlooker it appeared that there were _three_ ropes stretched between the vessel and the shore, two of them thin and one thick. These preliminary arrangements having been made, much more rapidly than the description of them might lead one to suppose, the purpose for which they had been fixed soon began to be carried out. Just as the lifeboat arrived with its first cargo of passengers, a large block or pulley was run out along the hawser by means of the whip, having attached to it a circular lifebuoy with a canvas bag hanging from it. This was the contrivance into which one individual at a time was placed and drawn ashore. Two holes in the bag allowed the legs of the occupant to hang down, and as the belt reached almost up to the neck, there was not much chance of his being tossed out of it. It was in order to prevent this, however, that Bax had fastened the end of the hawser high on the mainmast, so that the travelling bag was raised sufficiently above the water, except when it neared the shore. Then, indeed, it was frequently immersed in the towering waves, but then, too, it was so near the land that a few seconds sufficed to draw it beyond the reach of the sea. [See Note 1.] For two hours did these men of the coast toil in this arduous labour of love. More than a hundred persons had been saved; but nearly a hundred still remained on board the wreck. The storm was now at its height, and the vessel rolled over on her bilge so violently that the lifeboat was more than once on the point of being crushed under her massive sides. On her last trip she came close up under the quarter as on former occasions, but before any one could be taken off a monstrous wave lifted the hull right over the rocks on which she lay, and let her fall with fearful violence on a bed of sand in such a position that one of her large timbers snapped across with a report like a cannon shot. The lifeboat got entangled in the wreck and could not get clear. To make matters worse it grounded on a sandbank that rose close to the side of the "Trident," and could not be hauled out of the dangerous position in which it was thus suddenly placed. The top-gallant masts of the ship were swaying wildly over it, the yards were swinging to and fro, threatening each moment to strike it, and the ragged sails flapped over it with a noise like thunder. "Haul off! haul off!" shouted Bax, who observed the extreme danger in which the boat was placed. The crew attempted to do so, but for some minutes were unsuccessful. At last they got into deep water, but just as this was accomplished the mainyard struck it on the side and overturned it in an instant. Not being constructed on the self-righting principle, the boat remained keel up, but the men, buoyed up by their life-jackets, succeeded in climbing on board the wreck. A cry of despair arose from those still on board the ill-fated "Trident" when this catastrophe happened. During the next half-hour the rocket apparatus was plied with great success, but although most of the women and children were saved by it (and by the boat before it was disabled), there were still upwards of fifty men on board the wreck. "D'you think the ship will hold together long?" said Bax, going aft to the captain, who clung to the mizzen-shrouds superintending the operations of the men. "Not long, I fear," he replied. "If she had been thoroughly repaired before starting on this voyage she might have weathered the gale; but, but--" "But," interposed Mr Clelland,--the dark passenger, who during the whole of the proceedings which we have narrated had stood calmly beside the captain looking on--"but Messrs. Denham, Crumps, and Company, being penny wise and pound foolish, thought that the ships were strong enough for _their_ purpose, both ship and cargo being fully covered by insurance!" There was a spice of bitterness in this man's tone and manner which displeased Bax. He was about to administer a rebuke to him, when a larger wave than usual lifted the ship up, and let her fall with such force that another of her large timbers broke across like a pipe-stem, and the two remaining masts went by the board, sweeping several of the passengers and crew into the sea along with the wreck of spars and cordage. Just under the quarter a child fell into the water. It had been wrenched from its mother's arms by the coil of a flying rope. The mother leaped frantically on the bulwarks, and would have plunged into the sea had not Bax seized her. At that moment Mr Clelland passed a rope round his waist, tied it in that swift and perfect manner peculiar to seamen, and sprang into the sea. He seized the child in his arms. The captain of the "Trident" had caught the rope as Clelland sprang over the side. Bax assisted him, and in a few minutes both were hauled safely on board. "You're better stuff than I gave you credit for," said Bax, as the dark passenger delivered the child to its mother. "Indeed!" said Mr Clelland, with a touch of sarcasm in his tone; "I hope that I may be able to return you the like compliment at a more fitting season. At present there is other work for us to do. Come, lads, we must try to right the lifeboat, who will help me?" Mr Clelland sprang into the sea as he spoke and swam towards the boat, which still lay under the lee of the wreck with its keel uppermost. Bax followed instantly, and so did nearly the whole crew of the boat. These latter, having on their cork-jackets, ran comparatively little risk of drowning, but they, as well as Bax and Clelland, were in danger of being disabled by the rolling spars that surrounded them. With great difficulty they succeeded in turning the boat over, but, as it was nearly full of water, much valuable time was wasted before it could be baled out sufficiently to render it once more serviceable. When this was accomplished they hauled clear of the wreck, intending to veer round towards the stern, where they could approach the ship with greater safety. The remaining passengers seeing this, rushed upon the poop. At that moment the ship was lifted up, and hurled with such violence on a sunken rock that her back was broken; the sea dashed against her side, separating the poop from the fore part of the vessel, and turning it completely over, so that every soul on board was plunged suddenly into the sea. A wild shriek of despair rose high above the howling of the storm, and most of the weaker among the passengers sank in the raging sea to rise no more. But the lifeboat was now in a condition to render effectual aid to those who were strong enough to struggle a few minutes for their lives, or to cling to broken portions of the wreck. She was soon as full as she could hold, and Bax, seizing the bow oar, forced her head round towards the shore. The coxswain sprang to the helm; "Give way, lads," was shouted, and in a few seconds the boat was once again careering towards the shore on the crest of a towering billow. She took the beach in safety. "Now, then, shove off again," cried Bax, when the last of the passengers was assisted out of her. "Stop!" cried a coast-guard-man, "some of the men are too much knocked up to go off again." This was evident, for when the lanterns were held up to the faces of the brave fellows it was seen that several of the less robust among them were deadly pale from sheer exhaustion and fatigue. They indignantly protested, however, that they were still "game for another bout"; but the coxswain firmly, though kindly, insisted that the cork belts should be taken off two or three of them and given to the stoutest of at least a dozen volunteers who eagerly stepped forward. The boat was then relaunched, and after a careful search, and another sharp struggle with the angry sea, returned with six saved men and a woman, besides several apparently dead bodies, which were instantly removed to a neighbouring cottage, to be treated according to the rules laid down by the Royal Humane Society for the recovery of those who are apparently drowned. [See Note 2.] After the back of the ship was broken, and the wreck overwhelmed, the rocket apparatus of course became useless, as the mast to which the ropes were attached broke off close to the deck, and the ropes themselves became so entangled with the wreck as to be unmanageable; but before this catastrophe occurred good service had been done, for no fewer than sixty of the passengers of the ill-fated "Trident" had been saved by this means alone. The lifeboat had been the means of saving one hundred and twenty lives; and fifteen men, who succeeded in swimming to the beach, were rescued with the utmost difficulty by the people on shore. Among these last was the captain, who, with that heroic self-devotion which seems to be a common characteristic of British seamen, had made up his mind to be the last man to quit the ship. This intention was frustrated by the breaking up of the vessel. In the confusion he was swept beyond the reach of the lifeboat, and gained the beach he scarce knew how. Here he was launched on the shingle by a billow, and washed high up on the beach. He grasped the loose pebbles with the energy of despair, but the cataract of white water that rushed back as the wave retired, swept him with irresistible force into the sea. Again this happened and as he dug his fingers into the moving gravel, and felt how hopeless was his case, a cry of anguish burst from him. The cry was heard by Guy Foster, who, with a rope round his waist, had been for the last half-hour engaged in rescuing men and women from the fatal grasp of these retiring waves. "This way, lads, fetch the lantern, look alive!" he shouted, and sprang towards the part of the shore whence the cry had proceeded, followed by a crowd of seamen who had assisted him by holding the rope. Guy was much exhausted. Six times already had he plunged into the boiling surf and been dragged out with a fellow-creature in his arms. He had removed the loop of the rope for a few minutes, and now held it in his hand as he ran along the beach looking anxiously at the surf. Once again the captain was hurled on the beach, but in so exhausted a condition that he could make no effort to save himself. He rolled so near to Guy's feet that the latter dropped the rope in his haste as he leaped towards the drowning man. He caught him round the waist just as the broken billow began to rush back. For one moment Guy stood firm, but as the retiring water gathered force his limbs quivered, the gravel rolled from beneath his feet, and he was swept off his legs! Before he was engulfed in the surf, and almost before the cry of alarm had burst from his companions on the beach, a boy flung the loop of the rope over his shoulders, plunged headlong into the sea, and, catching Guy round the neck with both arms, held to him like a vice. It was Tommy Bogey! The men hauled gently on the rope at first, fearing to tear the little fellow from his grasp, but they need not have been so careful. Tommy's grip was an uncommonly firm one. In half a minute the three were pulled beyond the reach of the waves--the captain still breathing, Guy able to walk, though much exhausted, and Tommy Bogey none the worse for his heroic and successful exertions. This was the last incident worthy of note that occurred. Of the two hundred and fifty souls who had rejoiced that night in the prospect of a safe and speedy termination to their long voyage, fifty-five were drowned and one hundred and ninety-five were saved. Of these last the fifteen men who swam ashore would have been the sole survivors, in all human probability, if there had been no lifeboat or rocket apparatus on the coast. For the service thus rendered, each man who risked his life that night in the lifeboat received 2 pounds from the Royal Lifeboat Institution. Others who had assisted in saving life on the beach received rewards proportioned to their services, and Bax, Guy, and Tommy Bogey were each awarded the gold medal of the Society for the distinguished gallantry displayed, and the great risks voluntarily encountered by them on this occasion. It was suggested that Denham, Crumps, and Company should give something to the men of the lifeboat in acknowledgment of their services, but Denham, Crumps, and Company did not act on the suggestion! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note 1. In order to give those of our readers who happen to be interested in this subject a better idea of the manner of using the Rocket apparatus, we subjoin the Instructions given by the Board of Trade to masters and seamen in regard to it:-- In the event of your vessel stranding within a short distance of the United Kingdom, and the lives of the crew being placed in danger, assistance will, if possible, be rendered from the shore in the following manner, namely: 1. A rocket or shot with a thin line attached will be fired across your vessel. Get hold of this line as soon as you can, and when you have secured it let one of the crew be separated from the rest, and, if in the daytime, wave his hat or his hand, or a flag or handkerchief; or if at night let a rocket, a blue light, or a gun be fired, or let a light be shown over the side of the ship, and be again concealed, as a signal to those on shore. 2. When you see one of the men on shore, separated from the rest, wave a red flag, or (if at night) show a red light and then conceal it, you are to haul upon the rocket line until you get a tailed block with an endless fall rove through it. 3. Make the tail of the block fast to the mast about 15 feet above the deck, or if your masts are gone, to the _highest secure_ part of the vessel; and when the tail block is made fast, and the rocket line unbent from the whip, let one of the crew, separated from the rest, make the signal required by Article 1 above. 4. As soon as the signal is seen on shore a hawser will be bent to the whip line, and will be hauled off to the ship by those on shore. 5. When the hawser is got on board, the crew should at once make it fast to the same part of the ship as the tailed block is made fast to, only about 18 inches _higher_, taking care that there are no turns of the whip line round the hawser. 6. When the hawser has been made fast on board, the signal directed by Article 1 above is to be repeated. 7. The men on shore will then pull the hawser taut, and by means of the whip line will haul off to the ship a sling life-buoy fitted with petticoat breeches. The person to be hauled ashore is to get into this sling, thrusting his legs through the breeches, and resting his armpits on the lifebuoy. When he is in and secure, one of the crew must be separated from the rest, and again signal to the shore as directed in Article I above. The people on shore will then haul the person in the sling to the shore, and when he has landed will haul back the empty sling to the ship for others. This operation will be repeated to and fro until all persons are hauled ashore from the wrecked vessel. 8. It may sometimes happen that the state of the weather and the condition of the ship will not admit of the hawser being set up, in which case the sling will be hauled off instead, and the persons to be rescued will be hauled in it through the surf instead of along the hawser. Masters and crews of wrecked vessels should bear in mind that the success in landing them may in a great measure DEPEND UPON THEIR COOLNESS AND ATTENTION TO THE RULES HERE LAID DOWN; and that by attending to them many lives are annually saved by the Mortar and Rocket Apparatus on the coasts of the United Kingdom. The system of signalling must be strictly adhered to; and all women, children, passengers, and helpless persons should be landed before the crew of the ship.--BOARD OF TRADE, 22nd _December_ 1859. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note 2. It is of immense importance that every man in the kingdom should possess some degree of knowledge on the subject of the restoration of persons apparently drowned, for no one can tell at what moment he may be called upon, in the absence of medical aid, to act in a case of this nature. We therefore make no apology for here giving in full the rules which have been adopted by the National Lifeboat Institution. They run as follows: I. Send immediately for medical assistance, blankets, and dry clothing, but proceed to treat the patient _instantly_ on the spot, in the open air, with the _face downwards_, whether on shore or afloat; exposing the face, neck, and chest to the wind, except in severe weather, and removing all tight clothing from the neck and chest, especially the braces. The points to be aimed at are--first and _immediately_, the RESTORATION OF BREATHING; and secondly, _after_ breathing is restored, the PROMOTION OF WARMTH AND CIRCULATION. The efforts to _restore breathing_ must be commenced immediately and energetically, and persevered in for one or two hours, or until a medical man has pronounced that life is extinct. Efforts to promote _warmth_ and _circulation_ beyond removing the wet clothes and drying the skin must _not_ be made _until_ the first appearance of natural breathing. For if circulation of the blood be induced before breathing has recommenced, the restoration to life will be endangered. II. TO RESTORE BREATHING. TO CLEAR THE THROAT.--Place the patient on the floor or ground with the face _downwards_, and one of the arms under the forehead, in which position all fluids will more readily escape by the mouth, and the tongue itself will fall forward, leaving the entrance into the windpipe free. Assist this operation by wiping and cleansing the mouth. If satisfactory breathing commences, use the treatment described below to promote warmth. If there be only slight breathing, or no breathing, or if the breathing fail, then:-- TO EXCITE BREATHING--Turn the patient well and instantly on the side, supporting the head, and excite the nostrils with snuff, hartshorn, and smelling salts or tickle the throat with a feather, etcetera, if they are at hand. Rub the chest and face warm, and dash cold water, or cold and hot water alternately, on them. If there be no success, lose not a moment, but instantly:-- TO IMITATE BREATHING--Replace the patient on the face, raising and supporting the chest well on a folded coat or other article of dress. Turn the body very gently on the side and a little beyond, and then briskly on the face, back again; repeating these measures cautiously, efficiently, and perseveringly about fifteen times in the minute, or once every four or five seconds, occasionally varying the side. [_By placing the patient on the chest the weight of the body forces the air out; when turned on the side this pressure is removed, and air enters the chest_.] On each occasion that the body is replaced on the face make uniform but efficient pressure with brisk movement, on the back between and below the shoulder-blades or bones on each side, removing the pressure immediately before turning the body on the side. During the whole of the operations let one person attend solely to the movements of the head, and of the arm placed under it. [_The first measure increases the expiration, the second commences inspiration_.] The result is _respiration_ or _natural breathing_, and, if not too late, _life_. Whilst the above operations are being proceeded with, dry the hands and feet; and as soon as dry clothing or blankets can be procured, strip the body and cover, or gradually re-clothe it, but taking care not to interfere with the efforts to restore breathing. III. Should these efforts not prove successful in the course of from two to five minutes, proceed to imitate breathing by Dr Silvester's method, as follows:-- Place the patient on the _back_ on a flat surface, inclined a little upwards from the feet; raise and support the head and shoulders on a small firm cushion or folded article of dress placed under the shoulder-blades. Draw forward the patient's tongue, and keep it projecting beyond the lips; an elastic band over the tongue and under the chin will answer this purpose, or a piece of string or tape may be tied round them, or by raising the lower jaw the teeth may be made to retain the tongue in that position. Remove all tight clothing from about the neck and chest, especially the braces. TO IMITATE THE MOVEMENTS OF BREATHING.--Standing at the patient's head, grasp the arms just above the elbows, and draw the arms gently and steadily upwards above the head, and _keep them stretched_ upwards for two seconds. (_By this means air is drawn into the lungs_.) Then turn down the patient's arms, and press them gently and firmly for two seconds against the sides of the chest. (_By this means air is pressed out of the lungs_.) Repeat these measures alternately, deliberately, and perseveringly about fifteen times in a minute, _until a spontaneous effort to respire is perceived_, immediately upon which cease to imitate the movements of breathing, and proceed to INDUCE CIRCULATION AND WARMTH. IV. TREATMENT AFTER NATURAL BREATHING HAS BEEN RESTORED--TO PROMOTE WARMTH AND CIRCULATION. Commence rubbing the limbs upwards, with firm grasping pressure and energy, using handkerchiefs, flannels, etcetera: [_by this measure the blood is propelled along the veins towards the heart_.] The friction must be continued under the blanket or over the dry clothing. Promote the warmth of the body by the application of hot flannels, bottles or bladders of hot water, heated bricks, etcetera, to the pit of the stomach, the arm-pits, between the thighs, and to the soles of the feet. If the patient has been carried to a house after respiration has been restored, be careful to let the air play freely about the room. On the restoration of life a teaspoonful of water warm should be given; and then, if the power of swallowing have returned, small quantities of wine, warm brandy and water, or coffee, should be administered. The patient should be kept in bed, and a disposition to sleep encouraged. GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. The above treatment should be persevered in for some hours, as it is an erroneous opinion that persons are irrecoverable because life does not soon make its appearance, persons having been restored after persevering for many hours. APPEARANCES WHICH GENERALLY ACCOMPANY DEATH.--Breathing and the heart's action cease entirely, the eyelids are generally half-closed, the pupils dilated, the jaws clenched, the fingers semi-contracted; the tongue approaches to the under edges of the lips, and these, as well as the nostrils, are covered with a frothy mucus. Coldness and pallor of surface increase. CAUTIONS.--Prevent unnecessary crowding of persons round the body, especially if in an apartment. Avoid rough usage, and do not allow the body to remain on the back unless the tongue is secured. _Under no circumstances_ hold the body up by the feet. _On no account_ place the body in a warm bath, unless under medical direction, and even then it should only be employed as a momentary excitement. CHAPTER FOURTEEN. THE MORNING AFTER THE STORM. On the fifth morning that succeeded the breaking of the storm, described in the last chapter, the sun rose in gorgeous splendour and shone upon a sea that was clear and burnished like a sheet of glass. The wind had ceased suddenly, and a perfect calm prevailed; but although no breath of air ruffled the surface of the deep, the long swell rose and fell as if the breast of ocean were still throbbing from its recent agitation. All along the east coast of England this swell met the shore in a succession of slow-rolling waves, which curled majestically over, and appeared almost to pause for a moment ere they fell, with deep solemn roar, in a magnificent burst of foam. Everywhere the effects of the storm were painfully evident. Wrecks could be counted by the dozen from some of the bold headlands that commanded an extensive view of the shore. The work of destruction was not yet over. The services of our lifeboats could not yet be dispensed with although the fury of the winds had ceased. It is a mistake to suppose that when a gale has ceased, all danger to man and destruction to his property is over. We are apt to attribute too much influence to the winds. Undoubtedly they are the origin of the evil that befalls us in storms, but they are not the _immediate_ cause of the wholesale destruction that takes place annually among the shipping of the kingdom. It is the mighty hydraulic force of the sea,-- the tremendous lifting power of the waves, that does it all. Although the storm was over and the wind had gone down, the swell of the ocean had not yet ceased to act. On many a headland, and in many a rocky bay, brigs, schooners, barques, and ships of large size and stout frame, were that day lifted and battered, rent, torn, riven, and split by the sea as if they had been toys; their great timbers snapped like pipe-stems, and their iron bars and copper bolts twisted and gnarled as if they had been made of wire. The hardy men of Deal were still out in those powerful boats, that seem to be capable of bidding defiance to most storms, saving property to the nation, and earning--hardly earning--salvage for themselves. The lifeboats, too, were out,--in some cases saving life, in others, saving property when there were no lives in danger. How inadequate are our conceptions of these things when formed from a written account of one or two incidents, even although these be graphically described! How difficult it is to realise the actual scenes that are presented all along the coast during and immediately after each great storm that visits our shores. If we could, by the exercise of supernatural power, gaze down at these shores as from a bird's-eye point of view, and take them in, with all their stirring incidents, at one glance; if we could see the wrecks, large and small--colliers with their four or five hands; emigrant ships with their hundreds of passengers--beating and grinding furiously on rocks that appear to rise out of and sink into a sea of foam; if we could witness our lifeboats, with their noble-hearted crews, creeping out of every nook and bay in the very teeth of what seems to be inevitable destruction; if we could witness the hundred deeds of individual daring done by men with bronzed faces and rough garments, who carry their lives habitually in their hands, and think nothing of it; if we could behold the flash of the rockets, and hear the crack of the mortars and the boom of minute guns from John o' Groat's to the Land's End, at the dead and dark hours of night, when dwellers in our inland districts are abed, all ignorant, it may be, or thoughtless, in regard to these things; above all, if we could hear the shrieks of the perishing, the sobs and thanksgivings of the rescued, and the wild cheers of the rescuers; and hear and see all this at one single glance, so that our hearts might be more filled than they are at present with a sense of the terrible dangers of our shores, and the heroism of our men of the coast, it is probable that our prayers for those who "go down to the sea in ships" would be more frequent and fervent, and our respect for those who risk life and limb to save the shipwrecked would be deeper. It is also probable that we might think it worth our while to contribute more largely than we do to the support of that noble Institution whose work it is to place lifeboats where they are wanted on our coasts, and to recognise, reward, and chronicle the deeds of those who distinguish themselves in the great work of saving human life. Let us put a question to you, good reader. If France, or any other first-rate Power, were to begin the practice of making a sudden descent on us about once a month, on an average, all the year round, slaying some hundreds of our fishermen and seamen each time; occasionally cutting off some of our first-class emigrant ships, and killing all on board--men, women, and children,--thus filling the land with repeated wails of sorrow, with widows and with fatherless children: What would you do? What!--do you say that you "would fortify every island on the coast, plant Martello towers on every flat beach, crown every height with cannon, and station iron-clads in every harbour and bay, so that the entire coast should bristle with artillery?" That sounds well, but what guarantee have we that you really would act thus if France were to become so outrageous? "Common sense might assure me of it," you reply. So it might, and so it would, if we had not evidence to the contrary in the fact that our country _is_ thus assailed month after month--year after year--by a more inveterate enemy than France ever was or will be, and yet how little is done to defend ourselves against his attacks, compared with what might be, with what _ought_ to be, done! This enemy is the storm; but, like France, he is not our _natural_ enemy. We have only chosen in time past to allow him to become so. The storm has been wisely and beneficently ordained by God to purify the world's atmosphere, and to convey health and happiness to every land under heaven. If we will not take the obvious and quite possible precautions that are requisite to secure ourselves from his violence, have we not ourselves to blame? There are far too few harbours of refuge on our exposed coasts; the consequence is that our fishing-boats are caught by the storm and wrecked, and not unfrequently as many as a hundred lives are lost in a few hours: Who is to blame? A large vessel goes on the rocks because there is no lighthouse there to give warning of danger; a post has been neglected and the enemy has crept in: Who neglected that post? After the ship has got on the rocks, it is made known to the horrified passengers that there are no ship's lifeboats aboard, neither are there any life-belts: Whose blame is that? Still there seems hope, for the shore is not far off, and anxious people line it; but no ordinary boat can live in such a sea. There is no rocket apparatus on this part of the coast; no mortar apparatus by which a line might be sent on board: Why not? The nearest lifeboat station is fifteen miles off: Whose fault is that? Is the storm our enemy here? Is not selfish, calculating, miserly man his own enemy in this case? So the ship goes to pieces, and the result is that the loss of this single vessel makes 60 widows and 150 fatherless children in one night! not to speak of thousands of pounds' worth of property lost to the nation. If you doubt this, reader, consult the pages of the _Lifeboat Journal_, in which you will find facts, related in a grave, succinct, unimpassioned way, that ought to make your hair stand on end! Thoughts strongly resembling those recorded in the last few pages filled the mind and the heart of Bax, as he stood on that calm bright morning on the sea-shore. It was a somewhat lonely spot at the foot of tall cliffs, not far from which the shattered hull of a small brig lay jammed between two rocks. Tommy Bogey stood beside him, and both man and boy gazed long and silently at the wrack which lined the shore. Every nook, every crevice and creek at the foot of the cliff was filled choke full of broken planks and spars, all smashed up into pieces so small that, with the exception of the stump of a main-mast and the heel of a bowsprit, there was not a morsel that exceeded three feet in length, and all laid side by side in such regular order by the swashing of the sea in and out of the narrower creeks, that it seemed as if they had been piled there by the hand of man. They gazed silently, because they had just come upon a sight which filled their hearts with sadness. Close beside a large rock lay the form of an old white-haired man with his head resting on a mass of sea-weed, as if he were asleep. Beside him lay a little girl, whose head rested on the old man's breast, while her long golden hair lay in wild confusion over his face. The countenances of both were deadly pale, and their lips blue. It required no doctor's skill to tell that both were dead. "Ah's me! Tommy, 'tis a sad sight," said Bax. Tommy made no reply for a few seconds, but after an ineffectual effort to command himself, he burst into tears. "If we had only been here last night," he sobbed at length, "we might have saved them." "So we might, so we might, Tommy; who knows? Some one should have been here anyhow. It seems to me that things ain't well managed in these days. They haven't half enough of appliances to save life, that's a fact." Bax said this somewhat sternly. "Whose fault is it, Bax?" said Tommy, looking up in his friend's face. "Ha, Tommy," replied the other with a smile, "it don't become the like o' you or me to say who's to blame. You're too young to understand the outs and ins o' such matters, and I'm too ignorant." The boy smiled incredulously. The idea of Bax being "ignorant" was too gross and absurd to be entertained for a moment, even although stated by himself. "Well, but," urged Tommy stoutly, "if things _are_ wrong, it's clear that they ain't right, and surely I've a right to say so." "True, lad, true," returned Bax, with an approving nod; "that's just the point which I'd like you and me to stick to: when we see things to be wrong don't let's shirk sayin' so as flat as we can; but don't let us go, like too many shallow-pates, and say that we know _who's_ wrong and _why_ they're wrong, and offer to put them all right on the shortest notice. Mayhap" (here Bax spoke in a soft meditative tone, as if he had forgotten his young friend, and were only thinking aloud) "mayhap we may come to understand the matter one of these days, and have a better right to speak out--who knows?" "That I'm certain of!" cried Tommy, in a tone and with an air that made Bax smile despite the sad sight before him. "Come, lad," he said, with sudden energy, "we must get 'em removed. Away! and fetch a couple of men. I'll arrange them." Tommy was off in a moment, and Bax proceeded with gentle care to arrange the dress and limbs of the old man and the child. Two men soon arrived, and assisted to carry them away. Who they were no one knew and few cared. They were only two of the many who are thus cast annually, and by no means _unavoidably_, on our stormy shores. Do not misunderstand us, good reader. Compared with what is done by other lands in this matter, Britain does her duty well; but, compared with what is required by God at the hands of those who call themselves Christians, we still fall far short of our duty, both as a nation and as individuals. CHAPTER FIFTEEN. RELATES TO LOVE, CROSS PURPOSES AND MISTAKES, ETCETERA. Storms may rage, orphans and widows may weep, but the world must not pause in its regular routine of business and of pleasure. This is natural and right. It was not intended that men should walk perpetually in sackcloth and ashes because of the sorrows that surround them. But equally true is it that they were never meant to shut their eyes and ears to those woes, and dance and sing through life heedlessly, as far too many do until some thunderbolt falls on their own hearts, and brings the truth home. The command is twofold: "Weep with those that weep, and rejoice with those that do rejoice." Come then, reader, let us visit good Mrs Foster, and rejoice with her as she sits at her tea-table contemplating her gallant son with a mother's pride. She has some reason to be proud of him. Guy has just received the gold medal awarded him by the Lifeboat Institution. Bax and Tommy have also received their medals, and all three are taking tea with the widow on the occasion. Lucy Burton and Amy Russell are there too, but both of these young ladies are naturally much more taken up with Tommy's medal than with those of Guy or of Bax! And well they may be, for never a breast, large or small, was more worthy of the decoration it supported. "My brave boy," said the widow, referring to Tommy, and taking him by the arm as he sat beside her, but looking, irresistibly, at her son, "it was a noble deed. If I had the giving of medals I would have made yours twice the size, with a diamond in the middle of it." "What a capital idea!" said Lucy, with a silvery laugh, that obliged her to display a double row of brilliant little teeth. "A coral ring set with pearls would be finer, don't you think?" said Guy, gravely. Tommy grinned and said that that was a toothy remark! Lucy blushed, and said laughingly, that she thought Mrs Foster's idea better, whereupon the widow waxed vainglorious, and tried to suggest some improvements. Guy, fearing that he had been presumptuous in paying this sly compliment, anxiously sought to make amends by directing most of his conversation to Amy. Bax, who was unusually quiet that evening, was thus left to make himself agreeable to Lucy. But he found it hard work, poor fellow. It was quite evident that he was ill at ease. On most occasions, although habitually grave, Bax was hearty, and had always plenty to say without being obtrusive in his conversation. Moreover, his manners were good, and his deportment unconstrained and easy. But when he visited the widow's cottage he became awkward and diffident, and seemed to feel great difficulty in carrying on conversation. During the short time he had been at Deal since the wreck of the "Nancy," he had been up at the cottage every day on one errand or another, and generally met the young ladies either in the house or in the garden. Could it be that Bax was in love? There was no doubt whatever of the fact in his own mind; but, strange to say, no one else suspected it. His character was grave, simple, and straightforward. He did not assume any of those peculiar airs by which young men make donkeys of themselves when in this condition! He feared, too, that it might be interfering with the hopes of his friend Guy, whose affections, he had latterly been led to suspect, lay in the same direction with his own. This made him very circumspect and modest in his behaviour. Had he been quite sure of the state of Guy's heart he would have retired at once, for it never occurred to him for a moment to imagine that the girl whom Guy loved might not love Guy, and might, possibly, love himself. Be this as it may, Bax resolved to watch his friend that night closely, and act according to the indications given. Little did poor Guy know what a momentous hour that was in the life of his friend, and the importance of the part he was then performing. Bax rose to go sooner than usual. "You are very kind, ma'am," he said, in reply to Mrs Foster's remonstrances; "I have to visit an old friend to-night, and as it is probable I may never see him again, I trust you'll excuse my going so early." Mrs Foster was obliged to acquiesce. Bax shook hands hurriedly, but very earnestly, with each of the party, and quitted the cottage in company with Guy. "Come, Guy, let us walk over the sandhills." "A strange walk on so dark a night; don't you think it would be more cheerful on the beach?" "So it would, so it would," said Bax, somewhat hastily, "but I want to be alone with you, and we're likely to meet some of our chums on the beach. Besides, I want to have a quiet talk, and to tell ye something.--You're in love, Guy." Bax said this so abruptly that his friend started, and for a few seconds was silent. Then, with a laugh, he replied-- "Well, Bax, you've a blunt way of broaching a subject, but, now that you put the thing to me, I feel inclined to believe that I am. You're a sharper fellow than I gave you credit for, to have found me out so soon." "It needs but little sharpness to guess that when two young folk are thrown much together and find each other agreeable, they're likely to fall in love." Bax's voice sank to its deepest tones; he felt that his hopes had now received their deathblow, and in spite of himself he faltered. With a mighty effort he crushed down the feeling, and continued in a tone of forced gaiety-- "Come, I'm rejoiced at your good luck, my boy; she's one of a thousand, Guy." "So she is," said Guy, "but I'm not so sure of my good luck as you seem to be; for I have not yet ventured to speak to her on the subject of love." "No?" exclaimed Bax in surprise, "that's strange." "Why so?" said Guy. "Because you've had lots of time and opportunity, lad." "True," said Guy, "I have had enough of both, but some folk are not so bold and prompt as others in this curious matter of love." "Ah, very true," observed Bax, "some men do take more time than others, and yet it seems to me that there has been time enough for a sharp fellow like you to have settled that question. However, I've no doubt myself of the fact that she loves you, Guy, and I do call that uncommon good luck." "Well, it may seem a vain thing to say, but I do fancy that she likes me a bit," said the other, in a half jocular tone. The two friends refrained from mentioning the name of the fair one. The heart and mind of each was filled with one object, but each felt a strange disinclination to mention her name. "But it seems to me," continued Guy, "that instead of wanting to tell me something, as you said, when you brought me out for a walk in this dreary waste of furze and sand at such a time of night, your real object was to pump me!" "Not so," replied Bax, in a tone so deep and sad as to surprise his friend; "I brought you here because the lonely place accords with my feelings to-night. I have made up my mind to go to Australia." Guy stopped abruptly. "You jest, Bax," said he. "I am in earnest," replied the other, "and since I have forced myself into your confidence, I think it but fair to give you mine. The cause of my going is love! Yes, Guy, I too am in love, but alas! my love is not returned; it is hopeless." "Say not so," began Guy, earnestly; but his companion went on without noticing the interruption. "The case is a peculiar one," said he. "I have known the sweet girl long enough to know that she does not love me, and that she _does_ love another man. Moreover, _I_ love that man too. He is my friend; so, the long and the short of it is, I'm going to up-anchor, away to the gold-fields, and leave the coast clear to him." "This must not be, Bax; you may be wrong in supposing your case hopeless. May I ask her name?" "Forgive me, Guy, I _must_ not mention it," said Bax. It is not necessary to weary the reader with the variety of arguments with which Guy plied his friend in order to turn him from his purpose, as they wandered slowly over the sandhills together. He was unsuccessful in his efforts to arouse hope in the bosom of his friend, or to induce him to suspend his determination for a time. Nor was he more fortunate in attempting to make Bax say who was the friend--for whom he was about to make so great a sacrifice,--little suspecting that it was himself! "Now," said Bax, after having firmly resisted his companion's utmost efforts, "I want you to leave me here alone. I may seem to you to be obstinate and ungracious to-night" (he stopped and seized Guy's hand), "but, believe me, I am not so. My heart is terribly down, and you know I'm a rough matter-of-fact fellow, not given to be sentimental, so I can't speak to you as I would wish on this subject; but wherever I may go in this world, I will never cease to pray for God's blessing on you and yours, Guy." "I like to hear you say that, Bax," returned the other; "it will rejoice my heart to think that love for me will be the means of taking you often to the throne of God." "You're a good fellow, Guy; perhaps what you have often said to me has not been thrown away as much as you suppose. Come, now, instead of you having to urge the subject on me, I'll ask you to give me a text. Supposing that you and I were parting _to-night_ for the last time, and that I were going off to Australia _to-morrow_, what would you say to me in the way of advice and encouragement?" Guy paused thoughtfully for a moment, and then said, "Delight thyself in the Lord, trust also in Him, and He will give thee the desires of thine heart." "Thank 'ee, lad, I'll not forget the words," said Bax, wringing his friend's hand. "Perhaps I'll think of another and more suitable text when the time for parting really comes," said Guy, sadly. "Good-night, Bax; mind you come up to the cottage to-morrow, and let me know your plans." "I shall be busy to-morrow, but I'll write," said Bax, as his friend left him. "Ay," he added, "there goes a real Christian, and a true-hearted friend. Ah's me! I'll never see him more!" Bax wandered slowly and without aim over the dark waste for some time. Almost unintentionally he followed the path that led past the Checkers of the Hope. A solitary light burned in one of the lower windows of the old inn, but no sound of revelry issued from its doors. Leaving it behind him, Bax soon found himself standing within a few yards of the tombstone of the ill-fated Mary whose name he bore. "Poor thing, 'twas a sad fate!" he murmured, as he contemplated the grave of the murdered girl, who had been a cousin of his own grandfather. "Poor Mary, you're at rest now, which is more than I am." For some minutes Bax stood gazing dreamily at the grave which was barely visible in the faint light afforded by a few stars that shone through the cloudy sky. Suddenly he started, and every fibre of his strong frame was shaken with horror as he beheld the surface of the grave move, and saw, or fancied he saw, a dim figure raise itself partially from the earth. Bax was no coward in any sense of that word. Many brave men there are who, although quite fearless in regard to danger and death, are the most arrant cowards in the matter of superstition, and could be made to flee before a mere fancy. But our hero was not one of these. His mind was strong, like his body, and well balanced. He stood his ground and prepared to face the matter out. He would indeed have been more than human if such an unexpected sight, in such circumstances, had failed to horrify him, but the effect of the shock soon passed away. "Who comes here to disturb me?" said a weak voice that evidently belonged to this ghost. "Hallo! Jeph, is that you?" exclaimed Bax, springing forward and gazing into the old man's face. "Ay, it's me, and I'm sorry you've found me out, for I like to be let alone in my grief." "Why, Jeph, you don't need to be testy with your friend. I'll quit ye this moment if you bid me; but I think you might find a warmer and more fitting bed for your old bones than poor Mary Bax's grave. Come, let me help you up." Bax said this so kindly, that old Jeph's temporary anger at having been discovered passed away. "Well, well," said he, "the only two people who have found me out are the two I like best, so it don't much matter." "Indeed," exclaimed the young man in surprise, "who is number two, Jeph?" "Tommy Bogey. He found me here on the night when Long Orrick was chased by Supple Jim." "Strange, he never told me about it," said Bax. "'Cause I told him to hold his tongue," replied Jeph, "and Tommy's a good fellow and knows how to shut his mouth w'en a friend asks him to-- as I now ask you, Bax, for I don't want people know that I come here every night." "What! do you come here _every_ night?" cried Bax in surprise. "Ay, every night, fair weather and foul; I've been used to both for a long time now, and I'm too tough to be easily damaged." "But why do you this, Jeph? You are not mad! If you were, I could understand it." "No matter, no matter," said the old man, turning to gaze at the tombstone before quitting the place. "Some people are fond of having secrets. I've got one, and I like to keep it." "Well, I won't try to pump it out of you, my old friend. Moreover, I haven't got too much time to spare. I meant to go straight to your house to-night, Jeph, to tell you that I'm off to Australia to-morrow by peep o' day." "Australia!" exclaimed Jeph, with a perplexed look in his old face. "Ay, the blue peter's at the mast-head and the anchor tripped." Here Bax related to his old comrade what he had previously told to Guy. At first Jeph shook his head, but when the young sailor spoke of love being the cause of his sudden departure, he made him sit down on the grave, and listened earnestly. "So, so, Bax," he said, when the latter had concluded, "you're quite sure she's fond o' the other feller, are ye?" "Quite. I had it from his own lips. At least he told me he's fond of _her_, and I could see with my own eyes she's fond of _him_." "Poor lad," said Jeph, patting his friend's shoulder as if he had been a child, "you're quite right to go. I know what love is. You'll never get cured in _this_ country; mayhap foreign air'll do it. I refused to tell you what made me come out here lad; but now that I knows how the wind blows with _you_, I don't mind if I let ye into my secret. Love! ay, it's the old story; love has brought me here night after night since ever I was a boy." "Love!" exclaimed his companion; "love of whom?" "Why, who should it be but the love o' the dear girl as lies under this sod?" said the old man, putting his hand affectionately on the grave. "Ay, you may well look at me in wonderment, but I wasn't always the wrinkled old man I am now. I was a good-lookin' lad once, though I don't look like it now. When poor Mary was murdered I was nineteen. I won't tell ye how I loved that dear girl. Ye couldn't understand me. When she was murdered by that"--(he paused abruptly for a moment, and then resumed)--"when she was murdered, I thought I should have gone mad. I _was_ mad, I believe, for a time; but when I came back here to stay, after wanderin' in foreign parts for many years, I took to comin' to the grave at nights. At first I got no good. I thought my heart would burst altogether, but at last the Lord sent peace into my soul. I began to think of her as an angel in heaven, and now the sweetest hours of my life are spent on this grave. Poor Mary! She was gentle and kind, especially to the poor and the afflicted. She took a great interest in the ways and means we had for savin' people from wrecks, and used often to say it was a pity they couldn't get a boat made that would neither upset nor sink in a storm. She had read o' some such contrivance somewhere, for she was a great reader. Ever since that time I've bin trying, in my poor way, to make something o' the sort, but I've not managed it yet. I like to think she would have been pleased to see me at it." Old Jeph stopped at this point, and shook his head slowly. Then he continued-- "I find that as long as I keep near this grave my love for Mary can't die, and I don't want it to. But that's why I think you're right to go abroad. It won't do for a man like you to go moping through life as I have done. Mayhap there's some truth in the sayin', Out o' sight out o' mind." "Ah's me!" said Bax; "isn't it likely that there may be some truth too in the words o' the old song, `Absence makes the heart grow fonder.' But you're right, Jeph, it wouldn't do for _me_ to go moping through life as long as there's work to do. Besides, old boy, there's plenty of _this_ sort o' thing to be done; and I'll do it better now that I don't have anybody in particular to live for." Bax said this with reckless gaiety, and touched the medal awarded to him by the Lifeboat Institution, which still hung on his breast where it had been fastened that evening by Lucy Burton. The two friends rose and returned together to Jeph's cottage, where Bax meant to remain but a few minutes, to leave sundry messages to various friends. He was shaking hands with the old man and bidding him farewell, when the door was burst open and Tommy Bogey rushed into the room. Bax seized the boy in his arms, and pressed him to his breast. "Hallo! I say, is it murder ye're after, or d'ye mistake me for a polar bear?" cried Tommy, on being put down; "wot a hug, to be sure! Lucky for me that my timbers ain't easy stove in. Wot d'ye mean by it?" Bax laughed, and patted Tommy's head. "Nothin', lad, only I feel as if I should ha' bin your mother." "Well, I won't say ye're far out," rejoined the boy, waggishly, "for I do think ye're becomin' an old wife. But, I say, what can be wrong with Guy Foster? He came back to the cottage a short while ago lookin' quite glum, and shut himself up in his room, and he won't say what's wrong, so I come down here to look for you, for I knew I'd find ye with old Jeph or Bluenose." "Ye're too inquisitive," said Bax, drawing Tommy towards him, and sitting down on a chair, so that the boy's face might be on a level with his. "No doubt Guy will explain it to you in the morning. I say, Tommy, I have sometimes wondered whether I could depend on the friendship which you so often profess for me." The boy's face flushed, and he looked for a moment really hurt. "Tutts, Tommy, you're gettin' thin-skinned. I do but jest." "Well, jest or no jest," said the boy, not half pleased, "you know very well that nothing could ever make me turn my back on _you_." "Are you sure?" said Bax, smiling. "Suppose, now, that I was to do something very bad to you, something unkind, or that _looked_ unkind-- what then?" "In the first place you couldn't do that, and, in the second place, if you did I'd like you just as well." "Ay, but suppose," continued Bax, in a jocular strain, "that what I did was _very_ bad." "Well, let's hear what you call very bad." Bax paused as if to consider, then he said: "Suppose, now, that I were to go off suddenly to some far part of the world for many years without so much as saying good-bye to ye, what would you think?" "I'd find out where you had gone to, and follow you, and pitch into you when I found you," said Tommy stoutly. "Ay, but I did not ask what you'd do; I asked what you'd think?" "Why, I would think something had happened to prevent you lettin' me know, but I'd never think ill of you," replied Tommy. "I believe you, boy," said Bax, earnestly. "But come, enough o' this idle talk. I want you to go up to the cottage with a message to Guy. Tell him not to speak to any one to-night or to-morrow about what I said to him when we were walking on the sandhills; and be off, lad, as fast as you can, lest he should let it out before you get there." "Anything to do with smugglers?" inquired the boy, with a knowing look, as they stood outside the door. "Why, n-no, not exactly." "Well, good-night, Bax; good-night, old Jeph." Tommy departed, and the two men stood alone. "God bless the lad. You'll be kind to him, Jeph, when I'm away?" "Trust me, Bax," said the old man, grasping his friend's hand. Without another word, Bax turned on his heel, and his tall, stalwart figure was quickly lost to view in the dark shadows of the night. CHAPTER SIXTEEN. TOMMY BOGEY FORMS A MIGHTY RESOLVE, AND MR. DENHAM, BEING PERPLEXED, BECOMES LIBERAL. When Tommy Bogey discovered the terrible fact that his friend Bax had really gone from him, perhaps for ever, he went straight up to the cottage, sat down on the kitchen floor at the feet of Mrs Laker, laid his head on her lap, and wept as if his heart would break. "My poor boy!" said the sympathising Laker, stroking his head, and endeavouring to comfort him more by tone and manner than by words. But Tommy refused to be comforted. The strongest affection he had ever known was rudely and suddenly crushed. It was hard in Bax to have done it; so Tommy felt, though he would not admit it in so many words. So Bax himself felt when the first wild rush of sorrow was past, and he had leisure to consider the hasty step he had taken, while sailing away over the distant sea towards the antipodes. Bitterly did he blame himself and repent when repentance was of no avail. Tommy's grief was deep, but not loud. He did not express it with a howling accompaniment. It burst from him in gasping sobs for a time, then it subsided into the recesses of his young heart and gnawed there. It did not again break bounds, but it somewhat changed the boy's character. It made him almost a man in thought and action. He experienced that strong emotion which is known to most young hearts at certain periods of early life, and which shows itself in the formation of a fixed resolve to take some prompt and mighty step! What that step should be he did not know at first, and did not care to know. Sufficient for him, that coming to an unalterable determination of some indefinite sort afforded him great relief. After the first paroxysm was over, Tommy rose up, kissed Mrs Laker on the cheek, bade her goodnight with unwonted decision of manner, and went straight to the amphibious hut of his friend Bluenose, whom he found taking a one-eyed survey of the Downs through a telescope, from mere force of habit. The Captain's name was more appropriate that day than it had been for many years. He was looking uncommonly "blue" indeed. He had just heard of the disappearance of Bax, for the news soon spread among the men on Deal beach. Being ignorant of the cause of his friend's sudden departure, and knowing his deliberate, sensible nature, the whole subject was involved in a degree of mystery which his philosophy utterly failed to clear up. Being a bachelor, and never having been in love, or met with any striking incidents of a tender nature in his career, it did not occur to him that woman could be at the bottom of it! "Uncle," said Tommy, "Bax is gone!" "Tommy, I knows it," was the brief reply, and the telescope was shut up with a bang, as the seaman sat down on a little chest, and stared vacantly in the boy's face. "Why did he do it?" asked Tommy. "Dun' know. Who knows? S'pose he must ha' gone mad, though it don't seem likely. If it wasn't Guy as told me I'd not believe it." "Does Guy not know why he's gone?" "Apperiently he does, but he says he's bound not to tell. Hope Bax han't bin and done somethin' not 'xactly right--" "_Bax_ do anything not exactly right!" cried Tommy, with a look and tone of amazed indignation. "Right, lad, you're right," said Bluenose apologetically. "I've no doubt myself he could explain it all quite clear if he wos here for to do so. That's my opinion; and I've no doubt either that the first letter he sends home will make all straight an' snug, depend on it." "Uncle," said Tommy, "_I_ am going to Australia." Bluenose, who had just lighted his pipe, looked at the boy through the smoke, smiled, and said, "No, Tommy, you ain't." "Uncle," repeated Tommy, "I am. I once heard Bax say he'd rather go there than anywhere else, if he was to go abroad; so I'm certain he has gone there, and I'm going to seek for him." "Wery good, my lad," said the Captain coolly; "d'ye go by steamer to-night, or by rail to-morrow mornin'? P'raps you'd better go by telegraph; it's quicker, I'm told." "You think I'm jokin', Uncle, but I'm not, as you'll very soon find out." So saying, Tommy rose and left the hut. This was all he said on the subject. He was a strong-minded little fellow. He at once assumed the position of an independent man, and merely stated his intentions to one or two intimate friends, such as Bluenose, Laker, and old Jeph. As these regarded his statement as the wild fancy of an enthusiastic boy in the first gush of disappointment, they treated it with good-natured raillery. So Tommy resolved, as he would have himself have expressed it, "to shut up, and keep his own counsel." When Guy told Lucy Burton that the man who had saved her life had gone off thus suddenly, she burst into tears; but her tears had not flowed long before she asked Guy the reason of his strange and abrupt departure. Of course Guy could not tell. He had been pledged to secrecy as to the cause. When Lucy Burton went to tell Amy Russell, she did so with a trembling heart. For some time past she had suspected that Amy loved Bax and not Guy, as she had at first mistakenly supposed. Knowing that if her suspicions were true, the news would be terrible indeed to her friend, she considerately went to her room and told her privately. Amy turned deadly pale, stood speechless for a few seconds, and then fainted in her friend's arms. On recovering she confessed her love, but made Lucy solemnly pledge herself to secrecy. "No one shall ever know of this but yourself, dear Lucy," said Amy, laying her head on her friend's bosom, and finding relief in tears. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Time passed away, as time is wont to do, and it seemed as if Tommy Bogey had forgotten to carry out his determination. From that day forward he never referred to it, and the few friends to whom he had mentioned it supposed that he had given up the idea altogether as impracticable. They did not know the mettle that Tommy was made of. After maturely considering the matter, he had made up his mind to delay carrying out his plan until Bax should have time to write home and acquaint him with his whereabouts. Meanwhile, he would set himself to make and save up money by every means in his power, for he had sense enough to know that a moneyless traveller must be a helpless creature. Peekins was permanently received into Sandhill Cottage as page-in-buttons, in which capacity he presented a miserably attenuated figure, but gave great satisfaction. Tommy and he continued good friends; the former devoting as much of his leisure time to the latter as he could spare. He had not much to spare, however, for he had, among other things, set himself energetically to the study of arithmetic and navigation under the united guidance of old Jeph and Bluenose. Lucy Burton paid a long visit to Mrs Foster, and roamed over the Sandhills day after day with her friend Amy, until her father, the missionary, came and claimed her and carried her back to Ramsgate. During Lucy's stay, Guy Foster remained at the cottage, busily engaged in various ways, but especially in making himself agreeable to Lucy, in which effort he seemed to be very successful. When the latter left, he suddenly discovered that he was wasting his time sadly, and told his mother that he meant to look out for something to do. With this end in view he set out for London, that mighty hive of industry and idleness into which there is a ceaseless flow of men who "want something to do," and of men who "don't know what to do." And what of Denham, Crumps, and Company during this period? The rats in and around Red Wharf Lane could have told you, had they been able to speak, that things prospered with that firm. These jovial creatures, that revelled so luxuriously in the slime and mud and miscellaneous abominations of that locality, could have told you that, every morning regularly, they were caught rioting in the lane and sent squealing out of it, by a boy in blue (the successor of poor Peekins) who opened the office and prepared it for the business of the day; that about half an hour later they, the rats, were again disturbed by the arrival of the head-clerk, closely followed by the juniors, who were almost as closely followed by Crumps--he being a timid old man who stood in awe of his senior partner; that, after this, they had a good long period of comparative quiet, during which they held a riotous game of hide-and-seek across the lane and down among sewers and dust holes, and delightfully noisome and fetid places of a similar character; interrupted at irregular intervals by a vagrant street boy, or a daring cat, or an inquisitive cur; that this game was stopped at about ten o'clock by the advent of Mr Denham, who generally gave them, the rats, a smile of recognition as he passed to his office, concluding, no doubt, by a natural process of ratiocination, that they were kindred spirits, because they delighted in bad smells and filthy garbage, just as he (Denham) rejoiced in Thames air and filthy lucre. One fine morning, speaking from a rat's point of view, when the air was so thick and heavy and moist that it was difficult to see more than a few yards in any direction, Denham came down the lane about half-an-hour later than usual, with a brisk step and an unusually smiling countenance. Peekins' successor relieved him of his hat, topcoat, and umbrella, and one of the clerks brought him the letters. Before opening these he shouted-- "Mr Crumps!" Crumps came meekly out of his cell, as if he had been a bad dog who knew he deserved, and expected, a whipping. "Nothing wrong, I trust," he said anxiously. "No; on the contrary, everything right," (Crumps' old face brightened), "I've succeeded in getting that ship at what I call a real bargain--500 less than I had anticipated and was prepared to give." (Crumps rubbed his hands.) "Now, I mean to send this ship out to Australia, with a miscellaneous cargo, as soon as she can be got ready for sea. The gold fever is at its height just now, and it strikes me that, with a little judgment and prudence, a good thing may be made out there. At any rate, I mean to venture; for our speculations last year have, as you know, turned out well, with the exception of that unfortunate `Trident,' and we are sufficiently in funds just at this time to afford to run considerable risk." Crumps expressed great satisfaction, and agreed with all that Denham said. He also asked what the name of the new ship was to be. "The `Trident,'" said Mr Denham. "What! the name of the ship we lost in Saint Margaret's Bay?" exclaimed Crumps, in surprise. "I thought you knew the name of the ship we lost in Saint Margaret's Bay," said Denham sarcastically. "Of course, of course," replied Crumps, in some confusion, "but I mean-- that is, don't you think it looks like flying in the face of Providence to give it the same name?" "Mr Crumps," said Denham, with an air of dignified reproof, "it is most unnatural, most uncalled for, to talk of Providence in connexion with business. It is a word, sir, that may be appropriately used on Sundays and in churches, but not in offices, and I beg that you will not again allude to it. There is no such thing, sir, as Providence in business matters--at least such is my opinion; and I say this in order that you may understand that any remarks of that kind are quite thrown away on me. I am a plain practical man of business, Mr Crumps; once for all, allow me to say that, I object to the very unbusinesslike remarks of a theological nature which you are sometimes pleased to introduce into our conversations. I again repeat that there is no such thing as Providence in business,--at all events, not in _my_ business." "I will not again offend you," said poor Crumps, who stood looking confused and moving his legs uneasily during the delivery of this oration, "but as you have condescended to argue the matter slightly, may I venture to hint that our ships are propelled chiefly by means of sails, and that the winds are in the hands of Providence." "There, sir, I utterly disagree with you," retorted Denham, "the winds are guided in their courses by the fixed laws of Nature, and cannot be altered or modified by the wishes or powers of man; therefore, it is quite unnecessary, because useless, to regard them in matters of business. I am utterly devoid, sir, of superstition; and it is partly in order to make this clear to all with whom I have to do, that I intend to name our new ship the `Trident,' and to order her to sail on a Friday." As Mr Denham accompanied his last word with an inclination of the head which was equivalent to a dismissal, Mr Crumps sighed and retired to his den. His practical and unsuperstitious partner opened and read the letters. While Denham was thus engaged a tap came to the door, and old Mr Summers entered the room. "Ah! Summers, glad to see you, how are you?" said Denham, somewhat heartily--_for him_. "Thank you, Denham, I'm well," replied the benign old gentleman with a smile, as he fixed a pair of gold spectacles on his nose, and sat down in a most businesslike way to examine a bundle of papers which he pulled out of his coat-pocket. Mr Summers was a very old friend of Denham, and had been the friend of his father before him; but _that_ was not the reason of Denham's regard for him. The old gentleman happened to be a merchant in the city, with whom Denham, Crumps, and Company did extensive and advantageous business. This was the cause of Denham's unwonted urbanity. He cared little for the old man's friendship. In fact, he would have dispensed with it without much regret, for he was sometimes pressed to contribute to charities by his philanthropic friend. "See, I have settled that matter for you satisfactorily," said Mr Summers; "there are the papers, which you can look over at your leisure." "Thank you, Mr Summers," said Denham impressively, "this is _indeed_ very kind of you. But for your interference in this affair I am convinced that I should have lost a thousand pounds, if not more." "Indeed!" exclaimed the old gentleman with a bright smile, "come, I'm glad to hear you say so, and it makes my second errand all the more easy." "And what may your second errand be?" said Denham, with a sudden gravity of countenance, which showed that he more than suspected it. "Well, the fact is," began Summers, "it's a little matter of begging that I have undertaken for the purpose of raising funds to establish one or two lifeboats on parts of our coast where they are very much needed. (Denham fidgeted in his chair.) You know I have a villa near Deal, and frequently witness the terrible scenes of shipwreck that are so common and so fatal on that coast. I am sorry to say that my begging expedition has not been attended with so much success as I had anticipated. It is not such agreeable work as one might suppose, I assure you, one gets so many unexpected rebuffs. Did you ever try begging, Denham?" Denham said he never had, and, unless reduced to it by circumstances, did not mean to do so! "Ah," continued Mr Summers, "if you ever do try you'll be surprised to find how difficult it is to screw money out of some people." (Mr Denham thought that that difficulty would not surprise him at all.) "But you'll be delighted to find, on the other hand, what a number of truly liberal souls there are. It's quite a treat, for instance, to meet with a man,--as I did the other day,--who gives his charity in the light of such principles as these:--`The Lord loveth a cheerful giver;' `It is more blessed to give than to receive;' `He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord,'--one who lays aside a certain proportion of his income for charitable purposes, and who, therefore, knowing exactly how much he has to give at any moment, gives or refuses, as the case may be, promptly and with a good grace." "Ha!" exclaimed Denham, whose soul abhorred this sort of talk, but whose self-interest compelled him to listen to it. "Really," pursued Mr Summers, "it is quite interesting to study the outs and ins of Christian philanthropy. Have you ever given much attention to the subject, Mr Denham? Of course, I mean in a philosophical way." "Ha a-hem! well, I cannot say that I have, except perhaps in my capacity of a poor-law guardian in this district of the city." "Indeed, I would recommend it to you. It is quite a relief to men of business like you and me, who are necessarily swallowed up all day in the matter of making money, to have the mind occasionally directed to the consideration of the best methods of getting rid of a little of their superabundance. It would do them a world of good--I can safely say so from experience--to consider such matters. I daresay that you also know something of this from experience." "Ha!" ejaculated Mr Denham, who felt himself getting internally warm, but was constrained (of course from disinterested motives) to keep cool and appear amiable. "But forgive my taking up so much of your time, my dear sir," said Mr Summers, rising; "what shall I put you down for?" Denham groaned inaudibly and said, "Well, I've no objection to give twenty pounds." "How much?" said the old gentleman, as though he had heard imperfectly, at the same time pulling out a notebook. There was a slight peculiarity in the tone of the question that induced Denham to say he would give fifty pounds. "Ah! fifty," said Summers, preparing to write, "thank you, Mr Denham (here he looked up gravely and added), the subject, however, is one which deserves liberal consideration at the hands of society in general; _especially of ship owners_. Shall we say a hundred, my dear sir?" Denham was about to plead poverty, but recollecting that he had just admitted that his friend had been the means of saving a thousand pounds to the business, he said, "Well, let it be a hundred," with the best grace he could. "Thank you, Mr Denham, a thousand thanks," said the old gentleman, shaking his friend's hand, and quitting the room with the active step of a man who had much more business to do that day before dinner. Mr Denham returned to the perusal of his letters with the feelings of a man who has come by a heavy loss. Yet, strange to say, he comforted himself on his way home that evening with the thought that, after all, he had done a liberal thing! that he had "given away a hundred pounds sterling in charity." _Given_ it! Poor Denham! he did not know that, up to that period, he had never _given_ away a single farthing of his wealth in the true spirit of liberality--although he had given much in the name of charity. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. DARK DEEDS ARE DONE UPON THE SEA--TOMMY BOGEY IN GREAT DANGER. "Well, Bluenose, hoo d'ye find yerself to-day?" inquired Supple Rodger one fine morning, as the Captain sauntered slowly along the beach in front of his hut, with his hands deep in the pockets of his pilot-coat. "Thankee, I amongst the middlings. How's yerself?" "I like myself," said Rodgers; "how's old Jeph?" "Rather or'nary; but I dessay he'll come all square after a day or two in dock," answered the Captain; "I left him shored up in bed with bolsters." "So Tommy's slipped his cable, I'm told?" said Rodgers interrogatively. "Ay, he's off, an' no mistake. I thought he was jokin', for I heard him talk o' goin' after Bax some time past, but nothin' more come of it till yesterday, when he comes to me and bids me good day, and then off like a galley after a French smuggler. It's o' no use tryin' to catch him. That boy'll make his way and have his will somehow, whether we let him or no. Ay, ay," said Bluenose, lighting his pipe with a heavy sigh, "Tommy Bogey's gone for good." That was the last that was heard of poor Tommy for many a long day on the beach of Deal. But as there is no good reason why the readers should be kept in the dark regarding his movements, we shall follow him on the rugged path he had selected, and leave the men of Deal to wonder for a time, and talk, and then forget him. Having waited as long as his patience could hold out, and no letter having come from Bax, Tommy at last prepared to carry out his plan. By dint of hard labour among the boats at any odd jobs that people would give him, and running messages, and making himself generally useful to the numerous strangers who visited that fine and interesting part of the coast, he had scraped together a few pounds. By persevering study at nights he had acquired a fair knowledge of figures and a smattering of navigation. Thus equipped in mind and purse he went off to seek his fortune. His intention was in the first place to go to London and visit the "Three Jolly Tars," where, he doubted not, every possible and conceivable sort of information in regard to shipping could be obtained. There chanced at the time to be a certain small collier lying in the downs, awaiting a fair wind to carry her into the port of London. This collier (a schooner) was named the "Butterfly," perhaps because the owner had a hazy idea that there was some resemblance between an insect flitting about from flower to flower and a vessel sailing from port to port! Black as a chimney from keelson to truck, she was as like to a butterfly as a lady's hand is to a monkey's paw. The skipper of the "Butterfly" was a friend of Bluenose, and knew Tommy. He at once agreed to give him a passage to London, and never thought of asking questions. Soon after the boy went aboard the wind changed to the south-west; the "Butterfly" spread her black wings, bore away to the nor'ard, and doubled the North Foreland, where she was becalmed, and left to drift with the tide just as night was closing in. "I'm tired, Jager" (this was the skipper's name); "I'll go below and take a snooze," said Tommy, "for I've lots o' work before me to-morrow." So Tommy went below and fell asleep. The three men who formed the crew of this dingy craft lay down on the deck, the night being fine, and also fell asleep, Jager being at the helm. Now Jager was one of those careless, easy-going, reckless seamen, who, by their folly, ignorance, and intemperance are constantly bringing themselves to the verge of destruction. He sat near the tiller gazing up at the stars dreamily for some time; then he looked round the horizon, then glanced at the compass and up at the sails, which hung idly from the yards, after which he began to mutter to himself in low grumbling tones-- "Goin' to blow from the nor'ard. Ay, allers blows the way I don't want it to. Driftin' to the southward too. If this lasts we'll drift on the Sands. Comfr'able to think on, that is. Come, Jager, don't you go for to git into the blues. Keep up yer sperits, old boy!" Acting on his own suggestion, the skipper rose and went below to a private locker, in which he kept a supply of rum,--his favourite beverage. He passed Tommy Bogey on the way. Observing, that the boy was sleeping soundly, he stopped in front of him and gazed long into his face with that particularly stupid expression which is common to men who are always more or less tipsy. "Sleep away, my lad, it'll do ye good." Accompanying this piece of unnecessary advice with a sagacious nod of the head, the skipper staggered on and possessed himself of a case-bottle about three-quarters full of rum, with which he returned to the deck and began to drink. While he was thus employed, a breeze sprang up from the north-east. "Ease off the sheets there, you lubbers!" shouted the drunken man, as he seized the tiller and looked at the compass. "What! sleeping again, Bunks? I'll rouse ye, _I_ will." With that, in a burst of anger, he rushed forward and gave one of the sleepers a severe kick in the ribs. Bunks rose sulkily, and with a terrible imprecation advised the skipper "not to try that again"; to which the skipper retorted, that if his orders were not obeyed more sharply, he would not only try it again, but he would "chuck him overboard besides." Having applied a rope's-end to the shoulders of one of the other sleepers, he repeated his orders to ease off the sheets, as the wind was fair, and staggered back to his place at the helm. "Why, I do believe it is a sou'-wester," he muttered to himself, attempting in vain to read the compass. It was in reality north-east, but Jager's intellects were muddled; he made it out to be south-west and steered accordingly, almost straight before it. The three men who formed the crew of the little vessel were so angry at the treatment they had received, that they neither cared nor knew how the ship's head lay. A thick mist came down about the same time, and veiled the lights which would otherwise have soon revealed the fact that the skipper had made a mistake. "Why, wot on airth ails the compass?" muttered Jager, bending forward intently to gaze at the instrument, which, to his eye, seemed to point in all directions at once; "come, I'll have another pull at the b-bottle to steady me." He grasped the bottle to carry out this intention, but in doing so thrust the helm down inadvertently. The schooner came up to the wind at once, and as the wind had freshened to a stiff breeze and a great deal of canvas was set, she heeled violently over to starboard. The skipper was pitched into the lee scuppers, and the case-bottle of rum was shivered to atoms before he had time to taste a drop. "Mind your helm!" roared Bunks, savagely. "D'ye want to send us to the bottom?" The man sprang to the helm, and accompanied his remark with several fierce oaths, which need not be repeated, but which had the effect of rousing Jager's anger to such a pitch, that he jumped up and hit the sailor a heavy blow on the face. "I'll stop your swearin', I will," he cried, preparing to repeat the blow, but the man stepped aside and walked forward, leaving his commander alone on the quarter-deck. Bunks, who was a small but active man, was a favourite with the other two men who constituted the crew of the "Butterfly," and both of whom were strong-limbed fellows. Their anger at seeing him treated thus savagely knew no bounds. They had long been at deadly feud with Jager. One of them, especially (a tall, dark, big-whiskered man named Job), had more than once said to his comrades that he would be the death of the skipper yet. Bunks usually shook his head when he heard these threats, and said, "It wouldn't pay, unless he wanted to dance a hornpipe on nothing," which was a delicate reference to being hung. When the two men saw Bunks come forward with blood streaming from his mouth, they looked at each other and swore a tremendous oath. "Will ye lend a hand, Jim?" sputtered Job between his clenched teeth. Jim nodded. "No, no," cried Bunks, interposing, but the two men dashed him aside and rushed aft. Their purpose, whatever it might have been, was arrested for a moment by Bunks suddenly shouting at the top of his lungs-- "Light on the starboard bow!" "That's a lie," said Jager, savagely; "use yer eyes, you land-lubber." "We're running straight on the North Foreland," cried Job, who, with his companion, suddenly stopped and gazed round them out ahead in alarm. "The North Foreland, you fool," cried the skipper roughly, "who ever saw the North Foreland light on the starboard bow, with the ship's head due north?" "I don't believe 'er head _is_ due north," said Job, stepping up to the binnacle, just as Tommy Bogey, aroused by the sudden lurch of the vessel and the angry voices, came on deck. "Out o' the way," cried Jager roughly, hitting Job such a blow on the head that he sent him reeling against the lee bulwarks. The man, on recovering himself, uttered a fierce yell, and rushing on the skipper, seized him by the throat with his left hand, and drove his right fist into his face with all his force. Jager, although a powerful man, and, when sober, more than a match for his antagonist, was overborne and driven with great violence against the binnacle, which, being of inferior quality and ill secured, like everything else in the miserable vessel, gave way under his weight, and the compass was dashed to pieces on the deck. Jim ran to assist his comrade, and Bunks attempted to interfere. Fortunately, Tommy Bogey's presence of mind did not forsake him. He seized the tiller while the men were fighting furiously, and steered away from the light, feeling sure that, whatever it might be, the wisest thing to be done was to steer clear of it. He had not got the schooner quite before the wind when a squall struck her, and laid her almost on her beam-ends. The lurch of the vessel sent the struggling men against the taffrail with great violence. The skipper's back was almost broken by the shock, for his body met the side of the vessel, and the other two were thrown upon him. Job took advantage of his opportunity: seizing Jager by the leg, he suddenly lifted him over the iron rail, and hurled him into the sea. There was one wild shriek and a heavy plunge, and the miserable man sank to rise no more. It is impossible to describe the horror of the poor boy at the helm when he witnessed this cold-blooded murder. Bold though he was, and accustomed to face danger and witness death in some of its most appalling forms, he could not withstand the shock of such a scene of violence perpetrated amid the darkness and danger of a stormy night at sea. His first impulse was to run below, and get out of sight of the men who had done so foul a deed; but reflecting that they might, in their passion, toss him into the sea also if he were to show his horror, he restrained himself, and stood calmly at his post. "Come, out o' the way, younker," cried Job, seizing the helm. Tommy shrank from the man, as if he feared the contamination of his touch. "You young whelp, what are ye affeared on? eh!" He aimed a blow at Tommy, which the latter smartly avoided. "Murderer!" cried the boy, rousing himself suddenly, "you shall swing for this yet." "Shall I? eh! Here, Jim, catch hold o' the tiller." Jim obeyed, and Job sprang towards Tommy, but the latter, who was lithe and active as a kitten, leaped aside and avoided him. For five minutes the furious man rushed wildly about the deck in pursuit of the boy, calling on Bunks to intercept him, but Bunks would not stir hand or foot, and Jim could not quit the helm, for the wind had increased to a gale; and as there was too much sail set, the schooner was flying before it with masts, ropes, and beams creaking under the strain. "Do your worst," cried Tommy, during a brief pause, "you'll never catch me. I defy you, and will denounce you the moment we got into port." "Will you? then you'll never get into port alive," yelled Job, as he leaped down the companion, and returned almost instantly, with one of the skipper's pistols. He levelled it and fired, but the unsteady motion of the vessel caused him to miss his aim. He was about to descend for another pistol, when the attention of all on board was attracted by a loud roar of surf. "Breakers ahead!" roared Bunks. This new danger--the most terrible, with perhaps the exception of fire, to which a seaman can be exposed--caused all hands to forget the past in the more awful present. The helm was put down, the schooner flew up into the wind, and sheered close past a mass of leaping, roaring foam, the sight of which would have caused the stoutest heart to quail. "Keep her close hauled," shouted Job, who stood on the heel of the bowsprit looking out ahead. "D'ye think it's the North Foreland?" asked Bunks, who stood beside him. "I s'pose it is," said Job, "but how it comes to be on our lee bow, with the wind as it is, beats me out and out. Anyhow, I'll keep her well off the land,--mayhap run for the coast of Norway. They're not so partikler about inquiries there, I'm told." "I'll tell ye what it is, Bunks," said Tommy, who had gone forward and overheard the last observation, but could not bring himself to speak to Job, "you may depend on it we're out of our course; as sure as you stand there the breakers we have just passed are the north end of the Goodwin Sands. If we carry on as we're going now, and escape the sands, we'll find ourselves on the coast o' France, or far down the Channel in the morning." "Thank'ee for nothin'," said Job, with a sneer; "next time ye've got to give an opinion wait till it's axed for, an' keep well out o' the reach o' my arm, if ye don't want to keep company with the skipper." Tommy made no reply to this. He did not even look as if he had heard it; but, addressing himself to Bunks, repeated his warning. Bunks was disposed to attach some weight to it at first, but as the compass was destroyed he had no means of ascertaining the truth of what was said, and as Job laughed all advice to scorn, and had taken command of the vessel, he quietly gave in. They soon passed the breakers, and went away with the lee-gunwale dipping in the water right down the Channel. Feeling relieved from immediate danger, the murderer once more attempted to catch Tommy, but without success. He then went below, and soon after came on deck with such a flushed face and wild unsteady gaze, that it was evident to his companions he had been at the spirit locker. Jim was inclined to rebel now, but he felt that Job was more than a match for him and Bunks. Besides, he was the best seaman of the three. "Don't 'ee think we'd better close-reef the tops'l?" said Bunks, as Job came on deck; "if you'll take the helm, Jim and me will lay out on the yard." There was truly occasion for anxiety. During the last hour the gale had increased, and the masts were almost torn out of the little vessel, as she drove before it. To turn her side to the wind would have insured her being thrown on her beam-ends. Heavy seas were constantly breaking over the stern, and falling with such weight on the deck that Tommy expected to see them stove in and the vessel swamped. In other circumstances the boy would have been first to suggest reefing the sails, and first to set the example, but he felt that his life depended that night (under God) on his watchfulness and care. "Reef tops'l!" cried Job, looking fiercely at Bunks, "no, we shan't; there's one reef in't, an' that's enough." Bunks shuddered, for he saw by the glare of the murderer's eyes that the evil deed, coupled with his deep potations, had driven him mad. "P'raps it is," said Bunks, in a submissive voice; "but it may be as well to close reef, 'cause the weather don't seem like to git better." Job turned with a wild laugh to Tommy: "Here, boy, go aloft and reef tops'l; d'ye hear?" Tommy hesitated. "If you don't," said Job, hissing out the words in the extremity of his passion, and stopping abruptly, as if unable to give utterance to his feelings. "Well, what if I don't?" asked the boy sternly. "Why, then--ha! ha! ha!--why, I'll do it myself." With another fiendish laugh Job sprang into the rigging, and was soon out upon the topsail-yard busy with the reef points. "Why, he's _shakin' out_ the reef," cried Jim in alarm. "I've half a mind to haul on the starboard brace, and try to shake the monster into the sea!" Job soon shook out the reef, and, descending swiftly by one of the backstays, seized the topsail-halyards. "Come, lay hold," he cried savagely. But no one would obey, so, uttering a curse upon his comrades, he passed the rope round a stanchion, and with his right hand partially hoisted the sail, while with his left he hauled in the slack of the rope. The vessel, already staggering under much too great a press of canvas, now rushed through the water with terrific speed; burying her bows in foam at one moment, and hurling off clouds of spray at the next as she held on her wild course. Job stood on the bowsprit, drenched with spray, holding with one hand to the forestay, and waving the other high above his head, cheering and yelling furiously as if he were daring the angry sea to come on, and do its worst. Jim, now unable to speak or act from terror, clung to the starboard bulwarks, while Bunks stood manfully at the helm. Tommy held on to the mainmast shrouds, and gazed earnestly and anxiously out ahead. Thus they flew, they knew not whither, for several hours that night. Towards morning, a little before daybreak, the gale began to moderate. Job's mood had changed. His wild yelling fit had passed away, and he now ranged about the decks in moody silence, like a chained tiger; going down every now and then to drink, but never resting for a moment, and always showing by his looks that he had his eye on Tommy Bogey. The poor boy knew this well, and watched him intently the whole of that terrible night. Bunks, who had never once quitted his post, began to yawn, and suggested to Jim that he might take a spell at the helm now, when the progress of the schooner was suddenly arrested with a shock so violent that those on board were hurled prostrate on the deck, the fore-topmast snapped and went over the side, carrying the main-topmast and the jib-boom along with it, and the sea made a clean breach over the stern, completely sweeping the deck. Job, who chanced to have gone down below, was hurled against the cabin bulkhead, and the glass bottle he held to his lips was shivered to atoms. With his face cut and bleeding he sprang up the companion-ladder. "On the rocks!" he shouted. "On the sand, anyhow," answered Bunks. "The boat! the boat! she won't last ten minutes," cried Jim. One of the two boats belonging to the "Butterfly" had been washed away by the last wave, the other remained in its place. To this the three men rushed, and launched it quickly into the water. Job was first to get into it. "Jump in, jump in," he cried to the others, who were prompt enough to obey. Tommy Bogey stood motionless and silent close to the main-mast. His face was very pale; but a stern pursing of the lips and compression of the eyebrows showed that it was not cowardly fear that blanched his cheek. "The boy! the boy!" cried Bunks, as Job let go his hold of the schooner. A wild stern laugh from Job showed that he had made up his mind to leave Tommy to perish. "Shame!" cried Jim, seizing one of the oars; "pull, Bunks, pull to wind'ard a bit; we'll drop down and save him yet. Pull, you murderer!" shouted Jim, with a burst of anger so sudden and fierce that Job was cowed. He sat down and obeyed. The boat was very small, and might have been easily pulled by so strong a crew in ordinary circumstances; but the strength of wind and sea together was so great, that they were in great danger of being swamped, and it required their utmost efforts to pull a few yards to windward of the schooner. "Now then, look out!" cried Jim, endeavouring to turn the boat. As he said this a wave caught its side and upset it. The men uttered a loud cry; a moment later, and they were swept against the bow of the "Butterfly." Tommy had sprung to the side, caught up a rope, and cast it over. Bunks did not see it; he made a wild grasp at the smooth wet side of the vessel, but his hands found nothing to lay hold of, and he was carried quickly away to leeward. Jim caught the rope, but was brought up so suddenly by it that it was torn from his grasp. He also went to leeward and perished. Job had caught hold of the cutwater, and, digging his fingers into the wood, held on by main strength for a few minutes. "Here, lay hold o' the rope," cried Tommy, whose only desire now was to save the life of the wretched man; "there, don't you feel it?" He had rubbed the rope against Job's face in order to let him know it was there, but the man seemed to have lost all power to move. He simply maintained his death-grip until his strength gave way. Tommy understood his case, and looked quickly round for one of those ring-shaped lifebuoys which we are accustomed to see in our passenger steamers tied up so securely that they would in most cases of sudden emergency be utterly useless. But the owners of the "Butterfly" were economists. They did not think life-preserving worth the expenditure of a few shillings, so there was no lifebuoy to be found. There was a round cork fender, however, which the boy seized and flung into the sea, just as Job's grasp loosened. He uttered a wild shriek, and tossed up his arms imploringly, as he was carried away. The buoy fell close beside him, and he caught it. But it was scarce sufficient to sustain his weight, and merely prolonged the agonising struggle. Tommy soon lost sight of him in the darkness. Soon after there arose a wild fierce cry, so loud and strong that it seemed to have been uttered at the boy's elbow. Tommy shuddered, for it suggested the idea of a despairing soul. He listened intently, and twice again that thrilling cry broke on his ear, but each time more faintly. Still he continued to listen for it with a feeling of horror, and once or twice fancied that he heard it rising above the turmoil of wind and waves. Long before he ceased to listen in expectancy, the murderer's dead body lay tossing in that great watery grave in which so many of the human race--innocent and guilty alike--lie buried. Ere long Tommy was called to renewed exertion and trial. The tide happened to be rising when the schooner struck. While the incidents above related were taking place, the "Butterfly" was being dashed on the sand so violently, that her breaking up in the course of a short time was a matter of certainty. Tommy knew this well, but he did not give way to despair. He resolved not to part with his young life without a struggle, and therefore cast about in his mind what was best to be done. His first idea was to construct a raft. He had just begun this laborious work when the rising tide lifted the schooner over the sand-bank, and sent her off into deep water. This raised Tommy's hopes and spirits to an unnaturally high pitch; he trimmed the foresail--the only one left--as well as he could, and then, seizing the tiller, kept the vessel running straight before the wind. Standing thus at the helm he began to reflect on his position, and the reflection did not tend to comfort him. He was out in a gale on the stormy sea, without companions, without compass to guide him, and steering he knew not whither--possibly on rocks or shoals. This latter idea induced him to attempt to lie-to till day-break, but the crippled condition of the schooner rendered this impossible. There was nothing for it, therefore, but to run before the gale. In a short time his attention was attracted to a peculiar sound in the hold. On examination he found that the vessel had sprung a leak, and that the water was rising slowly but steadily. The poor boy's heart sank, and for the first time his courage began to give way; but quickly recovering himself he lashed the helm in position, and manfully set to work at the pump. He was somewhat relieved to find that the leak was small. In an hour he had pumped out nearly all the water. Then he returned to the helm and rested there for an hour, at the end of which the water in the hold had increased so much that he had to ply the pump again. The day broke while he was thus engaged, but the morning was so thick that he could see no land. On returning to the helm the second time, Tommy felt that this state of things could not go on much longer. The excitement, the watching, the horrors of the past night were beginning to tell on him. His muscles were exhausted, and he felt an irresistible desire to sleep. He struggled against this till about noon, by which time the wind had moderated to a steady breeze, and the sun shone through the mist as if to cheer him up a little. He had eaten nothing for many hours, as he did not dare to quit his post to go below for food, lest the schooner should come suddenly on some other vessel and be run down. Hunger and exhaustion, however, soon rendered him desperate; he ran below, seized a handful of biscuit, filled a can with water, and returned hastily on deck to break his fast. It was one of the sweetest meals he ever ate, and refreshed him so much that he was able to go on alternately steering and pumping till late in the afternoon. Then he suddenly broke down. Exhausted nature could bear up no longer. He lashed the helm, pumped out the water in the hold for the last time, and went below to rest. He was half asleep as he descended the companion-ladder. A strange and sad yet dreamy feeling that everything he did was "for the last time," weighed heavily on his spirit, but this was somehow relieved by the knowledge that he was now at last about to _rest_! There was delight in that simple thought, though there mingled with it a feeling that the rest would terminate in death; he lay down to sleep with a feeling that he lay down to die, and a half-formed prayer escaped his lips as his wearied head fell upon the pillow. Instantly he was buried in deep repose. The sun sank in the ocean, the stars came out and spangled all the sky, and the moon rose and sank again, but Tommy lay, regardless of everything, in profound slumber. Again the sun arose on a sea so calm that it seemed like oil, ascended into the zenith, and sank towards its setting. Still the boy continued to sleep, his young head resting quietly on the pillow of the dead skipper; his breath coming gently and regularly through the half-opened lips that smiled as if he were resting in peace on his mother's bosom. Being dashed on the rocks, or run into by steamers, or whelmed in the waves, were ideas that troubled him not, or, if they did, they were connected only with the land of dreams. Thus the poor boy rested calmly in the midst of danger--yet in safety, for the arm of God was around him. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. THE ANTIPODES. A new scene breaks upon us now, patient reader. We are among the antipodes in that vast and wonderful region where the kangaroo reigns in the wilderness, and gold is sown broadcast in the land. The men we see are, to a large extent, the same men we saw before leaving the shores of Old England, but they are wonderfully changed! Red flannel shirts, long boots, leathern belts, felt hats, and unshorn chins meet us at every turn; so do barrows and pick-axes and shovels. It seems as if we had got into a region inhabited solely by navvies. Many of them, however, appear to be very gentlemanly navvies! There are no ladies here; scarcely any females at all, for we have left the thriving settlements of Australia far behind us, and are now wandering over the Daisy Hill gold-diggings. The particular section of that busy spot to which our attention is directed at this moment, is named the "Kangaroo Flats." None but strong men can get on here. Let us go forward, and see how they obtain this yellow metal that turns the world upside down! Here is a man issuing from a hole in the earth close at our feet, like a huge ground-squirrel. He is tall; stout, and fair, with broad shoulders and a fine manly countenance, which is ornamented by a thick beard and moustache of glossy yellow hair. The silken curly hair of this man, contrasted with his great size and manliness, is very striking. He seats himself on a mass of clay, wipes the perspiration from his forehead, and shouts to some one down in the earth. "Hallo! Jack, let's hoist out the stuff now." "Ay, ay, Harry," replies a strong voice, with a sailor-like ring in it, from below, "I'll be on deck in a jiffy." Let us descend and look at this miner. The hole is narrow and deep; at the bottom of it is a dark tunnel two feet broad, between two and three feet high, and twenty-five feet long. At the farther extremity of it crouches a man with a pickaxe in his hands, and a candle beside him. It is a very awkward position in which to work, and the result is that this man pants and blows and sighs, and sometimes laughs quietly to himself at the comicality of his attitudes, while the perspiration pours over his face in large beads continuously. It seems very hard work, and so, indeed, it is, but the man is an unusually big and strong fellow, larger even than his fair companion above ground. His hair is short, black, and curly, as are his beard and whiskers, but at this moment his whole head and face are so besmeared with clay that his aspect is piebald and not more becoming than his attitude. Still, there is a massive grandeur in the outline of his features which cannot be destroyed by incrustations of clay, although his complexion is obscured by it. Like his comrade above, his costume consists of flannel shirt, dark trousers, and big boots. His shirt sleeves being rolled up to the shoulders, display a pair of arms that a sculptor might gaze on with admiration. This strong man pants and gasps more than ever with the heat as he drives the pick and tears up the earth for gold. Presently the candle burns dim; the air is getting foul. "Hallo, the candle's going out!" cries the dark miner, scrambling towards the bottom of the shaft on his hands and knees. "Ha! time to take a mouthful o' fresh air, Jack," remarks the fair miner, looking into the hole. In another moment a wild dishevelled clay-bespattered figure comes to the surface, rises like a giant out of the earth, and the countenance and proportions of our friend John Bax are revealed, in spite of the strange costume and black moustache and beard and incrustations of clay which more than half disguise him. "Whew! how hot it is," said Bax, as he stepped out of the hole. "You may say that," observed his friend, rising; "but come along, Jack, let's get up the stuff and wash out as much as we can before dinner. Mind, you've got to write home this afternoon, and won't be able to help me much in the evening." "Come along then," said Bax, going to work again with redoubled energy. There was a windlass over the hole by which the clay was raised to the surface. Bax wrought at this, and his mate went below to fill the buckets. Then they washed it out, and flooded away cartloads of worthless soil, until a small residue of clear shining particles remained behind. This they gathered carefully together, added it to the bag that held their fortune, remarked that there were "no nuggets this time," and that it was "hard work and little pay;" after which they flung down their tools, washed their hands and faces, and went into their tent to dine. Thus did Bax and his mate (an old acquaintance unexpectedly met with after arrival in Australia) dig, and sweat, and toil for gold. But Bax and his friend worked thus hard, only because it was their nature so to work at whatever their hands found to do. They had not set their hearts upon the gold. After dinner Harry went out to drive his pick and shovel. Bax remained in the tent to drive the quill. That night the two friends lay chatting and smoking in their tent after supper, with a solitary candle between them, and the result of the day's work--a small pile of shining dust--before them. "We'll not make our fortunes at this rate," observed Harry, with a sigh. "There's no saying what good fortune may be in store for us," observed Bax; "but put away the gold, it will do us no good to gaze at it." Harry rolled the little heap in a piece of paper, and tossed it into the leathern bag which contained their earnings. "Come now," said he, replenishing his pipe, "let's hear the letter, Bax, who d'ye say's the friend you've written to?" "He's a boy," said Bax, "Tommy Bogey by name, of which name, by the way, he has no reason to be proud--but he's a first-rate fellow, and I fear will have set me down as a faithless friend, for I left him without saying good-bye, and the letter I wrote to him on my arrival here went to the bottom with the unfortunate ship that carried it. However, here is the epistle. I'm open to correction, Harry, if you think any part of it not ship-shape." "All right," said Harry, "go ahead." Bax read as follows:-- "Kangaroo Flats, Daisy Hill Diggings, "Australia, _10th January_, 18--. "MY DEAR TOMMY,--The mail is just about to leave us, so I write to let you know where I am and what doing--also to tell you that I have just heard of the wreck of the ship that conveyed my first letter to you, which will account for my _apparent_ neglect. "Gold digging is anything but a paying affair, I find, and it's the hardest work I've ever had to do. I have only been able to pay my way up to this time. Everything is fearfully dear. After deducting the expenses of the last week for cartage, sharpening picks, etcetera, I and my mate have just realised 15 shillings each; and this is the first week we have made anything at all beyond what was required for our living. However, we live and work on in the hope of turning up a nugget, or finding a rich claim, singing--though we can't exactly believe--`There's a good time coming.'" Here Bax paused. "I won't read the next paragraph," said he, with a smile, "because it's about yourself, Harry, so I'll skip." Nevertheless, reader, as we wish _you_ to hear that passage, we will make Bax read on. "My mate, Harry Benton, is an old schoolfellow, whom I met with accidentally in Melbourne. We joined at once, and have been together ever since. I hope that nothing may occur to part us. You would like him, Tommy. You've no idea what a fine, gentle, lion-like fellow he is, with a face like a true, bold man in expression, and like a beautiful woman in form. I'm not up to pen-and-ink description, Tommy, but I think you'll understand me when I say he's got a splendid figure-head, a strong frame, and a warm heart. "Poor fellow, he has had much sorrow since he came out here. He is a widower, and brought out his little daughter with him, an only child, whose sweet face was once like sunshine in our tent. Not long ago this pretty flower of the desert sickened, drooped, and died, with her fair head on her father's bosom. For a long time afterwards Harry was inconsolable; but he took to reading the Bible, and the effect of that has been wonderful. We read it regularly every night together, and no one can tell what comfort we have in it, for I too have had sorrow of a kind which you could not well understand, unless I were to go into an elaborate explanation. I believe that both of us can say, in the words of King David, `It was good for me that I was afflicted.' "I should like _very_ much that you and he might meet. Perhaps you may one of these days! But, to go on with my account of our life and doings here." (It was at this point that Bax continued to read the letter aloud.) "The weather is tremendously warm. It is now (10th January) the height of summer, and the sun is unbearable; quite as hot as in India, I am told; especially when the hot winds blow. Among other evils, we are tormented with thousands of fleas. Harry stands them worse than I do," ("untrue!" interrupted Harry), "but their cousins the flies are, if possible, even more exasperating. They resemble our own house flies in appearance--would that they were equally harmless! Myriads of millions don't express their numbers more than ten expresses the number of the stars. They are the most persevering brutes you ever saw. They creep into your eyes, run up your nose, and plunge into your mouth. Nothing will shake them off, and the mean despicable creatures take special advantage of us when our hands are occupied in carrying buckets of gold-dust, or what, alas! ought to be gold-dust, but isn't! On such occasions we shake our heads, wink our eyes, and snort and blow at them, but all to no purpose--there they stick and creep, till we get our hands free to attack them. "A change must be coming over the weather soon, for while I write, the wind is blowing like a gale out of a hot oven, and is shaking the tent, so that I fear it will come down about my ears. It is a curious fact that these hot winds always blow from the north, which inclines me to think there must be large sandy deserts in the interior of this vast continent. We don't feel the heat through the day, except when we are at the windlass drawing up the pipeclay, or while washing our `stuff,' for we are generally below ground `driving.' But, although not so hot as above, it is desperately warm there too, and the air is bad. "Our drives are two and a half feet high by about two feet broad at the floor, from which they widen a little towards the top. As I am six feet three in my stockings, and Harry is six feet one, besides being, both of us, broader across the shoulders than most men, you may fancy that we get into all sorts of shapes while working. All the `stuff' that we drive out we throw away, except about six inches on the top where the gold lies, so that the quantity of mullock, as we call it, or useless material hoisted out is very great. There are immense heaps of it lying at the mouth of our hole. If we chose to liken ourselves to gigantic moles, we have reason to be proud of our mole-hills! All this `stuff' has to be got along the drives, some of which are twenty-five feet in length. One of us stands at the top, and hoists the stuff up the shaft in buckets. The other sits and fills them at the bottom. "This week we have taken out three cart-loads of washing stuff, which we fear will produce very little gold. Of course it is quite dark in the drives, so we use composition candles. Harry drives in one direction, I in another, and we hammer away from morning till night. The air is often bad, but not explosive. When the candles burn low and go out, it is time for us to go out too and get fresh air, for it makes us blow terribly, and gives us sore eyes. Three-fourths of the people here are suffering from sore eyes; the disease is worse this season than it has been in the memory of the oldest diggers. "We have killed six or seven snakes lately. They are very numerous, and the only things in the country we are absolutely _afraid_ of! You have no idea of the sort of dread one feels on coming slap upon one unexpectedly. Harry put his foot on one yesterday, but got no hurt. They are not easily seen, and their bite is always fatal. "From all this you will see that a gold-digger's life is a hard one, and worse than that, it does not pay well. However, I like it in the meantime, and having taken it up, I shall certainly give it a fair trial. "I wish you were here, Tommy; yet I am glad you are not. To have you and Guy in the tent would make our party perfect, but it would try your constitutions I fear, and do you no good mentally, for the society by which we are surrounded is anything but select. "But enough of the gold-fields. I have a lot of questions to ask and messages to send to my old friends and mates at Deal." At this point the reading of the letter was interrupted by an uproar near the tent. High above the noise the voice of a boy was heard in great indignation. For a few minutes Bax and his friend did not move; they were too much accustomed to scenes of violence among the miners to think of interfering, unless things became very serious. "Come, Bill, let him alone," cried a stern voice, "the lad's no thief, as you may see if you look in his face." "I don't give a straw for looks and faces," retorted Bill, who seemed to have caused the uproar, "the young rascal came peeping into my tent, and that's enough for me." "What!" cried the boy, in an indignant shout, "may I not search through the tents to find a friend without being abused by every scoundrel who loves his gold so much that he thinks every one who looks at him wants to steal it? Let me go, I say!" At the first words of this sentence Bax started up with a look of intense surprise. Before it was finished he had seized a thick stick, and rushed from the tent, followed by his mate. In two seconds they reached the centre of a ring of disputants, in the midst of which a big, coarse-looking miner held by the collar the indignant lad, who proved to be an old and truly unexpected acquaintance. "Bax!" shouted the boy. "Tommy Bogey!" exclaimed Bax. "Off your hands," cried Bax, striding forward. The miner, who was a powerful man, hesitated. Bax seized him by the neck, and sent him head over heels into his own tent, which stood behind him. "Serves him right!" cried one of the crowd, who appeared to be delighted with the prospect of a row. "Hear, hear!" echoed the rest approvingly. "Can it be _you_, Tommy?" cried Bax, grasping the boy by both arms, and stooping to gaze into his face. "Found you at last!" shouted Tommy, with his eyes full and his face flushed by conflicting emotions. "Come into the tent," cried Bax, hastening away and dragging his friend after him. Tommy did not know whether to laugh or cry. His breast was still heaving with recent indignation, and his heart was bursting with present joy; so he gave utterance to a wild hysterical cheer, and disappeared behind the folds of his friend's tent, amid the cheers and laughter of the miners, who thereafter dispersed quietly to their several places of abode. "Tommy," said Bax, placing the boy directly in front of him, on a pile of rough coats and blankets, and staring earnestly into his face, "I don't believe it's you! I'm dreaming, that's what I am, so the sooner you pinch me out of this state the better." It were vain to attempt to give the broken and disjointed converse that here took place between the two friends. After a time they became more rational and less spasmodic in their talk, and Tommy at last condescended to explain the way in which he had managed to get there. "But before I begin," said he, "tell me who's your friend?" He turned as he spoke to Harry, who, seated on a provision cask, with a pleasant smile on his handsome face and a black pipe in his mouth, had been enjoying the scene immensely. "Ah! true, I forgot; this is my mate, Harry Benton, an old school-fellow. You'll know more of him and like him better in course of time." "I hope he will," said Harry, extending his hand, which Tommy grasped and shook warmly, "and I hope to become better acquainted with you, Tommy, though in truth you are no stranger to me, for many a night has Bax entertained me in this tent with accounts of your doings and his own, both by land and sea. Now go on, my boy, and explain the mystery of your sudden appearance here." "The prime cause of my appearance is the faithlessness of Bax," said Tommy. "Why did you not write to me?" When it was explained that Bax had written by a vessel which was wrecked, the boy was mollified; and when the letter which had just been written was handed to him, he confessed that he had judged his old friend hastily. Thereafter he related succinctly his adventures in the "Butterfly" up to the point where we left him sound asleep in the skipper's berth. "How long I slept," said Tommy, continuing the narrative, "I am not quite sure; but it must have been a longish time, for it was somewhere in a Tuesday when I lay down, and it was well into a Thursday when I got up, or rather was knocked up by the bow of a thousand-ton ship! It was a calm evening, with just a gentle breeze blowin' at the time, and a little hazy. The look out in the ship did not see the schooner until he was close on her; then he yelled `hard-a-lee!' so I was told, for I didn't hear it, bein', as I said, sound asleep. But I heard and felt what followed plain enough. There came a crash like thunder. I was pitched head-foremost out o' the berth, and would certainly have got my neck broken, but for the flimsy table in the cabin, which gave way and went to pieces under me, and thus broke my fall. I got on my legs, and shot up the companion like a rocket. I was confused enough, as you may suppose, but I must have guessed at once what was wrong--perhaps the rush of water told it me--for I leaped instantly over the side into the sea to avoid being sucked down by the sinking vessel. Down it went sure enough, and I was so near it that in spite of my struggles I was carried down a long way, and all but choked. However, up I came again like a cork. You always said I was light-headed, Bax, and I do believe that was the reason I came up so soon! "Well, I swam about for ten minutes or so, when a boat rowed up to the place. It had been lowered by the ship that ran me down. I was picked up and taken aboard, and found that she was bound for Australia! "Ha! that just suited you, I fancy," said Bax. "Of course it did, but that's not all. Who d'ye think the ship belonged to? You'll never guess;--to your old employers, Denham, Crumps, and Company! She is named the `Trident,' after the one that was lost, and old Denham insisted on her sailing on a Friday. The sailors said she would be sure to go to the bottom, but they were wrong, for we all got safe to Melbourne, after a very good voyage. "Well, I've little more to tell now. On reaching Melbourne I landed--" "Without a sixpence in your pocket?" asked Bax. "By no means," said Tommy, "I had five golden sovereigns sewed up in the waist-band of my trousers, not to mention a silver watch like a saucepan given to me by old Jeph at parting, and a brass ring that I got from Bluenose! But it's wonderful how fast this melted away in Melbourne. It was half gone before I succeeded in finding out what part of the country you had gone to. The rest of it I paid to a party of miners, who chanced to be coming here, for leave to travel and feed with them. They left me in the lurch, however, about two days' walk from this place; relieving me of the watch at parting, but permitting me to keep the ring as a memorial of the pleasant journey we had had together! Then the rascals left me with provisions sufficient for one meal. So I came on alone; and now present myself to you half-starved and a beggar!" "Here is material to appease your hunger, lad," said Harry Benton, with a laugh, as he tossed a mass of flour cake, known among diggers as "damper," towards the boy. "And here," added Bax, pitching a small bag of gold-dust into his lap, "is material to deliver you from beggary, at least for the present. As for the future, Tommy, your own stout arms must do the rest. You'll live in our tent, and we'll make a gold-digger of you in a couple of days. I could have wished you better fortune, lad, but as you have managed to make your way to this out-o'-the-way place, I suppose you'll want to remain." "I believe you, my boy!" said Tommy, with his mouth full of damper. So Tommy Bogey remained with his friends at the Kangaroo Flats, and dug for gold. For several years they stuck to the laborious work, during which time they dug up just enough to keep themselves in food and clothing. They were unlucky diggers. Indeed, this might have been said of most of the diggers around them. Those who made fortunes, by happening to find rich spots of ground, were very few compared with the host of those who came with light hearts, hoping for heavy pockets, and went away with heavy hearts and light pockets. We shall not follow the fortunes of those three during their long period of exile. The curtain was lifted in order that the Reader might take a glance at them in the far-off land. They are a pleasant trio to look upon. They do not thirst feverishly for the precious metal as many do. Their nightly reading of the Word saves them from that. Nevertheless, they work hard, earn little, and sleep soundly. As we drop the curtain, they are still toiling and moiling, patiently, heartily, and hopefully, for gold. CHAPTER NINETEEN. DENHAM LONGS FOR FRESH AIR, AND FINDS IT. There came a day, at last, in which foul air and confinement, and money-making, began to tell on the constitution of Mr Denham; to disagree with him, in fact. The rats began to miss him, occasionally, from Redwharf Lane, at the wonted hour, and, no doubt, gossiped a good deal on the subject over their evening meals, after the labours and depredations of the day were ended! They observed too (supposing them to have been capable of observation), that when Mr Denham did come to his office, he came with a pale face and an enfeebled step; also with a thick shawl wrapped round his neck. These peculiarities were so far taken advantage of by the rats that they ceased to fly with their wonted precipitancy when his step was heard, and in course of time they did not even dive into their holes as in former days, but sat close to them and waited until the merchant had passed, knowing well that he was not capable of running at them. One large young rat in particular--quite a rattling blade in his way--at length became so bold that he stood his ground one forenoon, and deliberately stared at Mr Denham as he tottered up to the office-door. We notice this fact because it occurred on the memorable day when Mr Denham admitted to himself that he was breaking down, and that something must be done to set him up again. He thought, as he sat at his desk, leaning his head on his right hand, that sea-air might do him good, and the idea of a visit to his sister at Deal flitted across his mind; but, remembering that he had for many years treated that sister with frigid indifference, and that he had dismissed her son Guy harshly and without sufficient reason from his employment a few years ago, he came to the conclusion that Deal was not a suitable locality. Then he thought of Margate and Ramsgate, and even ventured to contemplate the Scotch Highlands, but his energy being exhausted by illness, he could not make up his mind, so he sighed and felt supremely wretched. Had there been any one at his elbow, to suggest a plan of some sort, and urge him to carry it out, he would have felt relieved and grateful. But plans for our good are usually suggested and urged by those who love us, and Denham, being a bachelor and a misanthrope, happened to have no one to love him. He was a very rich man--very rich indeed; and would have given a great deal of gold at that moment for a very small quantity of love, but love is not a marketable commodity. Denham knew that and sighed again. He felt that in reference to this thing he was a beggar, and, for the first time in his life, experienced something of a beggar's despair. While he sat thus, musing bitterly, there came a tap at the door. "Come in." The tapper came in, and presented to the astonished gaze of Mr Denham the handsome face and figure of Guy Foster. "I trust you will forgive my intrusion, uncle," said Guy in apologetic tones, as he advanced with a rather hesitating step, "but I am the bearer of a message from my mother." Denham had looked up in surprise, and with a dash of sternness, but the expression passed into one of sadness mingled with suffering. He pointed to a chair and said curtly, "Sit down," as he replaced his forehead on his hand, and partially concealed his haggard face. "I am deeply grieved, dear uncle," continued Guy, "to see you looking so very ill. I do sincerely hope--" "Your message?" interrupted Denham. "My mother having heard frequently of late that you are far from well, and conceiving that the fresh air of Deal might do you good, has sent me to ask you to be our guest for a time. It would afford us very great pleasure, I assure you, uncle." Guy paused here, but Mr Denham did not speak. The kindness of the unexpected and certainly unmerited invitation, put, as it was, in tones which expressed great earnestness and regard, took him aback. He felt ill at ease, and his wonted self-possession forsook him. Probably much of this was owing to physical weakness. "Come, uncle," said Guy affectionately, "you won't refuse us? We all live together in the cottage now, but we don't quite fill it; there is still one room to spare, and my wife will be delighted to--" "Your wife!" exclaimed Denham in amazement. "Yes, uncle," replied Guy in some surprise. "Did you not get our cards?" Mr Denham rested his forehead again in his hand in some confusion, for he remembered having received a letter long ago, the address of which he knew to be in his nephew's hand, and supposing it to be an application to be taken back into the office, he had tossed it into the fire without opening it. Feeling much perplexed, he said--"Oh, ah,--what is the lady's name?" "Lucy Burton was her maiden name," said Guy; "she is the daughter of an Independent minister, who was formerly a scripture-reader in Ramsgate." "Humph!" ejaculated Denham. "Pray, may I ask what your profession is _now_?" "I am cashier in the office of a very intimate friend of ours--Mr Summers." "What! the house with which we do so much business?" "The same," said Guy with a smile; "but tell me, uncle, will you come and stay with us? _Do_ say you will, if it were only for a week or two." "I'll think of it, nephew." Mr Denham did think of it. More than that, he went, and said he would stay a week. He stayed a week, and found himself in such comfortable quarters that he resolved to stay a fortnight. He did so, and then agreed to remain a month. Finally, it became a standing joke with Bluenose, who was a frequent visitor at the cottage kitchen, that he (Denham) was no better than the play-actors, who were always at their "last week but one," and never could get any farther. But Mr Denham's health did not improve. He had imbibed so much tar and fog and filth through his nostrils that his constitution could not recover from the effects, and at last it began to dawn upon him that health was of greater value than gold; that the accumulation of wealth was not the main object for which man had been created; that there was a future in regard to which it would be well that he should now make some inquiries. Here Mr Denham turned by a sort of instinct to Amy Russell, whose face was like a beam of sunshine in Sandhill cottage, and whose labours among the poor and the afflicted showed that she regarded life in this world as a journey towards a better; as an opportunity of doing good; as a ladder leading to a higher and happier sphere. In regard to this sphere he (Denham) knew next to nothing--except, of course, intellectually. Mr Denham turned to the right quarter for comfort, and found it. Still the merchant's health did not improve, so his physicians recommended a sea-voyage. At an earlier period in his career he would as soon--sooner perhaps--have taken a balloon voyage, but sickness had taught him wisdom. He gave in; consented to take a passage in one of his own ships, the "Trident" (which had made several good voyages to Australia), and ere long was ploughing over the billows of the South Seas on his way to the antipodes. Such is life! Wonderful coincidences are of constant occurrence in this world. It chanced that in the same year that Mr Denham made up his mind to take a voyage to Australia and back, Bax and Tommy Bogey made up their minds to give up digging for gold, and return to their native land. Their companion, Harry Benton, preferred to remain in the colony. Bax and Tommy had only made enough to keep themselves alive in the gold-fields until their last year; but, during this year they had been more successful. They hit on a good "claim," worked it out, and cleared two thousand pounds! With this they resolved to retire, and push their fortunes at home. Believing that they could realise more by carrying their gold home in dust and nuggets than by selling it in the colony, they had it packed in boxes, and took it aboard ship along with them. The ship that chanced to be ready to sail for England at this time was the "Trident," and almost the first face they saw on going aboard was the well-known visage of Mr Denham! Sea air had done him good. He looked strong and well--comparatively. Bax and he started, and gazed in surprise on each other. "How are you?" said Denham with some stiffness of manner. "Thank you, very well," answered Bax. Then both men felt and looked a little awkward. "A-hem!" coughed Denham. "Hope you're well, sir?" said Bax. There was little in the words, but there was much in the tone in which this was said. Mr Denham advanced and held out his hand. Bax shook it warmly. They were sufficiently good friends during the whole of that voyage, although there was just enough of remembrance of former days in the breast of each to prevent anything like cordiality between them. The homeward voyage was prosperous. Favouring gales wafted them on their way. No storms arose to cause anxiety to the brave, or to terrify the timid, and few incidents worthy of notice occurred until after they had doubled the Cape of Good Hope. But soon after this they met with an adventure which deserves record. CHAPTER TWENTY. A FIRE AT SEA. On the troubled breast of the Atlantic, a little to the southward of that great collection of sea-weed, known by the name of the Sargasso Sea, lay a large ship. She was in distress, for her flag was hoisted with the Union Jack down. The nature of her distress was apparent from a column of thick smoke that issued from the fore-hatch. The most terrible of all calamities had befallen her--she was on fire! That she was an emigrant ship was apparent from the great number of human beings--men, women, and children--who crowded her decks. Before the fire broke out she had weathered a severe gale, the effects of which had not yet passed away, for, although there was little wind, the waves were still high, and the burning ship rolled and plunged heavily. How the fire originated no one could tell, but the instant it was discovered, the captain, who was a brave and able man, took prompt measures for its extinction. But his utmost efforts failed of success, because (the old story) there was _no suitable machinery on board for the extinction of fire_! The owners of this ship, however, were not, like too many, utterly regardless of human life. On the contrary they had done a great deal--much more than is done by many ship-owners--for the comfort and safety of those who had entrusted their lives to them. There were boats on board sufficient to carry the entire crew and passengers; and two of these were lifeboats. There was also a large supply of life-buoys and life-jackets; the latter being made of cork, in such a form that the wearers might be able to work in them without inconvenience. But in preparing the ship for sea, fire had not been sufficiently considered. There was no fire-engine aboard. Buckets there were, and these were plied with vigour, but, as we have said, without success. Finding that the fire continued to gain strength, the captain ordered the ship to be scuttled; in other words, to be flooded by opening the lower ports and letting the sea rush in. The ship was one of those old East Indiamen, which in former days carried guns and marines like our men-of-war. The ports were soon knocked out, and the sea burst in, foaming and splashing like a mill-race when the sluice is drawn as it swept towards the hold, carrying boxes, bulk-heads, loose furniture and all before it. When it poured in a mighty cataract into the hold, the terrified multitude that crowded the upper deck entertained the hope for a few minutes that the fire would certainly be put out. Their hope was quickly crushed, for the ship soon gave signs of being waterlogged and threatened to settle down, rendering it necessary to close the ports before the fire was subdued. A wail of despair rose, from them when this was done, for now they knew that the ship was doomed, and that death in two of its most appalling forms stared them in the face. The scene that followed was heart-rending. The more timid among the passengers lost self-command. Some fell on their knees, and with bitter cries implored God to have mercy on them. Others took passionate farewell of each other, or sat clinging to each other in the silence of despair. Many became frantic, rushed about the decks and tore their hair, and a few of the braver spirits moved calmly and silently about, doing anything that required to be done, or coolly making preparation for the last struggle. Among these last were several women, who, sustained by the Christian's hope, went about comforting their companions and calming the poor children. In some cases they became the centres of little groups of men and women, who listened intently while they read the word of God, or joined with them in prayer. Many cursing lips had become silent now, or tremblingly attempted to call on our Saviour, for the first time, _in earnest_. Meanwhile the officers and crew were not idle. Preparation was made to lower the boats. The lifebuoys and belts were got ready, and everything was done to facilitate the abandoning of the vessel before she should be utterly consumed. The ordinary ship's boats were converted into lifeboats by the simple contrivance of fastening small empty casks all round them under the seats, and a large-sized cask in the stern and bow of each. As the sea was still running high, the operation of lowering was a matter of difficulty and danger. The women and children were put into the first boat while it hung suspended at the davits. Two men stood by to detach the hooks that held the boat by the bow and stern the instant she should touch the water. This was the moment of danger; for, if one man should succeed in this and the other fail, the inevitable consequence would be that the stern or the bow of the boat would be jerked into the air, and the people in her hurled into the sea. Four boats were lowered and cast off in safety. The fifth, which contained men chiefly, with only two or three women and no children, was upset. The man in the bow could not detach his hook; it remained fast while the stern hook was cast off; and when the ship rose it hung suspended by the bow. Instantly the people in her were struggling in the waves. The captain, knowing that this might occur, had ordered a dozen of the strongest of his men to put on cork life-belts, and stand in the main chains to be in readiness. These at once leaped into the sea, and supported the people, until another boat was lowered for them. But a misfortune here befell them. While one of the boats was swinging it was dashed against the ship's side so violently as to be stove in and rendered useless. This accident happened also to another boat, so that, even by overloading those that remained, it would now be impossible to accommodate every one. In this dilemma, the captain at once gave orders to heave overboard all the spare spars and the hencoops, together with enough of cordage for the construction of a raft. This was promptly done, and the raft was sufficiently far advanced in the course of an hour to admit of the emigrants being placed upon it. It was during the formation of this raft that the great value of the life-belts became manifest. While the spars were in a loose and half-fastened state, the men were obliged to work in the water. To have done this without the support of the belts would have been very exhausting, almost impossible; but with their floating power the men could work with both hands, and move about almost as freely in the water as on land. The life-buoys were also of the greatest value at this time; for the burning ship became so hot, before the raft was ready, that the passengers were obliged to jump overboard and get upon it as they best could, or float about until there was room for them all. In these circumstances the buoys were the means of saving the lives of some who could not swim. It was late in the evening when the raft was commenced, and night was far advanced before it was completed. During all this time the boats remained close to it, after having hauled it a short distance from the burning ship, which latter was now a mass of flame from the deck to the mast-heads, rendering the whole scene as bright as day. After the rigging was consumed, and the masts had fallen over the side, the hull continued to burn, for a considerable time, with less flame but with a dull red glow that afforded sufficient light to the workers. It was fortunate the light lasted so long, for the night was so dark that it would otherwise have been almost impossible to have worked at the raft-- tossed and rolled about as it was by the heavy sea. It was a strange weird sight, that busy glowing scene of disaster out upon the black ocean at midnight; and wonderful--unaccountable--did it appear in the eyes of the night-watch on board the "Trident," as that ship came over the sea, ploughing up the water before a steady breeze which had sprung up soon after the sun went down. "What can it be?" said Mr Denham to the captain when they first observed the light on the horizon. "A steamer, perhaps," replied the captain. "No steamer ever spouted fire like that," said Bax, who was the only other passenger on deck, all the others having gone to rest; "the steamers on the American lakes and rivers do indeed spout sparks and flames of fire like giant squibs, but then they burn wood. Ocean steamers never flare up like that. I fear it is a ship on fire." "Think you so? Steer straight for it, captain," said Mr Denham, whose heart, under the influence of bad health, and, latterly, of considerable experience in the matter of human suffering, had become a little softer than it used to be. The ship's course was altered, and long before the wreck was reached her decks swarmed with men and women who had got up in haste at the first mention of the word "fire"--some of them with a confused notion that their own vessel was in danger! It was indeed a novel and terribly interesting sight to most of those on board the "Trident." At first they saw the burning vessel like a red meteor rising on the waves and disappearing in the hollows; then the flames grew fierce, and spread a halo round the doomed ship that shone out vividly against the surrounding darkness. This latter was rendered intensely deep by contrast with the light. Then the masts went over the side, and a bright volume of sparks and scattered tongues of flame shot up into, the sky, after which the hull shone like a glow-worm until they drew quite near. The busy workers at the raft were too anxiously intent on their occupation to observe the approach of the "Trident," whose black hull was nearly invisible, and whose small lanterns might well have been overlooked on such an occasion. "They don't see us," observed Mr Denham. This was abundantly evident. Within the circle of red light, they could see the raft and the boats floating close to it; the men in cork-jackets toiling in the water and on floating spars, with ropes, handspikes, and axes. It was not until the "Trident" herself came within the circle of light, and hove-to, with flapping sails, that the people in the boats became aware of her presence. Then, indeed, there arose a shout of joy such as could be uttered only by men and women snatched suddenly and unexpectedly from the very jaws of death. Again and again it burst forth, and was replied to by the people in the "Trident," many of whom were so excited by the scene, and so overjoyed at the thought of having come up in time to save so many human beings, that they burst into tears; while others went down on their knees and thanked God fervently. Seeing that the people were getting excited, and knowing that order must be preserved, if the work that lay before them was to be done speedily and without accident, the captain sprang into the rigging, ordered the women and children to go below, and assured the male passengers that if any of them showed a disposition to be obstinate or unruly they also should be ordered below. This had the desired effect. Order was at once restored, and the captain then called for volunteers from among the stoutest of those on board to go into the chains, and lift the women and children out of the boats. The appeal was responded to by all the strong men in the ship--foremost and, strongest among whom was our friend Bax. From among these the captain selected the men that seemed best able for the work they undertook to do; and this, be it understood, was no child's play. The state of the sea rendered it extremely difficult and dangerous to bring the boats alongside, heavily laden as they were with human beings. To get the men on board would be difficult enough, even although they would in most cases be able to spring, and lay hold of ropes, and otherwise help themselves; but to get out the women and children by such means was not to be thought of. The men of the "Trident" who had the strongest arms and chests were therefore sent into the chains, where they leaned forward in slings with outstretched arms, and whenever the boats sheered up close enough they caught the women or children in their vice-like grasp and dragged them on board. Bax, owing to his unusual strength and breadth of shoulders, was peculiarly fitted for this laborious duty. His long reach of arm enabled him to stretch far beyond the others, and in several instances he caught hold of and rescued women after his companions had failed. Thus a much larger portion of the work fell upon him than on any of the others. In this sort of work Tommy Bogey was of no use whatever; and severely did his youth and want of physical strength press upon his spirits that night, poor boy! But Tommy's nature would not allow him to sit down and do nothing. Feeling that he could not do manly work, he set himself with right good-will to womanly employment. He assisted in carrying the children below when they were handed over the side, helped to strip them, and brought dry clothing and blankets, besides doing an immense amount of what may be termed stewardess' work for the poor ladies. There were others on board who worked willingly and well, but none who were so ubiquitous as he; none who knew so thoroughly what to do and how to do it, and none, certainly, who did everything with such a superabundance of energy. Once or twice Tommy stopped in the middle of these occupations to see how Bax was getting on; for to his rather partial eyes it seemed that his friend was doing the whole work, and that everybody else was merely looking on! On one of these occasions he saw Bax sustaining the weight of an old man and a young woman. The girl was the old man's daughter; she had clung to him in the boat and refused to let him go, having lost self-command through terror. Ignorant of this, and observing that the old man could not help himself, Bax grasped him under the arms the first time he came within reach. The boat was immediately swept away by the passing wave, leaving the old man and the girl, who still clung with a death-like grasp to him, suspended in the air. Bax's great strength enabled him to support this double weight, but he could not draw them up. A comrade stooped to assist him, but the strain on the sling was so great that it gave way, and Bax, with his burden, fell into the sea like lead. Tommy saw this happen. There were plenty of loose ropes about. He seized the end of one and leaped overboard instantly. He sank for a second or two, and on coming to the surface looked hastily round. A hand was raised above the water near him. He knew it to be that of his friend, and struck out for it, but it disappeared. Again it rose, and there was a convulsive grasping of the fingers. Tommy made one stroke and placed the rope in it. The fingers closed like a vice. Next moment the ship rose and lifted Bax completely out of the water, with the old man and the girl still clinging to him. Before the ship sank again the boat sheered up, and they were all pulled into it! To leap on board the "Trident" again, and resume his position with a new and stronger sling, was comparatively easy work for Bax. Tommy clambered up, too, close behind him. Passing a strong rope round his friend's waist, he said quietly: "It won't do to risk that again." "True, Tommy," said Bax; "run below and fetch me a glass o' brandy, lad. That last plunge almost floored me." The boy leaped over the side and dived below. He reappeared in a few seconds with a tin can, with which he clambered over the side into the chains, and held it to his friend's lips. Bax drained it at a draught, and Tommy left him without another word. The whole of this scene was enacted with the utmost speed and energy. The spectators seemed to be paralysed with amazement at the quiet self-possession of the man and the boy, both of whom appeared to divine each other's thoughts, and to work into each other's hands with the precision and certainty of a machine; they did it all, too, as if they were entirely alone in the work. Until now they had been watched with breathless anxiety; but when Tommy gave Bax the can of brandy, and then gravely went below with a baby that had just been rescued in his arms, there arose a wild cheer of admiration, not unmingled with laughter, from those who had witnessed his conduct. But their attention was soon turned again to the boats, two of which still remained with their freight on the heaving water. Many incidents of a thrilling nature were enacted that night. One of the most interesting, perhaps, occurred soon after that which has just been related. In one of the boats was the young wife of an emigrant, who, having been compelled to separate from his wife and child when they left the burning ship in the first boat, had come alongside of the "Trident" in another boat. Being an active man, he had caught a rope and hauled himself on board some time before his wife was rescued. The poor young mother had tied her infant tightly to her bosom by means of a shawl, in order to make sure that she should share its fate, whatever that might be. When the boat sheered up alongside, her husband was standing in the chains, anxious to render her assistance. The woman chanced to come near to Bax, but not sufficiently so to grasp him. She had witnessed his great power and success in saving others, and a feeling of strong confidence made her resolve to be caught hold of by him, if possible. She therefore drew back from the grasp of a stout fellow who held out his brawny arms to her. Bax noticed this occur twice, and understood the poor woman's motive. Feeling proud of the confidence thus placed in him, he watched his opportunity. The boat surged up, but did not come near enough. It swept away from the ship, and the poor woman's hands played nervously about the folds of the shawl, as she tried to adjust them more securely round her infant. Again the boat rose on a wave; the woman stood ready, and Bax stooped. It did not come quite near enough, but the disappointed woman, becoming desperate, suddenly put her foot on the gunwale, stood up at full length, and stretched out her arms. Bax just caught her by the hands when the boat was swept from under her. Similar incidents had occurred so often that little anxiety was felt; but our hero's strength was now thoroughly exhausted. He could not haul her up, he could only hold on and shout for assistance. It was promptly rendered, but before the poor woman could be rescued the infant slipped from the shawl, which the straightening of the mother's arms and her suspended position had loosened. A cry burst from the agonised father, who stooped, and stood in the attitude of one ready to plunge into the sea. The mother felt the child slipping, and a piercing shriek escaped from her as she raised her knees and caught it between them. With muscular power, intensified by a mother's love, she held the infant in this strange position until both were drawn up and placed in safety on the deck! This was the last of Bax's achievements on that eventful night. He was so thoroughly worn out by the long-continued and tremendous exertions he had been called on to make, that his strength, great though it was, broke down. He staggered down into the cabin, flung himself, wet as he was, on a couch, and almost instantly fell into a sleep so deep that he could not be roused for more than a moment or two at a time. Seeing this, Tommy bade the bystanders leave him alone for a few minutes until he should come back, when, according to his own expression, "he would screw him up all right and tight!" Every one was by this time so thoroughly convinced that the boy was quite able to manage his friend that they stood still awaiting his return with much curiosity. Tommy soon returned with a tumbler of hot brandy and water, followed by the steward with a pile of blankets. "Hold that a minute," said the boy, handing the tumbler to a little old gentleman who stood swaying to and fro with the motion of the vessel, and staring at Bax as if he had been a half-drowned sea-monster. "Now, then," cried Tommy, punching his friend severely in the ribs, seizing the hair of his head with both hands, and shaking him until his neck seemed dislocated,--to the surprise of all and the horror of not a few! The result was that Bax grumbled angrily, half awoke, and raised himself on one elbow. "Drink, you tom-tit!" said the boy, catching the tumbler from the old gentleman, and applying it to his friend's lips. Bax smiled, drank, and fell back on the pillow with a deep sigh of satisfaction. Then Tommy spread blanket after blanket over him, and "tucked him in" so neatly and with such a business-like air, that two or three mothers then present expressed their admiration and wonder in audible whispers. While Bax was being thus carefully tended by Tommy and a knot of sympathisers, the passengers and crew vied with each other in making the rescued people as comfortable as circumstances would permit. Meanwhile the "Trident" was again laid on her course, and, thus crowded with human beings, steered before favouring breezes for the shores of old England. CHAPTER TWENTY ONE. MYSTERIOUS DOINGS. We return, now, to the coast of Kent, and beg the reader to follow us into the Smuggler's Cave at Saint Margaret's Bay. Here, in a dark corner, sat old Jeph. It was a stormy Sunday afternoon. The old man had gone to the Bay to visit Coleman, and accompany him to his place of worship. Jeph had wandered alone in the direction of the cave after church. He found that some one had recently cleared its mouth of the rubbish that usually filled it, and that, by bending low, he could gain an entrance. Being of an adventurous disposition, the old man went in, and, seating himself on a projecting rock in a dark corner, fell into a profound reverie. He was startled out of this by the sound of approaching footsteps. "Come in, come in," said a deep hoarse voice, which Jeph at once recognised as that of Long Orrick, his old enemy. "Come in, Nick; you seem to have got a'feer'd o' the dark of late. We'll be out o' sight here, and I'll amuse ye till this squall blows over with an account o' what I heer'd the old man say." "This squall, as ye call it, won't blow over so soon as ye think," replied Rodney Nick in a sulky tone. "Hows'ever, we may as well wait here as anywhere else; or die here for all that I care!" "Hallo! messmate, wot's ado that ye should go into the blues when we're on the pint o' making our fortins?" said Orrick. "Ado!" cried Rodney angrily, "is it not bad enough to be called messmate by _you_, and not be able to deny it?" "You're civil, anyhow," said Orrick, with an oath. "I mean to be," retorted Nick, fiercely. "Come, come, it's no use quarrelling," said Orrick, with an affectation of good-humour. "Never say die! Nick; them's the words o' the immortial Nelson, w'en he gave the signal to blaze away at Trafalgar. But sit ye down here on this rock, and I'll tell ye all about wot I see'd last night. Ye'd like to know, I dessay." "I'd like to have know'd sooner, if you had seen fit to tell me," said Rodney Nick, in a gruff tone. "Well, then, keep yer mind easy, and here goes. You know as how I chanced to hear old Jeph make an appointment with that young puppy, Guy Foster, to meet him at the darkest hour o' night at the tomb o' Mary Bax. Thinks I, it won't be for nothin' you're goin' to meet at sich an hour in sich a place, my hearties, so I'll go an' keep ye company in a _private_ way! "You may be sure I was up to time. Two hours did I wait in the ditch behind the tomb, and I can tell ye, Nick, it's desprit eerie work a-sittin' there all alone of a dark night, a-countin' of the beatins of yer 'art, an' thinkin' every shadow of the clouds is a ghost. Hows'ever, the old man came at last, and lies down flat on the grave, and begins to groan a bit. Arter that he takes to prayin', an', d'ye know, the way that old feller prays is a caution. The parsons couldn't hold a candle to him. Not that I ever heer'd ony of 'em, but I _s'pose_ they couldn't! "Well, he was cut short in the middle by the arrival of the puppy--." "Wot puppy?" inquired Rodney. "Guy, to be sure; ain't he the biggest puppy in Deal?" said Orrick. "Mayhap, but he ain't the _longest_," retorted Rodney; "go on." "Humph!--well, down sits Guy on the head o' the tombstone, and pats old Jeph on the shoulder. "`Here I am, Jeph; come now, what is it you are so anxious to tell me?' "The old man sat up: `I'm goin' to die,' says he. "`Nonsense,' cried the young 'un, in a cheerie tone, by way of "don't say that." `You're as tough as an old bo'sn. Come, that wasn't what you wanted to tell me, I'm sure.' "`Ay, but it was,' says the old man in sich an earnest voice that the young 'un was forced to become serious. `Listen, Guy,' he goes on, `I'm goin' to die, an' there's no one in this world as I've got to look after me.' "Guy was goin' to interrupt him at this point, but he laid his hand on his shoulder and bade him be silent. "`I've got no relations, Guy, except two,' says he, `an' I've no childer. I never married. The only girl I ever loved lies under the cold, cold sod. You know that I'm a poor man, an' the two relations I spoke of are rich--rich--ay, and they're fond o' money. Mayhap that's the reason they _are_ rich! Moreover, they know I've got the matter o' forty pounds or thereabouts, and I know that when I die they'll fight for it--small though it is, and rich though they be--and my poor fortune will either go to them or to the lawyers. Now, Guy, this must not be; so I want you to do me a kindness. I'm too old and frail to go about matters o' business, an' I never was good at wot they call business in my best days, so I want you to pay all my debts for me, and bring me the receipts.' "`I'll do it, Jeph,' said Guy, `and much more than that, if you'll only tell me how I can serve you; but you mustn't speak in that sorrowful way about dying.' "`Sorrowful!' cries the old man, quite surprised like; `bless your heart, I'm not sorrowful. Don't the Book say, "It's better to be absent from the body and present with the Lord?"' (ah, you may grin as you please, Nick, but I give ye the 'xact words o' the old hypocrite.) `No, no, Guy,' continued Jeph, `I'll be right glad to go; many a sad yet pleasant hour have I spent here, but I'm weary now, and would fain go, if the Lord will. Now, it's my opinion that I've just two weeks to live--' "`Jeph!' exclaimed Guy. "`Don't interrupt me, lad. I've got _two weeks to live_, so I want you to go and arrange about my funeral. Get a coffin made--I used to be six feet when I was young, but I dessay I'm shorter now--and get the undertaker to cast up beforehand wot it'll all come to, and pay him, and bring me the receipts. Will ye do this, lad?' "`I will, if you wish it, but--' "`If I didn't wish it I wouldn't ask it.' "`Well, Jeph,' said Guy, earnestly, `I _will_ do it.' "`Thank'ee, lad, thank 'ee. I know'd ye would, so I brought the money with me. Here it is--forty pounds all told; you'll pay for the things, and bring me the receipts, and _keep the rest and use it in the service of God_. I know I can trust you, lad, so that's enough. All I want is to prevent my small savin's goin' to the winds, or to those as don't need 'em; _you_ understand how to give it to those as do.'" "Is that all?" said Rodney Nick, impatiently. "No that's not all," replied his companion, "though if it _was_ all, it's a rather coorious fact, for which ye might thank me for takin' the trouble to tell you. But you're thankless by nature. It seems to me that nother you nor me's likely to trouble Guy Foster to look arter _our_ spare cash in that way! But that ain't the end o' my story yet." "What! you didn't rob 'em? eh! you didn't pitch into the `Puppy,' and ease him o' the shiners?" Rodney Nick said this with a sneer, for he was well aware that his boastful companion would not have risked a single-handed encounter with Guy on any consideration. "No, I didn't; it warn't worth the trouble," said Orrick, "but--you shall hear. Arter the old man had said his say, Guy asked him if that was all, for if it was, he didn't see no occasion to make no secret about it." "`No,' said the old man, `that's not all. I want you to take charge of a packet, and give it to Bax after I'm gone. No one must break the seal but Bax. Poor Bax, I'd thought to have seen him once again before I went. I'll leave the old house to him; it ain't worth much, but you can look arter it for him, or for Tommy Bogey, if Bax don't want it. Many a happy evening we've spent in it together. I wanted to give you the parcel here--here out on the dark Sandhills, where no one but God hears us. It's wonderful what a place the town is for eavesdroppin'! so I made you come out here. You must promise me never to open the packet unless you find that Bax is dead; _then_ you may open it, and do as you think fit. You promise me this?' "`I do,' said Guy, as the old man pulled a small packet, wrapped in brown paper, from his breast pocket, and put it into his hands. Then, they rose and went away together." "Well?" said Rodney Nick. "Well!" echoed Long Orrick, "wot then?" "What next? what d'ye want to do?" inquired Rodney. "Do," cried Orrick, "I mean to get hold o' that packet if I can, by fair means or by foul, _that's_ wot I mean to do, and I mean that you shall help me!" The reader may imagine what were the feelings of the poor old man as he sat in the dark corner of the cave listening to this circumstantial relation of his most secret affairs. When he heard Long Orrick's last words, and felt how utterly powerless he was in his weakness to counteract him in his designs, he could not prevent the escape of a deep groan. The effect on the two men was electrical. They sprang up, filled with superstitious horror, and fled precipitately from the cave. Old Jeph staggered out after them, and made for the cottage of his friend Coleman. The latter met him near the threshold. "Why, Jeph, is this you? I've bin searchin' for ye more than an hour, and come to the conclusion ye must ha' gone home; but why, you're ill, Jeph!" "Ay, I'm ill, come, help me home." "Nay, not this night, you shall stop with me; the missus'll give you a cup o' tea as will do yer old heart good." "No, I must go home now," said Jeph, in a tone so decided that his friend was staggered. "You can't walk it, you know, in a stormy night like this." "I _will_ walk it," said Jeph. "Come, then, if you're bent on it, you'd better go in your own lugger; it's here just now, agoin' to put off in ten minutes or so. Nothin' ever stops Bluenose, blow high, blow low. W'en he wants to go off to sea, he _goes_ off, right or wrong. But you'll take a glass o' grog first." Old Jeph would not do this, so he was led down to the beach by Coleman, where they found the boat being launched. "Good-bye, old man," said Coleman, helping him over the side. "_Good-bye,--farewell_," said Jeph earnestly. "I came here to-day a-purpose to say farewell; shake hands, God bless you." The coast-guard-man was surprised by the warmth of his friend's manner, as well as by his words; but before he could ask him what he meant, the boat was run down the beach and out to sea. An hour later old Jeph was carefully put to bed in his own cottage, by his friend Captain Bluenose. CHAPTER TWENTY TWO. THE STORM AND THE WRECK. Guy Foster, clad in a sou'-wester hat and oilskin coat, stood at the end of the pier of Ramsgate Harbour, with his sweet wife, Lucy, clinging to his arm, and a sturdy boy of about four years old, holding on with one hand to the skirts of his coat, and with the other grasping the sleeve of his silver-haired grandsire, Mr Burton. It was night, and a bitter gale was blowing from the north-east, accompanied by occasional showers, of sleet. Crowds of seamen and others stood on the pier eagerly watching the lifeboat, which was being got ready to put off to sea. "It is too cold for you, darling," said Guy, as he felt Lucy's arm tremble. "Oh no! I should like to stay," said Lucy, anxiously. Just then a tremendous wave burst on the massive stone pier, and a shower of spray fell upon the crowd. Lucy and her companions received a copious share of it. "You are wet through, dear, and so is Charlie," said Guy, remonstratively. "Well, I will go home, but you must come with us, papa. Guy wants to remain, I know." The missionary gave his daughter his arm, and led her away, while Guy, pushing through the crowd, soon stood beside the lifeboat, the crew of which, already encased in their cork life-belts, were hastily taking their places. "There goes another rocket," cried one of those on the look-out; "it's from the North-s'n'-Head light." "Look alive, lads," cried the coxswain of the boat, more to relieve his feelings than to hurry the men, who were already doing their best. The shrill note of a steam-whistle was heard at this moment, its piercing sound rising high above the shriek of the gale and the roaring of the sea. It was a signal from the steam-tug appointed to attend on the lifeboat, and told that steam was up and all ready to put to sea. Put to sea on such a night! with the waves bursting in thunder on the shore, the foam seething like milk beneath, the wind shrieking like ten thousand fiends above, and the great billows lifting up their heads, as they came rolling in from the darkness of Erebus that lay incumbent on the raging sea beyond. Ay, a landsman might have said "madness" with reason. Even a seaman might have said that without much apparent impropriety. But the boatmen of Ramsgate held a different opinion! The signal gun had been fired, the rocket had gone up, a wreck was known to be on the fatal Goodwin Sands, and they were as eager to face the storm as if encountering danger and facing death were pleasant pastime. As the oars were about to be shipped, one of the crew stumbled, and struck his head so violently against the bollard, that he fell stunned into the bottom of the boat. Guy saw the accident as he stood on the edge of the pier. A sudden impulse seized him. At one bound he passed from the pier to the boat, which was already some half-dozen feet away, and took the seat and oar of the injured man. In the confusion and darkness, the others thought he was one of the supernumerary boatmen, and took no further notice of him. The boat was shoved back, the life-jacket was transferred to Guy, and the boatman was put ashore. A few strokes brought the boat alongside the steam-tug. "Heave the warp! make fast! all right, steam a-head!" The whistle shrieked again, the warp tautened, and tug and lifeboat made for the mouth of the harbour. As they passed out an inspiring cheer was given by the crowd, and a rocket streamed up from the pier-head to signal the lightship that assistance was on the way. The lifeboat which thus gallantly put off to the rescue in a storm so wild that no ordinary boat could have faced it for a moment without being swamped, was a celebrated one which had recently been invented and placed at this station--where it still lies, and may be recognised by its white sides and peculiar build. Its history is interesting. In the year 1851 the Duke of Northumberland, then president of the Lifeboat Institution, offered a prize of 100 pounds for the best model of a lifeboat. The result was that 280 models and plans were sent to Somerset House for examination. The prize was awarded to Mr James Beeching, boat-builder at Great Yarmouth, who was ordered to construct a boat, after the pattern of his model, 36 feet long, with 12 oars. The boat was built, and was found to be the most perfect of its kind that had ever been launched. It was the first self-righting boat ever constructed. The three great points to be attained in the construction of a lifeboat are: buoyancy, the power of righting itself if upset, and the power of emptying itself if filled with water. Up to this date the lifeboats of the kingdom were possessed of only the first quality. They could not be sunk; that was all. Of course that was a great deal, but it was far from sufficient. Mr Beeching's boat united all three qualities. Its self-righting principle was effected by means of two raised air-cases, one at the stem, the other at the stern, and a heavy metal keel. When overturned, the boat attempted, as it were, to rest on its two elevated cases, but these, being buoyant, resisted this effort, and turned the boat over on its side; the action being further assisted by the heavy keel, which had a tendency to drag the bottom downwards. Thus the upper part of the boat was raised by one action, and the bottom part depressed by the other, the result being that the boat righted itself immediately. In fact, its remaining in an inverted position was an impossibility. The self-emptying principle was accomplished by the introduction of six self-acting valves into the bottom of the boat, through which the water, when shipped, ran back into the sea! When we first heard of this we were puzzled, reader, as doubtless you are, for it occurred to us that any hole made in a boat's bottom would inevitably let water in instead of out! The difficulty was cleared up when we saw the model. Beeching's boat had a double floor, the upper one raised to a little above the level of the sea. The escapes were short metal pipes, the upper openings of which were fitted into holes in the upper floor. The lower ends passed through the bottom of the boat. The valves of the top opened downward, but could not be opened upwards, so that the rushing of the sea into the pipes from below was checked, but the rushing in of the sea from above pressed the valves open, and allowed the water to run out, in accordance with the well-known law that water must find its _level_. Thus, the _upper_ floor being above the _level_ of the sea, all the water ran out. Boats on this principle, modified in some of the details by Mr Peake, of Her Majesty's dockyard at Woolwich, are now adopted by the Lifeboat Institution. They right themselves in less than a minute, and free themselves of water in about the same time. Besides the above advantages, Mr Beeching's boat was fitted with the usual air-cases round the sides, and with a thick stripe of cork outside the gunwale; also with lines hanging over the sides in festoons, so that any one in the water, using them as stirrups, might get into the boat with ease. She was further provided with an anchor and cable; with strong but light lines attached to grappling irons at the bow and stern, which, when thrown into the rigging or upon a wreck, might fasten themselves to the ship and retain the boat without any other aid; also with a life-buoy, and a lantern for night work, besides numerous small articles. This boat was purchased by the Harbour Commissioners of Ramsgate, and anchored close to the pier, in connexion with a powerful steam-tug (the fires of which were never allowed to die down), ready at any moment to fly to the rescue, on the signal of distress being given. This is the boat whose splendid deeds have so frequently of late drawn the attention and compelled the admiration of the whole country; and it was this boat that issued from Ramsgate harbour on the wild night referred to at the beginning of this chapter. Both tide and wind were dead against them as they issued from the shelter of the pier and met the storm, but the steamer was very powerful; it buffeted the billows bravely, and gradually gained the neighbourhood of the Sands, where the breakers and cross seas beat so furiously that their noise, mingled with the blast, created a din which can only be described as a prolonged and hideous roar. The night was extremely dark, and bitterly cold. Heavy seas continually burst over the steamer's bulwarks, and swept her deck from stem to stern. The little lifeboat, far astern, was dragged by the strong hawser through a wild turmoil of water and spray. The men nestling under the gunwales clung to the thwarts and maintained their position, although sea after sea broke over them and well nigh washed them out. At length they reached the light-ship; hailed her and were told that the wreck was on a high part of the shingles, bearing north-west from the light. Away they went in that direction, but, being unable to find her, made their way to the Prince's light-ship, where they were told there was a large ship on the Girdler. Once more they steamed in the direction indicated, and soon discovered the wreck by the tar-barrels which she was burning. Just as they sighted her an enormous sea broke over the steamer with such violence as to stop her way for a moment, and cause her strong frame to quiver. "Look out, lads!" cried the coxswain of the lifeboat, as the black water loomed up between them and the tug. The men grasped the thwarts more firmly as a tremendous sea filled the boat to the gunwale. At this moment the checked steamer again leaped on her way; the stout hawser parted like a piece of twine, and the lifeboat was left behind. Hoisting the corner of its small sail they made for the wreck. No time was lost in bailing, as would have been the case with the boats of former years; a few seconds sufficed to empty her. The wind was now blowing a complete hurricane with a terrific sea on, the horrors of which were increased by the darkness of the night, so that it was with the utmost difficulty they succeeded in getting alongside. The wreck was a coasting vessel with a crew of eighteen men. There were no women or children, so they were got into the boat without much loss of time, and safely conveyed to the tug which lay to for her little consort, about three-quarters of a mile off. The lifeboat was again taken in tow, and they proceeded together towards Ramsgate, when another gun and signal-rocket recalled them to continue their arduous duties. The sleet of a winter's night beat furiously in the faces of these boatmen, as already much exhausted, they once again faced the storm. But the streaming rocket and the signal-gun seemed to infuse new life and vigour into their hardy frames. Out to sea they went again, and, having approached as near as they dared to the breakers, worked their way along the edge of the Sands, keeping a bright look-out for the vessel in distress. Up and down they cruised, but nothing could be seen of her. At last, on the eastern side of the Sands, they descried a large ship looming against the dark sky. "There she is!" shouted the coxswain. The hawser was slipt, and the boat, detached from her bulky companion, pushed into the very vortex of the breakers. To say that no other boat could have lived in such a sea, would convey but a faint notion of the powers of this boat. Any _one_ of the deluging billows that again and again overwhelmed her would have swamped the best and largest boat that was ever launched, and, although the old lifeboats might have floated, they certainly could not have made much progress in such a sea, owing to the difficulty of getting rid of the water. But the Ramsgate boat was empty a few seconds after being filled. The men had to take no thought as to this, except to see to it that they should not be washed out of her. On getting alongside, they found the wreck to be a very large ship. Its black hull towered high above them, and the great yards swayed with fearful violence over their heads. A single glance showed that she was crowded with men and women. The grapnels were thrown, and Guy starting up, seized the immense boat-hook, used by lifeboats, and stood ready to hook on to the rigging. He succeeded in fixing the hook, but a violent lurch of the ship tore the handle out of his grasp and cast him into the bottom of the boat. Just then a man was seen to run out on the main-yard, and slip down by a rope close to the sea. The boat sheered up towards him, and several arms were stretched out to save; but the boat glided away and the succeeding wave engulfed him. Only for a second however. When it passed the man was still seen clinging to the rope; the boat once again sheered up so close that he was induced to let go his hold. He dropped into the sea close alongside, caught one of the life-lines, and next instant was in the boat. "All right! Give me the boat-hook," he cried, seizing the handle as he spoke, and affixing it with the strength of a giant to the chains of the ship. The tone of this man's voice thrilled to Guy's heart. He sprang forward and seized him by the arm. One glance was sufficient. "Bax!" "Guy!" There was no time for more. The astonishment of both was extreme, as may well be supposed, and that of Guy was much increased when he heard another familiar voice shout-- "All right, Bax?" "All right, Tommy; let them look alive with the women and children; get up a light if you can." There were others in the lifeboat who recognised these voices, but life and death were trembling in the balance at that moment; they dared not unbend their attention from the one main object for an instant. Some one in the "Trident" (for it was indeed that ill-fated ship) seemed to have anticipated Bax's wish. Just as he spoke, a torch made of tar and oakum was lighted, and revealed the crowded decks, the raging sea that sought to swallow them up, and the lifeboat surging violently alongside. It was an appalling scene: the shrieks of the women and children, mingled with the howling wind, the rush of the waves on the ship's side, and the shouting of men, created a din so horrible that many a stout heart quailed. Fortunately the men who were the most active in the work of saving others were so taken up with what they were about, that there was no room for thought of personal danger. The first human being placed in the boat was a little child. Its mother, despairing of being saved herself, pressed through the crowd, held her little one over the side, and cried out "Save my child!" Bax leaped on the air-chamber at the bow of the boat, and grasping the shoulder of a boatman with one hand, stretched out the other towards the child; but the boat swooped forward and brought him close under the chains, where a sailor held a woman suspended in his arm, ready to drop her into the boat when it should come close alongside. It did not, however, approach sufficiently near. The next wave carried them back, and enabled Bax to seize the child and lay it in a place of safety. The mother was soon beside it, and in a short time the boat was quite filled. Bax then leaped into the mizzen-chains, the lifeboat pushed off, and conveyed her cargo to the steam-tug. They took off 25 women and children the first trip. The steamer then towed the boat into position, to enable her again to make straight for the wreck. By this means much valuable time was saved, and more trips were made than could have been accomplished in the time by any lifeboat without the aid of a steamer. All the women and children, and some of the male passengers, had been safely conveyed to the tug, when an accident happened which well-nigh destroyed the boat. This was the sudden falling of the mainmast of the "Trident." With a rending crash it fell on the boat, overturned it, and held it down, so that its self-righting principle was neutralised. The crew being secured against sinking by their life-jackets, succeeded in clambering into the ship--many of them more or less bruised and cut. The coxswain, however, did not appear; he seemed to have been lost. "He's under the boat!" gasped Guy, who having been entangled in the wreck of the mast was the last to get on board. "Axes, men!" shouted the Captain of the "Trident." "A hundred pounds to the man who saves him!" cried a voice from the quarter-deck. Who is this that is so liberal of his gold at a time when a hundred thousand pounds could not avail to save one hair of his own head? He clings to the mizzen-shrouds with a face so ashy pale that Guy Foster scarce recognises his own uncle! Ah! Denham, you have seen a storm and a wreck at last, in circumstances you little dreamed of when, years ago, Guy predicted that you would "change your mind" in regard to these matters; and it would seem that your experience has done you no little good! But, although Mr Denham shouted his best, no one heard him. Not the less on that account, however, did the strong men wield their axes and hew asunder the tough ropes and spars. Bax, as usual, was prominent in action. He toiled as if for life; and so it was for life, though not his own. Small was the hope, yet it was enough to justify the toil. The curvature of the lifeboat was so great that it was possible a portion of air sufficient to maintain life might be confined within it. And so it turned out. For twenty minutes they toiled; the boat was finally cleared; Bax struck the blow that set it free, and dragged the coxswain out as it turned over. He was found to be alive though almost exhausted! Once more they pushed off with a full load of human beings. Among them were Mr Denham, Bax, and Tommy Bogey. The greater part of the crew, and some of the male passengers, still remained in the wreck awaiting their turn. When the boat had advanced about a hundred yards a cry of distress was heard, but the noise of wind and waves was so great that they thought it might have been mere imagination. Nevertheless, so much were they impressed, that the coxswain put about and returned towards the wreck. Too soon they discovered that it had been the death-cry of those who were left behind, for _not a vestige of the_ "_Trident_" _remained_! The ill-fated vessel had been suddenly broken up and utterly swept away! In their anxiety to save any who might yet survive, and be clinging to portions of the wreck, the boat cruised about for some time, and her captain was tempted to advance too far over the dangerous shoals. She struck suddenly with great violence, and remained fast on the sands. The utmost efforts were made to haul off, but in vain. The boat was hurled again and again on the ridges of sand;--passed over several of them, and became hopelessly entangled. Those well-known ripples that one sees on the shore, are, on the Goodwin Sands, magnified from an inch to nearly three feet. Over these the boat now began to surge. "Hoist the sail! up with it!" cried the coxswain as they suddenly passed into deeper water. Some of the men began to hope that they had crossed the shoals, but they were mistaken. The order was obeyed, and the boat rushed forward wildly, with its lee gunwale buried deep in the sea; another moment and it struck again with tremendous violence. Those on board would have been torn out of her had they not clung to the seats with the energy of despair. It now became clear to all who knew the locality, that there was no alternative for them but to beat right across the Sands. The violence of the gale had increased. The night was pitchy dark, and the fearful shocks with which they struck the gigantic ripples on the banks, sent despair to the hearts of all, except the crew of the boat. These, knowing her capabilities, retained a vestige of hope. Bax, being ignorant on this point, had given up all hope. He clung to the bollard, close beside the coxswain. "It's all over with us at last," he said, as the boat struck heavily, and was then lifted away on the crest of a roaring breaker. "It may be so," replied the coxswain, calmly; "but if we escape being dashed on the wrecks that are scattered over the Sands, we may live it out yet." And what of Mr Denham, the head of the wealthy firm, who years ago had expressed the opinion that lifeboats were unnecessary, and that "those who devoted themselves to a sea-faring life ought to make up their minds to the chances and risks attending such a life"? What thought _he_ as he lay there in the bottom of the boat--terrified almost to death; shaken and bruised by the repeated and awful shocks; chilled by the intense cold, and drenched to the skin, with just enough life left to enable him to cling to a thwart;--what thought _he_ on that terrible night? Perchance he thought of his former life of pride, selfishness, and indifference to the woes of others. Perhaps he reflected that his own neglect in other days had something to do with his being here now. Whatever he thought he spoke not. His face was deadly pale. His lips were blue. He crouched, a hopeless, a helpless, and a pitiful object, in the bottom of the lifeboat. Presently they struck again. Crash! Every timber groaned as the boat turned broadside to the sea, which made a clear breach over her. The coxswain and Bax alone stood up, both holding on to the mizzen-mast. The rest clung on as they best could to the thwarts, sometimes buried in water, often with only their heads above it. The tide was making, and as the boat passed each shoal the bow lifted first and swung round--then the stern, and it was clear again; but only to be hurled on the next ridge, when the sea once more burst over it, sweeping away everything that was loose. It became necessary to alter the trim of the boat by moving some of the men from one part to another. The coxswain shouted the order, but only Guy Foster and two others were able to obey. All that the rest could do was to hold on with iron grasp for bare life. With some this had become the involuntary clutch of despair. Thus on they went crashing and jerking from bank to bank amid the raging wind and surf and bitter cold. None save a lifeboat could have survived. To Bax it seemed miraculous. "What are you doin'?" said he to one of the men near him. "I'm takin' off my life-belt," he replied; "it'll be over all the quicker, and I don't want to be beatin' about over the sands alive or dead longer than I can help; the sooner I go to the bottom the better." Bax tried to cheer this man, but in vain. At first a few of the more sanguine spirits among them had endeavoured to cheer their comrades, but as time wore on their efforts ceased. All gave themselves up for lost, and no word was spoken by any one, save at long intervals, when a brief sharp cry of agonising prayer escaped from those who looked to God for consolation. Thus for two hours they beat over the sands--a distance of nearly two miles--each moment expecting to be overturned or dashed to pieces on some of the old wrecks. All this time the noble-hearted coxswain remained at his post, and Bax stood--hopeless indeed, yet watchful, beside him. Suddenly the beating from ridge to ridge ceased. The boat swung into deep water, and rushed on her wild career over the foam! Those who were not utterly exhausted noticed the fact, and began to show symptoms of reviving hope and activity. Others, thoroughly worn out, remained utterly indifferent to the change. Yes, the great danger was past! Sail was quickly made. The storm was still wild as ever, but with sufficient water below her, winds and waves were powerless for evil to the lifeboat. Rushing through the surf, she soon gained the harbour of Ramsgate, and all on board were landed in safety. Ay, Reader, but the seeds of death had been sown that night. The boatmen returned to their homes, and the saved passengers and crew of the "Trident" were cared for by the authorities of the town, but one sad result was that several of those who had so nobly risked their lives to save others, never recovered from the effects of the sixteen hours of exposure to that pitiless storm. Another and a glorious result was, that a _hundred and twenty souls_ were snatched from a watery grave. CHAPTER TWENTY THREE. HISTORY OF THE LIFEBOAT. We pause at this point in our story, good reader, to treat you to a little of what mankind is prone to consider "dry," namely, a chapter of information and statistics. We dislike sailing under false colours, therefore we warn you at the outset of the nature of what is to follow. And yet our subject ought not to be considered dry, for it is indissolubly connected with salt water, and if human hearts were suitably affected by the simple statement of facts, drops of salt water would frequently moisten these pages! Please, do not skip. _Multum in parvo_ shall be our motto. Lionel Lukin, a coach-builder in London, was the inventor of the lifeboat. He took out a patent for it on the 2nd November, 1785, and wrote a pamphlet on lifeboats, entitled "The Invention, Principles, and Construction of Insubmergible Boats." His boat was rendered buoyant by means of a projecting gunwale of cork, and hollow air-cases within it; one of these being at the head, the other at the stern. It was ballasted by means of a false iron keel. In these respects this boat possessed, in rudimentary form, the essentials of the lifeboat of the present day. A coble was converted into a lifeboat on these principles by Lukin, and launched at Bamborough, where, in the course of the first year, it was the means of saving many lives. This was the first lifeboat ever brought into action. Lukin, though a man of energy and perseverance, was doomed to disappointment. The Prince of Wales (George the Fourth), to his credit be it said, was his warm and liberal patron, but even the Prince's influence failed to awaken the sympathy of the public, or of the men in high places who alone could bring this great invention into general use. People in those days appeared to think that the annual drowning of thousands of their countrymen was an unavoidable necessity,--the price we had to pay, as it were, for our maritime prosperity. Lukin appealed in vain to the First Lord of the Admiralty, and to many other influential men, but a deaf ear was invariably turned to him. With the exception of the Bamborough coble, not a single lifeboat was placed at any of the dangerous localities on the east coast of England for several years. Wrecked men and women and children were (as far as the Naval Boards were concerned) graciously permitted to swim ashore if they could, or to go to the bottom if they couldn't! Ultimately, the inventor of the lifeboat went to his grave unrewarded and unacknowledged--at least by the nation; though the lives saved through his invention were undoubtedly a reward beyond all price. The high honour of having constructed and set in motion a species of boat which has saved hundreds and thousands of human lives, and perchance prevented the breaking of many human hearts, is certainly due to Lionel Lukin. In 1789, the public were roused from their state of apathy in regard to shipwrecked seamen by the wreck of the "Adventure" of Newcastle, the crew of which perished in the presence of thousands who could do nothing to save them. Under the excitement of this disaster the inhabitants of South Shields met to deplore and to consult. A committee was appointed, and premiums were offered for the best models of lifeboats. Men came forward, and two stood pre-eminent--Mr William Wouldhave, a painter, and Mr Henry Greathead, a boat-builder, of South Shields. The former seems to have been the first who had a glimmering idea of the self-righting principle, but he never brought it to anything. Cork was the buoyant principle in his boat. Greathead suggested a curved keel. The chairman of the committee modelled a boat in clay which combined several of the good qualities of each, and this was given to Greathead as the type of the boat he was to build. From this time forward lifeboats gradually multiplied. Greathead became a noted improver and builder of them. He was handsomely rewarded for his useful labours by Government and others, and his name became so intimately and deservedly associated with the lifeboat, that people erroneously gave him the credit of being its inventor. The Duke of Northumberland took a deep interest in the subject of lifeboats, and expended money liberally in constructing and supporting them. Before the close of 1863, Greathead had built 31 boats, 18 for England, 5 for Scotland, and 8 for foreign countries. This was so far well; but it was a wretchedly inadequate provision for the necessities of the case. Interest had indeed been awakened in the public, but the public cannot act as a united body; and the Trinity House seemed to fall back into the sleep from which it had been partially aroused. It was not till 1822 that the great (because successful) champion of the lifeboat stood forth,--in the person of Sir William Hillary, Baronet. Sir William, besides being a philanthropist, was a hero! He not only devised liberal things, and carried them into execution, but he personally shared in the danger of rescuing life from the raging sea. Our space forbids a memoir, but this much may be said briefly. He dwelt on the coast of the Isle of Man, and established a Sailors' Home at Douglas. He constantly witnessed the horrors of shipwreck, and seemed to make it his favourite occupation to act as one of the crew of boats that put off to wrecks. He was of course frequently in imminent danger; once had his ribs broken, and was nearly drowned oftentimes. During his career he personally assisted in saving 305 lives! He was the means of stirring up public men, and the nation generally, to a higher sense of their duty to those who risk their lives upon the sea; and eventually-- in conjunction with two members of Parliament, Mr Thomas Wilson and Mr George Hibbert--was the founder of "THE ROYAL NATIONAL INSTITUTION FOR THE PRESERVATION OF LIFE FROM SHIPWRECK." This noble Institution--now named THE ROYAL NATIONAL LIFEBOAT INSTITUTION--was founded on the 4th of March, 1824. From that date to the present time it has unremittingly carried out the great ends for which it was instituted. Let us glance at these in detail, as given in their publication, _The Lifeboat Journal_. The objects of the Institution are effected-- "_1st_, By the stationing of lifeboats, fully equipped, with all necessary gear and means of security to those who man them, and with transporting carriages on which they can be drawn by land to the neighbourhood of distant wrecks, and by the erection of suitable houses in which the same are kept. "_2nd_, By the appointment of paid coxswains, who have charge of, and are held responsible for, the good order and efficiency of the boats, and by a quarterly exercise of the crew of each boat. "_3rd_, By a liberal remuneration of all those who risk their lives in going to the aid of wrecked persons, whether in lifeboats or otherwise; and by the rewarding with the gold or silver medal of the Institution such persons as encounter great personal risk in the saving of life. "_4th_, By the superintendence of an honorary committee of residents in each locality, who, on their part, undertake to collect locally what amount they are able of donations towards the first cost, and of annual contributions towards the permanent expenses of their several establishments." In order to see how this work is, and has been, carried out, let us look at the results, as stated in the last annual report, that for 1864. The lifeboats of the Institution now number 132, and some of them were the means of saving no fewer than 417 lives during the past year; nearly the whole of them in dangerous circumstances, amidst high surfs, when no other description of boats could have been launched with safety. They also took into port, or materially assisted, 17 vessels, which might otherwise have been lost. The number of persons afloat in the boats on occasions of their being launched was 6,000. In other words, our army of coast-heroes amounts, apparently, to that number. But in reality it is much larger, for there are hundreds of willing volunteers all round the coast ready to man lifeboats, if there were lifeboats to man. Although nearly every man of this 6000 risked his life again and again during the year, not a single life was lost. Nearly all these boats have been supplied with transporting carriages and boat-houses by the Institution. The cost in detail is as follows:-- +===========================+==========+ |Lifeboat and her equipments|300 pounds| +---------------------------+----------+ |Transporting carriage |100 pounds| +---------------------------+----------+ |Boat-house (average cost) |150 pounds| +---------------------------+----------+ |Total |550 pounds| +===========================+==========+ The sums granted last year for the saving of 714 lives by lifeboats, shore-boats, etcetera, amounted to nearly 1,300 pounds (about 1 pound 16 shillings 6 pence each life!) Fifteen silver medals and twenty-six votes of thanks, inscribed on vellum and parchment, were also awarded for acts of extraordinary gallantry. The income of the Institution in 1863 amounted to 21,100 pounds. Fifteen new lifeboats were sent to various parts of the coast in that year. It is interesting to observe in the report the persons by whom donations are sometimes given to the Institution. We read of "100 pounds from a sailor's daughter"; and "100 pounds as a thank-offering for preservation at sea, during the storm of 31st October last." Another thank-offering of 20 pounds, "for preservation from imminent danger at sea," appears in the list. "100 pounds from `a friend,' in gratitude to God for the preservation of his wife for another year"; and "20 pounds from a seaman's daughter, the produce of her needle-work." Among smaller sums we find 1 pound, 6 shillings, 9 pence collected in a Sunday school; 3 pounds, 18 shillings, 8 pence collected in a parish church, as a New Year's offering. Last, and least in one sense, though by no means least in another, 1 shilling, 6 pence in stamps, from a sailor's orphan child! The prayer naturally springs to one's lips, God bless that dear orphan child! but it has been already blessed with two of God's choicest gifts,--a sympathetic heart and an open hand. Small sums like this are not in any sense to be despised. If the population of London alone--taking it at two millions--were individually to contribute 1 shilling, 6 pence, the sum would amount to 150,000 pounds! Why, if everyone whose eye falls on this page--to descend to smaller numbers--were to give a shilling, it is not improbable that a sum would be raised sufficient to establish two lifeboats! [See Note 1.] But there are those who, besides being blessed with generous hearts, are fortunate in possessing heavy purses. We find in the same report donations of from two hundred to two thousand pounds, and legacies ranging from ten to a thousand pounds. The largest legacy that seems ever to have been bequeathed to the Institution was that of 10,000 pounds, left in 1856 by Captain Hamilton Fitzgerald, R.N., one of the vice-presidents of the Society. The mere mention of such sums may induce some to imagine that the coffers of the Institution are in a very flourishing state. This would indeed be the case if the Society had reached its culminating point--if everything were done that can be done for the preservation of life from shipwreck; but this is by no means the case. It must be borne in mind that the Institution is national. The entire coasts of the United Kingdom are its field of operations, and the drain upon its resources is apparently quite equal to its income. Its chief means of support are voluntary contributions. Since the Society was instituted, in 1824, to the present time, it has been the means of saving 13,570 lives!--many, if not most, of these being lives of the utmost consequence to the commerce and defence of the country. During the same period, it has granted 82 gold medals, 736 silver medals, and 17,830 pounds in cash; besides expending 82,550 pounds on boats, carriages, and boat-houses. Considering, then, the magnitude and unavoidable costliness of the operations of this Institution, it is evident that a large annual income is indispensable, if it is to continue its noble career efficiently. Closely allied to this is another society which merits brief notice here. It is the "Shipwrecked Fishermen's and Mariners' Royal Benevolent Society." Originally this Society, which was instituted in 1839, maintained lifeboats on various parts of the coast. It eventually, however, made these over to the Lifeboat Institution, and confined itself to its own special and truly philanthropic work, which is-- To board, lodge, and convey to their homes, all destitute, shipwrecked persons, to whatever country they may belong, through the instrumentality of its agents. To afford temporary assistance to the widows, parents, and children of all mariners and fishermen who may have been drowned, and who were members of the Society; and to give a gratuity to mariners and fishermen, who are members, for the loss or damage of their clothes or boats. Membership is obtained by an annual subscription of three shillings. Assuredly every mariner and fisherman in the kingdom ought to be a member of this Society, for it is pre-eminently useful, and no one can tell when he may require its assistance. The Lifeboat Institution and the Shipwrecked Fishermen's and Mariners' Society are distinct bodies, but they do their benevolent work in harmonious concert. The one saves life, or tries to save it; the other cherishes the life so saved, or comforts and affords timely aid to broken-hearted mourners for the dead. Both Institutions are national blessings, and as such have the strongest possible claim on the sympathies of the nation. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note 1. In case any reader should sympathise with us, and desire to act on the above hint, we subjoin the following address, to which money may be sent: The Secretary of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, 22 Charing Cross Road, London, W. CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR. A MEETING--A DEATH, AND A DISCOVERY. Resuming our story, we remind the reader that we left off just as the Ramsgate lifeboat had gained a glorious victory over a great storm. Availing ourselves of an author's privilege, we now change the scene to the parlour of Mrs Foster's temporary lodgings at Ramsgate, whither the worthy lady had gone for change of air, in company with her son Guy, her daughter-in-law Lucy, her little grandson Charlie, and her adopted daughter Amy Russell. Bax is standing there alone. He looks like his former self in regard to costume, for the only man approaching his own size, who could lend him a suit of dry clothing, happened to be a boatman, so he is clad in the familiar rough coat with huge buttons, the wide pantaloons, and the sou'-wester of former days. His countenance is changed, however; it is pale and troubled. On the way up from the harbour Guy had told him that he was married, and was surprised when Bax, instead of expressing a desire to be introduced to his wife, made some wild proposal about going and looking after the people who had been saved! He was pleased, however, when Bax suddenly congratulated him with great warmth, and thereafter said, with much firmness, that he would go up to the house and see her. On this occasion, also, Bax had told his friend that all the produce of his labour since he went away now lay buried in the Goodwin Sands. Bax was ruminating on these things when the door opened, and Guy entered, leading Lucy by the hand. "Miss Burton!" exclaimed Bax, springing forward. "My _wife_," said Guy, with a puzzled look. "Bax!" exclaimed Lucy, grasping his hand warmly and kissing it; "surely you knew that I was married to Guy?" Bax did not reply. His chest heaved, his lips were tightly compressed, and his nostrils dilated, as he gazed alternately at Guy and Lucy. At last he spoke in deep, almost inaudible tones: "Miss Russell--is she still--" "My sister is still with us. I have told her you are come. She will be here directly," said Guy. As he spoke the door opened, and Mrs Foster entered, with Amy leaning on her arm. The latter was very pale, and trembled slightly. On seeing Bax the blood rushed to her temples, and then fled back to her heart. She sank on a chair. The sailor was at her side in a moment; he caught her as she was in the act of falling, and going down on one knee, supported her head on his shoulder. "Bring water, she has fainted," he cried. "Dear Miss Russell!--dearest Amy!--oh my beloved girl, look up." Stunned and terrified though poor Mrs Foster was, as she rushed about the room in search of water and scent-bottles, she was taken aback somewhat by the warmth of these expressions, which Bax, in the strength of his feelings, and the excitement of the moment, uttered quite unconsciously. Guy was utterly confounded, for the truth now for the first time flashed upon him, and when he beheld his friend tenderly press his lips on the fair forehead of the still insensible Amy, it became clear beyond a doubt. Lucy was also amazed, for although she was aware of Amy's love for Bax, she had never dreamed that it was returned. Suddenly Guy's pent-up surprise and excitement broke forth. Seizing Mrs Foster by the shoulders, he stared into her face, and said, "Mother, I have been an ass! an absolute donkey!--and a blind one, too. Oh!--ha! come along, I'll explain myself. Lucy, I shall require your assistance." Without more ado Guy led his mother and Lucy forcibly out of the room, and Bax and Amy were left alone. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Again we change the scene. The Sandhills lying to the north of Deal are before us, and the shadows of night are beginning to deepen over the bleak expanse of downs. A fortnight has passed away. During that period Bax experienced the great delight of feeling assured that Amy loved him, and the great misery of knowing that he had not a sixpence in the world. Of course, Guy sought to cheer him by saying that there would be no difficulty in getting him the command of a ship; but Bax was not cheered by the suggestion; he felt depressed, and proposed to Guy that they should take a ramble together over the Sandhills. Leaving the cottage, to which the family had returned the day before, the two friends walked in the direction of Sandown Castle. "What say you to visit old Jeph?" said Guy; "I have never felt easy about him since he made me order his coffin and pay his debts." "With all my heart," said Bax. "I spent a couple of hours with him this forenoon, and he appeared to me better than usual. Seeing Tommy and me again has cheered him greatly, poor old man." "Stay, I will run back for the packet he left with me to give to you. He may perhaps wish to give it you with his own hand." Guy ran back to the cottage, and quickly returned with the packet. Old Jeph's door was open when they approached his humble abode. Guy knocked gently, but, receiving no answer, entered the house. To their surprise and alarm they found the old man's bed empty. Everything else in the room was in its usual place. The little table stood at the bedside, with the large old Bible on it and the bundle of receipts that Guy had placed there on the day he paid the old man's debts. In a corner lay the black coffin, with the winding-sheet carefully folded on the lid. There was no sign of violence having been done, and the friends were forced to the conclusion that Jeph had quitted the place of his own accord. As he had been confined to bed ever since his illness-- about two weeks--this sudden disappearance was naturally alarming. "There seems to have been no foul play," said Bax, examining hastily the several closets in the room. "Where _can_ he have gone?" "The tomb!" said Guy, as Jeph's old habit recurred to his memory. "Right," exclaimed Bax, eagerly. "Come, let's go quickly." They hastened out, and, breaking into a smart run, soon reached the Sandhills. Neither of them spoke, for each felt deep anxiety about the old man, whose weak condition rendered it extremely improbable that he could long survive the shock that his system must have sustained by such a walk at such an hour. Passing the Checkers of the Hope, they soon reached Mary Bax's tomb. The solitary stone threw a long dark shadow over the waste as the moon rose slowly behind it. This shadow concealed the grave until they were close beside it. "Ah! he is here," said Bax, kneeling down. Guy knelt beside him, and assisted to raise their old friend, who lay extended on the grave. Bax moved him so as to get from beneath the shadow of the stone, and called him gently by name, but he did not answer. When the moonlight next moment fell on his countenance, the reason of his silence was sufficiently obvious. Old Jeph was dead! With tender care they lifted the body in their arms and bore it to the cottage, where they laid it on the bed, and, sitting down beside it, conversed for some time in low sad tones. "Bax," said Guy, pulling the sealed packet from his breast-pocket, "had you not better open this? It may perhaps contain some instructions having reference to his last resting-place." "True," replied Bax, breaking the seals. "Dear old Jeph, it is sad to lose you in this sudden way, without a parting word or blessing. What have we here?" he continued, unrolling several pieces of brown paper. "It feels like a key." As he spoke a small letter dropt from the folds of the brown paper, with an old-fashioned key tied to it by a piece of twine. Opening the letter he read as follows:-- "DEAR BAX,--When you get this I shall be where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest. There is a hide in the north-west corner of my room in the old house, between the beam and the wall. The key that is enclosed herewith will open it. I used to hide baccy there in my smugglin' days, but since I left off that I've never used it. There you will find a bag of gold. How much is in it I know not. It was placed there by an old mate of mine more than forty years ago. He was a great man for the guinea trade that was carried on with France in the time of Boney's wars. I never rightly myself understood that business. I'm told that Boney tried to get all the gold out o' this country, by payin' three shillings more than each guinea was worth for it, but that seems unreasonable to me. Hows'ever, although I never could rightly understand it, there is no doubt that some of our lads were consarned in smugglin' guineas across the channel, and two or three of 'em made a good thing of it. My mate was one o' the lucky ones. One night he came home with a bag o' gold and tumbled it out on the table before me. I had my suspicions that he had not come honestly by it, so would have nothin' to do with it. When I told him so, he put it back into the bag, tied it up, and replaced it in the hide, and went away in a rage. He never came back. There was a storm from the east'ard that night. Two or three boats were capsized, and my mate and one or two more lads were drowned. The guineas have lain in the hide ever since. I've often thought o' usin' them; but somehow or other never could make up my mind. You may call this foolish, mayhap it was; anyhow I now leave the gold to you;--to Tommy, if you never come back, or to Guy if he don't turn up. Bluenose don't want it: it would only bother him if I put it in his way. "This is all I've got to say: The old house ain't worth much, but such as it is, it's yours, or it may go the same way as the guineas. "Now, Bax, may God bless you, and make you one of His own children, through Jesus Christ. My heart warms to you for your own sake, and for the sake of her whose name you bear. Farewell.--Your old friend and mate, JEPH." Bax stooped over the bed, and pressed his lips to the dead man's forehead, when he had finished reading this letter. For some time the two friends sat talking of old Jeph's sayings and doings in former days, forgetful of the treasure of which the epistle spoke. At last Bax rose and drew a table to the corner mentioned in the letter. Getting upon this, he found an old board nailed against the wall. "Hand me that axe, Guy; it must be behind this." The board was soon wrenched off, and a small door revealed in the wall. The key opened it at once, and inside a bag was found. Untying this, Bax emptied the glittering contents on the table. It was a large heap, amounting to five hundred guineas! "I congratulate you, Bax," said Guy; "this removes a great difficulty out of your way. Five hundred guineas will give you a fair start." "Do you suppose that I will appropriate this to myself?" said Bax. "You and Tommy are mentioned in the letter as well as me." "You may do as you please in regard to Tommy," said Guy, "but as for me, I have a good salary, and won't touch a guinea of it." "Well, well," said Bax, with a sad smile, "this is neither the time nor place to talk of such matters. It is time to give notice of the old man's death." Saying this, he returned the gold to its former place, locked the hide, and replaced the board. As he was doing this, a peculiar cut in the beam over his head caught his eye. "I do believe here is another hide," said he. "Hand the axe again." A piece of wood was soon forced out of the side of the beam next the wall, and it was discovered that the beam itself was hollow. Nothing was found in it, however, except a crumpled piece of paper. "See here, there is writing on this," said Guy, picking up the paper which Bax flung down. "It is a crabbed hand, but I think I can make it out:--`Dear Bogue, you will find the tubs down Pegwell Bay, with the sinkers on 'em; the rest of the swag in Fiddler's Cave.'" "Humph! an old smuggler's letter," said Bax. "Mayhap the tubs and swag are there yet!" We may remark here, that, long after the events now related, Bax and Guy remembered this note and visited the spots mentioned out of curiosity, but neither "tubs" nor "swag" were found! Quitting the room with heavy hearts, the two friends locked the door, and went in search of those who are wont to perform the last offices to the dead. CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE. THE CONCLUSION. There came a day at last when the rats in Redwharf Lane obtained an entire holiday, doubtless to their own amazement, and revelled in almost unmolested felicity from morning till night. The office of Denham, Crumps, and Company was shut; the reason being that the head of the firm was dead. Mr Denham had died without a will. At the time when Guy offended his uncle by expressing his opinion too freely, Denham vowed in his heart that his nephew should not inherit his business or fortune. He resolved to leave both to another nephew, the son of a younger brother, at that time in the East India Company's service. But as death was a contingency inconceivably remote from himself, at least in his own opinion, he did not think it necessary to make his will at that time. He died, therefore, as we have said, without making it. He died, also, without carrying out any of his good intentions! It is a common mistake to suppose that a man has only to repent of his evil deeds, and that thenceforth all will be plain sailing. The habits of a lifetime are not to be overcome without a hard struggle, even in the most sincere of Christians. Denham, after being saved by the Ramsgate lifeboat, had made up his mind to turn his wealth to good account, and, in his philanthropic plans, had resolved to look with special favour on the Lifeboat Institution. But he delayed to carry out these plans. He did not strike when the iron was hot, and so the iron began slowly to cool. He had also determined to reinstate Bax in his employment, and to take Guy into partnership, but he delayed in these matters also. The love of gold and the memory of fancied insults began to tell on him, as of old. He even went so far as to meditate carrying out his former intention of making his will in favour of the nephew in India! Still Denham did not fall back to his old position. A struggle which began when he resided with his sister at Deal, went on in his breast continually. While this struggle was yet undecided, a fever seized him. His constitution, weakened by the hardships which he had so recently undergone, gave way, and he died. The result was that the business fell to the next-of-kin,--Mrs Foster, whose son, in the natural course of things, stepped into his uncle's shoes. The result of this was that poor Denham's good resolves, and a great many more good resolves than Denham could ever have conceived of, were carried out in a way that would have amazed him had he been there to see it, and that almost took the breath away from old Mr Crumps. A glance at Guy in his office, not long after his uncle's death, will show the reader how things were managed by the new head of the firm. Guy was seated in Denham's chair, at Denham's desk, reading and writing what, in former days, would have been Denham's letters. Presently Mr Crumps entered. "I was just going to ask you to consult with me," said Guy; "pray sit down, sit down, Mr Crumps." The old man in his modesty meant to stand, as, in former days, he would have stood before Denham. "Here is a letter from a friend," continued Guy, "asking for a contribution towards the establishment of a lifeboat on the coast of Wales. He reminds me that I myself was once indebted to the services of a lifeboat when my life was in great danger, and hopes that I will respond liberally to his appeal. His name is Clelland. He was on board the old `Trident,' when she was wrecked in Saint Margaret's Bay. I made his acquaintance then. Now, what do you think we ought to give? I should like to have your advice on this point, and on several other matters of a similar nature, Mr Crumps, because there has been no regular `Charity' account in our ledger, I find, and I would like to open one. Don't you think it would be as well to open one?" Mr Crumps thought it would, and--being a man of naturally charitable and liberal impulses, who had been constantly snubbed by Mr Denham for many years past--he felt overjoyed at the prospect of a new era opening up before him. "Well, what shall we send to Mr Clelland?" pursued Guy. Mr Crumps, unable all at once to get over old habits and associations, suggested fifty pounds, timidly. "The district is a poor one," said Guy; "perhaps, that being the case--" "Say a hundred," put in Crumps eagerly (and then, in a partially apologetic tone), "the business can afford it, my dear sir. Heaven knows it is but little that--" The old man's voice faltered and stopped. He was going to have made a remark that would have cast a slur on the character of his late partner, so he checked himself and sighed. "Well, then, it shall be a hundred," said Guy, jotting down the sum on a slip of paper. "I would not advise more to be given to that particular district just now, because it might tend to check the efforts of the people on the spot. If they fail to raise the requisite sum, we can then give what is necessary. Now, there is an urgent appeal for funds being made just now to the public by the Lifeboat Institution. I think this a good opportunity to give away some of the cash which ought to have been--" Guy hesitated. He too was about to make a remark that would have been unfavourable to the character of his late uncle, so he checked himself. "What do you say to giving them a thousand pounds?" Mr Crumps said nothing to it. He was too much taken aback to say anything; but when he saw that Guy had jotted the sum down, and was apparently in earnest, he nodded his head, blew his nose violently, for a man of his years and character, and chuckled. "Well, then," continued Guy, "there is another subject which occurs to me just now, although it does not come under the head of charities. I wish to supply a ship's lifeboat to every vessel that belongs to us, and a set of life-belts, besides other things. I estimate that this will require a sum of nearly two thousand pounds. Let me see--" Here Guy began to jot and calculate, and to talk to himself in an undertone, while Mr Crumps, utterly bereft of speech, sat staring in amazement and delight at his young partner. While they were thus engaged, the tiger in blue who had supplanted Peekins entered, and said that three gentlemen wished to see Mr Foster. "Show them in," said Guy. "Sit still, Mr Crumps, I have not yet done with my calculations." In a few seconds Bax, Bluenose, and Tommy Bogey were ushered into the office. The latter had become a tall, handsome stripling during his residence abroad, and bid fair to rival Bax himself in stature. They shook hands cordially with Guy and Mr Crumps. "Well, Bax, is the new ship a good one?" said Guy; "d'you think she will suit you?" "That will she," said Bax, with a gratified look. "As the old song says-- "`She's a ship that's as tight to my fancy As ever sailed o'er the salt seas.' "I think she will be ready for sea in a couple of months. By that time I will be ready to take command, if you choose to trust her to me." "Trust her to you, Bax! Do you think we may trust our new vessel to him, Mr Crumps?" inquired Guy, with a smile. Mr Crumps, not having recovered the power of speech, nodded his head, and rubbed his hands slowly, a benignant smile playing on his old face the while. "Well, then," continued Bax, "Amy, so far from making any objection to going to sea with me, says that she won't let me go away without her, so that's settled, and the wedding day is fixed for Monday next week. But I'm not satisfied yet. I want you to do me still another favour, Guy." "What is that?" "To let Tommy Bogey go as supercargo. He's seaman enough to go as first mate, but he's too young for that yet. Also, I want to take Bluenose as a free passenger." "A free passenger!" said Guy, looking at the Captain with surprise. "Yes, you see," said Bluenose, modestly, "I'm raither moloncholy about old Jeph, an' if Bax and Tommy leave me, I'll feel quite desarted like. Moreover, I wants to see furrin' parts--specially the antypodes. But I hain't blunt enough to pay my passage, d'ye see, and so--and so--" "In short," interpolated Tommy, "he's blunt enough to ask a free one!" "A1 on Lloyds'!" said Bluenose, looking at Tommy with a broad grin; for the Captain regarded all his nephew's jokes--good, bad, and indifferent--as being perfect! It need scarcely be said that Guy readily agreed to their request, and that Mr Crumps was ready to agree to whatsoever Guy proposed. These matters being happily settled, the trio, having been invited to dine with Guy at a neighbouring chop-house at five o'clock, rose and left the partners to continue their consultation. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From that time forward Bax and Tommy Bogey remained in the service of Denham, Crumps, and Company, and Amy Russell went regularly to sea with her husband. Bluenose was afterwards appointed coxswain to a lifeboat on the coast of Kent where he rendered good service in many a wild storm, and was the means of snatching many a fellow-creature from the devouring sea. His friend Coleman happened to be on the coast-guard station near him; and many a pipe did these two smoke together, under the lee of the boat-house--spinning yarns of other days, chiefly connected with the sea and shipwrecks. Old Coleman had had considerable experience in rough, coast life, and was well able to speak on such subjects. The records of the Lifeboat Institution show that about one-third of the medals and rewards granted for meritorious services are awarded to men of the coastguard. Old Coleman was one of those who had taken his full share of the dangerous work of saving life. He was also gifted with that rare quality--the power of telling a story well, so that he and Bluenose became fast friends and constant companions during their residence on the Kentish coast. Similarity of tastes and desires drew other members of our tale together, besides Coleman and Bluenose. Old Mr Summers and Mr Clelland, the dark passenger in the "Trident," found such a strong bond of sympathy existing between them, that they took cottages in juxtaposition in the town of Deal, and went about continually "doing good." Mrs Foster, Lucy, and Guy were allies, as a matter of course. Rodney Nick improved somewhat in his character, and became a respectable boatman. People said that Mr Burton, the missionary to seamen, had something to do with this improvement. It is not improbable that he had. But Long Orrick died as he had lived,--a notorious and incorrigible smuggler. Peekins was changed from a tiger into a clerk; and, in process of time, came to keep the books of that celebrated firm in which he had originally figured as a spider in blue tights and buttons. Bax and Tommy sailed together for several years. They also engaged in mercantile ventures to China on their own account, and were so prosperous in their career that they realised ample fortunes, and finally settled near each other on the coast of Kent. Here they resumed their old career of saving human life. They became noted as men who were ready to devise and prompt to act in cases of emergency. They helped to man the lifeboat in their neighbourhood when occasion required. They were the means of establishing a library and a mission to seamen, and were regarded as a blessing to the district in which they dwelt. They were literally heroes of the coast, for they spent their time in doing good to those whose lot it is to brave the dangers of the deep and sweep the stormy sea. THE END. 
22277	----	[Illustration: THEN A WOMAN WAS LOWERED BY MEANS OF THIS, AND SAFELY STOWED AWAY. Darry the Life Saver--Page 185] ----------------------------------------------------------------------- DARRY THE LIFE SAVER Or The Heroes of the Coast By FRANK V. WEBSTER Author of "Only a Farm Boy," "Bob the Castaway," "The Boys of Bellewood School," etc. ILLUSTRATED New York Cupples & Leon Company Publishers ----------------------------------------------------------------------- BOOKS FOR BOYS By FRANK V. WEBSTER 12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Price per volume, 40 cents, postpaid ONLY A FARM BOY TOM, THE TELEPHONE BOY THE BOY FROM THE RANCH THE YOUNG TREASURE HUNTER BOB, THE CASTAWAY THE YOUNG FIREMEN OF LAKEVILLE THE NEWSBOY PARTNERS THE BOY PILOT OF THE LAKES TWO BOY GOLD MINERS JACK, THE RUNAWAY COMRADES OF THE SADDLE THE BOYS OF BELLWOOD SCHOOL THE HIGH SCHOOL RIVALS AIRSHIP ANDY BOB CHESTER'S GRIT BEN HARDY'S FLYING MACHINE DICK, THE BANK BOY DARRY, THE LIFE SAVER Copyright, 1911, by CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY DARRY, THE LIFE SAVER ----------------------------------------------------------------------- CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. The Hurricane 1 II. Saved by the Life Chain 10 III. Abner Peake's Offer 19 IV. The Cabin by the Sea 29 V. An Encounter on the Road 39 VI. Winning His Way 46 VII. The Midnight Alarm 55 VIII. Across the Bay 63 IX. The Signal Rocket 71 X. Jim the Bully 78 XI. A Glorious Prospect 86 XII. The Stolen Traps 94 XIII. Joe's Shotgun Secures a Supper 102 XIV. The Lonely Vigil of the Coast Patrol 110 XV. The Power of Music 117 XVI. Darry Meets with a Rebuff 124 XVII. Abner Tells a Little History 132 XVIII. The Imprisoned Launch 139 XIX. The Part of an Elder Brother 146 XX. Bad Luck and Good 154 XXI. Satisfying the Mortgage 162 XXII. Abner Hears the News 171 XXIII. Darry in the Lifeboat 179 XXIV. The Awakening 191 XXV. Conclusion 202 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- DARRY, THE LIFE SAVER CHAPTER I THE HURRICANE "Will we ever weather this terrible storm?" It was a half-grown lad who flung this despairing question out; the wind carried the sound of his voice off over the billows; but there came no answer. A brigantine, battered by the tropical hurricane sweeping up from the Caribbean Sea, was staggering along like a wounded beast. Her masts had long since gone by the board, and upon the stump of the mizzen-stick a bit of canvas like a goose-wing had been spread in the useless endeavor to maintain steerageway. All around, the sea rose and fell in mountainous waves, on which the poor wreck tossed about, as helpless as a cork. Though the lad, lashed to some of the rigging that still clung to the temporary jury mast, strained his eyes to the utmost, he could see nothing but the waste of waves, the uplifting tops of which curled over, and were snatched away in flying spud by the furious wind. Darry was the cabin boy of the _Falcon_, having sailed with Captain Harley now for several years. The old navigator had run across him in a foreign port, and under most peculiar conditions. Hearing a boyish voice that somehow struck his fancy, raised in angry protest, followed by the crack of a whip, and much loud laughing, the skipper of the brigantine had pushed into a café in Naples. Here he discovered a small, but sturdy lad, who had apparently been playing a violin for coppers, refusing to dance for a big brute of a sailor, an Italian, who had seized upon his beloved instrument. When the boy had made an effort to recover the violin the bully deliberately smashed it on the back of a chair. Then, laughing at the poor little chap's expressions of grief as he gathered up the pieces tenderly in his arms, the brutal sailor had seized upon a carter's whip, and cracking it loudly, declared that he would lay it over the boy's shoulders unless he mounted a table and danced to his whistling. It was then that the big mariner strode in and stood between the lad and his cowardly persecutors. When good-hearted Captain Harley heard the boy's pitiful story, and that he was a waif, having been abandoned some years before by an old man with whom he seemed to have been traveling, he offered to befriend him, and give him a chance to see something of the world as cabin boy on the good old brigantine, _Falcon_. This offer the little chap had eagerly accepted, for he believed he must be of American birth, and somehow longed to set foot on that land far across the sea. Some years had passed. Darry knew no other home save the friendly cabin of the brigantine, and since he had no knowledge as to what his name might be, by degrees he came to assume that of his benefactor. During these years the boy had seen much of the world, and learned many things under the guidance of the warm-hearted captain. Of course he spent many bitter hours in vain regrets over the fact that there was so little chance of his ever learning his identity--only a slender link seemed to connect him with that mysterious past that was hidden from his sight; and this was a curious little scar upon his right arm just below the elbow. It looked like a crescent moon, and had been there ever since he could remember. This fact caused Darry to believe it might be the result of some accident that must have occurred while he was yet a baby. If such were the case then some people, _somewhere_, would be apt to recognize this peculiar mark if they ever saw it again. Captain Harley had always encouraged him in the belief that some happy day he would surely know the truth. Just now, however, it really looked as though Darry need no longer allow himself to feel any anxiety on that score. The ocean depths would offer just as easy a resting place to a nameless waif as to a crowned monarch. When the great waves broke over the drifting vessel the rush of water must have swept him away, only that he had been wise enough to lash himself to the stump of the mizzen-mast. During a little lull in the tempest someone joined him, also using the whipping rope-ends to secure his hold. Darry saw by the aid of the darting lightning that it was his good friend, the captain; and with his thoughts still taken up with the peril of his situation he repeated the question that only the mocking winds had heard before: "Will we ever weather this storm, captain?" "I fear not, my lad," replied the master of the ship, sadly, "the poor old hulk is now only a plaything for the elements. It looks as though the _Falcon_ had reached the end of her voyaging at last. Twenty years have I commanded her. I have a feeling that if so be she goes down I will not survive her." The roar of the gale was such that it became necessary to shout at times, in order to make one's self heard above the elements. "Are we near the coast?" asked the boy, anxiously; for he knew that such a thing must double their danger. "I am afraid it is only too true, though the storm has been so prolonged that I have long ago lost my reckoning," replied the mariner. "But you told me these coasts are patrolled by brave life savers, who always stand ready to risk everything in case a vessel is driven on the reefs?" continued the boy, trying to see a gleam of hope through the gloom. "That is true, but alas! I am afraid even the bravest of men would find themselves helpless in such a terrific blow as this." "But, captain, surely you have not given up all hope?" anxiously demanded Darry, trying to face the terrible prospect with a brave heart. "I never do that, lad. But one of us may not live to reach the shore; and since it is so, I wanted to have a few last words with you, and then I must return to my duty, which is to try and steer this drifting hulk until the end comes." He reached out his hand. The boy eagerly clutched it, and there, as the lightning flashed, he looked into the kind face of his benefactor. Something seemed to tell him that it was the last time he would ever feel the pressure of that friendly hand, and this thought alarmed him as the storm had thus far been unable to do. "Listen, and take heed, my lad," said the skipper, earnestly, "it may be that Providence will shield you through this time of trouble, and that you shall reach the shore in safety after all. Should ill befall me I want you to write my old mother up in York State--you know where she lives. I have made all preparations, so that she will be provided for, and my sister also. Do you understand me?" "Oh! yes, sir! But I hope we may both pull through!" cried the boy, earnestly. "So do I, for life is sweet; but it may not be. Now, lad, about yourself, and I am done. Remember all that I have taught you. Then you will grow up to be a true man. And continue to search for some evidence of your people. That mark on your arm may be of great value to you some day. Hark! I fancied I caught the sound of the breakers just then! It is possible that the time has come for us to part. Good bye, my boy, and God bless you whatever betide!" Another fierce pressure of the hand, and Captain Harley was gone. Standing there, filled with horror and dismay, Darry caught a last glimpse of his guardian staggering across the wet deck, and then the gloom forever hid him from view. The days would come, and the days would go, but always must he remember that the last thought of the noble captain was for him. He strained his hearing to ascertain whether the captain's fears were well founded, and it was not long before he too could catch the awful pounding of the seas upon the half-submerged reefs. The helpless brigantine was drifting slowly, but surely to her fate; for there was hardly a place along the whole American coast more dangerous than this, which had in times past proved a graveyard for many noble ships. Among the tangled rigging was a broken spar, and to this Darry lashed himself, in the faint hope that if it were swept ashore he might still cling to life. He awaited the impending crash with his heart cold within his breast; for after all he was but a lad, and the strongest men might have viewed the catastrophe with a sickening sense of dread. Then came a fearful shock, as the brigantine was smashed down upon the jaws of the reef by a mighty force. After that the seas had her for a plaything, rushing completely over her as if in derision. Three times the boy was almost drowned by the flood that poured across that slanting deck, and he knew that if he remained there longer his time had surely come. It would be better to cut loose from the mast, and trust his fortunes upon the breast of the next giant wave that, if it were kind, would carry him well over the rocks, and head him for the distant beach. It was in sheer desperation that he seized upon his sailor's knife and severed the ropes that thus far had held so securely. Then he awaited the coming of the next comber with set teeth, and held his breath. A few seconds and it was upon him. This time the spar, as well as the clinging lad, went sweeping over the side of the vessel, and carried safely above the reef, started in toward the beach on a roller that seemed gigantic. The spray was in his eyes, so that he could hardly see at all, but at that moment Darry thought he glimpsed a light somewhere ahead; and what the captain had told him about the gallant life savers flashed into his mind. Somehow, it seemed to give the despairing boy renewed hope. Perhaps these brave men were watching for the coming of just such flotsam from the wreck, which they must have sighted when the lightning flashed; and would find some means for plucking him out of the raging sea. CHAPTER II SAVED BY THE LIFE CHAIN The line of reefs stood as a barrier to the sea, and after the waves came in contact with the rocks they continued on their course with less violence than before. Still, it was terrible enough to any one exposed to their fury. Hope soars high in the breast of youth, however, and life is sweet, so that our hero continued to struggle against the forces to which he found himself exposed. Again had his eyes caught a glimpse of a burning light on the shore, and somehow it gave him renewed courage to hold on, for he seemed to understand that determined hearts were waiting there, eager to give him a helping hand. Then some object sped past him, and he caught the sight of flashing oars. It was the lifeboat! In spite of the great danger involved in the undertaking, the coast guards had succeeded in launching their boat, and were even now heading toward the wreck on the reef; though the chances of finding a single living soul aboard seemed small indeed, for the billows were breaking completely over her, and she must soon go to pieces. Darry tried to call out, but his mouth filled with salty water, and in despair he saw the boat pass him by. Even the lightning failed to illumine the scene just then, or some eager eye might have detected the floating spar and its human burden. No hope remained save that he might be tossed up on the beach somewhere near the friendly fire that was burning as a beacon. Once he fancied he heard men shouting during a lull in the roar of the elements; but the coming of another smothering billow shut out the friendly sounds. Closer he was flung, until he could again hear the shouts of men, but the baffling seas kept playing with him, sending him up on the breaking wave only to once more snatch him back, until the poor boy almost despaired of living through the dreadful ordeal. He tried his best to raise his voice, but the cry he gave utterance to was so feeble that even if heard it must have been taken for the note of some storm bird attracted by the light of the beacon fire. Just when he was giving way to despair, he saw the figures of men running along the beach close to the edge of the waves, and new hope awoke in his breast that his predicament had been seen. Now they were pushing into the sea, holding one another's hands, and forming a living chain, with a sturdy fellow at the end to snatch the victim of the wreck out of the jaws of death. The precious sight was at that instant shut out, for again there came a deluge of water from behind, overwhelming the boy on the floating spar. Darry felt something take hold upon him, which, in his excited condition, he at first believed to be a shark; but, on the contrary, it proved to be the fingers of the man at the outer end of the line. Once they closed upon the person of the shipwrecked cabin boy they could not be easily induced to let go, and amid shouts of triumph, spar and lad were speedily dragged up on the beach beyond reach of the hungry waves. He was dimly conscious of being released from his friendly float, and tenderly carried a short distance to the shelter of a house. It was the life-saving station to which the boy had been taken by his rescuers. [ILLUSTRATION: HE WAS DIMLY CONSCIOUS OF BEING RELEASED FROM HIS FRIENDLY FLOAT.] Here he was wrapped in blankets, and placed close to a warm fire in order to restore his benumbed faculties; while some hot liquid being forced between his pallid lips served to give new strength to his body. In less than ten minutes he opened his eyes and looked around. Kind faces, even though rough and bearded, surrounded him, and he knew that for once he had cheated the sea of a victim. As strength came back he began to take an interest in what was passing around him, especially when he saw several men carried in, whom he recognized as some of the sailors of the ill-fated brigantine. Eagerly he watched and prayed that his good friend the captain might be one of those who had been snatched from a watery grave; but as time passed this hope gradually became fainter. The lifeboat had managed to return from the wreck, to report that not a living soul remained aboard; and that the seas were so tremendous that even had it been otherwise there would have been small chance of saving them, since it was next to impossible to approach close to the vessel. How the boy, lying there, looked with almost reverence upon those stalwart fellows who were risking their lives in the effort to save their fellow men. Darry would never forget that hour. The impressions he received then would remain with him through life; and in his eyes the calling of a life saver must always be reckoned the noblest vocation to which a young man could pledge himself. He thought he would like nothing better than to become one of the band, and in some way repay the great debt he owed them by doing as he had been done by. Presently he had so far recovered that he could get up and move around. All of the sailors had not been equally fortunate; indeed, two of them would never again scour the seas, having taken out papers for that long voyage the end of which no mortal eye can see. As each new arrival was carried in the boy would be the first to hasten forward, but as often his sigh echoed the heavy feeling in his heart as he discovered a face other than the familiar one he had grown to love. One of the surfmen who had manned the lifeboat seemed to be particularly interested in the rescued boy, for he came into the station several times to ask how he was feeling, and if there was not something more he wanted. He was a tall, angular fellow, with a thin but engaging face, and Darry had heard some of the others call him Abner Peake. Somehow he found himself drawn toward this man from the start; and it seemed as though in losing one good friend he had found another to take the place of the kind captain. Abner was a native of the shore, and spoke in the peculiar dialect of the uneducated Southerner; but as a water-dog he knew no superior, and it is this quality that Uncle Sam looks for when making up his crews to man the life-saving stations that dot the whole coast from Maine to Florida. There was a twang about his voice that reminded Darry of a negro he had once had for a shipmate on the brigantine; but at the same time his tone was soft, and inspired confidence. "Better hev a leetle more coffee, bub?" he said, coming upon Darry as the latter turned away white-faced from the last body carried in by the rough men. "Perhaps it would do me good; I still feel mighty weak; but I'm glad to be here instead of out there," replied Darry, pointing to where the white-capped waves were rushing in long lines toward the beach. "Course yuh be, bub. And we-uns air glad tuh get a chanct tuh pull yuh outen the water. My old woman'd like tuh set eyes on yuh. Jest the age our Joe would a-ben if he'd pulled through," and the rough surfman swept his sleeve across his eyes as he spoke. The secret of his interest in Darry was out; he had lost a boy of his own, and his heart was very tender still, so that the sight of this poor shipwrecked lad brought back his own sorrow keenly. "You haven't seen anything of the captain, I suppose?" anxiously asked Darry, wondering if it could possibly be that he had missed sight of his friend at the time he was lying there unconscious. Abner Peake shook his head in the negative. He saw the boy was very eager to learn of the mariner's fate, and well he knew that with each passing minute the chances of the other surviving the pounding of the seas became less and less. It was now not far from dawn. The hurricane still blew with its old violence, and there was scant hope of its passing for another twelve hours at least. All that time those devoted men must be on the watch, ready to man their surfboat again and take their lives in hand, should another vessel strike the dangerous reefs that were marked upon the chart as the worst within a hundred miles of Hatteras. Sick at heart over the loss of his wise friend and benefactor, Darry found the interior of the station almost unbearable just then. He felt as though he must get outside where the elements rioted, and watch the incoming waves for some sign of the captain. But this new-found friend declared that it could do no good, since the beach was already patrolled by those whose keen eyes would discover the faintest trace of a brave swimmer trying to buffet the cruel waves; he must remain under cover, so as to escape the possible evil results of his late experience. And so Darry had to once more lie down and let the other cover him with a blanket, a pillow having been placed under his head. He was utterly exhausted, and it had only been hope and excitement that had buoyed him up until now. As he lay there watching the various things that were being done for the relief of the poor fellows snatched from a watery grave he found his eyes growing heavy, and occasionally closing in spite of his efforts to remain awake. Once he sat up as some men came in bearing another sailor who, alas, had apparently been dragged out of the sea too late to save the spark of life; but, upon learning that it was not the one in whose fate he was so keenly interested, Darry had fallen back again upon his hard pillow. Soon after things faded from his sight, and he slept the sleep of weariness, for every muscle in his body was as sore as though it had been pounded with a club. It was hours before he awoke. At first he could not understand just where he was or how he came in such unfamiliar surroundings; but seeing the kindly face of Abner Peake bending over, he asked a mute question that the other answered with a shake of his head. The captain's body had not as yet come ashore. CHAPTER III ABNER PEAKE'S OFFER Days passed. Darry had entirely given up hope of ever hearing from the captain, whose body must have been carried out to sea again, as were several of the crew. After the shock became less severe, our hero began to take a new interest in the scene around him, and particularly in connection with the life-saving station where his new friend Abner was quartered. The keeper was a grizzled surfman named Frazer, and a man possessed of some education; he did not awaken the same feelings in the boy as Abner Peake, but at the same time he was evidently inclined to be friendly in his own gruff way. On the third day after the rescue he called Darry to him as he sat mending a net with which the crew of the station secured enough fish to serve them for an occasional meal. "Sit down, lad. I want to talk with you a bit," he said. Darry dropped on a block close by. He was still filled with the deepest admiration for these men of the coast, and his determination to follow their arduous calling when he grew big enough to take an oar in the surfboat was undiminished. "Now, tell me about yourself, and where you belong. We are not allowed to keep any rescued sailors more than a certain time. You notice that all the others have gone, save the poor chaps lying under those mounds yonder. Being a boy you've been favored; but the time has come to know what you mean to do. Speak up, lad, and tell me your story?" Encouraged by his kind voice, Darry told all he knew about himself up to the very moment when he parted from his friend, the captain. Mr. Frazer seemed interested. "I feel sorry for you, Darry. It must be hard to feel that you haven't got a friend in the world. My hands are tied in the matter, so I can do nothing; but there's Abner Peake telling me he'd like you to stay with him," he remarked. "I understood him to say he once had a boy about my age." "Yes, a likely little chap, but it was about a year back he was lost." "Was he drowned?" asked Darry, feeling that this was about the way most persons in this coast country must meet their end. "Yes. The little fellow was a venturesome boy, and tried to cross the bay in a heavy sea. He must have been swept out at the inlet. They found the boat on the beach, three miles above here, but never little Joe. Abner has never gotten over it. To this day he sits and looks out to sea as if he could discover his poor boy coming back to him. I thought for a time the fellow would go out of his mind." "And he wants me to stay with him?" continued Darry, musingly. "Yes. Abner has a small house out of the village, where his wife and the two little girls live, while he is over here at the station. Often we want someone to cross over with supplies, and he thinks you might like the job." Darry drew a long breath. "I have no home. The only one I ever knew was the poor old _Falcon_, and her timbers are scattered along the coast for ten miles. I think that if Mr. Peake really wants me to stay with him I shall accept gladly. It is tough to feel like a piece of driftwood all the time," he said. "I think you are wise in deciding that way. Abner is a kind man, and as for his wife--well, she's got a temper all right, but if you don't rub it the wrong way she can be got on with, I reckon. Anyhow, it would pay you to try it until something else turns up. Maybe you want to ship on another vessel?" "I think I have had all of the sea I want, after that time. I wake up nights, thinking I'm choking with the salt water, and trying to catch my breath. When I get older and stronger I want to be a life saver like you, sir." The keeper smiled pleasantly. It was not often he appeared as a hero in the eyes of even a boy, and, being human, he could not help feeling some satisfaction. "It's a dangerous calling, Darry; but, after all, no worse than that of a sailor. And while we risk our lives often, it is to try and save others. There's some satisfaction in that. But there sits Abner on that old keel of a wreck; suppose you go and tell him your story, and see what he says." When the boy joined him Abner Peake looked up, and the solemn expression on his face changed to one of kindliness. "Set down, lad. Are yuh feelin' all right agin after your rough time?" he asked. "A little sore in the arms still, but that will pass away soon. Mr. Frazer told me you wanted to hear my story." "If yuh don't mind tellin' me. I reckoned as how yuh must 'a' had a hard time. Now, I ain't never been away from this here coast, but I feels for boys what's out in the wide world. Still, there's some hope o' _them_ comin' back tuh the nest agin, some day. Now, go on, lad," with a long-drawn sigh. Again did the homeless Darry start in to narrate his brief career, so far as it was known to him; and the old surfman listened with a tear in his eye, as he told of his abandonment in a foreign port, and the hard time he had getting enough to eat. Finally it was all told, and Abner Peake laid a hand on his arm, saying: "Don't say yuh ain't got a home, any more, Darry, if so be yuh'd care to stay at my place. The missus ain't the easiest one in the world tuh get along with, but soon as she sees what a likely chap yuh be I know she'll like yuh, same as I do. Try it awhile, lad, until yuh kin make your mind up. My Joe used tuh make a tidy lot of money trappin' animals in the swamp for ther skins, huntin' turkles like them terrapin they pay sech a big price fur, an' actin' as guide fur the shooters as come down along the coast after ducks and snipe and bay birds. No reason but what you could do the same. Only try and git on the good side of the ole woman, to begin with, lad. She's got a heart, tho' there's some as don't believe it. I know she's still a feelin' bad because Joe was taken from us." "It was hard to lose him, your only boy," said Darry, consolingly. The man shook his head dolefully, and bent a wistful look toward the open sea. "Yes, it was tough; but I reckon he's safe in the harbor long afore now. What say, lad, be yuh of a mind to try it with us?" he continued eagerly. "I will, and only glad of the chance. It is kind of you to make me the offer, and I only hope I may be able to please your wife. I'll do everything I can to take the place of Joe, although, of course, I couldn't expect to do that altogether," replied Darry. "Say, yuh make me feel better, already. Seems to me as if I heerd little Joe aspeakin' to me from somewhere. I'm goin' crost the bay to-night, lad. It's my turn for a day off, an' I'll take yuh with me. I reckons his clothes'd just about be the right fit fur yuh." So it was settled. Darry felt easy in his mind now, much more so than he had been ever since finding himself adrift on shore, like a vessel without an anchor. No matter how humble, it would be _home_ to him, for he had no memories to haunt him, and bring about discontent. There was the village near by, where possibly he might meet boys of his own age; and what Abner had said about the pursuits by which Joe had been accustomed to making odd bits of money appealed to him, for he believed he had something of a love for outdoor sports in his nature, since he had never neglected to take advantage of a chance to use a fishing line, when the brigantine happened to be in one of the world ports to which business called her. But above all he gloried in the fact that occasionally he would have the opportunity to visit the station on the outer beach, where those hardy men patrolled every night, and stood ready to go to the assistance of any imperilled mariners. After supper he accompanied Abner to the little landing where a stout rowboat was fastened. Into this they dropped, and Darry immediately seized upon the oars, to the secret amusement and satisfaction of the life saver, who was quite willing to let him display his ability in this important line. "Yuh sure pull a good, strong stroke, lad," he declared, after they had been upon the bay for some time, Darry taking his bearings from a bright star that had appeared in the east. "He taught me," replied the boy, and, perhaps unconsciously, his voice quavered as he spoke, for he could not even think of the captain without emotion. "All the better. A feller ain't no use 'round this section less he kin row a boat with the best. And if so be yuh 'spect to jine with us some day, the more yuh larn about this same thing the better for yuh. Joe, he was a reg'lar water duck--but he was too darin' and he tried the game onct too often. Beware o' that inlet, lad. The tide sweeps outen it like a mill race sometimes, an' the best man couldn't hold his own agin it. It's ben a mystery to me always how it happened. Nobody ever knowed, only that we found the boat two days arter on the beach, three miles up. When yuh git tired say so, an' I'll spell yuh." After a long time they drew near the other shore. Here lights had been seen, and Darry discovered quite a collection of houses, for the most part cabins such as are so common in the south, especially along the coast of North Carolina. Abner insisted upon taking the oars now; and as he knew just where it was most desirable to land the boy no longer objected. Sitting there in the stern he watched the scene unfold as they approached the mainland, though the new moon gave very little light. Sounds as of boys at play, together with the barking of dogs, and even the gabble of a goose, awoke in his breast new emotions such as he had never experienced before; for he was about to be introduced to a home, no matter of what character, where he would after that belong. The boat was brought up against a landing, and both went ashore. "In the mornin' I'll get yuh to help carry the groceries to the boat, so I kin ferry 'em acrost. Jest now I'm pinin' to get to the shack, 'cause I ain't ben home these two weeks, yuh see. This way, Darry, lad. My cabin ain't jest in the village; but when I come home I ginerally stop in at the butcher's an' take some meat along. Git out, yuh yaller critter!" this to a dog that had come barking toward them as though recognizing the fact that a stranger had come to town. "Hyar, Peake, don't yer hit my dorg!" shouted a half-grown boy, slouching around a corner as though he had just come out of a drinking resort there. "Keep him home, then, Jim Dilks, er else teach the critter to behave. He tackled me onct and I had to kick him over a fence to save my shins from his teeth. Some day that hound'll get a call all right, yuh hear me, Jim?" declared Abner. Jim leered at him, and then looked at the boy. "Reckon it'll be a bad day for the feller that hurts me dorg, see? Who yer got trailin' 'long with yer, Peake? Say, be he the critter as kim ashore? Sooner he skips outen this the better. We ain't got jobs enough now fur them as growed up round hyar." "No danger of you worrin' 'bout jobs, Jim Dilks. Work an' you never got on well. Mind your own business, now. This lad can look out for hisself. He's goin' to live with me. Come on, Darry, don't notice the loafer," concluded the life saver; and he and the boy passed on. Darry was destined to see a great deal more of Jim Dilks, as we shall presently learn. CHAPTER IV THE CABIN BY THE MARSH As is customary in many of these little villages along the coast, the butcher shop was also the country store where groceries, dry goods, notions, and possibly boots and hats in addition, were sold. Mr. Keeler eyed the boy in Abner's company, while he was cutting off the meat. "Likely lad, that, Mr. Peake," he said. "I reckon he must be the one that come ashore from the wreck t'other night. I heard all about it, 'cause some of our men were over to help out," he added, in a low tone, taking advantage of Darry straying off a bit to examine a colored print that hung on the wall, and offered all manner of inducements to young fellows wishing to enlist in the navy. "The boy's all right. He's gwine to live with my missus--if they kin git on together. But about them as were over, Gus, I've got a notion some on 'em thought it might be a good chanct to wreck a craft. I seen Dilks there, with his crowd, an' yuh know he's under suspicion o' havin' lured that schooner ashore with a false light last year. Time's comin' when them rascals air goin' to git caught. Hangin' 'd be too easy for such snakes. An' that boy o' his'n promises to be a chip o' the ole block. He's as bad as they make 'em," returned the surfman, shaking his head. Nothing so angers a life saver as the mention of a wrecker; for deep down in his heart he believes that the men who make a living from salvage after a vessel has gone to pieces on the reefs, or else in boarding the wreck when the storm has gone down, would not hesitate a minute about sending any ship to her doom if they believed it could be done without too much risk. "If he doesn't get on with the missus let me have a try with him, Abner. Looks to be a likely lad. They're a scarce article around here--some go to sea, others are in the service, and more get drowned; while those that are left seem bad from top to bottom, just like Jim Dilks. Yes, I could use that younker, I think." Peake had turned white at mention of the fate that befalls so many young men of the shore; but he made no remark concerning his feelings. "I'll remember what yuh say, Mr. Keeler. But I got a notion the boy will stick with me. When the missus gets to know him she can't help but like him. He's the clear quill. Take the change out of that bill. We just got paid last night, yuh see. Darry, let's move along." The village merchant looked after the couple a little enviously, as though something about the boy's appearance had awakened his interest. "I saw Jim Dilks talking to Peake before they came in here. I wager that young scamp has it in for the new boy in town. He's been a holy terror for a long time, and for one I think something should be done to put a stop to his doings. But his father has a grip on the worst elements here, and everyone seems afraid to rile up the old wrecker. Some say he used to be a smuggler years back, and even blacker stories are told of his life in Cuba, before Spain got out of the island. Well, it's none of my business. I don't dare act alone. If someone else starts the ball rolling I'll give it a big shove." And so the butcher salved his conscience for not doing his duty. Meanwhile Darry and his new friend walked briskly along, talking as they went. The boy had seen considerable of foreign ports, and the many strange things he could tell were doubly interesting to this simple life saver, who had never been further than to Wilmington in all his life. "See that light ahead, lad? That's a lamp in the windy o' my shack. They knows when my night comes around, an' the missus puts that lamp there. It's a big thing, Darry, to have a light in the windy, ashinin' only fur you. Makes a feller feel like he had one leetle nest in all this big world, where some un cared fur him. And that is goin' to be your home too, boy." "I don't know how to thank you, Mr. Peake," faltered the lad. "Then don't try. Besides, mebbe yuh won't like it so well, after all. Nancy, she ain't so easy to get on with, since leetle Joe went away. Seems like she jest can't ever git over it. I seen her cryin' the last time I was over. No use tryin' to comfort the pore ole gal. It left a sore place in her heart that nothin' kin ever heal. I'm a hopin' that p'haps with you around she may perk up some." They were soon at the door. It was thrown open at the sound of Abner's call, and two rather unkempt little girls rushed out, to be tossed up in the air by the proud father. They looked at Darry with wide-eyed wonder, for strangers were uncommon in this neighborhood, so far removed from the railroad. "Come right in, Darry. Here's the missus," said the life saver. A woman came forward, and after greeting Abner, looked with a little frown in the direction of the boy. The surfman hastened to explain that Darry was a survivor of the last wreck, on the shore where so many brave ships had left their bones. "He's a waif, what's never knowed no home, Nance. The captain picked him up abroad, but he's English or American, sure enough. With the death of that captain went his only friend. I liked the lad,--he somehow made me think of our Joe. Jest the same size, too, and he could wear his clothes fine. He'd be a great help to yuh, I reckons, if so be yuh would like to have him stay." Abner saw a look of coming trouble in the eyes of his wife, and his voice took on a pleading tone. His mention of Joe was unfortunate, perhaps, for the woman had never become reconciled to the loss of her only boy, and always declared Heaven had dealt unjustly with her when there were so many worthless lads in the village, who could have been far better spared. "Just like I didn't have my hands full now, without bringing home any more mouths to feed," she fumed. "Like as not he's a good-for-nothing like Jim Dilks, and will only make us trouble right along. Keep him over at the station if you want, Abner Peake, but you don't quarter him on me. This is my house, and I'm to be consulted before anybody is brought here." Abner had apparently thought this all over. He simply took Darry's hand and drew the half resisting lad over in front of the irate woman. "Nancy, I never knowed yuh to be anything but fair. S'posin' our leetle Joe was kerried out to sea, an' in a strange land met up with a citizen as took him home to his wife. What kinder reception do yuh think _he'd_ get? Could any woman look in Joe's face an' send him away from her door? Wall, then, jest look in the face o' this boy, an' then if so be yuh say take him away, I'll do it, Nancy," he said, simply. Almost against her will she was compelled to look. Well it was for Darry that he had clear eyes in which lurked no guile, for that gaze of the surfman's "missus" was searching, since she had before her mind a picture of the lost Joe. She only nodded her head and said: "Let him stay." Perhaps she was too full of emotion to say more; but the husband nodded his head as though satisfied with what he had done. "It's all right, boy; she seen Joey in your eyes, jest as I done. Seems to me yuh kin make good with the ole woman. Don't notice all she says fur a time. Sure she's suffered some." Apparently the family had waited with supper for Abner to come home, for his wife immediately placed the meat on the frying pan, and the odor of steak quickly filled every cranny of the small cabin of three rooms. The two little girls were slow to make up with Darry, but he knew how to interest them in certain ways, and it was not long before they hovered around him as if he were a curiosity indeed. Abner tried to make himself as agreeable as possible, for various reasons. He saw that his wife had not yet become reconciled to the fact of a stranger coming among them, and was watching Darry out of the corners of her eyes from time to time, while a frown would gather on her brow. She was a sharp-featured woman; but life goes hard with those of her sex in this coast country, and they grow old at forty. Darry was studying hard how to please her, for he felt that she was to be pitied after having lost her only boy so suddenly a year or so back; and he determined never to forget this if she should scold him needlessly or show temper. He anticipated her wants in the line of wood for the fire, cheerfully assisted in washing up the supper dishes, and was withal so obliging that ere long the anxious Abner saw the lines begin to leave the forehead of his better half. This tickled him more than any well-won fight in the breakers might have done, for he had a secret dread of Nancy's often ungovernable temper. "The boy's gone and done it, blame me if he ain't!" he muttered to himself, when he saw his wife actually smile over at where Darry was sitting, with one of the twins on either side, entranced with some figures he was drawing to illustrate a little story he had been telling them about some sight seen in Naples. When it came time to retire Darry was given a shake-down in the second room. He felt that he had made some sort of an impression upon the surfman's wife, and that after all she might not prove so hard to win as he had feared from what little he had heard about her temper. That night was the most peaceful he had known for some time. In the morning he was up before any one else stirred, and when Mrs Peake made her appearance she found a bright fire burning in the kitchen, plenty of wood on hand, a bucket of water from the spring handy, and a boy only too anxious to do anything he was told in the way of chores. Perhaps she may have had a suspicion that it would not last. "A new broom sweeps clean," she remarked to Abner, as he appeared and looked at her inquiringly. "I calkerlate this one means to keep a-going' right along," he said, "yuh see, the poor critter ain't never had no home before, an' he'll sorter 'preciate one now. Give him a show an' he'll make good." When Abner had to return to the other side of the bay Darry went with him to the store, where a supply of edibles was laid in according to the list written out by the station keeper; together with a can of oil, since their stock had run low. When Abner shook his hand heartily at pushing off, Darry felt as though another link connecting him with the past had been broken. Perhaps his face betrayed his feelings, for the old man exclaimed: "Keep a stiff upper lip, lad, and it'll all come out well. The missus is interested in yuh already. Tell her that I said to give yuh Joe's gun, and the traps he left. He writ down how he used to git the muskrats an' coons, too, so yuh kin understand how to set the traps. Tell the missus that yuh mean to share an' share alike with her in the money yuh get. That'll please her, 'cause yuh see cash is some skeerce with we-'uns all the time. Ten dollars a week don't go far. Sometimes Nancy hunts roots in the marshes, or picks up a few turkles that sells for a dollar or two each. To-morrow yuh bring over the mail. I've got a boat as is fair, if it only had a new pair o' oars. P'raps as a sailor lad yuh could whittle out a pair to answer. Well, good-bye, Darry, my boy, and good luck. Keep an eye out to windward for squalls if so be that Jim Dilks shows alongside." When the surfman had pulled with a strong stroke for some distance he paused long enough to wave his hand to the boy; after which Darry turned away to get the articles Mrs. Peake wanted at the store, and for which she had doled out the necessary cash to a penny. It would seem as though Abner must have had a vision of some coming trouble in connection with the ne'er-do-well son of the notorious wrecker, Dilks, for even as Darry entered the village street on his way to the general store he saw the heavily built young ruffian shuffling toward him. There was a leer on the features of the bully. Our hero had knocked around the world long enough to be able to detect signs of a coming storm when he saw them; and if ever the signals were set for trouble they certainly gave evidence of being now, when that shiftless Jim Dilks intercepted the newcomer. CHAPTER V AN ENCOUNTER ON THE ROAD Jim Dilks had long ruled as the bully of Ashley village. He had a reputation as a bad boy that served him in place of fighting; and as a rule an angry word from him was sufficient to command obedience. Besides, Nature had made him so ugly that when he scowled it was enough to send a shiver down the spinal column of most boys. Darry came to a pause. Indeed, he could not well have continued along the path he was taking without walking over the bully, so completely had Jim blocked his way. "Looky here, didn't yer hear me tell yer last night ter get outen this place?" demanded the wrecker's son, thrusting that aggressive chin of his forward still more, and glaring at his prospective victim in his usual commanding way. "I believe you did say something like that. Are you Jim Dilks?" asked Darry, and to the surprise of the other he did not seem to show the customary anxiety that went with hostile demonstrations by the bully. "When air yer going, then?" continued Jim. "I haven't decided. In fact, I like my present accommodations with Mrs. Peake so well that I may stay there right along," replied Darry, steadily. Jim caught his breath, and in such a noisy way that one would think it was a porpoise blowing in the inlet. In all his experience he had never come across such an experience as this. "I see yer want takin' down," he cried. "I've run this ranch a long time now, an' there ain't no new feller comin' here without I say so. Yer got ter skip out er take a lickin' on the spot. Now, I give yer one more chanct ter say yer'll hoof it." Darry knew what it meant, for he had not knocked around so long without learning the signs of storm and fight. He had thought seriously over this very matter, after being warned that he might sooner or later have trouble with Jim; and as a result his decision was already formed. When Jim Dilks saw him deliberately taking off his jacket he stared, with a new sensation beginning to make its presence felt around the region of his heart--the element of uncertainty, even fear. "Wot yer doin' that fur?" he demanded, shaking his head after the manner of a pugnacious rooster about to enter into combat for the mastery of the barnyard. "Why, you said you were going to lick me, and as this is a very good coat Mrs. Peake gave me, one that used to belong to her boy, Joe, I thought she might feel bad if she saw it dusty or torn," replied Darry, solemnly. "Say, you bean't goin' ter fight, be yer?" gasped Jim, hardly able to believe his senses, the shock was so great. "Why, you said I had to. I don't want to fight a bit, but I always obey orders, you see, and you told me I must or leave Ashley. Now, I don't mean to go away, so I suppose I must do the other thing. But I hate to hurt anyone." "Hey? You hurt me? Don't worry about thet, cub. I reckon I kin wipe up the ground with a feller o' yer build. So yer won't run, eh? Then all I kin say is yer got to take yer medicine, see?" Naturally, Jim knew next to nothing about the science of boxing, for he had always depended upon his brute strength to pull him through, backed by his really ferocious appearance, when he assumed his "fighting face," as he was proudly wont to term it. On the other hand Darry had often boxed during the dog watch, with some of the sailors aboard the old brigantine, and since there were several among the crew who prided themselves on a knowledge of fisticuffs, he imbibed more or less of skill in the dexterity shown in both self defense and aggressive tactics. At the same time Darry had seldom been called upon to utilize this knowledge, for he was of a peaceful nature, and would shun a fight if it could be done in honor. Now, he knew that Jim Dilks was determined to have it out with him, and consequently, if he really intended to remain in Ashley, he must show this bully that he could take care of himself. Jim was surprised when he received a staggering blow in the first encounter, and before he had even been able to lay a hand on his antagonist, who, after striking had nimbly bounded aside, so that the village boy came near falling down. Believing that this must have been only an accident, Jim turned with a roar and once more strove to crush his rival by sheer weight and bulldog tactics. There never was a fight yet that did not immediately attract a crowd of the curious and idle. Boys came running from several quarters, and not a few men too, the more shame to them, always glad to watch a contest, whether between a pair of aggressive dogs or roosters, or pugnacious lads. Those who came running up could hardly believe their eyes, when they saw the recognized bully of the village engaged with a strange boy, and apparently, thus far, getting the worst of the bargain. Darry felt rather ashamed to be caught in the centre of such a gathering; but the fight had been forced upon him, and the only thing left was to wind it up as quickly as possible. Accordingly, he began to force matters, and the third time that Jim leaped at him, failing as before to land his blow, he received a sudden shock in the shape of a swift tap directly under the ear that hurled him to the ground. There was a buzz of excitement about this time. Boys who had tamely yielded to the sway of the bully for many moons began to take notice, and even say things that were not calculated to soothe the lacerated feelings of Jim who was picking himself up slowly, and trying to collect his scattered wits. The bully, of course, had not had enough as yet. This time, however, when he came on it was with considerable caution, for his rough experience had begun to teach him that rush tactics were not going to answer with the boy who knew so well how to handle his fists. It made no difference, for Darry met him squarely, and after a rapid interchange of blows that brought out many a whoop from those who looked on, Jim once more received an unexpected tap that caused him to sit down a second time. He was in no hurry to get up now, but sat there in a half-dazed way, rubbing the side of his head, and gritting his teeth savagely. The crowd began to cheer, and it must have been a galling sound to that defeated bully, whose hour had come, as it usually does with most of his kind. "Get up!" said one man, jeeringly. Jim scrambled to his feet, to find his antagonist facing him in a manner that made him quail. "Are you done, or shall we go on with it?" asked Darry, calmly, for he did not seem to have been even winded in the exchange of blows. "Ah, git out. Me hand is sprained, I tell ye. I fell on it last night. That's why I couldn't knock yer out. This thing ain't done yet, cub. I'll git yer as sure as me name is Jim Dilks. I allers do wen I goes arter a feller." He turned away with his head tossed in the air as though victory had really perched upon his banner. [ILLUSTRATION: HE WAS IN NO HURRY TO GET UP NOW, BUT SAT THERE IN A HALF-DAZED WAY.] The laugh that arose must have been galling to his pride, for he stopped in his tracks and looked around angrily in the hopes of detecting one of the boys in the act, whom he could trash later on as a sop to his wounded feelings; but they were shrewd enough to hide their exultant faces just then. Darry picked up his coat, and putting it on, strode away. He was conscious of a feeling of satisfaction, not because he had whipped his antagonist, for it had been almost too easy; but he knew Jim Dilks had long lorded it over the boys of Ashley, and perhaps after this he might hesitate to act the part of bully again. At any rate he was not intending to leave the place just because one fellow had given him orders; perhaps before they left him alone he might have to repeat this dose; but the reputation of the one who had downed Jim Dilks would travel fast, and the balance of the village herd would think twice before trying conclusions with the new boy at Peake's. CHAPTER VI WINNING HIS WAY When Darry entered the store the proprietor looked at him with interest. Mr. Keeler was a very strait-laced individual, and wont to raise his hands in horror at the mention of fighting, or anything, in fact, that partook of violence. He always gave it as his opinion that football was a brutal game, equal to the bull rights of the Spaniards, and could hardly be induced to even watch a baseball match, for fear one of the players be injured. Nevertheless, Mr. Keeler was human, and from the door of his shop he had seen the little affair on the road, and recognized the combatants as Peake's new boy and the village bully. He could hardly believe his eyes when he saw that Darry had come off victor, and that the idle men who gaped at the encounter were giving Jim the laugh as he crossly slouched away. Perhaps after all there might be something in such a fight as this, where a much-needed lesson was taught a young scoundrel. Mr. Keeler had his eyes opened for once; but at the same time he thought it his duty as a man of peace to speak to the new boy. "What was the trouble about, my lad?" he asked, as Darry handed him a list of the articles Mrs. Peake wished him to bring back. "There was no trouble on my side. I only wanted to be left alone, sir," replied our hero, smiling. "Oh! I see, and Jim wouldn't have it? Like as not he told you to get off the earth--it would be just like his impudence." "Not quite so bad as that, sir, but he did say I couldn't stay with Mrs. Peake, and must move on. I'm quite satisfied where I am, and I mean to stay--that is as long as she wants me to." "Quite right. I suppose there may be times when a boy is compelled to stand up for his rights, although I've generally preached the other way. But if you had to fight I'm glad you succeeded in convincing Jim that you could hold your own." "That was easy enough, sir. He is a clumsy fighter." "I hope you do not love to engage in such affairs, Darry?" continued the grocer, alive to what he considered his duty. "I've been set upon a few times when I had to defend myself, but I never look for trouble. I'd even avoid it if I could; but you know, Mr. Keeler, sometimes a boy has to either run away or fight; and somehow I don't care to run away." Mr. Keeler nodded his head. He was getting a new insight into boy character that day, that might revolutionize a few of his pet theories. "You say you have decided to stay with the Peakes?" he continued. "If Mrs. Peake wants me to. It isn't quite decided yet; but I think I shall like to have a home there. You see, sir, outside of the cabin of the old _Falcon_ I've never known a home in all my life." Mr. Keeler felt a new interest in this strange lad, who had been a wanderer the brief span of his days, and yet strange to say seemed to possess the instincts of a manly young chap. He wondered very much where the boy could have picked up his ways; but then Mr. Keeler had never met Captain Harley, or he might not have indulged in so much vague speculation. "If you can get on with Mrs. Peake you deserve considerable praise, lad. Not but what she is a good enough woman, and with a kindly heart; but ever since little Joe went out on the ebb tide and never came back again she seems to have become what I might say, soured on humanity. Abner is meek enough to stand it, but she has had quarrels with many people in the village. Still, who knows but what you may be the very one to do her good. You are about the size of her Joe, and with his clothes on, I declare now, you do look a little like him. He was a clever boy, and I just reckon her heart was all wrapped up in him. At any rate, I wish you success there, Darry. And if I can do you a good turn at any time just ask me." "Thank you, sir," replied the boy, with a lump in his throat; for he was unused to kindness save from Captain Harley, and had had more hard knocks in the past than good wishes. The benevolent grocer continued to chat with him until the purchases were all tied up in a bundle, and after payment had been made Darry placed the rather bulky package on his shoulder and trotted off. On the way home he was not spoken to by anyone. He saw several boys pointing in his direction, and there was a look of awe on their faces as they watched him walk by; but no one ventured to address a word to the newcomer who was said to have roundly trounced big Jim. A tall man also looked sharply at him, and as he wore a great nickel star on the breast of his coat Darry understood that this must be Hank Squires, the constable of the village. No doubt news of the encounter had drifted to his ears, and since the boy who usually made life miserable for him had come out "second best" Hank did not think it policy to take any official notice of the misdemeanor. As soon as he arrived at home, Darry busied himself in undoing his package, and placing the various articles where Mrs. Peake told him they belonged. His manner was so obliging and his answers to her questions so ready, that despite her feeling of resentment at Abner, thinking anyone could ever take the place of Joe in her heart, the woman found herself insensibly drawn to the boy. Perhaps, after all, the mere fact that he had never known a mother's love, nor had a home of any kind, appealed more to her sympathies than anything else. She watched him take off his coat and carefully fold it before setting to work. That too, was like Joe, always trying to save his mother needless worry and work. After a while, as he happened to come close to her in doing something to save her steps, she uttered a little exclamation. "Did you fall down with the bundle, Darry?" she asked, leaning forward. He turned a little red, conscious that in some way she must have discovered signs of his recent adventure on the road. "Oh! no, it was not heavy at all, ma'am," he replied, and then noting that her eyes were fastened on his cheek he put up his hand, in this way discovering for the first time, a little soreness there. When he withdrew his fingers he saw a spot of blood. "How did that happen then, Darry?" she asked, suspiciously. "I think he must have hit me there, but I didn't know it until now," he replied, relieved to feel that he could tell her the whole truth. "Someone struck you--have you been fighting then?" she asked, a little coldly; for woman-like, Mrs. Peake did not approve of strenuous encounters. "He said that I would have to leave you, and get out. I couldn't do anything else but defend myself when he came at me. I'm sorry, for I never tried to get in a fight in my life, and I never ran away from one either." "Who was it, Darry?" she asked again, looking uneasy. "Jim Dilks," he answered promptly, unconsciously squaring his shoulders. "Oh! that terrible boy again! What a shame he can't pick out some one of his own size to beat! Did he hurt you very much, my poor boy?" Then she was surprised to see Darry smile broadly. "I didn't know he had even struck me until just now. You see Captain Harley allowed me to box with the sailors, and I learned how to defend myself. Jim says he is going to get even with me later on," he said modestly. "Do you mean to tell me you whipped that big loafer, that good-for-nothing bully who has run the place for years?" exclaimed the woman, in astonishment. "I wouldn't just say that, ma'am, and Jim wouldn't admit it either; but I did knock him down twice, and the second time he said he wouldn't fight any more because, you see, his right hand was sprained. So he went off and left me alone." "Splendid! He deserved a lesson, the brute! Many's the time he has jeered at me when he passed; and everyone has been afraid to put a hand on him because his father is a bad man. And you did that? Well, the boys of Ashley ought to vote you thanks. And you fought because he wanted you to leave _this_ house? You thought it was a home worth fighting for? Then it shall be yours as long as you want to stay here, Darry." Before he suspected how greatly her feelings had been aroused, Mrs. Peake threw her arms about his neck and gave him a resounding kiss--perhaps in her heart she was in this way demonstrating her undying affection for the boy who had vanished from that home one year ago, and never came back. After that Darry worked with a light heart, such as he had never before known in all his life. During the afternoon Abner's wife took pains to open a box that contained all the treasured possessions of the young trapper and naturalist whose greatest delight had been to spend his time in the swamps watching the animals at their play; and in the proper season setting his traps to secure the pelts of muskrats, 'coons and skunks, which, properly cured, would bring high prices at such centres where furs are collected, and secure many little luxuries for his mother during the winter season. Darry handled these with a bit of reverence, for he knew what a wrench it must be to the devoted heart of the mother to see a stranger touching the things she had hoarded up as treasures, and over which she must have had many a secret cry. Together with the traps and other things there was an old shotgun still in good condition, and Darry had visions of coming days in the marsh and swamp, where fat ducks and squirrels might fall to his aim, and provide good dinners for this little family into whose humble home he had now been fully taken. His heart was filled with gratitude, for he knew that his lines had fallen in pleasant places, since he was no longer a waif in the world. CHAPTER VII THE MIDNIGHT ALARM Darry found himself greatly interested in the little diary left behind by the boy naturalist, and which, besides containing an account of his catches in the way of fur-bearing animals, also explained his methods of setting snares and traps, how he cured the skins when taken, and where he received the highest prices for the same. All of this information was eagerly devoured by his successor, who felt that it was certainly up to him to do his share toward supporting the little family of the life saver who had been so kind to him. He wandered out late one afternoon to look around and see what prospect there might be for game; since the fall season was now on, and the boom of guns beginning to be heard on the bay, where the ducks were commencing to congregate. As he drew near the cabin just at dusk he was surprised to discover a figure making off in a suspicious way, as though not desirous of being seen. He recognized the lurker as Jim Dilks, and the fact gave him considerable uneasiness, for he had not forgotten how the other vowed to get even for his discomfiture, and Jim's methods of wiping out a score were sometimes little short of shocking, if Darry could believe half he had heard. Had the fellow been prowling around in hopes of meeting him again, and trying conclusions a second time? Darry could not believe it, for such a thing would not be in line with the reputation of the village bully. He would be more apt to try and obtain a mean revenge by doing some injury to the kind woman who had given refuge to this shipwrecked lad. Evidently Mrs. Peake should know what he had seen, and so as soon as he entered the kitchen, he spoke of it. "Jim Dilks hanging about here," she echoed, in rising anger; "I'd just like to know what that scamp wants, that's all. No good follows his visits, as every one about this section knows to their sorrow." "I'm afraid I'm the cause of it all. Unfortunately my being here is apt to bring trouble down upon you. Perhaps it might be as well if I moved on, as he said," remarked the boy, dejectedly. The woman looked at him quickly, almost sharply. "Do you want to go?" she demanded. "No, oh, never; but it would save you trouble, and I have no right to bring that on you," he cried, hastily, and with emotion. "Then I say you shan't go away, not for a dozen Jim Dilks. You belong here now. I've done what I said I never would do, given away my Joey's things, and you're my boy, I say. I won't let you go away! This is your home as long as you want to stay. Let me catch that Jim Dilks trying to chase you off, that's all." Darry could not trust his voice to say one word, only caught up her work-stained hand and pressed it to his lips, then fled from the house. And yet as Darry stood out under the old oak that shielded the cottage from the burning sun in summer, and the biting winds of the "northers" in winter, looking up at the first bright evening star that peeped into view, he felt a happiness deep down in his boyish heart that could not be excelled by a prince of the royal blood coming into his palace home. He was merry all evening, and the twins romped as they had not done for many a day, in fact, ever since their brother had left them. The mother looked on in silent approval, thinking that once more home seemed to have a brightness about it that had been long lacking. When all had retired save Darry he sat by the fire thinking. Somehow he could not forget that skulking figure he had seen leaving the vicinity of the cabin at dusk, and he would have given much to have known just what mission brought the vindictive Jim out there. The bully's home was in the village, and he had no business so far away, unless bent on an errand that would not bear the light of day. A sense of responsibility came upon the boy as he sat there. What if this young wretch should be cruel enough to poison the chickens, or the three pigs that were expected to help carry the family over the winter? The thought gave him a bad feeling, and almost unconsciously he reached out his hand and picked up the gun that Joe had purchased with money earned through the sale of roots dug in the woods or furs secured through clever deadfalls. There were a few shells in the box, and among others, several containing very small shot, that might sting pretty lively, but could not do much damage to a half-grown boy as tough as Jim Dilks. And it was with that same individual in his mind that Darry pushed two of these small bird shells into the barrels of the gun. He did not know that he would care to send even this charge directly at a human being; but in case it became necessary he wanted to make certain he would do little harm. After that he seemed to feel easier in his mind, for he lay down and was soon fast asleep. Something awoke him about midnight, and thinking he had heard a sound he sat up to listen; then he heard it again, and felt sure it must be a cough, as of some one partly choking. He was worried and left his lowly bed to go to the door connecting the rooms and listen, but nothing came from beyond. Could the sound come from outside? He slipped on some of his clothes, and stepping over quietly opened the outer door, looking into the night. The new moon had long since vanished behind the horizon, and yet he could see some sort of flickering light, coming from that region back of the house. At the same time he believed he caught the muttering of voices, or it might be a low chuckle, followed by a plain sneeze. Smoke came to his nostrils, and that meant fire! Darry had a sudden vision of Jim Dilks getting even, and it took the form of a burning corn-crib or chicken house. Filled with indignation, he turned back into the house, and snatched up the old shotgun; gone now was his hesitation with regard to using the gun to pepper the rascally gang that took orders from the even more rascally Jim. Without saying a word Darry shot out of the door and turned the corner, when his worst fears were realized, for he saw flames rising up alongside the pigsty, which adjoined the building in which the fowls were kept. His first act was to fire the right barrel of his gun in the air, and at the same time give vent to a shout. Immediately several shadowy figures, which in spite of their bent attitudes he knew to be boys, started to scamper away, in sudden alarm lest they be recognized, and made to pay the penalty in the squire's court. As near as Darry could tell there were three of them, and as they ran he believed he could recognize Jim Dilks in the centre of the group. The temptation was too great to be resisted, and filled with indignation because of the cowardly trick of which they had been guilty, Darry took a snap shot at the running bunch. It was music to his ears to catch the howls that immediately arose; but he knew no serious damage had resulted because they ran faster than ever after that, quickly vanishing from view in the shadows. There was work to be done if he would save the humble quarters of the family porkers from destruction, and the hennery as well. He knew where the rain barrel stood that held the wash water, and snatching up a bucket he hastily dipped it in, after which he rushed over to the fire and dashed the contents upon the blaze. Back and forth he galloped, using considerable discretion as to where he put the water so as to head off the creeping fire. Mrs. Peake now came running with another bucket, and proved herself a woman in a thousand by assisting the new addition to the family put out the last of the conflagration. When there was not a spark remaining, and beyond the grunting of the pigs and the cackling of the fowls, everything had fallen back into its usual condition, one or two neighbors arrived on the scene, asking questions, and busying themselves generally, though had it depended on their efforts the frail buildings must have gone up in smoke before now. Of course many questions were fired at Darry, and he felt that it was necessary he should tell what he had seen, though cautious about saying he had fully recognized any one of the three skulkers, no matter what strong suspicions he may have entertained. He believed he had a means of identifying one or more of them, nevertheless, when the proper time came. More neighbors arrived, attracted by the shots and the confusion, for nothing could quiet the excited chickens; and for an hour there was more or less discussion on the part of these good people. Finally the excitement died out, the last neighbor went home, and the Peake cabin was left to those who belonged there. There was no further alarm during the balance of that eventful night. CHAPTER VIII ACROSS THE BAY Darry welcomed the coming of dawn. He was glad to see that the sky was clear, for he anticipated a long row across the broad bay that day, bearing the mail for those at the life-saving station, as well as several things he had been commissioned to fetch over by Abner. Hardly had they finished breakfast than there arrived a visitor. Mrs. Peake saw him coming along the road, for she could look out of the window of the kitchen, where they ate, and have a view of the open stretch. "Here comes old Hank Squires. I reckon he's heard something about what happened here last night. It's about time he took notice of some of the mean pranks those village boys play on those who live outside. Tell him all he wants to hear, Darry; but unless you can swear to it perhaps you'd better not say that you think it was Jim Dilks and his crowd. If you feel sure, go ahead," she remarked, for with all her temper Mrs. Peake was a woman with a due sense of caution. The constable knocked, and in response to her call to "come in," he entered. "I heard ye had a little shindig up to here last night, Mrs. Peake, an' I jest called 'round to see what it is all 'bout," said Hank, seating himself. "I see thar was a fire here all right, an' it kim near burning yer buildings down in the bargain. Some says as how it was sot by a passel o' boys. How 'bout that, ma'am?" "I didn't see anyone," answered the woman. "When I got out Darry here had the fire pretty well under control, and I only helped him finish. You can ask him about it, Mr. Squires." Darry had already learned through the grocer that previous to her marriage to Abner the good woman had been for some years a teacher in the schools, which fact accounted for her superior language and knowledge of things that were far above the intelligence of most of her neighbors. The constable looked keenly at our hero. "I b'lieve this is the boy wot was saved from the wreck o' that brigantine. So he's gwine to be your boy now, Mrs. Peake? Well, I understand he's got the makin' o' a man in him, so Mr. Keeler sez to me last night, and I hope you'll never have no reason to be sorry. I want to know, Darry, what about this here fire?" "I'll be only too glad to tell you all I know, sir," replied the boy promptly. "When did it happen?" began the constable, with the air of a famous lawyer, with a bewildered witness on the rack. "I think it was somewhere near midnight. I have no watch, and Mrs. Peake took the little clock in her room with her." "That was near the time. It was half-past one when I went back to my bed with my two little girls," remarked the owner of the house. "S'pose you tell me what happened, jest as it comes to you, lad." With this invitation Darry soon related the whole matter, even to his firing after the vanishing culprits. This latter event appeared to interest the constable more than anything else. "Do you think you hit any o' 'em?" he asked, eagerly. "They didn't stop to tell me, but I heard a lot of howling, and they ran faster than ever," replied Darry, smiling. "That sounds as if you did some damage. Mrs. Peake, I must look into this outrage closer, and if I can only git my hands on any dead-sure evidence somebody's boys is a gwine to pay for the fiddlin'. I'm tired o' sech goings-on. They sure are a disgrace to our village. But you know how it is--my hands are tied acause theys politics back o' it all. If I arrested Jim Dilks now on the strength o' a suspicion I'd get tied up in litigation and lose my job in the bargain. I hears as how theys gwine to be a meetin' called at the house o' the dominie to discuss this question, an' see what kin be did to change things." "I'm sure I'm glad to know it, and if they want another to join in tell them to count on Nancy Peake. The women must take this thing in hand, since the men are too much afraid of that ruffian, big Jim Dilks, to do anything. Be sure and let me know when that meeting is coming off, Mr. Squires," said Abner's better half; and when he saw the fire in her eyes and the determination shining there Constable Squires realized that the day of salvation for Ashley village was not so very far away. "Then you wouldn't like to swear to its being any particular pusson?" he went on, turning again to Darry. "I did not see a face, and without that my evidence would hardly convict. No, sir, I would not swear that one of the three was Jim." "That's bad. I stand ready to do my duty and arrest the boy if so be any one makes a complaint; but without that it wouldn't pay and only makes useless trouble all 'round. But I'm goin' to keep my eyes open from now on, and when I git a sure case on Jim he comes in." That was all Mr. Squires would say, and he soon departed; but not before he had called Darry outside for a few words in parting. "Looks like you was marked to be the central figger o' the comin' storm, lad. Keep your eye open for squalls. If things git too black around jest slip over to the dominie's leetle house and hev a talk with him. I knows more about what's gwine to happen than I let on; but somebody's due to hev a surprise that hain't a donation party either. You seem to have the right stuff in you, lad. I heard from Mr. Keeler how you took that bully Jim into camp mighty neat. He'll never be satisfied till he's paid you back. A word to the wise is sufficient. Goodbye, Darry." After all the constable did not seem to be a bad sort of fellow. During the morning Darry accomplished many things for Abner's wife, and she showed in her manner how pleased she was to have him there. When noon had come and gone he prepared for his row across the bay, for she insisted upon his making an early start. "Clouds are banking up in the southeast, and we look for trouble whenever that comes about. Still, you will have plenty of time to row over. Stay with Abner to-night and return in the morning if it is safe on the bay. Perhaps you may have a chance to see how the life savers work," said Mrs. Peake. It was almost two when he pushed off from the float and started on his long row directly across the bay. Steadily he kept pushing across the wide stretch of shallow water. As Abner had said, a new pair of oars seemed to be badly needed in connection with the old boat; but a willing heart and sturdy arms sent the craft along until finally Darry reached his goal. The storm was drawing near, for by now the heavens were clouded over, and the haze seemed to thicken. Perhaps had he lingered another hour Darry might have stood a chance of losing his way, and being drawn out of the inlet by the powerful ebb tide--just as the unfortunate Joe had been. Abner was waiting at the landing for him. "Glad to see yuh, lad. How's everything to home?" he asked. Of course Darry understood this to mean with regard to himself and his relations with the good woman of the house. Truth to tell Abner had worried more than a little since parting from the boy, for his wife had shown more than unusual ill temper lately, and he feared that he had possibly done an unwise thing in leaving Darry there to be a constant reminder of the son she had lost. But the happy look on the boy's countenance eased his mind even before the boy spoke a single word. "He kin do it, if any boy kin," was what the life saver was saying under his breath. "All well, and your wife sent this over to you, sir. Here's the mail, too. The postmaster didn't want to give it to me, but Mr. Keeler told him it was all right, and that I belonged with the crew over here." Unconsciously his tones were full of pride as he made this assertion, and the grocer had evidently done more to please the lad in making that assertion than he would ever know. But Abner seemed to be staring down at something. "Seems like as if yuh bed ben a leetle mite keerless, son, with them trousers. Don't strike me thet burn was on 'em yesterday," he remarked. "It wasn't, Mr. Peake. I got that last night," he said, quickly. "Doin' what?" went on Abner, who seemed to guess that there was a story back of it all that he ought to hear. "Putting out the pigsty, that was on fire, sir." "What's that? Who sot it afire, I'd like to know? Them pigs never has smoked, leastways not yit. Jest tell me the hull bloomin' thing, lad." To begin at the start Darry had to take up the subject of his encounter on the road, and from that he went on until the whole story had been told, including the visit of Hank Squires. CHAPTER IX THE SIGNAL ROCKET Abner Peake made no comment until the end had been reached. Then he smote one hand into the palm of the other, and relieved his feelings in the expressive way one would expect a coast "cracker" to do. "This sorter thing has got to stop! It's sure the limit wen them varmints set about burnin' a honest man's buildin's up! I'll take the law into my own hands onless somethin' is did soon. P'raps that parson kin manage to rouse up the village, and upset old Dilks. Ef so be it falls through I'm gwine to take a hand, no matter what happens." He immediately told the whole story to his companions at the station, and they, of course, sympathized with him to a man. "That Dilks gang has got to be run out of Ashley, root and branch, daddy and sons, for they're all alike," declared the keeper, Mr. Frazer, who was a man of considerable intelligence--indeed, no one could hold the position he did unless fairly educated and able to manage the various concerns connected with the station. "It's a burning shame that the families of men who are away from home in the service of the Government can't be left unmolested. I'm going to take the matter up with the authorities the next time the boat comes to this station." The life savers asked Darry many questions, but he was careful not to fully commit himself with regard to identifying the three culprits. "Course he couldn't say, boys. Don't forget Darry's new in this section, and most o' the boys is strangers to him. But he's put his trade-mark on one as won't forget it in a hurry. And for me I'd be willing to wager my week's pay that young Jim Dilks was leadin' them raiders in their rascally work," declared one of the crew, a stalwart young fellow named Sandy Monks. By this time the storm began to break, and it became necessary for the keeper to make good use of his glass in the endeavor to place any vessel chancing to be within range, so that in case of trouble later in the night they would have some idea as to the character of the imperiled craft. Darry watched everything that was done with eager eyes. After an early supper, in which he participated with the men of the station, he saw the guard that had the first patrol don their storm clothes, and prepare to pass out to tramp the beach, exchanging checks when they met other members of the next patrol to prove that through the livelong night they had been alive to their duty. Abner was on the second watch. He had consented to let the boy go out with him, and share his lonely tramp, for he seemed to realize that just then it was the most ardent wish in the heart of our hero to become a life saver like himself. The rain came down in sheets, and the thunder rattled, while lightning played in strange fashion all around; but this storm was not in the same class with the dreadful West India hurricane that had sent the poor _Falcon_ on to the cruel reefs, to wind up her voyaging forever. Darry might have liked to sit up and listen to the men tell about former experiences; but the keeper chased them to their beds, knowing that it was necessary to secure some sleep, since they must remain up the latter half of the night. A hand touching his face aroused Darry. "Time to git up, lad, if so be yuh wants to go along," came a voice which he recognized as belonging to Abner, though he had been dreaming of the captain. He was quickly dressed and out of doors. It seemed to be still raining, and the wind howled worse than ever, though but little thunder accompanied the vivid flashes of lightning. Having been giving some spare waterproof garments in the shape of oilskins, and a sou'wester, Darry felt himself prepared to face any conditions that might arise during his long walk with his friend. Taking lantern and coster lights for signalling, Abner set out, another patrol going in the opposite direction. Those who had been out for hours had returned to the station in an almost exhausted condition, and at the time Abner and Darry left they were warming up with a cup of coffee, strong spirits being absolutely forbidden while on duty. Darry asked questions when the wind allowed of his speaking, which was not all the time, to be sure. He wanted to know how the patrol learned when a ship was in distress, and Abner answered that sometimes they saw lights on the reefs; again the lightning betrayed the perilous condition of the recked vessel; but usually they learned of the need of assistance through rockets sent up by those on board, and which were answered by the coast guard. Captain Harley had not been given a chance to send such an appeal for help, since he had been swept overboard just after the brigantine struck; besides, the vessel was a complete wreck at the time, and without a single stick in place could never have utilized the breeches buoy even had a line been shot out across her bows by means of the Lyle gun. In two hours they had gone to the end of their route, and exchanged checks with the other patrol coming from the south. Then the return journey was begun. Almost an hour had elapsed since turning back, and they were possibly more than half way to the station, when suddenly Darry, who chanced to be looking out to sea, discovered an ascending trail of fire that seemed to mount to the very clouds, when it broke, to show a flash of brilliant light. "See!" he had exclaimed, dragging at the sleeve of his companion's coat, for Abner was plodding along steadily, as if his mind was made up to the effect that there was going to be no call for help on this night. "A rocket! a signal!" cried the old life saver, at once alive to the occasion. His first act was to unwrap one of the coster lights, and set it on fire. This was intended to inform those on board the ship that their call for assistance had been seen, and that the lifeboat would soon be started if conditions allowed of its getting through the surf; for there are occasionally times when the sea runs so high that it proves beyond human endeavor to launch the boat. Having thus done his duty, so far as he could, Abner set out on a run for the station, knowing that unless the full crew was on hand all efforts to send out the boat would be useless. Darry kept at his heels, though he could have outrun the older man had he so desired, being sturdy and young. Stumbling along, sometimes falling flat as they met with obstacles in the darkness, they finally came within sight of the lights of the station. Here they found all excitement, for the signal rockets had of course been seen by the lookout, and all was in readiness to run the boat out of its shed. Darry found that he could certainly make himself useful in giving a helping hand, and with a will the boat was hurried down to the edge of the water that rolled up on the beach. All they waited for now was the coming of one man, whose beat happened to be a little longer than any other, but who should have shown up ere now. As the minutes passed the anxiety of the helmsman grew apace, for those on the stranded vessel were sending more rockets up, as though they believed their peril to be very great. The men stood at their places, ready to push at the word, and then leap aboard. Darry was with them, eager and alert; indeed, he had done such good service up to now that the stout Mr. Frazer cast an eye toward him more than once, as though tempted to ask him to take the place of the missing man, who must have had an accident on the way, perhaps spraining an ankle over some unseen obstacle that came in his way as he ran headlong. Darry saw him talking with Abner, who looked his way, and shook his head as if hardly willing to give his consent. Just as his hopes ran high, and the words seemed trembling on the lips of the helmsman a shout was heard and the missing man came limping down to take his place without a complaint, though as it afterwards turned out he had a bad sprain. Then the wild word was given, the men heaved, the surf boat ran into the water, with the men jumping aboard, oars flashed out on either side, and were dipped deep, after which the boat plunged into the next wave, rode on its crest like a duck, made a forward move, and then darkness shut it from the gaze of the lad left behind. CHAPTER X JIM THE BULLY Although he could not accompany the life savers in the boat Darry had been given duties to perform, which he went about with a vim. One of these was to keep the fire burning, so that it might serve as a beacon to the life savers as they toiled at the oars. What with the darkness, and the flying spray that seemed almost as dense as fog, it was a difficult task to hold their bearings, and this glare upon the clouds overhead was essential. By this time several other men arrived on the scene, having taken chances upon the bay when it was seen that the night would be stormy. They were only too willing to assist, and as time passed many anxious looks were cast out upon the dashing sea in expectation of seeing the boat returning, possibly with some of the passengers or crew of the vessel in danger. Finally a loud shout was heard: "There they come!" Upon the top of an incoming billow the lifeboat was seen perched, with the men laboring at the oars to keep it steady, and the steersman standing at his post, every muscle strained to hold the craft from broaching to. It was a wild sight, and every nerve in Darry's body seemed to thrill as he kept his eyes glued upon that careening boat. On it came, sweeping in with the wash of the agitated sea, until finally it was carried far up the beach, where men, rushing in waist deep, seized hold and prevented the undertow from dragging it out again. Then the crew jumped out to lend their aid. Darry saw that quite a number of strangers were aboard, who had undoubtedly been taken from the vessel. They were passengers, the captain and crew refusing to abandon their craft. The steamer being head on, was not in as bad a condition as might otherwise have been the case; and as the storm promised to be short-lived, the commander had decided to try and await the coming of tugs from the city to drag his vessel off. The telephone to the mainland was immediately put to good use, and a message sent to a salvage company that would bring a couple of strong sea-going tugs to the scene inside of ten hours. Abner had labored with the rest. He was more or less tired when Darry found him, after the boat had been drawn up on the beach, but not housed, since it might be needed again; but this sort of thing was an old story in his life, and in comparison with some of his labors the adventure of the night had been rather tame. In the morning Darry started across the bay again, homeward bound. He was sorry to leave the beach, so much was his heart wrapped up in the work of the life savers. The day was bright and fine after the short storm which had seemed to clear the air wonderfully. He could see a few boats moving about, some of them oyster sloops or dredgers, other pleasure craft belonging to the rich sportsmen who had already commenced to drift down in pursuit of their regular fall shooting. Occasionally the distant dull boom of a gun told that a few ducks were paying toll on their passage south. Darry looked longingly at a splendid motor-boat that went swiftly past him. The young fellow on board seemed to be having a most delightful time, and it was only natural for any boy to envy him. It was noon when our hero arrived home. Mrs. Peake was interested in all he had to tell about the trip of the life savers. "We get used to hearing these things," she said, "but all the same it keeps the wives of the life savers feeling anxious. Some night it happens one of the crew of the lifeboat goes out and does not return. At any time it may be my turn. I know three widows now." "I think they ought to pick out the unmarried men," remarked Darry, who had himself been considering this very subject. "They do, I believe, as far as they can; but we must have bread, and the number of available surfmen is small. But those who win their living from the sea learn to expect these things sooner or later. It is only a question of time." After a bit of lunch Darry was sent to the village on an errand. This was how he happened to see Jim Dilks again. The meeting occurred just before Darry reached the grocer's, and as Jim was totally unaware of his coming he had no chance to assume airs. Darry looked at him eagerly, as though expecting to make a discovery; and this anticipation met with no disappointment. There could be no doubt about Jim limping, and once he instinctively put his hand back of him as if to rub a spot that pained more or less. Darry understood what it meant, and that he had not sent that shower of fine bird shot after the trio of desperate young scamps in vain. If Hank Squires wanted positive evidence as to who had been connected with the firing of Mrs. Peake's out-buildings he could find it upon an examination of the person of Jim Dilks. When the good-for-nothing caught sight of Darry it was surprising how he stiffened up and walked as upright as a drum-major. Darry had lost all respect for the prowess of the young ruffian, after that one trial of strength, when he had found Jim so lacking in everything that goes to make up a fighter. He had the feeling that he could snap his fingers in the other's face. Being a boy he could not help from addressing the ex-bully, and rubbing it in a little, for Jim was scowling at him ferociously. "Hello, Jim, how's the sprain--or was it rheumatism you had in your wrist? Sorry to see it's gone down now into one of your legs, and makes you limp. I tell you what's good for that sort of thing. First, be sure to take out any foreign substance, such as gravel, _lead_ or anything like that; then wash it well and rub on some sort of ointment. Follow the directions and it will work fine," he said, as soberly as though he meant every word. If anything, Jim scowled worse than before, since his guilty soul knew that this boy suspected his connection with the lawless act of the recent night. "Saw yer comin' acrost the bay this mornin'; say, was yer over on ther beach with the life savers? Did a boat go ter pieces on the reefs?" he asked. Darry saw that the other was swallowing his resentment in order to pick up information, and he remembered what dark stories he had heard in connection with the men who formed the companions of Jim's father--that they were termed wreckers, and some said they had reached a point of desperation where they did not hesitate to lure a vessel upon the reefs in order to profit from the goods that would float ashore after she went to pieces. Possibly the older Dilks and his cronies may have been abroad on the preceding night, hovering around in hopes of a windfall; and Jim was eager to learn whether such a chance had come. "Not last night, I'm glad to say. There was a steamer aground, but only the passengers would come ashore, the captain and crew remaining on board waiting for the tugs to arrive," replied Darry. Jim's face fell several degrees. He would have been satisfied to hear that a dozen poor sailors had been lost if it meant a big haul for the wreckers of the coast. "Say, be yer goin' to stay 'round this district," asked the bully, changing the subject suddenly. "Well, Mrs. Peake wants me to remain with her, and so does Abner. I'm thinking about it. When I make my mind up I'll let you know, Jim. If it's stay, why we can have it all over again. I want to warn you, Jim. You're going to get yourself into trouble if you keep on the way you're bent now. There's a law that sends a man to the penitentiary for setting fire to a neighbor's house," he said, as sternly as he could. "Never set fire ter a house," declared Jim, quickly. "Well, it doesn't matter whether it's a house or a barn or a hencoop. If Hank Squires could only find some positive evidence against you he says he'd lock you up right now; and Jim, I know how he could get all the evidence he needs." "'Taint so," flashed out the bully, but looking alarmed all the same; while his hand half instinctively sought his rear. "I think that an examination of those ragged trousers you wear would show where a few fine bird-shot peppered you as you ran. Perhaps both the other fellows got a touch of the same medicine, too, so you'd have company, Jim, when you went up." "It's a lie. I never sot that pigpen on fire!" "Oh! you know it was a pigpen, then, do you? I spoke of a chicken coop only." "Heerd 'em torkin' about it. Thet ole busybody, Miss Pepper, she war in ther store wen I was gittin' somethin' fur mam, and she sed as how she'd run this village if she war a man, an' the feller as set fire ter a honest woman's pigpen 'd git his'n right peart. Like fun she wud," returned Jim, quickly. "She's got her eye on you, Jim. She believes you led that gang. Going, eh, good-bye." CHAPTER XI A GLORIOUS PROSPECT Jim had heard enough. He was beginning to be a bit afraid lest this sturdy new boy who had mastered him so easily in their late encounter, take a notion to investigate his condition physically; and there were several little punctures that just then Jim did not care to have seen. Darry watched the bully saunter away, and it made him smile to see what an effort the other kept up his careless demeanor, when every step must have caused him more or less pain. Perhaps Jim, in spite of his bombastic manner, might have received a lesson, and would be a little more careful after this how he acted. So he walked to the store, completed his purchases, and was waiting for them to be tied up when who should enter but the young fellow he had seen in the beautiful cedar motor-boat out on the bay. He was dressed like a sportsman, and there was a frank, genial air about him that quite attracted Darry. Apparently he had dropped in to get his mail, for he walked over to the little cubby hole where a clerk sat. As his eyes in roving around chanced to fall on Darry, and the latter saw him give a positive start, and he seemed to be staring at him as though more than casually interested. Then he spoke to the clerk, who looked out toward Darry and apparently went on to explain that he was a stranger in the community, having been on a brigantine recently wrecked on the deadly reefs off the shore. The young man sauntered around until Darry left. Just as our hero put the last of the small shanties that formed the outskirts of Ashley behind him he caught the sound of hurrying steps. Thinking of Jim and his ugly promise of future trouble he half turned, but to his surprise and pleasure he saw that it was the owner of the launch, and that apparently the youth was hurrying to overtake him. What his curiosity was founded on Darry could not say; but presumed the other had liked his looks and wanted to strike up an acquaintance. It would not be the first time such a thing had happened to him. "Good morning, or rather good afternoon," said the stranger. "I believe they told me your name was Darry, and that you are stopping with one of the life savers. My name is Paul Singleton, and I'm down here, partly for my health, and also to enjoy the shooting. It turns out to be pretty lonely work, and I'm looking for a congenial companion to keep me company and help with the decoys later. I'm willing to pay anything reasonable, and I carry enough grub for half a dozen. My boat is small, but affords ample sleeping accommodations for two. How would you like to try it," and the youth smiled broadly. Darry was thrilled at the prospect, although he could not see his way clear to accept it just then. First of all he would not think of doing so without consulting Abner, who had been so kind, and who expected him to remain with the little family; then, it was nice to believe that Mrs. Peake would feel sorry to lose him; and last of all he knew little or nothing about the bay or the ways of guides, and the duties connected with the profession. "I'd like it first-rate, but just now I don't see how I could accept," he replied. "If it's a question of wages--" began the young man, who was watching the various expressions flit over Darry's face with an eager eye. "Not at all. I was only thinking of my duty to Abner Peake and his wife, who have been so good to me. Perhaps later on I might accept, providing you have not already filled the place." "I suppose you know best, but somehow I've taken a notion I'd like to have you along with me, Darry. For a week or two I mean to just knock around here, sometimes ashore and again afloat. Perhaps when the shooting begins in earnest you may be able to give me a different answer." "At any rate by that time I shall know more about the bay and the habits of the ducks that drop in here. I'm a stranger, you see, Mr. Singleton, and though I've done some hunting in India and other places where our ship lay at anchor for weeks, I know little about this sport. I can cook as well as the next fellow, and of course know something about boats, though more used to sails than gasoline." "You're too modest, Darry. Some chaps would have jumped at the chance to have a fine time. But I like you all the better for it. I see you are in a hurry, so I won't detain you any longer. It's understood then that if you can get off later you'll come to me?" "I'll only be too glad to do so, Mr. Singleton," was Darry's answer. The young fellow thrust out his hand, while his gaze still-remained riveted on Darry's face. As the boy walked rapidly away, feeling a sense of overpowering delight at the prospect ahead if all things went well, something caused him to glance back, and he saw Paul Singleton shaking his head while sauntering toward the village, as if something puzzled him greatly. Darry could not understand what ailed the other, or how anything about his appearance should attract so fine a young gentleman. He told Mrs. Peake about it, and while she looked displeased at first, Darry was so apparently loth to leave her that the better element in the woman's nature soon pushed to the front. "Of course you can go, after a little. There's nothing to prevent. It will be a fine thing for you, and may lead to something better. We have put through one winter without a man in the house, and can again. Time was when all my children were little, and even then Abner used to be away most of the time. Don't worry about us, Darry. When the time comes, I say, go," was what she remarked. How the skies were brightening for him! And only a few days back he had faced such a gloomy prospect that it appalled him! Now he whistled as he worked, rubbing up the various traps taken from Joe's box, and preparing to sally out for his first experience in trying to catch the muskrats that haunted the borders of the watercourses in the marshes near by. Carrying that invaluable little notebook along for reference in case he should become puzzled about anything, and with a few traps slung over his shoulder Darry followed the paths along the edge of the marsh until he reached one that seemed to enter the waste land. Joe had designated this as his favorite tramp, since it paralleled the creek, and the burrows of the little fur-bearing animals could be easily located. Presently Darry was busily engaged in examining the bank, and it was not long before he had found what he sought. This was a hole just below the water line. There were also the tracks of the occupants close by, showing just how they issued from their snug home to forage for food. He carefully set his trap under a few inches of water, so that the first rat coming forth and starting to climb the bank would set his hind feet in it. The chain he fastened to a stake out in the creek. This was done in order that the little rodent would be quickly drowned. Trappers invariably follow this rule when after water animals, and it is not always through a spirit of mercy toward the victim that actuates their motive, but the fact that they would otherwise lose many a catch, since the captive in despair over its inability to escape would gnaw its foot off. Having finished with the trap, Darry walked further into the marsh. It was a lonely place, seldom visited save by a few hunters in the season, who looked for mallard ducks there; or it might be some boy trapper, endeavoring to make a few dollars by catching some of the shy denizens wearing marketable fur coats. Here a brace of snipe went spinning away, and a little further a blue crane got up and flapped off, his long legs sticking out like fishing poles. In an hour or so the boy had placed all his traps. He had followed Joe's directions to the letter, and the morning would show as to whether he was to make a success of the venture. One thing was positive, and it was this, that even should he find nothing in the traps he did not mean to give up; if he had made a mistake, then it must be rectified, even if he had to secure some old boat in order to carry out his operations without leaving a scent behind to alarm the game. It was late in the afternoon when he reached home. The twins ran to meet him as though already they looked upon him in the light of a member of the little family. Darry threw first one and then the other up into the air, while they shrieked with laughter, and he could see that Mrs. Peake was looking on approvingly, as if her desolated mother heart was warming toward this lad who had never known what it was to have any one love him. He had been thinking much that afternoon of Paul Singleton, even repeating the name of the young man over and over, as though striving to remember whether he could have ever heard it before, which did not seem likely. And it was not so much anticipation of the good times coming that engaged his thought as that queer look on the face of Paul while they had been talking. What could it mean? CHAPTER XII THE STOLEN TRAPS In the morning Darry occupied himself repairing the damage done by the fire. After he had done all the chores, even to assisting Mrs. Peake wash the breakfast dishes, and there seemed nothing else to be undertaken, he took Joe's shotgun on his shoulder and walked toward the marsh. The woman, seeing how much he looked like her lost boy with the gun and the clothes, had a good cry when left to herself; but Darry did not know this. As he approached his first trap he found himself fairly tingling with eagerness. This was not because of the value involved in the skin of a muskrat, though it seemed as though each year the price was soaring as furs became more scarce; but he wanted to feel that he had learned his lesson well, and followed out the instructions given in Joe's little handbook. The trap was gone! He saw this with the first glance he cast over the low bank. Did it have a victim in its jaws or had some marauder stolen it? With a stick he groped in the deeper water, and catching something in the crotch he presently drew ashore the trap. He had caught his first prize. Of course he understood that when compared with the mink and the fox, a muskrat is an ignorant little beast at best, and easily captured; but for a beginning it was worth feeling proud over. Setting the trap again in the hope that there might be others in the burrow, one of which would set his foot in trouble on the succeeding night, Darry went on. He found only one more victim to the half dozen traps. Perhaps he had been too careless with the others and left plain traces of his presence that had warned the cunning rodents. Having placed all his traps in the water again, he started back home, swinging the two "muskies" in one hand, while carrying his gun in the other. After leaving the marsh he chanced to look back and was surprised to see a boy come out and start on a run toward the village. Darry had very little acquaintance with the village lads, and could not make up his mind whether he had ever seen this fellow before or not; but once or twice he thought he detected evidence of a limp in his gait when he fell into a walk, and this brought to mind Jim and his two cronies. It was not Jim, but at the same time there was no reason why it should not be one of his bodyguard, "the fellows who sneezed when Jim took snuff," as Mrs. Peake had said in speaking of the lot. Suppose this did happen to be Sim Clark or Bowser, what had he been doing in the marsh? Could it be possible that the fellow had been spying on him, and was now hastening to report to his chief? They might think to annoy him by stealing the traps he had placed, or at least robbing them of any game. Darry shut his teeth hard at the idea. He made up his mind that he would go out earlier on the following day, even if, in order to do so, he had to get up long before daylight to accomplish his various chores. No doubt he made rather a sorry mess of the job when he came to removing those first pelts--at least it took him half a dozen times as long as a more experienced trapper would have needed in order to accomplish the task. Still, when he finally had them fastened to a couple of boards left by Joe, he felt that he had reason to be satisfied with his first attempt. Mrs. Peake declared they seemed to look all right, and as each represented a cash money value of some forty or fifty cents, Darry realized that there was a little gold mine awaiting him in that swamp, providing those miserable followers of Jim allowed him to work it. Several times he awoke during the night and started up, thinking he heard suspicious sounds again, but they proved false alarms. He was glad to see the first peep of day, and quickly tumbled out to set about his various duties of starting the fire, bringing in water and wood, and later on chopping a supply of fuel sufficient to last through the day. When Mrs. Peake gave him permission to go Darry hurried off. Again he carried the gun, thinking he might find a chance to bag a fine fat duck or two, which Mrs. Peake declared she would be glad to have for dinner. Arriving at the scene of his first triumph of the previous day, he discovered once more that the trap was gone from the bank. Again he fished for it with the crotched stick, but despite his efforts there was no trap forthcoming. Finally, filled with a sudden suspicion, he crawled down to examine the stake in the water to which the chain had been secured. The stake was there all right but no trap rewarded his search. With his heart beating doubly fast, Darry sped along the path to where he had located his second trap, only to find it also missing. Now he knew that it could be no accident, but a base plot to upset all his calculations and deprive him of the fruits of his industry. The thing that angered him most of all was the fact that he must face Mrs. Peake and tell her he had lost the treasures she valued so highly. He shut his teeth together firmly. "They won't keep them, not if I know it," he muttered. "I'll find out where they hide them. I'll get 'em again, sure as I live!" The thieves had apparently done their evil work well. Not a single trap did he find in the various places where he had left them. But one thing he saw that gave him a savage satisfaction, and this was the fact that there were footprints around the last one, in which the muddy water had not yet had time to become clear. Darry believed from this that those who had rifled his belongings could not have left the scene more than a few minutes. Perhaps if he were smart he could overtake them and demand restitution. It stood to reason that the rascals could not have returned along the same path, for he would have met them. He bent down to examine the ground and could easily see where the marks of several wet and heavy shoes continued along the trial that followed the creek. Darry immediately started off on a run. Hardly five minutes later, as he turned a bend, he had a glimpse of a figure just leaving the path and entering the woods bordering the swamp. So far as he knew he had not been noticed; but to make sure he crept along under the shelter of neighboring bushes until he reached the place where the moving figure had caught his eye. Voices now came to his ear, and it was easy enough to follow the three slouching figures that kept pushing deeper into the swamp. He even saw his precious traps on their backs, together with several muskrats which Jim himself carried. Perhaps their first idea was to throw the traps into the oozy water of the swamp, so that they could never be found again; but then those steel contraptions represented a cash value of a dollar or so, and money appealed strongly to these fellows; so they hung on, with the idea of placing them in a hollow tree, where, later, they could be found and sold. Darry knew that he was going to recover his own, and he now watched the movements of the three with more or less curiosity. All the while he kept drawing nearer, fearful lest they discover him before he could get close enough to hold them up; for should they run in different directions he could not expect to accomplish his end. Then he saw what brought them to this place. A rude shack made of stray boards, and branches from trees loomed up. It was evidently a secret hide-out of the gang, where they came when matters got too warm either at home or among the neighbors whose hen roosts they had been pillaging. When Darry saw Jim throw his bunch of game on the ground, he knew his chase was at an end, and that presently, when he felt good and ready, he could turn the tables on his enemies. Lying there watching them start a fire and prepare to cook something they had brought along, he even chuckled to imagine how surprised the trio of young rascals would be when he popped up like a jack-in-the-box. CHAPTER XIII JOE'S SHOTGUN SECURES A SUPPER One of the fellows with Jim, and whom he addressed as Sim, gathered the six stolen traps together and held them up laughingly. "A bully find, fellers; but if I had me way I'd let 'em lie and snooped the musky out every day. Why it'd be like takin' candy from the baby, that's what. But Jim there wanted to kerry off the hull bunch," he said, swinging the traps idly to and fro. "I wanted ter let him know I allers kep' me word. When he finds 'em gone I bet yer he knows who's had a hand in it; but he caint prove nothin'. I kin snap me fingers in his face, an' tell him ter chase hisself. Here, Bowser, git that fire goin' in a hurry. I'm pretty near starved. The ole man chased me outen the house last night, an' ther ole woman won't give me a bite. Reckon I'll hev ter hustle fur meself arter this. Dad's as mad as hops 'cause he aint hed a chanct ter pick up any stuff on the beach fur three moons. If it keeps on, him and his gang 'll hev ter do sumpin different ter make biz good." Darry did not care to linger any longer. He wanted those traps and the animals that had been taken from them, and he meant to have them. "Why, hello, boys!" The three young rascals sprang erect when they heard these words, and their amazement can be imagined at discovering the object of their recent raid standing there not twenty feet away, holding Joe Peake's old shotgun carelessly in his hands. In that moment the real nature of each of them showed itself--Sim Clark darted into cover and ran away at the top of his speed like the coward he was, Bowser fell on his knees and wrung his hands, being weak when it came to a showdown; but Jim Dilks, ruffian as he was, scorned to do either, and stood his ground, like a wolf brought to bay and showing its fangs. "I see you have been so kind as to gather a few traps of mine together. And as I live if you haven't relieved me of the trouble of fishing for several rats. Very kind of you, Jim. Now, don't say a word, and just keep where you are, or by accident something might happen. Guess you know what shot feels like when it hits. Once ought to be enough, and this time you're so close it might be serious. Now, listen to me, once and for all, Jim Dilks, and you Bowser, I'm going right back and set these traps where I think I'll find more game. You touch a finger to one of them at your peril. I'll let Hank Squires know all about this shack here, and what you've been up to. The first trap that is missing means the whole three of you behind the bars. That's all." Jim never opened his mouth. He was awed for the time being, and watched Darry pick up the traps, together with the three muskrats, swing the lot over his shoulder and walk away. The boy did not know but what they might attempt to jump upon him yet and kept on the alert; but when he presently looked back upon hearing a shout, he found that Jim was only relieving his wounded feelings by kicking the kneeling Bowser vigorously. Darry did just as he had said he would. He went a little further into the marsh, thinking that since so many feet had been trampling around the bank of the creek the game might have become shy; but he set the six traps, and even marked the tree nearest each, so that the location could be easily found by himself or others, inclined that way. Such bold tactics would do more to keep Jim and his set from disturbing the traps than the utmost secrecy. When Darry went back home, he thought it best not to say anything about his adventure to Mrs. Peake; but having occasion to go to the village later in the day he sought out the constable, whom he found cleaning up his garden patch and burning the refuse. Old Hank amused him. The fellow was always indulging in mysterious hints as to what he was going to do some day soon, and doubtless his intentions were all right, but, as Miss Pepper had truly said, he lacked the backbone to carry them out. Old Jim Dilks and his crew of trouble breeders had dominated the vicinity so long now that it was hard to break away from their sway. The officer of the law was in his shirt sleeves, so that his fine nickel badge could not shine upon his manly breast; but as he saw Darry approach, and scented coming business, he drew his tall figure up as if in that way he could at least represent the majesty of the law. Hank had an idea that he possessed an eye that was a terror to evil-doers, when to tell the truth his gaze was as mild and peaceful as that of a babe. "Glad to see you, Darry. Hope there ain't been any more doings up at your place? I'm laying for the slippery rascals, and hope to have them dead to rights soon; but you know men in my profession have to go slow. A mistake is a serious thing in the eye of the law," he said, offering his hand in a friendly fashion. "There's nothing wrong up at the house, sir; but I wanted to tell you something I think you ought to know, in case the time comes when you might want to find Jim Dilks and his gang and they were not at home," began Darry. The constable quailed a trifle, then grew stern. "Big Jim or little Jim, which?" he said, anxiously. "The boy who has tried to make things so warm for me. He and his crowd have a shack in the swamp, where they camp out from time to time. That's where you'll find them when wanted." "Sure that's interesting news, lad. Can you tell me just where to look?" He heaved a sigh of relief--then there was not any need of immediate haste, and Hank was a true Southern "cracker," always ready to postpone action. "Leave the path along the creek just where it makes that sharp bend. A fallen tree marks the spot. Head due south until you sight a big live oak, the only one I noticed. The shack lies under its spreading branches, Mr. Squires. I thought you ought to know. Besides, I told Jim and his crowd I meant to inform you." "What! you saw Jim there, and his crowd with him? I wonder they let you get out of the swamp without a beating," exclaimed the constable, surprised, and looking at this newcomer as though he could hardly believe his senses. "They knew better. The fact is, sir, I had a shotgun with me. Perhaps they may have had a recent experience with such a little tool. But no matter, they let me gather up my traps and the three muskrats taken from them, and never offered to put out a hand to stop me." "Traps--muskrats--look here, now I begin to see light, and can give a guess how it came you were there in that swamp. You followed the rascals there." "To tell the truth, I did, for I was determined to get back what they had taken." "Bully for you, lad. If you had dropped in on us some time back we might have had a different class of boys around here by now. You're a reformer, that's what you are. First you knocks that tyrant Jim down; then you pepper him with shot after he has fired the pigpen of your new home, and now you brave him in his own dooryard. That's reforming all right, and I hope you keep at it until you've reformed the ugly beggar into the penitentiary. I begin to pluck up hope that soon public spirit will be so aroused that we can do something right. Would you mind shaking hands with me again, Darry. It does me good, sure it does." Of course Darry complied, though he had his doubts as to whether Mr. Squires would ever have the nerve to connect himself with any movement looking to the purging of Ashley village of its rough element. In fact, if anything were ever done he believed such women as Miss Pepper would be the ones to run the evil-doers out of town, and put up the bars. Darry had taken the three animals home, pleased to know that after all half his traps had found victims on this second day. He judged from this that he was doing very well, and with a little more experience could consider himself a full-fledged trapper. Later in the afternoon he thought of the ducks, and passing out upon the marsh walked until he discovered several feeding among the wild rice, when he started to creep up on them with infinite cunning. Reaching at last a bunch of grass as near as he could hope to go he waited until two were close together, when he fired his right barrel. As the remaining mallard started to rise in a clumsy fashion Darry gave him the benefit of the other barrel. When Mrs. Peake saw what fine birds he had secured she was loud in her praise, for their coming meant at least one good meal without cost, and every cent counted in this little family. Again Darry busied himself with his pelts. He was pleased to find how much easier the job seemed after his experience of the preceding day; and when the skins had been stretched upon the boards they had a cleaner look that satisfied the eye. After that he plucked the three ducks for the good woman, saving her a task she never fancied, and winning her thanks. Then he looked after the gun, believing that it is wise to always keep such a weapon in the best of order, since it serves its owner faithfully when called upon. "I had some visitors while you were away," announced Mrs. Peake, when after supper they were seated by the table. Darry looked up from his work of whittling more stretching boards, interested at once. CHAPTER XIV THE LONELY VIGIL OF THE COAST PATROL Mrs. Peake looked amused. "A young man called on me," she said. Dairy's face lighted up. "It must have been Mr. Singleton!" he exclaimed, eagerly. She nodded in the affirmative. "Did he come to see me?" he asked. "No, I rather think he wanted to have a little talk with me. You see he guessed from what you told him that it all was because of me you wouldn't go with him, and he just dropped in, he said, to have a neighborly chat, and let me know how much he was interested in a boy by the name of Darry." "That was fine of him. What did you think, wasn't he all I said?" "As nice a young gentleman as I ever met. He asked a lot of questions about you." "Of course. He had a right to. When a gentleman asks a strange fellow to go off with him on a cruise it's only business for him to learn all he can about whether the other is honest and all that. You told him I never touched liquor, I hope?" "He never asked about such things. In fact, it was all in connection with your past he seemed interested." "My past--how could he be interested in that? He never saw me before." Yet, strange to say, the fact seemed to thrill Darry through and through; for he was still hugging that hope to his heart, and wondering if some day he might not be lucky enough to learn who and what he was. "Well, all I can say is that he kept asking me all about you came here, why you were Darry, and what your other name might be; when he learned that you never knew who your parents were he seemed to be strangely agitated. He didn't take me into his confidence; but I'm morally convinced that Mr. Singleton believes he is on the track of some sort of discovery. I heard him ask Miss Pepper, who was hurrying over, seeing I had a visitor, if there was a telegraph office in Ashley; and when he left he was saying to himself: 'I must let her know--this may be important.' It would be a fine thing for you, my boy, if circumstances brought you face to face with some rich relative so soon after you landed on the soil of America." Darry drew a long breath, and shook his head. "It would be great, as you say, whether my father or mother were rich or poor, it wouldn't matter a bit to me; but I'm afraid you're getting too far along. Perhaps what you heard him say may refer to another affair entirely. No matter, I like Mr. Singleton, and have from the start. If we go off together I know I'd enjoy it first-rate in that dandy little motor-boat of his. I haven't said I would for sure. I mean to wait a while and see how things come out here ashore." She knew he was thinking of Jim Dilks and his scheming for mischief--that he believed the fact of her giving him shelter and a home had drawn upon her head the vindictive fury of the lawless rascal, who, finding the little home undefended if Darry went away, might think it safe to continue his persecution. When Darry strode forth into the marsh the next day he again carried the gun. He found his traps all safe. Undoubtedly his defiance had had its effect upon the mind of Jim; and however much he may have felt like repeating the thievish act which Darry's prompt arrival on the scene had nipped in the bud, he dared not attempt it. He was beginning to be afraid of this young chap who kept a chip on his shoulder, and dared him to knock it off. This time four victims attested to the skill with which the new trapper attended to his business. Already was the list reaching respectable proportions. He expected to cross over that afternoon to see Abner, and carry the mail again; and it would be with satisfaction that he could inform his good friend how the traps Joe had left behind were still fulfilling their destiny at the same old stand. The sky was clouded over when he started out on his long trip. He had during his leisure minutes fashioned a sort of sail that could be used with the wind astern; and as this happened to be the case now Darry got it in position for service. With the sail, he just rushed along over the bay; and all the while sat there taking his ease instead of dragging at the oars. Having spent some years on the waters there was little in connection with boats, big or little, that the lad did not know. He had found some good wood which Abner had expected to use for the purpose at some future date, and one oar was already pretty well advanced. By the time he crossed again he believed he would have them both completed; and at that they would be nothing of which anyone need feel ashamed. The favoring wind kept up until he drew in to the little landing where, as before, Abner stood waiting for him. That was a great night for Darry. First there came the supper with those jolly fellows, whose laughter and jokes he enjoyed so much; after that a nice quiet chat with Abner, who asked for all the news, and was deeply interested in his success in catching the sly denizens of the marsh; although he frequently sighed while Darry was speaking, and the boy could easily comprehend that at such times the poor man was picturing in his mind how Joe used to go through with the same experiences. When Darry thought it only right to tell how the three cronies had stolen his possessions, and how he had recovered them, Abner slapped his hand down on his knee, and exclaimed: "I reckon Mr. Fraser was right t'other day when he sez as how the sun o' the Dilks tribe began to set when yuh kim ashore from that wreck. Somehow yuh seem to be hittin' 'em hard, son. I aint much o' a prophet, sence I caint even tell wot the weather's gwine to be tomorry; but I seem to just know from the way things is a heapin' up that they's gwine to be a big heave soon, an' that means the Dilks has got to move on--Ashley don't want ther kind no more." Darry insisted on accompanying Abner when it came his turn to go out on his long patrol; this time it was in the earlier part of the night, so neither man nor boy thought of going to bed. The night was not wholly dark, for there was a moon behind the clouds; but beyond a certain limited distance of the sea lay in gloom, only the steady wash of the incoming waves telling of the vast reach of water lying along toward the east. They talked of many things as they plodded along the sandy beach. Darry spoke for the first time of Paul Singleton, and his desire that he accompany him later on in his cruising up and down the series of connected bays that stretched for some hundreds of miles back of the sandbars. Abner was silent at first, and the boy realized that he felt grieved to know there might come a break in the pleasant relations that had been established at home. "Course it's only right yuh should accept, lad," he said presently, "It's give me much comfort to know yuh was gittin' on so well with the ole woman, for I've felt bad on 'count o' her many times sense _he_ war taken. But it's a chance thet may never kim again, an' we cudn't 'spect to tie yuh down. Anyhow, your comin' hez been a good thing fur Nancy, an' I reckons she'll begin to perk up from now on. 'Sides, who knows wot may kim outen this? Jest as she sez thet younker aint interested in yuh jest acause he wants a feller in the boat along with him--I tell yuh he thinks he knows who yuh belong to, and that's a fack, son." "Oh! I hope so; but I don't dare dream of it. But I'm glad you think well of his offer. I can earn some money that will help out at home, besides having a good time," said Darry, eagerly; though truth to tell, it was the faint hope lodged in his heart that he might learn something concerning his past that chief of all influenced him in his desire to go with the owner of the motor-boat. "Glad to hear yuh say that word '_home_,' boy. I hopes it is a home to yuh, an' allers will be. I've ben thinkin' that your comin' war the greatest favor Heaven ever sent to me an' mine. If it gives Nancy new life that means a lot to me." Darry knew not what to say to this, but he found the rough hand of Abner, and with a hearty squeeze expressed his feelings far better than any words could ever have done. CHAPTER XV THE POWER OF MUSIC It seemed as though luck favored Darry on this trip, for the wind veered around during the night, and blew out of the southeast when he was ready to start on his return voyage to the mainland. Thus he was able to use his little sail to advantage both ways. It was coming so hard off the ocean, however, that at the advice of Abner he took a reef in the canvas before leaving--the life saver had become so attached to his new boy by this time that he could not bear to see him taking any unnecessary chances on that sheet of treacherous water that had already deprived him of one son. Darry was glad he had taken his friend's advice before half way across. Where the wind had a full sweep of the bay the waves were quite heavy, and it required all his skill as a sailor to keep his cranky little craft head on. As it was, he reached his haven with a rush, and his tactics in making a landing aroused the admiration of several old fisherman who were lounging at the dock. He had only time to accomplish several little messages at the store and get on the road for home when it began to drizzle. Darry was sorry for this, for he had laid out to visit his traps again during the afternoon, not wishing to leave any game that may have been taken, too long in the water. When later on at lunch he mentioned this to Mrs. Peake she said he would find an old oilskin jacket of Abner's behind the closet door in the hall, which Joe had been wont to don under similar circumstances. So after all, he went forth, defying the elements, as a true sailor lad always does; and was rewarded for his labor by taking three more trophies from the firm-jawed traps. Really it was beginning to look like business, with so many on the stretching boards; and Mrs. Peake smiled to see how careful the boy was in everything he undertook. It spoke well for his future, if he carried the same principle into his whole life. Of course Darry knew full well that the skins he was taking thus early in the fall were not as good in quality, and would not be apt to bring as high prices in the fur marts as those to be captured when real cold weather had set in; but there are times when one has to make hay while the sun shines; and he could not be sure that he would have the opportunity to do these things later. Besides, the supply of rats seemed unlimited, so rapidly do they breed all over the Eastern coast, from Maine to the Florida line. The rain continued all that night and the better part of the following day. It was one of those easterly storms that generally last out portions of three days, and are followed by a lengthy spell of good weather, with touches of frost in the early mornings. Darry made his regular pilgrimage to the marsh in spite of the rain, and this time found only two prizes to reward his diligence. From this he determined that it was time to make a change of base, and set his traps in other places where the game might not be so wary. At any rate he was having no further trouble with the Dilks crowd, and in that he found more or less satisfaction. Unconscious of the fact that he was being watched from time to time by one of the cronies of which Jim boasted, Darry went about his business, satisfied to do his daily duties, and each night count some progress made. Twice had he crossed the bay to the strip of sandy beach where the tides of the mighty Atlantic pounded unceasingly, day and night. His coming was always eagerly anticipated by the whole crew of the life-saving station, and for a good reason. It happened that on his visit just after the easterly storm had blown out, while they were all gathered around just before dark, chatting and joking, Darry cocked up his ear at the tweeking sound of a fiddle, which one of the men had drawn out of its case, and was endeavoring to play. Altogether he made a most doleful series of sounds, which upon analysis might prove to be an attempt to play "Annie Laurie," though one would need all his wits about him to settle whether this were the tune, or "Home, Sweet Home." The men looked daggers at the player, for the screeching sounds were certainly anything but pleasant. Darry sauntered over. He had played since a little lad, some Italian having first taught him; and on the brigantine Captain Harley had a violin of more than ordinary make, with which he had coaxed the cabin boy to make melody by the hour. "Sounds like a pretty good instrument?" suggested Darry to the would-be performer. "They tell me that, boy; but you see I ain't much of a judge. P'raps in time I may get on to the racket, that is if the boys don't fire me and the fiddle out before-hand," replied the surfman, grinning, for his clumsy hands were really never intended by Nature to handle a violin bow. "Would you mind letting me try it? I used to play a little." At the first sound of that bow crossing the strings, after Darry had properly tuned the instrument every man sat up and took notice; and as the boy bent down and lovingly drew the sweetest chords from the violin that they had ever heard, they actually held their breath. After that he was kept busy; indeed they would hardly let him have any rest, and that was why those rough men looked forward eagerly to the expected coming of Abner Peake's new boy. It seemed as though he must know everything there was, and the music would turn from riotous ragtime to the most tender chords, capable of drawing tears from those eyes so unused to weeping. It was a rare treat to Darry, too, for he dearly loved music, and the absence of his fiddle had made a gap in his life. The month was now passing, and closer drew the stormy period when, with the advent of grim November, the duties of the beach patrol naturally grow more and more laborious, since there are greater possibilities of wrecks, with the strong winds and the fogs that bewilder mariners, and allow them to run upon the reefs when they believe they are scores of miles away from the danger zone. The boom of guns could now be heard all day, and frequently Darry saw Northern sportsmen in the village; though as a rule they kept on board their yachts or else stayed at the various private clubs up or down the sound. Jim Dilks and his gang still lay low. They awaited a favorable opportunity to carry out some evil scheme, whereby the boy they had come to fear, as well as hate, might be injured. Well, they knew that he made daily trips into the marsh, and it would seem that they might find the chance they craved at such times; but there was one thing to deter them, and this was the fact that Darry never went to examine his traps without carrying that steady-shooting old shotgun. The burnt child dreads the fire, and Jim had hardly ceased to rub his injured parts, so that the possibility of getting a second dose was not at all alluring in his eyes. He was a good waiter, and he felt that sooner or later fortune would turn the trick for him, and the chance arise whereby he might pay back the debt he owed the "interloper," as he chose to deem Darry. CHAPTER XVI DARRY MEETS WITH A REBUFF During these weeks Darry had accomplished many little jobs around his new home, things that had been wanting looking after for a long time; for Abner's visits were so few and far between that he had little time to mend broken doors, or put up shelves where they would save the "missus" steps. If he went off with Paul Singleton later he would have no chance to look after these things, and so he made good use of his opportunities. He had not seen the young gentleman once since, and upon making inquiries of the storekeeper, learned that he had gone to a very exclusive club to spend some little time. Darry wondered whether he had been utterly forgotten. Perhaps the youth had regretted asking him to keep him company; it may have been done on the spur of the moment, simply because he chanced to resemble someone he knew. Once in the comfortable club, with experienced guides to attend him, and the very best points for shooting reserved, doubtless Paul Singleton had forgotten that there was such a boy as Darry in existence. So he tried to forget about it, and make up his mind that he could find plenty of congenial work looking after his traps and assisting Abner's wife during the winter, with occasional trips across the sound, and possibly a chance to pull an oar in the surfboat, should luck favor him. All this while he had taken toll of the feathered frequenters of the marsh, and many a plump fowl graced the table of the Peake family, thanks to the faithful old gun, and the steady nerves back of it. Darry soon learned where there were squirrels to be found, and twice he had brought in a mess of the gray nutcrackers, though not so fond of hunting them as other game. And one day he had delighted the good housewife with four nice quail, or as they were known in this section, "pa'tridge," which he had dropped out of a bevy that got up before him in the brush close to the woods where he looked for squirrel. He knew that something had been troubling Mrs. Peake, but it was a long time before he could tempt her to speak of it. It concerned money matters, of course, as is nearly always the case when trouble visits the poor. Abner had been incautious enough to put a little mortgage upon his humble home in order to help a relative who was in deep distress because of several sudden deaths in her family. He should not have done it, to be sure, but Abner had a big heart, as Darry well knew, and simply could not resist the pleading of his cousin. No doubt she meant well, but circumstances had arisen that prevented her from repaying the debt, and for the want of just one hundred dollars the Peakes were in danger of being dispossessed. Of course the mortgage was in the hands of a money shark, for even little villages boast their loan offices, where some usurer expects to get ten per cent. on his money, and will not hesitate to foreclose if it is not forthcoming. Abner's friends were all as poor as he was, and besides, he was so bashful about such things that he could never muster enough courage to mention his financial troubles to anybody. When by degrees Darry managed to draw this story from Mrs. Peake he thought it all over while off on one of his swamp trips, and reached a conclusion. That very day he stepped into the store of a man who as he chanced to know purchased the few furs that were taken in a season around that section. He learned that pelts were bringing unusually good prices, and the party quoted as high as eighty cents for fall muskrat skins, properly treated. When he got home, Darry counted his catch and found that he had some twenty-six in stock; with these he went back to the dealer, and struck a bargain whereby he came away with fourteen dollars in his pocket. Then he made for the office of the lawyer who held the mortgage, thinking he could pay up the arrears of interest, and bring happiness to the face of his kind benefactress. Just there he struck a snag. The loan shark refused to accept the money. He claimed that since they had defaulted on the interest the entire amount was due, and that he meant to have it, or foreclose. Darry knew little of law, but he saw that Darius Quarles meant business, and suspected that for some reason he meant to hold to his advantage and give Abner Peake more or less trouble. "Mr. Quarles, if you would only accept this interest now, I think I can promise that the whole sum will be paid by spring," Darry said, eagerly. This was, of course, just what the lawyer did not want. He pretended to look skeptical, and shook his head. "I suppose you are the boy Peake has adopted. Where did you get this money, may I ask? Did Nancy send you here with it?" he went on; and from the look in his cold, blue eyes, it was apparent that he would have enjoyed having the woman on her knees before him. Darius Quarles was a very small-minded man evidently; even a boy like Darry could understand that. "No, she does not know I have come here," replied our hero. "Then where did you get the money? Boys as a rule don't sport such sums as fourteen dollars in a bunch. I haven't heard of any bank being robbed, or a sportsman being held up; but you understand, it looks suspicious, boy." Darry flushed with mortification at the insult; but because of Mrs. Peake he managed to bite his lips and refrain from telling the curmudgeon just what he thought of him. "I received that fourteen dollars not ten minutes ago from a merchant in this village. He will vouch for it if you ask him," he said, quietly, though his eyes flashed fire. "Just mention his name, if you please. I might take a notion to drop in and see if he corroborates your assertion. As I am a magistrate as well as a lawyer, it is my bounden duty to make sure there is nothing crooked in such transactions as come under my observation. Who is the man?" He tried to look stern, but the attempt was a failure. Nature had made Mr. Quarles only to appear small and mean. "It was Mr. Ketcham, the hardware man," the boy answered. "And what would he be paying you this munificent sum for? So far as I know you have never worked for Ketcham, boy. Now, be careful not to commit yourself. What was this money given to you for doing?" Darry smiled as he drew out a paper. How fortunate that the hardware merchant who sold traps and purchased such furs as were taken in that region had insisted upon giving him a little bill of sale, in order to bind the transaction, and prove conclusively what the reigning price happened to be at the time. "Please glance at that, sir." Darius Quarles did so, and a shade of disappointment crossed his face. "I see you have taken up the same foolish pursuit that young Joe Peake followed--wasting your time loafing in the marsh when you had better be going to school and perhaps learning to become a useful man, a lawyer like myself for instance." Darry shrugged his shoulders, and his action brought a frown to the face of the narrow-minded man who sat there before him; perhaps he jumped to the conclusion that this frank-faced lad did not entertain such an exalted notion of his greatness as he would have liked to impress upon him. "At least that proves I did not steal the money, Mr. Quarles?" asked Darry. "I suppose so, though it is an open question as to whether you have any right to take these little inoffensive animals, and sell their coats to Ketcham. I think he might be in a better business; but then he always was a cruel boy." As Darry remembered the hardware man he believed him to be a jolly, red-faced man, and with a kindly eye, quite the opposite from the fishy orb of Mr. Quarles; but then there are some things that had better remain unsaid, and he did not try to voice his opinion. "Then you will not do Mrs. Peake this little favor, sir?" he asked. "Business is business with me, young man. Sometimes it is one person's day, and then the tables turn, and it is another's. This happens to be my time. According to the strict construction of the law, and the wording of the mortgage, the failure to pay the interest on time, with three days' grace, constitutes a lien on the property. I have a use for that cottage--in fact, a relative of mine fancies it. Here, I will give Nancy a chance to redeem her home. Wait a minute or two." He wrote rapidly on a sheet of paper, signed the same, and held it out. "Seven days I agree to wait, and if the principal and delayed interest are not handed over to me by next Tuesday, just one week from to-day, on Wednesday they will have to vacate. That will do, boy. Tell Nancy I only do that because of our old friendship. Had it been anyone else they would have cleared out before this. You can go now." Darry had to bite his lips harder than ever to keep from telling the skinflint just what he thought of him. Thrusting the paper in his pocket he stalked from the den of the human spider, his mind in a whirl; but grimly determined to try and find some means for saving the humble home of Abner Peake from the hand of the spoiler. CHAPTER XVII ABNER TELLS A LITTLE HISTORY As he walked home that evening Darry was figuring. Fourteen dollars was not going far when the sum required, according to the figures Mr. Quarles had written out, reached the grand total of a hundred and eleven dollars and thirty-seven cents. He had had much more than that on board the poor old _Falcon_ when she went to pieces, the amount of his savings for several years; but there was no use of his thinking about that. To whom could he look for assistance? He had not a friend, save new ones in the village; and even Mr. Keeler would be apt to decline to lend him money. Times were hard, collections very slow--he had heard this said many times of late--and to small merchants the sum of a hundred dollars means much. Darry thought it best not to say anything just then to Mrs. Peake, though a little later he must tell her about his visit to the money lender, and deliver the message Mr. Quarles had sent to her. He was due to cross the sound on the morrow, and perhaps it would be best to tell Abner first; he might have been making some arrangement to get someone else to assume the mortgage, and pay the lawyer off. So Darry tried to assume a cheerfulness he was far from feeling. Long he lay awake that night, thinking and trying to lay out some plan of action that might promise results. In the morning Darry visited his traps. Only one victim rewarded his labor, and this added to his gloom. He finished all his various chores, and they were many, for he had taken numerous duties upon his shoulders in order to spare Abner's wife. As before, it was nearly the middle of the afternoon before he could get away. Mr. Keeler loaded him down with packages intended for the station-keeper; indeed Darry had to make two trips between the store and his boat before he had all his cargo aboard. The weather was what a sailor would call "dirty"; that is, it gave promise of turning into more or less of a storm, and wise mariners would be keeping a weather eye out for a safe and snug harbor. Darry had no fear. He believed he knew that bay like a book now, and since he had tinkered with the boat and placed it in fair condition he thought it could stand any sea that might meet him in his passage to and fro between the mainland and the stretch of sand acting as a buffer to the ocean tides. It was a dead calm when he started, and he was compelled to use the oars; but by the time he reached the middle a breeze sprang up, and quick to take advantage of his opportunity he spread his bit of a sail, and went flying along like a frightened gull. Abner was always glad to see him, and taking advantage of the first chance to get the life saver alone, Darry told of his recent experience with the loan shark. The other looked very downcast; indeed, Darry could not remember having ever seen him appear so disheartened. "It means trouble for the poor ole woman, Darry. If I kin only muster up enough courage to ask some o' the folks to help me out p'raps we kin pull through; but the best o' friends pull back wen money is spoken of. They all got ther own burdens to kerry. I know I war a fool to ever do it; but Jenny got on my nerves yuh see, an' promised to give it back. An' thet shark, Quarles, it does him a lot o' good to know he kin push me down a peg," he said, with a heavy sigh. "I seemed to get the notion that he didn't love you very much, Mr. Peake," remarked Darry. "I thort he'd forgot all about it, but now I know he ain't, the skunk! He holds it agin me, and hes all these years. I reckon he jest hugged hisself wen I kim to him an' asked that loan. It war jest like playin' into his hands. Yuh see, lad, him an' me was rivals onct on a time." Darry pricked up his ears. Here was a touch of romance, something one would hardly expect to find in connection with so ordinary looking a man as Abner Peake. "You mean that he wanted Nancy--that is Mrs. Peake, to marry him?" he asked. "Thet's jest it, son. I reckon he'd a got her, too, fur I didn't hold a candle to Darius wen it kim to looks or larnin', but yuh see thet's whar chanct stepped in an' guv me a shove." "Something happened then?" "Nancy fell overboard off a boat we was all on. Darius, he didn't know how to swim and all he could do was to yell and wave his arms." "And you went overboard after her?" "I reckon I did. They sed as how I was in the water nigh about as quick as Nancy herself. She was a carryin' on high, like she was chokin', when I got to her, but I had her out in a jiffy. Arter thet she kinder took to me, an' Darius he got the mitten." "Now I understand why he feels that way toward you," said Darry, wisely. "They was some things I never did understand 'bout that thing. Nancy, she was allers the best gal swimmer in the village, but she did act like she was drownin' that day. Some sed as how they thort she tumbled over apurpose jest to hev some fun, an' see which o' her beaux'd drap in arter her the quickest," and the surfman smiled at the thought. "And you won out. I guess Mr. Quarles has never forgiven you for that. But what can be done to beat him at his game now? Isn't there any way?" "We got a week to try, an' as I git off before the end o' the time I'll see if anything kin be did. P'rhaps Keeler might help me out, though I did hear him say he was mighty hard up jest now. It was nice in yuh tryin' to do wot yuh did, boy. I knowed I wasn't makin' no mistake when I sized yuh up as the right sorter lad to take leetle Joey's place." The life saver put an arm affectionately across the shoulders of his companion, and Darry never felt prouder in his life than when he realized that he had "made good" with this simple surfman who had been so kind to him at their first meeting. "I only wish I had been able to do what I wanted to. It it had been any other man but Mr. Quarles I think he would have fixed it up, and I meant to put aside what I earned this winter, either from trapping or working for Mr. Singleton, to wipe out all that debt. I will yet, if I have the chance, and you can get somebody to take over the mortgage," he said, stoutly. "Give me time to think, lad. Wen yuh kim acrost another time p'raps I'll have some plan made up. I'd do nigh anything to save pore Nancy bein' put outen our leetle home. 'Taint much to look at, but she sets a heap by it, I reckon. And as soon as I git a chanct I mean to drop outen this business an' try to make a livin' another way, so I kin be home more. Fishin' it might be, er somethin' thet way." That night Darry played for the men, but they could not help noticing that much of his music was along the sad order. In the morning the sky was still overcast, and the sound lay in a bank of half darkness that looked like fog, though the whistling wind seemed to forbid such a thing. Abner was a little dubious about letting the boy depart, but Darry laughed at the idea of any harm befalling him. He had several things he wished to attend to, and besides, Mrs. Peake would need him through the day in many ways. He entered his boat and took up the oars for a hard row, for the wind was of too deceptive a character to allow him to make use of his sail. The men of the station had come down to see him off, for by this time Darry had won his way into the hearts of every rough fellow, and they looked upon him as a sort of general ward of the crew, pulled out of the sea at their door and destined for great things. Not one of them but who believed a bright future awaited Peake's new boy, and many were the predictions made among them, some even venturing the assertion that he would be president yet. So they waved their sou'westers and shouted a merry good-bye to him as he rowed into the gray blanket of mist that shrouded the sound. CHAPTER XVIII THE IMPRISONED LAUNCH The prospect ahead did not dismay Darry at all. He had been a sailor for some years and was accustomed to meeting all kinds of bad weather. Besides, his boat though old, was staunch, and could hold its own against waves that would upset another craft less steady; and then again he knew how to handle his oars with the skill that only long practice can bring. By degrees he lost sight of the sandy shore. He was now surrounded by a heaving sheet of water, and it required all his knowledge of things nautical to keep his bearings, for it was impossible to see even the slightest object on any side. The situation would have alarmed many a lad less accustomed to depending on himself in emergencies. Darry felt no fear. He noted the direction of the waves, and unless the wind shifted suddenly, which it was not apt to do, he felt positive he could bring up somewhere along the shore near the village. To his surprise he heard the sullen boom of a gun close by and wondered what any sportsman could be doing out there in that dense atmosphere, where it was impossible to see more than fifty feet away. Certainly ducks could not be coming to stool under such conditions. What could he be firing at then? There it was again, one shot following another in rapid order, until he had counted six. That would indicate the possession of one of those new style repeating shotguns, capable of holding half a dozen shells, and worked with a pump action. All of a sudden it struck Darry that possibly someone was in trouble and was taking this means of summoning assistance; though the chances were very slight that any bayman would be anywhere near with that gray blanket covering things--they knew enough to stick to the shore at such a time. Our hero changed his course a little thinking it could do no harm to look into matters and see what the bombarding meant. Should it prove that some green sportsman from one of the clubs was lost in the mist perhaps he would be glad of help, and might even promise to pay liberally to be taken ashore in tow. Just then Darry's mind was filled with an eager desire to make money, for he knew of a good use to which he could put it. Again as he approached, the rattle of a fusilade came to his ears, followed by a series of shouts in a strained voice. He was close on the spot apparently. "Hello!" he shouted in return. An answering whoop came back. "This way, please! I'm in a peck of trouble here!" he heard someone say. Twisting his head around as he bobbed up and down on the rollers, our hero caught just a glimpse of some object that seemed stationary, with the waves breaking over it. It was even worse than being lost upon the sound then--the unknown had driven his boat upon some half hidden rocks, and caught as in a vise she was in danger of being wrecked unless some other craft came upon the spot and pulled her off. That accounted for the shots and shouts, her owner realizing his extreme peril, for he was two miles from land and the storm increasing constantly. Darry pushed on and soon another surprise awaited him. "Hello! is that you, Darry?" asked a voice, and now he recognized it, so that even before he turned around again he knew he was once more in the company of Paul Singleton. "How are you, sir?" he cried. "Looks like you had run aground in the middle of the bay. If you will give me a rope I'll try and drag you off the way you went on. That is the only thing to be done." "I like the way you go about business," answered the young man. "I begin to have hopes that my poor little _Griffin_ may come out of this adventure with a whole skin. It began to look as though I might have to swim for it. Here you are with the painter, which I have fastened to the stern. All depends on how good a haul you can give, Darry." "What happened to your engine, sir?" asked the boy, surprised that it was not working in the effort to help the boat off. "I'll start it up again, but it did no good before, only churned the water. It seems I am wedged between two rocks so fast that even the lift of the waves has no effect upon the boat. They break all over us, and I'm wet to the skin and shivering in the bargain. You're as welcome as the flowers in May, Darry." The engine was speedily started up and the little propeller thrashed the water at a great rate, but though the cedar craft trembled violently there was no change in her position. "Keep that up and stay in the stern, so as to lighten the bow all you can. I think that is where she is caught fast. If you have anything heavy up forward and can manage to shift it aft so much the better," called Darry, as he kept off by an expert use of the oars; indeed, Paul never could understand how he managed to do this and secure the rope to a thwart at the same time. "There are a few things up there I can move--the water can and a lot of stuff in tins. Will you be able to hold out a few minutes longer?" asked Paul. "Easy enough. Take your own time, sir. When you're ready tell me, and I'll give a series of sharp jerks. I hope we can make her move some." Presently the owner of the motor-boat declared he had moved everything possible, and that the bow seemed to be a little more free than before, as though almost ready to rise with each flowing wave that swept past with a rush. Darry set to work and began to use every atom of strength in his sturdy muscles; at the same time he engineered matters in such a clever fashion that every time he pulled his oars through the water it was with a rapid movement in the nature of a shock, so that the little hawser tightening, gave a drag at the imprisoned craft. "She's moving!" yelled Paul Singleton, excitedly. Darry kept right along, pulling with even more vim than before. "Bully boy! she's coming! I can feel her move each time. If only an inch, it is something. We're going to get her off! It's a cinch, I tell you!" Plainly Paul Singleton was considerably excited over the changed prospect that confronted him, and his cries gave the lad heart to exert himself to the utmost. Suddenly he found that he was towing the launch behind him. She had left her berth in between the two rocks and floated on the waves. The owner gave a last whoop of delight. "I knew if anyone could accomplish it, you would. I think you must be my good genius, Darry. To think of our meeting again here in the middle of the bay and just when I was on my way to your home to see if I could induce you to keep your half-given promise. It's great! Tell me about destiny after this." That was the way Paul was calling out, as he busied himself in righting things aboard the jaunty little cedar craft. [Illustration: SHE HAD LEFT HER BERTH IN BETWEEN THE TWO ROCKS AND FLOATED ON THE WAVES.] "Now, what's to hinder you coming aboard and towing the rowboat astern? The engine is all right and capable of twelve miles an hour, so we can go with this blow easily enough," he suggested. Darry was quite willing, for his arms felt a bit weary after his exerions, and the launch did look comfortable, even though fairly drenched just then, as a result of the waves breaking over the stern while she was held a prisoner in the jaws of rock. The transfer was made without any particular trouble, and once Darry had secured his boat to the brass cleat in the stern of the launch he set to work throwing some of the surplus water overboard. "Working your passage, eh?" laughed Paul, who seemed to be in unusually high spirits, such was the re-action that had come over him. Meanwhile they drew in toward the land. What with the rain that was falling both of them were wet through; but this was such a chronic condition for a sailor lad to be in that Darry, for one, paid little attention to it. CHAPTER XIX THE PART OF AN ELDER BROTHER "Come," said Paul, after the boat had been tied up where the waves could not reach them and things had begun to assume a more comfortable aspect; "Here's a fine little cabin and an oil stove on which to make a hot pot of coffee, besides assisting to dry us out. I insist on you staying to keep me company for a while. We are both cold and wet. Say you will, Darry!" Darry did not need much urging. He was wet and chilled, and it did look cozy after Paul had started the stove going. "Besides," continued Paul, misconstruing his silence; "I am under heavy obligations to you for coming to my assistance when you did. You saved my life and you are a regular life saver like Mr. Peake. There must be some way in which I can partly cancel that debt. You are allowed salvage by law when you save a vessel, Darry, did you know it? But for your coming my poor little _Griffin_ must have gone to pieces, not to mention what would have become of her owner. Now, how can I settle for this indebtedness." He was laughing as he spoke, but Darry considered the moment had come for him to put in a plea for his friends. So he swallowed what seemed to be a lump in his throat, for after all it was no easy thing to ask such a favor from one who was hardly more than a stranger. "Mr. Singleton, I was just wishing I could meet you somewhere soon," he began. "Well, that is queer, since I was thinking about you too, and hoping you would not go back on me, for somehow, I seem to have set my mind on having you with me. And besides, there was another reason why I wanted to keep track of you, which I may tell you some day soon, Darry. But why were you wanting to see me?" "To ask a great favor?" "Not to let you off from your promise?" "Oh, no, I'll be only too glad of a chance to be with you. It would be glorious to spend some time aboard this fine little boat. What I wanted to say--that is, the favor I wanted to ask was not for myself." "Come, that's rather strange, Darry. Not for yourself--a favor for another? Let's hear what it's about. You've certainly excited my curiosity, and don't hesitate a bit about it. I shall be only too willing to do anything that lies in my power, if it pleases you." The words were most kind, and the smile that accompanied them even more so. Darry flushed with a sense of coming victory, for something told him he was in line to win out, and that the money-shark would be cheated of his prey. "I want to borrow a hundred dollars, sir," he said, slowly. Paul laughed as if amused. Immediately taking out his pocket-book he withdrew from it a bank bill of a large denomination and handed it to his companion, who received it in an embarrassed way. "There you are, Darry, and there is no loan about it. I owe you many times that much for your assistance. Now, don't say anything about it, for I am not used to being crossed. It's a mere bagatelle to me, as you must know. Some time if you feel like it you may tell me the circumstances that have arisen; but not until you're good and ready. I'm only too delighted to be of a little help." "I'm going to tell you all about it right here. It's only fair you should know where your money is going, sir. As soon as I get my breath you shall hear," went on Darry, fingering the hundred dollar bill as though he could hardly believe his senses. Never did a bill of like denomination seem to carry more happiness in its touch; he could easily picture the light that would dawn upon the worried features of Mrs. Peake when he handed her that mortgage, canceled, and Abner, too, how he would be likely to throw up his hat in the air and shout like a boy. Paul Singleton had been observing him curiously, but with kindling eyes, as if he saw more and more in this boy to admire; he could give something of a guess as to what was coming, and hence was not much surprised a little later when he heard the story of Darius Quarles and his long-slumbering revenge. He laughed heartily at the quaint way in which Abner had hinted about Nancy tumbling overboard on purpose, in order to discover which of her lovers was the better man. "I've met the lady, and to tell the truth I really believe she would have been equal to such a prank some years back. There's a lurking spirit of mischief in her eyes to this day, though I know she has met with a great grief lately, for I heard all about poor little Joe," Paul said, after Darry had finished. "You can never understand how glad I am to be able to bring a little joy to this poor couple. They have not known much happiness, sir. Even now, Abner is compelled to be away from home all the time in order to earn bread for his family." Paul Singleton seemed to consider. "We'll talk that over later on, Darry, when we have plenty of time," he answered. "Perhaps I may be able to suggest a remedy. I have shares in several properties down this way, and possibly Abner can be given a steady job as keeper at the club, or put in charge of a farm I own not far away from here. Depend upon it, some means can be found to help your benefactor out. I'd rather talk about you, just now, and what you have seen in your adventurous past. In fact, I'd like to know everything that ever happened to you, if you don't mind," he continued. Again Darry had that queer sensation pass over him, and he could not but remember what Abner had said about the possibility of his finding out something connected with his childhood, and that this young gentleman would be the means of supplying the missing link. So as they sat there and sipped the delicious coffee and dried out in comfort, he answered all the questions Paul could think of asking. They covered his entire past, from his earliest recollection, and especially about the old man who had finally deserted him in Naples, for he naturally occupied a prominent place in the recital. Darry had called him uncle, but thought the man could not have held that relationship toward him. He never knew what had become of the old man, but suspected that he must have met with some fatal accident in the Italian city. Then he narrated how he had supported himself by playing the violin, and at the same time learned to speak Italian as well as a native. Finally came the scene in the café, when Captain Harley rescued him from the cruelty of a bully, and after that there was very little to tell up to the time the brigantine was lost and his best friend vanished from the scene, never to appear again on earth. Paul Singleton harked back to his earliest recollections, and with the skill of a lawyer asked questions that put Darry's memory to a strain; he examined the singular mark upon the boy's arm with deepest interest and seemed impressed. "That will undoubtedly prove one thing or the other, as soon as I can see her," Darry heard him say, as if to himself. Evidently Paul Singleton knew nothing of the mark and was depending upon some other party to settle the identification. It was noon before either of them realized it. Darry declared he must hurry off so as to catch the lawyer at his office and settle matters before going home. "Hark, Darry," said Paul, holding his hand as they parted; "promise me that if there is anything else I can do to please you I'm to know it right away. Confide in me, my boy. It makes me happy to share, even to a limited extent, in your little affairs. And you know we are going to be great chums all winter, you and I. Look on me then as a sort of elder brother or a cousin, if you please." And Darry thought as he looked into the clear laughing eyes of Paul Singleton that nothing would give him greater happiness on earth than if he could claim relationship to this fine manly fellow. He seemed to be walking on air as he left the cove and headed into the village. Upon calling at the office of Darius Quarles he was disappointed to learn that the lawyer had gone off in his closed buggy early that morning, and would not be back all day--he had to foreclose a mortgage the clerk remarked, and never allowed that duty to be performed by a subordinate, for it gave him too much satisfaction to attend to it personally. Even his employees had a secret contempt for his mean ways, it seemed. "He expects to be home to supper, and if your business is pressing you might call at his house, which is just out of the village on the road to Harden," the young clerk said in concluding. "Thank you, I believe I shall call, as I wish to see him very much," replied Darry, and left the place. He made his way along the rather lonely road that led to the humble home of the Peakes, bowing his head to the storm, and yet with a song of thanksgiving swelling in his heart, for he knew he was carrying with him the means of lifting the load that had for some time oppressed his kind benefactors. Suddenly something struck him a stunning blow and looking up as he staggered he heard a chorus of shrill laughs, and realized that a rope had been thrown around him in such a way that his arms were pinioned down at his sides. At the same moment several impish figures sprang out of the dense brush and fell upon him with vicious blows, as though bent upon knocking him down. Though they had their faces concealed after a ridiculous fashion he recognized the malicious laugh of one as belonging to Jim Dilks. CHAPTER XX BAD LUCK AND GOOD Of course Darry knew what this attack meant. His enemy had been brooding over matters for a long time, and despairing of accomplishing his end while Darry was armed with a gun, during his daily visits to the big marsh, he had finally decided to lie in wait and have it out on the road from the village. Jim wisely backed himself up with a couple of allies in thus undertaking to give his enemy that long-delayed whipping. He had tried it once by himself and apparently had no relish to repeat the experiment. Perhaps it would have been the part of wisdom on the part of the young life saver to have taken to his heels and beat a masterly retreat. Great generals have done this same thing and considered it no dishonor to save their army for another day. To a high-spirited lad, however, it is the last thought, and many a fellow will stand the chances of a beating rather than to turn his back on the foe. Of course there was no time to consider the matter. The three disguised boys attacked him on all sides, and almost before Darry knew what he was doing blows were being exchanged with a vim. He fought gallantly and well, sending in just as many hard hits as his knowledge of the game permitted. Whenever he saw an opening he was quick to take advantage of the same, and as a consequence first one of Jim's supporters and then the other temporarily bit the dust, with a galaxy of stars floating before their mental vision. They were very much surprised. True, they may have heard something about the fighting abilities of this wonderful new boy; but Jim had kept declaring that only for his lame hand he would surely have easily come out victor on that memorable day of the first meeting, and they were forced to believe him. Artful Jim was wise enough to do a great deal of jumping about, but seemed quite willing his allies should meet with the brunt of the battle while he saved himself for the finishing touches. When Darry had tired himself out against Sim Clark and Bowser then his time would have arrived. Darry anticipated being whipped in the encounter. It was not to be expected that one boy could hold his own against three such tough customers as those opposed to him, since they would wear him out. Nevertheless, he declined to run at the beginning, and after a little it was entirely out of the question for him to do so, since he lacked the wind to conduct a flight. So there was really nothing to do but stand and take what was coming to him, at the same time give as good as he knew how. They would never be able at any rate to say they had won an easy victory. By this time they were beautifully daubed with mud, as each appeared to be the under dog while the minutes crept along. Darry's only hope lay in the possibility of some one passing that way, and as the day was so stormy, and few people ever took this road, his chances were indeed slender. Now the whole bunch seemed to be upon the ground alongside the road, struggling like a pack of Kilkenny cats, the three aggressors having their hands on Darry at one time in the endeavor to subdue him. Suddenly Jim gave a hoarse cry. "Haul off dere, fellers; somebody's comin'!" was what he ejaculated. Immediately the other two sprang to their feet like a couple of deer, afraid lest they be caught at their game; perhaps a vision of old Hank Squires flashed before them, with the penitentiary in the background. Darry, out of breath, but game to the last, made an ineffectual attempt to hold one of his tormentors, catching the flying end of his jacket; but such was the moment of Sim's upward movement, and the flimsy character of his wearing apparel, that the entire section came away, remaining in the grip of the enemy as he went tearing after his mates. The three of them plunged into the bushes alongside the road, and were lost to sight, leaving Darry half sitting up on the road, plastered with mud, and ruefully surveying the strip of cloth in his hand. After all it proved to be a false alarm, for no one came in sight. Darry was not foolish enough to invite a further attack by remaining on the ground after the enemy had temporarily withdrawn, so he gathered himself together and continued along the road, feeling of his limbs to ascertain just how seriously he had been bruised, and trying to scrape some of the mud from his clothes. He felt ashamed to let Mrs. Peake see him in this condition, for the clothes had been Joe's, and naturally she would feel badly to discover how they were now treated to a coating of mud. But then the fact of his having such a joyful surprise for her would discount any bad effect of his appearance. Thinking thus, Darry put his hand eagerly into the inside pocket where he had so carefully stowed the little leather pocket-book in which the hundred dollar bill given him by Paul, as well as the amount which his muskrat pelts had fetched at the hardware store, had been lodged. The pocket-book was gone! Poor Darry shivered as if someone had struck him a blow. Could he have lost it while upon the shore with Paul Singleton and had the angry sound claimed it as passage money for having allowed a victim to escape? No, he recollected very distinctly feeling it there as he started from the office of the lawyer, after learning that Mr. Quarles was away. Then it must have fallen out during his struggles on the road, for several times he had been on his back, with those "wildcats" clawing at him. Despite the chances of meeting them again, and having the struggle renewed, he deliberately turned back and quickly ran to the spot where there were plain evidences to be seen of the free-for-all fight. How eagerly he searched every foot of that territory, his heart, figuratively speaking, in his throat with anxiety. But as the minutes passed and he realized the hopeless character of his hunt it seemed to drop like lead into his shoes, the change was so great. Then there remained only one solution of the mystery--one of those young rascals must have inserted a hand in his coat while they were struggling there on the road and stolen the pocket-book with its contents. His heart seemed almost broken, and he even contemplated rushing after them to renew the battle and tear the prize from their possession; but a little thought caused him to understand how foolish such a move would be, for he had no idea as to what quarter they could he heading for when they left him, unless it might be that shack in the swamp, and it would be rash indeed for him to go there alone. He tried to pluck up courage enough to go home, basing all his hopes on Paul, who had seemed so very kind, and ready to help him out. Of course Mrs. Peake was astonished at his appearance, but the rising anger vanished when she learned who had been the cause of his misfortunes--at least it was turned in the direction of Jim Dilks, and she vowed that before another day had passed she would swear out a warrant for his arrest, and go personally to see that Hank Squires did his duty. Depressed in spirits Darry crept away to change his clothes for some others she brought him, also once belonging to Joe. Mrs. Peake advised that the muddy garments be hung up until they dried, when by a vigorous brushing they might be restored to something like their former condition of cleanliness. Accordingly, Darry first of all picked up the trousers and placed them on a line in a corner of the room, where they could drip without soiling the floor, he having spread a newspaper beneath. Then he proceeded to attend to the coat in the same way. While engaged in this he felt something bulky in one of the pockets and smiled faintly as he remembered thrusting that portion of Sim's torn coat there. This he had done under the impression that Hank might consider it conclusive evidence, calculated to convict the young ruffian beyond a possibility of doubt. It might just as well hang alongside the other garments, though Darry did not intend removing the incriminating mud stains from the fragment. As he drew the offending piece of cloth out he was thrilled to feel something in the folds, and with trembling fingers he opened it out. It seemed that with the portion of the coat that had come away in his hands was one of the pockets, and out of this receptacle Darry quickly drew something at which he stared as though he fancied he were dreaming. _His pocket-book!_ Sim had undoubtedly snatched the same from his person as they wrestled upon the ground, and having no other place in which to hide it at the moment, had thrust it in the very outside pocket of his coat that a minute later remained in the grip of the boy he had robbed. Darry stared at it until he realized the amazing fortune that had so kindly returned him his property, and then rolling over on the floor he shook with wild laughter, so that Mrs. Peake came to the door in alarm to see if he were ill. CHAPTER XXI SATISFYING THE MORTGAGE While Darry was gurgling with laughter, still clutching the fragment of coat and the precious pocket-book, he felt a hand seize his arm. Looking up he saw the puzzled and anxious face of Abner's wife. "What ails you, boy? Did they injure you more than you told me?" she asked, as if fearful that he were going out of his mind. To the further astonishment of the good woman the boy climbed to his feet, suddenly threw his arms around her neck and gave her a vigorous hug. "It's all right, mother, after all; they didn't get it!" he exclaimed. "What's all right? I don't understand at all," she replied, looking at the dirty strip of cloth he was holding, and the pocket-book as well. "Why, what do you think, while we were struggling there on the road, with me underneath part of the time, that sneak thief, Sim Clark, managed to steal my pocket-book out of my inner pocket. That was what made me seem so blue, for I had something in it I meant to show you. But when he tried to run away I held on and part of his coat ripped away. I stuck it in my pocket, thinking Hank would like to see it as evidence, and when I took it out here, don't you see I found what I had lost in Sim's pocket! Did you ever hear of such luck in your born days." Mrs. Peake herself laughed. "You do seem to be a fortunate boy. And they would have robbed you of what little you have. I'm glad you got it back, and I'm determined to see Hank Squires to-morrow about this thing. It has gone far enough." "But I've got something else to tell you. Come and sit down where we can talk," he continued, feeling happier than ever before in all his life, for he knew he was in a condition to chase away the clouds that had been bringing anxiety to her mind for months. So he told first of all about his visit to the hardware man, and how he obtained fourteen dollars for his muskrat skins. After that came the call upon the lawyer and what followed in connection with his offer to pay the interest due, and how Mr. Quarles had absolutely refused to accommodate him. Nancy sighed as she heard what the cold, grasping man of law had said about settling old scores. Perhaps she was sorry now she had given him such cause for hatred; but better the life she had led than one as the wife of a cruel money shark of his breed. From this Darry soon branched out and spoke of his trip to the shore, and how on his return a kindly fate had allowed him to be of material assistance to the very young man with whom he expected to spend the winter on his launch. Mrs. Peake began to listen more eagerly now, for she surmised that something of a pleasant nature was coming. When Darry finally placed the money in her hand, she looked at it in bewilderment, never having touched so much at one time in all her life; then she turned her tear-stained eyes upon him, and drawing him into her motherly arms kissed him again and again. And Darry never felt so well repaid for any action of his life as that. There was sunshine in the Peake house the balance of that day, even though the weather without was dark and overcast, for light hearts carry an atmosphere of their own that does not depend upon outside influences. The woman would not hear of Darry's going to see the lawyer that night. Something might happen to him again, with those malicious boys still at large, and it would be wiser she thought, to wait until morning, when the two of them could take the money to Darius Quarles and satisfy the mortgage. Besides, Nancy thought she would like to see what the money-lender looked like when finding his plans frustrated so neatly. "Thank goodness that relative of his will have to wait some time before this house falls into his clutches," she remarked, for the fourth time, since it was impossible, just then, to talk about anything else. So when another day dawned, while the weather was still heavy they walked to the village and astonished the lawyer by appearing in his office soon after his arrival. Supposing that Nancy had come to beg for more time, he set his face in its hardest lines, even though pretending to be sympathetic--times were out of joint, collections difficult to make, and he absolutely needed every cent he could scrape together in order to meet his obligations--that was the way he put it, when she announced she had come in relation to the mortgage. "Then I suppose you will be glad to receive this money, Darius, and return the mortgage canceled to me. And you can be sure that Abner will never trouble you in the same way again," she said, thrusting the full sum, with interest toward him. He slowly counted it, and found that every cent, as he had written it down for Darry, was there. "Ahem! this is an unexpected pleasure, Nancy. I congratulate you, indeed I do, on your success in finding someone to take over the mortgage," he stammered, as his face turned from red to white, and his little eyes glittered. "You are mistaken. There will be no mortgage on my home after this. The money has been earned by this brave boy here, not borrowed," she said, coldly. This caused him to look at Darry, and his mouth told that he was gritting his teeth wrathfully. "Ah! yes, indeed, truly a remarkable boy. What has he been doing now--taking the rats of the swamp by wholesale, I presume? Let me see, only yesterday he had sold twenty-six skins for fourteen dollars, and now a hundred dollar bill follows. It is amazing. Pardon me if I doubt my eyes. I suppose the bill is a good one?" "We will wait here until you go and find out. You might ask Mr. Paul Singleton, who has a little launch down at the docks, and is a member of the club above," replied Mrs. Peake, with stinging emphasis. "Did Mr. Singleton give him this money?" demanded the lawyer, suddenly. "He did, for saving his launch out in the bay yesterday. And what is more, Darry expects to cruise with him the balance of the winter. He has taken a great fancy for my boy. You can find him easily if you wish to ask him about this." It was wonderful how quickly the lawyer changed his manner. He knew who Paul Singleton was, and what wealth he represented in the exclusive sporting club near Ashley. "That alters the complexion of the whole thing. Now I congratulate Darry on his good fortune in making such a good, easy friend. Of course the bill must be all right if Paul Singleton gave it to him. I will immediately attend to the mortgage for you, and also see that it is satisfied on the books at the county office. Meanwhile I shall write you out a receipt in full, showing that it has been paid." Mrs. Peake said nothing more. She felt the utmost contempt for this man, and having been enabled to defeat his scheme for humiliating herself and husband, wished to remain in his company no longer than was absolutely necessary. So she and Darry presently went forth, and how pure even the stormy atmosphere seemed after being for half an hour in that spider's web of a lawyer's den. On the strength of the improved prospects Mrs. Peake felt that she was privileged to spend a portion of the small sum of money she had been hoarding against paying the interest, though as it had not amounted to the full sum she had not dared approach Darius with an offer. Mr. Keeler, being a good friend of the Peakes, and inclined to be hostile to the lawyer, she naturally confided her late troubles to his sympathetic ear, feeling that she could not keep silent. He shook the hand of the boy with sincerity, and declared that it was a great day for Abner and his brood when the surf man helped to pull the cabin boy of the _Falcon_ out of the sea. Being a modest lad, Darry escaped as soon as he could, and waited around until Mrs. Peake was ready to go home, when he showed up to carry her parcels. The family feasted that night most royally. Darry himself had purchased a steak in the store as his donation, and this was a luxury the little Peakes seldom knew. Ducks and fish were all very well, together with oysters, when they could get them; but after all there was a sameness in the diet that rather palled on the appetite, and that beefsteak with onions did smell mighty fine, as even the good cook admitted. The future looked very rosy to both Darry and Abner's wife. When the latter heard what Paul Singleton had said about getting some place for the life saver ashore, where he could be with his family right along, the poor woman broke down and sobbed; but it was joy that caused the tears to flow, and Darry felt his own eyes grow wet as he realized how she must have suffered while compelled to live in this mean way. Nancy having been a teacher had looked to better things, no doubt; but Abner thus far had lacked the ability to provide them for his family. Now, however, the current had changed. "And to think it all comes through you, boy. God sent you to us, I believe, just when things were at the worst. How different it looks now. I am the happiest woman in Ashley this night," she declared, and it seemed as though she could hardly take her beaming eyes off his face during that whole evening as they sat and built air castles for the future. It can be set down as certain that Darry found it hard to get to sleep after so much excitement. Long he lay there and went over all the recent experiences, to wonder again and again why Providence was so good to him, the waif who had until the last few years known only cuffs and trouble. The morning showed no improvement in the weather, for which Darry was sorry, because he wished to cross the sound in order to carry the glorious news to Abner and relieve his mind of the worry that must even now fill it. And as the prospect was that even worse weather might follow before it would improve he determined to go, though Mrs. Peake was rather loth to grant permission. CHAPTER XXII ABNER HEARS THE NEWS When Darry reached the village and was making for the place where his boat was tied up, he remembered that Paul Singleton was close by with his motor-boat. Perhaps he was aboard and would be interested in hearing what had happened to Darry since they parted. Accordingly he walked that way and was accosted by a genial voice calling: "All hail, comrade, what news? Come aboard. Just thinking about you, and if you hadn't hove in sight soon I meant to don my raincoat and saunter up to find out what was in the wind. Here you are, just in time to join me at my lunch, such as it is--coffee, a canoeist stew and some fresh bread I bought from a good housewife in the village. Sit down right there; no excuse, you must know sooner or later what sort of a cook I am, for we expect to share many a meal in common." In such a hearty way did Paul Singleton greet him, and of course Darry had to obey orders, even though hardly hungry. He entertained Paul with an account of his recent adventures, and that young gentleman nearly doubled up with merriment when he heard how a malicious fate had succeeded in cheating Sim Clark out of the reward of his villainy. "And where are you off to now?" demanded Paul, when they had finished their "snack," as he termed it in Southern style, and Darry seemed to be getting ready to depart. "Across to the station. Mr. Keeler told me last evening there was some important mail to go over, and I think its going to storm worse before it finally clears up." "Looks pretty dusty out there even now, for your little tub. Say, suppose we take your boat in tow and go over in the launch? I was wondering what to do only a little while back. Besides, I've wanted to see the surfmen work their boat, and if it comes on to storm hard, perhaps there may be a necessity for them to launch. I'd be sorry to have a wreck occur; but if it does happen I'd like to be on hand. Say yes, now, Darry." Of course he did, for who could resist Paul Singleton; especially when the passage could be made so much more quickly in the staunch little motor-boat than with his own clumsy craft. In a short time they sallied out. The cedar craft was a model of the boat builder's art, and carried a twelve-horse power engine, so that even though the wind and tide chanced to be against them they made steady progress toward the shore seen so dimly far across the sound. Nearly every wave sent the spray flying high in the air as it struck the bow; but there was a hood to catch this, and besides both occupants of the motor-boat had donned oilskins before starting. It was a long trip, nevertheless, for the wind continued to increase in force as the afternoon waned, and Darry, with a sailor's gift of foretelling what the weather was to be, predicted that the succeeding night must witness a storm such as had not visited the coast since the night he was cast ashore. Abner was delighted to see his boy, and it was not long before the party found shelter in the warm station, for the air was growing bitter. "A bad night ahead!" said one of the surfmen, after greeting Darry, "and worse luck, poor Tom here has broken his leg. Mr. Frazer is somethin' of a surgeon, and has set it, but as soon as this storm is over he must be taken home. It leaves us short a man if so be we are called out, unless some feller happens to run across before night, which is kinder unlikely." "I'd be only too glad to pull an oar, if necessary, and you couldn't find any better man," said Darry, quickly, looking at Abner, who shook his head, dubiously. "They may hev to take yuh, lad; but I hopes as how we aint gwine to be called out. It's a cruel night to fight the sea, an' only them as has been thar knows wot it means. Now come an' set down here, both on yuh, an' tell me all the news from hum. I seen somethin' in your eye, lad, thet tells me yuh knows sure a heap wuth hearin'. I hopes it's good news," he said. "Indeed it is, the best ever," replied Darry, with bursting heart, and then as quickly as he could he told the whole story. Poor Abner sat there, blinking, and hardly able to comprehend the wonderful change that had so suddenly come over his fortunes. Unable to speak he could only stretch out his hand to Paul, and then turning to our hero looked at him with his very soul in his eyes. After a little, when he became calmer, he asked many questions, and even had a quiet little laugh at the expense of Darius Quarles. "That's the second time yuh see he's ben knocked out a-tryin' to rob me. Nancy done it fust a-fallin' into the water, and this time Darry here cum to the front. Darius he must be concludin' he was borned under an unlucky star, 'specially wen he tackles Nancy Peake. I'd give somethin' to see the gal jest now," he added wistfully as he tried to picture what she must look like when really and truly happy. Long they talked, until an early supper was ready, and the men gathered about the table, while the wind shrieked and sighed about the corners of the station, telling of the severe labors the coming night would demand. After the meal was finished nothing would do but that Darry must give them some music ere the first detail went out on their arduous duties in facing the cold storm. Paul had known nothing of this accomplishment on the part of his new friend. He sat there as though enthralled while Darry drew such weird strains from the little polished instrument in his hands that this young man, who had doubtless listened to many masters of the violin believed he had never in all his life heard such wonderful music. Of course the strange surroundings had something to do with it, for there was a constant accompaniment of howling wind, with the surge of the wild surf beating time to the magic of the bow, and it seemed as though the player selected just such music as would be appropriate to such a setting. Finally the first detail had to make ready for their long tramp along the beach, and muffled in their oilskins they sallied forth. Later on Abner and his companions expected to start out, for Paul was determined to learn all he could about this hard life of those who patrolled the coasts while the storms raged, a helpful auxiliary to the lighthouse department. The men should have sought rest and sleep while they had the chance, but no one seemed desirous of lying down. Tom, the poor fellow with the broken leg, was bearing up bravely, and only bemoaned the fact that, if there should be any necessity for the launching of the surfboat he could not do his duty. Suddenly everyone started up. Above the roar of the storm a sound had come that could not be anything other than the boom of a gun. There is nothing that startles more than this sound, heard upon the shore as the storm rages, for it invariably tells of peril hovering over some vessel that has been beaten from her track and is threatened with wreck, either upon the reefs or the treacherous sands. Instantly all was bustle and excitement. Every man donned his oilskins, and as they had made all preparations there was little time wasted in doing this. Paul rushed out with the rest, eager to be "in the swim," as he said. It was a scene never to be forgotten. The waves were running high and breaking upon the beach with a thunderous roar, while the wind added to the clamor; so that save for the absence of thunder and lightning the picture seemed to be a duplicate of that other so strongly impressed upon Darry's mind. Down the beach they could catch glimpses of an illumination, and it seemed as though some of the coast patrol might be burning coster lights to signal the vessel on the reef. Presently they would come back, when the lifeboat would be launched. With material that was kept ready for just such an emergency a fire was immediately started. Mr. Frazer was looking anxiously down the beach, and Darry heard him calling to Abner. "I don't like the looks of things yonder. That fire is none of the work of our men. Jim Dilks and his wreckers must be over here looking for pickings. I pity any poor wretch who comes ashore and falls into their hands. That scoundrel wouldn't be above robbing a castaway, and even chocking out what little life remained in his body, if so be it looked like he might tell. Keep a lookout for the rascals, boys. And all give a hand here to get the boat out of the shed. We're going to have a hard night of it, I'm afraid." CHAPTER XXIII DARRY IN THE LIFEBOAT The boat was soon rolled out and placed where it could be quickly launched at the word. Mr. Frazer was not only the keeper of the station but the helmsman of the lifeboat, which latter was a most responsible position, since he must direct the movements of the men who pulled the oars, bring the boat under the vessel in peril, manage to rescue as many of those aboard as could be carried, and finally navigate the craft successfully to the shore. Darry looked upon him as a wonderful man, a hero, indeed, whose equal he had never known. There were signs of distress seaward. Through his night glasses Mr. Frazer reported seeing a steamer in trouble. She had evidently gone on the reef, having gotten out of her course in the wild storm, or else because the wreckers further down the coast had deceived her navigator by means of false beacons. No matter, she was fast upon the treacherous reef and would likely fill and be a wreck before morning, since her entire port side seemed exposed to the fury of the waves. It was a wonder how anything could remain on board and endure so terrific a pounding; if later on she were washed free the chances were there would be holes enough in her by that time to cause her to sink like a shot. The lifeboat could not get out to her any too soon. Those on board were burning lights, and sending up rocket after rocket to indicate that their need of assistance was great. Still nothing could be done until the men on the detail came in. Already it had been settled that unless assistance came speedily, in the shape of a recruit to take the place of Tom, Darry would have to go. The boy was in a fever of suspense, fearful that he might be cheated out of the experience, as on the previous occasion. Paul was quite useless because he knew so little about pulling an oar, while as a sailor, with some years experience on a vessel, Darry was at home on the water in any capacity. "I certainly admire your grit, Darry," said Paul, shuddering as he looked out at the heaving waves, the white tops of which loomed up in the gloom. "Oh! I'm used to these things. Dozens of storms I've been through, under all sorts of conditions," answered the boy. "All the same it's a big risk. I hope nothing will go wrong. That's a mighty small boat to pit against the fury of the sea." "But as safe as they make them. It's impossible to sink it, and the ropes are there to keep us from being swept out, even if flooded. All around the outside you see ropes, and if a fellow goes over he holds on to one of those until another wave sweeps him back in his seat again, and there you are." Although Darry spoke so lightly it must not be assumed that he failed to realize the gravity attending the passage of the surboat out upon such a troubled sea; for accidents do happen to the crews of these life-saving craft, and many a daring soul has gone to his account while trying to rescue others. But just then the patrol came running up, almost out of breath. From one man Frazer learned that his surmise concerning the appearance of the lawless wreckers on the shore was well founded, and that they had been up to some mischief further south, where signs of lights had been noticed by this coastguard. The word was given to take their places, as the boat was about to be launched. They had waited a brief time to allow the newly-arrived men a chance to recover their wind for they would need it presently, when once upon the heaving bosom of the deep. Paul squeezed the hand of his young friend. How he envied him this chance to prove his courage and to pull an oar in a life-saving trip. The rockets had ceased to ascend as though either the supply had given out, or else conditions had become so bad that there was no longer a chance to carry on this work. Then came the word: "Go!" There was a simultaneous movement on the part of the entire crew, and as the sturdy men put their shoulders to the task the surfboat shot forward just at the proper instant when a wave expended itself upon the sloping beach. Its prow entered the water, and those furthest ahead sprang into their places, whipping the long oars into the rowlocks for a struggle against the force of the next onrushing billow. Darry was one of these. He had not watched that other launching for nothing, and understood just what was required of him, as though through long practice. Now they were off! The oars dipped deep, and hardy muscles strained back of them. Slowly but surely the boat gained against all the fury of the onrushing tide, and foot by foot they began to leave the shore. Paul was shouting, swinging his hat, as Darry could see while he tugged at his task. Once fully launched upon the swelling bosom of the sea, the progress of the surfboat was more rapid, though every yard had to be won by the most arduous of labor, the men straining like galley slaves under the lash; but in this case it was a sense of duty rather than the whip of the tyrant that urged them on. No man but the helmsman saw anything of the steamer that was fast upon the cruel jaws of the reef, for it was against orders for anyone to turn his head. Such an incautious movement might throw him out of balance in the swing of the stroke and bring about disaster, or at least temporarily disarrange their regular advance; they had to trust everything to the wisdom and experience of the man who hung on to the long steering oar, and blindly obey his shouted instructions. Many times had he gone forth upon just such a hazard, and thus far his sagacity had proven equal to the task. They began to hear human voices shrieking through the storm. That meant they were drawing close under the lee of the steamer, and that those on board must have sighted them, and were consequently filled with new hope. Above all else came the awful pounding of the sea upon the side of the doomed steamer. Darry knew the sound well, for many a night had he gone calmly to sleep while the chorus of the elements was beating close to his head. He had pulled well, and held his own with the brawny men of the crew, just as Mr. Frazer had known would be the case when he allowed him to take the place of Tom in the boat. Abner was next to him, and the surfman had watched the manly efforts of his adopted boy with secret delight. Few boys indeed of his size could have proven their worth to the crew of the lifeboat in time of need as Darry had done. He could indeed be reckoned one of the life savers from this hour on, if so be they came back again to the shore that had witnessed their departure. Now, as they swung around temporarily the rowers were afforded their first glimpse of the imperiled vessel. It was undoubtedly a steamer, one of the coasters that pass up and down the Atlantic seaboard, bound from New York to one of the various southern ports, or _vice versa_, and usually keeping far enough out to avoid the perils that hover about Kitty Hawk and Hatteras. She was in a bad position, having gone ashore, or been washed aground, so that her whole quarter was exposed to the sweep of the boiling sea. Through the flying spray they could see numerous figures along the lee rail of the vessel, hanging on desperately, while now and then the water would sweep over the deck, and at such times a chorus of screams told that there were other than men there, women half frightened out of their senses by the peril. The surfboat was, after some maneuvering, gotten in such a position under the lee of the steamer that a rope could be thrown aboard. Then a woman was lowered by means of this, and safely stowed away. As the rope had been fastened to the boat there was no longer necessity for the crew to strain at the oars, consequently they were at liberty to assist in caring for those sent down by the steamer's crew, working under the direction of a cool, level-headed captain. Darry had cast off his oilskins, as being in the way. A wetting was of small moment anyway to one so warm-blooded as he, and the cumbersome garments impeded his movements, since they were meant for a big man. The sleeve of his shirt had also become torn in some way and flapped loose until he tucked it up out of the way. All unconscious of the picturesque figure he made he continued to work with all his might, helping to receive the women and children as they were slipped over the side. Many an eye was attracted toward him as seen by the light of the lanterns that were held over the side of the steamer to aid the workers, and more than one wondered how it came that a mere lad was to be found keeping company with these hardy men of the coast, seasoned to storms, and able to defy the rigors of the cold. It was no easy task to take on a load of the passengers under such conditions. Only when the surfboat rose on a billow could they be lowered, for at other times the distance was so great that the deck of the steamer looked as far away as the roof of a tall building. Yet, thanks to the ability of the steamer captain, and the experience of the surfmen below, the shipping of the women and children was accomplished with but a single accident. One child dropped off the rope, having been insecurely fastened, and with the shrieks of the women fell into the sea, but hardly had she reached the water than with a splash Darry was over, and had seized upon the little one. His companions immediately reached out friendly hands, and both were drawn into the plunging boat, amid frantic cheers from all who had seen the daring rescue. One woman seized hold of the boy as he pushed his way through the crowd to his place at the oars, and looked wildly in his face. He supposed she must be the mother of the child he had saved, and not wishing for any scene just then, when he was needed at his place, as they were about to cast off, Darry gently broke her hold, leaving on her knees and staring after him. Although he little suspected the fact it was something else that had chained the attention of this woman passenger; and even as she knelt in the bottom of the boat, which was beginning its perilous passage toward the shore, her eyes continued to be riveted upon his face, and she was saying to herself over and over: "Oh! who is he, that boy? I must see him again if we both live. Can it be possible he had any connection with Paul's telegram? I have come far, but I would go over the distance a thousand times if only a great joy awaited me. Yes, I must see him surely again!" From which it would appear that the friendly fortune that seemed to be attending the affairs of our young hero of late had again started work; and that even in gratifying his wild desire to serve as a life saver Darry had been advancing his own cause. Now the lifeboat was headed for the shore, and sweeping in on a giant roller. Great care had to be exercised lest the boat broach-to, and those in her be spilled out, when some must be drowned, for having taken so many aboard they lacked the buoyancy that had previously marked their progress. Standing in his place the steersman carefully noted every little point, and high above the rush of the storm his voice rang out as he ordered the crew to cease rowing, or to pull hard. It was well worth experiencing, and Darry was glad he had at last found a chance to go out with the crew. Abner knew that at least one more trip would have to be made, in order to take off the crew of the steamer, and he was determined that if there should have arrived any substitute on the beach while they were away Darry must not be called upon to undertake the second voyage. The strain was terrific for a mere stripling of his build, and only old seasoned veterans could stand under it. There was no need of questioning the willingness of the lad to volunteer again; and if it seemed absolutely necessary Abner would give his consent, but he hoped circumstances might change and another hand be provided. With the women and children they had several of the crew who had come along to relieve any oarsman who might give under the great strain; the more sent in this load the less remaining for the next, and among these Abner had picked upon a certain husky fellow who seemed able to do his part if called upon. Now the shore was close by. The fire burned brightly, fed by Paul, and the steersman could see several other men at the water's edge, proving that they had crossed the sound in some sort of staunch craft, or had come down from above, knowing the wreck was close to the life-saving station. At last the boat mounted the last billow on which she was to continue her voyage to the beach. The crew pulled heartily to keep her perched high on its foamy crest, and in this fashion they went rushing shoreward. CHAPTER XXIV THE AWAKENING As the boat shot forward and her keel grated on the sand the crew were over the sides like a shot, seizing upon her in order to prevent the outgoing wave from carrying her along. Then one by one the women and children were carried to the shore, and hurried to the shelter of the station, where a warm fire and something to drink in the way of coffee and tea would put new life in the shuddering mass. The woman who had been so strangely agitated at sight of Darry seemed to be a lady of refinement, but she was almost perishing from the cold, and did not resist when they forced her to seek shelter. Once she turned around and looked back to where Darry was busy; but when inside the house she swooned from exhaustion, to come to later and find Paul Singleton bending anxiously over her, with words of affection on his lips. Meanwhile Darry was ready to again take his place with the rest, but Abner had been busy, and spoke to Mr. Frazer, who in turn engaged a stalwart fisherman to fill the vacancy caused by Tom's absence. Although disappointed, Darry did not insist, for he knew the tax upon his young muscles had been severe, and if he failed it might throw the whole crew out of balance. So he saw them set out again, with his heart in his eyes. When they had vanished from view he walked nervously up and down the beach for a short time; then noticing the presence of a moving light not more than half a mile down the shore he remembered what he had heard Mr. Frazer say about the wreckers being abroad, looking for anything of value they could lay hands on. Usually these men make their living by gathering up whatever may be cast on the beach after a vessel has gone to pieces, and thus far their calling is legitimate, but as a rule they are a bad class, and at times, when fortune frowns upon their efforts, many of their kind resort to desperate means for accumulating riches, even robbing the dead, and it was hinted in connection with Jim Dilks' crowd, going still further. When a vessel is in danger of going to pieces, the passengers usually load themselves with what valuables they may possess in the hope of saving these in case they reach the shore in safety; so that these ghouls frequently find a little fortune upon the persons of the drowned travelers. Darry had heard the crew of the lifeboat talking about these wreckers so frequently that he was more than curious with regard to them, and as he saw the lantern moving to and fro along the water's edge, now approaching and again retreating, he felt a sudden desire to look upon their methods of work. It was not a wise move on his part at all, for such men are as a rule desperate characters, and resent being spied upon, since such action savors too much of the law and justice in their eyes; but Darry was only a venturesome boy, who somehow never knew the meaning of the word fear, and a little saunter along the beach would pass away some of the time until the boat came in again. So he started off, telling no one of his intention, though one man noticed him walk away, which fact proved fortunate in the end. As he drew nearer the moving light he saw that, as he had suspected, it was a lantern held in the hand of a big man who was passing along as close to the edge of the water as he could, and surveying with the eye of a hawk each incoming billow, as though he expected to discover a floating form that must be snatched away ere it were carried out again. But it was no errand of mercy that caused this human vulture to keep up his unceasing vigil; for should the body of a luckless passenger come ashore his first act would be to rifle the pockets rather than attempt to restore life. Darry caught a glimpse of several other figures beyond, but their lanterns had evidently given out, so they were trusting to their eyes alone for seeing in the dark. He had never as yet met big Jim Dilks, but something told him that this man was now before him, and he wondered if the son might not also be one of the other prowlers beyond, since he evidently possessed the same kind of savage instincts that characterized his father. Darry had come as close as he deemed prudent when he saw the man start forward with a sudden swoop, and seizing some object from the inflowing wave drag it up on the shore. There was no outcry to call the attention of others, for evidently this was a game of "every man for himself," though possibly a division of spoils might be made later on. Horrified, Darry pressed closer, for he fancied he had seen a feeble movement on the part of the figure drawn from the waves--doubtless alone and unassisted the swimmer could never have crawled out on the beach, but now that he was beyond reach of the waves, would the man who had snatched him ashore do the slightest thing to keep the spark of life from going out entirely? He saw Jim Dilks bend eagerly down. Closer still Darry pressed, unconscious in his eagerness to see that he was placing his own life in danger. The man who would not hesitate to rob the dead might go even further in order to conceal his crime. He saw Jiw Dilks hurriedly search through the pockets of the figure, transfer a number of articles to his own person, and then with a growl lift the body in his arms, giving it a toss that once more sent it afloat. The terrible nature of this act brought out a half-stifled cry from the watching boy, and the wrecker, startled, wheeled to see him there. He darted upon him like a wolf, and ere Darry could lift a hand to save himself he was struck a severe blow on the head. After that he knew nothing more. When he opened his eyes later he found himself in the life-saving station, and for a minute or so wondered what had happened, for as he started to rise there was a severe pain in his head, and he sank back with a sigh. Then it all seemed to pass before him. Again he could see the savage face of big Jim, as he turned like a sheep-killing dog caught in the act, and once more Darry shivered with the terrible thought that life had not wholly departed from the wretched passenger from the ill-fated steamer at the time the wrecker tossed him back into the merciless sea. Who had found him, and brought him here, when evidently the lawless man had intended that he should share the fate of the doomed passenger, and thus forever have his lips sealed? Someone must have heard him sigh, for there was a movement close by, and his eyes took in the eager face of Paul Singleton. "Bully for you, Darry! We were getting mighty anxious about you, but I can see you're all right now. It has been hard to keep Abner at his duty watching the shore. Every little while he appears at the door to ask if you have recovered your senses yet. Why, he couldn't be more fond of you if you were his own Joe," said Paul, running his hand tenderly over the boy's forehead. "I don't understand how I got here," declared Darry; "the last thing I remember was being struck by the fist of that brute, big Jim Dilks. He had just robbed a passenger from the wreck. I saw him pull the body out of the water, clean out the pockets, and then throw the poor fellow back again. And, Mr. Singleton, it's a terrible thing to say, but I'm most sure there was life still in the body of the man he robbed when he tossed him back!" "The scoundrel, I wouldn't put it past him a particle. And that isn't the first time he and his gang have done the same thing either. But their time has come, Darry. Even now I chance to know that the government has sent agents down here to make arrests, urged on by the women of Ashley, and before another day rolls around all of those rascals will be in the toils. You may be called on to give evidence against Dilks. But please forget all about this gruesome matter just now, my dear boy. There is something else of a vastly different nature that awaits you--some delightful intelligence, in fact." Paul paused to let the half-dazed lad drink in the meaning of his words. "Oh! Mr. Singleton!" he began. "No, from this hour let it be Paul--Cousin Paul, in truth. You know, I said I wanted you to look upon me as an elder brother, but now it seems that we are actually related, and that I am your full-fledged cousin." "My cousin! Oh! what can you mean?" gasped the bewildered Darry. "I'll tell you without beating around the bush, then. You are no longer the poor homeless waif you used to believe yourself." "No, that is true, thanks to dear old Abner and Nancy," murmured Darry, loyal to his good friends in this hour. "But there is someone who has a better claim upon your affection than either Abner or Nancy, kind-hearted though they undoubtedly are. It is your own mother, Darry!" exclaimed the young man, leaning over closer as he said that word of magic. "Mother! My mother! How sweet that sounds! But tell me how can this be? Who am I, and where is she? How did you find it out, and, oh! Paul, are you _sure_, quite sure? A disappointment after this would be hard to bear." "Have no fears, Darry, there is no longer the slightest shadow of a doubt. The minute my aunt set her eyes on that crescent-shaped mark on your arm she knew beyond all question that Heaven had granted her prayers of years, and in this marvelous way restored her only child to her again. She saw you leap overboard to save that little child, and she recognized in your face the look she remembered so well as marking the countenance of her husband, now long since dead. She says you are his living picture as a boy." "I remember some lady seizing hold of my arm after they dragged me aboard the lifeboat, but at the time I believed it must be the mother of the child, and I was anxious to get back to my place, for the boat might upset with one oar missing. And that was--my mother?" How softly, how tenderly, he spoke the word, as though it might be something he had only dared dream about, and had difficulty in realizing now that he could claim what nearly all other boys had, a parent. "Yes, that was my dear Aunt Elizabeth. I wired her away down in South America, where she was visiting cousins, and it has taken her quite a while to get here. She had to change steamers twice, and meant to come back here from New York by rail, when a strange freak of fortune sent that vessel upon the reef, and placed you in the lifeboat that went to the rescue. After this I shall stand in awe of the mysterious workings of Providence, since this beats anything I ever heard of. I could see something familiar in your looks, and after hearing your story sent for her on a chance. That was why I dared not tell you any more than I did. If I had only known about the history of that scar on your arm I would have been positive. She asked me immediately about it, and when I told her it was surely there she fainted again." "My mother! how strange it seems. Go on please, Paul," murmured the boy, reaching out and possessing himself of the other's hand, as though its touch gave him assurance that this was not one of his tantalizing dreams. "I went in search of you, and one of the men told me he had seen you walking down the beach, as though attracted by the light which he believed was a lantern carried by a wrecker, perhaps the feared Jim Dilks. I engaged him to accompany me, and securing a lantern we hurried along. And Darry, we found you just in time, for the sea was carrying you out. I believe that wretch must have cast you into the water just as he did the body of the passenger." "Then I owe my life to you--Cousin Paul?" "If so it only squares accounts, for I guess I'd have gone under out there on the sound only for your coming in time. But Darry, do you think you feel strong enough to see your mother? I forced her to lie down in the little room beyond, but she cannot sleep from the excitement." "Yes, oh! yes. Please bring her. I shall be a long time understanding it all, and trying to realize that I am truly awake. To think that I really have a mother!" Darry drew a long breath, and followed Paul with eager eyes as he went through the doorway into the other room. It was dawn now. In more senses than one the day had come to Darry. He heard low voices, and then someone came through the door, someone whose eyes were fastened hungrily upon his face. Darry struggled to sit up, and was just in time to feel a pair of arms around his neck and have his poor aching head drawn lovingly upon the bosom of the mother whom he had not known since infancy. CHAPTER XXV CONCLUSION Later on, in fragments, Darry learned the whole story. It was all very wonderful, and yet simple enough. The old man whom he remembered so well, and who had told him to call him uncle, was in reality a brother of his mother. He had quarreled with his sister Elizabeth's husband, after abusing his kindness, and to cancel what he called a debt, had actually stolen the only child of the man he had wronged and hated. An old story, yet happening just as frequently in these modern days as in times of old, for men have the same passions, and there is nothing new under the sun. Everything that money could do was done to find the man and the little boy he had kidnapped, but he proved too cunning for them all, and although several times traces were found of his being at some foreign city, when a hunt was made he had again vanished. So the years came and went, and the child's mother was left a widow. Hope never deserted her heart, though it must have grown fainter as time passed on, and all traces of the wicked child-stealer seemed swallowed up in mystery. Paul had known of her great trouble, and it was the remarkable resemblance of Darry to a picture he had seen of his uncle Rudolph as a boy that first startled him. Then came the story about the waif, and this gave him strong hopes that by the wonderful favor of Providence he had been enabled to come across the long-lost boy, his own cousin. Their happiness was subdued, for there had been lives lost in the storm, a number of passengers and crew having been swept from the deck of the steamer by the giant waves before the coming of the life savers. As the storm subsided by noon, our little party, increased by Abner's presence, was enabled to cross the still rough sound in the staunch motor-boat of Paul, and to Nancy's amazement appeared at her humble little home. She heard the story of Darry's great good fortune with mingled emotions, for while she could not but rejoice with him in that he had found a mother, still, in a way, it seemed to the poor woman as though she had been bereaved a second time, for she was beginning to love the boy who had come into her life to take the place of Joe. Still, the future appeared so rosy that even Nancy could not but feel the uplift, and her face beamed with the general joy as she bustled around and strove to prepare a supper for her guests. In the village they had heard news. Jim Dilks and several of his cronies were in the hands of the United States authorities, having been arrested on serious charges. Later on they were convicted of using false beacons in order to lure vessels on the reefs for wicked purposes, and of robbing the dead cast up on the shore. A more serious charge could not be proven, though few doubted their innocence. Darry, or as he was compelled to call himself now, Adrian Singleton, being summoned to give evidence, helped to send the big wrecker to his well-earned solitude by telling what he had seen on the night of the last storm, and as some jewelry was found in his possession, which was identified by the wife of a passenger who lost his life, and whose body was washed up on the beach later on, there was no difficulty in securing his conviction. As for his profligate son, he was not long in following the elder Dilks to confinement, being caught in some crime that partook of the nature of robbery, and was sent to a reformatory, where it is to be hoped he may learn a lesson calculated to make him a better man when he comes forth. Since these happenings took place only a few years back, young Jim is still in confinement; his boon companions Sim Clark and Bowser vanished from Ashley and doubtless sought congenial surroundings in Wilmington, where they could pursue their destiny along evil lines until the long arm of the law reached out and brought them to book. True to his word, Paul saw to it that Abner Peake was placed in charge of the big farm he owned, not a great distance away from Ashley, and here the former life saver and his family have every comfort their simple hearts could wish for, so that they count it the luckiest day of their lives when the cabin boy of the lost brigantine, _Falcon_, was washed up on the beach out by the life-saving station. About once a year Abner visits his old chums out on the beach, spending a couple of days in their company and reviving old times, but on such occasions they often see him sitting by himself under the shelter of some old remnant of a former wreck, his calm blue eyes fixed in an absent-minded fashion upon the distant level horizon of Old Ocean, and at such times no one ventures to disturb him, for well they know that he is holding silent communion with the spirit of poor little Joe, who went out with the tide, and was seen no more. Somewhere upon that broad, lonely ocean his little form has found a resting place, and so long as he lives must Abner drop a tear in his memory whenever he sets eyes upon his watery shroud. But the Peakes are happy, and the twins are growing up to be buxom children. There is another little laughing Peake now, a boy at that, and at last accounts Darry--it is hard to call him by any other name--heard that he is destined to be christened Joseph Darry Peake. After all, Paul and Darry did have a chance to spend some part of the winter cruising together on the sound, although our hero later on decided that he must start in to make himself worthy of the position which was from this time to be his lot, and enrolled at an academy where his fond mother could be near him, and have a home in which he might find some of the happiness that fate had cheated him out of for so long. No one who knows the youth doubts that he has a promising future before him, and many prophesy that he will eventually make a more famous lawyer than his father was before him. Often Darry loves, when by himself, to look back to the days that are no more, and at such times he thinks with gratitude of the friends whom a kindly Providence raised up for him in his time of need. Among these he never fails to include Captain Harley, the skipper of the _Falcon_, whose widow Darry had communicated with while he was still under the roof of the life saver's home, and whom he later on met personally, as she came on to hear all he could tell about her lost husband. And the brave life savers on that desolate Carolina beach have not been forgotten by the grateful mother of the boy they had adopted, for during each winter there always comes a huge box filled with such warm clothing as men in their arduous and dangerous profession greatly need. At Christmas holidays Darry, Paul and Mrs. Singleton make it a point to spend a week at Ashley, during which time they live again the stirring scenes of the past, and find much cause for gratitude because of the wonderful favors that were showered upon them in that locality. THE END 
27322	----	AN APPEAL TO THE BRITISH NATION, ON THE Humanity and Policy OF FORMING A NATIONAL INSTITUTION, FOR THE PRESERVATION OF LIVES AND PROPERTY FROM SHIPWRECK. BY SIR WILLIAM HILLARY, BARONET. AUTHOR OF "A PLAN FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF A STEAM LIFE BOAT AND FOR THE EXTINGUISHMENT OF FIRE AT SEA;" "SUGGESTIONS FOR THE IMPROVEMENT AND EMBELLISHMENT OF THE METROPOLIS," AND "A SKETCH OF IRELAND IN 1824." _THIRD EDITION._ LONDON: PRINTED FOR GEO. B. WHITTAKER, AVE-MARIA-LANE. 1825. TO THE KING. SIRE, From Your Majesty's exalted station as Sovereign of the greatest maritime power on earth, and from the ardent zeal with which You have graciously extended Your Royal patronage to every measure which could promote the welfare and the glory of the British Navy, I have presumed, with the utmost deference, to dedicate the following pages to Your Majesty. With the most dutiful respect, I have the honour to subscribe myself, SIRE, Your Majesty's Most devoted subject and servant, WILLIAM HILLARY. INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION[A]. The few pages of which the present edition is composed, were principally written under the circumstances there stated, which had forcibly called my attention to the fatal effects of those ever-recurring tempests, which scatter devastation and misery round our coasts, where the veteran commander and his hardy crew, with their helpless passengers of every age and station in life, are left wretchedly to perish from the want of that succour which it has become my object earnestly to solicit for these destitute victims of the storm. Another winter has scarcely yet commenced, and our coasts are spread over with the shattered fragments of more than two hundred vessels, which, in one fatal tempest, have been stranded on the British shores, attended with an appalling havoc of human life, beyond all present means to ascertain its extent, besides the loss of property to an enormous amount. And shall these fearful warnings also be without avail? Shall we still close our eyes on conviction, until further catastrophes wring from us those reluctant efforts, which ought to spring spontaneously from a benevolent people? With the most ample means for the rescue of thousands of human beings from a watery grave, shall we still leave them to their fate? Shall we hear unmoved of this widely-spread destruction, and not each contribute to those exertions, to which the common charities of human nature, and the certainty of the direful evils we might avert, and the sufferings we might assuage, ought to incite us to lend our utmost aid? The conflicting fury of the elements, the darkness of night, the disasters of the sea, and the dangers of the adjacent shores, but too frequently combine to place the unhappy mariner beyond the power of human relief. But if all cannot be rescued, must all therefore be left to perish? If every effort cannot be attended with success, must not any attempt be made to mitigate these terrible calamities, which bring home the evil to our very doors, and force conviction on us by their desolating effects, and by the destruction of hundreds of our countrymen, whose wretched remains perpetually strew our shores?--Whilst we pause, they continue to perish; whilst we procrastinate, the work of destruction pursues its course; and each delay of another winter, in the adoption of measures more commensurate with the extent of these deplorable events, is attended with the sacrifice--perhaps of a thousand human lives. Even were the preservation of the vessels and their cargoes alone the objects of our care, the present want of all system for such a purpose is, in its consequences, as lavish of property as it is of life; and from the vast amount now annually lost on our shores, infinitely more might unquestionably be preserved to the commercial interests of the country, by the establishment of the Institution proposed, than its support would cost to the nation on its most extended scale. Actuated by these impressions, I have sought by every argument to rouse the dormant energies of a brave and a humane people to the rescue of their fellow-creatures; and through the ardent zeal, the generous enterprise, and the liberal bounty of a great nation, to awaken every feeling which can stimulate to the effort, and provide every means which can insure its success. In our great insular empire, almost all individuals, from the most exalted and powerful in the land to the lowly and obscure, are at some period of their lives induced, by their various avocations and pursuits, to leave their own coasts. The brave seamen, the gallant soldiers, and the various subjects of these realms, of all ranks and degrees, are to be found traversing every stormy sea, and exposed to peril on every dangerous shore. This is not then an object for which the great and the affluent are called on for the relief of the humble and the destitute alone--the cause is individual, national, and universal, perhaps beyond any other which has ever yet been addressed to a country for support. It appeals equally to personal interest and to national policy--to private benevolence and to public justice; and each who thus extends the benefits of his efforts and his bounty to his countrymen and to mankind, may also be contributing to the future safety of his family, his friends, or himself. In the pursuit of this arduous undertaking, I have felt it to be a duty I owed to the cause of which I have thus become an advocate, to offer my views to those of every class and department, who, from their humanity, their talents, or their station, are the most calculated, or the best enabled, to promote this great object of national benevolence. I have dedicated this cause, with all deference, to a most gracious sovereign; I have addressed myself in its behalf to his ministers; and I have appealed to various distinguished individuals, to almost all the great national and benevolent institutions in the kingdom, to the commercial and shipping interests, and to the public at large, for the support of an object well worthy the deep attention of the greatest naval power of the present or of any former age, for the rescue of her numerous seamen and subjects from one of the most frequent and most awful of all the various calamities which desolate the human race. From the same motives, I have most respectfully submitted this national and international system to the sovereigns and governments of the principal maritime powers of Europe and of America; and I avail myself with pleasure of the present occasion, to express my grateful acknowledgments for the promptitude with which several of their ministers, resident at this court, have transmitted it to their respective governments. Encouraged to persevere in my endeavours, by the flattering support and approbation of many distinguished and enlightened characters, I am induced to hope that the day is not remote, when this contemplated institution may be established on a permanent basis, by the united energies of a noble and a benevolent nation, to whose support such a cause has never yet been addressed in vain. The interest which this subject has already excited, has induced me to commit another edition of my pamphlet to the press; whilst the magnitude and vital importance of these objects, to our country and to mankind,--on our own and every foreign shore,--in the present and every future age,--will, I trust, best plead my excuse as a retired individual, and acquit me from the charge of presumption, in having had the temerity to submit my views to the consideration of so many illustrious personages, and for the earnest solicitude with which I have addressed myself to the humanity, the benevolence, and the justice of the British nation. 10th November, 1823. FOOTNOTE: [A] The introduction to the second edition and the following pamphlet were published previously to the formation of "the Royal National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck," which it originally projected, as will be obvious by reference to dates and to the accompanying Appendix. AN APPEAL, _&c._ For many years, and in various countries, the melancholy and fatal shipwrecks which I have witnessed, have excited a powerful interest in my mind for the situation of those who are exposed to these awful calamities; but the idea of the advantages which would result from the establishment of a national institution, for the preservation of human life from the perils of the sea, first suggested itself to me during my residence on a part of the coast, often exposed to the most distressing scenes of misery, and where the dreadful storms of the last autumn prevailed with unusual violence. On some occasions, it has been my lot to witness the loss of many valuable lives, under circumstances, where, had there been establishments previously formed for affording prompt relief, and encouragement given to those who might volunteer in such a cause, in all probability the greater part would have been rescued from destruction. At other times I have seen the noblest instances of self-devotion; men have saved the lives of their fellow-creatures at the peril of their own, without a prospect of reward if successful, and with the certainty that their families would be left destitute if they perished. From these considerations, I have been induced to wish, that the results of the experience, talent, and genius of the most distinguished commanders, and men of science, should be united in the formation of one great Institution, which would in itself embrace every possible means for the preservation of life from the hazards of shipwreck. Though many individuals have employed their time, their attention, and often exposed their personal safety for this object, yet nearly the whole of the most extensive and dangerous parts of our coasts are left without any means having been adopted, any precautions taken, for rendering assistance to vessels in distress; and, winter after winter, we have the most afflicting details of the consequences attendant on this lamentable apathy to human misery--an awful destruction of life, on almost every shore which surrounds the British dominions: acts have even sometimes been perpetrated at which humanity shudders, and which have caused other nations to cast reproach and opprobrium on the British name. But individual efforts, however meritorious in themselves, are unequal to produce all the benefits contemplated, or to remedy all the evils, attendant on one of the most tremendous of perils to which human nature is exposed, and which is most likely to fall upon those who are in the very prime of manhood, and in the discharge of the most active and important duties of life. From the calamity of shipwreck no one can say that he may at all times remain free; and whilst he is now providing only for the safety of others, a day may come which will render the cause his own. These are not arguments founded on the visionary contemplation of remote or improbable dangers. Their urgent necessity must be obvious to every mind. So long as man shall continue to navigate the ocean, and the tempests shall hold their course over its surface, in every age and on every coast, disasters by sea, shipwrecks, and peril to human life, must inevitably take place; and with this terrible certainty before our eyes, the duty becomes imperative, that we should use every means to obviate and to mitigate the deplorable consequences. This subject in a peculiar manner appeals to the British people collectively and individually. For ages, our seamen have been the acknowledged support of our splendour and our power; and until every thing which the ingenuity of man can suggest, and every inducement and regulation which social institutions can offer and arrange, have been combined into one great plan for their safety, we shall be wanting in our best duties to them, to our country, and to ourselves. Local associations cannot call forth the energy which such a cause demands at our hands; they are only partial benefits, whilst the great evil remains unredressed. We have many noble institutions, widely spread through the extent of the British dominions, supported by voluntary contributions, and exalting our name above that of every other nation by our disinterested efforts in the cause of humanity; whilst this great and vital object to every Briton, seems alone to have been strangely and unaccountably overlooked, or only partially undertaken. Our coasts are surrounded by land-marks as a guide by day, and lights and beacons by night; our mariners are furnished with charts of every sea, every rock is pointed out, every shoal set down, and every channel buoyed. Pilots are to be found at the entrance of every port, and all that science, indefatigable labour, and liberal expenditure can effect, to warn the seaman of his danger, and to prevent vessels from being wrecked,--all has long, and ardently, and ably been studied and accomplished. Whilst the vessels are yet secure, every safeguard is at their command, amply supplied by public associations, or by the state; and towards which, on their safe arrival in port, they contribute their quota for the benefits they have received,--and all must but too often prove in vain; many may thus be warned of their danger, and be saved; shipwrecks will still continue to take place, despite of all human means, and their crews be exposed to every species of peril and distress,--but what then becomes their fate? Wretched, exhausted, and in the last extremity of danger, on whom does their rescue devolve? to what body or class of men, or to which of our numerous departments, does it now become an honourable and an imperative duty to afford them assistance in this their utmost need?--where are the national funds for such an object, to supply ample means for the hazardous attempt, to reward the brave efforts of those who succeed, or to relieve the destitute families of those who perish in so honourable a cause? The melancholy catastrophe closed, every human being on board having perished, or having quitted their shattered vessel in despair; the laws and usages of recompense are clearly defined;--salvage for the property preserved, in proportion to its amount. But in the dreadful crisis between these two extremes, does one law of the land, or one National Institution, hold out the established claim to certain reward for a life saved? In the nineteenth century, surrounded by every improvement and institution which the benevolent can suggest, or the art of man accomplish for the mitigation or prevention of human ills, will it for a moment be capable of belief, that there does not, in all our great and generous land, exist one National Institution which has for its direct object the rescue of human life from shipwreck? The protection of property is in every stage a subject of legislation and of care;--the rescue of life from shipwreck has never yet been adopted as a national and a legislative object. With the exception of the recompenses voluntarily given by the liberal institution of Lloyd's, the very few associations scattered thinly on the coasts, and the valuable inventions and gallant efforts of those brave and enlightened individuals who do honour to their country, our shipwrecked seamen are left in this awful situation, to the spontaneous exertions of enterprise and humanity, the chance of the moment, or the mercy of the winds and waves;--or rather let us say, to a greater mercy, and a higher Power. It may be thought that this picture is overcharged; but unhappily, I believe it will be found too faithfully correct. I am firmly convinced, that these appalling facts have never yet reached the great majority of the nation; but the veil once withdrawn, the honour, the justice, and the humanity of Britain will be deeply compromised, if the evil is not promptly and effectually redressed;--not any human means should be spared to atone for the past, and to alleviate the future. In bringing this deeply interesting subject before the public, it is my ardent hope that it may call forth the attention of those better qualified to bring to perfection so important a work. Let this great national object but once engage the attention of the public mind, and not any thing can arrest its course. The power of united effort, in the attainment of any great work of national benevolence, has never yet failed of success. The institution I have in view is equally a claim of justice and of benevolence; it peculiarly belongs to the greatest maritime nation in existence, and will, I trust, be deemed worthy the attention of the Admiralty of England, who have so long held their high station with as much honour to themselves as benefit to their country. By whose immediate patronage the first measures for the organization of such a system may be honoured, or under the sanction of what names the requisite public meetings to carry them into effect may be announced, it would be the utmost presumption in me to anticipate; but it appears to me, that the immediate assembling of such meetings in London, would best contribute to the establishment of this Institution on a permanent and extensive foundation. To the consideration of such meetings, I must respectfully beg leave to submit: That a national institution should be formed, equally worthy of Great Britain, important to humanity, and beneficial to the naval and commercial interests of the United Empire; having for its objects, _First_, The preservation of human life from shipwreck; which should always be considered as the first great and permanent object of the Institution, _Secondly_, Assistance to vessels in distress, which immediately connects itself with the safety of the crews. _Thirdly_, The preservation of vessels and property, when not so immediately connected with the lives of the people, or after the crews and passengers shall already have been rescued. _Fourthly_, The prevention of plunder and depredations in case of shipwreck. _Fifthly_, The succour and support of those persons who may be rescued; the promptly obtaining of medical aid, food, clothing, and shelter for those whose destitute situation may require such relief, with the means to forward them to their homes, friends, or countries. The people and vessels of every nation, whether in peace or in war, to be equally objects of this Institution; and the efforts to be made, and the recompenses to be given for their rescue, to be in all cases the same as for British subjects and British vessels. _Sixthly_, The bestowing of suitable rewards on those who rescue the lives of others from shipwreck, or who assist vessels in distress; and the supplying of relief to the destitute widows or families of the brave men who unhappily may lose their lives in such meritorious attempts. The objects of the Institution being thus defined, and having, I hope, already obtained the powerful support of those illustrious personages and distinguished characters in the state, under whose fostering care, as patrons and presidents, the system would have the best prospect of being brought to maturity; it would only be requisite to proceed to the next duty of the meeting, which would be the formation of a numerous Committee, including liberal and enlightened men from all classes and departments, naval and military officers, members of the Trinity House and of Lloyd's, merchants and commanders in the East India and other services, &c. In addition to this central Committee, it would be requisite, in order to carry the objects of the association into active execution, that branches of the Institution, and subject to its rules, should be formed in all the principal ports, and on the most dangerous sea-coasts of the United Kingdom; each having its own separate Committee, in direct communication with that in London. But, on the general central meetings of Presidents and Committee in London, would devolve the primary measures for the permanent establishment of the Institution; the general system of finance, the formation of rules and regulations, and the plans for giving activity and effect to the whole. Perhaps it might facilitate the progress of the measures in view, if the labour were divided, and two or more separate Committees or Boards were formed from the whole, consisting of individuals best qualified for the objects of each separate department, whose reports, before being finally adopted, should receive the sanction of the Institution at large. Under this view of the subject, a Committee of finance would be desirable, whose duty, in the first instance, would be to arrange and pursue the best and most active measures to diffuse a general knowledge of the objects and principles of the association; and to obtain donations and subscriptions, for the purpose of carrying them into effect. From the peculiarly interesting nature of this Institution, it is to be presumed, that this part of their duty would be found easy in its progress, and successful in its results. When we see long columns filled with the first names in the country, with large sums placed opposite to them, for objects temporary in their nature, and small in importance compared with the present, which contemplates the rescue of thousands of human beings now in existence, and an incalculable number yet unborn, from one of the most tremendous of all perils,--who is there, to whom such an Institution once became known, that would refuse his aid? It is a cause which extends from the palace to the cottage, in which politics and party cannot have any share, and which addresses itself with equal force to all the best feelings of every class in the state. The names of every branch of the Royal Family are to be found at the head of all the benevolent Institutions of the empire. From the nobility and gentry large donations and subscriptions may naturally be expected. The clergy of every class will, no doubt, be foremost in the cause of humanity. To the whole body of the navy, the marines, and to the army, who, in the prosecution of their professional duties, encounter so many of the dangers of the sea, such an appeal will never be made in vain. Can it be supposed that there is one East India Director, one member of Lloyd's, an under-writer, a merchant, a shipowner, or commander in the India or merchants' service, from whom a subscription, liberal in proportion to his means, will not be obtained? Nor will the generous aid of any class of society, I am persuaded, be wanting for such a purpose; and as a stimulus to the whole, by example in their donations, and by the widely-extended circle of their influence, the British females of every station in life will, I am convinced, particularly distinguish themselves in aid of this cause. From these opinions, which I so confidently entertain of the humanity and liberality of the British people, I rest firmly persuaded, that the most ample means will be easily and speedily obtained for every possible expenditure which can attend the objects of this Institution. When the funds shall have been once established, the duty of the Committee will be, to have the permanent superintendence and regulation of their finance under the proper control of the whole society. A second Board, or Committee, should be formed from the most experienced and enlightened officers of the navy, seamen, engineers, and scientific men, for the purpose of carrying the direct objects of the Institution into effect. One of the most important duties of this Committee will be to combine, in a clear, concise, and well-digested system, the result of the joint knowledge and experience of the whole body, in plain and simple language, divested as much as possible of technical phraseology, and capable of being understood by every individual. This code of instruction should comprise the best and most prompt measures to be adopted in every sort of danger to which a vessel can be exposed, and on whatever kind of coast, in order that the most effectual assistance may be given, with the least possible loss of time, and with such means as in remote situations can most probably be obtained; and the Committee should be requested to report, from time to time, the result of those measures which they had found from experience to be most successful; whilst every friend to such a cause, who might suggest an invention or a means to facilitate these objects, would be certain, that in this Committee his plans would receive the most attentive consideration from those who would possess the power and the inclination to carry them into effect. It will be desirable that this Committee should suggest the most eligible plans for permanent establishments in all sea-ports, road-steads, and resorts for shipping, and particularly on remote, wild, and exposed parts of the coast, where lifeboats, anchors, cables, hawsers, and the beneficial inventions of those enlightened and highly patriotic officers, Sir William Congreve, Captains Marryat, Manby, Dansey, Mr. Trengrouse, and various other meritorious individuals, should be kept in constant readiness for use, with every means for the preservation of lives in danger, and the assistance of vessels in distress, according to the nature of the coasts on which the respective depôts may be established. The purchase, safe custody, and control over the stores of the Institution, their being deposited in places best situated for instant issue on every emergency, and always in a state fit for immediate service, are objects which demand the utmost circumspection and care. This department is perhaps the most important of the whole--it is the operative; and on its judicious arrangements, the means of prompt and effectual efforts, the success of the most hazardous undertakings, the safety of those employed, and the rescue of those in peril, will unquestionably depend. For these purposes, as well as every other connected with the Institution, the respective Committees proposed to be formed, in every port, and on every coast, will be of the most essential use. The zeal, and other requisite qualities, which the members of such Committees may naturally be supposed to possess, point them out as the most eligible persons to have the immediate direction of the measures to be adopted. From them also it is to be expected that the most experienced in nautical affairs may be selected to command. To that department under which boats are to go out, and men are to risk their lives, for the rescue of those who may be in danger, the utmost attention is due: that, when they are so employed, it shall be under the direction of the most skilful advice which the occasion can afford; that their boats and equipments shall be such as best to insure their safety; and that the crews shall be selected from the bravest and most experienced persons who can be found. To insure order and promptitude on these occasions, where the least delay or indecision may cause the loss of all opportunity of acting with effect, a previous and, as far as practicable, a permanent arrangement should be formed. Volunteers should be invited to enrol themselves from amongst the resident pilots, seamen, fishermen, boatmen, and others, in sufficient numbers to insure the greatest probability of having every aid at hand, which, in the moment of danger, may be requisite. Each man should have his department previously assigned, and the whole should act under their respective leaders. To these regulations might be added a system of signals, equally available by night or by day, through which persons on board of vessels in distress could communicate the nature of the assistance of which they stood in need; and those on shore warn them of any danger, inform them of the succour they were going to afford, or give them any instructions requisite to their safety. In addition to these means, a great source of assistance to vessels in distress might be secured to be at all times within reach, by permanent and judicious arrangements with pilot companies, steam vessels, anchor vessels, harbour boats, trawl and other fishing boats, which, under proper indemnities, and for reasonable remuneration, would doubtless at all times contribute their aid, and act under the regulations of the Institution; it might also be advantageous, on many parts of the coast, to give premiums to those owners of boats who should have them fitted up with air tight cases, casks or cork, so as to answer the purpose of life boats, and who should constantly keep them in that state, ready for immediate service. At the same time care should be taken not to trammel by unnecessary regulations the spontaneous efforts of those, who, actuated by a generous ardour, on the emergency of the moment, seize on the first means which present themselves, and often accomplish their object in a manner which, to a cooler calculation, would appear impracticable. To expect a large body of men to enrol themselves, and be in constant readiness to risk their own lives for the preservation of those whom they have never known or seen, perhaps of another nation, merely because they are fellow-creatures in extreme peril, is to pay the highest possible compliment to my countrymen; and that on every coast there are such men, has been fully evinced, even under the present want of system, when the best means for their purpose are not supplied; when they are without any certainty of reward; and act under the peculiarly appalling consideration, that if they perish, they may leave wives, children, and every one destitute who depend on them for support. If, under such discouragement, we every year have so many instances of self-devotion, what might not be expected from the same men, when they knew that in the performance of their arduous duties, every possible means to execute them, with safety to themselves, and success to the objects of their efforts, would be supplied; that if they succeeded, they would be honoured and recompensed, according to their merits and situation in life; and if it were their lot to perish in so noble a cause, they had at least the consolation to know, beyond a doubt, that their families would not be left to deplore their loss in unassisted poverty? To these objects the Institution ought unquestionably to extend, or it would be unworthy of the great country to which it belonged, and of the high patronage with which I hope it may be honoured. Nor will I suppose that those whom I have specified are the only persons who will take an active part on such occasions. There is another class, who, from what I have individually seen, will, I am certain, become able and zealous leaders,--not only the employed, but the half-pay officers of the navy, now so widely spread over the coasts of the United Kingdom. Living in retirement in time of peace, they would not allow their energies to sleep when their brother seamen were in danger, but come forward with the conscious feeling, that those distinguished characters who preside over the British navy, would regard such meritorious services as being in the direct path of honour; and that to rescue a human being from the perils of shipwreck would not be less acceptable to their country than to subdue her enemies in battle. The Romans rewarded with the civic crown those who had saved the life of a fellow citizen. Our late venerable sovereign conferred the baronetage on the gallant Viscount Exmouth, then Captain Pellew, for his noble and successful efforts, at the extreme hazard of his own life, to save the crew of an East Indiaman, wrecked at Plymouth, when the situation of every one on board appeared beyond the reach of human aid. The whole class of the preventive service, with many departments of the revenue, could not be more honourably employed, and they must naturally feel that their brave exertions, on such occasions, would be fully estimated. The assistance of medical men, who would enrol themselves to be ready to attend, might frequently be of the utmost importance to succour and restore those who might have sustained severe injury, or whose lives might be nearly extinct; and it is confidently to be hoped, that the happiest consequences would frequently result, from having always ready for use, the apparatus of the Royal Humane Society for restoring suspended animation--also by the circulation of their instructions for the treatment of persons in that situation. There is not perhaps any subject connected with this proposed Institution, more worthy of its utmost attention and care, than the protection of persons and property from the cruel rapacity of those abandoned marauders, who, on some parts of our coasts, have but too long followed a practice disgraceful to a civilized state, and dangerous in its example as fatal to its victims, of plundering from wrecks, and there is much reason to fear, often suffering to perish, from want of assistance, many who might otherwise have been rescued from peril, and restored to their friends and their country; but by means of the numerous establishments of this Institution, the effects of a better example, the stimulus of rewards given for the preservation of life, the vigilant care and the vigorous measures which in such cases would unquestionably be pursued, it is confidently to be hoped that such atrocities would be heard of no more on our shores. In time of war, it might be advisable that a limited number of known, steady, and brave seamen, who had already distinguished themselves on these occasions, should be protected from the impress, by belonging to this service. The number need not be large, as the retired veterans of the navy, and the fishermen on the coast, would constitute the majority to be employed. The nature and extent of the recompenses for time and trouble, and the reward of those who hazard their own lives in the rescue of others, would form another important branch of the Institution for the labours of this Committee. The qualifications for these rewards naturally form themselves into classes. First, in case of successful efforts, where persons, at the risk of their own lives, save from imminent peril those of their fellow-creatures,--it should be established, beyond all doubt, that they should receive such reward for each life saved, as the Institution, on mature consideration, may determine. This might be fixed at not less than a certain sum, with power to extend it to a greater amount, to be decided by the Committee, according to the nature of the case; but, at all events, to the smallest of these rewards the parties to have an absolute claim, on furnishing unquestionable evidence of having saved a life. In many cases of persons rescued from the wreck, saved amongst rocks, or when found washed by the breakers on shore, particularly on remote coasts, but too often exposed to scenes of lawless depredation, the parties should equally be entitled to reward. Where lives are saved, without those employed hazarding their own, they should at least receive the smaller of the premiums conferred. Rewards should also be given where every possible effort has been made, though unhappily without success. When vessels are actually in distress, proportionate premiums should be given to the first, second, and other boats which get alongside, and for other assistance. Remunerations should be given, and every inducement held out, for the prevention of plunder, and for the preservation of lives and vessels, in every situation of danger to which they may become exposed. When a life is saved by a person who had been equally fortunate on a former occasion, his reward should be larger, and increase progressively for other successful efforts. In case of crime, the second offence is punished more severely than the first, and the third than the second. In meritorious acts, it were only sound policy that the rewards should bear a similar proportion. Where an individual perishes in his attempts to rescue lives from shipwreck, or when assisting vessels in distress, his wife, children, or aged parents, if dependent on him for support, should have every relief which it may become practicable to give, and according to the particular circumstances of the case. The Institution should also recompense for severe injuries, ascertained to have been unquestionably sustained in the actual performance of such services. Ample and general powers should be given to confer rewards for such other acts as the Committee may consider justly entitled to them. It might, perhaps, also be worthy the consideration of the Institution at large, whether any badge or medal conferred on a man who had saved a life from shipwreck at the hazard of his own, might not have a very powerful effect. To many minds, even in the humblest walks of life, such a recompense would be more acceptable than a pecuniary reward, whilst a laudable ambition might be thus excited in others to imitate so meritorious an example--thus holding out every species of inducement, to the brave and the generous--to the humble but humane, to render their utmost aid to the shipwrecked of every land, in the moment of their extreme distress. To receive applications for rewards, to examine into the nature and extent of services performed, and to make reports, and forward certificates and recommendations to the general Committee, would become one of the most important duties of the local departments, on the judicious and faithful performance of which the honour and credit of the Institution would materially depend. These appear to me to be the principal objects to which the attention of the Committees should be directed, in the original formation of the establishment, and subject to the decision of the general meetings of the Institution, to whom their reports should be submitted. It is to be presumed that various parts of the interior of the United Kingdom will furnish considerable funds to the Institution, without calling upon it for any supplies; that many of the great sea-ports may perhaps raise means equal to the amount of their expenditure, in their immediate district; whilst there is a vast extent of the most rugged coast lying far distant from any prompt assistance, on which, above all others, vessels are exposed to the greatest danger. For such places, establishments could only be formed at a considerable expense; it being obvious, that from the solitude and remoteness of the surrounding country, only small pecuniary aid could be obtained; yet in these situations the seamen and fishermen ought to be stimulated by every possible incitement to take an active and decided part in the cause of humanity; since on these very coasts the vessels belonging to the most distant ports might be lost, and the relatives of those who resided in the very interior of the kingdom might perish. The cause, therefore, becomes common to all, and it will be of the highest importance to its success, that arrangements should be formed between the central Committee and the district associations, that, united in funds and in measures, they may as much as possible act in concert, in carrying the objects contemplated into the fullest effect through the whole extent of the British dominions. How far it may be desirable to apply for an act of parliament, or to establish the Institution into a chartered association, will remain for the general Committee to decide, when the whole has assumed a distinct form. It is also probable that great advantages might result from the investigations of a Committee of the House of Commons into the insufficiency of the enactments and regulations now in force for the preservation of life, and the prevention of plunder, from vessels which may be wrecked within the jurisdiction of our laws. I also venture, with deference, to recommend, that other maritime nations should be invited to form similar establishments, so far as accords with their respective laws and usages, and to concur in mutual arrangements with Great Britain for the reciprocal aid of the subjects and vessels of each other. Nor is the universal adoption of this system more imperatively demanded, by those feelings which should incite us to afford the most prompt assistance to the people of every country who may be in danger of shipwreck on our shores, than it is consistent with a wise and enlightened policy, which should extend our views from our own immediate coasts, to the most remote quarters of the globe, and to every neighbouring state; more particularly from the entrance of the English Channel to the frozen regions of the North. And when we recollect the vast commercial fleets which the enterprise of our merchants adventures into every sea, and during every season; when more than a thousand sail of British vessels pass the sound of the Baltic each year; ought we not to bear in mind to what hazards the subjects and vessels of Great Britain are constantly exposed, on the whole of so extended a coast, and in every stormy and dangerous sea? and shall we not be wanting to them and to humanity, if we do not endeavour to obtain for our own shipwrecked countrymen, in every foreign land, the same effectual aid in the hour of danger, which, I doubt not, it will become one of the proudest objects of this Institution to extend to the vessels of every nation which may be in distress on the British shores?--Even during the most arduous prosecution of war, the cause of humanity, and the progress of civilization, would be eminently promoted by these noble and generous efforts, for the rescue of those, whom the fury of the elements had divested of all hostile character, and thrown helpless and powerless on a foreign coast. Thus would nations be drawn by mutual benefits into more strict bonds of amity during peace, and thus might the rigours of war be ameliorated, by having one common object of benevolence remaining; in the exercise of which the jealousies and angry passions incident to a state of hostility could not have any part with a generous and a high-minded people; whilst the experience and penetration of liberal and enlightened governments could, without difficulty, form such arrangements as would prevent that which was intended as a benefit to mankind, from being made subservient to any political abuse. My utmost wishes would be accomplished by seeing these international regulations established, in connexion with one great Institution, to extend to the most remote province of the empire, on the exalted principle, that wherever the British flag should fly, her seamen should be protected; and that those who risked their own lives to save their fellow-creatures from the perils of shipwreck should be honoured and rewarded; whilst every stranger, whom the disasters of the sea may cast on her shores, should never look for refuge in vain. DOUGLAS, ISLE OF MAN, 28th Feb. 1823. APPENDIX. A year had scarcely elapsed after the first edition of the preceding Pamphlet was committed to the press, when the great object it recommended was accomplished, with an unanimity and a promptitude which the irresistible power of such a cause could alone effect, by the establishment of the Royal National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck;--district associations on a very extended scale have also been formed in the county of Norfolk, and on various other important parts of the coast, avowedly founded on the plan which this work had projected. It has therefore become expedient, in the future circulation of this Pamphlet, to add a few pages, containing authentic statements of those proceedings by which the Institution was organized--how cordially this measure has been received and adopted, and how much in conformity with that outline which I had ventured to offer to the consideration of my country, these documents will best evince. It will at the same time be seen, that the resolutions of the General Meeting do not extend to the remuneration of the Salvors of property in cases of shipwreck, where not immediately connected with the preservation of life, it having been the opinion of the Provisional Committee that the existing laws had already made such regulations as to render that measure unnecessary. In reference to those passages which treat of the rewards to be conferred for services which may be performed, and more particularly as to the relief to be afforded to the destitute families of those who unhappily may perish in their attempts to preserve the lives of others, it will be obvious that the extent of such recompenses and relief must of necessity be guided by those means, which the liberality of the nation may supply--at the same time, I have the utmost satisfaction in stating the humane declaration of the Institution, that their operations will be limited only by the amount of those funds which may be placed at their disposal, or the number of cases calling for assistance; and I most sincerely concur in the confident hope which the Central Committee express, that the contributions may be so general as not only to give present effect, but also permanence, to this great national undertaking. Honoured, as this Institution has been, by the high patronage of the King, and of his illustrious family--constituted a Royal Institution by his Majesty's gracious command--sanctioned by many of the most distinguished characters in the church and state, and sustained by the bounty of a generous nation--it is not for me to have the presumption to offer my acknowledgements, for that support which the cause of our shipwrecked fellow-creatures has obtained from the sovereign and the people of this great country. But there are some names, the omission of which would be an act of injustice--the gentlemen of the Provisional Committee, who prepared the way for that success which attended the public meeting, over which his grace the Archbishop of Canterbury presided, in a manner as advantageous to the measures which he so essentially contributed to promote, as honourable to his own benevolent feelings; and the equally zealous members of the Central Committee, who now so ably conduct the affairs of the Institution, are eminently entitled to the warmest thanks of every friend of this cause, for their early and important exertions in its establishment, of whom I may perhaps be permitted to name Thomas Wilson, Esq. one of the representatives in parliament for the City of London, and George Hibbert, Esq. as having been amongst the foremost in affording their valuable co-operation in the formation of this Institution. It only remains for me to express the heartfelt satisfaction which I experience, in witnessing the attainment of this object of my most earnest solicitude, and in the firm conviction with which I am impressed, that this Institution is now established on principles which will extend its beneficial effects to the most distant shores, and to generations yet unborn. WILLIAM HILLARY. May 29, 1824. No. I. _Circular, convening a preliminary and select Meeting, to consider of the Suggestions in the Pamphlet by Sir William Hillary, Bart. of an Institution for the Rescue of Lives from Shipwreck._ No. 33, New Broad Street, February 4, 1824. SIR, You are respectfully requested to attend at the City of London Tavern, on Thursday, the 12th instant, at twelve for one o'clock precisely, to confer on certain measures which will then be submitted, and to determine on the expedience of calling a General Meeting in London, for the formation of a "National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck." I have the honour to be, Sir, Your most obedient servant, S. COCK. No. II. _Proceedings of a preliminary Meeting of Noblemen and Gentlemen, held at the City of London Tavern, on Thursday, the 12th of February, 1824._ Thomas Wilson, Esq. M.P. was called to the Chair. Resolved unanimously, That this Meeting, taking into consideration the frequent loss of human life by shipwreck, and believing that by the preconcerted exertions of practical men, and the adoption of practical means, such calamities might often be averted, are of opinion that a National Institution should be formed (to be supported by voluntary donations and subscriptions) for the preservation of life in cases of shipwreck on the coasts of the united kingdom; for affording such immediate assistance to the persons rescued, as their necessities may require; for conferring rewards on those who preserve their fellow-creatures from destruction; and for granting relief to the destitute families of any who may unfortunately perish in their attempts to save the lives of others. Resolved unanimously, That, with a view to the formation of such an Institution, a general Meeting of the Nobility, Gentry, Merchants, Traders, and others, be convened for Wednesday, the 25th instant, at twelve for one o'clock precisely, or such other day as may be found more convenient. Resolved unanimously, That the following be a provisional Committee in the interim, with power to add to their number. THOMAS WILSON, Esq. M.P. Chairman. Henry Baring, Esq. M.P. Vice-Admiral Lord Amelius Beauclerk, K.C.B. John Blackburn, Esq. Henry Blanchard, Esq. John William Buckle, Esq. James Cazenove, jun. Esq. Simon Cock, Esq. Captain J. W. Deans Dundas, R.N. David C. Guthrie, Esq. Samuel Gurney, Esq. George Hibbert, Esq. Sir William Hillary, Bart. Samuel Hoare, Esq. George Lyall, Esq. Rev. H. H. Norris. John Clark Powell, Esq. Joseph Pulley, Esq. John Vincent Purrier, Esq. Christopher Richardson, jun. Esq. Benjamin Shaw, Esq. Right Honourable Lord Suffield. Christopher Tenant, Esq. Mr. Alderman Thompson, M.P. William Vaughan, Esq. Joshua Walker, Esq. M.P. Joshua Watson, Esq. Thomas Wilkinson, Esq. George Frederick Young, Esq. Resolved unanimously, That the thanks of this Meeting be given to Sir William Hillary, Bart. for his exertions in bringing this interesting subject before the Meeting, and for his assistance in its deliberations. Mr. Wilson having left the chair, It was resolved unanimously, That the best thanks of this Meeting be given to Thomas Wilson, Esq. for his able conduct in the chair, and for his zeal in the support of the objects in contemplation. No. III. ROYAL NATIONAL INSTITUTION FOR THE PRESERVATION OF LIFE FROM SHIPWRECK. _LONDON, MARCH 4, 1824._ PATRON--THE KING. Vice-Patrons. His Royal Highness the Duke of York. His Royal Highness the Duke of Clarence. His Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex. His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge. His Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester. His Royal Highness Prince Leopold of Saxe Cobourg. PRESIDENT--The Earl of Liverpool, K.G. Vice-Presidents. His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury. His Grace the Archbishop of York. His Grace the Duke of St. Alban's. The Most Noble the Marquis of Lansdowne. The Most Noble the Marquis of Hertford, K.G. Vice-Admiral of Cornwall, and of the Coast of Suffolk. The Most Noble the Marquis of Camden, K.G. The Right Hon. the Earl Spencer, K.G. The Right Hon. the Earl of Craven. The Right Hon. the Earl of Lonsdale, K.G. The Right Hon. the Earl of Harrowby. The Right Hon. Earl Brownlow. The Right Hon. Lord Amelius Beauclerk, K.C.B. The Right Hon. Lord John Russell, M.P. The Right Hon. Viscount Torrington. The Right Hon. Viscount Melville, K.T. The Right Hon. Viscount Exmouth, G.C.B. The Lord Bishop of London. The Lord Bishop of Durham. The Lord Bishop of Chester, now Bath and Wells. The Lord Bishop of Bristol. The Right Hon. Lord Suffield. The Right Hon. Lord Braybrooke. The Right Hon. Lord Amherst, Governor-General of India. The Right Hon. Lord Stowell. The Right Hon. Robert Peel. The Right Hon. George Canning. The Right Hon. Frederick John Robinson. The Right Hon. William Huskisson. Sir William Hillary, Bart. Sir Claude Scott, Bart. Sir Charles Forbes, Bart. M.P. William Haldimand, Esq. M.P. George Hibbert, Esq. William Manning, Esq. M.P. The Chairman of the Hon. East India Company. The Deputy Master of Trinity House. The Chairman for Lloyd's. N. M. Rothschild, Esq. John Smith, Esq. M.P. Joshua Walker, Esq. M.P. Joshua Watson, Esq. Thomas Wilkinson, Esq. Thomas Wilson, Esq. M.P. Central Committee. Thomas Wilson, Esq. M.P. Chairman. Captain Astley, R.N. Henry Blanchard, Esq. Richardson Borradaile, Esq. Captain William Bowles, R.N. John William Buckle, Esq. John Capel, Esq. David Carruthers, Esq. James Cazenove, jun. Esq. Jonathan Chapman, Esq. G. R. Clarke, Esq. Simon Cock, Esq. William Cotton, Esq. Captain Ed. Henry a'Court, R.N. M.P. Captain C. C. Dansey, R.A. John Deacon, Esq. Captain Joseph Dowson. Captain Deans Dundas, R.N. Captain John Foulerton. Charles Francis, Esq. James Halford, Esq. Edward Hurry, Esq. Captain John Locke, H.C.S. Edward Hawke Locker, Esq. George Lyall, Esq. W. A. Madocks, Esq. M.P. John Marshall, Esq. John Petty Muspratt, Esq. John Clark Powell, Esq. John D. Powles, Esq. Joseph Pulley, Esq. John Vincent Purrier, Esq. Christoper Richardson, jun. Esq. Captain R. Saumarez, R.N. K.L. Thomas Snodgrass, Esq. Christopher Tennant, Esq. Mr. Alderman Thompson, M.P. Mr. Alderman Venables. John Wild, Esq. H. S. H. Wollaston, Esq. George Frederick Young, Esq. Treasurer. William Sikes, Esq. 5, Mansion House Street. Trustees. Thomas Wilson, Esq. M.P. James Cazenove, jun. Esq. John Clark Powell, Esq. Auditors. Timothy A. Curtis, Esq. Henry Sikes, Esq. Mr. Alderman Thompson, M.P. Secretary. Thomas Edwards, Esq. Office of the Institution, No. 12, Austin Friars, London. At a Public Meeting of Noblemen, Gentlemen, Merchants, and others, held at the City of London Tavern, this day, His Grace the ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY in the Chair, The following resolutions were passed unanimously:-- I. Upon the motion of his Grace; seconded by Captain Bowles, R.N.--That an Institution be now formed for the Preservation of Life in cases of Shipwreck on the Coasts of the United Kingdom, to be supported by donations and annual subscriptions; and to be called the "National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck." II. Moved by W. Wilberforce, Esq. M.P.; seconded by Captain Deans Dundas, R.N.--That medallions or pecuniary rewards be given to those who rescue lives in cases of shipwreck. III. Moved by the Lord Bishop of London; seconded by Mr. Alderman Bridges, M.P.--That such immediate assistance be afforded to persons rescued as their necessities may require. IV. Moved by the Lord Bishop of Chester; seconded by William Manning, Esq. M.P.--That relief be supplied to the widows and families of persons who may unfortunately perish in their attempts to save the lives of others. V. Moved by Captain John Foulerton;--seconded by Mr. Alderman Venables,--That the subjects of all nations be equally objects of the Institution, as well in war as in peace; that the same rewards be given for their rescue as for British subjects; and that foreigners saved from shipwreck, and being in a state of destitution, be placed under the care of the consuls or other accredited agents of their own nations, or be forwarded to their respective countries. VI. Moved by Joshua Walker, Esq. M.P.; seconded by John William Buckle, Esq.--That medallions be conferred on the authors of such inventions for the preservation of lives, in cases of shipwreck, as shall be most effectual for that purpose. VII. Moved by Matthias Attwood, Esq. M.P.; seconded by Thomas Wilkinson, Esq.--That the Institution be established in London, and be conducted by a patron, vice-patrons, a president, vice-presidents, governors, forty committeemen, a treasurer, three trustees, three auditors, a secretary, and assistants. VIII. Moved by John Blades, Esq.; seconded by John Marshall, Esq.--That the committee be denominated the "London Central Committee," and do continue to act for the first two years; and that after the expiration of that term, an election of six new members take place at each annual meeting, in the room of the six who shall be found to have attended the fewest number of times in the preceding year: and that the vice-patrons, president, vice-presidents, and treasurer, be also members of the committee. IX. Moved by Joseph Pulley, Esq.; seconded by John Atkins, jun. Esq.--That donations and annual subscriptions be now entered into, and solicited, for carrying the objects of this Institution into effect. X. Moved by Captain Manby; seconded by Thomas Shirley Gooch, Esq. M.P.--That maritime counties or districts, the principal sea ports, and the inland counties of the united kingdom, and the British isles, be earnestly invited to form district associations, as branches of this Institution, for the purpose of promoting donations and subscriptions, and for assisting to carry its general objects into effect. XI. Moved by Captain Richard Saumarez, R.N.; seconded by Christopher Richardson, jun. Esq.--That it be recommended to such district associations, that their affairs be managed in conformity with the principles of the London central committee, and that their committees do consist of a chairman, and such other members as they may deem expedient. XII. Moved by Mr. Alderman Bridges, M.P.; seconded by David Carruthers, Esq.--That the committee be empowered to form rules, regulations, and by-laws, for the government of the Institution, which are to be submitted to the next general meeting. XIII. Moved by Quarles Harris, Esq.; seconded by James Cazenove, Esq.--That a copy of these resolutions be transmitted to the ambassadors, consuls, or other representatives of foreign states, resident in this country. XIV. Moved by Sir Charles Flower, Bart.; seconded by William Walcot, Esq.--That his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury be requested to convey to the King's most gracious Majesty, the deep and grateful sense which this Meeting entertains of the distinguished honour which his Majesty has conferred upon the Institution in becoming its patron. XV. Moved by Captain Deans Dundas, R.N.; seconded by John Wilson, Esq.--That the grateful thanks of this Meeting be respectfully offered to their Royal Highnesses the Dukes of York, Clarence, Sussex, and Gloucester, and Prince Leopold of Saxe Cobourg, for their readiness to become the vice-patrons of the Institution. XVI. Moved by John William Buckle, Esq.; seconded by John Vincent Purrier, Esq.--That the thanks of this Meeting be given to the Earl of Liverpool, for his acceptance of the presidency of the Institution. XVII. Moved by William Cotton, Esq.; seconded by Jonathan Chapman, Esq.--That the thanks of this Meeting be also given to his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the other noble and distinguished personages who have accepted the office of vice-presidents of the Institution. XVIII. Moved by George Lyall, Esq.; seconded by Thos. Wilson, Esq. M.P.--That the best thanks of this Meeting are due to Sir William Hillary, Bart. for his patriotic efforts in bringing this subject before the public, and for his zealous endeavours to promote the establishment of the Institution. XIX. Moved by Thomas Wilkinson, Esq.; seconded by Thomas Maltby, Esq.--That copies of the resolutions entered into this day be transmitted to the Admiralty, to the Trinity House, and to Lloyd's; and that copies of the resolutions be published in several of the provincial papers. XX. Moved by John William Buckle, Esq.; seconded by Sir Charles Flower, Bart.--That the warmest thanks of this Meeting be presented to Thomas Wilson, Esq. M.P. for his humane, zealous, and persevering exertions in the establishment of this Institution. His Grace the Archbishop having left the chair, Thomas Wilson, Esq. was unanimously called upon to take it. Moved by Thomas Wilson, Esq. M.P. seconded by Sir Chas. Flower, Bart. and resolved unanimously,--That the best thanks of this Meeting be given to his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, for the important service which he has rendered the Institution, and particularly for his condescension in taking the chair this day. (Signed) THOMAS WILSON, Chairman. _At a General Court of the Subscribers and Friends to the Royal National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck, held at the City of London Tavern, on the 10th of March, 1825._ The Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells in the Chair. It was moved by George Hibbert, Esq. Seconded by Thomas Wilson, Esq. M.P. And resolved unanimously, That the Gold Medallion of the Institution be presented to Sir William Hillary, Bart., by whom this NATIONAL INSTITUTION was first suggested, and ably recommended by his publications on the subject. (Signed) THOMAS WILSON, Chairman of the Committee. Having thus shown, by official documents, the great outline of the Royal National Institution, now happily established for the preservation of Life from Shipwreck, a brief recapitulation of the important nature of its objects and its plans, will perhaps be the best conclusion I can offer to those pages, which have already been received by the public in a manner so gratifying to my own feelings. From the most early periods, and in every state of society, shipwreck has been one of those never ceasing evils which has excited the commiseration of mankind; but, until recently, appears scarcely ever to have called forth their humane efforts to mitigate its deplorable consequences. For centuries our mariners have been left, unassisted, to endure every peril of the sea, as if shipwreck were a calamity in every instance utterly beyond all reach of mortal succour, and in every age, thousands of our fellow-creatures have thus miserably perished, who unquestionably might have been rescued. Of late years, various efforts have been made on parts of our coasts for the preservation of life from impending peril, and some excellent inventions have been introduced for that purpose; these had however hitherto been only a means, not a system--local, not national. But when we reflect on the great waste of human life attendant on these dreadful catastrophes, and the vital importance to their country of those who have thus been abandoned to their wretched fate, it cannot fail to excite our astonishment that amongst all the noble Institutions of this great empire, which have been patronized by the crown, promoted by the government, or sustained by the bounty of the people, there never before has been established, in this the most powerful maritime state of ancient or of modern days, one general association, or national Institution for the preservation of Life from Shipwreck. The humane attention of the British nation has at length been roused to this important object,--this void in our benevolent establishments has been supplied, by the formation of the Royal National Institution, under the immediate patronage of the King. The objects contemplated by this Institution are, in their nature, deeply interesting to the cause of humanity--important to the naval and the commercial interests of the nation, and calculated to extend their beneficial influence to every age and every country. It will be seen by the preceding documents that it takes within the scope of its efforts, the preservation from shipwreck--not only of the seamen and the subjects of these kingdoms, but those of every nation who may become exposed to that misfortune on the British shores, equally in peace and in war. It invites to its aid the humane and the brave, urging them to the rescue of their fellow-creatures, by supplying them with every means, that their attempts may be made with all attainable safety to themselves--conferring honorary and pecuniary rewards for their generous efforts--rendering every practicable relief to the destitute widows and families of those who unfortunately may perish in their attempts to save the lives of others, and for those who happily may be thus preserved. It purposes to provide them with that food, clothing, medical aid, and shelter, which their forlorn situation may require--to enable those who may belong to this country to proceed to their homes, or to the nearest port where they may obtain future employment. And the subjects of other powers to return to their native land, or to place them in safety under the care of the accredited authorities of their own nation. This Institution also confers honorary rewards, on the authors of such inventions as shall be the most effectual, for the preservation of Lives from Shipwreck. Such are the leading features of that system, which is presumed to be the best calculated for calling forth the energies of a great maritime people--to stimulate those feelings which have but too long remained dormant, or hitherto have only been partially exerted, and to arouse our countrymen to the rescue of the best bulwarks of British power from those direful calamities to which they are perpetually exposed--which are not the casual misfortunes of a day, once overcome and not liable to recur, but extending their destructive ravages to every sea and to every coast--each year sweeping thousands to a watery grave, and certain to continue their devastating effects to thousands yet unborn; augmented, in the number of their victims, in proportion as our commerce shall extend itself over the globe. To all who revere the naval glory of Britain--to all who duly estimate the commercial greatness of their country, or who profit by its success--to all who feel the humanity and the policy of preserving the brave defenders of the state, and the hardy conductors of that commerce, from those dangers, to which, in the exercise of their arduous duties, they are continually exposed--this Institution cannot appeal in vain. Every class must feel how deeply it is connected with the national honour, and the maritime interest of their country, that all the means which the bounty of a wealthy and a liberal people can supply, and all the efforts which experience and humanity can prompt, should be devoted to so sacred a cause. Each in his respective sphere is earnestly solicited to bear a part--the great and the affluent, and those residing in the interior of the kingdom, by their influence and their contributions--the active and the zealous, by their energetic efforts--those on the coasts, by the more hazardous exertions of enterprise and bravery--and all, according to their power and their stations, to promote the success, and to recompense the endeavours of those who voluntarily encounter the greatest perils, for the rescue of the unhappy mariner, of every nation, who may be in danger of shipwreck on our coasts. The accomplishment of so many and such important objects, on a scale commensurate with the frequency and the extent of the misfortunes they are intended to alleviate, requires the combined efforts of numerous public bodies and zealous individuals--preconcerted arrangements on every dangerous coast, and considerable pecuniary resources. Under these convictions, I presume most earnestly to recommend, that public meetings should be held in those maritime counties and great sea ports of the united kingdom which have not yet come forward in this cause, for the formation of district or local associations on all our coasts, regulated in their internal concerns by their own committees, as departments of, and in direct communication with, the parent Institution, having an union of funds, of object and of effort, for the most extended adoption of every means which the magnitude of the evil to be averted imperatively demands at our hands. Nor are those whose residence is the most remote from the scenes of these disasters, less interested in the universal establishment of this system.--Where is to be found that family, of any station, even in the very interior of the kingdom, which has not some near and dear connexions, some valued relatives or friends, who, from their professions or their pursuits, may become exposed to the hazard of shipwreck, and who may be thus preserved, through the very means to which their bounty may contribute? Themselves distant from the scene of danger, they may, without effort or toil, become instrumental in the rescue of those they most value in life--equally then are they called on to take measures for the collection of funds in the midland counties as on the coasts, in order to give increased resources to the Institution, for the most effectual prosecution of its plans. As this great national measure shall continue to establish itself in the public mind, the adoption of more extended and systematic plans will naturally impress themselves on our consideration. From an almost universal want of foresight in our seamen, and a carelessness in providing against future dangers, naturally arising from the reckless bravery of their character, they would turn with contempt from any proposition that each should always take with him to sea, some one of those simple but practicable means by which his rescue from shipwreck might be greatly facilitated. In like manner the owners or masters of vessels, some from an ill timed parsimony, but far more, from thoughtlessness or prejudice, neglect to provide their vessels with any of the apparatus which would, in many instances, insure the safety of the passengers and crews. What is thus the duty of every one, will, amongst such a numerous class of individuals, be either entirely neglected or imperfectly executed, and a continued sacrifice of life be the certain consequence. Our seamen constitute one of the most valuable properties of the state. The preservation of the life of the subject is one of the most imperative duties of an enlightened government--it has therefore become indispensably requisite, in this great maritime nation, that these evils, arising from causes which no unity of opinion or of action, in the parties most interested, can ever be expected to remove, should as far as possible be obviated by legislative enactment--and that vessels should not, after a given period, be permitted to clear out at the ports from which they are to sail, until, according to their tonnage, the number of their passengers and crews, and the nature of the voyage on which they are bound, it shall have been ascertained that they have been provided by the owners, and according to established regulations, with those means of safety which shall be required. These should consist of the most simple and effectual apparatus for establishing a communication in case of wreck, between the vessel and the shore--materials for the construction of rafts--lifebuoys--cork jackets, or other buoyant means of safety to individuals; boats in a reasonable proportion to the numbers on board, to some of which the properties of life boats might immediately and easily be given--with other measures which the great importance of the object demands, on a scale consistent with that economy which should ever attend compulsatory regulations. The extent and nature of these precautionary measures require mature consideration, and would best be ascertained by a committee of experienced and scientific officers and individuals selected from the navy, the Trinity House, Lloyd's, the Ship-owners' Society, and other departments connected with maritime affairs, on whose reports, and after minute and deliberate investigation, perhaps an enactment could alone be founded to produce the much desired effect.--It is only by reducing into a system those measures which are now left to chance, or to the forethought or the caprice of thousands, that such effectual precautions can be taken, as will insure that at all times the danger may be promptly met by adequate means of rescue. It has been allowed by those of much ability and experience, that it would be very important, that seamen in the merchants service should be examined, by some competent authority, to be established for the purpose, as to their possessing that knowledge of their profession, on which the safety of their vessels and the lives of their crews must continually depend, before any one, who has not already filled that office, should be allowed to take the command of a vessel, of such tonnage and description, and with such exceptions as, on more full investigation of the subject, might be deemed requisite. We have only stedfastly and undeviatingly to persevere in our course,--the greatness of our objects--the goodness of our cause--the conviction to the public mind, which time and experience cannot fail to bring, of the practicability of our means; and above all, the benevolent feelings of a gallant nation, excited by the continued rescue of their fellow creatures, will combine irresistibly to advocate this system, and ultimately to insure its complete success. Much has recently been accomplished--several noble establishments have already been formed on our coasts--rewards for many lives preserved have already been bestowed--infinitely more remains yet to be done--nor should we for one moment desist from our exertions, nor relax from their ardent pursuit, until the whole of the British coasts shall be surrounded by well organized branches of the Institution--until every mariner, who may be in danger of shipwreck on our shores, may feel assured that his rescue will be attempted by all the efforts which a generous enterprise can make, supported by every means which human foresight can arrange--and until, prompted by our example, and witnessing that succour which their own shipwrecked seamen will have received on the shores of these kingdoms, the governments and the people of every maritime nation may become impressed with the vital importance of this cause; and joining their efforts to ours, by the formation of similar establishments in their respective countries, thus essentially contribute to the adoption of an inter-national and universal system for the mitigation of the calamity of shipwreck, on every coast of the civilised world. WILLIAM HILLARY. 19th July, 1825. LONDON: PRINTED BY THOMAS DAVISON, WHITEFRIARS. 
21717	----	BATTLES WITH THE SEA, BY R.M. BALLANTYNE. CHAPTER ONE. HEROES OF THE LIFEBOAT AND ROCKET. SKIRMISHES WITH THE SUBJECT GENERALLY. It ought to be known to all English boys that there is a terrible and costly war in which the British nation is at all times engaged. No intervals of peace mark the course of this war. Cessations of hostilities there are for brief periods, but no treaties of peace. "War to the knife" is its character. Quarter is neither given nor sought. Our foe is unfeeling, unrelenting. He wastes no time in diplomatic preliminaries; he scorns the courtesies of national life. No ambassadors are recalled, no declarations of war made. Like the Red Savage he steals upon us unawares, and, with a roar of wrathful fury, settles down to his deadly work. How does this war progress? It is needful to put and reiterate this question from time to time, because new generations of boys are always growing up, who, so far from being familiar with the stirring episodes of this war, and the daring deeds of valour performed, scarcely realise the fact that such a war is being carried on at all, much less that it costs hundreds of lives and millions of money every year. It may be styled a naval war, being waged chiefly in boats upon the sea. It is a war which will never cease, because our foe is invincible, and we will never give in; a war which, unlike much ordinary warfare, is never unjust or unnecessary; which cannot be avoided, which is conducted on the most barbarous principles of deathless enmity, but which, nevertheless, brings true glory and honour to those heroes who are ever ready, night and day, to take their lives in their hands and rush into the thick of the furious fray. Although this great war began--at least in a systematic manner--only little more than fifty years ago, it will not end until the hearts of brave and generous Britons cease to beat, and the wild winds cease to blow, for the undying and unconquerable enemy of whom we write is--the Storm! "Death or victory!" the old familiar warwhoop, is not the final war-cry here. Death is, indeed, always faced--sometimes met--and victory is often gained; but, final conquests being impossible, and the "piping times of peace" being out of the question, the signal for the onset has been altered, and the world's old battle-cry has been exchanged for the soul-stirring shout of "Rescue the perishing!" Though our foe cannot be slain, he can, like the genii of Eastern story, be baffled. In the days of old, the Storm had it nearly all his own way. Hearts, indeed, were not less brave, but munitions of war were wanting. In this matter, as in everything else, the world is better off now than it was then. Our weapons are more perfect, our engines more formidable. We can now dash at our enemy in the very heart of his own terrible strongholds; fight him where even the boldest of the ancient Vikings did not dare to venture, and rescue the prey from the very jaws of death amid the scenes of its wildest revelry. The heroes who recruit the battalions of our invincible army are the bronzed and stalwart men of our sea-coast towns, villages, and hamlets-- men who have had much and long experience of the foe with whom they have to deal. Their panoply is familiar to most of us. The helmet, a sou'wester; the breastplate, a lifebelt of cork; the sword, a strong short oar; their war-galley, a splendid _lifeboat_; and their shield-- the Hand of God. In this and succeeding chapters I purpose to exhibit and explain in detail our Lifeboats, and the great, the glorious work which they annually accomplish; also the operations of the life-saving Rocket, which has for many years rescued innumerable lives, where, from the nature of circumstances, Lifeboats could not have gone into action. I hold that we--especially those of us who dwell in the interior of our land--are not sufficiently alive to the deeds of daring, the thrilling incidents, the terrible tragedies and the magnificent rescues which are perpetually going on around our shores. We are not sufficiently impressed, perhaps, with the _nationality_ of the work done by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, which manages our fleet of 270 lifeboats. We do not fully appreciate, it may be, the personal interest which we ourselves have in the great war, and the duty--to say nothing of privilege--which lies upon us to lend a helping hand in the good cause. Before going into the marrow of the subject, let us put on the wings of imagination, and soar to such a height that we shall be able to take in at one eagle glance all the coasts of the United Kingdom--a sweep of about 5000 miles all round! It is a tremendous sight, for a storm is raging! Black clouds are driving across the murky sky; peals of thunder rend the heavens; lightning gleams at intervals, revealing more clearly the crested billows that here roar over the sands, or there churn and seethe among the rocks. The shrieking gale sweeps clouds of spray high over our windward cliffs, and carries flecks of foam far inland, to tell of the dread warfare that is raging on the maddened sea. Near the shore itself numerous black specks are seen everywhere, like ink-spots on the foam. These are wrecks, and the shrieks and the despairing cries of the perishing rise above even the roaring of the gale. Death is busy, gathering a rich harvest, for this is a notable night in the great war. The Storm-fiend is roused. The enemy is abroad in force, and has made one of his most violent assaults, so that from Shetland to Cornwall, ships and boats are being battered to pieces on the rocks and sands, and many lives are being swallowed up or dashed out; while, if you turn your gaze further out to sea, you will descry other ships and boats and victims hurrying onward to their doom. Here, a stately barque, with disordered topsails almost bursting from the yards as she hurries her hapless crew--all ignorant, perchance, of its proximity--towards the dread lee-shore. Elsewhere, looming through the murk, a ponderous merchantman, her mainmast and mizzen gone, and just enough of the foremast left to support the bellying foresail that bears her to destruction. Think you, reader, that this sketch is exaggerated? If so, let us descend from our lofty outlook, and take a nearer view of facts in detail. I quote the substance of the following from a newspaper article published some years ago. The violence of the storm on Wednesday and Thursday night was terrific. The damage to shipping has been fearful. On sea the tremendous gale proved disastrous beyond precedent. Falmouth Harbour was the scene of several collisions, and one barque and a tug steamer sank at their anchors. A wreck is reported at Lelant, to which the Penzance lifeboat with a stout-hearted crew had started, when our despatch left, to rescue thirteen men who could be descried hanging in the shrouds. A fine new ship is on Hayle bar, and another vessel is believed to be wrecked there also. Doubtless we have not yet heard of all the wrecks on the Cornish coast; but it is in the magnificent bay which includes Torquay, Paignton, and Brixham that the most terrible havoc has occurred. On Wednesday, about sixty sail were anchored in Torbay. Eleven have gone ashore at Broadsands, five of which are total wrecks. The names of those we could ascertain were the Fortitude, of Exeter; the Stately, of Newcastle; the Dorset, of Falmouth, and a French brigantine. At five o'clock on Thursday evening some of the crews were being drawn ashore by lines and baskets. At Churston Cove one schooner is ashore and a total wreck; there is also another, the Blue Jacket, which may yet be saved. At Brixham there are two fine ships ashore inside the breakwater. At the back of the pier ten vessels have been pounded to matchwood, and all that remains are a shattered barque, her masts still standing, two brigs, and a schooner, all inextricably mingled together. Twelve trawlers have been sunk and destroyed. Out of the sixty ships at anchor on Wednesday night there were not more than ten left on Thursday afternoon. Many of these are disabled, some dismasted. A fishing-boat belonging to Brixham was upset in the outer harbour about eight o'clock, and two married fishermen of the town and a boy were drowned. At Elbury a new brig, the Zouave, of Plymouth, has gone to pieces, and six out of her crew of ten are drowned. Eleven other vessels are on shore at Elbury, many of the men belonging to which cannot be accounted for. One noble woman, named Wheaton, wife of a master mariner, saved two lives by throwing a rope from the window of her house, which is built on the rocks overhanging the bay at Furzeham Hill. Scores of poor shipwrecked men are wandering distractedly about Brixham and Churston, the greater part of them having lost all they possessed. The total loss of life arising from these disasters is variously estimated at from seventy to a hundred. Is not this a tremendous account of the doings of one gale? And let it be observed that we have lifted only one corner of the curtain and revealed the battlefield of only one small portion of our far-reaching coasts. What is to be said of the other parts of our shores during that same wild storm? It would take volumes instead of chapters to give the thrilling incidents of disaster and heroism in full detail. To convey the truth in all its force is impossible, but a glimmering of it may be obtained by a glance at the Wreck Chart which is published by the Board of Trade every year. Every black spot on that chart represents a wreck more or less disastrous, which occurred in the twelve months. It is an appalling fact that about two thousand ships, upwards of seven hundred lives, and nearly two millions sterling, are lost _every_ year on the shores of the United Kingdom. Some years the loss is heavier, sometimes lighter, but in round numbers this is our annual loss in the great war. That it would be far greater if we had no lifeboats and no life-saving rockets it will be our duty by-and-by to show. The black spots on the Wreck Chart to which we have referred show at a single glance that the distribution of wrecks is very unequal--naturally so. Near the great seaports we find them thickly strewn; at other places, where vessels pass in great numbers on their way to these ports, the spots are also very numerous, while on unfrequented parts they are found only here and there in little groups of two, three, or four. Away on the nor'-west shores of Scotland, for instance, where the seal and the sea-mew have the ocean and rugged cliffs pretty much to themselves, the plague-spots are few and far between; but on the east coast we find a fair sprinkling of them, especially in the mouths of the Forth and Tay, whither a goodly portion of the world's shipping crowds, and to which the hardy Norseman now sends many a load of timber--both log and batten--instead of coming, as he did of old, to batten on the land. It is much the same with Ireland, its more important seaports being on the east. But there is a great and sudden increase of the spots when we come to England. They commence at the border, on the west, where vessels from and to the busy Clyde enter or quit the Irish Sea. Darkening the fringes of the land on both sides, and clustering round the Isle of Man, they multiply until the ports have no room to hold them, and, as at Liverpool, they are crowded out into the sea. From the deadly shores of Anglesea, where the Royal Charter went down in the great and memorable storm of November, 1859, the signs of wreck and disaster thicken as we go south until we reach the Bristol Channel, which appears to be choked with them, and the dangerous cliffs of Cornwall, which receive the ill-fated vessels of the fleets that are perpetually leaving or entering the two great channels. But it is on the east coast of England that the greatest damage is done. From Berwick to the Thames the black spots cluster like bees. On the coasts of Norfolk and Suffolk, off Great Yarmouth, where lie the dangerous Haisborough Sands, the spots are no longer in scattered groups, but range themselves in dense battalions; and further south, off the coast of Kent, round which the world's commerce flows unceasingly into the giant metropolis, where the famous Goodwin Sands play their deadly part in the great war, the dismal spots are seen to cluster densely, like gnats in a summer sky. Now, just where the black spots are thickest on this wreck chart, lifeboats and rocket apparatus have been stationed in greatest numbers. As in ordinary warfare, so in battles with the sea, our "Storm Warriors" [See an admirable book, with this title, written by the Reverend John Gilmore, of Ramsgate. (Macmillan and Company)] are thrown forward in force where the enemy's assaults are most frequent and dangerous. Hence we find the eastern shores of England crowded at every point with life-saving apparatus, while most of the other dangerous parts of the coast are pretty well guarded. Where and how do our coast heroes fight? I answer--sometimes on the cliffs, sometimes on the sands, sometimes on the sea, and sometimes even on the pierheads. Their operations are varied by circumstances. Let us draw nearer and look at them while in action, and observe how the enemy assails them. I shall confine myself at present to a skirmish. When the storm-fiend is abroad; when dark clouds lower; when blinding rain or sleet drives before the angry gale, and muttering thunder comes rolling over the sea, men with hard hands and weather-beaten faces, clad in oilskin coats and sou'-westers, saunter down to our quays and headlands all round the kingdom. These are the lifeboat crews and rocket brigades. They are on the lookout. The enemy is moving, and the sentinels are being posted for the night--or rather, they are posting themselves, for nearly all the fighting men in this war are volunteers! They require no drilling to prepare them for the field; no bugle or drum to sound the charge. Their drum is the rattling thunder; their trumpet the roaring storm. They began to train for this warfare when they were not so tall as their fathers' boots, and there are no awkward squads among them now. Their organisation is rough-and-ready, like themselves, and simple too. The heavens call them to action; the coxswain grasps the helm, the oars are manned, the word is given, and the rest is straightforward fighting--over everything, through everything, in the teeth of everything, until the victory is gained, and rescued men, women, and children are landed in safety on the shore. Of course they do not always succeed, but they seldom or never fail to do the very uttermost that it is in the power of strong and daring men to accomplish. Frequently they can tell of defeat and victory on the same battlefield. So it was on one fearful winter night at the mouth of the Tyne in the year 1867. The gale that night was furious. It suddenly chopped round to the South South East, and, as if the change had recruited its energies, it blew a perfect hurricane between midnight and two in the morning, accompanied by blinding showers of sleet and hail, which seemed to cut like a knife. The sea was rising mountains high. About midnight, when the storm was gathering force and the sentinels were scarcely able to keep a lookout, a preventive officer saw a vessel driving ashore to the south of the South Pier. Instantly he burnt a blue light, at which signal three guns were fired from the Spanish Battery to call out the Life Brigade. The men were on the alert. About twenty members of the brigade assembled almost immediately on the pier, where they found that the preventive officer and pier-policeman had already got out the life-saving apparatus; but the gale was so fierce that they had been forced to crawl on their hands and knees to do so. A few minutes more and the number of brigade men increased to between fifty and sixty. Soon they saw, through the hurtling storm, that several vessels were driving on shore. Before long, four ships, with their sails blown to ribbons, were grinding themselves to powder, and crashing against each other and the pier-sides in a most fearful manner. They were the Mary Mac, the Cora, and the Maghee, belonging to Whitstable, and the Lucern of Blyth. Several lifeboats were stationed at that point. They were all launched, manned, and promptly pulled into the Narrows, but the force of the hurricane and seas were such that they could not make headway against them. The powers of man are limited. When there is a will there is not always a way! For two hours did these brave men strain at the tough oars in vain; then they unwillingly put about and returned, utterly exhausted, leaving it to the men with the life-lines on shore to do the fighting. Thus, frequently, when one arm of the service is prevented from acting; the other arm comes into play. The work of the men engaged on the pier was perilous and difficult, for the lines had to be fired against a head wind. The piers were covered with ice, and the gale was so strong that the men could hardly stand, while the crews of the wrecks were so benumbed that they could make little effort to help themselves. The men of the Mary Mac, however, made a vigorous effort to get their longboat out. A boy jumped in to steady it. Before the men could follow, the boat was stove in, the rope that held it broke, and it drove away with the poor lad in it. He was quickly washed out, but held on to the gunwale until it drifted into broken water, when he was swallowed by the raging sea and the boat was dashed to pieces. Meanwhile the crew of the Cora managed to swing themselves ashore, their vessel being close to the pier. The crew of the Lucern, acting on the advice of the brigade men, succeeded in scrambling on board the Cora and were hauled ashore on the life-lines. They had not been ten minutes out of their vessel when she turned over with her decks towards the terrible sea, which literally tore her asunder, and pitched her up, stem on end, as if she had been a toy. The crew of the Maghee were in like manner hauled on to the pier, with the exception of one lad from Canterbury. It was the poor boy's first voyage. Little did he think probably, while dreaming of the adventures of a sailor's career, what a terrible fate awaited him. He was apparently paralysed with fear, and could not spring after his comrades to the pier, but took to the rigging. He had scarcely done so when the vessel heeled over, and he was swung two or three times backwards and forwards with the motion of the masts. It is impossible to imagine the feelings of the brave men on the pier, who would so gladly have risked their lives to save him--he was so near, and yet so hopelessly beyond the reach of human aid! In a very brief space of time the waves did their work--ship and boy were swallowed up together. While these events were enacting on the pier the Mary Mac had drifted over the sand about half a mile from where she had struck. One of her crew threw a leadline towards a seaman on the shore. The hero plunged into the surf and caught it. The rest of the work was easy. By means of the line the men of the Life Brigade sent off their hawser, and breeches-buoy or cradle (which apparatus I shall hereafter explain), and drew the crew in safety to the land. That same morning a Whitby brig struck on the sands. The lifeboat Pomfret, belonging to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, put out and rescued her crew. In the morning the shores were strewn with wreckage, and amongst it was found the body of the boy belonging to the Mary Mac. All these disasters were caused by the masters of the vessels mistaking the south for the north pier, in consequence of having lost sight of Tynemouth light in the blinding showers. Of course many lifeboats were out doing good service on the night to which I have referred, but I pass all that by at present. The next chapter will carry you, good reader, into the midst of a pitched battle. CHAPTER TWO. DESCRIBES A TREMENDOUS BATTLE AND A GLORIOUS VICTORY. Before following our brilliant lifeboat--this gaudy, butterfly-like thing of red, white, and blue--to the field of battle, let me observe that the boats of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution have several characteristic qualities, to which reference shall be made hereafter, and that they are of various sizes. [A full and graphic account of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution--its boats, its work, and its achievements--may be found in an interesting volume by its late secretary, Richard Lewis, Esquire, entitled _History of the Lifeboat and its Work_--published by Macmillan and Company.] One of the largest size is that of Ramsgate. This may be styled a privileged boat, for it has a steam-tug to wait upon it named the Aid. Day and night the Aid has her fires "banked up" to keep her boilers simmering, so that when the emergency arises, a vigorous thrust of her giant poker brings them quickly to the boiling point, and she is ready to take her lifeboat in tow and tug her out to the famed and fatal Goodwin Sands, which lie about four miles off the coast--opposite to Ramsgate. I draw attention to this boat, first because she is exceptionally situated with regard to frequency of call, the means of going promptly into action, and success in her work. Her sister-lifeboats of Broadstairs and Margate may, indeed, be as often called to act, but they lack the attendant steamer, and sometimes, despite the skill and courage of their crews, find it impossible to get out in the teeth of a tempest with only sail and oar to aid them. Early in December, 1863, an emigrant ship set sail for the Antipodes; she was the Fusilier, of London. It was her last voyage, and fated to be very short. The shores of Old England were still in sight, the eyes of those who sought to "better their circumstances" in Australia were yet wet, and their hearts still full with the grief of parting from loved ones at home, when one of the most furious storms of the season caught them and cast their gallant ship upon the dangerous Sands off the mouth of the Thames. This happened on the night of the 3rd, which was intensely dark, as well as bitterly cold. Who can describe or conceive the scene that ensued! the horror, the shrieking of women and children, and the yelling of the blast through the rigging,--for it was an absolute hurricane,--while tons of water fell over the decks continually, sweeping them from stem to stern. The Fusilier had struck on that part of the sands named the Girdler. In the midst of the turmoil there was but one course open to the crew-- namely, to send forth signals of distress. Guns were fired, rockets sent up, and tar-barrels set a-blaze. Then, during many hours of agony, they had to wait and pray. On that same night another good ship struck upon the same sands at a different point--the Demerara of Greenock--not an emigrant ship, but freighted with a crew of nineteen souls, including a Trinity pilot. Tossed like a plaything on the Sands--at that part named the Shingles-- off Margate, the Demerara soon began to break up, and the helpless crew did as those of the Fusilier had done and were still doing--they signalled for aid. But it seemed a forlorn resource. Through the thick, driving, murky atmosphere nothing but utter blackness could be seen, though the blazing of their own tar-barrels revealed, with awful power, the seething breakers around, which, as if maddened by the obstruction of the sands, leaped and hissed wildly over them, and finally crushed their vessel over on its beam-ends. Swept from the deck, which was no longer a platform, but, as it were, a sloping wall, the crew took refuge in the rigging of one of the masts which still held fast. The mast overhung the caldron of foam, which seemed to boil and leap at the crew as if in disappointed fury. By degrees the hull of the Demerara began to break up. Her timbers writhed and snapped under the force of the ever-thundering waves as if tormented. The deck was blown out by the confined and compressed air. The copper began to peel off, the planks to loosen, and soon it became evident that the mast to which the crew were lashed could not long hold up. Thus, for ten apparently endless hours the perishing seamen hung suspended over what seemed to be their grave. They hung thus in the midst of pitchy darkness after their blazing tar-barrels had been extinguished. And what of the lifeboat-men during all this time? Were they asleep? Nay, verily! Everywhere they stood at pierheads, almost torn from their holdfasts by the furious gale, or they cowered under the lee of boats and boat-houses on the beach, trying to gaze seaward through the blinding storm, but nothing whatever could they see of the disasters on these outlying sands. There are, however, several sentinels which mount guard night and day close to the Goodwin and other Sands. These are the Floating Lights which mark the position of our extensive and dangerous shoals. Two of these sentinels, the Tongue lightship and the Prince's lightship, in the vicinity of the Girdler Sands, saw the signals of distress. Instantly their guns and rockets gleamed and thundered intelligence to the shore. Such signals had been watched for keenly that night by the brave men of the Margate lifeboat, who instantly went off to the rescue. But there are conditions against which human courage and power and will are equally unavailing. In the teeth of such a gale from the west-nor'-west, with the sea driving in thunder straight on the beach, it was impossible for the Margate boat to put out. A telegram was therefore despatched to Ramsgate. Here, too, as at Broadstairs, and everywhere else, the heroes of the coast were on the lookout, knowing well the duties that might be required of them at any moment. The stout little Aid was lying at the pier with her steam "up." The Ramsgate lifeboat was floating quietly in the harbour, and her sturdy lion-like coxswain, Isaac Jarman, was at the pier-head with some of his men, watching. The Ramsgate men had already been out on service at the sands that day, and their appetite for saving life had been whetted. They were ready for more work. At a quarter past eight p.m. the telegram was received by the harbour-master. The signal was given. The lifeboat-men rushed to their boats. "First come, first served," is the rule there. She was over-manned, and some of the brave fellows had to leave her. The tight little tug took the boat in tow, and in less than half an hour rushed out with her into the intense darkness, right in the teeth of tempest and billows. The engines of the Aid are powerful, like her whole frame. Though fiercely opposed she battled out into the raging sea, now tossed on the tops of the mighty waves, now swallowed in the troughs between. Battered by the breaking crests, whelmed at times by "green seas," staggering like a drunken thing, and buffeted by the fierce gale, but never giving way an inch, onward, steadily if slowly, until she rounded the North Foreland. Then the rescuers saw the signals going up steadily, regularly, from the two lightships. No cessation of these signals until they should be answered by signals from the shore. All this time the lifeboat had been rushing, surging, and bounding in the wake of her steamer. The seas not only roared around her, but absolutely overwhelmed her. She was dragged violently over them, and sometimes right through them. Her crew crouched almost flat on the thwarts, and held on to prevent being washed overboard. The stout cable had to be let out to its full extent to prevent snapping, so that the mist and rain sometimes prevented her crew from seeing the steamer, while cross seas met and hurled her from side to side, causing her to plunge and kick like a wild horse. About midnight the Tongue lightship was reached and hailed. The answer given was brief and to the point: "A vessel in distress to the nor'-west, supposed to be on the high part of the Shingles Sand!" Away went the tug and boat to the nor'-west, but no vessel could be found, though anxious hearts and sharp and practised eyes were strained to the uttermost. The captain of the Aid, who knew every foot of the sands, and who had medals and letters from kings and emperors in acknowledgment of his valuable services, was not to be balked easily. He crept along as close to the dangerous sands as was consistent with the safety of his vessel. How intently they gazed and listened both from lifeboat and steamer, but no cry was to be heard, no signal of distress, nothing but the roaring of the waves and shrieking of the blast, and yet they were not far from the perishing! The crew of the Demerara were clinging to their quivering mast close by, but what could their weak voices avail in such a storm? Their signal fires had long before been drowned out, and those who would have saved them could not see more than a few yards around. Presently the booming of distant cannon was heard and then a faint line of fire was seen in the far distance against the black sky. The Prince's and the Girdler lightships were both firing guns and rockets to tell that shipwreck was taking place near to them. What was to be done? Were the Shingles to be forsaken, when possibly human beings were perishing there? There was no help for it. The steamer and lifeboat made for the vessels that were signalling, and as the exhausted crew on the quivering mast of the Demerara saw their lights depart, the last hope died out of their breasts. "Hope thou in God, for thou shalt yet praise Him," perchance occurred to some of them: who knows? Meanwhile the rescuers made for the Prince's lightship and were told that a vessel in distress was signalling on the higher part of the Girdler Sands. Away they went again, and this time were successful. They made for the Girdler lightship, and on the Girdler Sands they found the Fusilier. The steamer towed the lifeboat to windward of the wreck into such a position that when cast adrift she could bear down on her. Then the cable was slipped and the boat went in for her own special and hazardous work. Up went her little foresail close-reefed, and she rushed into a sea of tumultuous broken water that would have swamped any other kind of boat in the world. What a burst of thrilling joy and hope there was among the emigrants in the Fusilier when the little craft was at last descried! It was about one o'clock in the morning by that time, and the sky had cleared a very little, so that a faint gleam of moonlight enabled them to see the boat of mercy plunging towards them through a very chaos of surging seas and whirling foam. To the rescuers the wreck was rendered clearly visible by the lurid light of her burning tar-barrels as she lay on the sands, writhing and trembling like a living thing in agony. The waves burst over her continually, and, mingling in spray with the black smoke of her fires, swept furiously away to leeward. At first each wave had lifted the ship and let her crash down on the sands, but as the tide fell this action decreased, and had ceased entirely when the lifeboat arrived. And now the point of greatest danger was reached. How to bring a lifeboat alongside of a wreck so as to get the people into her without being dashed to pieces is a difficult problem to solve. It was no new problem, however, to these hardy and fearless men; they had solved it many a time, before that night. When more than a hundred yards to windward of the wreck, the boat's foresail was lowered and her anchor let go. Then they seized the oars, and the cable was payed out; but the distance had been miscalculated. They were twenty yards or so short of the wreck when the cable had run completely out, so the men had to pull slowly and laboriously back to their anchor again, while the emigrants sent up a cry of despair, supposing they had failed and were going to forsake them! At length the anchor was got up. In a few minutes it was let go in a better position, and the boat was carefully veered down under the lee of the vessel, from both bow and stern of which a hawser was thrown to it and made fast. By means of these ropes and the cable the boat was kept somewhat in position without striking the wreck. It was no easy matter to make the voice heard in such a gale and turmoil of seas, but the captain of the Fusilier managed to give his ship's name and intended destination. Then he shouted, "How many can you carry? We have more than a hundred souls on board; more than sixty of them women and children." This might well fill the breasts of the rescuers with anxiety. Their boat, when packed full, could only carry about thirty. However, a cheering reply was returned, and, seizing a favourable opportunity, two of the boatmen sprang on the wreck, clambered over the side, and leaped among the excited emigrants. Some seized them by the hands and hailed them as deliverers; others, half dead with terror, clung to them as if afraid they might forsake them. There was no time, however, to humour feelings. Shaking them all off--kindly but forcibly--the men went to work with a will, briefly explained that there was a steamer not far off, and began to get the women first into the boat. Terror-stricken, half fainting, trembling in every limb, deadly pale, and exhausted by prolonged anxiety and exposure, the poor creatures were carried rather than led to the ship's side. It needed courage even to submit to be saved on such a night and in such circumstances. Two sailors stood outside the ship's bulwarks, fastened there by ropes, ready to lower the women. At one moment the raging sea rose with a roar almost to the feet of these men, bearing the kicking lifeboat on its crest. Next moment the billow had passed, and the men looked down into a yawning abyss of foam, with the boat surging away far out of their reach, plunging and tugging at the ropes which held it, as a wild horse of the plains might struggle with the lasso. No wonder that the women gazed appalled at the prospect of such a leap, or that some shrieked and wildly resisted the kind violence of their rescuers. But the leap was for life; it had to be taken--and quickly, too, for the storm was very fierce, and there were many to save! One of the women is held firmly by the two men. With wildly-staring eyes she sees the boat sweep towards her on the breast of a rushing sea. It comes closer. Some of the men below stand up with outstretched arms. The woman makes a half spring, but hesitates. The momentary action proves almost fatal. In an instant the boat sinks into a gulf, sweeps away as far as the ropes will let her, and is buried in foam, while the woman is slipping from the grasp of the men who hold her. "Don't let her go! don't let her go!" is roared by the lifeboat-men, but she has struggled out of their grasp. Another instant and she is gone; but God in His mercy sends the boat in again at that instant; the men catch her as she falls, and drag her inboard. Thus, one by one, were the women got into the lifeboat. Some of these women were old and infirm; some were invalids. Who can conceive the horror of the situation to such as these, save those who went through it? The children were wrapped up in blankets and thus handed down. Some of the husbands or fathers on board rolled up shawls and blankets and tossed them down to the partially clothed and trembling women. It chanced that one small infant was bundled up in a blanket by a frantic passenger and handed over the side. The man who received it, mistaking it for merely a blanket, cried, "Here, Bill, catch!" and tossed it into the boat. Bill, with difficulty, caught it as it was flying overboard; at the same moment a woman cried, "My child! my child!" sprang forward, snatched the bundle from the horrified Bill, and hugged it to her bosom! At last the boat, being sufficiently filled, was hauled up to her anchor. Sail was hoisted, and away they flew into the surging darkness, leaving the rest of the emigrants still filled with terrible anxiety, but not now with hopeless despair. The lifeboat and her tender work admirably together. Knowing exactly what must be going on, and what would be required of him, though he could see nothing, the captain of the Aid, after the boat had slipped from him, had run down along the sands to leeward of the wreck, and there waited. Presently he saw the boat coming like a phantom out of the gloom. It was quickly alongside, and the rescued people-- twenty-five women and children--were transferred to the steamer, taken down to her cabin, and tenderly cared for. Making this transfer in such a sea was itself difficult in the extreme, and accompanied with great danger, but difficulty and danger were the rule that night, not the exception. All went well. The Aid, with the warrior-boat in tow, steamed back to windward of the wreck; then the lifeboat slipped the cable as before, and returned to the conflict, leaping over the seething billows to the field of battle like a warhorse refreshed. The stirring scene was repeated with success. Forty women and children were rescued on the second trip, and put on board the steamer. Leaden daylight now began to dawn. Many hours had the "storm warriors" been engaged in the wild exhausting fight, nevertheless a third and a fourth time did they charge the foe, and each time with the same result. All the passengers were finally rescued and put on board the steamer. But now arose a difficulty. The tide had been falling and leaving the wreck, so that the captain and crew determined to stick to her in the hope of getting her off, if the gale should abate before the tide rose again. It was therefore agreed that the lifeboat should remain by her in case of accidents; so the exhausted men had to prepare for a weary wait in their wildly plunging boat, while the Aid went off with her rescued people to Ramsgate. But the adventures of that night were not yet over. The tug had not been gone above an hour and a half, when, to the surprise of those in the lifeboat, she was seen returning, with her flag flying half mast high, a signal of recall to her boat. The lifeboat slipped from the side of the wreck and ran to meet her. The reason was soon explained. On his way back to Ramsgate the captain had discovered another large vessel on her beam-ends, a complete wreck, on that part of the sands named the Shingles. It was the Demerara, and her crew were still seen clinging to the quivering mast on which they had spent the livelong night. More work for the well-nigh worn out heroes! Away they went to the rescue as though they had been a fresh crew. Dashing through the surf they drew near the doomed ship, which creaked and groaned when struck by the tremendous seas, and threatened to go to pieces every moment. The sixteen men on the mast were drenched by every sea. Several times that awful night they had, as it were, been mocked by false hopes of deliverance. They had seen the flashing of the rockets and faintly heard the thunder of the alarm-guns fired by the lightships. They had seen the lights of the steamer while she searched in vain for them on first reaching the sands, had observed the smaller light of the boat in tow, whose crew would have been so glad to save them, and had shouted in vain to them as they passed by on their errand of mercy to other parts of the sands, leaving them a prey to darkness and despair. But a merciful and loving God had seen and heard them all the time, and now sent them aid at the eleventh hour. When the lifeboat at last made in towards them the ebb tide was running strongly, and, from the position of the wreck, it was impossible to anchor to windward and drop down to leeward in the usual fashion. They had, therefore, to adopt the dangerous plan of running with the wind, right in upon the fore-rigging, and risk being smashed by the mast, which was beating about with its living load like an eccentric battering-ram. But these Ramsgate men would stick at nothing. They rushed in and received many severe blows, besides dashing into the iron windlass of the wreck. Slowly, and one by one, the enfeebled men dropped from the mast into the boat. Sixteen--all saved! There was great shaking of hands, despite the tossings of the hungry surf, and many fervid expressions of thankfulness, as the sail was hoisted and the men of the Demerara were carried away to join the other rescued ones, who by that time thronged the little Aid almost to overflowing. At Ramsgate that morning--the morning of the 4th--it was soon known to the loungers on the pier that the lifeboat was out, had been out all night, and might be expected back soon. Bright and clear, though cold, was the morn which succeeded that terrible night; and many hundreds of anxious, beating, hopeful hearts were on the lookout. At last the steamer and her warrior-boat appeared, and a feeling of great gladness seemed to spread through the crowd when it was observed that a flag was flying at the mast-head, a well-known sign of victory. On they came, right gallantly over the still turbulent waves. As they passed the pier-heads, and the crowd of pale faces were seen gazing upwards in smiling acknowledgment of the hearty welcome, there burst forth a deep-toned thrilling cheer, which increased in enthusiasm as the extent of the victory was realised, and culminated when it became known that at one grand swoop the lifeboat, after a fight of sixteen hours, had rescued a hundred and twenty souls from the grasp of the raging sea! Reader, there was many a heart-stirring incident enacted that night which I have not told you, and much more might be related of that great battle and glorious victory. But enough, surely, has been told to give you some idea of what our coast heroes dare and do in their efforts to rescue the perishing. CHAPTER THREE. LIGHT AND SHADE IN LIFEBOAT WORK. But victory does not always crown the efforts of our lifeboats. Sometimes we have to tell of partial failure or defeat, and it is due to the lifeboat cause to show that our coast heroes are to the full as daring, self-sacrificing, and noble, in the time of disaster as they are in the day of victory. A splendid instance of persevering effort in the face of absolutely insurmountable difficulty was afforded by the action of the Constance lifeboat, belonging to Tynemouth, on the night of the 24th November, 1864. On that night the coast of Northumberland was visited by one of the severest gales that had been experienced for many years, and a tremendous sea was dashing and roaring among the rocks at the mouth of the Tyne. Many ships had sought refuge in the harbour during the day, but, as the shades of evening began to descend, the risk of attempting an entrance became very great. At last, as the night was closing in, the schooner Friendship ran on the rocks named the Black Middens. Shortly afterwards a large steamer, the Stanley, of Aberdeen, with thirty passengers (most of whom were women), thirty of a crew, a cargo of merchandise, and a deckload of cattle, attempted to take the river. On approaching she sent up rockets for a pilot, but none dared venture out to her. The danger of putting out again to sea was too great. The captain therefore resolved to attempt the passage himself. He did so. Three heavy seas struck the steamer so severely as to divert her from her course, and she ran on the rocks close to the Friendship, so close that the cries of her crew could be heard above the whistling winds and thundering waves. As soon as she struck, the indescribable circumstances of a dread disaster began. The huge billows that had hitherto passed onward, heaving her upwards, now burst over her with inconceivable violence and crushed her down, sweeping the decks continuously--they rocked her fiercely to and fro; they ground her sides upon the cruel rocks; they lifted her on their powerful crests, let her fall bodily on the rocks, stove in her bottom, and, rushing into the hold, extinguished the engine fires. The sound of her rending planks and timbers was mingled with the piercing cries of the female passengers and the gruff shouting of the men, as they staggered to and fro, vainly attempting to do something, they knew not what, to avert their doom. It was pitch dark by this time, yet not so dark but that the sharp eyes of earnest daring men on shore had noted the catastrophe. The men of the coastguard, under Mr Lawrence Byrne, their chief officer, got out the rocket apparatus and succeeded in sending a line over the wreck. Unfortunately, however, owing to mismanagement of those on board the steamer, it proved ineffective. They had fastened the hawser of the apparatus to the forecastle instead of high up on the mast, so that the ropes became hopelessly entangled on the rocks. Before this entanglement occurred, however, two men had been hauled ashore to show the possibility of escape and to give the ladies courage. Then a lady ventured into the sling-lifebuoy, or cradle, with a sailor, but they stuck fast during the transit, and while being hauled back to the wreck, fell out and were drowned. A fireman then made the attempt. Again the cradle stuck, but the man was strong and went hand over hand along the hawser to the shore, where Mr Byrne rushed into the surf and caught hold of him. The rescuer nearly lost his life in the attempt. He was overtaken by a huge wave, and was on the point of being washed away when he caught hold of a gentleman who ran into the surf to save him. The rocket apparatus having thus failed, owing to the simple mistake of those in the wreck having fastened the hawser _too low_ on their vessel, the crew attempted to lower a boat with four seamen and four ladies in it. One of the davits gave way, the other swung round, and the boat was swamped. Three of the men were hauled back into the steamer, but the others perished. The men would not now launch the other boats. Indeed it would have been useless, for no ordinary boat could have lived in such a sea. Soon afterwards all the boats were washed away and destroyed, and the destruction of the steamer itself seemed about to take place every moment. While this terrible fight for dear life was going on, the lifeboat-men were not idle. They ran out their good boat, the Constance, and launched her. And what a fearful launching that was! This boat belonged to the Institution, and her crew were justly proud of her. According to the account given by her gallant coxswain, James Gilbert, they could see nothing whatever at the time of starting but the white flash of the seas as they passed over boat and crew, without intermission, twelve or thirteen times. Yet, as quickly as the boat was filled, she emptied herself through her discharging-tubes. Of these tubes I shall treat hereafter. Gilbert could not even see his own men, except the second coxswain, who, I presume, was close to him. Sometimes the boat was "driven to an angle of forty or forty-five degrees in clearing the rocks." When they were in a position to make for the steamer, the order was given to "back all oars and keep her end-on to the sea." The men obeyed; they seemed to be inspired with fresh vigour as they neared the wreck. Let Gilbert himself tell the rest of the story as follows. "When abreast of the port bow, two men told us they had a rope ready on the starboard bow. We said we would be there in a moment. I then ordered the bow-man to be ready to receive the rope. As soon as we were ready we made two dashing strokes, and were under the bowsprit, expecting to receive the rope, when we heard a dreadful noise, and the next instant the sea fell over the bows of the Stanley, and buried the lifeboat. Every oar was broken at the gunwale of the boat, and the outer ends were swept away. The men made a grasp for the spare oars. Three were gone; two only remained. We were then left with the rudder and two oars. The next sea struck the boat almost over end on board the Friendship, the boat at the time being nearly perpendicular. We then had the misfortune to lose four of our crew. As the boat made a most fearful crash, and fell alongside the vessel, James Grant was, I believe, killed on the spot, betwixt the ship and the boat; Edmund Robson and James Blackburn were thrown out, Joseph Bell jumped as the boat fell. My own impression is that the men all jumped from the boat on to the vessel. We saw them no more. There were four men standing in a group before the mainmast of the schooner. We implored them to come into the boat, but no one answered." Little wonder at that, James Gilbert! The massive wreck must have seemed--at least to men who did not know the qualities of a lifeboat--a surer foothold than the tossed cockleshell with "only two oars and a rudder," out of which four of her own gallant crew had just been lost. Even landsmen can perceive that it must have required much faith to trust a lifeboat in the circumstances. "The next sea that struck the lifeboat," continues the coxswain, "landed her within six feet of the foundation-stone of Tynemouth Dock, with a quickness seldom witnessed. The crew plied the remaining two oars to leeward against the rudder and boathook. We never saw anything till coming near the three Shields lifeboats. We asked them for oars to proceed back to the Friendship, but they had none to spare." Thus the brave Constance was baffled, and had to retire, severely wounded, from the fight. She drove, in her disabled and unmanageable condition, into the harbour. Of the four men thrown out of her, Grant and Robson, who had found temporary refuge in the wrecked schooner, perished. The other two, Bell and Blackburn, were buoyed up by their cork lifebelts, washed ashore, and saved. The schooner itself was afterwards destroyed, and her crew of four men and a boy were lost. Meanwhile the screams of those on board of her and the Stanley were borne on the gale to the vast crowds who, despite darkness and tempest, lined the neighbouring cliffs, and the Shields lifeboats just referred to made gallant attempts to approach the wrecks, but failed. Indeed, it seemed to have been a rash attempt on the part of the noble fellows of the Constance to have made the venture at all. The second cabin of the Stanley was on deck, and formed the bridge, or outlook. On this a number of the passengers and crew had taken refuge, but a tremendous sea carried it, and all its occupants, bodily away. After this the fury of the sea increased, and about an hour before midnight the steamer, with a hideous crash, broke in two amidships. The after part remained fast; the fore part swung round. All the people who remained on the after part were swept away and drowned. The new position into which the fore part of the wreck had been forced was so far an advantage to those who still clung to it, that the bows broke the first violence of the waves, and thus partially protected the exhausted people, thirty-five of whom still remained alive out of the sixty souls originally on board. Ten of these were passengers--two being ladies. Meanwhile fresh preparations were being made by the rocket-men. Messengers had been sent in hot haste to Cullercoats for more rockets, those at Tynemouth having been exhausted. They arrived at five o'clock in the morning. By that time the tide had fallen considerably, admitting of a nearer approach to the wreck, and once more a gleam of hope cheered the hearts of the perishing as they beheld the fiery messenger of mercy rush fiercely towards them from the shore. But hope was still delayed. Four of the rockets missed. The fifth passed right over them, dropping the lifeline on the wreck, and drawing from the poor sufferers a feeble cheer, which was replied to lustily from the shore. This time, fortunately, no mistakes were made by those on board. The blocks and tackle were drawn out, the hawser on which the sling-lifebuoy traversed was fastened high up on the foremast to prevent the ropes fouling the rocks, as they had done on the first attempt; then the lifebuoy was run out, and, eventually, every soul was drawn in safety to the shore. Thus did that battle end, with much of disaster and death to regret, indeed, but with upwards of thirty-five rescued lives to rejoice over. I have now shown the action and bearing of our coast heroes, both in circumstances of triumphant victory and of partial success. Before proceeding to other matters it is well to add that, when intelligence of this disaster was telegraphed to the Lifeboat Institution, a new lifeboat was immediately forwarded to Tynemouth, temporarily to replace the damaged Constance. Instructions were given for the relief of the widows and children of the two lifeboat-men who had perished, and 26 pounds was sent to the crew of the boat. At their next meeting the committee of the Institution, besides recording their deep regret for the melancholy loss of life, voted 100 pounds in aid of a fund raised locally for the widows and seven children of the two men. They likewise bestowed their silver medal and a vote of thanks, inscribed on vellum, to Mr Lawrence Byrne, of the coastguard, in testimony of his gallant services on the occasion. Contributions were also raised by a local committee for the relief of the sufferers by these disasters, and a Volunteer Corps was formed to assist in working the rocket apparatus on future occasions of shipwreck. Let me at this point earnestly request the reader who dwells in an _inland_ home, and who never hears the roaring of the terrible sea, carefully to note that in this case it was _men of the coast_ who did the work, and _people of the coast town_ who gave subscriptions, who sympathised with sufferers, and raised a Volunteer Corps. Ponder this well, good reader, and ask yourself the question, "Is all as it should be here? Have I and my fellow-inlanders nothing to do but read, admire, and say, Well done?" A hint is sufficient at this point. I will return to the subject hereafter. Sometimes our gallant lifeboat-men when called into action go through a very different and not very comfortable experience. They neither gain a glorious victory nor achieve a partial success, but, after all their efforts, risks, and exposure, find that their services are not required, and that they must return meekly home with nothing to reward them but an approving conscience! One such incident I once had the opportunity of observing. I was living at the time--for purposes of investigation, and by special permission-- on board of the Gull Lightship, which lies directly off Ramsgate Harbour, close to the Goodwin Sands. It was in the month of March. During the greater part of my two weeks' sojourn in that lightship the weather was reasonably fine, but one evening it came on to blow hard, and became what Jack styles "dirty." I went to rest that night in a condition which may be described as semi-sea-sick. For some time I lay in my bunk moralising on the madness of those who choose the sea for a profession. Suddenly I was roused--and the seasickness instantly cured--by the watch on deck shouting down the hatchway to the mate, "South Sand Head Light is firing, sir, and sending up rockets!" The mate sprang from his bunk--just opposite to mine--and was on the cabin floor before the sentence was well finished. Thrusting the poker with violence into the cabin fire, he rushed on deck. I jumped up and pulled on coat, nether garments, and shoes, as if my life depended on my speed, wondering the while at the poker incident. There was unusual need for clothing, for the night was bitterly cold. On gaining the deck I found the two men on duty actively at work, one loading the lee gun, the other fitting a rocket to its stick. A few hurried questions by the mate elicited all that it was needful to know. The flash of a gun from the South Sand Head Lightship, about six miles distant, had been seen, followed by a rocket, indicating that a vessel had got upon the fatal sands in her vicinity. While the men were speaking I saw the flash of another gun, but heard no report, owing to the gale carrying the sound to leeward. A rocket followed, and at the same moment we observed the distress signal of the vessel in danger flaring on the southern tail of the sands, but very faintly; it was so far away, and the night so thick. By this time our gun was charged and the rocket in position. "Look alive, Jack; fetch the poker!" cried the mate, as he primed the gun. I was enlightened as to the poker! Jack dived down the hatchway and next moment returned with that instrument red-hot. He applied it in quick succession to gun and rocket. A grand flash and crash from the first was followed by a blinding blaze and a whiz as the second sprang with a magnificent curve far away into surrounding darkness. This was our answer to the South Sand Head Lightship. It was, at the same time, our signal-call to the lookout on the pier of Ramsgate Harbour. "That's a beauty!" said our mate, referring to the rocket. "Get up another, Jack. Sponge her well out, Jacobs; we'll give 'em another shot in a few minutes." Loud and clear were both our signals, but four and a half miles of distance and a fresh gale neutralised their influence on that dark and dismal night. The lookout did not see them. In a few minutes the gun and rocket were fired again. Still no answering signal came from Ramsgate. "Load the weather gun!" said the mate. Jacobs obeyed, and I sought shelter under the lee of the weather bulwarks, for the wind seemed to be made of pen-knives and needles! The sturdy Gull straining and plunging wildly at her huge cables, trembled as our third gun thundered forth its summons, but the rocket struck the rigging and made a low, wavering flight. Another was therefore sent up, but it had scarcely cut its bright line across the sky when we observed the answering signal--a rocket from Ramsgate pier. "That's all right now, sir; _our_ work is done," said the mate to me, as he went below and quietly turned in, while the watch, having sponged out and re-covered the gun, resumed their active perambulations of the deck. I confess that I felt somewhat disappointed at the sudden termination of the noise and excitement. I was told that the Ramsgate lifeboat could not well be out in less than an hour. There was nothing for it, therefore, but patience, so I turned in, "all standing," as sailors have it, with a request that I should be called when the lights of the tug should come in sight. Scarcely had I lain down, however, when the voice of the watch was heard shouting hastily, "Lifeboat close alongside, sir! Didn't see it till this moment. She carries no lights." Out I bounced, minus hat, coat, and shoes, and scrambled on deck just in time to see a boat close under our stern, rendered spectrally visible by the light of our lantern. It was not the Ramsgate but the Broadstairs lifeboat, the men of which had observed our first rocket, had launched their boat at once, and had run down with the favouring gale. "What are you firing for?" shouted the coxswain of the boat. "Ship on the sands bearing south," replied Jack, at the full pitch of his stentorian voice. The boat which was under sail, did not pause, and nothing more was said. With a magnificent rush it passed us, and shot away into the darkness. Our reply had been heard, and the lifeboat, steering by compass, went straight as an arrow to the rescue. It was a thrilling experience to me! Spectral as a vision though it seemed, and brief almost as the lightning flash, its visit was the _real_ thing at last. Many a time had I heard and read of our lifeboats, and had seen them reposing in their boat-houses, as well as out "for exercise," but now I had _seen_ a lifeboat tearing before the gale through the tormented sea, sternly bent on the real work of saving human life. Once again all became silent and unexciting on board the Gull, and I went shivering below with exalted notions of the courage, endurance, and businesslike vigour of our coast heroes. I now lay wakeful and expectant. Presently the shout came again. "Tug's in sight, sir!" And once more I went on deck with the mate. The steamer was quickly alongside, heaving wildly in the sea, with the Ramsgate lifeboat "Bradford" in tow far astern. She merely slowed a little to admit of the same brief question and reply, the latter being repeated, as the boat passed, for the benefit of the coxswain. As she swept by us I looked down and observed that the ten men who formed her crew crouched flat on the thwarts. Only the steersman sat up. No wonder. It must be hard to sit up in a stiff gale with freezing spray, and sometimes heavy seas sweeping over one. I knew that the men were wide awake and listening, but, as far as vision went that boat was manned only by ten oilskin coats and sou'-westers! A few seconds carried them out of sight, and thus, as regards the Gull Lightship, the drama ended. There was no possibility of the dwellers in the floating lights hearing anything of the details of that night's work until the fortnightly visit of their "tender" should fall due, but next morning at low tide, far away in the distance, we could see the wreck, bottom up, high on the Goodwin Sands. Afterwards I learned that the ship's crew had escaped in one of their own boats, and taken refuge in the South Sand Head Lightship, whence they were conveyed next day to land, so that the gallant men of Ramsgate and Broadstairs had all their toil and trouble for nothing! Thus, you see, there are not only high lights and deep shadows, but also neutral tints in the various incidents which go to make up the grand picture of lifeboat work. There is a Fund connected with the Broadstairs Lifeboat which deserves passing notice here. It was raised by the late Sir Charles Reed, in 1867, the proceeds to be distributed annually among the seamen who save life on that coast. The following particulars of this fund were supplied by Sir Charles Reed himself:-- "Eight boatmen of Broadstairs were interested in a lugger--the Dreadnought--which had for years done good service on the Goodwins. One night they went off in a tremendous sea to save a French barque; but though they secured the crew, a steam-tug claimed the prize and towed her into Ramsgate Harbour. The Broadstairs men instituted proceedings to secure the salvage, but they were beaten in a London law court, where they were overpowered by the advocacy of a powerful company. In the meantime they lost their lugger off the coast of Normandy, and in this emergency the lawyers they had employed demanded their costs. The poor men had no means, and not being able to pay they were taken from their homes and lodged in Maidstone Gaol. He (Sir Charles) was then staying in Broadstairs, and an appeal being made to him, he wrote to the `Times', and in one week received nearly twice the amount required. The bill was paid, the men were liberated and brought home to their families, and the balance of the amount, a considerable sum, was invested, the interest to be applied to the rewarding of boatmen who, by personal bravery, had distinguished themselves by saving life on the coast." CHAPTER FOUR. CONSTRUCTION AND QUALITIES OF THE LIFEBOAT. In previous chapters enough has been told, I think, to prove that our lifeboats deserve earnest and thoughtful attention, not only as regards their work, but in reference to their details of construction. It has been said that the lifeboat possesses special qualities which distinguish it from all other boats. Chief among these are the self-righting and self-emptying principles. Stability, resulting from breadth of beam, etcetera, will do much to render a boat safe in rough seas and tempestuous weather, but when a boat has to face mighty rollers which turn it up until it stands straight on end, like a rearing horse, and even tumble it right over, or when it has to plunge into horrible maelstroms which seethe, leap, and fume in the mad contention of cross seas, no device that man has yet fallen upon will save it from turning keel up and throwing its contents into the water. Instead therefore, of attempting to build a boat which cannot upset, men have deemed it wiser to attempt the construction of one which will not remain in that position, but which will, of necessity, right itself. The end aimed at has been achieved, and the boat now in use by the Lifeboat Institution is absolutely perfect in this respect. What more could be desired in any boat than that, after being upset, it should right itself in a _few seconds_, and empty itself of water in less than one minute? A boat which does not right itself when overturned is only a lifeboat so long as it maintains its proper position on the water. Let its self-emptying and buoyant qualities be ever so good, you have only to upset it to render it no better than any other boat;--indeed, in a sense, it is worse than other boats, because it leads men to face danger which they would not dare to encounter in an ordinary boat. Doubtless, lifeboats on the non-self-righting principle possess great stability, and are seldom overturned; nevertheless they occasionally are, and with fatal results. Here is one example. In the month of January, 1865, the Liverpool lifeboat, when out on service, was upset, and seven men of her crew were drowned. This was not a self-righting boat, and it did not belong to the Lifeboat Institution, most of whose boats are now built on the self-righting principle. Moreover, the unfortunate men had not put on lifebelts. It may be added that the men who work the boats of the Institution are not allowed to go off without their cork lifebelts on. Take another case. On the 4th January, 1857, the Point of Ayr lifeboat, when under sail in a gale, upset at a distance from the land. The accident was seen from the shore, but no aid could be rendered, and the whole boat's crew--thirteen in number--were drowned. This boat was considered a good lifeboat, and doubtless it was so in many respects, but it was not a self-righting one. Two or three of the poor fellows were seen clinging to the keel for twenty minutes, by which time they became exhausted, were washed off, and, having no lifebelts on, perished. Again in February, 1858, the Southwold lifeboat--a large sailing boat, esteemed one of the finest in the kingdom, but not on the self-righting principle--went out for exercise, and was running before a heavy surf with all sail set, when she suddenly ran on the top of a sea, turned broadside to the waves, and was upset. The crew in this case were fortunately near the shore, had on their lifebelts, and, although some of them could not swim, were all saved--no thanks, however, to their boat, which remained keel up--but three unfortunate gentlemen who had been permitted to go off in the boat without lifebelts, and one of whom was a good swimmer, lost their lives. Let it be noted here that the above three instances of disaster occurred in the day time, and the contrast of the following case will appear all the stronger. One very dark and stormy night in October, 1858, the small lifeboat of Dungeness put off through a heavy sea to a wreck three-quarters of a mile from the shore. Eight stout men of the coastguard composed her crew. She was a self-righting, self-emptying boat, belonging to the Lifeboat Institution. The wreck was reached soon after midnight, and found to have been abandoned. The boat, therefore, returned towards the shore. Now, there is a greater danger in rowing before a gale than in rowing against it. For the first half mile all went well, though the sea was heavy and broken, but, on crossing a deep channel between two shoals, the little lifeboat was caught up and struck by three heavy seas in succession. The coxswain lost command of the rudder, and she was carried away before a sea, broached to, and upset, throwing her crew out of her. _Immediately_ she righted herself, cleared herself of water, and was brought up by her anchor which had fallen out when she was overturned. The crew meanwhile having on lifebelts, floated and swam to the boat, caught hold of the life-lines festooned round her sides, clambered into her, cut the cable, and returned to the shore in safety! What more need be said in favour of the self-righting boats? The self-emptying principle is quite equal to the self-righting in importance. In _every_ case of putting off to a wreck in a gale, a lifeboat ships a great deal of water. In most cases she fills more than once. Frequently she is overwhelmed by tons of water by every sea. A boat full of water cannot advance, therefore baling becomes necessary; but baling, besides being very exhausting work, is so slow that it would be useless labour in most cases. Besides, when men have to bale they cannot give that undivided attention to the oars which is needful. To overcome this difficulty the self-emptying plan was devised. As, I doubt not, the reader is now sufficiently interested to ask the questions, How are self-righting and self-emptying accomplished? I will try to throw some light on these subjects. First, as to self-righting. You are aware, no doubt, that the buoyancy of our lifeboat is due chiefly to large air-cases at the ends, and all round the sides from stem to stern. The accompanying drawing and diagrams will aid us in the description. On the opposite page you have a portrait of, let us say, a thirty-three feet, ten-oared lifeboat, of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, on its transporting carriage, ready for launching, and, on page 95, two diagrams representing respectively a section and a deck view of the same (Figures 1, 2, and 3). The breadth of this boat is eight feet; its stowage-room sufficient for thirty passengers, besides its crew of twelve men--forty-two in all. It is double-banked; that is, each of its five banks, benches, or thwarts, accommodates two rowers sitting side by side. The lines festooned round the side dip into the water, so that anyone swimming alongside may easily grasp them, and in the middle part of the boat--just where the large wheels come in the engraving--two of the lines are longer than the others, so that a man might use them as stirrups, and thus be enabled to clamber into the boat even without assistance. The rudder descends considerably below the keel--to give it more power--and has to be raised when the boat is being launched. The shaded parts of the diagrams show the position and form of the air-cases which prevent a lifeboat from sinking. The white oblong space in Figure 2 is the free space available for crew and passengers. In Figure 3 is seen the depth to which the air-chambers descend, and the height to which the bow and stern-chambers rise. It is to these large air-chambers in bow and stern, coupled with great sheer--or rise fore and aft--of gunwale, and a very heavy keel, that the boat owes its self-righting power. The two air-chambers are rounded on the top. Now, it is obvious that if you were to take a model of such a boat, turn it upside down on a table, and try to make it rest on its two _rounded_ air-chambers, you would encounter as much difficulty as did the friends of Columbus when they sought to make an egg stand on its end. The boat would infallibly fall to one side or the other. In the water the tendency is precisely the same, and that tendency is increased by the heavy iron keel, which drags the boat violently round to its right position. The self-righting principle was discovered--at all events for the first time exhibited--at the end of last century, by the Reverend James Bremner, of Orkney. He first suggested in the year 1792 that an ordinary boat might be made self-righting by placing two watertight casks in the head and sternsheets of it, and fastening three hundredweight of iron to the keel. Afterwards he tried the experiment at Leith, and with such success that in 1810 the Society of Arts voted him a silver medal and twenty guineas. But nothing further was done until half a century later, when twenty out of twenty-four pilots lost their lives by the upsetting of the non-self-righting Shields lifeboat. Then (1850) the late Duke of Northumberland offered a prize of 100 guineas for the best lifeboat that could be produced. No fewer than 280 models and drawings were sent in, and the plans, specifications, and descriptions of these formed five folio manuscript volumes! The various models were in the shape of pontoons, catamarans or rafts, north-country cobles, and ordinary boats, slightly modified. The committee appointed to decide on their respective merits had a difficult task to perform. After six months' careful, patient investigation and experiment, they awarded the prize to Mr James Beeching, of Great Yarmouth. Beeching's boat, although the best, was not, however, deemed perfect. The committee therefore set Mr James Peake, one of their number, and assistant master-shipwright at Woolwich Dockyard, to incorporate as many as possible of the good qualities of all the other models with Beeching's boat. From time to time various important improvements have been made, and the result is the present magnificent boat of the Institution, by means of which hundreds of lives are saved every year. The self-discharge of water from a lifeboat is not so easy to explain. It will be the more readily comprehended if the reader understands, and will bear in remembrance, the physical fact that water will, and must, find its level. That is--no portion of water, small or great, in tub, pond, or sea, can for a moment remain above its flat and level surface, except when forced into motion, or commotion. Left to itself it infallibly flattens out, becomes calm, lies still in the lowest attainable position--in other words, finds its level. Bearing this in mind, let us look again at Figure 3. The dotted double line about the middle of the boat, extending from stem to stern, represents the _floor_ of the boat, on which the men's feet rest when standing or sitting in it. It also represents, or very nearly so, the waterline outside, that is, the depth to which the boat will sink when afloat, manned and loaded. Therefore, the _boat's floor_ and the _ocean_ _surface_ are on the same level. Observe that! The space between the floor and the keel is filled up with cork or other ballast. Now, there are six large holes in the boat's floor--each hole six inches in diameter--into which are fitted six metal tubes, which pass down by the side of the cork ballast, and right through the bottom of the boat itself; thus making six large openings into the sea. "But hallo!" you exclaim, "won't the water from below rush up through these holes and fill the boat?" It will indeed rush up into these holes, but it will not fill the boat because it will have found its level--the level of ocean--on reaching the floor. Well, besides having reached its level, the water in the tubes has reached six valves, which will open downwards to let water out, but which won't open upwards to let it in. Now, suppose a huge billow topples into the boat and fills it quite full, is it not obvious that all the water in the boat stands _above_ the ocean's level--being above the boat's floor? Like a wise element, it immediately seeks its own level by the only mode of egress--the discharging tubes; and when it has found its level, it has also found the floor of the boat. In other words, it is all gone! moreover, it rushes out so violently that a lifeboat, filled to overflowing, frees itself, as I have already said, in less than one minute! The _buoyancy_, therefore, of a lifeboat is not affected for more than a few seconds by the tons of water which occasionally and frequently break into her. To prove this, let me refer you again to the account of the Constance, given by its gallant coxswain, as recorded in the third chapter. He speaks of the lifeboat being "buried," "sunk" by the wave that burst over the bow of the Stanley, and "immediately," he adds, "the men made a grasp for the spare oars!" There is no such remark as "when we recovered ourselves," etcetera. The sinking and leaping to the surface were evidently the work of a few seconds; and this is indeed the case, for when the force that sinks a lifeboat is removed, she rises that instant to the surface like a cork, and when she tumbles over she recovers herself with the agility of an acrobat! The transporting-carriage is a most essential part of a lifeboat establishment, because wrecks frequently take place at some distance from a station, and prompt assistance is of the utmost importance in all cases of rescue. It is drawn by horses, and, with its exceedingly broad and strong wheels, can be dragged over any kind of road or across soft sand. It is always backed into the surf so deep that the boat may be launched from it, with her crew seated, and the oars out, ready to pull with might and main the instant the plunge is made. These first strokes of a lifeboat's crew are of immense importance. Want of union or energy on the part of steersman or crew at this critical point may be fatal. The boat must be made to cut the breakers end-on, so as to prevent her turning broadside on and being rolled back on the beach. Even after these initial strokes have been made successfully, there still remains the possibility of an unusually monstrous wave hurling the boat back end over end. The boat resting on its carriage on the sands (Figure 1) shows the relative position of the two. It will be seen, from that position, that a very slight tip will suffice to cause the bow of the boat to drop towards the sea. As its keel rests on rollers, comparatively little force is required to launch it. Such force is applied by means of ropes attached to the stern, passing through pulleys at the outer end of the carriage, so that people on shore haul the ropes inland in order to force the boat off its carriage seaward. Once the boat has got fairly over the surf and out upon the wild sea, her progress is comparatively safe, simple tugging against wind and sea being all that has to be done until the wreck is reached, where dangers of another kind await her. I have now shown that the great qualities of our lifeboat are--_buoyancy_, or a tendency not to sink; _self-righting_ power, or inability to remain upside down; _self-emptying_ power, or a capacity to discharge any water that may get into it; and _stability_, or a tendency not to upset. The last quality I shall refer to, though by no means the least, is _strength_. From what has been already written about lifeboats being hurled against wrecks and rocks, it must be evident that the strength of ordinary boats would not suffice. In order to give them the requisite strength of frame for their tremendous warfare, they are built of the best Honduras mahogany, on what is known as the diagonal plan--that is, the boat has two distinct "skins" of planking, one set of planks being laid on in a diagonal position to the others. Moreover, these planks run from one gunwale round under the boat to the other gunwale, and have a complete layer of prepared canvas between them. Thus great strength and elasticity are combined, so that the boat can stand an inconceivable amount of battering on wreckage, rocks, or sand, without being destroyed. That this is really so I will endeavour to prove by referring in the next chapter to a particular instance in which the great strength of one of our lifeboats was powerfully illustrated. It may be added, in conclusion, that the oars of a lifeboat are short, and so made as to combine the greatest possible strength with lightness. They are fastened to the gunwale by short pieces of rope, and work in a moveable iron crutch on an iron thole-pin. Each boat is provided with a set of spare oars. Her equipment of compass, cables, grapnels, anchors, etcetera, is, as may be supposed, very complete, and she rides upon the storm in a rather gay dress of red, white, and blue, in order that she may be readily distinguished from other boats--her lower parts being white, her upper sides blue, and her line of "fender" all round being scarlet. CHAPTER FIVE. MORE TALES OF HEROISM. If any one should doubt the fact that a lifeboat is _all but_ indestructible, let that sceptical one read the following tale of wreck and rescue. On a terrible night in the year 1857 a Portuguese brig struck on the Goodwin Sands, not far from the lightship that marks the northern extremity of those fatal shoals. A shot was fired, and a rocket sent up by the lightship. No second signal was needed. The Ramsgate men were, as usual, keeping a bright lookout. Instantly they jumped into the lifeboat, which lay calmly floating in the harbour alongside the pier. So eager were the men to engage in the deadly struggle that the boat was over-manned, and the last two who jumped in were obliged to go ashore again. The tug _Aid_ was all ready--according to custom--with steam up. She took the boat in tow and made for the mouth of the harbour. Staggering out in the teeth of tide and tempest they ploughed their way through a heavy cross sea, that swept again and again over them, until they reached the edge of the Goodwins. Here the steamer cast off the boat, and waited for her while she dashed into the surf, and bore the brunt of the battle alone. It was a familiar proceeding to all concerned. Many a time before had the Ramsgate boat and steamer rescued men and women and little ones from the jaws of death on the Goodwins, but they were about to experience a few novelties that night. It was very dark, so that the boat had much difficulty in finding the brig. On coming within about eighty yards of her they cast anchor and veered down under her lee. At first they were in hopes of getting the vessel off, and some hours were spent in vain attempts to do this, but the gale increased in fury; the brig began to break up. She rolled from side to side, and the yards swung wildly in the air. A blow from one of these yards would have stove the boat in, so the Portuguese crew--twelve men and a boy--were taken from the wreck, and the lifeboat-men endeavoured to push off. All this time the boat had been floating in a basin worked in the sand by the motion of the wreck; but the tide had been falling, and when they tried to pull up to their anchor the boat struck heavily on the edge of this basin. They worked to get off the shoals with the energy of men who believe that their lives depend on their efforts. For a moment they succeeded in getting afloat, but again struck and remained fast. Meanwhile the brig was lifted by each wave, that came rushing over the shoals like a mountain chain of snow, and let fall with a thundering crash. Her timbers began to snap like pipe-stems, and, as she worked nearer and nearer to the boat, the wildly-swaying yards threatened immediate destruction. The heavy seas flew continually over the lifeboat, so that passengers and crew could do nothing but hold on to the thwarts for their lives. At last the brig came so near that there was a stir among the men; they were preparing for the last struggle-- some of them intending to leap into the rigging of the wreck and take their chance. But the coxswain shouted, "Stick to the boat, boys, stick to the boat!" and the men obeyed. At that moment the boat lifted a little on the surf and grounded again. New hope was inspired by this. They pulled at the cable and shoved might and main with the oars. They succeeded in getting out of immediate danger, but still could not pull up to their anchor in the teeth of wind and tide. The coxswain then saw plainly that there was but one resource left--to cut the cable and drive away to leeward right across the Goodwin Sands, which at that place were two miles wide. But there was not yet sufficient water on the sands even for the attempting of that forlorn hope. As far as could be seen in that direction, ay, and far beyond the power of vision, there was nothing but a chaos of wild, tumultuous, whirling foam, without sufficient depth to float them over, so they held on, intending to wait till the tide, which had turned, should rise. Very soon, however, the anchor began to drag. This compelled them to hoist sail, cut the cable sooner than they had intended, and attempt to beat to windward--off the sands. It was in vain. A moment more, and they struck with tremendous force. A breaker came rolling towards them, filled the boat, caught her up like a plaything on its crest, and, hurling her a few yards onwards, let her fall with a shock that well-nigh tore every man out of her. Each successive breaker treated her in this way! Those who dwell by the seashore know well those familiar ripples that mark the sands when the tide is out. On the Goodwins those ripples are gigantic banks, to be measured by feet, not by inches. I can speak from personal experience, having once visited the Goodwins and walked among the sand-banks at low water. From one to another of these banks this splendid boat was thrown. Each roaring surf caught it by the bow or stern, and, whirling it right round, sent it crashing on the next ledge. The Portuguese sailors gave up all hope and clung to the thwarts in silent despair, but the crew did not lose heart altogether. They knew the boat well, had often gone out to battle in her, and hoped that they might yet be saved, if they could only escape striking on the pieces of old wreck with which the sands were strewn. Thus, literally, yard by yard, with a succession of shocks, that would have knocked any ordinary boat to pieces, did that lifeboat drive, during two hours, over two miles of the Goodwin Sands! A thrilling and graphic account of this wreck and rescue is given in the Reverend John Gilmore's book, "Storm Warriors," in which he tells us that while this exciting work was going on, the _Aid_ lay head to wind, steaming half power, and holding her own against the storm, waiting for her lifeboat, but no lifeboat returned to her, and her gallant captain became more and more anxious as time flew by. Could it be possible that her sturdy little comrade, with whom she had gone out to battle in hundreds of gales, was overcome at last and destroyed! They signalled again and again, but got no reply. Then, as their fears increased, they began to cruise about as near to the dangerous shoals as they dared-- almost playing with death--as they eagerly sought for their consort. At last the conviction was forced upon them that the boat must have been stove by the wreck and swamped. In the midst of their gathering despair they caught sight of the lightship's bright beam, shining like a star of hope through the surrounding darkness. With a faint hope they made for the vessel and hailed her. "Have you seen anything of the lifeboat?" was the eager question. "Nothing! nothing!" was the sad reply. Back they went again to the place they had left, determined to cruise on, hoping against hope, till the night should pass away. Hour after hour they steamed hither and thither, with anxiously straining eyes. At last grey dawn appeared and the wreck became dimly visible. They made for it, and their worst fears were realised--the remnant of the brig's hull was there with ropes and wreckage tossing wildly round it--but no lifeboat! Sadly they turned away and continued to search for some time in the faint hope that some of her crew might be floating about, buoyed up by their lifebelts, but none were found, and at last they reluctantly made for the harbour. And when the harbour was gained what saw they there? The lifeboat! safe and sound, floating as calmly beside the pier as if nothing had happened! As the captain of the _Aid_ himself said, he felt inclined at once to shout and cry for wonder, and we may be sure that his wonder was not decreased when he heard the lifeboat's story from the brave coxswain's lips--how that, after driving right across the sands, as I have described, they suddenly found themselves in deep water. That then, knowing the extremity of danger to be past, they had set the sails, and, soon after, had, through God's mercy, landed the rescued Portuguese crew in Ramsgate Harbour! It must not be imagined, however, that such work as this can be done without great cost to those who undertake it. Some of the men never recovered from the effects of that night's exposure. The gratitude of the Portuguese seamen was very great, as well as their amazement at such a rescue! It is recorded of them that, before arriving in the harbour, they were observed to be in consultation together, and that one who understood a little English spoke to one of the crew in an undertone. "Coxswain," said the lifeboat man, "they want to give us all their money!" "Yes, yes," cried the Portuguese interpreter, in broken English; "you have saved our lives! Thank you, thank you! but all we have is yours. It is not much, but you may take it between you." The amount was seventeen pounds! As might have been expected, neither the coxswain nor his men would accept a penny of it. This coxswain was Isaac Jarman, who for many years led the famous Ramsgate lifeboat into action, and helped to save hundreds of human lives. While staying at Ramsgate I had the pleasure of shaking the strong hard hand of Jarman, and heard some of his adventures from his own lips. Now, from all that has been said, it will, I think, be seen and admitted that the lifeboats of the Institution are almost indestructible. The _lifebelt_, to which reference has been so often made, deserves special notice at this point. The figure on the title-page shows its appearance and the manner in which it is worn. It was designed in 1854, by Admiral J.R. Ward, the Institution's chief inspector of lifeboats. Its chief quality is its great buoyancy, which is not only sufficient to support a man with head and shoulders above water when heavily clothed, but enables the wearer easily to support another person--the extra buoyancy being 25 pounds. Besides possessing several great advantages over other lifebelts, that of Admiral Ward is divided in the middle by a space, where the waistbelt is fastened. This permits of great freedom of action, and the whole machine is remarkably flexible. It is also very strong, forming a species of armour which protects the wearer from severe blows, and, moreover, helps to keep him warm. It behoves me now to say a few words about the inventor of lifeboats. As has been told, our present splendid boat is a combination of all the good points and improvements made in such boats down to the present time. But the man who first thought of a lifeboat and invented one; who fought against apathy and opposition; who completed and launched his ark of mercy on the sea at Bamborough, in the shape of a little coble, in the year 1785, and who actually saved many lives therewith, was a London coachbuilder, LIONEL LUKIN by name. Assuredly this man deserved the deepest gratitude of the nation, for his was the first lifeboat ever brought into action, and he inserted the small end of that wedge which we have been hammering home ever since, and which has resulted in the formation of one of the grandest, most thoroughly national and unsectarian of our charitable institutions. Henry Greathead--a boatbuilder of South Shields--erroneously got the credit of this invention. Greathead was a noted improver and builder of lifeboats, and was well and deservedly rewarded for his work; but he was not the inventor. Lionel Lukin alone can claim that honour. In regard to the men who man them, enough has been written to prove that they well deserve to be regarded as the heroes of the coast! And let me observe in passing that there are also _heroines_ of the coast, as the following extract from the Journal of the Institution will show. It appeared in the January number of 1865. "Voted the Silver Medal of the Institution, and a copy of its vote of thanks on parchment, to Miss Alice R. Le Geyt, in admiration of her prompt and courageous conduct in rowing a small boat into the surf at the risk of her life, and rescuing two little boys who had fallen into the sea from the outer pier at Lyme Regis, Dorset, on the 4th August." Again, in October, 1879, the Committee of the National Lifeboat Institution voted the Silver Medal of the Institution, and a copy of the vote inscribed on vellum, to Miss Ellen Francis Prideaux Brune, Miss Gertrude Rose Prideaux Brune, Miss Mary Katherine Prideaux Brune, Miss Beatrice May Prideaux Brune, and Miss Nora O'Shaughnessy, in acknowledgment of their intrepid and prompt services in proceeding through a heavy surf in their rowing-boat, and saving, at considerable risk of life, a sailor from a boat which had been capsized by a squall of wind off Bray Hill, Padstow Harbour, Cornwall, on the 9th August. When the accident occurred, the ladies' boat was being towed astern of a fishing-boat, and Miss Ellen Prideaux Brune, with great gallantry and determination, asked to be cast off, and, with her companions, she proceeded with all possible despatch to the rescue of the drowning sailor. All the ladies showed great courage, presence of mind, and marked ability in the management of their small boat. They ran great risk in getting the man into it, on account of the strong tide and sea on at the time. So it would appear that the spirit of the far-famed Grace Darling has not yet departed from the land! If heroism consists in boldly facing and successfully overcoming dangers of the most appalling nature, then I hold that thousands of our men of the coast--from Shetland to the Land's End--stand as high as do those among our soldiers and sailors who wear the Victoria Cross. Let us consider an example. On that night in which the Royal Charter went down, there was a Maltese sailor on board named Joseph Rodgers, who volunteered to swim ashore with a rope. Those who have seen the effect of a raging sea even on a smooth beach, know that the power of the falling waves is terrible, and their retreating force so great that the most powerful swimmers occasionally perish in them. But the coast to which Rodgers volunteered to swim was an almost perpendicular cliff. I write as an eye-witness, reader, for I saw the cliff myself, a few days after the wreck took place, when I went down to that dreary coast of Anglesea to identify the bodies of lost kindred. Ay, and at that time I also saw something of the awful aspect of loss by shipwreck. I went into the little church at Llanalgo, where upwards of thirty bodies lay upon the floor--still in their wet garments, just as they had been laid down by those who had brought them from the shore. As I entered that church one body lay directly in my path. It was that of a young sailor. Strange to say, his cheeks were still ruddy as though he had been alive, and his lips were tightly compressed--I could not help fancying--with the force of the last strong effort he had made to keep out the deadly sea. Just beyond him lay a woman, and beside her a little child, in their ordinary walking-dresses, as if they had lain down there and fallen asleep side by side. I had to step across these silent forms, as they lay, some in the full light of the windows, others in darkened corners of the little church, and to gaze earnestly into their dead faces for the lineaments of those whom I had gone to find-- but I did not find them there. Their bodies were washed ashore some days afterwards. A few of those who lay on that floor were covered to hide the mutilation they had received when being driven on the cruel rocks. Altogether it was an awful sight--well fitted to draw forth the prayer, "God help and bless those daring men who are willing to risk their lives at any moment all the year round, to save men and women and little ones from such a fate as this!" But, to return to Joseph Rodgers. The cliff to which he volunteered to swim was thundered on by seas raised by one of the fiercest gales that ever visited our shores. It was dark, too, and broken spars and pieces of wreck tossing about increased the danger; while the water was cold enough to chill the life-blood in the stoutest frame. No one knew better than Rodgers the extreme danger of the attempt, yet he plunged into the sea with a rope round his waist. Had his motive been self-preservation he could have gained the shore more easily without a rope; but his motive was not selfish--it was truly generous. He reached the land, hauled a cable ashore, made it fast to a rock, and began to rescue the crew, and I have no doubt that every soul in that vessel would have been saved if she had not suddenly split across and sunk. Four hundred and fifty-five lives were lost, but before the catastrophe took place _thirty-nine_ lives were saved by the heroism of that Maltese sailor. The Lifeboat Institution awarded its gold medal, with its vote of thanks inscribed on vellum, and 5 pounds, to Rodgers, in acknowledgment of his noble conduct. All round the kingdom the men are, as a rule, eager to man our lifeboats. Usually there is a _rush_ to the work; and as the men get only ten shillings per man in the daytime, and twenty shillings at night, on each occasion of going off, it can scarcely be supposed that they do it only for the sake of the pay! True, those payments are increased on occasions of unusual risk or exposure; nevertheless, I believe that a worthier motive animates our men of the coast. I do not say, or think, that religious feeling is the cause of their heroism. With some, doubtless, it is; with others it probably is not; but I sincerely believe that the _Word of God_--permeating as it does our whole community, and influencing these men either directly or indirectly--is the cause of their self-sacrificing courage, as it is unquestionably the cause of our national prosperity. CHAPTER SIX. SUPPLIES A FEW POINTS FOR CONSIDERATION. I have now somewhat to say about the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, which has the entire management and control of our fleet of 273 lifeboats. That Institution has had a glorious history. It was founded by Sir William Hillary, Baronet--a man who deserves a monument in Westminster Abbey, I think; for, besides originating the Lifeboat Institution, he saved, and assisted in saving, 305 lives, with his own hands! Born in 1824, the Institution has been the means of saving no fewer than 29,608 lives up to the end of 1882. At its birth the Archbishop of Canterbury presided; the great Wilberforce, Lord John Russell, and other magnates were present; the Dukes of Kent, Sussex, and other members of the Royal family, became vice-patrons, the Earl of Liverpool its president, and George the Fourth its patron. In 1850 good Prince Albert became its vice-patron, and her Majesty the Queen became, and still continues, a warm supporter and annual contributor. This is a splendid array of names and titles, but let me urge the reader never to forget that this noble Institution depends on the public for the adequate discharge of its grand work, for it is supported almost entirely by voluntary contributions. The sole object of the Institution is to provide and maintain boats that shall save the lives of shipwrecked persons, and to reward those who save lives, whether by means of its own or other boats. The grandeur of its aim and singleness of its purpose are among its great recommendations. When, however, life does not require to be saved, and when opportunity offers, it allows its boats to save property. It saves--and rewards those who assist in saving--many hundreds of lives every year. Last year (1882) the number saved by lifeboats was 741, besides 143 lives saved by shore-boats and other means, for which rewards were given by the Institution; making a grand total of 884 lives saved in that one year. The number each year is often larger, seldom less. One year (1869) the rescued lives amounted to the grand number of 1231, and in the greater number of cases the rescues were effected in circumstances in which ordinary boats would have been utterly useless-- worse than useless, for they would have drowned their crews. In respect of this matter the value of the lifeboat to the nation cannot be estimated--at least, not until we invent some sort of spiritual arithmetic whereby we may calculate the price of widows' and orphans' tears, and of broken hearts! But in regard to more material things it is possible to speak definitely. It frequently happens in stormy weather that vessels show signals of distress, either because they are so badly strained as to be in a sinking condition, or so damaged that they are unmanageable, or the crews have become so exhausted as to be no longer capable of working for their own preservation. In all such cases the lifeboat puts off with the intention in the first instance of saving life. It reaches the vessel in distress; some of the boat's crew spring on board, and find, perhaps, that there is some hope of saving the ship. Knowing the locality well, they steer her clear of rocks and shoals. Being comparatively fresh and vigorous, they work the pumps with a will, manage to keep her afloat, and finally steer her into port, thus saving ship and cargo as well as crew. Now let me impress on you that incidents of this sort are not of rare occurrence. There is no play of fancy in my statements; they happen every year. Last year (1882) twenty-three vessels were thus saved by lifeboat crews. Another year thirty-three, another year fifty-three, ships were thus saved. As surely and regularly as the year comes round, so surely and regularly are ships and property saved by lifeboats--saved _to the nation_! It cannot be too forcibly pointed out that a wrecked ship is not only an individual, but a national loss. Insurance protects the individual, but insurance cannot, in the nature of things, protect the nation. If you drop a thousand sovereigns in the street, that is a loss to you, but not to the nation; some lucky individual will find the money and circulate it. But if you drop it into the sea, it is lost not only to you, but to the nation, indeed to the world itself, for ever,-- of course taking for granted that our amphibious divers don't fish it up again! Well, let us gauge the value of our lifeboats in this light. If a lifeboat saves a ship worth ten or twenty thousand sovereigns from destruction, it presents that sum literally as a free gift to owners _and_ nation. A free gift, I repeat, because lifeboats are provided solely to save life--not property. Saving the latter is, therefore, extraneous service. Of course it would be too much to expect our gallant boatmen to volunteer to work the lifeboats, in the worst of weather, at the imminent risk of their lives, unless they were also allowed an occasional chance of earning salvage. Accordingly, when they save a ship worth, say 20,000 pounds, they are entitled to put in a claim on the owners for 200 pounds salvage. This sum would be divided (after deducting all expenses, such as payments to helpers, hire of horses, etcetera) between the men and the boat. Thus--deduct, say, 20 pounds expenses leaves 180 pounds to divide into fifteen shares; the crew numbering thirteen men:-- +==================================+==========+ |13 shares to men at 12 pounds each|156 pounds| +----------------------------------+----------+ |2 shares to boat |24 pounds | +----------------------------------+----------+ |Total |180 pounds| +==================================+==========+ Let us now consider the value of loaded ships. Not very long ago a large Spanish ship was saved by one of our lifeboats. She had grounded on a bank off the south coast of Ireland. The captain and crew forsook her and escaped to land in their boats. One man, however, was inadvertently left on board. Soon after, the wind shifted; the ship slipped off the bank into deep water, and drifted to the northward. Her doom appeared to be fixed, but the crew of the Cahore lifeboat observed her, launched their boat, and, after a long pull against wind and sea, boarded the ship and found her with seven feet of water in the hold. The duty of the boat's crew was to save the Spanish sailor, but they did more, they worked the pumps and trimmed the sails and saved the ship as well, and handed her over to an agent for the owners. This vessel and cargo was valued at 20,000 pounds. Now observe, in passing, that this Cahore lifeboat not only did much good, but received considerable and well-merited benefit, each man receiving 34 pounds from the grateful owners, who also presented 68 pounds to the Institution, in consideration of the risk of damage incurred to their boat. No doubt it may be objected that this, being a foreign ship, was not saved to _our_ nation; but, as the proverb says, "It is not lost what a friend gets," and I think it is very satisfactory to reflect that we presented the handsome sum of 20,000 pounds to Spain as a free gift on that occasion. This was a saved ship. Let us look now at a lost one. Some years ago a ship named the Golden Age was lost. It was well named though ill-fated, for the value of that ship and cargo was 200,000 pounds. The cost of a lifeboat with equipment and transporting carriage complete is about 650 pounds, and there are 273 lifeboats at present on the shores of the United Kingdom. Here is material for a calculation! If that single ship had been among the twenty-seven saved last year (and it _might_ have been) the sum thus rescued from the sea would have been sufficient to pay for all the lifeboats in the kingdom, and leave 22,550 pounds in hand! But it was _not_ among the saved. It was lost--a dead loss to Great Britain. So was the Ontario of Liverpool, wrecked in October, 1864, and valued at 100,000 pounds. Also the Assage, wrecked on the Irish coast, and valued at 200,000 pounds. Here are five hundred thousand pounds--half a million of money--lost by the wreck of these three ships alone. Of course, these three are selected as specimens of the most valuable vessels lost among the two thousand wrecks that take place _each year_ on our coasts; they vary from a first-rate mail steamer to a coal coffin, but set them down at any figure you please, and it will still remain true that it would be worth our while to keep up our lifeboat fleet, for the mere chance of saving such valuable property. But after all is said that can be said on this point, the subject sinks into insignificance when contrasted with the lifeboat's true work--the saving of human lives. There is yet another and still higher sense in which the lifeboat is of immense value to the nation. I refer to the moral influence it exercises among us. If many hundreds of lives are annually saved by our lifeboat fleet, does it not follow, as a necessary consequence, that happiness and gratitude must affect thousands of hearts in a way that cannot fail to redound to the glory of God, as well as the good of man? Let facts answer this question. We cannot of course, intrude on the privacy of human hearts and tell what goes on there, but there are a few outward symptoms that are generally accepted as pretty fair tests of spiritual condition. One of these is parting with money! Looking at the matter in this light, the records of the Institution show that thousands of men, women, and children, are beneficially influenced by the lifeboat cause. The highest contributor to its funds in the land is our Queen; the lowliest a sailor's orphan child. Here are a few of the gifts to the Institution, culled almost at random from the Reports. One gentleman leaves it a legacy of 10,000 pounds. Some time ago a sum of 5000 pounds was sent anonymously by "a friend." A hundred pounds comes in as a _second_ donation from "a sailor's daughter." Fifty pounds come from a British admiral, and five shillings from "the savings of a child!" One-and-sixpence is sent by another child in postage-stamps, and 1 pound 5 shillings as the collection of a Sunday school in Manchester; 15 pounds from three fellow-servants; 10 pounds from a shipwrecked pilot, and 10 shillings, 6 pence from an "old salt." I myself had once the pleasure of receiving twopence for the lifeboat cause from an exceedingly poor but enthusiastic old woman! But my most interesting experience in this way was the receipt of a note written by a blind boy--well and legibly written, too--telling me that he had raised the sum of 100 pounds for the Lifeboat Institution. And this beneficial influence of our lifeboat service travels far beyond our own shores. Here is evidence of that. Finland sends 50 pounds to our Institution to testify its appreciation of the good done by us to its sailors. President Lincoln, of the United States, when involved in all the anxieties of the great war between North and South, found time to send 100 pounds to the Institution in acknowledgment of services rendered to American ships in distress. Russia and Holland send naval men to inspect--not our armaments and _materiel_ of hateful war, but-- our lifeboat management! France, in generous emulation, starts a Lifeboat Institution of its own, and sends over to ask our society to supply it with boats--and, last, but not least, it has been said that foreigners, driven far out of their course and stranded, soon come to know that they have been wrecked on the British coast, by the persevering efforts that are made to save their lives! And now, good reader, let me urge this subject on your earnest consideration. Surely every one should be ready to lend a hand to _rescue the perishing_! One would think it almost superfluous to say more. So it would be, if there were none who required the line of duty and privilege to be pointed out to them. But I fear that many, especially dwellers in the interior of our land, are not sufficiently alive to the claims that the lifeboat has upon them. Let me illustrate this by a case or two--imaginary cases, I admit, but none the less illustrative on that account. "Mother," says a little boy, with flashing eyes and curly flaxen hair; "I want to go to sea!" He has been reading "Cook's Voyages" and "Robinson Crusoe," and looks wistfully out upon the small pond in front of his home, which is the biggest "bit of water" his eyes have ever seen, for he dwells among the cornfields and pastures of the interior of the land. "Don't think of it, darling Willie. You might get wrecked,--perhaps drowned." But "darling Willie" does think of it, and asserts that being wrecked is the very thing he wants, and that he's willing to take his chance of being drowned! And Willie goes on thinking of it, year after year, until he gains his point, and becomes the family's "sailor boy," and mayhap, for the first time in her life, Willie's mother casts more than a passing glance at newspaper records of lifeboat work. But she does no more. She has not yet been awakened. "The people of the coast naturally look after the things of the coast," has been her sentiment on the subject--if she has had any definite sentiments about it at all. On returning from his first voyage Willie's ship is wrecked. On a horrible night, in the howling tempest, with his flaxen curls tossed about, his hands convulsively clutching the shrouds of the topmast, and the hissing billows leaping up as if they wished to lick him off his refuge on the cross-trees, Willie awakens to the dread reality about which he had dreamed when reading Cook and Crusoe. Next morning a lady with livid face, and eyes glaring at a newspaper, gasps, "Willie's ship--is--wrecked! five lost--thirteen saved by the lifeboat." One faint gleam of hope! "Willie may be among the thirteen!" Minutes, that seem hours, of agony ensue; then a telegram arrives, "_Saved, Mother-- thank God,--by the lifeboat_." "Ay, thank God," echoes Willie's mother, with the profoundest emotion and sincerity she ever felt; but think you, reader, that she did no more? Did she pass languidly over the records of lifeboat work after _that_ day? Did she leave the management and support of lifeboats to _the people of the coast_? I trow not. But what difference had the saving of Willie made in the lifeboat cause? Was hers the only Willie in the wide World? Are we to act on so selfish a principle, as that we shall decline to take an interest in an admittedly grand and good and national cause, until our eyes are forcibly opened by "our Willie" being in danger? Of course I address myself to people who have really kind and sympathetic hearts, but who, from one cause or another, have not yet had this subject earnestly submitted to their consideration. To those who have _no heart_ to consider the woes and necessities of suffering humanity, I have nothing whatever to say,--except,--God help them! Let me enforce this plea--that _inland_ cities and towns and villages should support the Lifeboat Institution--with another imaginary case. A tremendous gale is blowing from the south-east, sleet driving like needles--enough, almost, to put your eyes out. A "good ship," under close-reefed topsails, is bearing up for port after a prosperous voyage, but the air is so thick with drift that they cannot make out the guiding lights. She strikes and sticks fast on outlying sands, where the sea is roaring and leaping like a thousand fiends in the wintry blast. There are passengers on board from the Antipodes, with boxes and bags of gold-dust, the result of years of toil at the diggings. They do not realise the full significance of the catastrophe. No wonder--they are landsmen! The tide chances to be low at the time; as it rises, they awake to the dread reality. Billows burst over them like miniature Niagaras. The good ship which has for many weeks breasted the waves so gallantly, and seemed so solid and so strong, is treated like a cork, and becomes apparently an egg-shell! Night comes--darkness increasing the awful aspect of the situation tenfold. What are boxes and bags of gold-dust now--now that wild despair has seized them all, excepting those who, through God's grace, have learned to "fear no evil?" Suddenly, through darkness, spray, and hurly-burly thick, a ghostly boat is seen! The lifeboat! Well do the seamen know its form! A cheer arouses sinking hearts, and hope once more revives. The work of rescuing is vigorously, violently, almost fiercely begun. The merest child might see that the motto of the lifeboat-men is "Victory or death." But it cannot be done as quickly as they desire; the rolling of the wreck, the mad plunging and sheering of the boat, prevent that. A sturdy middle-aged man named Brown--a common name, frequently associated with common sense--is having a rope fastened round his waist by one of the lifeboat crew named Jones--also a common name, not seldom associated with uncommon courage. But Brown must wait a few minutes while his wife is being lowered into the boat. "Oh! be careful. Do it gently, there's a good fellow," roars Brown, in terrible anxiety, as he sees her swung off. "Never fear, sir; she's all right," says Jones, with a quiet reassuring smile, for Jones is a tough old hand, accustomed to such scenes. Mrs Brown misses the boat, and dips into the raging sea. "Gone!" gasps Brown, struggling to free himself from Jones and leap after her, but the grasp of Jones is too much for him. "Hold on, sir? _she's_ all right, sir, bless you; they'll have her on board in a minute." "I've got bags, boxes, _bucketfuls_ of gold in the hold," roars Brown. "Only save her, and it's all yours!" The shrieking blast will not allow even _his_ strong voice to reach the men in the lifeboat, but they need no such inducement to work. "The gold won't be yours long," remarks Jones, with another smile. Neptune'll have it all to-night. See! they've got her into the boat all right, sir. Now don't struggle so; you'll get down to her in a minute. There's another lady to go before your turn comes. During these few moments of forced inaction the self-possessed Jones remarks to Brown, in order to quiet him, that they'll be all saved in half an hour, and asks if he lives near that part of the coast. "Live near it!" gasps Brown. "No! I live nowhere. Bin five years at the diggings. Made a fortune. Going to live with the old folk now--at Blunderton, far away from the sea; high up among the mountains." "Hm!" grunts Jones. "Do they help to float the lifeboats at Blunderton?" "The lifeboats? No, of course not; never think of lifeboats up there." "Some of you think of 'em down _here_, though," remarks Jones. "Do _you_ help the cause in any way, sir?" "Me? No. Never gave a shilling to it." "Well, never mind. It's your turn now, sir. Come along. We'll save you. Jump!" cries Jones. And they do save him, and all on board of that ill-fated ship, with as much heartfelt satisfaction as if the rescued ones had each been a contributor of a thousand a year to the lifeboat cause. "Don't forget us, sir, when you gits home," whispers Jones to Brown at parting. And _does_ Brown forget him? Nay, verily! He goes home to Blunderton, stirs up the people, hires the town-hall, gets the chief magistrate to take the chair, and forms a _Branch_ of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution--the Blunderton Branch, which, ever afterwards, honourably bears its annual share in the expense, and in the privilege, of rescuing men, women, and little ones from the raging seas. Moreover, Brown becomes the enthusiastic secretary of the Branch. And here let me remark that no society of this nature can hope to succeed, unless its secretary be an enthusiast. Now, reader, if you think I have made out a good case, let me entreat you to go, with Brown in your eye, "and do likewise." And don't fancy that I am advising you to attempt the impossible. The supposed Blunderton case is founded on fact. During a lecturing tour one man--somewhat enthusiastic in the lifeboat cause--preached the propriety of inland towns starting Branches of the Lifeboat Institution. Upwards of half a dozen such towns responded to the exhortation, and, from that date, have continued to be annual contributors and sympathisers. CHAPTER SEVEN. THE LIFE-SAVING ROCKET. We shall now turn from the lifeboat to our other great engine of war with which we do battle with the sea from year to year, namely, the Rocket Apparatus. This engine, however, is in the hands of Government, and is managed by the coastguard. And it may be remarked here, in reference to coastguard men, that they render constant and effective aid in the saving of shipwrecked crews. At least one-third of the medals awarded by the Lifeboat Institution go to the men of the coastguard. Every one has heard of Captain Manby's mortar. Its object is to effect communication between a stranded ship and the shore by means of a rope attached to a shot, which is fired over the former. The same end is now more easily attained by a rocket with a light rope, or line, attached to it. Now the rocket apparatus is a little complicated, and ignorance in regard to the manner of using it has been the cause of some loss of life. Many people think that if a rope can only be conveyed from a stranded ship to the shore, the saving of the crew is comparatively a sure and easy matter. This is a mistake. If a rope--a stout cable-- were fixed between a wreck and the shore, say at a distance of three or four hundred yards, it is obvious that only a few of the strongest men could clamber along it. Even these, if benumbed and exhausted--as is frequently the case in shipwreck--could not accomplish the feat. But let us suppose, still further, that the vessel rolls from side to side, dipping the rope in the sea and jerking it out again at each roll, what man could make the attempt with much hope of success, and what, in such circumstances, would become of women and children? More than one rope must be fixed between ship and shore, if the work of saving life is to be done efficiently. Accordingly, in the rocket apparatus there are four distinct portions of tackle. First the _rocket-line_; second, the _whip_; third, the _hawser_; and, fourth, the _lifebuoy_--sometimes called the sling-lifebuoy, and sometimes the breeches-buoy. The rocket-line is that which is first thrown over the wreck by the rocket. It is small and light, and of considerable length--the extreme distance to which a rocket may carry it in the teeth of a gale being between three and four hundred yards. The whip is a thicker line, rove through a block or pulley, and having its two ends spliced together without a knot, in such a manner that the join does not check the running of the rope through the pulley. Thus the whip becomes a double line--a sort of continuous rope, or, as it is called, an "endless fall," by means of which the lifebuoy is passed to and fro between the wreck and shore. The hawser is a thick rope, or cable, to which the lifebuoy is suspended when in action. The lifebuoy is one of those circular lifebuoys--with which most of us are familiar--which hang at the sides of steamers and other vessels, to be ready in case of any one falling overboard. It has, however, the addition of a pair of huge canvas breeches attached to it, to prevent those who are being rescued from slipping through. Let us suppose, now, that a wreck is on the shore at a part where the coast is rugged and steep, the beach very narrow, and the water so deep that it has been driven on the rocks not more than a couple of hundred yards from the cliffs. The beach is so rocky that no lifeboat would dare to approach, or, if she did venture, she would be speedily dashed to pieces--for a lifeboat is not _absolutely_ invulnerable! The coastguardsmen are on the alert. They had followed the vessel with anxious looks for hours that day as she struggled right gallantly to weather the headland and make the harbour. When they saw her miss stays on the last tack and drift shoreward, they knew her doom was fixed; hurried off for the rocket-cart; ran it down to the narrow strip of pebbly beach below the cliffs, and now they are fixing up the shore part of the apparatus. The chief part of this consists of the rocket-stand and the box in which the line is coiled, in a peculiar and scarcely describable manner, that permits of its flying out with great freedom. While thus engaged they hear the crashing of the vessel's timbers as the great waves hurl or grind her against the hungry rocks. They also hear the cries of agonised men and women rising even above the howling storm, and hasten their operations. At last all is ready. The rocket, a large one made of iron, is placed in its stand, a _stick_ and the _line_ are attached to it, a careful aim is taken, and fire applied. Amid a blaze and burst of smoke the rocket leaps from its position, and rushes out to sea with a furious persistency that even the storm-fiend himself is powerless to arrest. But he can baffle it to some extent--sufficient allowance has not been made for the force and direction of the wind. The rocket flies, indeed, beyond the wreck, but drops into the sea, a little to the left of her. "Another--look alive!" is the sharp order. Again the fiery messenger of mercy leaps forth, and this time with success. The line drops over the wreck and catches in the rigging. And at this point comes into play, sometimes, that ignorance to which I have referred--culpable ignorance, for surely every captain who sails upon the sea ought to have intimate acquaintance with the details of the life-saving apparatus of every nation. Yet, so it is, that some crews, after receiving the rocket-line, have not known what to do with it, and have even perished with the means of deliverance in their grasp. In one case several men of a crew tied themselves together with the end of the line and leaped into the sea! They were indeed hauled ashore, but I believe that most, if not all, of them were drowned. Those whom we are now rescuing, however, are gifted, let us suppose, with a small share of common sense. Having got hold of the line, one of the crew, separated from the rest, signals the fact to the shore by waving a hat, handkerchief, or flag, if it be day. At night a light is shown over the ship's side for a short time, and then concealed. This being done, those on shore make the end of the line fast to the _whip_ with its "tailed-block" and signal to haul off the line. When the whip is got on board, a _tally_, or piece of wood, is seen with white letters on a black ground painted on it. On one side the words are English--on the other French. One of the crew reads eagerly:-- "Make the tail of the block fast to the lower mast well up. If masts are gone, then to the best place you can find. Cast off the rocket-line; see that the rope in the block runs free, and show signal to the shore." Most important cautions these, for if the tail-block be fastened too low on the wreck, the ropes will dip in the water, and perhaps foul the rocks. If the whip does not run free in the block it will jamb and the work will be stopped; and, if the signals are not attended to, the coastguardsmen may begin to act too soon, or, on the other hand, waste precious time. But the signals are rightly given; the other points attended to, and the remainder of the work is done chiefly from the shore. The men there, attach the hawser to the whip, and by hauling one side thereof in, they run the other side and the hawser out. On receiving the hawser the crew discover another _tally_ attached to it, and read:-- "Make this hawser fast about two feet above the tail-block. See all clear, and that the rope in the block runs free, and show signal to the shore." The wrecked crew are quick as well as intelligent. Life depends on it! They fasten the end of the hawser, as directed, about two feet _above_ the place where the tail-block is fixed to the stump of the mast. There is much shouting and gratuitous advice, no doubt, from the forward and the excited, but the captain and mate are cool. They attend to duty and pay no regard to any one. Signal is again made to the shore, and the men of the coastguard at once set up a triangle with a pendent block, through which the shore-end of the hawser is rove, and attached to a double-block tackle. Previously, however, a block called a "traveller" has been run on to the hawser. This block travels on and _above_ the hawser, and from it is suspended the lifebuoy. To the "traveller" block the whip is attached; then the order is given to the men to haul, and away goes the lifebuoy to the wreck, run out by the _men on shore_. When it arrives at the wreck the order is, "Women first." But the women are too terrified, it may be, to venture. Can you wonder? If you saw the boiling surf the heaving water, the roaring and rushing waves, with black and jagged rocks showing here and there, over which, and partly through which, they are to be dragged, you would respect their fears. They shrink back: they even resist. So the captain orders a 'prentice boy to jump in and set them the example. He is a fine, handsome boy, with curly brown hair and bright black eyes. He, too, hesitates for a moment, but from a far different motive. If left to himself he would emulate the captain in being that proverbial "last man to quit the wreck," but a peremptory order is given, and, with a blush, he jumps into the bag, or breeches, of the buoy, through which his legs project in a somewhat ridiculous manner. A signal is then made to the shore. The coastguardsmen haul on the whip, and off goes our 'prentice boy like a seagull. His flight is pretty rapid, considering all things. When about half-way to land he is seen dimly in the mist of spray that bursts wildly around and over him. Those on the wreck strain their eyes and watch with palpitating hearts. The ship has been rolling a little. Just then it gives a heavy lurch shoreward, the rope slackens, and down goes our 'prentice boy into the raging sea, which seems to roar louder as if in triumph! It is but for a moment, however. The double-block tackle, already mentioned as being attached to the shore-end of the hawser, is manned by strong active fellows, whose duty it is to ease off the rope when the wreck rolls seaward, and haul it in when she rolls shoreward, thus keeping it always pretty taut without the risk of snapping it. A moment more and the 'prentice is seen to emerge from the surf like a true son of Neptune; he is seen also, like a true son of Britain, to wave one hand above his head, and faintly, through driving surf and howling gale, comes a cheer. It is still more faintly replied to by those on the wreck, for in his progress the boy is hidden for a few seconds by the leaping spray; but in a few seconds more he is seen struggling among the breakers on the beach. Several strong men are seen to join hands and advance to meet him. Another moment, and he is safe on shore, and a fervent "Thank God!" bursts from the wrecked crew, who seem to forget themselves for a moment as they observe the waving handkerchiefs and hats which tell that a hearty cheer has greeted the rescued sailor boy. There is little tendency now to hesitation on the part of the women, and what remains is put to flight by certain ominous groans and creakings, that tell of the approaching dissolution of the ship. One after another they are lifted tenderly into the lifebuoy, and drawn to land in safety, amid the congratulations and thanksgivings of many of those who have assembled to witness their deliverance. It is truly terrible work, this dragging of tender women through surf and thundering waves; but it is a matter of life or death, and even the most delicate of human beings become regardless of small matters in such circumstances. But the crew have yet to be saved, and there are still two women on board--one of them with a baby! The mother--a thin, delicate woman-- positively refuses to go without her babe. The captain knows full well that, if he lets her take it, the child will be torn from her grasp to a certainty; he therefore adopts a seemingly harsh, but really merciful, course. He assists her into the buoy, takes a quick turn of a rope round her to keep her in, snatches the child from her arms, and gives the signal to haul away. With a terrible cry the mother holds out her arms as she is dragged from the bulwarks, then struggles to leap out, but in vain. Another wild shriek, with the arms tossed upwards, and she falls back as if in a fit. "Poor thing!" mutters the captain, as he gazes pitifully at the retreating figure; "but you'll soon be happy again. Come, Dick, get ready to go wi' the child next trip." Dick Shales is a huge hairy seaman, with the frame of an elephant, the skin of a walrus, and the tender heart of a woman! He glances uneasily round. "There's another lady yet, sir." "You obey orders," says the captain, sternly. "I never disobeyed orders yet, sir, and I won't do it now," says Dick, taking the baby into his strong arms and buttoning it up tenderly in his capacious bosom. As he speaks, the lifebuoy arrives again with a jovial sort of swing, as if it had been actually warmed into life by its glorious work, and had come out of its own accord. "Now, then, lads; hold on steady!" says Dick, getting in, "for fear you hurt the babby. This is the first time that Dick Shales has appeared on any stage wotsomediver in the character of a woman!" Dick smiles in a deprecating manner at his little joke as they haul him off the wreck. But Dick is wrong, and his mates feel this as they cheer him, for many a time before that had he appeared in woman's character when woman's work had to be done. The captain was right when he muttered that the mother would be "soon happy again." When Dick placed the baby--wet, indeed, but well--in its mother's arms, she knew a kind of joy to which she had been a stranger before--akin to that joy which must have swelled the grateful heart of the widow of Nain when she received her son back from the dead. The rest of the work is soon completed. After the last woman is drawn ashore the crew are quickly rescued--the captain, of course, like every true captain, last of all. Thus the battle is waged and won, and nothing is left but a shattered wreck for wind and waves to do their worst upon. The rescued ones are hurried off to the nearest inn, where sympathetic Christian hearts and hands minister to their necessities. These are directed by the local agent for that admirable institution, the Shipwrecked Fishermen's and Mariners' Society--a society which cannot be too highly commended, and which, it is well to add, is supported by voluntary subscriptions. Meanwhile the gallant men of the coastguard, rejoicing in the feeling that they have done their duty so well and so successfully, though wet and weary from long exposure and exertion, pack the rocket apparatus into its cart, run it back to its place of shelter, to be there made ready for the next call to action, and then saunter home, perchance to tell their wives and little ones the story of the wreck and rescue, before lying down to take much-needed and well-earned repose. Let me say in conclusion that hundreds of lives are saved in this manner _every_ year. It is well that the reader should bear in remembrance what I stated at the outset, that the Great War is unceasing. Year by year it is waged. There is no prolonged period of rest. There is no time when we should forget this great work; but there are times when we should call it specially to remembrance, and bear it upon our hearts before Him whom the wind and sea obey. When the wild storms of winter and spring are howling; when the frost is keen and the gales are laden with snowdrift; when the nights are dark and long, and the days are short and grey--then it is that our prayers should ascend and our hands be opened, for then it is that hundreds of human beings are in deadly peril on our shores, and then it is that our gallant lifeboat and rocket-men are risking life and limb while fighting their furious Battles with the Sea. THE END. 
42415	----	STORM WARRIORS: OR, Life-Boat Work ON THE GOODWIN SANDS. BY THE REV. JOHN GILMORE, M.A., RECTOR OF HOLY TRINITY, RAMSGATE; AUTHOR OF "THE RAMSGATE LIFE-BOAT," IN MACMILLAN'S MAGAZINE. _FOURTH THOUSAND._ LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO. 1875. [_All rights reserved._] [Illustration: Life-boat] LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS. STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. TO THE MOST BELOVED MEMORY OF MY LATE FATHER, JOHN GILMORE, COMMANDER, R.N., AND TO THE MOST BELOVED MEMORY OF MY LATE ELDEST BROTHER, ROBERT GRAHAM GILMORE, CAPT., R.N.R., TWO MOST BRAVE, AND SKILFUL, AND TRUE, AND LOVING-HEARTED SAILORS, WHO HAVE PASSED IN FAITH AND PEACE TO THE HAVEN THAT THEY HUMBLY SOUGHT, I INSCRIBE THIS WORK. J. G. PREFACE. "O Mamma, I do hope that we shall be wrecked on the Goodwin Sands, that we may be saved by the brave life-boat men!" "You horrid boy, hold your tongue, do," replied the Mamma, who was anticipating, with some degree of nervousness, starting upon a voyage for Australia in about three weeks' time, and could scarcely be expected to enter to the full into her young son's very practical enthusiasm. But within the last half hour the boy's shrill voice had been heard at the Ramsgate pier-head, among the cheers that welcomed the life-boat back from a night of toil and triumph on the Goodwin; and for the present, to be saved from a wreck by the life-boat men is to him one of the most delightful ideas on earth. After reading an article in 'Macmillan's' of the life-boat men's doings, a brave English Admiral, then commanding a fleet, wrote--"My heart warms to the gallant fellows; tell them so, and please give them the enclosed (a guinea each) from an English Admiral without mentioning my name." A Kentish Squire, sending a donation of a guinea for each of the men wrote,--"To read the brave self-sacrificing doings of the Ramsgate life-boat men, makes me proud of the men of my county." Other gentlemen wrote, and ladies wrote, and by-and-by we heard from Australia, America, South America, and also from other parts of the world came evidence, that English hearts, wherever they are, cannot but feel deeply as they read the simple narrative of such gallant deeds. "Your life-boat stories have undoubtedly helped on the good life-boat cause," said Mr. Lewis. "The public have evinced considerable interest in those tales of life-boat work," said Mr. Macmillan; and so the idea grew that I must write a book about the life-boat work on the Goodwin Sands. A formidable idea this for a man with no "learned leisure," and quite unconscious of possessing any especial literary skill, or any especial literary ambition. Certainly, I could have no difficulty in obtaining full and abundant particulars of the various adventures of the life-boat. It was gravely said to a friend of mine,--"It is really very wrong of Mr. Gilmore, as a family man, to risk his life in the life-boat." I have been able to get all particulars without risking my life, and without, which is not much less to the point, lumbering up the boat with a useless hand; moreover, I doubt whether I should have had very keen powers of observation, while cold and exhausted and breathless, and clinging for very life to the thwarts, with the seas rushing over me, and tearing at me, striving to wash me out of the boat; which would have been my condition and very soon the condition of any unseasoned landsman who went to share the strife which the experienced boatmen often find it hard enough to endure. I have managed better: I have had sometimes two, three, or four boatmen up to my house; and we have fought their battles over again; I questioning and cross-questioning, getting particulars from them, small as well as great. "What did you do next?" To one such question, I remember the answer was--"Why then we handed the jar of rum round, for we were almost beaten to death."--"But with the seas running over the boat, and the boat full of water, it must have been salt-water grog very soon--how did you manage it?"--"Well, Sir, when there was a lull, a man just took a nip; then if there was a cry, 'Look out! a sea!' he put the jar down between his legs, shoved his thumb in the hole, held on to the thwart with his other arm, then bent well over the jar and let the sea break on his back." Thus getting them to recall incident after incident, I got the full details of each adventure; and when we arrived at the more stirring scenes, it was very exciting work indeed; the men could scarcely sit in their chairs--their muscles worked, faces flushed, and most graphically they told their tales, I, not one whit less excited, taking notes as rapidly as possible. Truly I must live to be an old man before I forget the hours I have spent in my study with Jarman, Hogben, and Reading, and R. Goldsmith, and Bill Penny, and Gorham, and Solly, and some other of my brave boatmen friends, as they have told me their many experiences and toils and dangers in life-boat work. To Jarman especially do I owe thanks for his many graphic narratives; he was coxswain of the boat for ten years, and during the time of most of the adventures related. One difficulty I have had to contend with has been the comparative sameness in the ordinary life-boat services. I could have had nine narratives in one especial fortnight, for nine times was the life-boat out during that time; but it has taken nearly ten years for me to find a sufficient number of narratives so varying in their chief incidents that the book should not of necessity be wearisome from repetition, and at the same time give a picture of the varied experiences and dangers of life-boat work. I must leave my Readers to judge how far I have gained my object in the selection I have made. As the few life-boat stories I have already published have been used to some extent in public Readings, Penny Readings, and on the like occasions, I have thought it well to make each story, as far as possible, complete in itself, although to effect this, some repetition of similar incidents has been unavoidable. I come of a sailor family--this will account to landsmen for my seeming acquaintance with nautical matters; I have never been to sea--this will explain to sailors the ignorance on such matters that they will not have much difficulty in detecting. "God help the poor fellows at sea!"--"God protect and bless the life-boat men!" (humble, honest, hardworking and most generous and brave-hearted men as I well know full many of them to be); "And God prosper the good Life-boat Institution, and advance its noble object!" that many a brave fellow may be spared to his family and home; many a good man be plucked from death to be yet the joy and support of loved ones; and many a man, unfitted to meet death, be snatched from its jaws to live to repent and to seek that peace which he had formerly disregarded. With such prayers I launch my book. And may God further it to His glory, by making it instrumental in gaining yet increased sympathy with the already much-loved life-boat cause; thus blessing it to be one of the humble instruments, among many, in helping to work out the results for which, in our sailor-loving land, so many are ever ready to hope, to work, to pray. One last word. The narratives related are, I firmly believe, as far as possible, strictly and literally true; I am positive the boatmen would not knowingly exaggerate in the least; and I have sought to tell the tales, incident by incident, what the men did, and what the men suffered, and what the men said--simply as they related each circumstance to me. CONTENTS. PAGE CHAPTER I. HOW THE SHIPWRECKED FARED IN DAYS OF OLD, AND THE GROWTH OF SYMPATHY ON THEIR BEHALF 1 CHAPTER II. WRECKERS 13 CHAPTER III. THE INVENTOR OF THE LIFE-BOAT 19 CHAPTER IV. THE GROWTH OF THE LIFE-BOAT MOVEMENT 23 CHAPTER V. THE INVENTION AND LAUNCHING OF THE PRIZE LIFE-BOAT 32 CHAPTER VI. THE RAMSGATE LIFE-BOAT AT WORK--STORM WARRIORS TO THE RESCUE 48 CHAPTER VII. THE RESCUE OF THE CREW OF THE "SAMARITANO," AND THE RETURN 66 CHAPTER VIII. A NIGHT ON THE GOODWIN SANDS 82 CHAPTER IX. THE WRECK ABANDONED, AND THE LIFE-BOAT DESPAIRED OF 94 CHAPTER X. SIGNALS OF DISTRESS--OUT IN THE STORM 116 CHAPTER XI. THE EMIGRANT SHIP 134 CHAPTER XII. THE RESCUE OF THE CREW OF THE "DEMERARA," AND THE EMIGRANTS' WELCOME AT RAMSGATE 149 CHAPTER XIII. THE WRECK OF THE "MARY"--GALES ABROAD 161 CHAPTER XIV. THE WRECK OF THE "MARY"--A STRUGGLE FOR DEAR LIFE 171 CHAPTER XV. DEAL BEACH 192 CHAPTER XVI. THE LOSS OF THE "LINDA," AND THE RACE TO THE RESCUE 203 CHAPTER XVII. THE RESCUE OF THE CREW OF THE "AMOOR" 214 CHAPTER XVIII. THE RESCUE OF THE CREW OF THE "EFFORT"--THE DANGERS OF HOVELLING 224 CHAPTER XIX. THE HOVELLERS, OR SALVORS SAVED. THE "PRINCESS ALICE" HOVELLING LUGGER 234 CHAPTER XX. THE SAVING OF "LA MARGUERITE"--(A HOVEL) 254 CHAPTER XXI. THE WRECK BROUGHT IN 265 CHAPTER XXII. THE WRECK OF THE "PROVIDENTIA" 275 CHAPTER XXIII. HARDLY SAVED 287 CHAPTER XXIV. SAVED AT LAST--THE FATAL GOODWIN SANDS 298 CHAPTER XXV. SAVED AT LAST--WE WILL NOT GO HOME WITHOUT THEM 310 CHAPTER XXVI. SAVED AT LAST--"VICTORY OR DEATH" 320 CHAPTER XXVII. OF SOME OF THE LIFE-BOAT MEN 333 CHAPTER XXVIII. CONCLUSION--THE LIFE-BOAT INSTITUTION 344 STORM WARRIORS. CHAPTER I. HOW THE SHIPWRECKED FARED IN DAYS OF OLD, AND THE GROWTH OF SYMPATHY ON THEIR BEHALF. A worthy Quaker thus wrote:--"I expect to pass through this world but once; if, therefore, there can be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again." Before in fancy we man the Life-boat, and rush out into the storm, and have the salt spray dashing over us, and the wind singing like suppressed thunder in our ears--before we watch the gallant Storm Warriors of the present day, in their life-and-death struggle, charging in through the raging seas to the rescue of the shipwrecked, let us look back and see how the unfortunate by shipwreck fared in the old time, and then take a hasty glance or two, watching the gradual growth, from age to age, of sympathy for the distressed; humanity becoming more pronounced, and more practical; the progressive adaptation of Maritime Law to the advancing tone of feeling; the gradual organization and development of that most noble Society, "The National Life-boat Institution," which has for its sole object the lessening of the dangers of the sea, and the saving of the shipwrecked; and, lastly, the progress and final triumph of the labours of science, in the invention of a life-boat which is able successfully to defy the efforts of the most raging storms. The "good old days!" Those who sing too emphatically the glories of the "good old days" must either be influenced by the enchantment distance lends to the view, or guided by the wholesome proverb, "Let nothing, except that which is good, be spoken of the dead." Human nature seems an inheritance unchanging in its properties, and it was in the old time much as it is now, capable of bringing forth fruit good or bad, in accordance with the training it received, or the associations by which it was surrounded. The old days were very far from being either very golden or very good, the strong arm was too often the strong law, and selfishness was far more likely to make the weak ones a prey for plunder, than was compassion to make them objects for assistance. There was a good deal of the Ishmael curse about the old feudal days; the Baron's hand was too ready to be against every man's, and every man's against his; to plunder and to pillage at all convenient opportunities, as well by sea as by land, seemed very much a leading institution. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Piracy was almost openly recognized; a foreign ship with a rich cargo was too great a temptation for the free sailors of those rough-and-ready days, and there was in reality as much of the spirit of piracy in the rugged justice by which it was endeavoured to suppress the crimes, as in the crimes themselves. Supposing an act of piracy to have been committed, restitution was first demanded from the nation, or maritime town, to which the pirate belonged; and if satisfaction was not obtained, then the aggrieved party was allowed to take out "Letters of Marque," and might sally forth to all intents a pirate, to plunder any ship sailing from the place to which the vessel which had first robbed him belonged. This system was acknowledged under the name of the "Right of Private Reprisal;" and so, what with pirates licensed and unlicensed, ships seeking plunder without any discrimination, and ships seeking revenge without much, Hallam might well write: "In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a rich vessel was never secure from attack, and neither restitution nor punishment of the criminals was to be obtained from Governments, who sometimes feared the plunderer, and sometimes connived at the offence." To piracy was added the constant petty warfare and feuds that were carried on between maritime nations, and even between towns of the same nation. Hallam quotes, "The Cinque Ports, and other trading towns of England, were in a constant state of hostility with their opposite neighbours during the reigns of Edward I. and II.; half the instruments of Rymer might be quoted in proof of these conflicts, and of those with the mariners of Norway and Denmark." Sometimes mutual envy produced frays between different English towns; thus in the year 1254 the Winchilsea mariners attacked a Yarmouth galley, and killed some of her men. The evil effects of this confusion of might with right, the anxiety occasioned by this constant warfare, and by these petty feuds, lingered longer on sea than on land; and kept the morals of the seafaring population of the coasts at the lowest ebb; and as one consequence, the plundering of vessels wrecked on the shores was in all parts of Europe carried on with as ruthless a hand, as was piracy and privateering afloat. It may be somewhat interesting to consider the gradual progress of legislation with reference to this very terrible system and crime of wrecking; and while doing so, we shall receive further proof of how the rough mastery of the strong over the weak crept into the Laws, and how full a development it had in such laws, as especially related to wrecks and wreckage. It is hard in the present day to conceive how, in the name of any government making claim to the administration of justice, such a law could have been passed as that which existed prior to Henry I., which gave the king complete possession of all wrecked property: ownership on the part of the original possessor was supposed to have been lost by the action of the sea. Whether the law originated in that strong instinct for the appropriation of unconsidered trifles, which is rather a snare to all governments, or whether it was found necessary to make the king the owner of wreckage, in order to lessen the temptation to cause vessels to be wrecked, and their crews murdered for the sake of pillage, no unfrequent occurrence in those days, however it was, the law existed, and the shipwrecked merchant might come struggling ashore upon a broken spar, and find the coast strewn with scattered but still valuable goods, so lately his, but now by law his no longer, any more than they belonged to the half dozen rude fishermen who stood watching the torn wreck, and dispersed cargo being wave-lifted high upon the beach. Henry I., whose declining years were years of tender and deep sadness, on account of his own losses at sea, was somewhat more compassionate in his dealings with the unfortunate by shipwreck. He decreed that a wreck or wrecked goods should not be considered lost to the owner, or become the property of the Crown, if any man escaped from the wreck with life to the shore. Henry II. made a feeble enlargement of this scant degree of mercy--he expanded this saving clause, so that if either man or beast came ashore alive, the wreck and goods should still be considered as belonging to the original possessors; but failing this, although the owner should be known beyond all possibility of doubt, all the saved property should belong to the king; so that in those old days, if a cat was supposed to have nine lives, it was quite sufficient to account for its being for so long a popular institution on board ship; for even a cat washing ashore, would become the owner's title-deeds to all of his property that the sea had spared. Richard I. could be generous in things small as well as great; he could act nobly upon principle as well as upon impulse; it must have been, indeed, only natural to his open unselfish nature and high courage, to spurn the idea of robbing the robbed, of making the victim of the sea's destructive power the further victim of a king's greed; he was prepared to give his laws of chivalry a wide interpretation, and let them ordain succour for the distressed by the rage of waters, as well as for the distressed by the rage of men. And so when about to take part in the third crusade, King Richard decreed, "For the love of God, and the health of his own soul, and the souls of his ancestors and successors, kings of England. "That all persons escaping alive from a wreck should retain their goods; that wreck or wreckage should only be considered the property of the king when neither an owner, nor the heirs of a late owner, could be found for it." For several centuries all European nations had for the foundation of their maritime laws, a certain code, called the Code of Oleron. There is the usual veil of historical uncertainty clouding the origin of these laws, for while some authorities declare that Richard I. had nothing to do with them, others declare that they were completed and promulgated by Richard, at the Isle of Oleron, as he was returning from one of his crusades, and that they had first and especial reference to the customs on the coasts of some of his continental domains. The Laws of Oleron contain thirty-seven articles, and make very terrible statements as to the system of wrecking, which in those days disgraced the then civilized nations of the earth, while they show also, that if sinners were then prepared to sin with a high hand, that the authorities were prepared with no less energy to inflict punishment for crime. Some of the extracts from these laws are as utter darkness compared with light, when you read them beside extracts from the Life-boat journals of the present day, suggesting as they do the customs of the people as regards wrecking, and the scant mercy that was shown to the shipwrecked. Consider, for instance, the picture as given in the following extracts from the old laws of Oleron:-- "An accursed custom prevailing in some parts, inasmuch as a third or fourth part of the wrecks that come ashore belong to the lord of the manor, where the wrecks take place, and that pilots for profit from these lords, and from the wrecks, like faithless and treacherous villains, do purposely run the ships under their care upon the rocks." The Code declares, that the lords, and all who assist in plundering the wreck shall be accursed, excommunicated, and punished as robbers. "That all false pilots shall suffer a most rigorous and merciless death, and be hung on high gibbets." "The wicked lords are to be tied to a post in the middle of their own houses, which shall be set on fire at all four corners, and burnt with all that shall be therein; the goods being first confiscated for the benefit of the persons injured; and the site of the houses shall be converted into places for the sale of hogs and swine." But if this threat of burning the said wicked lords, and the wholesale confiscation and destruction of their houses and properties, had not sufficient terrors to control such hardened sinners, and if they, or others, were prepared to add murder to robbery, then the laws enacted-- "If people, more barbarous, cruel, and inhuman than mad dogs, murdered shipwrecked folk, they were to be plunged into the sea until half dead, and then drawn out and stoned to death." Railway directors and others would scarcely like the enforcement of laws parallel to those which dealt with the carelessness of Pilots; which provided, "That if negligence on the part of the Pilot caused shipwreck, he was to make good out of his own means the losses sustained, and if his means were not sufficient, then he should lose his head;" it was meekly suggested; "that some care should be taken by the master and mariners," possibly as much for their own sakes as for the sake of the unfortunate pilot. "That they should be persuaded that the man had not the means to make good the loss, before they cut off his head." The preamble of an Act of Parliament is generally the summary of the arguments for the necessity of the Bill. The preamble of a Bill for the repression of crime, may be therefore taken as the expression of the national conviction, that such crimes exist at the time. If so, during the reign of George II. human nature did not show itself to be one whit better than in earlier days, still were men equally capable of cruel selfishness and wrong, although civilization had done much to curb the outward expression of many of the former evils, and to control, to some extent, the open and virulent barbarities of still darker days. For we find that the old laws, and barbarous modes of punishment, were not sufficient to cope with the strongly developed tendencies for wrecking, which showed themselves, in various ways, to be existent, and in full activity. And therefore a new Act was passed, which recited-- "That notwithstanding the good and salutary laws now in being against plundering and destroying vessels in distress, and against taking away shipwrecked, lost, and stranded goods, that still many wicked enormities had been committed to the disgrace of the nation." Therefore certain provisions were enacted, the bearing of which was as follows:-- Death was to be the punishment for the chief of these enormities, such as hanging out false lights for the purpose of bringing vessels into distress. Death for those who killed, or prevented the escape of shipwrecked persons. Death for stealing goods from a wreck, whether there be any living creature on board or not. Acts of Parliament in following years felt the impress of the more merciful spirit of legislation which began to prevail. The punishment of death for theft from a wreck was reduced to imprisonment; while penal servitude for life was made the penalty for a new development of crime, namely, that of wilfully scuttling, or setting on fire, or wrecking a ship for the purpose of defrauding or damaging Insurance Offices or Owners. The existing Merchant Shipping Act of 1854, and the amendments and additions to it, now form the Code by which all maritime questions are arranged; and most of the barbarities, cruelties, and wrongs which, for so many ages, added to the perils of the sea, both as to life and property, are now sufficiently guarded against. But still a most subtle cruelty and fatal wrong is left almost altogether untouched, that of sending vessels to sea in an unseaworthy condition, as to hull, or spars, or sails, or rigging, or perhaps dangerously overladen; many a vessel only worthy of being utterly condemned, which no office would think for one moment of insuring, and that would scarcely pay for breaking up, is bought cheap, patched up, and sent, perhaps, to float up and down our coasts as a Collier, a sort of dingy coffin, only waiting to be entombed by the first heavy gale and raging sea in which she is caught, and then to go quickly down to her grave, carrying with her her crew, unless they have taken warning in time, and found some chance of escaping, which they are not slow to take advantage of, knowing the nature of the craft they are in; but many a brave sailor finds no escape, and feels no hope, when once the heavy gale breaks on the crazy craft, and thus dies a victim to one of the treacherous, and permitted, and most fatal cruelties of our most Christian and most enlightened age; but this state of things, we may well believe, will not be permitted to last much longer; the attention of the public has been thoroughly aroused to the subject, more especially by the zealous, energetic, and unselfish action of Samuel Plimsol, Esq., M.P., who having the welfare of the poor sailor most thoroughly at heart, has attacked with every courage the still existing abuses, arising chiefly from the deficiencies in our Maritime Code, and all who have sympathy with the sailor must wish him success, and who has not? but it is hard work to develop legislative action, even from wide-spread national sympathy; but the work is commenced; and as one result of his action, a Royal Commission has been issued by Her Majesty. The following is a synopsis of the opening instructions of the Commission:-- VICTORIA R. WHEREAS--We have deemed it expedient for divers good causes and considerations that a commission should forthwith issue to make inquiry with regard to the alleged unseaworthiness of British Registered Ships; whether arising from overloading, deck-loading, defective construction, form, equipment, machinery, age or improper stowage; and also to inquire into the present system of Marine Insurance; of the alleged practice of undermanning ships; and also to suggest any amendments in the law which might remedy or lessen such evils as may be found to have arisen from the matters aforesaid, &c., &c. Given at our Court at St. James's the 29th day of March, 1873, in the thirty-sixth year of our reign. By our command, (Signed) H. A. BRUCE. We may now therefore have great hopes, that there will be speedily some good result, from the spirited manner in which this question of sending unseaworthy vessels to sea has been brought before the public. Note.--I have to thank a friend for Notes, which he kindly gave me, of extracts which he made from books to which he had access in the British Museum, referring to the Ancient Maritime Laws upon Wrecking. My friend has, since this Chapter was first written, developed his Notes into an Article, which he published in a periodical; I have, nevertheless, not refrained from giving the account, which I think my readers may find interesting. J. G. CHAPTER II. WRECKERS. "O father! I see a gleaming light; O say what may it be?" But the father answered never a word-- A frozen corpse was he. And ever the fitful gusts between A sound came from the land; It was the sound of the trampling surf On the rocks and the hard sea-sand. The breakers were right beneath her bows She drifted a dreary wreck, And a whooping billow swept the crew Like icicles from her deck." _Longfellow._ "Perhaps some human kindness still May make amends for human ill." _Barry Cornwall._ As we have considered the growth of legislation upon the question of wrecking and wreckage, and contrasted the more civilized, but not perfect code, now existing, with the barbarous laws of days gone by, we may also, perhaps, well put in contrast the present character and action of our coast population, as a rule, with what they were in days more remote. Imagine a homeward-bound vessel some two hundred and fifty years ago, clumsy in build, awkward in rig, little fitted for battling with the gales of our stormy coast, but yet manned with strong stouthearted men, who made their sturdy courage compensate for deficiency of other means; think of many perils overcome, a long weary voyage nearly ended, the crew rejoicing in thoughts of home, of home-love and home-rest, the headlands of dear Old England, loved by her sons no less then, than now, lying a dark line upon the horizon, the night growing apace, the breeze freshening, ever freshening, adding each moment a hoarser swell to the deep murmurs of its swift-following blasts; the ship scudding on, breasting the seas with her bluff bows, rising and pitching with the running waves which cover her with foam! Look on land! keen eyes have watched the signs of the coming storm, men more greedy than the foulest vulture, "more inhuman than mad dogs," have cast most cruel and wistful glances seaward! yes, their eyes light up with the very light of hell, as they see in the dim distance the white sail of a struggling ship making towards the land! And now try to imagine the scene, as the night falls, and the storm gathers, two or three ill-looking fellows drop in, say, to a low tavern standing in a by-lane that leads from the cliff to the beach, in some village on our south-western coast--soon muttered hints take form, and in low whispers the men talk over the chances of a wreck this wild night; they remember former gains, they talk over disappointments, when on similar nights of darkness, wildness, and storm, vessels discovered their danger too soon for them, and managed to weather the headlands of the bay. The plot takes form; with many a deep and muttered curse, the murderous decision is taken, that if a vessel can be trapped to destruction, it shall be. There is an old man of the party whose brow is furrowed with dread lines; he does not say much, but every now and then his eyes glare, and his features work as if convulsed; his comrades look at him, twice, and as a terrific squall shakes the house, a third time: silently he rises and leaves the inn; his mates now look away from him, as if quite unconscious as to what he is about; their stifled consciences cannot do much for them, but can give to each, just one faint half-realized sensation of shame. Now in the pitch darkness of the night, with bowed head, and faltering steps, battling against the storm, the old man leads a white horse along the edge of the cliff, to the top of the horse's tail a lantern is tied, and the light sways with the movement of the horse, and in its movements seems not unlike the mast-head light of a vessel rocked by the motion of the sea. A whisper has gone through the village, of a chance of something happening during the night, and most of the men and many of the women are on the alert, lurking in the caves beneath the cliff, or sheltered behind jutting pieces of rock. The vessel makes in steadily for the land; the captain grows uneasy, and fears running into danger; he will put the vessel round, and try and battle his way out to sea. The look-out man reports a dim light ahead; What kind? and Whither away? He can make out that it is a ship's light, for it is in motion. Yes, she must be a vessel standing on in the same course as that which they are on. It is all safe then, the captain will stand in a little longer; when suddenly in the lull of the storm a hoarse murmur is heard, surely the sound of the sea beating upon rocks? yes! look, a white gleam upon the water! Breakers ahead! Breakers ahead! Oh! a very knell of doom; the cry rings through the ship, Down, down with helm, round her to; too late, too late! a crash, a shudder from stem to stern of the stout ship; the shriek of many voices in their agony, green seas sweeping over the vessel, and soon, broken timbers, bales of cargo, and lifeless bodies scattered along the beach, while the shattered remnant of the hull is torn still further to pieces with each insweep of the mighty seas, as they roll it to, and fro, among the rocks. Fearful and crafty the smile that darkened the dark face of the willing murderer, who was leading the horse with the false light, as he heard the crash of the vessel, and the shrieks of the drowning crew, fearful the smiles that darkened the faces of the men and women waiting on the beach, as they came out from their places, ready to struggle and fight among themselves for any spoil that might come ashore; a homeward-bound ship from the Indies--great good fortune, rich spoil--bale after bale is seized upon by the wreckers, and dragged high upon the beach out of the way of the surf--but see, a sailor clinging to a bit of broken mast, with his last conscious effort he gains a footing on the shore, staggers forward and falls. Is he alive? not now! Why did that fearful old woman kneel upon his chest, and cover his mouth with her cloak? Dead men tell no tales! claim no property! Have such things been possible? They have, and have been done; traditions of such dread tragedies still linger on the Cornish coast, and it is a matter of history that all around our shores miscreants were to be found, who were ready to sacrifice to their blood-thirsty avarice those whom the rage of water had spared. Yes, and still many sailors find their worst enemies ashore, and know no danger so great as that of falling into the hands of their fellow-men; but not now in the small harbours or fishing-villages of the coast--not now among the seafaring population of our shores, must wretches capable of such deeds be looked for, but among the degraded quarters of our large maritime towns--among the land-sharks, who haunt the docks, the crimp-houses, the dens of infamy, the low taverns--there Jack may still be wrecked, and drugged, and robbed, and perhaps murdered. But even there darkness has not got it all its own way; for if there are many who are ready to ruin the reckless sailor, there are many others, thank God, who are ready to warn and aid him. Seamen's Churches, Bethels, Sailors' Homes, Sailors' Missionaries, and all sorts of benevolent institutions, seek to struggle with, and overcome, the bad effect of the many evils to which the sailor on shore is exposed. And the sea-coasts where the Storm Warriors now gather tell a tale of hardihood, of courage, of endurance, and of skill, no less than the olden days could boast of. But now courage is glorified by mercy, and hardihood by sympathy, and endurance is sustained, and skill and enterprise are quickened into action by the noblest feelings, and readiness for self-sacrifice, which can move the heart of man. If our last pages have been gloomy in the picture they have given of what was frequently done not many generations ago, let us seek a contrast, which shall be as light to darkness, and compare with those scenes of old, a picture of that which happens month after month, and in the winter season week after week, and sometimes, almost day after day, on our own coasts in the present time. A homeward-bound ship is rushing along, skimming the green seas, seeming to rejoice in the pride of her beauty, strength, and speed; there is some fatal error or accident, and she comes suddenly to destruction. Many men are anxiously on the look-out; they have been watching her closely from the shore, and eagerly preparing for action at the moment of the shipwreck, which for some time they have feared must happen. And now guns fire, and rockets flash, and the signals quickly given are quickly answered, and the Storm Warriors rush into action; they are not now the Storm Pirates as was the case too often of old, they are the Storm Warriors; their flashing lights tell of coming rescue, and do not lure to destruction; for as the gallant life-boat men rush into all danger, make every effort, battling with mad waves and boiling surf, they fight under the noble banner of Mercy--THEIR MISSION IS TO SAVE. CHAPTER III. THE INVENTOR OF THE LIFE-BOAT. "The most eloquent speaker, the most ingenious writer, and the most accomplished statesman cannot effect so much as the mere presence of the man who tempers his wisdom and his vigour with humanity." _Lavater._ What dreams had Lionel Luken, coach-builder of London, in the year 1780, or thereabouts? The perils to machines, or coaches, in those days were many and varied; the roads were often rough, and dangerous enough to equal the pleasing variety and exciting accompaniments of a cross-country gallop; the bridges were very few, and the fords very many. Did Lionel Luken lose coach, or customer, or both, in a rushing flood which overwhelmed some burdensome coach and unhappy travellers at one of these fords? and, thinking over the disaster sorrowfully, patiently, and profitably, as great minds and great hearts will think, did he conceive the idea of a coach warranted against sinking, with air-tight compartments? and then, expanding the idea, did the noble thought occur to him of building a boat that would not merely float in the rush of a flood, but that would defy the troubled waters of a raging sea? And was it thus, that Lionel Luken gained unto himself the immortal honour of being the first inventor of the Life-boat? In whatever manner the idea presented itself to him, and however it was developed in the mind of the skilful and humane coach-builder, certain it is that it seized him very thoroughly, and that he, being one of the race of God's heroes, alike humane, brave, and earnest, was not content to let his happy, his blessed thought die barren of result, but made noble and persevering efforts to bring his invention to a successful issue. He had high courage, for his courage was inspired by the great hope that his boat might be the instrument of plucking many poor sailors from dread peril, carrying them through threatening seas, snatching them from the very jaws of death, and of restoring them to their loving ones in their loved homes. With this holy ambition, Lionel Luken laboured nobly, as, urged by a like ambition, many now labour nobly for the good life-boat cause. But the old days were not days of quick sympathy, or of ready enterprise, and Luken, although supported, to a certain extent, by royalty, uselessly clamoured at official doors, and sought public patronage in vain. People seemed then to have no strong objection to other people being drowned, just as they had no strong prejudice against others suffering the tortures of miserable prisons, the worst asylums, or any of the many horrors which a more enlightened age has sought with some degree of success to lessen or remove. In the year 1785 Luken took out a patent for a boat which, to a great extent, embodied almost all the more needful properties possessed by the present model life-boat; he at the same time published a pamphlet; "Upon the invention, principle, and construction of insubmergible boats." He suggested that such boats should be protected by bands of cork round their gunwales, that they should be rendered buoyant by the use of air-cases, especially at the bow and stern, and that they should be ballasted by an iron keel. But even when the good man passed from theory to practice, and succeeded at Bamborough in getting a boat converted into a life-boat on the above principles, and when this boat proved a success, and saved many lives, even then he could obtain no support from the authorities in carrying out his grand object. The story is told of a general who blamed a soldier for ducking at the sound of a cannon ball, saying that he had no business to be a soldier if he had the faintest objection to being shot. On the same principle, the first lord of the Admiralty, in his stern rejections of Luken's many efforts, may have considered that life-boats would interfere with a sailor's prerogative for being drowned; and drowned indeed many of the poor fellows were--swept to destruction in sight of land, for winds were cruel, and rocks were hard, and seas wild, and ships frail, while benevolence slept, and the cries of the drowning did not reach official ears, and Luken's loud appeals on behalf of humanity were disregarded, and he, brave man, who had so long struggled, hoping against hope, became utterly disappointed that the movement, the importance of which he so realized, and for which he had so long laboured, did not become general. Still he had the satisfaction of seeing his plan adopted in one or two places, in Shields especially, as we shall show; and he had the great happiness of knowing that, time after time, lives were saved by the boats which were built after his model. He had done all that he could, and went on building coaches, not, we may presume, on life-boat principles; and he tried somewhat to content himself, as he looked forward with hope for a time of greater enlightenment and sympathy, when he trusted that the seed he sowed, almost with tears, would bring its harvest of sheaves, and full of this faith, the good man devised an inscription for the stone which should mark his resting-place in a quiet country churchyard, simply stating, "That he was the Inventor of the first life-boat." Honoured be the memory of Lionel Luken! CHAPTER IV. THE GROWTH OF THE LIFE-BOAT MOVEMENT. "What is noble? 'tis the finer Portion of our mind and heart, Linked to something still diviner Than mere language can impart; Ever prompting--ever seeing Some improvement yet to plan; To uplift our fellow-being, And, like man, to feel for Man." _C. Swain._ If the ear were only as powerful to enable the mind to realize things heard, as the eye is powerful in enabling the mind to realize things seen, many reforms would have been worked out promptly, instead of having to wait year after year, sometimes almost generation after generation, while the mind of the public has had its sympathies but slowly awakened by the constant statement of some evil, and the unceasing demand for its remedy. Thus it was, that a terrible scene of disaster and death, of which many were the agonized eye-witnesses, did more to urge forward the life-boat cause than had been effected by the report of many similar tragedies, which but few lookers on had seen occur. It was in the year 1789, a tremendous gale of wind was raging at Newcastle; thousands of the inhabitants were watching the wild sea as it foamed up at the entrance of the port, and they trembled as they saw vessel after vessel stagger on through the sweeping waves, running into the harbour for refuge. One ship, the _Adventurer_, missed the entrance of the port, and was driven on to the rocks; the seas rushed over her deck, and flew half-way up the masts; the crew took refuge in the rigging, and the wreck was so near to the pier, that the horrified and terror-stricken people thronging there, could hear the cries for help, and even see the growing shade of the death agony upon the faces of the men, as they became more and more exhausted and faint from exposure to the heavy seas; and then they saw one after another of the seamen torn from his hold and perish miserably; and this within call of these thousands of spectators, who were full of grief and sympathy, but were unable even to attempt a rescue. Brave men stood powerless, and as they were frantically appealed to, to try and save the drowning men, could only groan over the utter impossibility of rendering them any assistance! Yes! the daring, hardy, skilful sailors, wept with the weeping women, as they stood overwhelmed with helpless horror watching the most heart-rending scene. Strong boats were there, ready to be manned, boats that had successfully battled with many a rough sea, but they were _not life-boats_, and to go out into such a mad boil of raging waves in any other kind of boat than a life-boat, would have been certain death to all the crew, without affording the faintest possibility of help to the shipwrecked; and thus, without help, without hope, one after the other of the poor shipwrecked sailors, exhausted and faint, fell back into the wild waves and perished: the vessel was speedily torn to pieces, the crowd slowly and sorrowfully went home; soon the darkness of night shadowed the wild sea and the saddened town, but the day's work was not done--the tragedy was not without fruit, in more senses than one, "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church;" the sympathies of the people were now fully aroused; meetings were at once held at South Shields--a committee was formed--and premiums were offered for the best life-boat. William Wouldham, a painter, was one of the successful competitors; he presented a model embracing many excellent qualities; Henry Greathead, a boat-builder of South Shields, stood next on the list. The various models presented were discussed--their more excellent qualities selected--and from the suggestions thus obtained, a model life-boat was planned, from which, as a type, Greathead built a boat, which, either from the fact that he improved upon the model given to him, or because his name, as its builder, was chiefly associated with it, became known as Greathead's life-boat, and he gained the honour of being its inventor--not but what the claims of Wouldham were stoutly asserted; and we may believe by many accepted, for in the parish church of St. Hilda, South Shields, a tombstone erected to the memory of Wouldham bears at its head a model of his life-boat, with the following inscription:-- "Heaven genius scientific gave, Surpassing vulgar boast, yet he from soil So rich, no golden harvest reap'd, no wreath Of laurel gleaned. None but the sailor's heart, Nor that ingrate, of palm unfading this, Till shipwrecks cease, or Life-boats cease to save." Within the next fifteen years, or so, Greathead built about thirty life-boats, eight of which were sent to foreign countries. At last the life-boat cause was wakened into life, but into no vigorous existence; it did not actually die, but lingered on with here and there a spasm of vitality, as some local cause or stirring advocate excited a momentary interest in the question. Life-boat stations were scattered at long intervals round the coast, and boats of various designs, some very good, were placed at a few of the more dangerous positions on our shores. The public was not altogether unprepared to move, but was waiting for the needed impulse. The whole cause, in spite of all its intrinsic merits and great claims upon humanity, waited for the _coming man_, and he was found in the person of Sir William Hillary, Baronet, one of nature's real noblemen; his heart was great, as his arm was strong; his love for the sea was only equalled by his love for sailors; all that concerned their well-being excited his quick sympathy and active interest, and his feelings were, as a matter of course, very sincere, and very earnest for the life-boat cause. Sir W. Hillary lived at Douglas, in the Isle of Man. His sympathy for the sailor proved its vitality by being active and practical: he established Sailors' Homes, and in many ways sought their improvement and benefit; and when the hour of danger came, when the storms raged and lives were in peril, Sir William was the first, not only to encourage, but also to lead the boatmen to the rescue of the shipwrecked; he shrank from no danger, he shared all labour, and endured all hardship, and this to such an extent, that he was personally engaged in efforts by which more than three hundred lives were saved. The following are some of the occasions in which Sir William's heroic efforts were blessed in their results to the saving of life:-- In the year 1825 Sir William, and the crews under him, rescued eighty-seven persons, sixty-two of these from the steamer _City of Glasgow_; eleven from the _Leopard_ brig; and nine from the _Fancy_ sloop. In the year 1827 they saved seventeen lives. In 1830, four different crews were rescued, forty-three lives being saved; and in 1832 no fewer than fifty lives were saved from a passenger-ship. The nature of the perils Sir William Hillary so nobly encountered, and the toils he shared, may be well illustrated by an account of the rescue of the crew of the _St. George_. On the 29th of November, 1830, the mail steamer _St. George_ struck on St. Mary's rock, not far from Douglas. The captain had no boats to which he could trust in so violent a sea; he therefore cut away the mainmast, and endeavoured to construct a raft from its wreck, together with the spars which they had on board; but the seas proved too heavy for him to be able to do so, and he signalled his distress to the shore. Sir William Hillary and a crew of twelve men at once manned the life-boat, and proceeded in the direction of the wreck; they found the steamer hard upon the rock, and surrounded by such a raging boil of surf that any attempt to rescue the unfortunate passengers and crew seemed almost impossible; nevertheless they were not the men to leave their fellow-creatures to perish without making an effort for their safety, at whatever risk that effort must be made; they therefore let the boat rush before the gale into the heart of the surf; here she was completely at the mercy of the wild and broken waves--her rudder was torn off, oar after oar was broken, until scarcely half the number were left--some of the air-tight compartments were strained and filled with water, and rendered useless, and to add to the dismay of the crew, one of the tremendous seas which rushed over the boat washed Sir William and three men overboard; it was only after the greatest difficulty that they were recovered, and, happily, without being much hurt; the life-boat was then hurled by the waves between the steamer and the rock, here the broken mainmast and other wreckage were being driven violently by the surf in all directions, so that the life-boat was in a very whirlpool of danger. The crew and passengers of the steamer thought, however, that they would be safer in the boat, in spite of the dread peril she was in, than on board the steamer, which was being torn and beaten to pieces, and they left the steamer for the boat; the boat had then more than sixty persons on board; and hour after hour her crew struggled in vain to get her out of the position of extreme danger, in which the force of the gale and the rush of the waves held them as in a vice; every moment was one of very great hardship to all on board the boat, as the surf continually flew over them in volumes, and the danger of being crushed by the wreckage, that was tossing and leaping in the contest of the mad sea that raged around them, was incessant. After nearly three hours of the hardest struggle, they managed to get the almost disabled boat a little clear from the rock and the wreck, but still they were unable to make any headway against the seas, or get beyond the circle of surf, when at length the sea, as if tired of sporting with its shattered prey, drove the boat so far beyond the range of the surf, that other boats were able to come to her assistance and all lives were saved. Such was the nature of the perils and hardships that Sir William Hillary often readily and nobly encountered in his efforts to save life. When, therefore, urged by the cruel necessities of the case, he pleaded for the life-boat cause, and illustrated his pleading by his own personal experience, men began at last to listen to what he urged. He described not only that the dangers of the shipwrecked were fearfully increased from want of due means for their rescue, in the absence of boats properly constructed to contend against the peculiar danger arising from the raging seas and broken water which generally surrounded a wreck, but he showed also how, from the same cause, brave men too often rushed to their death. That in answer to the cry for rescue, men put to sea, urged by the generous impulses of sympathy and courage, went forth possessed of all the needed bravery, the strength, the skill, the determination to perish or to save: they did often perish, and did not save, because they needed the boats which could alone safely contend with the dangers that they had to encounter. Two members of Parliament, Mr. Thomas Wilson and Mr. George Hibbert, were especially moved by such a tale, told by such a man, out of a brave, loving, full heart, and illustrated by such terrible experience, and they gave Sir William their very hearty co-operation; and these three men became, in the year 1825, the founders of the "Royal National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck." Sir W. Hillary undertook the formation of a branch committee of the society for the Isle of Man, and so fully succeeded that, by the year 1829, each of the four harbours of the station possessed a life-boat. Under the organization of this society, and with the aid of some fourteen smaller, and local associations, and notably with the assistance of "The Shipwrecked Fishermen and Mariners' Royal Benevolent Society," which was instituted in the year 1839, and provided seven life-boats on different parts of the coast, the life-boat cause went on, doing much noble work, but leaving very much more undone; and very much that was effected was not done in really the best way. Thus the life-boat cause had prospered, the work was becoming organised; but still much was wanting; it needed some new and great stimulus--and in a few years the stimulus came. CHAPTER V. THE INVENTION AND LAUNCHING OF THE PRIZE LIFE-BOAT. "In spite of rock and tempest's roar, In spite of false lights on the shore, Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea, Our hearts, our hopes are all with thee; Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, Are all with thee--are all with thee!" _"The Ship of State."--Longfellow._ In the year 1848, the Admiralty called for returns from the various coastguard stations which gird the coast, as to the condition of the life-boat service in their respective neighbourhoods; the results showed a state of things very far from satisfactory. It appeared that the number of life-boats was about one hundred, but out of these, only fifty-five were reported as being in good repair, and a great many of this number were declared to be of such heavy construction, that very much of their usefulness was sacrificed. Twenty boats were reported as being only in fair repair, and twenty-one boats were declared to be bad and unserviceable. From many stations came the reports of great loss of life from want of a boat. From Ballycotton, for instance, where a life-boat could be easily manned, and yet, sad to state, that within fifteen years no fewer than sixty-seven lives had been lost, no life-boat being there to effect a rescue. The evidence for the necessity for further effort was also afforded, by the long distances which existed between many of the life-boat stations. Twenty-seven miles, thirty-three, forty-five, ninety-four, one hundred and forty-one, and one hundred and fifty-one miles being among such distances; thus in various places the coast was left absolutely unprotected for many miles together. Equally sad, and similar to that given by Sir W. Hillary, was the evidence as to the faulty construction of many of the boats, inasmuch as although they were a decided improvement upon the ordinary boat, yet they too often proved incompetent to contend against the rush of seas and broken water to which they were exposed; from this cause the most painful tragedies frequently occurred, the loss of brave fellows who went out to save others from a dreadful death, and who through no lack of courage, of strength, or of skill, on their part, but from the faulty construction of the boat they were in, found one common grave with those whom they sought to rescue from the raging seas. Thus one life-boat gained a most sad notoriety: on one occasion she drowned four of her crew; on another occasion twelve; and on a third, twenty men were drowned out of her. A second, so called, life-boat lost on one occasion two men, on a second three men, and on a third all her crew; when she was most properly condemned as too dangerous to be of use. A Scarborough life-boat lost sixteen men. At Dunbar, on the occasion of a man-of-war being wrecked, the life-boat in two trips saved forty-five men; on her third trip she upset, and nearly all who were in her were drowned; she was condemned, and for many years no life-boat at all was stationed there, although from time to time many lives were lost. Thus we find that in the year 1850 life-boat work was no unknown work. Life-boat societies had done much, and were doing much. Life-boats had been stationed in various localities during the preceding half century, and there were at the date mentioned seventy-five life-boats in England, eight in Scotland, and eight in Ireland; but nearly one-half of these were, from one cause or another, more or less unserviceable; and many of the most exposed parts of the coast were still unprovided with life-boats. In that year, 1850, there were six hundred and eighty-one wrecks: the loss of life was about seven hundred and eighty-four, including a crew of eleven men, whose boat upset one stormy November night, they having put off to the assistance of a vessel in distress. It was evident that the life-boat system was not sufficiently developed or general, and there was, moreover, no universally approved model of a boat in which all boatmen might have confidence; this latter consideration was especially brought before the notice of the public by an accident which occurred to the Newcastle life-boat, the sad particulars of which are given in the following extracts from a letter written December 14th, 1849, by the then treasurer of the life-boat "Friend of the Ports of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and South Shields," Mr. R. Anderson. "The life-boats of the Port of Newcastle, stationed at the entrance of the Tyne in North and South Shields, have been for about sixty years instrumental in saving the crews of those vessels which have been unfortunately stranded at the entrance of the port. No correct account was kept of the exact number so rescued from danger previous to the year 1841, but since then four hundred and sixty-six persons have been brought ashore from sixty-two vessels. "On the morning of the fatal accident, the _Betsy_, of Littlehampton, laden with salt, was stranded on the hard sand; and the receding tide left her among heavy breakers, with a heavy ebb-tide running past her. "The life-boat was launched about 9 A.M., and being manned by twenty-four pilots, immediately proceeded to the vessel; and, having hailed her, and given instructions to the people on board to prepare two ropes ready to throw to them, they waited for a little time between the ship and the shore for the ropes to be got ready, then they again proceeded to the vessel, and succeeded in getting alongside; the rope from the after end of the vessel was received into the boat; the rope from the fore end had just been received and reeved in the ring at the stern, and a few fathoms hauled into the boat; and the shipwrecked men were preparing to descend, when a terrific knot of sea recoiling from the resistance it met at the vessel's bow, threw the bow of the boat up over end, and the bow-rope not holding, the boat was driven in that position, with all her crew thrown into the stern, astern of the vessel, into the rapid ebb-tide, which running into her, caused the boat to capsize, and all the men were washed into the sea; they were carried away by the tide. "The accident was seen from the shore, and immediately the second life-boat was launched from South Shields, and, with seventeen pilots on board, proceeded with all possible despatch to the assistance of the crew of the former boat; they found and rescued three, one had succeeded in getting on board the brig, and thus only four out of the twenty-four were saved. "Nor were the crew of the stranded vessel forgotten; the third life-boat from North Shields was launched; and notwithstanding the appalling accident, a crew of seventeen brave fellows manned her instantly, and proceeded alongside the _Betsy_, and brought all her crew, and the one pilot who succeeded in getting on board her, safely ashore. "The first life-boat which had turned end-over-end was washed ashore bottom up; her great want was the self-righting principle." Urged by the necessities of the case, which became daily more apparent, the Duke of Northumberland, President of the National Life-boat Society, organized a plan by which the intellect and experience of the world at large should be encouraged to invent a life-boat, which should be on all points as perfect as possible. His Grace offered a premium of one hundred guineas for the best model of a life-boat. The defects of the existing boats were pointed out as a guide to inventors, they being chiefly: "1. They do not upright themselves in the event of being upset. "2. That they are too heavy to be readily launched or transported along the coast in case of need. "3. That they do not free themselves from water fast enough. "4. That they are very expensive." A committee was formed to examine, and report upon the models. The offer of His Grace, and the conditions of the competition, were published in October 1850, and no expense or pains were spared in making them known. The interest and excitement produced by the notice were deeply and widely felt; the challenge was accepted by great numbers of people--amateurs, to whom to invent a life-boat seemed a laudable and holy ambition, vied with the boat-builders who had thoughts of professional reputation to give a spur to their humanity--speedily in all parts of England, and in many other parts of the world, busy minds and skilful hands were at work. In due time models came teeming in upon the committee in almost overwhelming numbers. Not content with asking for models of life-boats, the committee also asked for information upon certain defined points, the models sent in numbered no fewer than two hundred and eighty, while the answers to inquiries were sufficient to fill five folio volumes of manuscript. As for the models, every possible form and every possible principle seemed to find its illustration. There were boats designed upon the principle of Pontoons, of Catamarans, of Rafts, Steamers, Paddle-box Boats, North Country Cobles--every possible modification of the whaleboat, and of the ordinary boat; boats made of wood, of tin, of galvanized corrugated iron, boats with cork linings, with air-boxes, with water-ballast, with no ballast, tubular boats, boats a series of tubs, a series of boxes; to be propelled by oars, by sails, by paddle-wheels, by screws, to be worked by hand power, by steam power, by atmospheric air. The Committee might well feel overwhelmed at such a perfect rush of ideas and designs thus suggested for their consideration; and as they began to go into details, they found it almost impossible to decide which model was best, where the elements of excellency were so varied and so numerous, especially as they found that so large a number of the boats presented such excellent combinations of different good qualities. The committee therefore deemed it necessary to organize a regular competitive examination, assigning marks to different necessary qualifications, that they might thus be able to arrange the boats presented in an order of merit, dependent upon their respective combination of good qualities. The following is the list of qualities that were required in the boats, with the number of marks apportioned to each. 1st Quality. Rowing boat in all weathers 20 2nd " Sailing boat in all weathers 18 3rd " Sea boat, i.e., stability, safety, buoyancy forward for launching through surf 10 4th " Means of freeing boat from water readily 8 5th " Extra buoyancy nature, amount, distribution, mode of application 7 6th " Power of self-righting 9 7th " Suitableness for beaching 4 8th " Room for, and power of carrying passengers 6 9th " Moderate weight for transport along shore 3 10th " Protection from injury to bottom 3 11th " Ballast, as iron 1, water 2, cork 3 6 12th " Access to stem and stern 3 13th " Tumbler heads for securing warps 2 14th " Fenders, life-lines, &c. 1 With their mode of examination thus fully organized, the Committee patiently and carefully set about their interesting task, and after much labour it was decided that the model presented by Mr. James Beeching, of Great Yarmouth, possessed the best combination of necessary qualifications, and to it was awarded eighty-six out of the one hundred marks; and the inventor had the gratification of receiving the following letters from the Duke of Northumberland, and from the Chairman of the Life-boat Committee:-- _Alnwick Castle,_ _13th August, 1851._ SIR, It gives me much pleasure to send you a cheque for £105, as the prize for the best model of a life-boat. And I must thank you for the assistance you have given me and the Society for Saving Life from Shipwreck by that model, which will enable us to establish a better life-boat on the coast than those at present in use. Yours, &c., NORTHUMBERLAND. _To Mr. James Beeching._ * * * * * _Somerset House, London,_ _14th August, 1851._ SIR, I have the gratification to acquaint you that the Committee appointed to examine the life-boat models sent to Somerset House, to compete for the premium offered by His Grace the Duke of Northumberland for the best model of a life-boat, have awarded the prize to your model. I am therefore directed by His Grace to transmit to you the enclosed cheque for £105, and the report of the Committee upon which the award was founded. Yours, &c., J. WASHINGTON, R.N., Chairman of the Committee. _To Mr. James Beeching._ A fine boat, called the _Northumberland_, was speedily built by Mr. Beeching, and she immediately commenced a more memorable career than has ever fallen to the lot of any other boat--the stormy petrel of the sea--the pioneer of a work not more glorious than much which had been attempted, but which crowned almost every brave effort with abundant success, where science aided sympathy with all the fruits of her skill, so that the double cry of agony, where on the one hand there was lamentation for the shipwrecked and lost, and on the other a cry, if possible, even more piteous still, for those who perished in their efforts to save the shipwrecked--a cry that had been too often heard, was soon almost to cease from the land. The early passage in the history of the _Northumberland_ seemed to suggest that hers was to be a holiday existence, her career commenced with a round of triumphant display and popularity. She visited various parts of the coast, and all her properties were displayed, creating everywhere confidence in her powers, and enthusiasm at the thought of the stimulus to be given to the great work of saving life from shipwreck, by the possession of such a noble and efficient boat. There was a great gathering at Ramsgate to witness the first public trial the boat was to be put through; naval officers, elder brethren of the Trinity House, scientific men of all services were interested deeply in the series of experiments to which she was to be subjected, for they all fully realized how the question of life or death to thousands, yea, in the course of time, to tens of thousands, was involved in the problem, as to whether any boat could be found competent to resist all the fury of a raging and broken sea. The _Northumberland_ was manned, and first her stability was to be tested; all her crew stood and jumped upon one gunwale, but failed to upset her; her self-righting property was next to be tried; they brought her under a crane, and passing a rope from her mast round her bottom, gradually hauled her over, and she was bottom up; they let go the strain on the rope, and in five seconds she had righted herself, and in twenty seconds more she had emptied herself of water. Again she was to be turned over, and this time fresh interest was to be excited in the experiment, as Mr. Samuel Beeching, the son of the inventor and builder of the boat, determined to show his confidence in her powers by being in her when she was upset: slowly the strain is again put upon the rope under-running the boat, and she gradually turns over, Mr. Beeching clinging to the centre thwart the while; a moment's suspense, the boat is keel up, and the brave man out of sight--scarcely time for a pang of fear, when the boat comes round with a throb, and the man is seen standing on the thwart, cheering in answer to the cheers with which the success of the experiment and his re-appearance are greeted. Now for a trial at sea, among the bright leaping waves, which seem full of playfulness and glee, as if ready to greet her merrily, and to whisper no word of the many deadly conflicts she must wage with them in coming days, ere she shall snatch the spoil of human life from their rage and strength. Strong arms are at the oars, the good ash staves bend, and away she shoots through the waves, holding her own successfully as other boats race with her. Her sailing powers must be tried, and a revenue-cutter accepts her challenge; both bowl along with a fresh breeze bellying their sails, and the life-boat behaves well and bravely, and proves also a success under sail. The breeze freshens, and there is a great bubble of leaping surf in the broken water in the angle of the pier; an ordinary boat would speedily be swamped there; but there the life-boat rides on the tumbling seas like a thing of life; every experiment increases the confidence that her crew and the lookers-on feel in the boat. Seaward now for a sterner trial, and on the field where her numerous future contests are to be fought, and her numerous victories gained; out and away where the rolling seas break in upon the Goodwin Sands, and where they fret into surf as they are checked in their race, and make the sea white with the foam of their falling crests; away into the tumbling seas, running the gauntlet of the leaping waves; away, and away, she speeds round the north end of the Sands, then steers for the North Foreland, until all her crew are perfectly delighted with her powers, and return to describe the trip, and how she behaved, and the confidence they have in her, that they would not hesitate to go in her into any broken water whatever. Great is the congratulation and gladness among the naval and scientific men who are watching the experiments, and many thank God, that at last the problem is solved--that a boat is found able to defy the broken surf and raging waves--a fit and safe instrument in the hands of the brave-hearted boatmen, who are ever ready to do and dare all that is possible, in their efforts to save life from shipwreck. The crew that went out in the boat made the following report:-- To the Harbour Commissioners. "This is to certify that we have this day been to sea in the _Northumberland_ prize life-boat, and have had every opportunity of proving her sailing qualities; she has also been through a great deal of broken water and heavy sea, and we consider her, in the true sense of the word, perfectly qualified to encounter any bad weather when occasion might require her services, and we should be quite willing to go in her to any vessel in distress at any time." The prize life-boat was purchased in December, 1851, for £250, by the Trinity Board, for the use of the Royal Harbour at Ramsgate, with the dread Goodwin Sands for her special cruising ground. The trial of the life-boat became an especial feature at the various regattas held round the coast. The interest in her became very general, and a great move was given to the life-boat cause. At Teignmouth they determined that the trial should be of a very practical and somewhat sensational nature--a capsize out at sea! At eleven o'clock one stormy morning the signal was given to man the life-boat. In about one quarter of an hour she was making her way out to sea, and then her crew endeavoured to capsize her; they had tried in vain to do so in smooth water, would she defy their efforts in a rough tumble of sea and heavy weather? They set all her sails and manoeuvred in every way to upset her, but without effect, when, while she was heeling over almost on her broadside, with all her sails full, the crew, at a given signal, jumped on her lee-gunwale, and down on her broadside she went; her sails were let go, and she righted at once, only two of her crew were thrown out of her, and these, with their cork jackets on, were bobbing up and down quite happily among the waves; they were soon picked up, and the boat speedily on her way again, the men more pleased and confident than ever in her wonderful powers. But the National Life Boat Institution was not quite contented with the prize life-boat; she had gained eighty-six marks out of the one hundred in the competition of models; she was near perfection, but still could be improved upon; and as the great aim of the Society was to obtain a perfect boat, they would naturally not be content with anything less than this desired perfection, a boat that should satisfy the judges to the full in every particular, and thus merit the whole one hundred marks, instead of the eighty-six. Mr. Peake, the then assistant master-shipwright at the Royal Dockyard at Woolwich, was appealed to. He made the matter his especial study. He took the prize-boat as his model, and combining with it some of the best qualities of the other boats, constructed a boat not differing much, or in any essential point, from the prize one, but yet sufficiently an improvement upon it to be pronounced as far as possible perfect on all points; and it was at once adopted by the National Life Boat Institution as the standard model life-boat. The life-boat cause was now to know no further stay in its onward course, the Committee was formed of thoroughly earnest and warm-hearted men--men full of practical knowledge and warm sympathy. Moreover, the Institution was blessed with as able and indefatigable a Secretary as an Institution ever rejoiced in, this in the person of Mr. Richard Lewis, Barrister-at-Law; the appeal to the public for sympathy and assistance was general, and generally acknowledged. The Society told of dangerous headlands, of treacherous sands and tides all round the coast, of shipwrecks frequent, and deaths often occurring for want of a life-boat, and of life-boats, faultless in construction, only waiting the time when the Committee should have the means to place them where needed; the funds grew as the wants were realized, and the heart of the nation was warmed to the noble cause; the wreck-chart still showed a dismal circumference of casualties round the coast, marking dangerous points where many vessels had been lost; but the inner line of defence began also to show itself on the map, and the marks of the life-boat stations began year by year to confront more regularly the signs of places where danger and shipwreck were most frequent. But more of this, and the noble Life-boat Society, in the closing chapter of the book. It is time that we launched our life-boat for its real work. The waves are roaring on the Goodwin, the life-boat is at her moorings in the harbour of Ramsgate, the brave boatmen--Storm Warriors indeed--are on the watch, hour after hour through the stormy night walking the Pier, and giving keen glances to where the Goodwin Sands are white with the churning seething waves that leap high, and plunge and foam amid the treacherous shoals and banks. Look! a flash is seen; listen, in a few seconds, yes, there is the throb and boom of a distant gun, a rocket cleaves the darkness; and now the cry--Man the life-boat! Man the life-boat! Seaward Ho! Seaward Ho! But now in a boat efficient on all points, whose only career shall be to save, and not to add victim to victim, as she herself is overcome by the rage of the sea. CHAPTER VI. THE RAMSGATE LIFE-BOAT AT WORK.--STORM WARRIORS TO THE RESCUE. "Ye mariners of England, That guard our native seas; Whose flag has braved a thousand years The battle and the breeze! Your glorious standard launch again To match another foe; And sweep through the deep, While the stormy winds do blow, While the battle rages loud and long And the stormy winds do blow." It was a Sunday night, in the month of February, a few years ago, the anxious boatmen, who kept a diligent watch, shrugged their shoulders as they cast keen glances to windward, and declared that it was going to be a very dirty night. Heavy masses of cloud skirted the horizon as the sun set; and as the night drew on, violent gusts of wind swept along, accompanied by snow-squalls. It was a dangerous time for vessels in the Channel, and it proved fatal to one at least. Before the light broke on Monday morning, the Margate lugger _Eclipse_ put out to sea to cruise round the shoals and sands in the neighbourhood of Margate, on the look out for the victims of any disasters that might have occurred during the night. The crew soon discovered that a vessel was ashore on the Margate Sands, and directly made for her. She proved to be the Spanish brig _Samaritano_ of one hundred and seventy tons, bound from Antwerp to Santander, and laden with a valuable and miscellaneous cargo. Her crew consisted of the captain, Modesto Crispo, and eleven men; it was during a violent squall of wind and snow that the vessel was driven on the Sands, at about half-past five in the morning; the crew attempted to get away from the vessel in the boats, but in vain, the oars were broken in the attempt, and the boats stove in. The lugger _Eclipse_, as she was running for the brig, spoke a Whitstable fishing-smack, and borrowed two of her men and her boat. They boarded the brig as the tide went down, and hoped to be able to get her off the Sands at the next high water. For this purpose, six Margate boatmen and the two Whitstable men were left on board. But with the rising tide, the gale came on again in all its fury, and the boatmen had speedily to give up every hope of saving the vessel. They hoisted their boat on board to prevent her being swamped by the seas which were breaking heavily, and all hands began to feel that it was becoming a question, not of saving the vessel, but of saving their own lives. The sea rushed furiously over the wreck, lifting her, and then letting her fall with crushing violence upon the sands. Her timbers did not long withstand this trial of their strength; a hole was quickly knocked in her side, she filled with water, and settled down upon the sand. The waves began now to break with great force over the deck; the lugger's boat was speedily knocked to pieces and swept overboard; the hatches were forced up, and some of the cargo which floated on the deck was at once washed away. The brig began to roll and labour fearfully, as wave after wave broke against her, with a force that shook her from stem to stern and threatened to throw her bodily upon her broadside; the men, fearing this, cut the weather-rigging of the main mast, and the mast soon broke off short with a great crash, and went over the side. All hands now took refuge in the fore-rigging; nineteen men had then no other hope between them and a terrible death than the few shrouds of the shaking mast. The wind beat against the poor fellows with hurricane force; each wave that broke against the vessel sprang up in columns of foam and drenched them to the skin; the air was full of spray and sleet, which froze upon them as it fell. The Margate boatmen were there, but the Margate lugger could not have lived five minutes in the sea that surrounded the vessel; the Whitstable smack would have been wrecked at once, if she had attempted to get near the wreck, and thus the poor fellows, caught in a trap, had to be left by their comrades to their fate, their only chance of escape being the possibility of a life-boat coming to their rescue, and this before their frail support should yield to the rush of wind and sea. And resting in this hope they waited hour after hour, clinging to the shrouds of the tottering mast; but no help came, until one and all despaired of life. In the meanwhile, news of the wreck had spread like wildfire through Margate. In spite of the gale, and the blinding snow squalls, many of the inhabitants struggled to the cliff, and with spy-glasses tried to penetrate the scud, or to gain in the breaks of the storm some glimpses of the wreck. As soon as the peril the crew of the brig were in was known, the smaller of the two Margate life-boats was manned and made to the rescue. As she sailed out into the storm, the seas broke over her and filled her; this her gallant crew heeded little at first, for they had every confidence in her powers to ride safely through any storm, that her air-tight compartments would prevent her from sinking; but to the astonishment of the men they found that the boat was rapidly losing her buoyancy, and fast becoming unmanageable; indeed she was filling with water, which came up to the men's waists. The air-tight boxes had evidently filled; and they remembered, too late, that the valves, with which each box is provided to let out any water that may leak in, had been left unscrewed in the excitement of starting. Their boat, with the air-tight compartments filled with water, virtually ceased to be a life-boat, and her crew had to struggle for their own safety. Although then within a quarter of a mile of the brig, there was no help for it, they could make no farther way against the storm; the boat was unmanageable, and the only chance of life left to the boatmen themselves, was to run her ashore on the nearest part of the coast. It was doubtful whether they would be able to succeed even in this; and it was not until they had battled for four hours with the sea and gale, that they were able to get ashore in Westgate Bay. There the coastguard were ready to receive them, and did their best to revive the exhausted men. As soon as it was discovered at Margate that the first life-boat was disabled, the large life-boat, the _Friend of all Nations_, was got ready with every speed, and with much trouble dragged round to the lee side of the pier, where it was launched. Away she started, her brave crew doing all they could to battle with the gale, and force their way out to the wreck; but all their efforts were in vain; the tremendous wind was right against them; the sea completely overpowered them, and prevented their beating to windward; the tiller gave way, and after a hard struggle her crew had also to give up the attempt, and this life-boat in turn was driven ashore about one mile from the town. With both their life-boats wrecked, the Margate men almost gave up all hopes of saving the crew of the vessel and the men that were left on board; but this should not be the case until every possible effort had been made; but it was with small hope for the shipwrecked, and with much apprehension for the boats themselves, that the people watched two luggers--the _Nelson_ and the _Lively_--undaunted by the fate of the life-boats, stagger out mid the sweeping seas to the rescue. The fate of one lugger, the _Nelson_, was soon settled; a fearful squall of wind caught her before she had got many hundred yards clear of the pier; it swept her foremast out of her, and her crew had to make every possible effort to avoid being driven on the rocks, and there wrecked. The _Lively_ was more fortunate; she beat her way out to sea, but found so heavy a surf breaking over the Sands, that it was evidently impossible to cross them, or to get near the wreck. The Margate people became full of despair, and many a bitter tear was shed for sympathy and for personal loss as they watched the wreck, and thought of the poor fellows perishing slowly before their eyes, apparently without any possibility of being saved. A rumour spread among the crowd that the lieutenant of the coastguard had sent an express off to Ramsgate, for the Ramsgate steamer and life-boat; but this scarcely afforded any hope, as it was thought impossible that the steamer and life-boat could make their way round the North Foreland in the teeth of so tremendous a gale, or that, if they did so, it was supposed impossible that either the ship could hold together, or the crew live, exposed as they were in the rigging, during the time it would of necessity take the steamer and boat to get to them. We now change the scene to Ramsgate. From an early hour on the Monday morning, groups of boatmen assembled on the pier at Ramsgate; they were occasionally joined by some of the more hardy among the townsmen, or by a stray visitor, attracted by the wild scene that the storm presented. The boatmen could faintly discern, in the intervals between the snow-squalls, a few vessels in the distance, running before the gale, and they were keenly on the watch for signals of distress, that they might hasten to the rescue. But no such signal was given. Every now and then, as the wind boomed by, some landsmen suggested that it was the report of a gun from one, or other, of the three light-vessels, which guard the dangerous Goodwin Sands; but the boatmen shook their heads, and those who with spy-glasses kept a look-out in the direction of the light-vessels confirmed them in their disbelief. About nine o'clock, tidings came to Ramsgate that a brig was ashore on the Woolpack Sands off Margate. It was, of course, concluded that the two Margate life-boats would go to the rescue; and although there was much anxiety and excitement as to the result of the attempt the Margate boatmen would certainly make, no one had the least idea that the services of the Ramsgate life-boat would be required. But shortly after twelve a coastguard man from Margate hastened breathless to the pier, and to the harbour-master's office, saying, in answer to eager inquiries as he hurried on, that the two Margate life-boats had been wrecked, and that the Ramsgate boat was wanted. The harbour-master immediately gave orders, "Man the life-boat." No sooner had the words passed from his lips than the boatmen, who had crowded round the door in anticipation of the order, rushed away to the boat. First come, first in; not a moment's hesitation, not a thought of further clothing; they will go as they are, rather than not go at all. The news rapidly spreads; each boatman as he heard it, hastily snatched up his bag of waterproof overalls, and south-wester cap, and rushed down to the boat; and for some time boatman after boatman was to be seen racing down the pier, hoping to find a place still vacant; if the race had been to save their lives, rather than to risk them, it would hardly have been more hotly contested. Some of those who had won the race and were in the boat, were ill prepared with clothing for the hardships they would have to endure, for if they had not their waterproofs at hand they did not delay to get them, fearing that the crew might be made up before they got to the boat. But these men were supplied by the generosity of their disappointed friends, who had come down better prepared, but too late for the enterprise; the famous cork jackets were thrown into the boat and at once put on by the men. The powerful steam-tug, well named the _Aid_, that belongs to the harbour, and has her steam up night and day ready for any emergency that may arise, speedily got her steam to full power, and with her brave and skilful master, Daniel Reading, in command, took the boat in tow, and together they made their way out of the harbour. James Hogben, who, with Reading, has been in many a wild scene of danger, was coxswain, and steered and commanded the life-boat. It was nearly low water at the time, but the force of the gale was such as to send a good deal of spray dashing over the pier; the snow fell in blinding squalls, and drifted and eddied in every protected nook and corner. It was hard work for the excited crowd of people, who had assembled to see the life-boat start, to battle their way through the drifts and against the wind, snow, and foam to the head of the pier; but there at last they gathered, and many a one felt his heart fail as the steamer and boat cleared the protection of the pier, and encountered the first rush of wind and sea outside. "She seemed to go out under water," said one old fellow; "I would not have gone out in her for the universe." And those who did not know the heroism and determination that such scenes call forth in the breasts of the boatmen, could not help wondering much at the eagerness which had been displayed to get a place in the boat--and this although the hardy fellows knew that the two Margate life-boats had been wrecked in the attempt to get the short distance which separated the wreck from Margate; while they would have to battle their way through the gale for ten or twelve miles before they could get even in sight of the vessel. It says nothing against the daring or skill of the Margate boatmen, that they failed. In such a gale they could not get to windward against wind and tide, success therefore was almost impossible without the aid of steam; with a steam-boat to tow them into position for dashing in upon the Sands, the Margate boats would in all probability have succeeded; without such assistance the Ramsgate boat would have certainly failed. As soon as the steamer and boat got clear of the Ramsgate pier, they felt the full force of the storm, and it seemed almost doubtful whether they could make any progress against it. They slowly worked their way out of the full strength of the tide, as it swept round the head of the pier, and then began to move ahead a little more rapidly, and were soon ploughing their way through a perfect sea of foam. The steamer with its engines working full power, plunged heavily along; wave after wave broke over its bows, sent its spray flying over the funnel and mast, and deluged the deck with a tide of water, which, as it rushed aft, gave the men enough to do to hold on. The life-boat was towing astern with fifty fathom of five-inch hawser out, an enormously strong rope about the thickness of a man's wrist. Her crew already experienced the dangers and discomforts, that they were ready to endure, perhaps, for many hours, and without a murmur, in order to save life. There was anxiety and fear, but the one thought of anxiety and fear was, as to whether they could possibly be in time to save the lives of the poor fellows, who must, for so many hours, have been clinging to a shattered wreck. It would be hard to give a description to enable one to realize the position of the men in the boat, as they were being towed along by the steamer. The use of a life-boat is, that it will float and live, where other boats would of necessity be swamped, upset, and founder; they are made for, and generally only used on, occasions of extreme danger and peril, for terrible storms and wild seas. The water flows into the boat, and over it, and it still floats: some huge wave will break over it, and for a moment bury it, but it rises in its buoyancy and shakes itself free; beaten down on its broadside by the waves and wind, it struggles hard, and soon rises again on an upright keel, and defies them to do their worst; and even if some mighty breaker should come rushing along, catch her in its curling arms, and bodily upset her, only for a few seconds would the triumph last, the boat would speedily right again, sitting like an ark of refuge in the boiling sea of foam, while her crew, upheld by their cork jackets, would be floating and struggling around her, until one after another would manage to regain her sides, and clamber in over her low gunwale at the waist, and shortly she would be speeding away again on her life errand. Such were the qualities of the noble boat, which we are watching, while she is urging her way through the dismal seas, while a dozen poor fellows, some nine or ten miles off, are hanging to the shaking shrouds of a tottering mast, the waves that are breaking over them threatening every moment to be their tomb. Away! away, then, brave boat! gallant crew! God grant you good progress! Since the moment of clearing the pier, the waves that broke over the boat filled her time after time, and did everything but drown her. The men were up to their knees in water; they bent forward as much as they could, each with a firm hold upon the boat. The spray and waves rushed over them, and as they beat continuously upon their backs, although they could not penetrate their waterproof clothing, still they chilled them to the bone, for, as the spray fell, it froze, indeed so bitter was the cold that the men's mittens were frozen to their hands. After a tremendous struggle the steamer seemed to be making head against the storm; they were well clear of the pier and getting on gallantly. They made their way through the Cud Channel, and had passed between the black and white buoys, so well known to Ramsgate visitors, when a fearful sea came heading towards them. It met and broke over the steamer, buried her in foam, and swept along. The life-boat rose to it, for a moment hung with her bows high in air, and then as she felt the strain of the tow-rope, plunged bodily into the wave, and was almost altogether under water; the men were nearly washed out of her, but at that moment the tow-rope broke, the wave threw the boat back with a jerk, and as the strain of the rope suddenly ceased, the boat fell across the seas which swept in rapid succession over her, and seemed completely at their mercy. Oars out! oars out! was the cry, and the men, as soon as they could get breath, got them out, and began to make every effort to get the boat round again, head to wind, but in vain, the waves tossed the oars up, the wind caught the blades, and it was as much as the men could do to keep them in their hands. The gale was too heavy for them, and they drifted rapidly before wind and tide towards the Brake Shoal, which was directly under their lee, and over which the seas were rushing with great violence. But the steamer, which throughout was handled most admirably, both as regards skill and bravery, was put round as swiftly as possible, and very cleverly brought within a few yards to windward of the boat, as she lay athwart the sea. The men on board the steamer threw a hauling line on board the boat to which was attached a bran new hawser, and again took the boat in tow. The tide was still flowing, and as it rose, the wind came up in heavier and heavier gusts, bringing with it a blinding snow and sleet, which, with the spray, still freezing as it fell, swept over the boat, till the men looked, as one said at the time, like a body of ice. The men could not look to windward for the drifting snow and blinding seas which were continually rushing over them, they only knew that the strong steamer was plunging along, taking all as it came, for they felt the strain on the rope; thus they realized that each moment's suffering and peril brought them nearer to their poor perishing fellow-sailors; and not one heart failed, not one repented of winning the race to the life-boat. Off Broadstairs, they suddenly felt the way of the boat stop. The rope broken again, was the first thought of all; but on looking round as they were enabled to do, as the boat was no longer being dragged through the seas; they discovered to their utter dismay that the steamer had stopped; they thought that her machinery had broken down, and at once despaired of saving the lives of the shipwrecked, for with the wind as it was, it would be long hours before they could beat up against the gale, and get to the Sands, on which they were told the wreck lay; a moment's suspense and they discovered, to their gladness, that the steamer had merely stopped to let out more cable, fearful that it might break again in the struggle that was before them, as they fought their way round the North Foreland. Another hour's hard struggle, and they reached the North Foreland. There the sea was running tremendously high--the gale was still increasing; the snow, sleet, and spray, rushed by with hurricane speed. Although it was only early in the afternoon, the air was so darkened by the storm that it seemed a dull twilight. The captain of the boat was steering; he peered out between his collar and cap, but looked in vain for the steamer. He knew that she was all right, for the rope kept taught; but many times, although she was only a hundred yards ahead, he could see nothing of her, still less able were the men on board the steamer to see the life-boat. Often did they anxiously look astern, and watch for a break in the drift and scud to see that she was all right; for although there could be no doubt as to the strain upon the rope, she might be towing along bottom up, or have all her men washed out of her, for all they could tell. The master of the steamer watched the seas, which broke over the _Aid_, making her stagger again, as they rushed towards the life-boat, and several times the fear that she was gone came over him. But steamer and life-boat still battled successfully against the storm. As soon as they were round the North Foreland, the snow squall cleared and they sighted Margate; all anxiously looked for the wreck, but nothing of her could they see. They saw a lugger riding just clear of the pier, with foremast gone, and anchor down to prevent her being driven ashore by the gale. They next sighted the Margate life-boat driven ashore and abandoned in Westgate Bay, looking a complete wreck, the waves beating over her. A little beyond this they caught sight of the second life-boat, also washed ashore; and then they learnt to realize to the full the gallant efforts that had been made to save the shipwrecked, and the destruction that had been wrought as effort after effort had been overcome by the fury of the storm. But where was the wreck? Had she been beaten to pieces, all lives lost, and were they too late? A heavy mass of cloud and snowstorm rolled on to windward of them in the direction of the Sands off Margate, and they could not make out any signs of the wreck there. There was just a chance that it was the Woolpack Sand that she was on. They thought it the more likely, as the first intelligence of the wreck that came to Ramsgate declared that such was the case; and accordingly they determined to make for the Woolpack Sand, which was about three miles farther on; they had scarcely decided upon this, when, providentially, there was a break in the drift of the snow to windward, and they suddenly caught sight of the wreck. But for this sudden clearance in the storm they would, as we have said, have proceeded farther on, and some hours must have passed before they could have found out their mistake and got back again, and by that time every soul of the poor shipwrecked crew must have perished. The master of the steamer made out the flag of distress flying in the rigging of the vessel, the ensign union downwards; she, doubtlessly, was the wreck of which they were in search. But still it was a question how they could get to her, for she was on the other side of the Sand. To tow the boat round the Sand would take a long time in the face of such a gale; and for the boat to make across the Sand seemed almost impossible, so tremendous was the sea that was running over it. Nevertheless there was no hesitation on the part of the life-boat crew. It seemed a forlorn hope, a very rushing upon destruction, to attempt to force the boat under canvas through such a surf and sea; but they looked at the tottering wreck; they felt how any moment might be the last to the poor fellows clinging to her, and they could not bear to think of the delay that would be occasioned by their going round the Sands. Without hesitation, therefore, they cast off the tow-rope, and were about setting sail, when they found that the tide was running so furiously that they must be towed at least three miles to the eastward before they would be sufficiently far to windward to make certain of fetching the wreck. It was a hard struggle to get the tow-rope on board again, tossed about as they were by the tumbling seas, and a bitter disappointment to all, that an hour, or more, of their precious time must be consumed before they could possibly get to the rescue of their endangered brother seamen; but there was no help for it, and away again they went in tow of the steamer. The snow-squall came on again, and they lost sight of the wreck, but all kept an anxious look-out, and now and then, in a break in the squall, they could catch a glimpse of her. They could see that she was almost buried in the waves which broke over her in great clouds of foam, and again many and weary were the doubts and speculations, as to whether any on board of her could still be alive. For twenty minutes or so they battled steadily on against wind and tide. The gale, which had been increasing since the morning, came on heavier than ever, and roared like thunder over head; the sea was running so furiously and meeting the life-boat with such tremendous force that the men had to cling on their hardest not to be washed out of her, and at last the new tow-rope could no longer resist the increasing strain, and suddenly parted with a tremendous jerk; there was no thought of picking up the cable again--they could stand no further delay, and one and all of her crew rejoiced to hear the captain of the life-boat give orders to set sail. CHAPTER VII. THE RESCUE OF THE CREW OF THE "SAMARITANO," AND THE RETURN. Now set the teeth, and stretch the nostril wide; Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit To his full height! On, on, you noble English, Whose blood is set from fathers of war-proof! Fathers that, like so many Alexanders, Have, in these parts, from morn till even fought. "King Henry V."--_Shakespeare._ Harder still the gale, and the rush of the sea and the blinding snow. The storm was at its height. As the life-boat headed for the Sands, a darkness, as of night, seemed to settle down upon the men; they could scarcely see each other; but on through the raging sea and blinding storm they drove the gallant boat. As they approached the shallow water, the high part of the Sand, where the heaviest waves were breaking, they could see spreading itself before them, standing out in the gloom, a white, gleaming, barrier wall of foam; for there as the rushing waves broke, they clashed together in their recoil, and mounted up in columns of foam, their heavier volume falling, and their crests caught by the wind and carried away in white streaming clouds of spray, while the fearful roar of the beat of the waves could be heard above the gale. But still straight for the breakers the men made. No faltering, no hesitation, brows knit, teeth clenched, hands ready, and hearts firm, and into it with a cheer. The boat, although under the smallest sail she could carry--a double reefed fore-sail and mizen--was driven on by the hurricane force of the wind, on through the outer range of breakers she plunged, and then came indeed a struggle for life. The waves no longer rolled on in foaming ranks, but leapt, and clashed, and battled together in a raging boil of sea. They broke over the boat, the surf poured in first on one side of the boat, and then on the other, as she rolled to starboard and port, wildly tossed from side to side. Some waves rushed bodily over the boat, threatening to sweep every man out of her. Look out, my men! hold on! hold on! was the cry. When they saw some huge breaker heading towards them like an advancing wall, then the men threw themselves breast down on the thwart, curled their legs under it, clasped it with all their force with both arms, held their breath hard, and clung on for very life against the tear and wrestle of the wave, while the rush of water poured over their backs and heads, and buried them in its flood. Down, down, beneath the weight of the water, the men and boat sank; but only for a moment; the splendid boat rose in her buoyancy, and freed herself of the seas, which for a moment had overcome her and buried her, and her crew breathed again; and a struggling cry of triumph rises from them. Well done, old boat! well done! all right! all right! Yes, all hands here, no one washed out of her; and with a quick glance of mutual congratulation they look at each other, and rejoice that all are safe, scarce time for a word. "Now she goes through it, now she's forging ahead! keep a tight hold, my boys!" A moment's lull, as she glided on the crest of some huge wave, or only smaller ones tried their strength against her; then again the monster fellows came heading on, again the warning cry was given; look out! hold on! hold on! and the men crouched, and clung, and struggled for their lives, while the wild waves rushed over the boat. Thus until they got clear of the Sands the fearful struggle was again and again repeated; but at last it was for a time over, they had burst through the belt of raging surf and got again into deep water. They had then only the huge rolling waves and less broken tumble of sea to contend with; this, in such a furious gale of wind, was bad enough, and almost more than any other kind of boat could have endured, but little in comparison to what they had just gone through, and escaped from. The boat was now put before the wind, and every man in her was on the look-out for the wreck. For a time it remained so thick that there was no possibility of finding her, when again a second time a sudden break in the storm revealed her: she was about half a mile to leeward. They shifted the foresail with great difficulty, and again made in for the Sands towards the vessel. The appearance of the wreck as they approached her made even the stoutest among them shudder. She had settled down by the stern in the Sands, the uplifted bow being the only part of the hull that was to be seen; the sea was making a clear breach over her. The mainmast was gone, her foresail, and foretopsail were blown adrift, and great columns of foam were mounting up, flying over her foremast and bow. They saw a Margate lugger lying at anchor just clear of the Sands, and made close to her. As they shot by they could just make out, mid the roar of the storm, a loud hail, eight of our men on board! and on they flew, and in a few minutes were in a sea that would instantly have swamped the lugger, noble and powerful boat though she was. Approaching the wreck, it was with terrible anxiety they strained their sight, trying to discover if there were still any men left in the tangled mass of rigging, over which the sea was breaking so furiously. By degrees they made them out. "I see a man's head, look! one is waving his arm."--"I make out two! three! why the rigging is full of the poor fellows;" and with a cheer of triumph, at being yet in time, the life-boat crew settled to their work. The wreck of the mainmast, and the tremendous wash of sea over the vessel, prevented their going to the lee of the wreck. This increased their danger tenfold, as the result proved. When about forty yards from the wreck, they lowered their sails, and cast the anchor over the side. The moment for which the boat had so gallantly battled for four hours, and the shipwrecked had waited almost in despair for eight hours, had at last arrived. No cheering! no shouting in the boat now, no whisper beyond the necessary orders; the risk and suspense are too terrible! yard by yard, the cable is cautiously payed out, and the great rolling seas are allowed to carry the boat, little by little, nearer to the vessel. The waves break over the boat, for a moment bury it, and then as the sea rushes on, and breaks upon the wreck, the spray, flying up, hides the men lashed to the rigging from the boatman's sight. They hoist up a corner of the sail to let the boat sheer in; all are ready; a huge wave lifts them. Pay out the cable! sharp, men! sharp! the coxswain shouts; belay all! The cable was let go a few yards by the run, and the boat is alongside the wreck. With a cry, three men jump into the boat and are saved! All hands to the cable! haul in hand over hand, for your lives, men, quick, the coxswain cries; for he sees a tremendous wave rushing in swiftly upon them. They haul in the cable, draw the boat a little from the wreck, the wave passes and breaks over the vessel; if the life-boat had been alongside she would have been dashed against the wreck, and perhaps capsized, or washed over, and utterly destroyed. Again the men watch the waves, and as they see a few smaller ones approaching, let the cable run again, and get alongside; this time they are able to remain a little longer by the vessel; and one after another, thirteen of the shipwrecked men unlash themselves from the rigging and jump into the boat, when again they draw away from the vessel in all haste, and avoid threatened destruction. "Are they all saved?" No! three of the vessel's crew, Spaniards, are still left in the rigging; they seem almost dead, and scarcely able to unlash themselves, and crawl down the shrouds and await the return of the boat. Again the boat is alongside, and this time the peril is greater than ever. They must place the boat close to the vessel, for the men are too weak to make any spring to reach her; they must remain alongside for a longer time, for two life-boatmen must get on to the wreck and lift the men on board; but, as before, they go coolly, quietly, and determinedly to work; the cable is veered out, the sail manoeuvred to make the boat sheer, and again she is alongside; the men are seized by their arms and clothing, and dragged into the boat. The last one left is the cabin-boy; he seems entangled in the rigging. The poor little fellow had a canvas bag of trinkets and things, he was taking as presents to the loved ones at home, and all through the howling storm, the rush and beat of the waves, as he held on exhausted and half dead to the shrouds, he still thought of those loved friends, and clung to the canvas bag. God only knows whether the loved ones at home were thinking of, and praying for him, and whether it was in answer to their prayers and those of many others that the life-boat then rode alongside that wreck, an ark of safety mid the raging seas. They shout, the boy lingers still, his half-dead hands cannot free the bag from the entangled rigging. A moment and all are lost; a boatman makes a spring, seizes the lad with a strong grasp, and tears him down from the rigging into the boat--too late, too late; they cannot get away from the vessel; a tremendous wave rushes on: hold hard all, hold anchor! hold cable! give but a yard, and all are lost! The boat lifts, is washed into the fore-rigging, the sea passes, and she settles down again upon an even keel! Thank God! If one stray rope of all the torn and tangled rigging of the vessel had caught the boat's rigging, or one of her spars--if the boat's keel or cork fenders had caught in the shattered gunwale, she would have turned over, and every man in her been shaken into the sea to speedy and certain death. Thank God, it is not so, and once more they are safe. The boat is very crowded; she has her own crew of thirteen on board, six of the Margate boatmen and two Whitstable fishermen, who were left on the vessel, the captain, mate, eight seamen and the boy; thus, thirty-two souls in all form her precious freight. The life-boatmen at once, without a second's delay, haul in the cable as fast as possible, and draw up to the anchor to get clear of the wreck, for they must get some distance away before they dare let go their cable, or with the wind and seas setting directly towards the vessel they would be driven upon her, unless they had plenty of room to sail by her. An anxious time it is, as they draw up to the anchor; at last they are pretty clear, and hoist the sail to draw still farther away before they let go. There is no thought of getting the anchor up in such a gale and sea. "She draws away," cries the captain of the boat, "pay out the cable; stand by to cut it; pass the hatchet forward; cut the cable, quick, my men, quick." There is a moment's delay, a delay by which indeed all their lives are saved; a few strong blows with the hatchet, and the cable would have been parted. A boatman takes out his knife, and begins gashing away at the hawser. Already one strand out of the three, which form the strong rope, is severed; when a fearful gust of wind sweeps by, the boat heels over almost on her side--a crash is heard, and the mast and sail are blown clean out of the boat. Never was a moment of greater peril. Away in the rush of the wave the boat is carried straight for the wreck; the cable is payed out and is slack; they haul it in as fast as they can, but on they are carried swiftly, apparently to certain destruction. Let them hit the wreck full, and the next wave must throw the boat bodily upon it, and all her crew will be swept at once into the sea; let them but touch the wreck, and the risk is fearful; on they are carried, the stem of the boat just grazes the bow of the vessel, they must be capsized by the bowsprit and entangled in the wreckage; some of the crew are ready for a spring into the bowsprit to prolong their lives a few minutes, the others are all steadily, eagerly, quietly, hauling in upon the cable might and main, as the only chance of safety to the boat and crew; one moment more and all are gone, one more haul upon the cable, a fathom or so comes in by the run, and at that moment it mercifully taughtens and holds; all may yet be safe, another yard or two and the boat would have been dashed to pieces. They again haul in the cable, and draw the boat away as rapidly as they can from the wreck, but they do it with a terrible dread, for they remember the cut strand of the rope. Will the remaining two strands hold? The strain is fearful, each time that the boat lifts to a wave, the cable tightens and jerks, and they think it breaking; but it still holds, and a thrill of joy passes through the heart of all, as they hear that the cut part of the rope is safely in the boat. But the danger is not even yet over: all this time the mast and sail have been dragging over the side of the boat; it is with great difficulty that they get them on board. The mast had been broken short off about three feet from the heel. They chop a new heel to it, and rig it up as speedily as they can, but it takes long to do so; for the boat is lying in the trough of the sea, and the waves are constantly breaking over her; moreover, she is so crowded that the men can scarcely move, and the gale is blowing as hard as ever. For the poor Spaniards, as they cling to each other, the terrors of death seem scarcely passed away; they know nothing of the properties of the life-boat, and cannot believe that it will live long in such a sea. As the waves beat over the boat and fill it, they imagine that she will founder, and each time that the great rolling seas launch themselves at her they cling to each other, expecting that she will capsize; besides, the poor fellows' nerves are not in a very good state; for eight hours they have been in great danger, for a large portion of that time in momentary expectation of death, during the four hours they were lashed to the rigging of the wreck, with the life nearly beaten and frozen out of them by the constant rush of sea and of spray, and by the bitter wind. One of the Spaniards seeing a life-belt lying down, which one of the crew had thrown off in the hurry of his work, sits upon it by way of making himself doubly safe. But the work goes on. At last the mast is fitted and raised. No unnecessary word is spoken all this time, for the life and death struggle is not yet over; nor, indeed, can it be before they are well away from the neighbourhood of the wreck. Now, as they hoist the sail, the boat gradually draws away; the cable is again payed out little by little; as soon as they are well clear of the vessel they cut it, and away they sail. The terrible suspense is over when each moment was a moment of fearful risk. It had lasted from the time when they let go the anchor to the time when they got clear of the vessel--about one hour. The men could now breathe freely, their faces brighten, and from one and all there arises spontaneously a pealing cheer. They are no longer face to face with death, and thankfully and joyfully they sail away from the sands, the breakers, and the wreck. The gale was still at its height, but the peril they were in then seemed nothing to what they had gone through, and had happily left behind. In the great reaction of feeling, the freezing cold and sleet, the driving wind, and foam, and sea, were all forgotten; and they felt as light-hearted as if they were out on a pleasant summer's cruize. They could at last look round and see who they had in the boat, speak hearty words of congratulation to the Margate and Whitstable men, some of whom they knew, and strive by a good deal of broken English, and slaps on the back, and shaking of hands, to cheer up the Spanish sailors, and to let them know how glad they are to have saved them. They then proceeded in search of the steamer, which, after casting the life-boat adrift, made for shelter to the back of the Hook Sand, not far from the Reculvers, and there waited, her crew anxiously on the look-out for the return of the life-boat. As they were making for the steamer, the lugger _Eclipse_ came in chase to hear whether they had succeeded in saving all hands, and especially, whether all the men of her crew were saved. They welcomed the glad tidings with three cheers for the life-boat crew, and made in for the land. Soon after, the Whitstable smack made towards them upon a similar errand, and her crew were equally rejoiced to hear that their ship-mates with all hands were safe. It was too rough, a great deal, for the men to be taken on board the smack; and so she, after speaking them, tacked in for the land. The night was coming on apace; it was not until they had run three or four miles that they sighted the steamer; and when they got alongside her it was a difficult matter to get the saved crew on board. The sea was raging, and the gale blowing as much as ever, and the steamer rolled and pitched heavily; the poor shipwrecked fellows were too exhausted to spring for the steamer as the opportunities occurred, and had to be almost lifted on board, one poor fellow being hauled on board by a rope. Again the boat was taken in tow, almost all her crew remaining in her, and they commenced their return home. The night was very dark and clear; the sea and gale had lost none of their force; and until the steamer and boat had got well round the North Foreland, the struggle to get back was just as great as it had been to get there. Once round the Foreland the wind was well on the quarter, and they made easier way; light after light opened to them; Kingsgate and Broadstairs were passed, and at last the Ramsgate pier-head light shone out with its bright welcome, and the men began to feel that their work was nearly over. A telegram had been sent from Margate in the afternoon, stating that the Ramsgate life-boat had been seen to save the crew; but nothing more had been heard. The boatmen had calculated the time when they thought the steamer and life-boat might both be back; and the fearful violence of the storm suggested some sad occasion for the delay. As hour after hour grew on, the anxiety increased; real alarm was beginning to be felt by all, and a keen watch was kept for the first appearance of the steamer and boat round the edge of the cliff. As the tide went down, and the sea broke less heavily over the pier, the men could venture farther along it, until, by the time of the boat's return, they were enabled to assemble at the end of the pier, and there a large and anxious crowd gathered. The anxiety of all was increased by the suggestions and speculations of disasters, which always present themselves at a time of suspense and apprehension; and so, when the steamer was announced with the life-boat in tow, the reaction was great, and the watchers shouted for very joy. And as the "Storm Warriors" entered the harbour waving the strong right arms that had worked so well, and shouted, "All saved!" "All saved!" and the flags of triumph were seen flying out in the gale. Cheer after cheer broke from the crowd as they welcomed home from the dread battle-field those who had fought and conquered, and now bore with them as trophies of their victory, nineteen men; fellow-sailors, whose lives had been saved from a terrible and certain death. And many cheered again as they thought of the number who would have had life-long cause to mourn, if these poor fellows had perished. Parents, wives, children--what a group they would seem if they could be pictured watching the saved ones return; what words, and looks, and tears of thanks where feelings are too deep for words, for the Storm Warriors, and for the life-boat cause, and for the generous English people who placed such boats at the disposal of such brave hearts and strong hands--of men ready to dare all and to do all that men can do to rescue the perishing from death. Think only of the group that may possibly welcome back the little pale, exhausted cabin-boy, their hearts as warm as his, their love as deep as his--as his, which made that little canvas bag full of simple presents so dear to him that he held to it through all the many hours of the storm; that made it his first thought when the wild seas rushed over the vessel, and the crew had to take to the rigging; love that made him, when grown men thought only of their own lives, rush to his chest and seize his treasure, and all through the wild gale cling to it; cling to it still, though the winds in their bitter cold froze him through and through, and the seas beat over him hour after hour. Think of the faces that may have seemed to peer at him out of the darkness of the storm. A loving-hearted father ready to thank him for the tobacco-box; a mother for that wonderful brooch; a little dark-eyed brother for the knife with four blades, and a little sister for the little very blue-eyed doll with such rosy cheeks. No, he could not let the bag go, and so it nearly cost him his life, and by the delay his clinging to it caused, nearly cost all the brave men their lives also; but the good God would not let so much simple love work so much disaster, and the loving ones shall see him again, and perhaps he will stand, and perhaps each of his fellow-sailors will stand, in the centre of some tearful group, who again and again will weep, and thank God, as they are told of the wreck, and the hours of peril, and the waiting for death, and the hopeless despair, and the strange wonderful boat that came in through the storm; and how they were saved, when they never thought to see home again. And often shall the brave boatmen be blessed and thanked by grateful hearts, and the life-boat cause not forgotten. I repeat the picture that we may learn to think much of the sailor's arrival home, as well of his being saved from the wreck, and thus learn to appreciate the more the value and the mercy of life-boat work. But to return. The Spanish sailors had, by the time they reached the harbour, somewhat recovered under the care of the life-boat crew, and were further well cared for, and supplied with clothes by the care of the Spanish consul. And the hardy English boatmen did not take long to recover from their exposure and fatigues, fearful as they had been. The Spanish captain, in speaking of the rescue, was almost overcome by his feelings of gratitude and wonder. He had quite made up his mind for death; he felt that the wreck could not by any possibility hold together much longer; every moment he expected a final crash; and all his experience taught him that it was impossible for any boat to come to their rescue in such a fearful sea. His experience of the life-boat was new, and not easily to be forgotten. He had a painting made of the rescue to take with him and show to the Spanish Government. It is pleasing to be able to wind up this story with stating, that the English Board of Control acknowledged the bravery and exertions of the men engaged in the rescue, by presenting to each of them 2_l._ and a medal, and that the Spanish Government also gratefully acknowledged the heroic exertions of the men, by granting to each a medal and 3_l._ CHAPTER VIII. A NIGHT ON THE GOODWIN SANDS. "God help the poor fellows at sea!" Far away inland, when tempests blow Wild through the dark'ning night, We list to the roar of the winds as they go On their hurricane steeds to the fight; For the hosts of the storm-king are gathering fast Where the white-crested waters flee, And our heart breathes this prayer, as he rushes past, On the wings of the northern howling blast,-- "God help the poor fellows at sea!" _C. T._ "God have mercy upon the poor fellows at sea!" Household words these, in English homes, however far inland the homes may be; and although near these homes the sea may have no better representative than a sedge choked river, or canal, along which slow barges urge a lazy way. For when the storm-wrack darkens the sky, and gales are abroad, seaward fly the sympathies of English hearts, and the prayer is uttered, and in many cases, in this sea-loving island of ours, with very special reference to some loved and absent sailor. It is those, however, who live near the sea-shore, and watch the warfare going on in all its terrible reality, that learn the more truly to realize the fearful nature of the struggles for life that go on round our coasts; and who learn as the wild gales rave to find an answer to the murmurings of the fierce blast, in the prayer, "God have mercy upon the poor fellows at sea;" and this especially as they welcome ashore, as wrested from death, some rescued sailor, or mourn over those who have found a sudden grave almost within call of land. It is a pretty picture enough from Ramsgate Pier, when fifty or a hundred sail are in sight within two or three miles of land, and the day is sunny, and the sea bright, and a good wholesome breeze is bowling along; but anxious withal, when the clouds are gathering, and the fleet of vessels are seeking to make the best of their way to find shelter in the Downs: and a south-westerly gale moans up, and the last of the fleet are caught by it, and have to anchor in exposed places, and you watch them riding heavily, making bad weather, the seas every now and then flying over them. It is winter time, and the weather stormy; day after day brings into the harbour fresh evidences of the deadly contest that rages out at sea--vessels towed in disabled, with bulwarks washed away, masts over the side, bows stove in, or leaky, having been in collision, touched the ground or been struck by a sea; who at such times can withhold their interest or sympathy? the veriest landsmen grow excited, and make daily pilgrimages to the pier, to see how the vessels under repairs are getting on, or what new disasters have occurred. But it is at night-time especially that your thoughts take a more solemn and anxious turn. As you settle down by the fireside for a quiet evening, you remember the ugly appearance the sky had some two or three hours before, when you stood watching the scene from the end of the pier. You felt that mischief was brewing, as the gusts of wind swept by with increasing force, and you looked out upon a troubled sea that every minute seemed to grow more white and raging. The Downs anchorage was full of shipping; a few vessels had parted their cables, and had to run for it, while the luggers, heavily laden with chains and anchors, staggered out of the harbour to supply them: other ships made for the harbour; you almost shuddered as you looked down upon them from the pier, and saw them in the grasp of the sea, rolling and plunging, with the waves surging over their bows. Another minute's battle with the tide, you heard the orders shouted out, you saw the men rushing to obey them--the pilot steady at the wheel, and you could scarce forbear a cheer as ship after ship shot by the pier-head and found refuge in the harbour. Altogether it was a wild exciting scene, and you cannot shake off the effect--the wind rushes and moans by, a minute before it was raging over the sea. The muffled roaring sound that is heard, is that of the waves breaking at the foot of the cliff. From the windows can be seen, gleaming out in the darkness, the bright lights of the Goodwin light-ships, which guard those fatal sands--sands so fatal, that when the graves give up their dead, few churchyards will render such an account as theirs, not only as to the number of the dead, but also that the Sands are a battle-field which entombs the brave and strong, who go down quick to their grave, quick from the full tide of life and strength, from the eager stern deadly contest in which, to the last, all their strong energies were fully engaged. Men who, a few hours before, were reckless and merry, anticipating no danger and ready to laugh at the thought of death; who, if homeward bound, were full of joy as they seemed almost to stand upon the threshold of their homes; or by whom, if outward bound, the kisses of their wives, which seemed still to linger on their cheeks, and the soft clasping arms of their little ones, which seemed still to hang about their necks, were only to be forgotten in the few hours of terrible life struggle with the storm, and then again to be keenly remembered in the last gasping moment, ere the Goodwin Sands should find them a grave almost within the shadow of their homes. There is a sudden report; surely the firing of a gun, a wreck, a vessel on the Sands--watch, yes, there! A rocket streams up from one of the light-vessels, and the gun and the rocket five minutes after, form the signal that calls to the life-boat for assistance. The breakers on the Sands could be clearly seen from the shore during the day, as they rose and fell like fitful volumes of white eddying smoke, breaking up the clear line of the horizon, and tracing the Sands in broken broad leaping outlines of foam. Yes! and now, amid those terrible breakers, somewhere out in the darkness, within five or six miles, near that bright light, there are twenty, thirty, fifty, you know not how many, of your fellow-creatures, struggling for their lives. Ah! listen to the storm blast, with what dread force it rushes by, what a dirge it seems to moan; and well it may, for if the gale lasts only a few hours, and there is no rescue, the morning may be bright and fair and calm, and the sea as smooth as a lake, but nothing of either ship or crew shall any more be seen. But, thank God! there will be a rescue! You know that already brave hearts have determined to attempt it; that strong ready hands are already at work in cool, quick, preparation; that, almost before you could urge your way against the tempest down to the head of the pier, the steamer and life-boat will have fought their way out against the storm and darkness upon their errand of mercy. "God have mercy upon the poor fellows at sea; upon the shipwrecked in their dismal peril; upon the brave Storm Warriors speeding out in danger and hardship!" this is the prayer that indeed often finds utterance, when the sleeper is awakened in the dark hours of the night by the howling of the wind or the boom of the signal gun. And at Ramsgate the prayer may be uttered fervently indeed by those, who, when they hear the signal of distress, know that the endangered vessel is experiencing all the dread dangers of the Goodwin Sands, for the vessels wrecked upon them have indeed, if the weather is bad, but a poor prospect of ever sailing the broad seas again. The Goodwin is a quick-sand, and it is this, as well as the tremendous sea that beats upon it in heavy weather, that makes it so terribly fatal to vessels that get stranded on it. At low tide a portion of the sand is dry, and hard, and firm, and can be walked on for a distance of about four or five miles; but as the water again flows over any part of it, that part becomes, as the sailors say, "all alive," soft and quick, and ready to suck in anything that lodges upon it. Suppose a vessel to run on with a falling tide, where the sand shelves, or is steep, the water leaves the bow and the sand there gets hard; the water still flows under the stern, and the sand there remains soft a longer time; down the stern sinks lower and lower; the vessel soon breaks her back, or works herself deeper and deeper by the stern; as the water rises she fills and works and still sinks deeper in the sand every roll she gives, until at high tide she is, perhaps, completely buried, or only her topmasts are seen above water. Other vessels, if the sea is heavy, begin to beat heavily, and soon break up. Lifted up on the swell of a huge wave, as it breaks and flies away in surf and foam, the vessel thumps down with all its weight upon the sands, the timbers give and strain, the seams open; she soon ceases, as she fills with water, to rise upon the wave; great gaps are torn from the bulwarks; the decks burst open with the air seeking to escape from the hold, and as the sea rushes over the vessel, each roll she gives wrenches her more and more; the masts fall over the side; her cargo floats and washes away, and speedily, even in a few hours, she is in a torn and shattered condition, completely wrecked and destroyed. The broken hull is full of water and lurches heavily to and fro with each wave, rolls and slightly lifts and works, until it has made a deep bed in the Sands in which it is soon completely buried--so that many vessels have run upon the Sands in the early night, and scarcely a vestige of them been seen in the morning. By way of illustration, let me tell what happened one dark stormy night some few years back. The harbour steam-tug _Aid_ and the life-boat had started from Ramsgate early in the day, to try and get to the _Northern Belle_, a fine American barque, which was ashore not far from Kingsgate; but the force of the gale and tide was so tremendous, that they could not make way against it, and were driven back to Ramsgate--there to wait until the tide turned, or the wind moderated. About two in the morning, while they were making ready for another attempt to reach the _Northern Belle_, rockets were fired from one of the Goodwin light-vessels, showing that some vessel was in distress on the Sands. They hastened at once to afford assistance, and got to the edge of the Sands shortly after three in the morning. Up and down they cruised, but could see no signs of any vessel. They waited until it was daylight, and then saw the upper portion of the lower mast of a steamer standing out of the water. They made towards it, but found no one was left, and no signs of any wreck floating about to which a human being could cling. They concluded, that almost immediately upon striking, the vessel must have broken up, sunk, and been buried in the quick-sand. Poor fellows! poor fellows! a sharp, sudden death: would that the vessel had held together a little longer. Away, then, now for the _Northern Belle_. They had not made much way ahead when the captain of the _Aid_ sees a large life-buoy floating near. "Ease her," he cries, and the way of the steamer slackens. "God knows but what that life-buoy may be of use to some of us." The helmsman steers for it; a sailor makes a hasty dart at it with a boat-hook, misses it, and starts back appalled from a vision of staring eyes, and matted hair, and wildly tossed arms. They shout to the life-boat crew, and they in turn steer for the buoy; the bowman grasps at it, catches it, but cannot lift it, his cry of horror startles the whole crew, and some spring to his help; they lift the buoy and bring to the surface three dead bodies that are tied to it by ropes round their waists. Slowly and carefully, one by one, the crew lift them on board, and lay them out under the sail. The _Violet_, passenger steamer, had left Ostend about eleven the previous night; at two in the morning she struck on the Goodwin Sands; a little after three there was no one left on board to answer the signals of the steam-boat that had come to their rescue, and show their position; at seven there was nothing to be seen of the steamer, crew, or passengers, but a portion of one mast, the life-buoy, and the three pale corpses sleeping their long last sleep under the life-boat sail. Such are the Goodwin Sands. It was a storm-ridden November day, the weather was very threatening throughout; it was blowing hard, with occasional squalls from the east-north-east, and a heavy sea running. At high tide the sea broke over the east pier. As the waves beat upon it and dashed over in clouds of foam, the pier looked from the east cliff like a heavy battery of guns in full play. The boatmen had been on the look-out all day, but there had been no signs of their services being required; still, they hung about the pier until long after dark. At last they were straggling home, leaving only those on the pier who had determined to watch during the night, when suddenly some thought that they saw a flash of light. A few seconds of doubt, and the report of the gun decided the matter. At once there was a rush for the life-boat. She was moored in the stream about thirty yards from the pier. In a few minutes they had unmoored her, and got her alongside; her crew was already more than made up; some had put off to her in small boats, others had sprung into her when she came within a few feet of the pier. She was over-manned, and the two last in had to turn out. In the meantime, a rocket had been fired from the light-vessel. Many had been on the look-out for it, to decide beyond all doubt, which of the three light-vessels had fired the gun. It proved to have been the North Sands Head vessel that had signalled. The cork jackets were thrown into the boat, the oars and ropes overhauled, all things seen to be right, and the men in their places and ready for their start in a comparatively few minutes. The crew of the steam-tug _Aid_ had not been less active. Immediately upon the first signal, her shrill steam-whistle resounded through the harbour, calling on board those of her crew who were on shore, and her steam, which is always up, was rapidly got to full power, and in less than half an hour from the time of the firing of the first gun she was gallantly steaming out of the harbour with the life-boat in tow. As she went out a rocket streamed up from the pier head. It was the answer to the signal of the light vessel, and told that assistance was on the way. Off they went, ploughing their way through a heavy cross sea, which frequently swept completely over the boat. The tide was running strongly, and the wind right ahead; it was hard work breasting both sea and wind in the face of such a gale; but they bravely persevered, and gradually made head-way. They steered right for the Goodwin, and having approached it, as near as they dare take the steamer, they worked their way through a heavy sea along the edge of the Sands, on the look-out for the vessel in distress. At last they make her out, and, as they approach, find two Broadstairs luggers riding at anchor outside the Sands. The Broadstairs men had heard the signal, and the wind and tide being in their favour, they soon ran down to the neighbourhood of the wreck. On making to the vessel, the Ramsgate men find her to be a fine-looking brig, almost high and dry upon the Sands. Her masts and rigging are all right; the moon, which has broken through the clouds, shines upon her clean new copper; and, so far, she seems to have received but little damage. A grand thing for all hands, for owners, underwriters, crew and boatmen, the men think, if they can only get her safely off when the tide rises, and bring her into harbour; a fine vessel and perhaps valuable cargo saved, and a pretty bit of salvage, which will be well earned and nobody should grudge, for the boatmen have to live, as well as to save life. Efforts have already been made for the vessel's relief. The _Dreadnought_ lugger had brought with her a small twenty-five feet life-boat. The _Little Dreadnought_, and this boat with five hands, had succeeded in getting alongside the brig. The steamer slips the hawser of the Ramsgate boat, and anchors almost abreast of the vessel, with sixty fathom of chain out. There is a heavy rolling sea, but much less than there has been, as the tide has fallen considerably. The life-boat makes in for the brig, carries on through the surf and breakers, and when within forty fathoms of the vessel, lowers the sail, throws the anchor overboard, and veers alongside. The captain and some of the men remain in the boat, to fend her off from the sides of the vessel, for although it is shallow water, the tide is running over the Sands like a sluice, and it requires great care to prevent the boat getting her side stove in. The rest of her crew climb on board the brig. Her captain had, until then, hoped to get his vessel off, as the tide rose, without assistance, and had refused the aid of the Broadstairs men; but now he realizes the danger that his vessel is in, and very gladly accepts the assistance that is offered. One of his crew speaks a little English, and through him the captain employs the crew of the life-boat and the Broadstairs men, to get his ship off the Sands. CHAPTER IX. THE WRECK ABANDONED, AND THE LIFE-BOAT DESPAIRED OF. "Alone upon the leaping billows, lo! What fearful image works its way? A ship! Shapeless and wild ... Her sails dishevell'd, and her massy form Disfigured, yet tremendously sublime: Prowless and helmless through the waves she rocks, And writhes, as if in agony! Like her, Who to the last, amid o'erwhelming foes, Sinks with a bloody struggle into death,-- The vessel combats with the battling waves, Then fiercely dives below! the thunders roll Her requiem, and whirlwinds howl for joy!" _Crabbe._ The boatmen, as soon as they get on board the brig, find that she is in a very perilous position, but have hopes of getting her off. At all events they will try very hard for it. She is a fine new and strongly-built Portuguese brig, belonging to Lisbon, and bound from Newcastle to Rio, with coals and iron. Her crew consists of the captain, the mate, ten men, and a boy. She is head on to the Sand, but the Sand does not shelve much, and her keel is pretty even. The wind is still blowing very strongly and right astern. The tide is on the turn, and will flow quickly: there is no time to be lost; the first effort must be to prevent the brig driving further on the Sand. With this object in view the boatmen get an anchor out astern as quickly as possible; they rig out tackles on the foreyard, and hoist the bower anchor on deck; they then slew the yard round, and get the anchor as far aft as they can; then shift the tackles to the main yard, and lift the anchor well to the stern; shackle the chain cable on, get it all clear for running out, try the pumps to see that they work; and then wait until the tide makes sufficiently to enable the steamer, which draws six feet of water, to get a little nearer. They hope that the steamer will be able to back close enough to them, to get a rope on board fastened to the flukes of the brig's anchor, and to drag the anchor out, and drop it about one hundred fathoms astern of the vessel. All hands will then go to the windlass, keep a strain upon the cable, and each time the vessel lifts, heave with a will--the steamer, with a hundred and twenty fathoms of nine-inch cable out, towing hard all the time. By these means they expect to be able, gradually, to work the vessel off the Sands. But they soon lose all hope of doing this; it is about one o'clock in the morning; the moon has gone down; heavy showers of rain fall; it is pitch dark and very squally; the gale is evidently freshening again; a heavy swell comes up before the wind, and as the tide flows under the brig she begins to work very much, for now the heavy waves roll in over the sand, and she lifts, and falls with shocks that make the masts tremble and the decks gape open. The boatmen begin to fear the worst. The life-boat is alongside, with seven hands in her; she is afloat in the basin that the brig has worked in the sands, and it takes all the efforts of the men on board to prevent her getting under the side of the vessel and being crushed. The wind increases as the tide flows, and the brig works with great violence, now, as she rolls and careens over upon her bilge, she threatens to fall upon, and destroy the life-boat The captain of the boat hails the men on the brig to come on board the boat, and get away from the side of the vessel as fast as they can. The boatmen try to explain the danger to the Portuguese, but they cannot understand. Hail, after hail, comes from the boat, for every moment increases the peril, but the Portuguese captain still refuses to leave his vessel. Any moment may be too late; the boatmen are almost ready to try and force the Portuguese over the side, but they cannot persuade them to stir; and as they will not desert them, they also wait on; wait on while the ship rolls, and works, and groans, while the seas fly over her, and at any moment she may break up. Suddenly a loud sharp crack, like a crashing of thunder, peals through the ship. The boatmen jump on the gunwale, ready to spring for the life-boat, for she may be breaking in half; no, but one of her large timbers has snapt like a pipe-stem, and others will soon follow. The Portuguese sailors make a rush to get what things they can on deck; altogether they fill eight sea-chests with their clothes. These are quickly lowered into the life-boat. Her captain does not like having her hampered with so much baggage, but cannot refuse the poor fellows, at least, a chance of saving their kit. The surf flies over the brig, and boils up all around her. The life-boat is deluged with spray, and her lights are washed out; the vessel still lifts and thumps and rolls with the force of the sea. Time after time the snapping and rending of her breaking timbers are heard; at each heave she wrenches and cracks and groans in all directions--she is breaking up fast. Make haste, make haste! for your lives be as quick as you can! The chests are all lowered, the boy is handed into the boat, the Portuguese sailors follow, the boatmen spring after them, and the brig is abandoned. We have said that it was about one o'clock in the morning when the squalls came on again, with heavy rain and thick darkness. The steamer had remained at anchor, waiting for the tide to rise, when, with the water deeper, she would be able to get nearer the brig. But as the gale freshens there is a dangerous broken sea where she is riding, and she begins to pitch very heavily. She paddles gently ahead to ease her cable, but it is soon evident to the men on board her, that if they are to get their anchor at all they must make haste about it. They heave it up, and lay to for the life-boat. The sea increases so rapidly that the _Dreadnought_ lugger is almost swamped, and has to cut her cable without attempting to save her anchor, and to make with all speed before the gale for Ramsgate. The _Petrel_ lugger springs her mast, which is fished with great difficulty, and she, too, makes the best of her way to the harbour. The wind continues to increase, the gale is again at its height, and a fearful sea running. Wave after wave breaks over the steamer's decks, but she is an excellent boat, strongly built and powerful; and her captain and crew are well used to rough work. Head to wind and steaming half power, she holds her own against the wind, and keeps, as far as her crew can judge, in the neighbourhood of the wreck and of the life-boat. As time passes, and the crew of the steamer can see nothing of the boat, they get anxious. The wreck must have been abandoned long before this; has the boat been unable to get away from her? is the boat swamped or stove? and are all lost? They signalize again and again, but in vain; they can obtain no answer. They cruize up and down as near the edge of the Sands as they dare, hoping to fall in with the boat. Now they make in one direction, and now in another, as in their eagerness and apprehension the roar of the storm shapes itself into cries of distress, or as a darker shadow on the sea leads them into the hope that at last they have found the lost boat. All hands keep steadfastly on the look-out, and get greatly excited; the storm becomes truly terrible; but they forget their own peril and hardships in their great anxiety for the safety of the crew of the life-boat, and of the poor fellows who were on the wreck. Their anxiety becomes insupportable, heightened as it is by the horrors of the night. Through the thick darkness, the bright light of the Goodwin light-vessel shines out like a star. With a faint hope the crew of the steamer wrestle their way through the storm and speak the light-vessel. "Have you seen anything of the life-boat?" the captain of the steamer shouts out. "Nothing! nothing!" is the answer. It seems to confirm all their fears, and they hasten back again to their old cruising ground--they will not lessen their exertions, or lose any chance of rendering assistance to their comrades. It is still pitch-dark, and the storm rages on--the hours creep by, O how slowly! How they long for the light! All hands still on the watch! and as the first grey light of dawning comes, it is with straining eye-balls they seek to penetrate the twilight, and find some signs of their lost comrades. It is almost broad daylight before they can even find out the place where the wreck was lying. With all speed, but little hope, they make for it; and then indeed their great dread seems realized. The brig is completely broken up, literally torn to pieces. They can see great masses of timber, and tangled rigging, but no signs of life. Nearer and nearer they go and wait for the broad daylight; but still nothing is to be seen, but shattered pieces of wreck, moored fast by the matted rigging to the buried remains of the hull, and tossing and heaving in the surf. Some of the men fancy they can see fragments of the life-boat heaving about with the other wreckage, but whether it is so or not, the end seems the same, and after one last careful but fruitless look around, to see whether there are any signs of the life-boat elsewhere on the Sands, sadly they turn the steamer's head away from the dreary fatal Goodwin, and make for the harbour. They grieve for brave comrades tried in many scenes of danger, and think with faint hearts of the melancholy report they have to give, and it is but little consolation to them in the face of so great a loss, to remember that they, at all events, have done all in their power, and that they have nothing to reproach themselves with. To return to the life-boat men; all hands have deserted the brig, and there are now in the life-boat thirteen Portuguese sailors, five Broadstairs boatmen, and her ordinary crew, consisting of thirteen Ramsgate boatmen, altogether thirty-one souls. The small _Dreadnought_ life-boat has been swung against the brig by the force of the tide, and is so damaged that no one dares venture in her. The tide is rising fast, the gale blowing as hard as ever, the surf running very high and breaking over the vessel, so that one constant torrent of spray and foam is falling with no light weight, or small volume, upon the life-boat which is under the lee of the brig, and the men have no protection from the falling sheets of spray. The vessel is rolling heavily, she has worked a bed in the sands, which the run of tide has somewhat enlarged, and in this she half floats, rolling from side to side with fearful rapidity and violence. The life-boat is afloat within the circle of the bed; the brig threatens to roll over her. "Shove and haul off, quick! Shove and haul off," are the orders. Some with oars, pushing against the brig, others hauling might and main upon the brig's hawser, they manage to pull the boat two or three yards up towards the boat's anchor, and to get her a little farther off from the side of the brig. Now she grounds heavily upon the edge of the basin that has been worked in the sand by the brig. "Strain every muscle, men; now, or never! now, or never! for your lives pull!" and pull and strain they did. No! not one inch will the life-boat stir; she falls over on her side, the surf and seas sweep over her, the men cling to the thwarts and gunwale; all but her own crew give up all thoughts of hope; but they know the capabilities of the boat and do not lose heart--Crash! the brig heaves, and crushes down upon her bilge; again and again she half lifts upon an even keel and rolls, and lurches from side to side; each time that she falls to leeward, she comes more and more over and nearer to the boat. This is the danger that may well make the stoutest heart quail. The boat is aground--helplessly aground; her crew can see through the darkness of the night the yards and masts of the brig swaying over their heads; now tossing high in the air as the brig rights, and now falling nearer and nearer to them, sweeping down over their heads, swaying and rending in the air, the blocks, and ropes, and torn fragments of sails, flying wildly in all directions. Let but one of the swaying yards but hit the boat, she must be crushed and all lost. The men crouch down closer and closer, clinging to the thwarts as the brig falls to them; casting dread glances at the approaching yards; all right once more; another pull at the cable--hard, men, hard; over again comes the brig; stick to it, men, stick to it, my men; crushed or drowned it will be soon over if we cannot move the boat; another pull, all together; again, and again, they make desperate efforts to stir the boat, but she will not move one inch; they must wait, and if needs be, wait their doom; and as they wait the danger each moment increases. It is a fearful time of suspense, this waiting aground on the dread Goodwin, in the darkness and wildness of the storm, half dead with cold and the ceaseless rush of surf over them, and watching in the shadowy darkness the swaying masts of the rolling brig, swinging nearer and nearer, and how will this question of life and death be decided? Which will happen first? will the tide flow sufficiently to float them, or will the brig crush them with her masts and yards before they can get beyond her reach. The men can do nothing more in the dark wild night and terrible danger; each minute seems an hour; they almost forget to try and protect themselves from the wind and spray, and they watch the brig as if spellbound, as she rolls nearer and nearer; each moment the position gets more desperate. Any one hit? as the flying blocks hanging from the yard-arms rattle over the heads of the men in the boat. No! but a few feet nearer and we should all have been crushed--a turn or two more and we shall be finished. There is a stir among the men; the moment seems come; they prepare for the last struggle. Some are getting ready to spring for the flying rigging of the brig, as it sways over their heads, hoping thus to get on board the wreck if the life-boat is crushed up. "Stick to the boat, men! stick to the boat, men, it's our only chance," the coxswain cries out, "the brig must soon go to pieces, while we may yet get clear; stick to the boat!" And the brig, which had quivered while lying on her side as if coming bodily over, while the dark yards hovered over the crouching men, lifted again, and once more the men breathe with a sigh of relief; for that time they quite expected the boat to be crushed and pinned where she lay. At this moment the boat trembles beneath them, lifts a little on the swell of the tide that is beginning to reach her, and grounds again. It is like a word of life to the men, and instantly all are on the alert, they get all their strength on the hawser, and as the boat lifts again, and comes a little more on an even keel, they draw her a yard or two nearer to her anchor, but not any farther from the brig, and over again the brig slowly rolls; again and again they make desperate efforts to get beyond the reach of her dark side, and swinging yards and masts, but it is long before they can do so: at last they succeed as the water flows still more, and now they ride to their anchor a few yards beyond the reach of the brig, which they watch break up, and listen to the groaning and rending of her timbers, and the flapping of her torn sail and tangled rigging. Both the wind and tide are setting with all their force right upon the Sands, and the captain of the boat sees what is before them; where they are now at anchor will soon be one wild rage of broken sea. To get away from the sand in the face of the fierce gale and tide is impossible; and so there is no alternative, they must beat right across the Sands, and this in the wild fearful gale, and terrible sea, and pitch dark night, and what the danger of this is, only those who know the Goodwin Sands, and the dread seas that sweep over them, can at all imagine. They ride at anchor for some time, waiting for the tide to rise sufficiently for them to get over the Sands. They see the lights of the steamer shining in the distance, outside the broken and shallow water; but there is no hope of assistance from her: their lanterns are washed out, they cannot signalize; and if they could, the steamer could not approach them. The sea is breaking furiously over them. Time after time the boat fills as the broken waves wash clean over her, but instantly she empties herself again, and rises to her water-line. The gale sweeps by more fiercely than ever. The men are nearly washed out of the boat, and worse still, the anchor begins to drag. The tide has made a little, and they are being driven each moment nearer to the wreck; there may be water enough to take them clear; at all events, there is no help for it, they must risk it. "Hoist the foresail; stand by to cut the cable. All clear."--"Ay, Ay!"--"Away then." And the boat quickly heads round, and then, under the power of the gale and tide, leaps forward, flies along; but only for a few yards, when, with a tremendous jerk, she grounds upon the Sands. The crew look up, and their hearts almost fail them, as they find that they are again within reach of the brig. Her top-gallant masts are swaying about, her yards swing within a few feet of them, her sails which have blown loose and are in ribbons, beat and flap like thunder over their heads. Their position seems worse than ever; but they are not this time kept long in suspense. A huge breaker comes foaming along; its white crest gleams out in the darkness high above them, a moment's warning, it breaks over them and swamps them, but all are clinging might and main to the boat. Another breaker comes streaming along; it swamps them again in passing, but now the volume of the wave seizes the boat, up it seems to swing it in its mighty arms, and to bodily hurl it forward; and then the boat crashes down on the Sands as the wave breaks, and grounds them with a shock that would have torn every man out of her, if they had not been holding on. But one great peril is passed; the mighty swing of the huge waves has carried them yards forward, and they are clear of the wreck; but at that moment they are threatened with another danger almost as terrible. The small _Dreadnought_ life-boat has been in tow all this time; it has not been wise to have her in tow, but she belongs to the Broadstairs boatmen, and neither they nor the Ramsgate boatmen like to abandon her. As the Ramsgate boat now grounds, the smaller boat comes bow on to her, sweeps round, and gets under her side; the two boats roll and crash together; each roll the larger one gives, each lift of the sea, she comes heavily down on the other boat; the crash and crack of timbers are heard; which boat is it that is breaking up? Both, if this continues, must be very speedily destroyed. Some of the men get out the oars and boat-hooks, and push for their very lives, thrusting and striving their utmost to free the _Dreadnought_, which is so dangerously thumping and crashing under the quarter of the larger boat. It is a terrible struggle in that boiling sea, with the surf breaking over them. But all their efforts seem in vain, the boats still crash and roll together; one of them is breaking up fast. "Oars in," shouts the coxswain; "over the side half-a-dozen of you--take your feet to her;" and some of the brave fellows spring over, clinging to the rail of the deck of the high air-boxes that are at the bow and stern of the Ramsgate life-boat. Again and again, all together, a fierce struggle, but without success; a big wave comes rolling on, it washes over them, but as the larger boat lifts, the men blindly thrust out with their feet, and the _Dreadnought_ is pushed clear. The men scramble, or are dragged back into the Ramsgate boat; the tow-rope is cut, and the _Dreadnought_, almost a wreck, is swept away by the tide, and is lost in the darkness, while, most mercifully, the Ramsgate boat still remains uninjured. A third time they are providentially saved from what seemed almost like certain death; and yet they have only commenced the beginning of their troubles, for is there not before them the long range of sands, with the broken fierce waves and raging surf, and many a fragment of wreck, like sunken rocks studded here and there, upon any one of which, if they strike, it must be death to them all? The boat is still aground upon the ridge of sand. She lifts, and is swept round, and grounds again broadside to the sea, which makes a clean breach over her. The Portuguese are all clinging together under the lee of the foresail, and there is no getting them to move. The crew are holding on where they can; sometimes buried in the water, often with only their heads out. The captain is standing up in the stern, holding on by the mizen-mast; sometimes he can see nothing of the men as the surf sweeps over them. He orders the chests to be thrown overboard, but most of them are already washed away; the rest are unlashed from their fastenings, and lifted as the men can get at them, and the next wave carries them away. Heavy masses of cloud darken the sky; the rain falls in torrents; it is bitterly cold; the men can do nothing but hold on; the tide rises gradually; suddenly the boat lifts again; it is caught by the driving sea, and is flung forward. There is no keeping her straight, the water is too broken; her stern frees itself before the bow, and round she swings; her bow lifts a little; onward she goes a few yards, and grounds again by the stern; round sweeps the bow, and with another jerk she comes broadside on the Sands again, lurching over on her side, with the terrible surf making a clean sweep over the waist. It is a struggle for the men to get their breath, the spray beats over them in such clouds. This happens time after time. The captain calls the men aft, that the boat may be lightened in the bow, and thus be more likely to keep straight. Most of the boatmen come to the stern, but the Portuguese will not move, and even some of the boatmen are so exhausted with the violent exertions they have made, and by the beating of the waves, that they are almost unconscious, and only able to cling to the gunwale and thwarts of the boat with an iron, nervous grasp, and are thus just able to save themselves from being washed out of her. As the coxswain notices their exhausted state, he expects each time as the big waves wash over them to see some of them leave go their hold and be carried away; and although he makes as light of it as he can, and tries to cheer them up, he himself has very small hope of ever seeing land again. The sands on the sea shore, if there has been any surf, appear at low tide uneven with the ridges or ripples the waves have left on them. On the Goodwins, where the force of the sea is in every way multiplied, and the waves break and the tide rushes with tenfold power, the little sand ripples of the smoother shore become ridges of two or three feet high. It is on these ridges that the life-boat so continually grounds. As the tide rises she is swept from one to the other by the long sweeping waves; she is swung round and round in the swirl of the cross-seas and rapid tide, thumping and jerking heavily each time that she strands. All this is in the midst of darkness, of bitter cold, and of a raging wind, surf, and sea, until the hardship and peril are almost too much to be borne, and some of the men feel dying in the boat. One old boatman afterwards thus described his feelings. "Well, sir, perhaps my friends were right when they said I hadn't ought to have gone out--that I was too old for that sort of work"--he was then about sixty years of age--"but, you see, when there is life to be saved, it makes one feel young again; and I've always felt I have had a call to save life when I could; and I wasn't going to hang back then; and I stood it better than some of them after all. I did my work on board the brig, and when she was so near falling over us, and when the _Dreadnought_ life-boat seemed knocking our bottom out, I got on as well as any of them; but when we got to beating, and grubbing over the Sands, swinging round and round, and grounding every few yards with a jerk that bruised us sadly, and almost tore our arms out from the sockets--no sooner washed off one ridge, and beginning to hope that the boat was clear, than she thumped upon another harder than ever, and all the time the wash of the surf nearly carrying us out of the boat--it was truly almost too much for any man to stand. There was a young fellow holding on next to me; I saw his head begin to drop, and that he was getting faint, and going to give over; and when the boat filled with water, and the waves went over his head, he scarcely cared to struggle free. I tried to cheer him a bit, and keep his spirits up. He just clung to the thwart like a drowning man. Poor fellow, he never did a day's work after that night, and died in a few months. "Well, I couldn't do anything with him, and I thought that it didn't matter much, for I felt it must soon all be over; that it couldn't be long before the boat would be knocked to pieces. So I took my life-belt off, that I might have it over all the quicker; for I knew that there would be no chance whatever of life if the boat once went, and I would have it over all the quicker, for I didn't want to be beating about those sands alive or dead longer than I could help; the sooner I went to the bottom, the better, I thought. When once all hope of life was over--and that time seemed close upon us every moment--some of us kept shouting, just cheering ourselves and one another up, as well as we could; but I had to give that up, and I remember hearing the captain crying out, 'We will see Ramsgate yet again, my men, if we steer clear of old wrecks,' And then I heard the Portuguese lad crying, and I remember that I began to think that it was a terrible dream, and pinched myself to see if I was really awake; and I began to feel very strange and insensible. I didn't feel afraid of death, for, you see, I hadn't left it to such times as that to prepare to meet my God. And if ever I spent hours in prayer, be sure I spent them in prayer that night. And I just seemed going off in a kind of dead faint, and felt very dream-like, and as if I couldn't hold on any longer; and as I felt this I thought, in a feeble sort of way, of my friends ashore, and bid them good-bye like, for I knew that I should be soon washed out of the boat, when I looked up, and the surf was curling up both sides of the boat, and I was going to throw myself down on the thwart, that the seas might beat upon my back, and I should never have lifted it up again, when I saw a bright star. The clouds had broken a little, and there was that blessed beautiful star shining out. Yes, truly it was a blessed beautiful star to me; as it caught my eye it seemed, in my weak state, to lay a strange hold upon me; to gather all my attention, and to call me back to life again. And I began to have a little thought about seeing my home again, and that I wasn't going to be called away just yet. And I straightened myself up a little, and laid a firmer hold upon the boat, and lifted my head to look for the star after each time the seas beat over us, and I kept my eye upon it whenever I could; and I cannot explain how it was, but looking for and watching that star kept me up, and when I got ashore, I seemed at first not much worse than the best of them. But for seven whole days after that I lost my speech, and lay like a log upon my bed; and I was ill a long time--indeed, have never been right since, and I suppose at my age I never shall get over it. But what is more, I believe something of the same sort may be said of most of those that were in the boat that night. One poor young fellow is dead, another has been subject to fits ever since, and not any of us quite the men we were before, and no wonder when you think what we passed through. "I cannot describe it, and you cannot, neither can any one else; but when you say you've beat and thumped over those sands, almost yard by yard, in a fearful storm on a winter's night, and live to tell the tale, why it seems to me about the next thing to saying that you've been dead, and brought to life again." The coxswain of the life-boat, brave Isaac Jarman, was chosen for that position for his fortitude, skill, and daring, and well did he sustain his character that night, never for one moment losing his presence of mind, and doing his utmost to cheer the men up. The crew consisted of hardy, daring fellows, ready to face any danger, to go out in any storm, and to do battle with the wildest seas; but the horrors of that night were almost too much for the most iron nerves. The fierce freezing wind, the almost pitch darkness, the terrible surf, and beating waves, and the men unable to do anything for their safety; the boat driven, almost hurled, by the force of the waves from sand ridge to sand ridge, and apparently breaking up beneath them each time she lifted on the surf and crushed down again upon the Sands, besides the danger of her getting foul of any old wrecks--how all this was lived through seemed miraculous. Time after time there was a cry of "Now she breaks up! she can't stand this! all over at last!" Another such thump, and she is done for, and then the boat would writhe, almost on her beam ends, while the waves beat over, until she was again lifted and thrown forward to crash down and ground again; and all this lasted for about two hours, as almost yard by yard they beat from ridge to ridge over the sands. Suddenly the swinging and beating of the boat cease; she is in a very heavy sea, but she answers her helm and keeps her head straight. At last they have got over the Sands and into deep water; the danger is passed, and they are saved. With new hopes comes new life. Some can scarcely realize their comparative safety, and still keep their firm hold upon the boat, expecting each second another terrible lurch and jerk upon the Sands, and the heavy rush and wash of the seas. No: that is all over, and the boat, in spite of her tremendous knocking about, is sound, and sails buoyantly and well. The crew quickly get further sail upon her, and she makes way before the gale to the westward. The Portuguese sailors lift their heads. They have been clinging together and to the boat, crouching down under the lee of the foresail during the time of beating over the Sands; they notice the stir among the boatmen, and that the terrible jerking and thumping of the boat and the rush of sea over her have ceased; and they also learn that the worst is passed, and that the danger is at an end. Long since did they despair of life; and their surprise and joy now know no bounds. Bravely on goes the life-boat, making for the westward. The Portuguese are very busy in earnest consultation. The poor fellows have lost their kit, and only possess the things they have on, and a few pounds that they have with them. Soon it becomes evident what the consultation has been about. "Coxswain!" one of the boatmen cries out, "they want to give us all their money!" "Yes! yes!" said the interpreter, in broken English, "you have saved our lives! Thank you! thank you! but all we have is yours; it is not much, but you take it between you;" and he held out the money. It was about 17_l._ "I, for one, won't touch any of it," said the coxswain of the boat. "Nor I!" "Nor I!" others added; "put your money up." The brave fellows will not take a farthing from brother sailors, whom they know to be poor, much like themselves; and in a few words they make them understand this, and how glad they are to have saved them. The life-boat makes good way, and soon runs across the Sands through the Trinity Swatch Way, and, without further adventure, she reaches the harbour about five o'clock in the morning. The crew of the brig are placed under the care of the Portuguese Consul, and the boatmen go to their homes, to feel for many a long day the effects of the fatigues and perils of that terrible night. During all this time the steamer has been cruising up and down the edge of the Sands, vainly searching for any trace of the life-boat; and soon after daylight she made, as has been already described, for the harbour. Her captain and crew are half broken-hearted, and scarcely know how they shall be able to tell the tale of the terrible calamity that seems so certainly to have happened. Suddenly, as the mouth of the harbour opens to them, they see the life-boat. They stare with amazement, and can scarcely believe their eyes. "Astonished," said the captain of the steamer, describing his feelings, "that I was; never so much so in my life, as when I stood looking at that boat. I could have shouted and cried for very wonder and joy; you might have knocked me down with a straw." Thus the captain of the steamer described his feelings. It was the same with all the crew; and as the steamer shot round the pier and heard that all were saved, and the life-boatmen all right, the good news seemed to more than repay them for the dangers and anxieties of the night. Thus did the crew of the gallant life-boat and of the steamer help to earn that night the noble reputation that belongs to our boatmen and sailors at large--testimony to which was given, on one occasion, by a foreign captain, who said, "Ah! we may always know whether it is upon the English coast that we are wrecked, by the efforts that are made for our rescue." CHAPTER X. SIGNALS OF DISTRESS--OUT IN THE STORM. "And the coming wind did roar more loud, And the sails did sigh like sedge; And the rain poured down from one black cloud, The moon was at its edge. The thick black cloud was cleft, and still The moon was at its side; Like water shot from some high crag, The lightning fell with never a jag, A river steep and wide." _Coleridge._ Wild weather on land! wild weather at sea! fear and trembling, and earnest prayers, in many a quiet home, for loved ones at sea, who must be within reach of the gale that hurries so fiercely by. How impressive it is to lie awake listening to the storm--to hear the rush of the wind, now moaning in the chimney, now thundering at the windows against which the rain beats and hurtles; to fancy or to feel that the house trembles shaken in the rude power of the blast, or, if near the sea-shore, to hear the waves breaking on the beach, a half-suppressed tumultuous uproar, like the faintly heard riot of a distant angry mob. To get farther to sea in one's thoughts, and to picture a noble ship with close-reefed topsails running before the gale, or beating away from the dread neighbourhood of dangerous sands or coast, while the pilot, anxious and watchful, and the crew, eager and alert, peer through the darkness to catch the welcome guidance of some bright warning light, or are on the watch to detect the fainter light of some ship that is steering her course perilously near; the passengers all the time wistful and anxious, asking many questions, and receiving cheering answers, but given with that unreality of tone that makes the hearer fear the sound, more than he can believe the sense; or to imagine a vessel at anchor, the cables swinging out at their full length, the sails all closely furled, but the gale beating against the hull, and masts, and yards, with a power that threatens to sweep the ship and her living freight to a speedy destruction; to picture the ship lifting, and pitching, and surging, in a cloud of spray, the hungry waves leaping at it, as if to devour it before its time, the anchors yielding foot by foot, or the cable giving, and the hungry sands waiting in a terrible rage of foam and sea under the lee. In the morning to look from tall cliffs upon a golden beach, upon the fretting surf that lines it, upon the sea bright with sunshine, smooth browed, but like a great giant rolling his huge limbs in uneasy sleep; quick with great billows rising and falling in restless heavy long lines of waves. Then to look at the distant Goodwin Sands, and to watch the white leaping surf, fangs in the jaws of death, still gnashing and mumbling after their midnight meal, in which they ravened perhaps on a goodly ship, and mangled many brave sailors, and weeping women and trembling wondering children; unless their victims were snatched from their grasp by the brave Storm Warriors who rush into their midst in the very fiercest of their strife, and wrestle with them for their prey. Such pictures are often suggested by the midnight gale, and such after-scenes are witnessed in the morning's calm at Ramsgate, as at many another spot on the bold coast of our sea-girt island home, where each howling wind that rushes on breathes the trumpet-blast that calls to the struggle of life and death. It was a tempestuous wintry day early in December, a few years ago, when the scenes occurred which the following will be an attempt to describe: During the whole of the day the wind has been blowing hard from the west-north-west. The weather has been very unsettled for some little time, squally with the cloud-scud low, and swiftly flying past; now the weather is becoming worse, and the blasts are more frequent and more fierce, rapidly growing into a heavy gale. The Fitzroy's signal hangs ominously from the flag-staff, giving a warning of the dangerous winds which may be expected. The Downs anchorage is crowded with shipping, so much so, that the lights of the vessels anchored there throw a glare upon the darkness of the night, such as is shed by the lights of a populous town. Every now and then a vessel leaves the fleet, and, running before the gale, seeks surer refuge; or perhaps a homeward-bound ship swiftly threads her way through the crowd of vessels, the crew half rejoicing in the gale, which at every blast bears them nearer home. On Ramsgate Pier rumours of disasters at sea, bring the watchful lookers on together in anxious gossip; many partially disabled vessels have already found refuge in the harbour, and now a schooner is brought in by some Broadstairs boatmen. When they boarded her in answer to her signals of distress, they found that the mate with a woman and child alone remained on board. The schooner had been in collision during the previous night, and whether the rest of her crew had escaped to the other vessel, or had been lost overboard, was left a matter of dread uncertainty. As it is a stirring sight to see the vessels making through the heavy seas for the harbour, so it is an exciting, and withal a gallant, sight to watch the luggers heavily freighted with anchors and chains, to supply vessels that have slipped their cables, bearing away bravely in all the rush of the storm, upon their errands of daring enterprise. The afternoon creeps on; it is half-past three, a puff of smoke is seen coming from the Gull light-ship, but the wind is too strong, and in the wrong direction, for the report of the gun to be heard. The signal is, however, at once accepted, and soon the steamer and the life-boat are away in the storm. They make for the light-vessel to learn for what, and in which direction their services are required. A squall of thick rain hides the Downs and the south end of the Goodwin Sands from view. Suddenly the squall clears away, passing rapidly to windward, and now from the pier and cliff, although not yet from the lower level of the steamer's deck, or from the life-boat, the vessel that is in danger is seen. A large light schooner has driven from her anchorage, and is now dragging perilously near the Goodwin Sands. She is too near, with the wind as it is, to have any chance of escaping by slipping her cable and sailing clear of the Sands; she is driving fast, and the large flag, that she has hoisted as a signal of distress, can be very distinctly seen from the cliff. The watchers on shore, by taking her bearings, see how rapidly she is dragging her anchors and nearing her doom; and the nature of the tremendous sea she is in is also very evident. She is light, buoyant, and lifts to every wave; she looks like a gallant charger taking a succession of desperate leaps, as first her bow is thrown high in the air, and she then rides for a moment high upon the top of the wave, and then again her stern is thrown high, and her bow is almost buried as the huge short wave passes under her. Repeatedly those who are watching her from the shore, have their fears aroused that her straining cables have at last parted, and that she is in full career for the waiting deadly Sands. It is an alarming sight. The lookers-on from the cliff only take their eyes off her to look occasionally at the steamer and life-boat as they are making their way to her rescue. The steamer rolls and plunges on--nothing daunted, nothing disturbed, by all the buffeting she gets; the life-boat rises like a cork to every wave, and plunges through the crests as she feels the drag of the steamer, while the foam spreads out on either side like a fan, and the scud and spray fly over her in a cloud. The steamer and life-boat make their way to the Gull Lightship, where they learn that a schooner has been seen in distress, bearing south-south-west, supposed to be on the South Sand Head. On through the giant seas and driving surf, in the very teeth of the gale, they make gallant way, and are about to take up a position from which the life-boat can dash in through the broken water to the rescue of the crew. A large Deal lugger is beating up to windward from the neighbourhood of the Sands, they speak her, and learn that she has rescued the crew of the schooner. The lugger, one of the finest of all the noble boats that sail from Deal beach, had, some time before the schooner got into such a dangerous position, sheered alongside her, at no slight risk, and as she shot by, the crew had jumped into her, forgetting in their hurry and excitement the flag of distress which they had left flying high, pleading still, and not in vain, for help that was no longer needed. Nothing can be done for the schooner; driving fast, she soon begins to thump on the Sands; darkness settles down upon her, the fierce waves have her for their prey, and in the morning not one remaining fragment of her is to be seen; she has been torn utterly to pieces, and what the tide has not swept away, the Sands have completely buried. The steamer and life-boat, when they leave the schooner to her fate, make for a barque, which, with main and mizen masts cut away, seems, although she is in great danger, to have a chance of weathering the storm. The wind is too heavy, and the tide too strong, for the steamer to be able to tow her into a safer position; her crew have already made their escape, and she is left in turn, but not, as it proves, to meet the fate of the schooner, for she successfully rides out the gale. A further cruise round the Sands, to see if their services are required by any distressed vessel, and they make again for Ramsgate, which they reach about half-past six. The steamer and life-boat are moored, ready for any fresh call which may be made for their services, the probability of which seems very great, and all the men remain on the alert. In such a storm anxious watchers are on the look-out at all the stations round the coast. Boatmen under the protection of boat-houses, or boats, or grouped together at friendly corners, are keeping a steadfast watch upon the seas. One or two every now and then take a few strides into the open for a wider range of view, and then back again to cover. The coastguard-men, sheltered in nooks of the cliff, or behind rocks, or breasting the storm on the drear Sands as they walk their solitary beat, peer out into the darkness watching for those signals from the sea--the gun flash, or the gleam of the rocket, which while they speak hope to the imperilled, tell to those on shore of lives in danger--of those who must speedily be rescued, or must die. Or the watchers listen for the dull throb of the signal gun, the sign of wild warfare, and struggles for life mid the charges and conflicts of breaking waves and dashing seas, a signal that the waiting Storm Warriors instantly accept, and rush into the contest to snatch their dying brethren from the arms of the enemy that is too strong for them. Sometimes the telegraph wires speed the message of distress along the coast, as happened one stormy New Year's Eve, when a ship was seen off Deal beach in almost a blaze of light, burning tar-barrels, and firing rockets to tell of her distress; an intervening fog seemed to prevent the look-out on board the light-vessel seeing her, and some boatmen on Deal beach, who could not possibly get their boats off the sands in the face of the strong gale blowing straight on shore, put their halfpence together to pay for a telegraph message--the messages were dearer then than they are now--and sent their swiftest runner to telegraph to Ramsgate; and after all, there was some unfortunate mistake, and fatal delay, and a telegram at last sent for further particulars, which was answered with a demand for urgent speed, and away then flew steamer and life-boat, and they neared the wreck, and rounded to, to send the life-boat in, when some of the boatmen thought they heard an agonising shriek, and others thought it was only the wail of the storm; but they looked, and the great green seas swept over the wreck, turned her right over, and she was seen no more, and twenty-eight lives went to their account. A piteous New Year's tale it was that was told next morning; a boat's crew got away from the ship soon after she struck, and battling through the broken seas, made way before the wind to Dover, and they told the story, that the lost vessel had picked up a shipwrecked crew, who were thus a second time wrecked, and at the second time lost; and that more of the crew would have come away in the boat, and in other boats, but it was a great risk, and there was a Deal pilot on board who pointed out the danger; and said that the Ramsgate life-boat was certain to be out to their rescue, they might be sure of her; and so they stayed and lighted tar-barrel after tar-barrel, and fired rocket after rocket; and when the sea washed their signal fires out, and swept the decks, they took to the rigging, and waited for the life-boat; and as they waited the poor Deal pilot could watch the light on the beach, by the house where slept his wife and eight children, who were to call him husband--father--no more. The life-boat men scarcely liked to speak of the agony and disappointment it was to them to be thus just too late; no fault of theirs, poor fellows; they would, if they could, have sooner swum to the wreck, if that were of any use, than have been too late to save the poor perishing lives. There was an official inquiry into the matter made by the authorities in London, and it was decided that no one was to blame; that it was one of those unfortunate occurrences which never would have happened, like many others, if people could only be as wise before an event as they are after, and which no one could regret more than those who were in any way the unfortunate, and of course most unintentional, agents of bringing it about. And now to proceed with the adventures of the life-boat on the night in question. About a quarter past eight in the evening, the harbour-master of Ramsgate receives a telegram. It tells its tale in its own short way, and the harbour-master learns that round the stormy North Foreland, some miles to westward of Margate, the _Prince's_ light-ship is firing guns and rockets, and that the _Tongue_ light-ship is repeating the signals. The vigilant coastguard-man who had first noticed the signals hurried to Margate with the tidings; but there the fine life-boats are powerless to help. The wind is blowing a hurricane from west-north-west, and drives such a tremendous sea upon the shore that no boat whatever could possibly get off and work its way out to sea; it would merely be rolled back upon the beach in the attempt. The coastguard at Margate at once saw how impossible it would be to render the required aid from Margate, and hastened to send a telegram to Ramsgate calling for help. The harbour-master there receives it, and now hurried action at once takes the place of wistful anxious waiting. For hours the steamer and life-boat have quietly rested in the sheltered harbour, lifting gently to the small waves that have been playing against their sides. The men for hours have been gazing out into the darkness, watching for signals, and listening to the roar of the gale, and to the murmur and tumult of the tumbling waves. The expected challenge comes. Ready! all ready! is the answer, and they rush to action at once, without waiting for one moment to consider whether a challenge to such strife should, or should not, be accepted. They know the hardships and peril of the work upon which they are called; but they know the other side of the question also; and it would make many comparatively useless lives as noble as are the lives of many of these poor boatmen, if all would only consider the result of good work, as well as the labour, and forget the trouble, or personal hardships of the labour, in the keen hope to realize the desired result. And these boatmen, as they have been crouching down under shelter of the pier wall, watching the progress of the storm, have had many a memory, and many a vision, to occupy their thoughts and stir their anxious courage; memories of brave fellows plucked from the very grasp of death; and visions of that which they well know how to picture; brother sailors perhaps clinging to the spars of a shattered wreck, while the wild waves leap around and only a few fragments of creaking yielding timber shield the poor men from their fury, and from death. They know the power of the waves to tear the strongest ships to pieces in a few hours, and are ready, all ready, for any stern deadly wrestle with the fury of the storm, for the rescue of those who stand in such dread need of help. The order is given, and the usual rush to the life-boat takes place. The regular Ramsgate boatmen have not, this time, the race for the boat all to themselves; the _Adder_ revenue-cutter is in the harbour, and two of her men get into the life-boat, and with ten boatmen and the coxswain, the crew is made up. The men on board the steam-tug _Aid_ are prompt as usual, and within half-an-hour from the giving of the order the steamer and life-boat are out to the rescue, again fighting their way through broken seas, and breasting the full fury of the gale. Imagine the picture that was shrouded in the thick darkness of that wild night. The steamer is strong and powerfully built, and has never failed in any of her struggles with the storm, but has in every part worked true and well; and this when failure in crank, rod, or rivet, might have been death to many lives. Seek to imagine this brave little steamer at her perilous work. Thrown up and down like a plaything by the mighty sea, now half buried in the wash of surf, or poised for a moment on the broad crest of a huge wave, and again shooting bows under into the trough, rolling and pitching and staggering in the storm, but still battling on true to her purpose. Still onward and onward she goes; the beat of the paddles, the roar of the steam-pipe, the throb of the engines, mingling with the hoarse blast of the gale, and the lash and hiss of the surf and fleeting spray; while to the watchers on shore, her light flitting here and there as she rolls and tosses, alone tell of her progress. The life-boat is almost burrowing her way through the spray and foam. Each man bends low on his seat, and holds fast by thwart or gunwale. The wind has changed, and the boat is being towed in the face of the gale and sea, and does not ride over the waves as easily as she would if she were under canvas only, but is dragged on and on, plunging through the crests of the seas. "It was just like as if a fire-engine was playing upon my back, not in a steady stream, but with a great burst of water at every pump," said one of the men whose station was in the bow. It is a wild sea; the waves and surf that break against the bows of the big ships that are at anchor in the Downs send their spray flying high, almost to the topmast heads; so it may well be imagined how the heavy seas nearly smother the steamer and life-boat as they breast all their force, heading against the gale. Now the waves rush over the bow, and again a cross wave catches the side of the boat, throws her almost on her side, sweeps bodily over her; while she pitches and rolls with a motion quick as that of a plunging horse. But the men know her well, and trust her thoroughly; and with a firm hold and stout hearts they resolutely journey onwards. Now, the wind veers a little, and the high cliffs somewhat break its force, and the men feel less the power of the gale; but still the wind is almost directly ahead, and the ebb tide is running against them with great strength. Every yard of advance is won by a struggle with the seas, as the steamer _Aid_ pants and beats her way onward. But still it is won, and all hands are content. At last they get round the North Foreland, and begin to feel that they are nearing the scene of action. The rain ceases, and the clouds of flying scud lift a little. It is still pitch dark, but free from mist and rain--clear dark, as they call it. The men see the Margate Pier, and the town lights, which shine out steadily and clearly; and it seems to them a strange contrast as they look from their rough post of danger, action, and hardship, upon the town resting in quiet peace, unconscious of the storm. They make for the _Tongue_ light-ship, which is stationed about nine miles from Margate. Every five minutes the darkness of the horizon is broken by the flash of a rocket which is thrown up by the light-ship. It goes flying up against the gale, and bursting, gives a moment's gleam as its stars caught by the fierce wind, pass away, floating in a short stream of light to leeward. The steamer's crew make for the light-ship, looking anxiously the while in all directions for any signal which may guide them more directly to the vessel in distress; but they see none, and so speed on towards the light-ship. As the steamer passes her on the lee side, as slowly and as near as possible, the coxswain is told that signals had been seen from the high part of the Shingle sand bank, supposed to be from a large vessel in distress. The life-boat in turn sheers near the light-vessel in passing, and hears the same report. Again they urge their way, struggling onward in the gale; but they can see no sign of a vessel, and no vestige of a wreck. Perilous and anxious is the work as they feel their way along the very edge of the dangerous Sands; the roar of the gale is too great for any cries of distress to be heard. The hull of the vessel may be overrun with the seas, and the crew, clinging to the masts or rigging, be utterly unable to give any signals by firing guns or rockets, or by showing lights; and the night is so dark, that from the life-boat they can only see a few yards ahead. The men are most anxiously on the look-out; each time that the boat rises high upon a sea, they try their utmost to peer through the darkness by which they are surrounded. No! the breakers gleam white, and the steamer's light is tossing to and fro with every pitch and roll of the vessel; but nothing more can they make out. And the anxiety of the men, both on board the steamer and the life-boat, becomes greater and greater; they do not like to leave the neighbourhood of the Sands without thoroughly examining it, fearing that in doing so they may leave behind them, to a despair rendered more terrible, and to a death rendered more bitter by the false hopes that had been excited, some poor fellows clinging desperately to a few fragments of trembling wreck. But still they can see nothing and can hear nothing of either wreck or crew; either the vessel must have gone utterly to pieces, or the men on board the _Tongue_ light-ship have been mistaken in the position of the signals they have seen. As the men are listening intensely for the faintest signal or cry of distress, they fancy that they hear the booming of a distant gun, fired at intervals. Now in a lull in the storm they hear it more distinctly, and see in the far distance the flashing of a rocket-light. Watching and listening still, they soon discover that the _Prince's_ and _Girdler_ light-ships are at the same time repeating signals of distress. They must give up their present search, and hasten to the rescue where such urgent demands are being made for their help. Their consolation is, that at all events they can do nothing more in the utter darkness in searching for the wreck, which they have been already so long looking for in vain; and before daylight, or soon after, they can probably be back to resume their search after having, as they hope, done good work in the interval. At all events, they must be off; and off they go, leaving, as it proved, a crew of storm-beaten men in as desperate a position as it was well possible for men to be. They think it best to make for the _Prince's_ light-ship first, and on arriving there they are told that a large ship has been seen making signals. They think that she is on the Girdler Sands, but she may be on the Shingles. Away again in the darkness they speed on their noble mission. At last they plainly discern a light on the south part of the Shingles; they make for it, but only to be again disappointed. It is the light of the steam tug _Friend of all Nations_, which is lying-to under the lee of the Shingles to be protected from the rush of the seas. But here they are somewhat repaid for their efforts, for they learn beyond doubt that the vessel in distress is a large ship on the Girdler Sands; and more than this, that another large ship, disabled and in great distress, had been seen driving down the Deeps, a very narrow channel between the Shingle and the Long Sand. It must have been signals from this latter vessel which had been seen by the men on board the _Tongue_ light-ship. They are unwilling to pass on their way to the Girdler without making an effort to find the vessel which had been seen in such great distress, and which, in every probability, had gone ashore somewhere in the neighbourhood. So they make a cruise in the direction of the Deeps. They search narrowly, but in vain, and at last hurry away as the Girdler light-ship still continues to fire heavy guns. At last their long, persevering, and hazardous search is crowned with success. Upon nearing the Girdler light-ship, they see on the Sands the flare of blazing tar-barrels; they know these must be the signals made by the vessel that has run on the Sands. At once every man forgets all about his many hours of exposure to wet, cold, and exertion, and wakens up to full strength and vigour; and all begin at once to make preparations for going into the rescue. The steamer is obliged to steer clear of the broken water, not only because of the danger of grounding, but also because of the wildness of the seas as they break upon the Sands, as their surf would be quite sufficient to sweep her decks and swamp her. She skirts the breakers and tows the life-boat well to windward. The men on board the boat watch their opportunity; and as soon as they find themselves in the right position for reaching the wreck, they cast off the tow-rope, and the wind and sea at once swing the boat's head round, and she plunges into the midst of the broken water which is rushing over the Sands. It is a desperate strife of waters, and into the very thick of the fray, straight as an arrow, the boat rushes. The strength of the gale is so great, the men only dare to hoist a close-reefed foresail; but swiftly it bears the boat along. At times the boat is so overrun with broken water and surf that the men can scarcely breathe. They, however, cling resolutely to the boat, and again and again she shakes herself free of water, and the men straighten themselves for a moment, draw a few long breaths, when again they meet a tangle of broken waves. Down into the trough of the troubled seas the boat plunges, and over her and her crew the waves again rush in all directions; and thus she undauntedly works her way to the wreck. CHAPTER XI. THE EMIGRANT SHIP. "Borne upon the ocean's foam, Far from native land and home, Midnight's curtain, dense with wrath, Brooding o'er our venturous path. While the mountain wave is rolling, And the ship's bell faintly tolling: Saviour! on the boisterous sea, Bid us rest secure in Thee." _L. H. Sigourney._ It is one o'clock in the morning; the moon gleams out through the gulfs in the dark deep clouds which sweep swiftly across her path. The men see a large ship hard and fast on the Sands and in a perfect boil of waters. The tremendous seas surge around her, and as they wildly leap against her shake her from stem to stern; the spray is flying over her in great sheets, and mingles with the dark masses of smoke, which rise in thick clouds from the flaming tar-barrels, while smoke and spray are swept swiftly to leeward by the force of the wind. The vessel is making all possible signals of distress; the fierce gale has driven her, at each lift of the sea, higher and higher upon the Sands, until she has reached the highest part, and there has grounded fast. As the tide fell the waves could no longer lift the ship, and let her crash down upon the sand, else long since she would have been utterly broken to pieces. The boat makes in for the ship, the people on board see her, and cries and cheers of joy greet her approach. The foresail is lowered, the anchor thrown overboard, and the boat fast sheers in towards the vessel, which they find to be an emigrant ship crowded with passengers. The cable goes out by the run, and is too soon exhausted, for with a jerk it brings the boat up within sixty feet of the vessel. As the poor emigrants see the boat stop short, their cries for help are frantic, and sound dismally in the boatmen's ears, as slowly and laboriously they haul in the cable, and with much trouble get up their anchor, before making another attempt to get alongside the ship. In the meantime they answer the cries of the people with shouts to encourage them, and the moon shining out, the emigrants see that they are not deserted. The sea is so heavy, and the boat's anchor has taken so firm a hold, that it is a long time before they can get it up; at last they succeed, and now sail within fifty fathoms of the vessel, before they heave the anchor overboard again. It is necessary if they are to windward of a vessel to let the anchor down as far as possible from her, that they may get plenty of sea-room when they haul up to it again, so that when they set sail they may have space enough to sail clear of the vessel upon which the seas would throw the boat bodily, if they did not allow themselves room to steer a course which shall be clear of her. They let the cable out gradually and drop alongside; they get a hawser from the bow, and another from the stern of the vessel, and by these they are enabled to keep the boat moderately well in position, the man on board hauling and veering on the ropes, and upon the boat's cable attached to the anchor, so as to keep the boat sufficiently near without letting her strike against the sides of the vessel, and this, in the broken seas and rapid tide, is a matter of no small difficulty. The ship is the _Fusilier_, bound from London to Australia; her captain and pilot shout out to the men on board the boat, "How many can you carry? we have more than one hundred souls on board, more than sixty women and children." And it is with no little dismay that the terrified passengers look down upon the boat half buried in spray, and wonder how she could by any possibility be the means of rescuing such a crowd of people. The men answer from the boat that they have a steamer near, and that they will take off the passengers and crew in parties to her. Two of the life-boat men, as the boat lifts on the top of a sea, make a sprint, catch hold of the man-ropes and climb on board the ship. "Who comes here?" shouts the captain, as the two boatmen, clad in their oilskin overalls, with their cork belts on, and pale and half exhausted with their long battling with wind and sea, jump from the bulwarks amid the excited passengers who crowd the deck. "Two men from the life-boat," is the reply, and the passengers throng round them, seize them by the hands, and some even cling to them with an energy of fear, that requires considerable force to overcome. The light from the ship's lamps and the faint moonlight reveal the mass of people on board, and the terrible state of exhaustion and fear that most of them are in; some are deadly pale and terror-stricken, their eyes wildly staring, and trembling in every limb; some are in a fainting condition, and are supported by friends, who half forget their own terrors in their efforts to console the sufferers who seem to need it most; the wild shrieks of some of the poor women pierce the gale, while others of the passengers are quiet and resigned, but their pale and firm looks and clasped hands suggest the depth of the emotions that they are at such pains to control. It has been a long long night of terror and most anxious suspense, and many of those who have held up bravely during its hours of danger and almost of despair, now break down at the crisis of the life-boat's arrival. But the night has not been one of unreasoning fear with all. There are those on board who, filled with a calm heroism, have by their example of holy faith exerted great influence for good among their fellow-passengers--one woman especially, who has been for some time employed by a religious society in London, visiting among the poor, proves herself well fitted for scenes of danger and distress. Gathering many around her, she read and prayed with them; and often as the wild blasts shook the vessel to the keel, there mingled with the roar of the storm the strains of hymns, and many poor creatures gathered consolation and confidence as they were led to look, from their own perfect helplessness and weakness, to the Almighty arm of a loving God; and many, who had already learnt to know and to feel those truths which take the sting from death, were encouraged to draw nearer to place their full reliance upon the sufficient atonement of Him who has declared, "I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and he that believeth in me shall never die." Thus there was light in the darkness and songs in the night, and the voice speaking mid the tempest said, "Peace, be still;" and many felt, although the warring elements still raged, a calm, which recklessness may assume, but which faith alone can give at such an hour. This is no fancy sketch, no effort to drag in a bit of attempted pathos. One hundred immortal souls were momentarily expecting the summons which should launch them into eternity; and a most terrible shade in the tragic picture it would indeed have been, had not any of that throng been prepared for the summons by the exercise of earnest humble faith--if by all of them the expected messenger, who seemed to linger minute by minute upon the threshold, was dreaded only with a despairing fear, as the King of Terrors, if not any were prepared to welcome him calmly as the messenger of Peace. But now the life-boat men are upon the deck--a prospect of safety dawns upon all--a wild scene of excitement for a moment prevails, and there is a rush made for the gangway of the ship. Mothers shriek for their children; husbands strive to push their wives through the throng, and children are trodden down in the rush. It is a few moments before the excitement ceases, and the captain can exercise any authority; but the emigrants, checked for a minute, regain self-control, fall back from the side of the vessel, and await for orders. "How many will the life-boat carry?" the captain asks the life-boat men. "Between twenty and thirty at each trip," is the answer. "There is a very nasty dangerous sea and surf over the Sands, if too crowded we may get some washed out of her." It is at once decided, as a matter of course, that the women and children shall be taken first, and the crew prepare to get them into the boat. Two sailors are slung in bow-lines over the side of the vessel to help the women down. The boat ranges to and fro in the rush of the tide, the men do their utmost to check its sheering, hauling and easing in turn the hawsers which are passed from the ship to the bow and stern of the boat, but there is no keeping her for one moment steady; now she veers right away from the vessel as far as the cable will let her, and again comes in upon a rush of sea as if to crush herself against the wreck; up she is lifted on the crest of a wave to almost the level of the ship's deck, and down again plunges as the wave passes, many feet below, and leaves a deep and dismal gulf of tumbled sea and foam between her and the ship. It is a terrible scene; the crowd of helpless frightened people, and the comparatively small boat, tossed wildly in the rage of maddened waves, their one hope of rescue; and it is dangerous and difficult work getting the people into the boat; it would have been quite difficult and dangerous enough if all had been active and resolute sailors accustomed to scenes of danger, but how much more so, when a large proportion of those to be saved are helpless women, some aged and infirm! The women who are mothers are called first; one is led to the gangway, and shrinks back from the scene before her. The boat is lifted up on a big wave, the men stand on the thwarts with outstretched arms, ready to catch her if she falls, but the next moment the boat drops into the wild waste of water many feet below, and is half covered with a rush of foam. No wonder that the poor woman shrieks with terror, and seeks to struggle back on to the deck of the vessel; no time for persuasion, she is urged forcibly over the gangway, and now hangs in mid-air, held by the two men who are suspended over the side by ropes; as the boat rises again, the boatmen, who stand ready to catch her, cry, "Let go!" The two men do so, but the woman, in her terror, clings to one with a frantic grasp, and the next moment, as the boat falls away from the side of the vessel--oh! must she not fall into the sea? for the man to whom she is clinging cannot hold her as she is; one of the active prompt boatmen sees her danger, makes a spring, grasps her by the heel, drags her from her hold, catches her in his arms in her fall, and both of them roll over into the boat, their fall broken by the men who stand ready to catch them. The half insensible woman is quickly passed to the stern of the boat and thus she is saved. Now, they are ready again, for all are anxious that not a moment shall be lost; the number to be rescued, and the time that must of necessity be occupied in going to and from the steamer, makes every minute a question of life and death. Again, up the boat rises; the woman who is being urged forward makes a half spring, and is got into the boat without much trouble. The next time the boat rises she does not come well alongside, she rather falls short and sheers off. A woman is being held over the side by the two men: "Don't let go, Jack; don't let go!" the woman struggles, the position of the men is so awkward that they cannot hold her firmly, and she is struggling from their grasp, while the mad waves leap below, and if she falls she must at once be swept away by them, and down she does fall, but at that moment the boat sheers in again, just enough to enable one of the men to grasp the clothes of the woman and to drag her, as she falls, on to the side of the boat, and she too is saved. Again to work; another woman, she is sobbing, and cries out piteously, "Oh! don't shake me; be careful, don't hurt me!" Poor creature! she is very near her confinement; down she falls from the hands of the men who are holding her into the arms of the boatmen, and rolls over into the bottom of the boat. Some of the husbands on board throw blankets down to the poor half-dressed women in the boat; the blankets are rolled into bundles that the wind may not carry them away. Some of the women in the boat are crying aloud for their children; a passenger rushes frantically to the gangway, cries, "Here, here!" and thrusts a big bundle into the hands of one of the sailors, who supposes it to be merely a blanket which the man intends for his wife in the boat. "Here, Bill, catch!" the sailor shouts and throws the bundle to a boatman who is standing up in the boat; he just succeeds in catching it, as it is in the point of falling into the sea, and is thunderstruck to hear a baby's cry proceed from it, while there is a shriek from a woman, "My child! my child!" as she springs forward, and snatches it from him, which tells, indeed, of the greatness of the danger through which the poor little thing has passed. In spite of all the boatmen's care and labour the boat every now and then lurches with a tremendous thump against the ship's side, and would be stove in but for the massive cork fenders which surround her, and still she is leaping and tossing about; now high as the main chains of the ship, now low in the trough of a big sea, the hollow of which is so deep that it leaves but little water between the bottom of the boat and the sands; but with all eager haste the men work on, and at last, after many hair-breadth escapes, and some heavy falls, thirty women and children are got on board, and the boat is declared to be full. The boatmen cast off the hawsers from her bow and stern, and begin to haul in hard upon the cable. They draw the boat up to the anchor with much difficulty, for as the range of cable gets shorter, the boat jerks and pitches a great deal in the rush of the short waves, and in the swing of the tide. The anchor is up at last; the sails are hoisted; the boat feels her helm, gathers way swiftly, and shoots clear of the ship. A faint and half-hearted cheer greets them as they pass astern of the vessel; the remaining passengers watch them with wistful and somewhat anxious glances as they plunge on through sea and foam. Away the boat bounds before the fierce gale--on through the flying surf and boiling sea--on, although the waves leap over her and fill her with their spray. Buoyantly she rises and shakes herself free, staggering as a cross wave mid the broken water dashes itself against her bows; tossing her stern high as she climbs the waves' tall crests, then pitching almost bows under as the rolling waves pass under her stern; and lurching heavily on her side as she sinks into the trough of the sea. It is, in spite of their hope, a dread time for the poor women and children on board her, with those whom they love as themselves, left, they almost fear, to perish on the wreck, and while to themselves death at every moment seems very near; trembling with cold and excitement, they crowd together, and hold on to the boat, to each other, to anything; it is hard to think of safety while the boiling seas foam so fiercely around, ready, it seems, at any moment to overwhelm and bury the boat in their fierce waves. And the poor women take a more convulsive and firm grasp, as every now and then the men see a giant cross sea heading towards them, and give a quick warning cry--"Hold on!" and the sea comes with a clean sweep over the boat, almost washing them out of her. The steamer, as has been said, towed the life-boat well to windward, that she might have a fair wind before which to run in for the wreck, but as soon as the life-boat left the steamer, away she speeded round to the other side of the Sands, to leeward of the wreck, that the boat might again have a fair wind to her as she comes from the wreck, and she now lays to, awaiting the boat's return. On she comes; the broken water is now passed; the air is full of scud and spray, but the cross seas overrun her no longer; she is in deep water, and the exhausted emigrants begin to raise their heads and look about them; they could not have endured that continual breaking of the waves and rush of water over them much longer; how their hearts lift with joy as they hear the cheering voices of the men, and have the lights of the steamer pointed out to them, shining bright and near! Thus, with thirty women and children, their first sheave of the harvest to be gathered from death, the life-boat men run their boat alongside the _Aid_. The steamer is put athwart the seas, to form a break-water for the boat, which comes under her lee; the roll of the steamer, the pitching of the boat, the wild wind and sea, with the darkness of the night only faintly broken by the light of the steamer's lanterns, render it a somewhat difficult matter to get the women out of the boat. As the boat rises the men lift up a woman and steady her for a moment on the gunwale, two men on the steamer catch her by the arms as she comes up within reach, and she is dragged up the side on to the deck. There is here also no time for ceremony; a moment's hesitation, and the poor creature might have a limb crushed between the steamer and the boat. As each woman is thus got on deck, two men half lead half carry her to the cabin below. One woman struggles to get back to the boat, crying for her child, the men do not understand her in the roar of the gale, and she is gently forced below; again the rolled-up blanket appears, it is handed into the steamer, and is about to be dropped upon the deck, when half-a-dozen voices shout out, "There is a baby in the blanket!" and it is carried down into the cabin, and received by the poor weeping mother with a great outburst of joy. "God bless you! God bless you!" she exclaims to the man, and then blesses and praises God out of the abundant fulness of her heart. Some of the poor women are completely overcome by the reaction which takes possession of them now that they find themselves in safety; they had been comparatively calm and resigned during their hours of hardship and danger; now they realise the nature of the peril to which they have been exposed, and in which many whom they love are still placed. Some throw themselves on the cabin floor, weeping and sobbing; some cling to the sailors, begging and entreating them to save their husbands and children who are on board the wreck; while others can do little else than offer up some simple form of prayer and praise to God. Instantly that the boat is freed from her passengers she drops astern of the steamer, and is towed round the sands, to get again into position to make a second trip to the vessel; and when the straining cable is let go, and her sail hoisted, she heads round, gathers way, and bounds in like a greyhound through the troubled sea towards the wreck. A slant of wind comes and drives her from her course, and she fails in reaching the ship, and makes for the open water. The steamer speedily picks her up, tows her into a more favourable position, and the boat soon gets again alongside the vessel. There are still on board more women and children than will fill the boat, and they have to leave some half-a-dozen behind. All the old difficulties in getting the women down the side of the vessel into the life-boat are repeated, although the wind has now fallen a little. They make for the steamer, and as each new comer is handed down into the cabin, the anxiety of those who are eagerly looking for some loved one is great indeed, and the meetings again, after so dread a separation, are naturally very affecting. For the third time the boat makes to the ship, and now brings away the remaining passengers. The cabin of the steamer is full of women and children in every stage of exhaustion and excitement; and they are all very thankful to God for the full answer vouchsafed to the earnest prayers of the previous night. It has taken more than three hours to get the emigrants on board the steamer; there has been additional delay created by the boat twice failing to reach the ship, but this very delay, which at the time seemed so unfortunate, was, under God's providence, the means of saving further life. The life-boat again makes for the _Fusilier_ to see what the crew of the vessel will do, whether they will abandon the vessel at once, or wait to see the result of a change in the weather which seems to promise. They get alongside; the gale has gone down very considerably, and the tide has been falling fast for some time. The ship being light, has not received so much injury from the thumping on the ground as they anticipated; and, as she is high up on the sands, the tide has left her the sooner, so that she has settled down in shallow water, and there is now, therefore, no immediate danger; although, should the wind get up with the returning tide, she may be very speedily beaten to pieces. The captain of the ship thinks that if the wind goes down she may possibly be got off at the next high tide, as she has not been much knocked about; but while he is unwilling to abandon the vessel while there is a chance of her being rescued, he feels the greatness of the risk, and wishes the life-boat to remain alongside him. It is nearly day-light; the night is clear, and the wind still blowing very hard, although the fierceness of the gale seems expended. The life-boat makes her way to the steamer, and takes orders to be given at Ramsgate to send luggers with anchors and cables, that every effort may be made to get the ship off, if the weather continues to moderate. The boat then returns and lies by the ship, while the steamer, heavily freighted with rescued emigrants, makes the best of her way towards Ramsgate. CHAPTER XII. THE RESCUE OF THE CREW OF THE "DEMERARA," AND THE EMIGRANTS' WELCOME TO RAMSGATE. "Eternal Father, strong to save, Whose arm hath bound the restless wave, Who bid'st the mighty ocean deep Its own appointed limits keep; O hear us when we cry to Thee For those in peril on the sea." _Hymn._ "Now we must leave our fatherland, And wander far o'er ocean's foam; Broken is kinship's dearest band, Forsaken stands our ancient home. "But one will ever with us go, Through busiest day and stillest night; The heavens above, the deeps below, Stand all unveiled before his sight." _Hymn._ The emigrants describe their perils to the men on board the steamer, and mention that during the previous evening, while their ship was driving, and some time before she struck, they saw a large ship in great distress, and drifting fast in the direction of the Sands, but that as darkness set in, they lost sight of her. The crew of the steamer keep a sharp look-out for this vessel, or for any signs of her. She is evidently the one of which they had already heard, and of which they had been in search before they discovered the _Fusilier_. After some time they discover part of a mast and other wreckage entangled in the Sands, and can only conclude that the vessel has gone utterly to pieces, with the loss of all hands, during the night; they must speed on, and get the poor emigrants cared for on shore with all possible haste. But for the delay that had been occasioned, the steamer would have been far on its way to Ramsgate by this time, while it was yet too dark for them to see any distance; now in the grey light that increases rapidly they can search for any other signs of wreckage. As they proceed down the Prince's channel, and get near to the light-vessel, they see the small remnant of a wreck, which they think may be the bowsprit and jib-boom of a vessel dismasted and on her beam ends; they get nearer to her, and find that she is well over on the north-east side of the Girdler or Shingle Sands. Some of the crew wish to launch the steam tug's small life-boat, eighteen feet long, and make in through the surf to the wreck, to which they think they can see some of the crew clinging; but it is considered too great a risk to take so small a boat through such a broken sea, and it is agreed that they had better go back for the large life-boat. They put back, and passing to leeward of the _Fusilier_, strike the flag half-mast high, as a sign that the boat is to join them. This she speedily does, and they together make for the newly-found wreck; as they approach her, they can see that she is a vessel on her beam ends, with only her foremast standing. The life-boat makes in for her; the men wonder greatly that the vessel has held together so long, for she is broken and torn almost to pieces; the copper is peeled off her bottom, the timbers are started, rent, and twisted; the planking is wrenched off, almost all the cargo is washed out of the shattered hull, and here, and there, the light is to be seen through her bottom; there remains now little more than the skeleton of the ship that a few hours before, taut and trim, had buoyantly bounded over the seas; and where was her gallant crew that had so bravely sailed her then? The foremast, feebly held in position by a remnant of the deck, lies stretched a few feet above the water. The crew and pilot have been lashed to it for many hours, and have, for that time, seemed to be trembling over a fearful and yawning grave; the heavy waves foam up and beat against the hull, and the doomed ship is, bit by bit, being torn further to pieces. The crew, as they cling on, hear the timbers creaking and snapping; the deck was blown up as the water covered it, by the force of the confined air, and its fragments have been swept away in the swift tide. The heavy waves make a greater and greater breach over the ship; at times the ship lifts a little from the mere force of the blows given by the tremendous seas; at any moment the foremast may break off short, and the wreck be rolled right over. The mast quivers at every shake and heave of the wreck; the fierce tide rushes five feet beneath where the trembling sailors cling, over whom the waves are continually breaking. An hour passes, and the men are to their wonder still spared; another and another hour, but they have no means of giving any signals of distress, and there seems no room whatever for hope. How can there be? they ask each other. Suddenly they make out a steamer's lights in the distance, and watch them with a wistful curiosity; to their astonishment the steamer seems to make directly for them, and then to cruise backwards and forwards within a few hundred feet of them. A few of the trembling sailors shout out once or twice, but the rest smile grimly at the idea of any voice being heard, even a few yards off, in the roar of such a gale. They watch the steamer's lights in a very agony of suspense, but without any hope that they themselves can be discovered in the darkness. They see a smaller light some distance astern of the steamer, and imagine it to be that of a life-boat. As they hopelessly watch the movement of the vessels, they hear the dull throb of heavy guns from the distant light-ships. They see the faint flashes of light from the rockets: they know that these signals are calling to the steamer and life-boat to speed on elsewhere, to the rescue of other drowning ones; yes, the steamer, in answer to these signals, is leaving them, and abandoning her vain search, and with a deepening despair they watch her lights grow fainter and fainter, and at last disappear in the distance. So they are left alone in their desolation, while the wild winds roar and the hungry waves rage around them. The moon goes down, the darkness deepens, the gale rushes by more furiously than ever; then comes a slight lull, and a faint light streaks the horizon. They tighten their grasp upon the trembling mast and torn rigging, and speak a few words of hope. They may yet witness another sun-rise; for in the dull grey light of the early dawn they can see faintly a steamer in the distance. She is approaching, but her course will hardly bring her near enough to discover them, lying as they are up on one torn mast only just out of the water. How intensely they watch her! and many an earnest beseeching prayer is uplifted, and from some hearts that were withal not much accustomed to prayer. Eagerly! eagerly! they watch her! How some feebly speak words of hope, while others will not be aroused out of their despair! Thank God! she changes her course, and makes in directly for the Sands, upon the edge of which their frail wreck rests. They may all begin to hope again, and joy comes in upon them like a flood. They shout aloud, and wave a rag of canvas, the only means of signalling that is left to them. The steamer sees them, she dips her flag as a signal that they are seen; and then, to the unspeakable horror of the poor men, slowly turns round, and steams away full speed in the direction from which she came. An agony of fear again comes over the poor fellows; they feel that they cannot be altogether deserted. Upon reflection, they see that no ordinary boat could live through the surf which separates them from the steamer; and the steamer would only have been herself wrecked if she had come any nearer the Sands. She must have gone for a life-boat. How long will she be away? They shudder as the creaking mast trembles beneath them; and look with heart dread at the yawning gulf of wild waters which gapes a few feet below; and they cannot but have a dismal fear that the steamer on her return with assistance, may find no vestige left either of them, or of the remnant of wreck to which they cling. A short time, which however seems long indeed to them in their great suspense, and they again see the steamer, and soon they can make out, to their great joy, that she has the life-boat in tow. Still the flying surf beats upon them, and drives them, with its sheer weight, still closer to the mast; still the water rages around, while they cling with all desperate energy to the quivering shrouds; they are cold, and drenched, and exhausted, but they are full of hope; their hearts are lightened, their strength seems to return, the long hours during which they have seemed hopelessly face to face with death are passed, for the life-boat is near, and her gallant crew are speeding to their rescue. The life-boat comes swiftly on, running before the still heavy gale; now rising like a cork to the mounting seas, or plunging boldly through the surf and broken water. Her men forget the long night-struggle of fatigue and danger through which they have passed; much noble, self-denying, and dangerous work have they done, but they have still noble work to do--more lives to save, by the help of God--and with cool determination they cheerfully proceed to their new labours. They find the water more and more broken as they near the ship; the waves are flying high over the lost vessel; the ebb-tide is running strongly. From the breaking seas, and from the position of the wreck, now on her broadside with her keel to windward, they cannot anchor on the windward side and let the boat drop gradually in upon the wreck, their only chance is to run with the wind abeam right in upon the fore-rigging. It is true that there is considerable danger in this, but at such times the life-boat men cannot stop to calculate danger, and must be ready oftentimes to risk their own lives in their attempts to save the lives of others. They, therefore, charge in straight amid the floating wreckage, and the boat hits hard upon the iron windlass, which is still hanging to the deck of the vessel. A rope is thrown round the fore-rigging, and the group of exhausted sailors shout with joy as they greet the glad friendly faces of the life-boat men coming in upon them out of the storm of desolation that rages around. The crew, sixteen in number, including the pilot and a boy of about eleven years of age, are to the last extent exhausted and feeble, and slowly drop one by one from the mast into the boat, and leave to its fate the last storm-torn fragment of the _Demerara_, which has been for so many hours their only hope. "Oars out, and pull hard; let us get clear of all this wreckage before we have a hole knocked in the boat's bottom," and every boatman strains his hardest; soon they are clear; now a moment's delay ere they hoist the sail, and a great shaking of hands all round, and warm greetings, and heartfelt thanks from the saved ones, and the boat's sail is again hoisted, and away they make through the surf. It is now nearly ten o'clock in the morning; they soon reach the steamer, which is waiting to leeward. The emigrants have been watching the movements of the boat with the keenest interest; their feelings of sympathy are moved to their very depths, by the fact of their having passed so lately through similar scenes of danger and rescue. They crowd the deck, and shout after shout greets the boat; the women cheer at the top of their voices, and welcome, with outstretched arms, alike the rescued and the rescuers. One warm-hearted Irishwoman seizes the coxswain's hands in both hers, and shakes them with might and main, sobbing out, as the tears roll down her cheeks, "I'll pray the Holy Father for you the longest day that I live." The steamer is literally crowded with rescued people; the cabins are given up to the women and children, and the poor people half forget their present misery in great thankfulness for their safety; they are wet and cold, and trembling with excitement and with the effects of their long hours of fear and exposure; the cabin is small and crowded to the extreme; the steamer rolls and pitches tremendously, as she makes her way through the cross seas which still run high and broken, though the height of the tempest is past. It is no unusual occurrence for a crowd of people to be grouped at the pier-head, watching with interest for the appearance of one of the many steamers which, with flags flying in token of goodly freight, and with gay appearance, as fitly betokens holiday time, makes swiftly for the harbour; but with a deeper interest than ever is excited by such holiday scenes is the steamer waited for now. It is one of those bright, genial winter mornings of which Ramsgate has so goodly a share. Many persons have been attracted to the pier to take, on that pleasant promenade, a good instalment of the fresh breeze, and to watch the sea, bright with sunshine, and the waves glistening and flashing in their turmoil of unrest. Intelligence spreads that the steamer and life-boat have been away all night, and are now every minute expected to round the Point and appear in sight. Great is the feeling of gladness, and deep the satisfaction, as the gallant _Aid_ appears with her flags flying, and flags flying too at the life-boat's mast-heads, telling the glad tale of successful effort. The crowd rejoices greatly in the good work done; and as the steamer comes nearer it is seen that never on a summer's day did steamer bear a fuller freight of holiday-seekers than does the _Aid_ now bear of those who have been rescued from deadly peril. From the pier the crowd look down upon the multitude on board, and feel that that throng of fellow-beings have been just snatched from death, and a thrill of wonder and gladness passes through the on-lookers, and combines with that half formed sense of fear, which a realization of danger recently escaped either by ourselves, or by others, always gives. The crowd waves, and shouts, and hurrahs, and gives every sign of glad welcome and hearty congratulation, and as the steamer sweeps round the pier-head, the pale upturned faces of one hundred and twenty rescued men, women, and children, smile back a glad acknowledgment of the welcome so warmly given. It is a scene almost overpowering in the deep feeling that it produces. The emigrants land; they toil weakly up the steps to the pier, all bearing signs of the dangers and hardships through which they have passed. Some are barely clothed, some have blankets wrapped round them, and all are weary and worn and faint with cold and wet and long suspense. There are aged women among the emigrants; some who had been unwilling to be left behind when those most dear to them were about to seek their fortunes abroad; others had been sent for by their friends, and to them the thoughts of the terrors and trials of a sea-voyage had been overcome by the longing to see, once again before they died, the faces so long loved and so much missed; to see perhaps the grand-children upon whom, although they had never looked, yet they had thought of until they had become almost part of their daily life. It is piteous to see these aged women totter from the steamer to the pier. And young men and young women are of the number; they, crowded in the race at home, determined to seek in a wider field to make better way. Here a poor stricken woman looks wistfully upon the white face and almost closed eyes of the baby in her husband's arms. This is the child that was so nearly lost overboard as it was thrown into the boat wrapped up in a blanket; the mother's fears were not realised--the baby speedily recovered. It now becomes the glad office of the people of Ramsgate to bestir themselves on behalf of those suddenly thrown upon their charity. The agent of the Shipwrecked Fishermen and Mariners' Society at once takes charge of the sailors. Accommodation is found for the emigrants in houses near the pier, and a plentiful meal at once supplied; many of the residents busy themselves most heartily; clothes, dresses, coats, boots, and all necessary garments are most liberally given; the people are ready to _spoil_ themselves on behalf of the poor emigrants. And thus warmed, fed, clothed and consoled by the heartfelt sympathy that is so evidently and practically manifested, the poor emigrants recover in a wonderfully short space of time from the state of physical and nervous exhaustion to which they had been reduced; but they are never likely to forget the terrors of the night, or the debt of gratitude they owe to the gallant Ramsgate life-boat men, who so nobly effected their rescue. Subscriptions in the meantime have been raised in the town to pay all expenses, and to put into the hands of the poor emigrants some little ready money. One of the shipping agents has telegraphed to the owners of the ship, and been empowered to provide the emigrants all needed board and lodging; he does so, and on the next morning forwards them to London. A crowd of Ramsgate people bid them good-bye at the station, and receive grateful acknowledgments of the kindness and sympathy that have been shown, and they from their hearts wish their poor friends God speed. The emigrants were cared for in London by the owners of the _Fusilier_. The weather moderating the morning after the wreck, the emigrants' things were got out of the vessel and sent on to them; and the owners of the _Fusilier_ soon obtained another ship, in which they forwarded their passengers, and they had a prosperous voyage to Melbourne. The _Fusilier_ was ultimately got off the Sands, but no vestige of the _Demerara_ was ever again seen. CHAPTER XIII. THE WRECK OF THE "MARY"--GALES ABROAD. "Yet more! the billows and the depths have more! High hearts and brave are gathered to thy breast! They hear not now the booming waters roar, The battle-thunders will not break their rest. Keep thy red gold and gems, thou stormy grave! Give back the true and brave!" _Mrs. Hemans._ The year was fast dying out. Inland the wild winds did little to disturb the progress of Christmas preparations, or the happiness of Christmas gatherings. The blasts swept ragingly along, and the last of the dead leaves were torn from the withering branches. The stalwart trees battled sturdily in the woods; but many a stout veteran that had long laughed at storms, at last was bowed in the grasp of the gale, and fell prostrate, or, like a fainting giant, leant with arms all abroad against his fellow-strugglers in the strife. In the towns there was much wondering gossip at the force of the wind, and here and there some trivial disasters to record; but for all its rage and bluster, the gale did not gather on shore many trophies of its strength, and swept moaningly out to sea, to find in the yielding waters a more ready ally, as it would visit with its wrath man and his works. The brave ships that were caught by the gale were prepared to accept the accustomed challenge. It overtook the tall vessels, and then the swelling sails garnered the force of the wind and held it captive, and made it speed the swift ship along. It fell with its full strength upon the stout ships riding at anchor, and moaned through the shaking rigging, and by the swaying masts and yards, while the groaning cables shuddered in every link, and the strong anchors grappled the ground with a tighter and tighter grasp, and held the good ships safe, in spite of the raging wind and rush of sea, safe from the greedy waiting sands, or cruel rocks. Thus on the tempest-lashed ocean all was life, and energy, and conflict; and the dying year, as its closing hours sped away, had at sea the howling winds and seething waves to sing its dirge, and storm weary sailors, and storm-beaten ships to mark its close. Ships from the Thames, from the east coasts of England and Scotland, from all northern Europe--ships sailing under every flag, and bound to all ports, gathered day by day in the Downs anchorage, where they waited for the strong south-westerly gales to give place to a more favourable slant of wind, that they might pursue their way down Channel; but still the strong adverse winds prevailed. But while the outward-bound ships were thus obliged to halt in their course, the homeward-bound ships came foamingly along, their masts bending like whips under the small spread of canvas they were alone able to carry. Like white-winged gulls they fled over the leaping seas, and threaded their way through the crowded anchorage of the Downs. The careless sailors laughed at the heavy blasts of wind which in their force only hurried the good ship on, and thus gave the crews a better prospect of realising their hopes of being in Old England on the near Christmas tide, to spend it with their friends on shore, and share in, and by their presence greatly add to, all the pleasures of the season. But the smaller vessels at anchor in the Downs began to ride uneasily, the force of the gale fell on them with unchecked fury, the swift tide pressed them sore, and raging seas broke over them again and again. Their anchors began to drag; the breakers on the Goodwin Sands leapt and foamed dangerously near to leeward; there was also danger of collision if their anchors continued to drag, the ships in the Downs being so crowded together. Yes, there must be a flight from the Downs on the part of many of the smaller craft. Some vessels make for Ramsgate harbour, not many, as the charges are now so high and restrictive as almost to make it cease from being a harbour of refuge. Other vessels make for an anchorage round the North Foreland; a dangerous experiment this, as it frequently happens that a sudden lull comes in the southerly gale, and in a short time the wind chops right round, and begins to blow from the northward harder than ever. It was so on the occasion of which we are writing. If a strong fort, under which a fleet was anchored for protection, suddenly fell into the hands of the enemy, a greater change would not be wrought in the position, as to the safety of the vessels, than is occasioned by this sudden shift of wind to the vessels in the Margate Roads. The high cliffs which have been their shield now become their deadly peril. It had been desirable to gain their shelter, it is now a necessity to escape from their neighbourhood as soon as possible. And so, on this occasion, as the wind chopped round all was at once astir; some ships succeeded in regaining their anchors, others had no time or power to do so; some were driven ashore; twenty or thirty vessels had to slip their cables, and as, with no anchors on board, the captains did not dare to remain in the neighbourhood of the Sands or land, these vessels were hauled on a wind, and like a flock of weary frightened birds went staggering out into the North Sea.[1] The hovelling-luggers from Ramsgate, Margate, Deal, and Broadstairs are out during the gale; they go in chase of the ships that have fled from their anchorage; they place men on board such vessels as need them, either to act as pilots, or to assist the weary crews. Some of the luggers receive orders to fetch anchors and cables for such vessels as have lost theirs, and away they go plunging and speeding through the seas, making for the nearest port where they can find agents to supply them; and then out again with all speed, heavily laden, with anchors and chains, in search of the vessels which have employed them, and which have, likely enough, been driven by the force of the gale, far from the position in which the luggers left them. At midnight the gale gathers increased force; the dark heavy clouds seem to settle lower and lower, and as the snow-squalls sweep by, the air and sea seem one confused mass of flying foam and snow. The storm rages at Ramsgate Pier with all its fury; the pier stands an advanced fortress unmoved by the fierce attack of the waves, and it is well manned by brave boatmen, the reserved guard of the storm--Storm Warriors ready to sally forth to rescue life at the first signal of danger. One or two waggons, heavily laden with chains, and trucks with anchors, are being drawn down the pier by the struggling horses, the spray in heavy volumes washing over all. Luggers in the harbour, and alongside the pier, are rolling and pitching in the rough tumble of the miniature sea that the gale arouses even there. An anchor is hanging from the crane, a lugger beneath it is tossing up and down; the men are doing their utmost to guide the anchor in its descent into the boat as she plunges about; it is perilous work for all hands; it seems a marvel that it can be done without staving in the boat, or crushing the men. A group of boatmen are crouching under shelter of the wall of the pier, near the life-boat; the night wears away--it is three o'clock in the morning. A boatman makes his way to the pier-head; he finds the coxswain of the life-boat on the look-out. "Well, Jarman, a heavy gale this." "A heavy gale indeed, Gorham; it is blowing great guns and no mistake--a terrific sea, too; just the night for our work, and I shall not be surprised if some is cut out for us, and pretty stiff too, before the morning." "Likely enough, it is a sort of touch-and-go night for the Goodwin. I noticed before dark several vessels riding in the Gulls; now the wind has cast in so heavily from the north, it will go hard with some of them, I fear. "Yes, I noticed them; they must have a bad time of it now; it is to be hoped that the anchors will hold; it will be almost sudden death for any poor fellows whose ships touch the Goodwin to-night; why, with the sea that must be now raging there, it would take in a ship almost at a mouthful." "True enough, coxswain; I have been very anxious about them all night--cannot help thinking about them." And it is supposed that the boatman's fears were very terribly justified. One vessel was wrecked in the way we are about to tell; and very grave fears were felt as to the fate of several others; when the morning came, not one of the vessels that had been noticed the evening before as being anchored in such a dangerous position was to be seen, and yet it was almost certain that not any of them could have got away in safety. Fishing-smacks that had been lying-to not far from the North Foreland saw the fleet of vessels driven from the Margate Roads, and afterwards saw several of them flying signals of distress, and apparently in a sinking condition; but from the extraordinary force of the gale, the fishermen could render no assistance, and the weather was too dark and thick for the signals for help to be seen from the light-vessels, or from the shore; moreover, a good deal of wreckage was seen floating about in the morning, and the mast-head of one vessel was discovered standing out of the water upon the Goodwin, the last seen relic of some unknown ship and crew. Among the vessels observed during the afternoon to be at anchor in a very perilous position in the Gull Stream, and making very bad weather of it, was the _Mary_, a schooner of about 170 tons; she had been a Dutch galliott, had a cargo of coals on board, and was bound from Shields to Dieppe. There was one fine young man on board, David Fullarton. Life seemed more especially dear to him, as he was engaged to be married; the arrangements for the wedding had been made; he had been busy in preparing a home; and a short voyage from Shields to Dieppe and back, would do something towards the expenses, and he would not be long away; and so there were bright memories to look back upon, bright hopes before him; but this terrible storm seems to cover all with its shadow. As soon as darkness sets in, and the gale shows signs of increasing in force, Fullarton becomes very anxious, and keenly alive to the danger the schooner is in; time after time he entreats the captain to have the masts cut away, that the vessel may ride more easily, and be less exposed to the fury of the wind. "Do! captain, pray do! for the sake of our lives let it be done! we are dragging our anchors--we are fast driving on the Sands;" and again he begs the captain to signal for assistance. "Why not! why not? you will do it too late, captain, too late!" the poor fellow cries in his restlessness and distress. The night grows on, and its terrors multiply; the intense darkness, the wild sea, the howling winds moaning and wailing through the rigging, the hoarse roar and thunder of the breakers raging on the near Goodwin Sands. At last, the captain feels that the schooner is in great danger, and orders the crew to set a tar-barrel on fire; they hasten to do so--Fullarton working with eager haste; but the wash of the sea over it and the heavy wind will not let it burn; they fill the barrel with tow and tar, and grease, and at last get it to flare up with a fierce flame that resists the storm; the watch on board the Gull light-ship had noticed before dark the danger of the vessel, and had been keenly on the look-out in her direction for signals of distress; on Ramsgate Pier, also, an anxious look-out had been kept for some hours, the boatmen expecting disasters in that quarter. It is a little before four in the morning; the men on board the light-vessel see the signal of distress, and fire a gun and send up a rocket to convey to the shore the tidings that help is wanted. The boatmen at once commence preparations with all energy, they arouse the men asleep in the watch-house on the pier, a man hurries to give the harbour-master notice, the crew of the steamer _Aid_ get ready for sea, the harbour-master hurries down the pier and gives the men orders to start on their merciful and perilous errand. Away they go in the teeth of the hurricane, clearing their way through the leaping foaming waves and the clouds of heavy spray. The town and harbour lights gleam out in the darkness, but there is no looking back for them on the part of the men, and there may be none; until by God's mercy, their work is successfully finished, and then doubly will the lights shine out a glad welcome on their triumphant return home. The lights they now look for are the beacon fires of warfare; calls to conflict and peril; guides into the thickest of the dread battle-field. As the life-boat lifts on the curl of a wave, the crew see the flickering flame of the signal-fire that is burning so fiercely in the tar-barrel on the wreck; they make in for the signal at once, pass through the Cud channel; snow-squalls come sweeping by, adding to the cold and darkness, and shutting out from their view all lights on the Sands; the men are eager and excited in their quick sympathy for the shipwrecked crew--eager to brave all the dangers of the lashing seas which they know must be leaping and tearing about the wreck. And they well realize the deadly peril the poor shipwrecked seamen must be in, and think little in their struggle onward of all the hardships they themselves are enduring. For about forty minutes they battle their way, and then find themselves near the wreck; the signal flame from the burning tar-barrel leaps, and flickers, and burns low, and is almost extinguished by the spray; the life-boatmen watch it anxiously, for they know that if the crew of the vessel cannot succeed in keeping it alight, it will be almost impossible for them to find the vessel in the darkness of the night; the crew of the schooner also feel this to be the case, and bring clothes and bedding, and all the tar and oil they can get at, and by great exertions manage to keep the fire burning. FOOTNOTE: [1] NOTE.--_Extract from Newspaper._--"Five vessels wrecked off Margate:--On Friday evening there were about one hundred and fifty vessels anchored in the Margate and North Foreland Roads, where they were sheltered from a south-westerly gale. Suddenly, about one o'clock on Saturday morning, a violent gale sprung from the north-east, and the vessels in the Roads were compelled to slip their anchors and seek the nearest shelter. Rockets and flares were seen displayed in all directions from the numerous distressed vessels. The Broadstairs life-boat and the Margate life-boat, the _Quiver_, put to sea. Four vessels were driven ashore, three in the Main, and one in Margate Bay, and the crews of three were saved by the Broadstairs life-boat. Another vessel was run down off the North Foreland, and it is reported that another has gone to pieces on the Tongue Sand, and, it is feared, with all hands." CHAPTER XIV. THE WRECK OF THE "MARY"--A STRUGGLE FOR DEAR LIFE. "Sleep on; thy corse is far away, But love bewails thee yet; For thee the heart wrung sigh is breathed, And lovely eyes are wet." _G. D. Prentice._ "Now, my men, make ready!" the coxswain cries; "we've got our work before us." The night is wild, and dark, and bitter, blinding snow, and sleet, and storm-wrack rush along on the wings of the gale. The Sands are alive with the rolling breakers, the fierce dash and seethe of the waves upon them add to the roar of the tempest; never was a battle-field more full of raging foes than is that into the midst of which our Storm Warriors are about to rush; never was band of men more beset by foes, more helplessly, hopelessly beset, than are the crew of the _Mary_; how shall they be plucked from the midst of ten thousand raging waves? any one of which would swamp an ordinary boat; it can only by any possibility be done by such a boat as the life-boat, and only by such men as the life-boatmen. And now the men settle to their work. The mainsail and mizen are already close reefed, they are got ready for instant hoisting. The steamer lashes through the seas towing the boat farther to windward, the hawser is let go, the men hoist the sails as fast as they can in the leaping rolling boat; she feels the force of the blast, lays over on her side, down with the helm, she rights, her head comes round, and in through the boiling seas she makes for the wreck. Each boatman has his life-belt on, and as the seas break more fiercely over the boat, the men twist the life-lines round their arms, so that if some huge wave, rushing over the boat, should wrench them from their hold, and wash them out of the boat, or that the boat should upset in the curl of a breaker, that they may have the better chance of getting back to her. Each time that the boat lifts on the top of a wave they can make out the signal-fire on board the wreck, as the boat falls in the trough of a sea they speed swirling along, through a very gauntlet of hungry waves which leap upon her, as wolves would leap upon a strong horse; but she throws them off, as the horse might the wolves in the impetus of his speed and power. "Ready in the bow?" "Ay! Ay!" "Ready all?" "All ready." "We are nearing the wreck," a plunge forward on a big wave, and the dismasted vessel is seen only a few fathoms off. "Over with the anchor, down with the mainsail; keep up the mizen, to let the boat sheer, and now for the wreck." The life-boatmen are near enough to her to see by the fitful blaze of the tar-barrel that she is a small schooner, with a high stern, and that she is totally dismasted, and they recognise the Dutch-looking craft that they had watched during the afternoon; they catch the gleam of the pale faces of the crew, who are clinging to the gunwale. Poor fellows! how they gaze out in the darkness; death, death, so near from the raging storm, from their sinking ship, from the terrible Sands on which the wreck of their vessel will be torn piecemeal by the strong fierce waves in so short a time. How they cry out with hope, as they first catch sight of the lights that are shining out in the gloom, and drawing nearer and nearer! it may be only the lights of some vessel as badly off as they are: they will not think so; they are on the Goodwin, the signals have been made, and answered from Ramsgate; if the life-boat can save them, they will be saved, and this small light dancing so wildly in the storm, and drawing nearer out of the dread darkness of the wild night, may be the light of the life-boat, and they will not despair. It _must_ be the life-boat! no other boat could come in through the seas as that boat has done; and now as she nears, the light is reflected on her blue-and-white sides, and they hear the men shout, and the poor fellows pass from despair to hope, and cling harder than ever to the gunwale of the wreck, as the seas wash over them. On board the life-boat they veer out the cable rapidly; many fathoms run out, but still they seem to get no nearer the wreck, on the contrary, the wreck is getting farther and farther from them. As the life-boatmen made the vessel out in the darkness, they supposed her to be hard and fast on the Sands, and as they neared, and could see how the waves were beating over her, this appeared still more to be the case, but it proves not to be so; the tide is much higher than usual, and the wreck, with two long lengths of chain-cable dragging over her bows, is drifting over the top of the Sands, and with the force of the gale, and in the strength of the tide, drifts faster than the men on board the boat are able to veer out the cable. "Hold on the cable, the wreck is drifting, we must up anchor; to it, my men, hard and fast as you can." This getting in the life-boat cable and anchor is terrible work; the wild seas are literally raging over the boat; it was bad enough when the boat was under weigh, running before the wind, bounding along with the waves in their flight, and thus escaping much of their fury. But now the boat is head to the seas, she meets them as they rush on with all their force, and she wrenches and jerks at the cable with a power that threatens to tear her to pieces. As many men as can lay hold of the cable do so; they cling on to the boat with their legs round the thwarts; they give the hawser a couple of turns round the bollard--a timber head in the fore part of the boat used for towing purposes; a huge wave passes; the boat falls in the trough of the sea; as she falls the strain of the cable lessens; "Haul, and with a will, my men, haul!" they get a fathom or two of cable in; the curling crest of a broken wave falls on board, almost smothering the men, and filling the boat; she droops and staggers under the weight of water; the men in her as they cling to the thwarts are up to their necks, the air-tight compartments in the boat lift her, the valves in the floor open, she empties herself in a few seconds; a huge short wave curls on, she rises to it, buoyant as ever; it catches her under the bows, throws her high in the air, as if it would turn her end-over-end; the men cling to the hawser for a breathless moment; it checks the boat, the wave breaks over the boat in a cloud of spray and foam; the boat drops; the men shake their heads free of the water; again a loud shout from the coxswain; "Haul, haul, your hardest, my men, hand over hand!" they get in a few more feet of the strong rope, and so much nearer to their anchor; and then hold on with straining muscles for another dread struggle with the next huge sea; hardly time for a few quick breaths, and here the sea comes, like a terrible monster, with shaking mane and gnashing teeth; it foams along, gleaming out of the darkness and straightly leaps upon them; and thus amid all the wild turmoil of the raging breakers, with the boat thrown violently here and there in the might of the seas, with the waves breaking over her in such quick succession that the men can scarcely find time to breathe, does the fight go on in order to recover the anchor and cable; the men had no thought of themselves; they had but to cut the cable and run before the gale, and the fierce strife would be over; no! they must, at all costs, recover the anchor and cable, or they will not be able to save the crew, and they will fight and wrestle for it to the end. At last the cable shortens, another pull and the boat is right over the anchor, she lifts on a sea, the anchor is torn from its hold, and lifts with her: in with it, make it fast, hoist the sails, the boat's head pays round, and she is again steered for the wreck. As the boat runs before the wind and seas, the men, who are thoroughly exhausted, have a few minutes of comparative rest. The time occupied by the life-boat men in recovering their anchor has been a dread time indeed, for the poor shipwrecked crew. With their shattered and slowly-sinking vessel staggering and shuddering beneath their feet, the heavy seas thundering against her and breaking over her, each one threatening to be the final one which shall sweep them all to destruction; the men seemed to be each moment on the verge of death. The storm howls around them, their only ray of hope proceeds from the life-boat light, which shines feebly through the mist, and suddenly the boat has halted short in her course towards them; why, they can scarcely understand; but one thing they are sure of, that it is no failing courage on the part of the men; it is impossible that they should be left to perish in their distress. Their one effort now is to keep the tar-barrel in full blaze, and cruelly the wind and seas seem to do their utmost to destroy this their last hope, and leave them without the signal which alone can guide the life-boat to their rescue. Fullarton, poor fellow, is working with an excited energy, burning in the barrel everything that he can lay hands on, that is at all likely to feed the flame. He had left home a few days before, so full of hope and joy, and glad anticipation; they had had bad weather, and anxious watches, and sleepless nights since they sailed, and now the poor fellow is almost overwrought by work and watching, and broken down with dread anxiety. "It is not for myself so much, not for myself, as for my poor girl," he says to his mates; they, kind fellows, amid their own cares and anxieties, and memories, and fears, do what they can to cheer him up. Now as the life-boat comes rushing in through the seething seas, and breaks out from the darkness into the light of the fire which they succeed in keeping burning on the deck of the schooner, it is Fullarton's voice that is heard in piercing tones above the roar of the gale. "Be as quick as you can! be as quick as you can! we are sinking fast." Yes! it is very evident that the vessel must soon founder; the wild seas are rushing over her; her deck is almost level with the surface of the water; at any moment she may refuse to lift to the rise of the sea, and with one plunge sink bodily down. The coxswain of the life-boat sees that the schooner is still drifting, and decides upon not anchoring the boat, but tries to run alongside the wreck, which is being kept head to the seas and wind by the drag of her chains. The boat runs alongside within a few feet; the grappling-irons are thrown on board, they catch in the gunwale of the wreck, the boatmen take turns with the lines round the thwarts, and begin to haul the boat slowly up to the wreck; it is hazardous work, for she is deeply laden with coals, and is half full of water; she is buried in the seas, and labouring very heavily; the men are afraid that in the rush of some cross sea the boat will be tossed bodily on to the wreck. The boat lifts up on the crest of a towering wave; there is a tremendous strain upon the stout grappling-lines, a moment's lull in the rush of the broken water. "Haul in hard upon the lines, get her alongside, now, my men; sharp, my men!" the coxswain shouts; and then to the vessel's crew: "Be ready to jump directly we are near enough!" "Aye! Aye! all right, all right!" the crew cry, excitedly, and crouch ready to spring upon the gunwale, and over into the boat. "Be ready all! be ready all!" the coxswain again cries, as he tries to sheer the boat near enough for the men to jump on board. "Now! now! Stop! hold on, hold on all for your lives!" A tremendous breaker comes gliding on like a dark snow-crowned wall, deluges the men with the foam and spray that flies from its crest, lifts the boat in its strong grasp, the grappling-lines snap like threads, and the boat is swept on in the rush of the wave far away from the wreck; the boatmen look back, and in the glare of the signal-fire they can see the pale white faces of the despairing and terrified sailors, and as the boat is driven on through the dark wild seas, the cries of the poor fellows can be for some time heard penetrating the tumult of the storm. Before the boat was driven away from the vessel, at the moment of the ropes parting, the coxswain, seeing that the boat would be carried away, shouted at the pitch of his voice, "Have ropes ready!" the crew heard the words; and are consoled in the depth of their disappointment; they know that they are not to be deserted, that while ship and life-boat both last, attempt after attempt will be made for their rescue. But how long will the wreck float under them? this is the terrible question, and they call out, and this is the cry that the boatmen hear indistinctly: "We are sinking fast! We are sinking fast!" The swirl of the sea and the tide, and the force of the gale, drive the boat far away to leeward; the men hoist her sails again, heave her to, and then try to stay her, and make in again directly for the wreck; but she misses stays, as the seas come rushing over her, and they have to wear her round. They battle on, and are speedily ready for their third attempt, thankful to find that the poor labouring wreck is still afloat. They run the boat close under the schooner's port-quarter; the sailors are all ready with the required ropes; they throw one on board the boat, and the men in the boat succeed in throwing two strong lines on board the wreck; once more the order is to haul in close alongside. And again the boatmen see the white faces of the almost drowned and exhausted men light up with hope. Fullarton especially is full of joy in the reaction of his feelings; he almost feels saved, and is very excited. Cautiously the boatmen work, doing their utmost to prevent the boat being dashed against the wreck; now they are just alongside; two minutes more, and all are saved; no, a heavy sea comes foaming along, and as it breaks fills the boat and rushes over the ship, which staggers under its weight; the ropes which fasten the boat to the ship, jerk and wrench, but still hold; the boat lifts, clears herself of water, the men breathe again. Another tremendous wave comes rushing along, another, and then several in quick succession; the men cling with all their force to the thwarts; heavy volumes of water beat down upon their backs; the boat plunges, and is wrestled here and there in the strong tumult of the waves; the ropes seem ready to tear the masts and thwarts to which they are fastened out of the boat; at last one rope parts; another gives the moment after; the boat rises on the crest of a wave, she heels over, the third rope breaks under the tremendous strain, the boat springs forward and is torn away from the vessel, and is rapidly swept away under her stern; a loud shriek is heard, it is from poor Fullarton; the boatmen see him as he stands between them and the glare of the flame; he throws up his clasped hands in despair; the next moment he wildly rushes along the deck, for a second balances himself on the gunwale, crouches and springs with all his force towards the boat--a heavy thud; he hits the bow of the boat as she is driving away stern first; a cry from the boatmen, "Man overboard!" as he sinks a huge wave rolls over him, and bears the boat farther away; Jarman, the coxswain, seizes a life-buoy and jumps upon a thwart ready to throw it to the man when he rises; a blast of wind catches Jarman, nearly tumbles him overboard, and throws him down into the bottom of the boat, wrenching the life-buoy from his hand; the drowning sailor is again lost to sight in the trough of the sea; he is swimming and struggling hard, but the boat, although without sails, is being driven faster than he can swim; the men see his wild desperate efforts, as he plunges and springs forward with outspread arms as if to grasp at the boat; he is lifted high on the crest of a wave; it curls him over, and with a cry he falls head first, and is buried in the trough of the sea; once more they make out his figure as he springs up on the top of a wave between them and the signal-fire; once again they hear his cry of despair, and he is lost to them, and to all dear to him on earth for ever. It is all over in a few seconds; the hardy boatmen shudder and feel sick at heart: so suddenly, so terribly, so swiftly has the strong man died; and to see their brother sailor thus perish within a few yards of them, beaten under by the boiling waves so quickly that they were utterly powerless to aid, is indeed, terrible to all. But not a moment is to be lost, any one of the mad seas which rush so continually over the wreck may founder her with its weight, or sweep the exhausted men out of her. The wreck cannot by any possibility float much longer; how can the men be saved? The life-boat is now right astern of the vessel, which is drifting slowly towards them; the seas run with such violence, swaying the wreck in one direction and the boat in another, that it is evidently useless to attempt to fasten the boat alongside the wreck, and the coxswain determines to adopt a new plan. The boat is right astern of the wreck, which is slowly drifting towards them; the coxswain of the boat will anchor the boat right in her path, and try to sheer alongside as she drifts past, and thus get the crew out of her. "Over with the anchor; veer out as little cable as she will ride to; hold on, stand ready all!"--and they anxiously watch the approach of the wreck. On the wreck comes straight for them; the boats mizen sail is hauled flat to help the boat sheer out of the ship's way; they must manage skilfully or she will drive right over the life-boat; the helm is put hard up; the mizen catches the wind; the boat sheers, the wreck just misses her; the boat is close to her starboard quarter. Down helm, and the boat sheers in close alongside, the men in the bow pay out the cable quickly to let the boat float alongside the ship, "Jump when we near!" they cry to the crew; "jump for it! be steady, but do not lose a chance!" a sea throws the boat within a yard of the wreck, three men spring on board; a moment, and the next rush of sea sweeps the boat away and buries them all in foam. As the sea overruns the boat, the boatmen cling to the sailors who have sprung on board, to prevent their being washed out of her. "Have we got all?" "No, only three, one is left!" "Look out, then, my men; in we go again! the lee-tide is running very strongly--the cable is paying out fast."--"There is only about ten fathom of cable left," the men in the bow shout to the coxswain; he sheers the boat in, they can just make out the figure of a man at the stern of the vessel; they cry out to him: "Be ready; 'tis your last chance; you must jump for your life; we shall hardly have time to come in again;" they close in alongside; a heavy sea knocks down the men in the bow who are paying out the rope; at that moment the man on the wreck makes a desperate leap for the boat, he falls among the men; the end of the cable runs out into the sea. "Rope gone!" is the cry, but the man is saved; the ship is on the point of sinking, and they at once lose sight of her in the dark night. It is the captain who is last on board the boat; he looks round with thankfulness upon the life-boatmen and upon his saved crew: "But where is Fullarton?" he asks. "The man who jumped for the boat when the ropes parted." "He fell short of the boat, and we could not save him," is the sad answer. "Poor fellow, poor fellow! he was so terribly anxious, he could not wait. Oh! that he had only waited with us! but he was almost in despair before the boat came, and seeing you break away the second time was too much for him." And afterwards he told them the drowned sailors piteous story--what a good fellow he was, and that it was because he was to be married upon his return home that he was so anxious, and felt life to be doubly dear to him. It is about seven o'clock in the morning; the day breaks wild and cold, and dismal as weather can well be. The faint light of the dawn scarcely makes its way through the thick clouds of flying spray and foam and half-frozen snow that drive fiercely along. A dread suggestive picture as witnessed from the cliffs on shore is that of the Goodwin Sands in a storm--the raging mountains of white surf springing high in the air, and breaking into clouds of spray, and the waves racing along the Sands in foaming rollers, strong to sweep anything before them: to watch this from the shore at a distance of six miles is enough to make one shudder, so terrible a picture does it give of wild, hungry, irresistible power and rage, but what must it be for those who have to encounter this turbulent sea in the very thick of its strife; in a boat almost buried by the waves, clinging to the thwarts, the life half beaten out of them; and yet, hour after hour enduring all hardship, and sternly battling with all resistance--and all this the men in the life-boat have yet to endure. The boat is on the top of the south end of the Sand, and in the fiercest strife of the wild sea, a foaming wilderness of water all around them; the waves seem mad in the very fury of their contest; they rear up and clash together with a roar and hiss; rush swiftly on; recoil as swiftly back; now meet others in their full onward swoop and contend for mastery; leap high in angry curling crests, then fall with thunder tones, but only to form in serried ranks, and rush swiftly again into the wild race and conflict. No ordinary boat could endure this for a minute, the first of these mad curling waves would engulf her at once; the life-boat alone can contend with such broken battling seas, and come out a victor from the strife. The men crowd aft that the boat may run better before the gale; they put oars out on each quarter to help the boat steer, and to prevent her broaching to, for if she does, the curl of the wave is so strong that she will be rolled over, and probably many of her crew and passengers lost, for although she would right again directly, all could not expect to get back to her in such a sea; she is full of water; the seas break over her in such quick succession, that she has no time to free herself, but she bounds on, and on, and soon, but not without much danger, the men escape from the broken water and reach the outer part of the Sand. The boat is now put under fore-sail and mizen, both close reefed, hauled to the wind and pressed through the seas, to be certain of making the land, from which the gale is blowing so strongly. The boat heels over under the pressure of her canvas, one gunwale is buried in the seas; the rescued men have never been in a life-boat before, and feel much alarmed. "Ah! Geordie, man," says the captain to the mate, "this is queer sort of sailing; it's sailing under water altogether;" and the men afterwards confessed, that not knowing what a life-boat could do, they expected every moment that she would capsize, and felt themselves in almost as much danger in the boat as they had been on board the wreck. It takes the boat about an hour and a half of this hard driving through the seas to beat up against the gale and get near to the land; the men then find themselves not far from the South Foreland light, between Deal and Dover. The ships in the Downs are many of them in great danger, driving from their anchorage, and some with signals of distress flying. An English man-of-war is at anchor there; as the life-boat flies under her stern, the men on deck give a hearty cheer in honour of the Warriors of the Goodwin Sands. A large Dutch ship is next passed, all her crew crowd aft, and with much energy they also cheer the brave boatmen. Some large Deal luggers are cruising about; the men on board see with much surprise the flag flying at the life-boat mast-head, telling the tale of triumph, that a crew had been rescued; for they declared in speaking about it afterwards, that they thought it a mere impossibility to get a crew off the Goodwin in such a night, and through such a terrific sea. The life-boatmen begin to be uneasy about the steamer; they saw her last about five in the morning, with the Goodwin Sands close under her lee, and facing the full force of the gale. They think that she will have run down the Sands and be waiting for them; they put the boat about, and run out a little, hoping to meet her; after they have laid-to for about half an hour, waiting for the steamer, a heavy squall strikes the boat, and carries away her mizen-mast; they at once wear her head round to the land, and run into St. Margaret's Bay. The men fear that if they leave the protection of the high cliffs, the boat, as she is now partially disabled, may be blown over on the French coast by the force of the gale, and they therefore run down under the cliffs to Dover. Here they find further evidence of the terrible nature of the gale; ships are being towed into the harbour disabled; the sea is making a clean breach over the cross wall; part of the esplanade has been washed away, and the mail packets have been driven back in distress; hundreds of people, hiding in sheltered places, are watching the fury of the sea; they have for some time seen, with much interest, the gallant life-boat, with her flag flying, making for the harbour, and many come down the pier to welcome her. The life-boat, as she shoots round the head of the pier, meets the strong wind in all its force; she has lost her mizen-mast, anchor, cables, and has scarcely a spare fathom of rope left; she is fast being driven out again to sea, when they manage to get a rope to her from the pier, and many willing hands clap on, and tow her slowly along; in the meantime the harbour-master sends the steam-tug to her help, and the boat is soon safely moored in the inner harbour, and the men who have for so many hours encountered such great hardship and peril are once more upon dry land. The shipwrecked crew are well cared for by the agent of the Shipwrecked Mariners' Society; the life-boatmen go to the Sailors' Home, and under the influence of a hearty welcome and substantial cheer, speedily recover from the effects of their long exposure and fatigue. The coxswain hastens to telegraph to the authorities at Ramsgate the safe arrival of the life-boat at Dover, and there is great satisfaction felt there at the assurance of the boat's safety. While the life-boat was in among the breakers, battling with the seas, and disentombing, we may almost say, the terrified sailors from the hungry grave which yawned around them, the steamer kept her ground, as near as possible to where the captain thought the life-boat was at work, and just clear of the surf. They waited hour after hour, but no signal came from that fierce battle-field; the hoarse blast of the storm, the many-voiced roar of waters, overwhelmed all other sound; the darkness of the night, the clouds of sleet and foam engulfed all in gloom. The crew of the steamer waited on in much anxiety, and not free from great peril. The daylight broke, a grey flood of misty light rolled back the greater darkness, but they could see no signs of the life-boat; they could make out by-and-by a few spars tossing wildly among the leaping seas and a tangled portion of wreck; they steam in as near to it as they dare, and with their glasses watch closely every shadow, or spar, or mass of wreckage, but see no signs of life; the sea is silent as to the fate of the crew, and after a careful and vain search, the captain of the steamer, feeling sure that if the life-boat has succeeded in getting clear of the Sands, she must have been forced by the gale to run to Dover for shelter, he determines to make the best of his way there. Jarman, the life-boat coxswain, sees the steamer making for the harbour, and hastens to the pierhead; one wave of his arm tells the whole story of success and safety. The crew of the life-boat and of the steamer alike realize the responsibility of their work, that it is indeed one of life and death--that they must not be out of the way when wanted if they can help it; for that any delay may be fatal to some dying crew, who are perhaps straining their eyes in vain searchings for their one earthly hope, the life-boat. All hands at once prepare for their return to Ramsgate; back round the stormy South Foreland again; and home to be greeted, as such conquering heroes should be greeted, with smiles of welcome from hundreds of faces brightening up with hearty sympathy, and with ringing cheers that tell alike of admiration for courage, and of gladness for their return; cheers that know no reserve, as they welcome those who come triumphant from the battle-field--cheers for those who come not from death-dealing, in however good a cause, but from life-saving--leaving none to echo their shouts of victory with the wailings of defeat. The following letter will prove an apt and not uninteresting conclusion to the story, as it expresses the deep gratitude of the men who were saved, and gives in simple heartfelt language their tribute of thanks, and their declaration of admiration for the gallant and self-denying efforts by which their rescue from otherwise certain death had been so nobly effected. "_119 Church St., North Shields. Capt. Shaw, Harbour-master, Ramsgate._ "DEAR SIR, "I, the undersigned master, and likewise the crew of the _Mary_, which were saved by the gallant coxswain, Mr. Jarman, and his crew on the morning of the 21st inst., which I do believe to be unrivalled, for my idea is they used every effort to save the young man which was drowned, but it was in vain; we all beg to return a vote of thanks to Mr. Jarman and his crew; likewise to you, dear sir, which has everything in such order and discipline for the rescue of life; and may the Lord bless them all, and look over them, when trying their uttermost efforts to rescue their fellow-men from a watery grave! I cannot express my feelings good enough to reward the brave fellows' attendance. My love to them all, and I will make a letter appear in the public press after I get myself settled, therefore I beg to conclude." "From your grateful Friend, "WILLIAM FOREMAN, Master. "C. H. MOORE, Mate. "JOSEPH COLLINS, Carpenter. "THOMAS ATCHINSON, A. B." To which letter the harbour-master returned answer, stating how gratifying it was to all connected with the life-boat and steam-tug that such gallant and skilful exertions should have reaped such success; the sympathy and great regret that was felt for the loss of their young shipmate; and that there were at Ramsgate, at all times both by day and night, gallant boatmen ready and willing to risk their lives when called upon to perform such perilous undertakings. And, readers, can we do better than often, and especially when gales are abroad, echo the prayer offered for the life-boatmen by the rescued master of the _Mary_.--"The Lord bless them all, and look over them when trying to rescue their fellow-men from a watery grave!" CHAPTER XV. DEAL BEACH. "Then courage, all brave mariners, And never be dismay'd, While we have bold adventurers, We ne'er shall want a trade; Our merchants will employ us To fetch them wealth, we know; Then be bold--work for gold, When the stormy winds do blow." _M. Parker._ Few places in the world, if any, have proved the scene of more daring sailor-life than Deal beach. Generation after generation of boatmen have passed away, having spent their lives, from early boyhood, in continuous strife with the swift tide, strong seas, and rolling surf that race through the channels off Deal, and break upon the Goodwin, or upon the Shingle beach. Other antagonists the old days used to provide, and the young men's hands grew hard with handling the bow, or spear, or javelin, or the musket, cutlass, or boarding-pike, as well as with handling the tiller and the ropes. In the days of old, the Northern Sea Kings were, to the east coast of England, like clouds on the horizon, ever threatening a storm, but without any indication as to where the storm would break. The coast of Kent was especially open to their attacks; they came down like wolves on the fold; a bright sunny morning, a bowling northerly breeze, a few specks on the horizon standing out darkly with the clear dawn behind them. A few hours, and the Norsemen were at work; a fishing-village, wrecked and half buried in ruins, some of its stout defenders lying gashed and ghastly among its smoking embers; trembling fugitives still hurrying inland with a few of their lighter and more treasured goods, and the marauders holding swift and triumphant debauch upon the shore, as with rude cries of mirth and victory, they prepare to start seaward again before time can be found to gather forces to make any attack upon them, or any efforts can be made to regain the plunder the hardy robbers have obtained, or to revenge the slaughter they have worked. The Romans, when they were lords of the land, felt the necessity of resisting these roving Sea Kings in a determined and organised manner; they formed nine military stations along the coast, and placed all under the command of an officer, to whom they gave the sounding title of Count of the Saxon Shore. Four of these stations were in Kent--Reculver, Richborough, Dover, and Lymne. Remains of the Roman fortifications still bear witness that they were intended in defence from an enemy whose power was not lightly esteemed. This military organisation of the Romans was afterwards developed into the establishment of the Cinque Ports and their respective members, the jurisdiction of which embraced a coast line from Reculver to Hastings. The inhabitants of the Cinque Ports well earned and fully obtained great honour in the old days. The free men of the ports were styled barons, and held rank among the nobility of the kingdom. They stood the vanguard of defence against all England's continental enemies, and their service is thus described by Mr. Boys in his 'History of Sandwich': "The inhabitants were always on the watch to prevent invasion; their militia were in constant readiness for action, and their vessels stout and warlike, so that, in Edward the First's time, they alone equipped a fleet of one hundred sail, and gave such a blow to the maritime power of France as to clear the Channel of those restless and insidious invaders. The state depended upon them for the safety of its coast-line and towns, and their services went by no means unrewarded; an encouragement they had always been accustomed to receive, and this for commercial as well as for warlike enterprise, as by the wisdom of our Saxon ancestors, a merchant who had at his own expense three times freighted vessels with home produce was entitled to the rank of thane or baron. The Barons of the Cinque Ports walked in procession at the coronations of the kings and queens, and at the feast of the coronation had an especial table allotted to them in Westminster Hall at the right of the king; this privilege was preserved up to the time of the coronation of George the Third." All this is evident and sufficient testimony of the nature and extent of the services of our coast heroes in defence of their country; and still the enterprise and daring continue, and bold, vigilant warfare goes on, although defence against a foreign foe has long ceased to be its first consideration. In later times, indeed, the revenue officers unfortunately, and to no small extent, took the place of the foreign foe in the minds and labours of by no means a few of the boatmen and inhabitants of these towns situated so conveniently adjacent to the Continent; and the enterprise and labours of the boatmen were no less daring, if less patriotic than in former days, and smuggling was elevated into as organized a business as fishing is now: one writer rather quaintly remarks, "Yet even this smuggling is not without its utility, for however the revenue may suffer, it gives birth to a very intrepid race of seamen, who are of the greatest service in relieving others from the dangers which befall shipping on this coast in bad weather." Certainly the boatmen of Deal beach are not now, and probably never have been, surpassed for skill and daring. If they can by any possibility get their famous luggers out to sea, no hurricane daunts them; their splendid boats glide over the seas, escaping the broken water--now high on the wave, now buried in the trough--and look like so many strong-winged gulls, as they seem almost to play with the storm. Falconer, in his 'Shipwreck,' pays the following tribute to the skill and courage of the boatmen: "Where e'er in ambush lurks the fatal sands, They claim the danger, proud of skilful bands! For while, with darkling course, the vessels sweep The winding shore, or plough the faithless deep; Or bar, or shelf, the watery path they sound With dexterous arm, sagacious of the ground. Ceaseless they combat every hostile wind, Wheeling in mazy track with course inclined; Expert to moor where terrors line the road, Or win the anchor from its dark abode." Let us take a peep at Deal beach, and try to realize some of the scenes that are there to be witnessed. Suppose a fine clear winter's day. A gentle south-westerly breeze has been blowing on and off for several days; many ships have found their way out of the Thames, or have beaten down helped by the tides from the North Sea, and having reached the Downs there ride safely at anchor; the ships-boats, or the galley punts, as the small Deal boats are called, are doing the little work that is to be done, and the large luggers are drawn high upon the beach. The boatmen are lounging about the beach here and there, or they are smoothing the shingle down with shovels, where the tide has heaped it up, to give the luggers a fair run down into the sea in the event of their being wanted; tanned sails are spread abroad upon the shingle drying, women hang about knitting and watching the ships at anchor for any signal for a boat; at times there is a move down the beach to help a boat that is coming ashore out of the surf and to drag it up high and dry. The wind gets a slant to the south-east as the tide ebbs, and at once all are alert in the fleet of ships at anchor in the Downs, that have been waiting for a fair breeze. There is a hurry to the beach of all officers, sailors, or passengers that may be ashore; the last supply of fresh provisions is taken on board those ships on which the Captain can afford to be luxurious: you can hear the orders shouted, the capstans at work; jibs are set, topsails loosened, the anchors got up and catted, the sails let fall, and away the ships go down Channel; a fresh northerly breeze bowls along and lasts some days, the outward bound ships go flying through the Downs with top-gallant sails set; and except that they land a few pilots, there is nothing whatever for the Deal men to do. At last a change of weather promises, the homeward-bound are to have a turn; the outward-bound must anchor in the Downs and wait a while. The French coast shows out clearly, the gulls are whirling about uttering shrill plaintive cries; the boatmen watch the sunset, greyish white streaky clouds are gathering in the west, the sun looks _sheer_, is the boatmen's word for it, and as the long rays of light break through the clouds--ah! yes, we shall have a change of wind and weather. "The sun is setting up his backstays." "Bright _skies_ make dirty ways;" and before daylight closes the men overhaul their luggers and see that everything is ready for a sudden start, should their services be needed. A mizzling rain comes on, the wind is round to the westward and freshening; some of the vessels which have been among the last to pass Deal bound to the southward, give up the hope of getting down Channel in the face of the freshening breeze, and return to find anchorage in the Downs. It is a likely night for work, and the boatmen get ready for a cruise; everything is prepared to launch one of the large luggers; she is now drawn up high upon the beach; her crew of fifteen men hasten to get ready for sea. It is a dark and squally winter's morning, about one o'clock; fourteen of the men are now on board, each at his station; one man stands ready to cut the lashing of the stop which holds the boat in position on the ways; they wait till a squall passes; the word is given, the lashing cut, the man springs to the gunwale of the boat, and climbs on board. Scarcely has he tumbled over the side when the boat rushes down the greased ways and is launched into the surf; the mizen is already set, the foresail is hoisted with all speed, and the boat speeds on her way seaward. As the day comes the breeze freshens, and many luggers are cruising about, speaking the vessels at anchor, or the vessels running through the Downs, ready to offer any assistance in their power; upon some of the vessels they put men to pilot them into Ramsgate harbour, or round the North Foreland into the Margate Roads. Or if the wind has blown heavily, there will be generally some vessels that have lost their anchors and cables, and the boatmen will receive orders to supply fresh ones. There is sometimes a degree of surprise expressed at the amount claimed by a boat's crew for taking an anchor and cable off to a vessel in distress; it requires some knowledge of the work to appreciate its danger, and how hardly and well the money awarded is generally earned. Consider, as an example, the case of the _Albion_ lugger, as it happened during the gale, some of the incidents of which we are about to relate. The _Albion_ during her cruise meets with a vessel which is driving before the increasing storm; she has lost both her anchors and cables, and the lugger receives orders to supply her from the shore; the hardy crew receive the order gladly, put the lugger round, and beat through the heavy seas, making for Deal. They have to force the boat against wind and tide, and much skill is required to prevent her being filled by the rising seas which sweep around her; now she rushes upon the beach, the surf breaks over her and half fills her with water; with a tremendous thump and shake, she strikes the shore with her iron keel. As the wave which bore the lugger in upon the beach recedes, a man springs overboard from the bow with a rope in his hand; many catch hold of the rope, and haul their hardest to keep the boat straight, head on to the beach; there is a stem strap--a chain running through a hole in the front part of the keel; a boatman watches his opportunity, and as a wave sweeps back, rushes down and passes a rope through the loop of the strap; the other end of this rope is fastened to a powerful capstan, which is placed high up on the beach. "Man the capstan! Heave with a will," and the strong men strain at the capstan bars until the capstan creaks again. There is no starting the lugger; she is so full of water from the surf breaking on the beach, that she is too heavy for the men at one capstan to move her; ropes are led down from two other capstans, and rove through a snatch block fastened to a boat on the beach; all put out their strength, round they tramp with a "ho! heave ho!" and slowly the lugger travels up the beach, and is safe from the roll of the breakers. The men get the water out of her, haul her higher up on to a swivel platform, turn her round head to the sea, and the leading hands hurry away to inquire about an anchor and cable. The agent supplies them with such as seem suitable for the size of the vessel, and which will perhaps weigh together about seven tons. There is no small amount of labour attached to getting the anchor and chain cable on board the lugger, but in a short time all are again ready for sea. The gale has rapidly increased in force, and a frightful surf is running on the beach; the roar of the breakers on the shingle, the howling of the storm, the gleam of white foam, shining out of the mist and gloom, all picture the wildness of the storm, but the undaunted boatmen do not hesitate; all is ready, the signal given, the boat rushes down the steep ways, and is launched into the sea. A breaking wave rolls in swiftly, it meets the bow of the lugger in its rush, fills her; for a moment the big boat runs under water, and then is lifted and twisted like a toy in the grasp of the sea, and is thrown in the heave of the wave broadside on to the beach; a cry of horror from all on shore, and a rush down to aid the crew, who are all--there are fifteen of them--struggling in the surf; now the men are washed up by the wave, and feel the ground, and stagger forward; now they are caught again by a breaker and rolled over; it is for each of them a terrible battle with the fierce seas; here, one gets on his feet and stumbles forward, he is caught by the men on shore and dragged up the beach; there, a man is lying struggling on the shingle, trying in vain to rise, exhausted and confused; two men seize his collar and pull him forward a yard or two, then get him to his feet, and he escapes the next wave, which would have washed him out to sea again. Now all the men seem to be saved; names are shouted--do all answer? no! there is one missing; all rush to the water's edge, and gaze into the darkness; eagerly watching each shadow mid the surf; there he is! no! yes it is! there lifting on the surf; there rolling over: "Quick, quick, form a line!" and the brave boatmen grasp each other's hands with iron strength and form a chain, the lowest of the four or five men at the sea end of the chain being in the water; the waves battle with them, but sturdily they persevere; at last the body is within the reach of the seaward man, he grasps it, the men are dragged up the beach, and the poor insensible man is carried ashore. Alive? or dead? they cannot say, and with a great fear in their hearts they carry him hurriedly up the beach, and soon, to the great joy of all, he gives signs of life, and gradually recovers. In the meanwhile the poor boatmen on the beach have nothing that they can do, but watch their fine boat, which was worth five hundred pounds, being torn, and hammered to pieces in the surf, plank after plank is wrenched from her, now with a loud crash she is broken in half, the two halves part, the anchor and cable fall through her, they can see part of the fore-peak with one side torn away, floating in the breakers; soon that also is rent to pieces, and nothing but fragments of the boat float in the surf, or are strewn about the beach, and the boatmen, heavy-hearted, but thankful that they have escaped with their lives, go slowly to their homes, to rest for a few hours, and recruit their strength, and then to be ready to form part of the crew of any other boat, and at the first summons to rush out again to the encounter with the stormiest seas. In a narrative of adventure and conflict with the seas that rage over the Goodwin Sands, it would not be well to refrain from bearing testimony to how readily, how gallantly, the men of Deal, of Broadstairs, of Walmer, and of Kingsdown, as well as of Ramsgate, man their respective life-boats, whenever the call is made for their services, and race out to the scene of action, full of hardihood, of skill, of courage--true Storm Warriors, ever ready to dare all and do all that they may rescue the drowning from a watery grave. CHAPTER XVI. THE LOSS OF THE "LINDA," AND THE RACE TO THE RESCUE. "A sudden crash, the mast is gone, And with it goes all hope; No longer can the fated crew With the surging waters cope. "Now they commit their souls to God, As men about to die; For vain seems all the help of man In this extremity." _G. Ward._ At daylight, in the morning after the destruction of the _Albion_ lugger, the weather grows worse and worse; the grey misty gloom that hangs over the sea is scarcely broken by the swift gleams of light that find a faint way through the fast drifting clouds. And the weather continues to grow more tempestuous still as the night grows on. Many ships come scudding northward before the gale; they make the South Sand Head light, and steer their course for the narrow Gull channel that runs between the Goodwin and Brake Sands. The South Sands Head light-ship is moored at the southern extremity of the Goodwin Sands; it is about three miles from the South Foreland light. In thick misty weather, which so often prevails in the Channel during westerly gales in winter time, it is often very difficult for vessels to make either of these lights. And as the edge of the Goodwin Sands is very steep at this part, and has deep water close to it, keeping the lead going scarcely affords sufficient protection, for between two casts of the lead a vessel running fast may well pass out of deep water on to the Sands, and there be lost. So it often happens that vessels running through the Downs in such weather, suddenly find themselves in a position of great peril. On the night in question, the men on board the light-ship keep an especially vigilant watch, as the darkness of the night adds to the gloom which spreads its folds over the raging sea, and the direction and force of the wind, and the many ships that are flying before the gale, suggest the probability of disaster. About midnight, the men on watch make out, in the lift of the mist, a fine brig not far from them, driving before the gale, and making straight for the Sands; the alarm is given, and a gun at once fired to give the unfortunate crew warning of their danger. The look-out men fancy, by the changing of the position of the brig's lights, that the crew are making an effort to alter the vessel's course, and to weather the Sands; but it is too late! nothing can save her! The crew of the light-ship lose sight of her in the darkness, and make all ready to signal for the life-boat to come to the rescue of her crew; they wait a minute or two, watching, in the direction they think the brig must strike, for the usual signals of distress, and almost immediately see the bright flare of a tar-barrel; they fire a signal-gun from the light-ship, and its warning voice booms loudly above the storm; then they send up rockets; the shipwrecked are thus encouraged to hope, while the ready boatmen on shore are called to action. The signals are seen at the Walmer life-boat station, one mile from Deal; and at the Kingsdown station, three miles from Deal; at both places the call is promptly and eagerly obeyed; the life-boats are got ready with all haste; they are speedily manned and launched, and struggle their way through the boiling surf, which is rolling upon the beach. They spread all the canvas they can stagger under, and the two boats fly before the gale straight for the light-ship; there they learn the position in which the signals of distress were seen, and cruise round the edge of the Goodwin in all the fierce tumble of sea, and skirt the ring of surf which marks where the rollers are breaking with terrible force upon the Sands; but they can obtain no guide, no clue to where the wreck is; no signal light shines out of that drear darkness pleading for help, and no sound can the men hear, listen as they will, other than the ceaseless roar of the storm. Still the brave boatmen will not abandon the search, and for some hours the boats continue their vain efforts. The crew of the Kingsdown boat determine at last that further search is useless, and as it is not possible for them to beat back to their distant station in the teeth of the gale, they run for Ramsgate, arriving there just before dawn. The Walmer boat continues cruising in the neighbourhood of the Sands until after daylight, when her crew, seeing no signs of the wreck, also determine to make for the shore. The seas have been steadily increasing in violence, and are now running very high, and as they curl and break, the crest of each wave is caught by the fierce wind, and dispersed in a cloud of spray. Bravely the boat sails on through the troubled seas; she is constantly overrun by the waves, and filled with water, but each time she speedily regains all her buoyancy, and bounds on over the seas. The men have almost too much confidence in her, as if no amount of sea and wind could possibly capsize her; they carry on a press of canvas, until the stout masts bend and the ropes strain again, and they make the sheet fast; but now a fierce huge wave comes rushing along, catches the boat broadside on, lifts the boat high on its crest, and then completely curls her over and passes, leaving the boat capsized, and all the men struggling in the water. But it is however only a passing victory, after all, that the sea can boast over the life-boat; at once she rights herself, gets rid of the water that fills her, and rides upon the seas as bravely as ever. Happily all the men have on their cork jackets, and in them they float breast high; never was there such a wild dance as they now seem to dance; tossed high and poised for a moment on the cone of a leaping wave, again engulfed in the hollow trough of a sea, with a wall of tumbling water all around; rising and falling in quick succession, their arms beating broken time as they struggle to swim towards the boat, which begins to drift fast away; it is fortunate that some of the men have retained hold of the life-lines, the ends of which are fastened to the boat, by these they haul themselves alongside her, and all soon succeed in getting on board. Away again through the Downs, across the high rolling seas, making for the shore, but their troubles are not yet at an end; a blast of wind, fiercer than its fellows, strikes the sail, the boat careens over; at that moment a huge wave leaps on the boat, strikes it with such force and so high, that it fills the sail with water and drives the boat bodily over, and the second time she is capsized, and the men, before they have recovered from the exhaustion caused by their former struggle, are the second time plunged into the sea, to find themselves battling for their lives with the waves. The cork jackets keep them afloat as before, but the waves run over them, and they are almost smothered in clouds of foam, until they are thoroughly worn out by the rush and beat of the seas which break over their heads. Up and down, tumbling here and there in the turmoil of the seas, pale and gasping for breath, almost too faint to make any struggle to regain the boat, becoming rapidly unconscious; this time the wild dance mid the raging seas becomes truly too much like a dance of death. Happily a powerful Deal lugger is near the scene of the disaster; her crew at once do their best to pick up and return to the life-boat those of the men who are themselves unable to gain it. The life-boat, self-righted, is floating high on the waves quite ready for action as soon as her crew can again take charge of her, and speed her on in her course. The men are, at last, all once more on board, the boat is again got under weigh, and speeds safely to the land. But how, all this while, fared the unfortunate crew of the vessel, in the vain effort to render assistance to whom the life-boat men had incurred such hardship and peril. The unfortunate ship was the brig _Linda_: the captain fancied the ship was in a safe course, free from any immediate danger; the storm fog was too thick for them to see the land, or any of the numerous signal lights that guard the coast, but they kept the lead going, and sped on before the gale; suddenly all hands are alike startled and terrified by the loud report of a gun fired quite close to them, and at seeing the light of a light-vessel very near; they at once realize their danger, for they know that the dread Goodwin Sands must be right under their lee; with frantic haste they attempt to wear the ship, but it is too late; as she feels the helm she plunges in among the surf, crashes upon the Sands, and the great seas begin to fly over her; the ship must be lost, it is beyond all hope that she can be saved; is there any hope for the crew? They will not despair, or be lost without making what small efforts they are able to obtain assistance; they know, from the violence with which the ship rises and thumps upon the Sands, that she must very speedily go to pieces. They get a tar-barrel, fill it with canvas, grease, and rags, light it, and have the satisfaction of seeing it flare up with a brilliant flame; that, at all events, must sufficiently penetrate the surrounding darkness and gloom to make known their distress to the neighbouring light-vessel. Again, and almost immediately, they hear the loud boom of the gun; but as previously it seemed to them the signal of death, so now it affords them a faint--a very faint hope; rockets too are fired by the light-vessel; surely the signals will be heard and seen on shore, and the life-boat will come out in search of them; but where will they be then? There is no time--no time; the seas are washing over the deck, the fierce fire of the tar-barrel is at once extinguished, and the men hasten to take refuge from the sweeping seas in the cross-trees and shrouds of the masts. Seven men spring to the foremast shrouds, and climb to the cross-trees, the captain and four men cling to the mainmast; time after time the vessel lifts and falls with a crash that wrenches her from stem to stern, and makes all her timbers groan and rend, and nearly shakes the sailors from their hold. Now the ship begins to work and writhe, the timbers break with loud reports, planks are wrenched from her side in the fierce tear of the sea, stout iron bolts are torn from their hold and twisted like so much thread--the ship is breaking up fast; the masts sway about, the men have to hold on their hardest to prevent being shaken into the sea, so are they tossed and swung about in the roll of the mast and the sway of the vessel. Each wave leaping higher than those that have gone before, seems to claim them for its prey; everything on the deck is swept away; the deck itself opens, the water gets down into the hold, and soon the deck breaks up, and pieces float away in the wash of the sea; the bulwarks are torn off, and now a piece of the side of the vessel is wrenched away; the vessel must be torn to fragments in a few short minutes, and death seems very near to all the crew. A tremendous wave rushes over the wreck, a crash louder than a thunder peal; the foremast has broken off close to the deck, it falls over; a few loud despairing cries, and the seven poor fellows who clung to the mast are hurled into the sea, and are at once lost in the wild rage of water. The five men on the mainmast shudder in their terror and despair, and cling closer and closer to the mast as it sways and jerks from side to side; there may be a few minutes yet to live; they think of home and wife and children, and hold on the more convulsively while the seas break over them with increasing violence; it takes but a short time, and the wreck beneath them seems in absolute fragments; the poop-deck is wrenched up, and a large piece of it is torn away; at the next sea the wreck heels over, the mainmast is carried away, and the captain and the four men are hurled from it into the sea; the captain is thrown against a large fragment of deck with such force that both his legs are broken; he, however, manages to hold on to the piece of wreck, the other four men are also swept to it, and there cling; they find themselves surrounded by the hundred fragments of wreck into which the stout brig has been so rapidly torn. The tide sweeps away the piece of deck to which the five men are so desperately clinging--away from the scene of the sad, swift, tragedy, and, by God's mercy, into an eddy of the current away from the surf and breakers which are thundering down in all their fury upon the Sands, and which would have swept the poor sailors at once to destruction if their frail raft had come within their reach. Away in the rough but not now broken seas the men are borne, their only hope the shattered, heaving piece of wreck that forms their raft; the horrors of the dark night are added to by the roar of the breakers as they crash down upon the Sands, and the poor sailors know not but that at any moment they may be met by some fresh eddy of the swift tide, and swept into the midst of that fatal surf. The fierce gale howls over them, the men are exhausted and hopeless, but they manage to lash the captain to the piece of wreck, his two broken legs make him faint and sick with agony; and on and on they float during the long dreary hours of the night. They pass the Gull light-ship, watch its bright and, to them, mocking light, then they are carried to the north-east of the Sands; there they meet the changing tide, and it sets them to the southward, and, to their great joy, away from the fatal Goodwin, away in the direction of Calais, the seas still wash over them. The agony of the captain is almost unendurable, as every wash of the sea, every heave of the frail piece of wreck jars his broken legs; the men have their nails torn from their fingers with the desperate energy with which they clutch the smooth timbers of the piece of deck on which they are lying. Hour after hour passes, and for fifteen hours they thus float about, cold and wet, and wounded, and faint with hunger and thirst; the poor fellows become almost unconscious, and can only just manage to hold on mechanically to their frail support; the morning passes, and they have no energy to look for a passing sail, and no means of signalling if they saw one. Suddenly a loud shout surprises them, and they lift their heads and see, with boundless joy, a large cutter almost alongside the raft; they seem called back from death, and begin to arouse themselves from the swoon into which they were all so rapidly sinking. The cutter is a pilot-boat from Antwerp; they are got on board her not without much difficulty, so helpless are they, and so high is the sea still running; the kind-hearted Belgians have every pity for the most miserable condition of the poor men, and do all they can to restore them; as soon as possible the pilots land them at Deal, and they are taken to the hospital and receive all possible medical care and attention; they soon revive, the captain's broken limbs are set, and he ultimately recovers; and while they mourn over the sad loss of their comrades, they cannot feel too much wonder, or be too deeply thankful, for their own most marvellous escape. CHAPTER XVII. THE RESCUE OF THE CREW OF THE "AMOOR." "No wild hurrahs accompany The deeds these men do dare; No beat of drum, no martial strain, No spirit stirring air. "But in the cold and darksome night They combat with the blast; And gain, by dint of hardihood, The victory at last. "Then let us pay the honour due To such devoted strife; Where gallant men so nobly risk For fellow men their life." _G. Ward._ We left, in our last chapter, the Kingsdown life-boat making for Ramsgate harbour, and the Walmer life-boat, after a couple of upsets, making for Deal beach. The Kingsdown boat reached Ramsgate about seven o'clock in the morning, the gale still blowing very heavily. Shortly after seven o'clock signals are heard from the Gull light-ship; and the coxswain of the Ramsgate life-boat receives orders from the harbour-master to proceed at once to sea,--the steamer as usual taking her in tow: the sea is very heavy, and the air thick with rain and spray. The steamer and life-boat work their way out through the storm, and find a brig riding at anchor in the Gull stream, not far from the light-ship; she has a flag hoisted at her peak as a signal, and they make for her; the crew tell them, that shortly before, in a lift in the storm, they saw a ship on the north-west spit of the Goodwin; the life-boat cruises in the direction pointed out, but the crew can see nothing of the wrecked vessel, so they proceed to the Gull light-ship, hoping there to obtain further information. The men find the crew of the light-ship anxiously watching for their approach; they crowd aft as the steamer and life-boat passes under the stern of the vessel, and make signals to describe the position of the wreck; the boatmen soon discover it, and as soon as they have been towed into the right position for so doing, slip from the steamer, and make in for the stranded vessel. It is now nearly low tide. As they approach, they find that the wreck is high and dry on a ridge of sand: nearer still, and they see a man walking towards them on the sand, waving a large shawl; the life-boat is steered towards him, and choosing a place where the surf is breaking with less force, they run the boat on to the sands; three of the crew jump overboard and wade through the surf; they join the man on the Sands, and make for the wreck; the heavy seas have driven the Sands into high ridges, and the gullies between these are waist-deep and full of running water, with the sand soft and quick at the bottom; through these deep gullies the men have to wade. Arriving at the wreck, they find it to be that of a brigantine, named the _Amoor_. At about eleven o'clock of the night previous, in the dark mist and heavy gale, she had run on the Sands at nearly high tide, the sea immediately ran over the vessel, and the crew had no time to make a single signal of distress, but had directly to climb up into the main rigging to prevent being washed overboard. Fortunately the ship was stem on to the Sands, with her stern to the wind and tide, and she kept straight--and as she was laden with coals, she kept upright on her keel. As the tide rose, the waves in their rush lifted the wreck and carried her gradually on and on, letting her fall after each lift with a heavy shock that made it difficult for the men to retain their hold. Then the seas broke over her so heavily that the men feared that they would be washed even from their position in the main rigging, and managed to get on to the foremast; here they found more shelter. For about four miles did the ship thus beat over the Sands, and the men felt, with a great and deep thankfulness, that if they had had the guidance of her themselves, they could not have kept her more straight in her course along the narrow high ridge of the sand than she was kept by God's providence, for if the vessel had been carried to the right or to the left of that narrow ridge of sand, she would have got into deep water, and then must have sunk immediately, so much was her hull shattered, and all her crew would of necessity have been at once drowned. But the agony of mind and the suspense endured this time by the men was something terrible. They could scarcely feel any hope that the wreck would long sustain the terrible shocks that she was receiving. They looked down upon the mad waves as they raced by, and each one seemed a ready grave; there was nothing to be done, no fierce struggle for life, which in its excitement should lessen the terrors of the apparently approaching death, only to cling on and wait in the darkness. And now they feel that the end must soon come, for they hear the surf roaring near; it is roaring on the edge of the Sands, the waves rushing in from the deep water and breaking upon the Sands, and this right in the path along which their vessel is being driven yard by yard. A little more and she must be plunged in this surf, and then a few yards, and she must sink in deep water; and as thousands upon thousands have earnestly prayed that they might be kept off these deadly sands, so these poor sailors now earnestly seek that they may be left on them, until daylight comes, and their pitiable position may be seen, and they have a chance of being saved. They are now within a quarter of a mile of the end of the sand, but the tide is falling rapidly, and the wreck lifts less and less; at last, to the great joy of all her crew, she grounds heavily and ceases to lift. She is swung round broadside to the tide, and falls over on her side, and then works and crashes almost to pieces. The water now soon leaves her, and she becomes high and dry, and speedily the men can leave the wreck and stand upon the sand; the surf rages around them at a short distance; it is only for a few hours that where they now stand will be dry, and then the sea will rage over the sand again with all its fury. The captain is a bold, active determined man; he will throw away no chance of safety; something must be done before the return of tide, and he will lose no time. The captain and crew can form no opinion as to where they are; the vessel is an absolute wreck, beaten by this time almost to fragments, they have no means of signalling their distress, and it seems that their only chance will be to make a raft out of the many shattered pieces of timber that are hanging about the wreck; the boats have long since been destroyed and washed away. The shipwrecked crew have only their knives to work with, but they commence with all energy, wrenching away the broken timbers from the deck and sides of the vessel, cutting away the ropes, lashing the timbers together. But with their utmost efforts they can make but slow progress, and they feel that their raft, when as hastily completed, as it must be, will be but a frail support in the rage of waters with which it will have to contend, as soon as the sea again beats over the Sands; but still on that dry knoll of sand, in almost pitch darkness, with the wind howling by them, and the roar of the breaking waves all around, the men work on and on. The poor storm-beaten, wearied men, feel faint and exhausted, but spare no labour, slack no energy, for the tide will turn with the dawn, and then, as an enemy creeping up to destroy them, will, in its speedy advance, give them short time for labour, and scant mercy, when it once seizes them as its prey. The dawn has broken, the tide is rising, and each man is inspired to fresh exertions. Suddenly, they are all startled by the loud report of a gun, fired at no great distance from them. What is it? What is it? they all cry. Soon a rocket goes whizzing up into the grey misty clouds. Is it a signal from some unfortunate vessel in distress similar to that which they are in? At all events that feeling of intense and hopeless solitude which almost overcame them, seemed disturbed, and whilst they eagerly work on, they at the same time keep a sharp look out in the direction from which the signals have been given; they are soon able to make out that it is a light-vessel that is signalling; this fills them with hope; they must have been seen by the watch on board, and it is on their account that the signal must have been made; but still they will not abate any of their efforts, the life-boat may not be able to reach them, or she may not be out in time to save them; at all events, with the tide creeping up as it is, they will not lose a chance, and go on busily constructing the raft. They have made considerable progress, having lashed a good many spars crosswise, and pieces of bulwark over them, when they discover a steamer's smoke not far off, and soon after make out a boat, which must be a life-boat, making in over the seas towards them; one man makes for the edge of the Sands, and soon the boat grounds not far from him, and three boatmen wade towards him. The boatmen, when they reach the raft, find the men getting some provisions on to it, but all the stores have been under water during the night, and are spoilt. The joy of the shipwrecked men at the arrival of the boatmen is intense. "Thank God! that you have come," said the captain; "I did not at all expect that any of us would have been alive this morning." A strange meeting it seems, in that wild stormy morning, there, on the centre of the Goodwin Sands, where the waves had raged so furiously a few hours before, and would in a few hours rage so furiously again; there, where the shipwrecked had expected to die a tragical death, the sailors and the boatmen stand greeting each other; the life-boatmen rejoicing almost as much at being there ready to save the poor sailors, as they are at the prospect of being saved; the ship's crew look down upon their raft, and feel indeed what a poor protection it must have proved in the storm which they would have had to encounter. The crew of the wrecked vessel, now that the excitement of working with such fierce energy at the raft is over, begin to feel the reaction, and feel thoroughly exhausted, and look so worn and weather beaten, as if the death shade, which had seemed to hover over them for so many hours, had left its impress upon the countenance of each. A few more words of greeting and thankfulness between the castaways and the rescuers, and all prepare to find their way across the Sands to the life-boat. The life-boatmen first climb on board the wreck, to see if they can find any small things which they can save for the men, but every moveable thing seems to have been washed out of the vessel; they find the cabin broken and crushed up, but manage to drag a few of the captain's clothes out of it; they find a dog on board, which they save. And now all turn their backs upon the wreck. The shipwrecked sailors have become very feeble, and some of them are scarcely able to drag their limbs along, and require to be held up on both sides as they wade through the shallow channels of water, many of which they have to cross on their way to the boat. They hurry on as fast as they can, for the weather is very uncertain, and a mist or snow-squall coming on would put them in the greatest possible peril, for they would in that case very speedily be lost among the gullies, which are half filled with water, and which stretch in all directions across the Sands at low water; and the boatmen know what it would be to be lost there; with the sand getting soft and quick beneath their feet as the tide rose, and with the narrowing belt of surf each moment drawing nearer and nearer, there to wander hopelessly for a short time, then to be scarcely able to move as the sands grew quick, and then to fall an easy prey to the fierce sweep of the first breaker that rolled in upon them. It is no wonder that the boatmen look with dread upon the increasing gloom of the morning, and hurry the men on as much as possible; they make out the life-boat, and with much difficulty and exertion they get to the edge of the Sands. The life-boat is at anchor with ten fathoms of chain out; the heavy breakers are rolling in and lifting her with such violence as they sweep on, that at each lift she drags her anchor, and beats further and further over the spit of sand upon which the waves are expending their first fury. The surf flies over the boat, fills her, and then rages on in clouds of foam. The men on board are anxiously looking for the return of their comrades with the shipwrecked crew, and greatly rejoice as they see the groups of men struggling across the Sands to the boat. They soon make out how exhausted the shipwrecked men are, and feel that it will be very hard work for them to wade through the surf to the boat. Some of the boatmen get life lines ready to throw to any that may be overpowered and thrown down by the wind and tide, others jump overboard to go to the assistance of the enfeebled sailors. It is bitterly cold, and the water, as they wade through it, feels as if it would freeze them through and through; they bring off the shipwrecked crew one by one, the more exhausted of them being supported on both sides between two life-boat men; at last all are on board, but they cannot yet leave the sands; they must wait until the water is high enough to float the life-boat over the ridge which surrounds her. All are shivering with cold and wet; they crouch in the boat and protect themselves as well as they can from the flying surf; a long weary hour is thus passed; the tide rises sufficiently, sail is set, and the life-boat makes for the steam-boat, and is greeted with cheers--cheers that are heartily answered. The shipwrecked sailors, who had had during the night no hope of again giving a cry of joy on earth, join in as lustily as they can, in that cry which, sounding over the wild seas, tells of noble deeds in struggling to save life, and of happy and most blessed results. That although the storm still swept furiously by, and although the waves still rushed madly around the shipwrecked, that they were now safe in the safety afforded by the noble life-boat. So safe, indeed, that it was not too soon for the poor sailors to rejoice in their rescue, and to express with heartfelt cheer their gratitude to the brave men who had rescued them from their position of deadly peril. The steamer does not take long in towing the boat to Ramsgate, where all receive the usual warm greeting, and the shipwrecked the needful care. The crew of the wrecked vessel, the _Amoor_ of Elswick, are Germans; their consul takes care of them, and sends them to the Sailors' Home. They proved so thankful for the rescue effected, that they wrote to their home authorities, and the life-boat men soon received from the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg Schwerin an expression of gratitude and admiration for their conduct, accompanied by a Silver Medal, a Certificate of Merit, and ten shillings each man. CHAPTER XVIII. THE RESCUE OF THE CREW OF THE "EFFORT"--THE DANGERS OF HOVELLING. "All where the eye delights, yet dreads to roam, The breaking billows cast the flying foam Upon the billows rising; all the deep Is restless change; the waves so swelled and steep, Breaking and sinking; and the sunken swells, Not one, one moment, in its station dwells." _Crabbe._ The famous old life-boat _Northumberland_ had done her work, and had done it nobly and well. Staunch, and true, she had breasted the hardest gales, stemmed the fiercest seas, and had been the means of rescuing hundreds of perishing men, women, and children from that which, without her, and the brave hearts and strong hands that sailed her, must have been swift, certain, and terrible death; but at last her time had come--weather beaten, wrenched, and worn, with her thousand battles with the gales, she was condemned as being no longer to be intrusted with the precious lives that she contained, as she went forth to contend with the wild seas that rage over the Goodwin Sands. The _Bradford_, a very powerful and excellent boat presented to the Life-boat Institution by the good people of Bradford, and by the Institution appointed to Ramsgate, had not yet been sent down, and a smaller boat called the _Little Friend_ was occupying her place for the time. But it was a clear fine morning, with the waves fretting and fuming somewhat, but dancing and gleaming brightly in the sunshine; it had been squally during the night, and at times had blown very hard, but the morning promised better, and the life-boat was rocking gently at her moorings, no one thinking it likely that her services would be required for some time. But the boatmen must be doing something, if only drawing their bow at a venture, and now the _Champion_ is getting ready for sea; she is one of the Ramsgate hovelling-luggers, a noble boat of twenty-two tons, fit for any weather. In summer time she is fitted as a pleasure-boat, and, as such, takes many a holiday cruise; but now she is in winter gear, and ready for rougher scenes and harder work. The more threatening and heavy the weather, the greater the probability of disaster occurring, or having occurred, then the more ready are her crew to work their way out to the Goodwin Sands, and to cruise round them on the look-out for vessels in distress; they dare not take the lugger into the broken water--there a life-boat alone can live; but still she is a grand sea-boat, one that will stagger on with a ship's heavy anchor and chain on board, through weather bad enough for anything--a boat that is well suited for the hard and dangerous service which employs her during the winter months. Her crew consists of ten men; the men get no regular pay, but any salvage or reward for services they may obtain is divided into fourteen shares: the boat takes three and a half shares for her owners, one half share goes to the provision account, as the crew when on board are supplied by the owners with provisions, and one share is given to each of the men--this is the ordinary arrangement. Complaints are sometimes made of the amounts charged by these men for services rendered; but the cases of a good hovel are few and far between; and often the luggers put out to sea, night after night, throughout a stormy winter, hanging about the Sands, in wind and rain, and snow and mists, the men half frozen with the cold, and half smothered with the flying surf and spray, and often week after week they thus suffer and endure, and do not make a penny-piece each man; working their hardest, without any other result, than that of getting more and more into debt at home, and almost tempted to become disheartened with it all, hardly able to hope against hope; then at last, perhaps, comes a chance--a big ship is on the tail of a sand bank; they render assistance and get her off; if she had remained there another tide she would probably have been knocked to pieces: they have saved thousands of pounds' worth of property; and the captain, and the owners, and the underwriters, all look aghast, and cry out with indignation, when they ask perhaps a sum that will give them ten or fifteen pounds a man--do something to pay the scores that have been growing month after month, something to requite them for the weary watching, and labour, and suffering, that they have had so many weeks in vain. No! let those who grumble at the demands made on such occasions, feel fully assured that they know many easier, more pleasant, and more profitable ways of making money, than by hovering around the Goodwin Sands throughout the nights of a stormy winter, on the look-out for vessels in distress. The following tale will illustrate, in its simple narration of actual facts, some of the dangers to which the men are exposed when on such service. On the morning in question a haze floated over the Goodwin Sands, preventing anything being made out from the shore; wherever the haze lifted a little, the men on the look-out on the pier closely watched the break in it with their glasses; for the channels on either side of the Sands are so narrow and the tides so strong, that it is an easy matter for a ship-master to lose his bearings in thick weather, and to run his ship on the Sands. A squall passes over the Sands, driving the mists before it, and the men on the pier make out that a vessel is ashore on the Goodwin; she is completely on her broadside, and the boatmen, looking through powerful glasses, can see that men are walking about on the side of the wreck. The harbour-master is immediately informed; he knows that the _Champion_ lugger is out there, but the surf may be too great for her to be able to render assistance, and he gives directions that the life-boat shall be at once manned. The steamer soon takes the life-boat in tow, and they proceed through a comparatively smooth sea to the vessel. Upon arriving there, they find that the _Champion_ lugger has succeeded in sending in her small boat, and in taking the men off the wreck. But as the boat makes off to the lugger's she loses an oar, and the tide is running with such strength that the boat's crew cannot stem it, and are driven back in the direction of the Sands; the life-boat men see the danger the boat will get into if she is carried into the broken water, and at once give chase. The men on board the lugger's boat are, not unnaturally, anxious to have the honour of saving the crew without the assistance of the life-boat, and they persevere in their efforts to reach the lugger; suddenly the wind flies round to the north-east, and a heavy squall sweeps along accompanied with snow and sleet; it becomes very thick and dark, the lugger's men think the squall will soon pass, and although their boat is only sixteen feet long, and has eleven men on board, they still work away striving to get back to the lugger. But the wind increases in force, and the sea begins to make rapidly, the little boat gets into shallow water and thumps heavily on the edge of the sand; then the boatmen and the shipwrecked crew realize the danger they are in. The wrecked sailors begin to shout to the life-boat men to come to their help, and the boat's crew see that they cannot get away from the Sands by themselves; in fact, that without the aid of the life-boat they must all then and there perish, and they are glad to make for the life-boat with all speed. The sailors and some of the boat's crew get on board the life-boat, two or three hands remain in the small boat, which is taken in tow by the life-boat, and they start in search of the steamer; but the weather becomes more and more thick, and they can see nothing of her; in fact, can only see a few yards before them. Now to their dismay they find that they have come away without a compass, and the wind has shifted so frequently and rapidly, that they cannot guess at its direction, and therefore cannot tell which way to steer; they are on the top of the Sands, and in very shallow water, and the boat often touches the ground with a great jerk as she sails along. Now, and again, she grounds bow on and is swung round and round by the tide. The tide as it is low water runs through so many channels and swatch ways that its direction does not at all help the men to tell the course they are steering; and so, as a mere matter of guess-work, and that they may keep the boat's head in one direction, they put her on the wind, and after being beaten about a good deal by the broken seas, succeed in getting into deep water; but not until they have been entangled for four hours among the Sands. After sailing for about half an hour, they discover the Gull light looming red out of the thick mist. They then soon make out the _Champion_, and put her crew on board her. The lugger's men want the shipwrecked crew to accompany them, but they are too content with the life-boat, and refuse to move; the steamer comes up and takes the life-boat in tow. Again the wrecked sailors cannot be persuaded to leave the life-boat for her, and as soon as the boat is in tow, and they are well under weigh, the wrecked sailors begin to tell their tale. "The name of our wrecked vessel is the _Effort_; it is now several days since we sailed from the Forth, bound for Rotterdam, and ever since we have had a a terrible time of it, nothing but gale after gale, the wind flying about in all directions, until you can guess we were pretty well tired of all this beating about in the North Sea; what with the wind driving us first in one direction and then in another--what with contrary tides and thick weather--we soon lost our reckoning, and must have been caught in the lee drift of the tide, and thus got carried on to the Goodwin Sands. We grounded heavily, at once felt the danger we were in, and hoisted lamps as signals of distress, but we knew that these could not be made out at any distance in such thick weather, and hurried to get a tar-barrel on deck to set fire to it, and make a good blaze; but our vessel was very light--she rolled from side to side almost yard arms under, and suddenly capsized altogether. At once, and with difficulty, we made for the weather-rigging, and were glad to find that not any of the crew were lost as she fell over. We lashed ourselves to the rigging. We knew to our great joy that the tide was falling; had it been rising we must have very soon been overrun by it, the vessel broken up, and every man of us lost. We were in danger enough as it was, for the brig soon after she capsized was caught by the tide, and worked round with her deck towards the seas; and as the heavy seas broke over her and came rushing up the deck, they fell on us with terrible weight, and beat us and crushed us against the ship's rail, so that we were forced to unlash ourselves from the rigging, and what to do we did not know, till one of us said, 'Our only chance is to lash the end of the ropes round our waists, and let go the rigging as the waves come,' and so we did; and terrible work it was. As the waves came we slackened the ropes and went away a little with them, and as they passed, half smothered as we were, hauled ourselves back to the rigging and held on a bit; and then, when the next wave came, we let go, and were all adrift in the wash again; our hands were almost torn to pieces with the strain on the ropes, and grasping at the side of the vessel." And they shewed where their hands were torn, with the nails almost drawn from the finger ends. "You see, too, how our clothes were nearly dragged off us; it was indeed an awful time. We encouraged each other as well as we could, but soon became too exhausted to speak much, and just went struggling on. The topmast heads were right down in the Sands, and every moment we expected the masts would break off short, and then the vessel would have rolled over, and it would have been death to us at once--but while there was life there was hope, and so we held on, just hoping against hope, and so we would not despair, but seemed to gather a little bit of courage, again and again struggling to prolong, for a few minutes, the life of which we saw so little chance of at last saving; but the tide was still falling, and if we could only live through all the wash of the sea, until it had gone down a bit, there was just one more chance for us. "Well, we stood it for about two hours, I should think, the seas breaking over us continually, when we began to feel that they were getting less heavy, and ran less and less up the deck, and over the vessel. And at last, although half dead with breathlessness and fatigue, from the exertion and the constant rush of the waves over us, we were able to drag ourselves up on to the broadside of the vessel, and then we threw ourselves down full length, to try and recover our strength a little." It was with no slight degree of interest and sympathy that the life-boat men listened to the tale of the poor fellows; three of whom were married men, and they described how the thoughts of the loved ones at home, while it added to their agony, yet nerved them time after time to fresh efforts to struggle free from the seas that overran them. One man grew very excited as they told the dismal story. His limbs and features worked, the horrors of the past night came upon him in all their force, and as the waves dashed over the life-boat, he fancied himself again being washed off the side of the wreck, and springing up he shouted, "Let me drown myself, let me drown myself, I can stand it no longer!" and tried to throw himself into the sea. Three men seized him, held him down and tried to pacify him, but still he struggled, shouting,--"I cannot stand it! I cannot stand it! let me go! let me go!" He soon became somewhat quieter, from exhaustion, but the men did not feel it safe to let go their hold upon him, until they got into the harbour. It was now about half-past four in the afternoon, and the life-boat work for the day was done, the shipwrecked crew staggered to the Sailors' Home; wondering much to find themselves still alive, after the dread perils, and terrible struggles, and exhaustion, of the previous night. CHAPTER XIX. THE HOVELLERS, OR SALVORS, SAVED. THE "PRINCESS ALICE" HOVELLING LUGGER. "When they who to the sea go down, And in the waters ply their toil, Are lifted on the surge's crown, And plunged where seething eddies boil, "Then with Thy mercies ever new, Thy servants set from peril free; And bring them, Pilot wise and true, Unto the port where they would be." _Hymn._ No sooner has the life-boat started in the morning, in answer to the signal from the Goodwin light-vessel, than the master of the _Princess Alice_ gathers a crew of twelve men, and follows as fast as possible in the wake of the life-boat. A fine south-westerly breeze is blowing and the noble lugger bowls along at a great speed, and reaches the neighbourhood of the Sands about a mile and a half behind the life-boat. The lugger brings to an anchor just outside the Sands, and her crew, finding that the weather has somewhat moderated, and that the sea has gone down with the tide, determine to send six of their men in their small boat into the wreck, to see if they can save any cargo or rigging; the men get to the wreck without much difficulty, and find her right over on her broadside, with her yard-arms buried some feet in the Sands; the top-gallant mast is gone; her rigging and all her top-hamper, a tangled mass, is floating and washing about in a deep hole which the eddy of the waves, beating against the wreck, has worked. The men climb on to the side of the vessel, and then lower themselves down from the weather-rigging across the deck, which is lying almost upright on its side, that they may look into the hold; the hatches are off, and they find that the hold is quite empty, everything washed out; it is difficult to get into the captain's cabin, as the vessel is completely on her side, or there may be things there worth saving; they will see to it by-and-by, and now they proceed at once to save what rigging they can. The three men on the vessel get their knives and choppers to work, and commence cutting away, when suddenly it begins to get dark, a heavy squall threatens, and a storm of snow and hail comes driving along before the wind. The men in the boat shout out, "It begins to look bad; do you not think that we had better be leaving, and get out of this?" But the men busy in the rigging are somewhat excited over their work, and answer back, "It is only a squall, a mere spoon drift, and will soon work round;" the wind, however, rapidly increases, and sweeps by in such violent gusts, that the men on the ship's side are nearly blinded with the snow, and can no longer hold on against the wind; well! they are willing to work hard and risk much, to save what they can from the hungry Goodwin Sands, even if that which they save will give them only a few shillings a man; but if they cannot, they cannot; it is not the first time, by very many, that they have returned with nothing but danger and labour for their pains. "Look sharp, men, look sharp; do you want to drown us all?" "Come down at once," is the cry from the boat; and the men lower themselves down over the slippery side of the vessel, into the small boat, which is leaping and tossing about in the waves which begin to surge up with some violence. "Now, men, oars out and away with a will; I doubt we have left it quite long enough." "Aye! Aye! too long, I fear." "Well! time enough to think that when we find it so." "Which way are you going?" they ask the coxswain. "I don't suppose there is much choice, there will be less surf running at the back of the Sand, and the lugger is sure to expect us to come out there, now that the sea has got up; so round with her, and pull hard." And away, as for their lives, the men pull, the little boat seethes through the troubled water, urged by her powerful crew; and they soon near the edge of the Sand, and are making for deep water. "Easy all, men! do you hear that?" And to their dismay, they hear the surf beating heavily, right ahead of them. "Didn't I tell you so?" "Hold your tongue--our work is to get out of this, not to grumble while in it." "Right enough then, and I am your man; but what next?" "Pull ahead a little, and let's look at them;" and doing so, they see huge waves rolling in out of the deep water upon the shallow Sands, mounting up, curling over, and breaking, washing back, meeting other breakers foaming up against them; in fact, a sea of raging water surrounding the Sands; a sea in which their little boat would be swamped at once, and in which, indeed, no ordinary boat could float, and only a life-boat could possibly pass through. As they mount on a wave they can see the lugger, riding safely just outside the surf, only a quarter of a mile off, waiting for them; but that quarter of a mile it is impossible for them to pass, and equally impossible for the lugger to get any nearer to them. "Well, my men, there is no help for it here; we cannot get off the Sands this way, that's certain." The seas begin to break heavily over the boat; the men keep her head to the waves, or she would be at once rolled over, so rapidly is the swell setting in; as it is, she begins to fill with water, and they have to continue bailing her; they must let her drift back, pulling easy to keep her head straight, and each wave carries them some distance further from the edge of the Sand. As soon as they get clear of the rollers and the surf, they rest on their oars, and consult what is to be done; it all seems very hopeless, but it is no good waiting where they are; and so they determine to return again to the wreck, as to their only place of safety, and this indeed but for a very short time. They get to the wreck, and lay under shelter of her hull, not knowing what to do; never did men seem in more terrible plight, the wreck could afford but the scantiest shelter to the crew who hopelessly clung to her the night before; then the tide was falling, but now the tide is rising; each moment the great rollers that are rushing in upon the Sands break nearer and nearer; soon they will rush over the wreck, cover her completely, and rend and tear her to fragments. What can be done? To remain where they are is certain death, to attempt to escape in their small open boat seems death, equally certain. Well, it is better to die doing than to die waiting; but never have men held consultation under more apparently hopeless circumstances; the boat the men are in is the boat the _Princess Alice_ generally carries on her deck, between the masts; she is about eighteen feet long, and four broad, fine boat enough for her size; but she seems more than sufficiently filled by the six powerful men who are in her, and if she should be caught in the roll of one of the big waves, she will at once be capsized, or fill with water, and sink, leaving her crew but a few gasping moments of vain struggle with the boiling seas. And the seas rage round them every moment nearer and nearer. Some of the men think that if they can drag the boat for about a mile over the crown of the part of the Sands that is still dry, and thus get out to windward of the North-west Spit, that they may find more shelter there for a time, and if they do find it somewhat smoother there, will perhaps be able to work their way through the surf; but upon a snow-squall, which for a time had darkened all around them, clearing away, they find that the breakers are throwing up as much surf there as anywhere else, and all hope of rescue in that direction is gone; and the conviction settles down upon them all, that there seems indeed no possibility of escape; but still they kept cool, and quiet, and undaunted, prepared to do their utmost, calmly and skilfully, up to the last moment, letting no chance go by; at all events, they will stop where they are no longer, as the breaking seas are closing in upon them fast. The Goodwin Sands are about nine miles long; in the middle of them there is at low water a large lake, which is called on the chart "Trinity Bay," but which is known to the boatmen as the In-sand; the men row in the direction of this lake, and row over the sand-banks which surround it, as soon as the tide has flowed sufficiently to enable them to do so; now they find themselves in completely smooth water, and are safe; but for how long? a short hour or so, for the hungry waves are following them up fast, still higher and higher comes the tide, and a furious surf begins to rage over the banks that for a time protect the lake. Well do the men know how short a time of rest remains to them; they hear the beat of the heavy waves thundering near, they see the gleam of the surf, the sea begins to boil up around them, the circle of safety gets each moment more narrow, their dread ruthless enemy is on them again, and the men brace themselves for a life-and-death struggle, for with such a struggle they are face to face. "Now, my men, to it again! look out all!" and each man grasps his oar hard, fixes his eye upon the steersman, James Penny, watches his every sign, and listens to his every word; for in the struggle that is before them any mistake may be at once fatal to all. The big waves roll in, fast following each other, and the boat meets each one head on, and rises to it; the surf flies over the men, and into the boat; "Bale away, Penny! bale away! or she will swamp!"--and fast the steersman bales; he has one hand on the tiller, and is watching the direction of every wave, and shouting to the men, on which side to ease, on which to pull a little harder, to keep the boat's head straight to the waves; for if but one wave catches the boat on the side it will roll her over at once, and all must perish; they must row sometimes harder in a lull, sometimes gently when a high roller comes, to avoid its breaking upon them, or to prevent their burying the boat's bow in its steep side. The coxswain sees a tremendous wave rolling on; a few smaller ones come first; up the boat flies, down again, again mounts high, and again falls down; "Steady all, look out, half a stroke hard starboard side, easy port, now easy all--easy all;" the men stop pulling, and lay their oars flat on the water to steady the boat; the great wave rolls on, the boat's bow is tossed high, nearly on end, the men lean back as far as possible, but can scarcely keep their seats, or prevent being thrown bodily forward upon the coxswain; the boat falls with a heavy plunge; there is a moment's lull. "Now a stroke, or two, my men;" and they gently press the boat forward and make a little way; "Easy all, head her to it, here she comes," and up again they mount upon the crest of a wave, and are again nearly turned end-over-end, but, happily, fall on an even keel as the wave passes, and at once prepare themselves to meet the next sea, and thus meeting wave after wave, overcoming danger after danger, they go drifting slowly with the tide. The men do not dare at any time to pull hard for fear of rowing the boat under, they make therefore but little way ahead, not more than half a mile, or so, an hour, but they are carried slowly by the tide down Trinity Bay in the direction of the Downs. The boat has been nearly full of water all this time, from the surf and spray that have broken into her, but she happily has a belt of cork round her, underneath the thwarts, or she must have long since been swamped, but this, with the constant baling of the coxswain, has kept her afloat. The men have been able to remain in the bay until the tide has risen greatly, and it is now high water over the Sands, and the water being deeper, the seas do not break nearly as heavily as before; they are mounting seas, not running seas. The mounting sea swells up and comes pushing along, like a hill of water, steep on both sides; its crest is caught by the wind and is driven away in clouds of spray and foam, but a boat meeting it has time to rise, and float over it; but a running sea is much more dangerous; its base is caught and retarded by the Sands; it comes along, its sides steep as a wall, its crest curling more and more over until it breaks, and the upper portion of the wave falls with a mighty crash, with perhaps tons of water in its volume; it would be impossible for any boat but a life-boat to contend for a moment with such a rushing breaking sea as this, and the little boat the six men are in, with its heavy freight, would be swamped, beaten under water and rolled over by the first such sea she met; but if the men can only steer clear of these breakers, and keep the boat's head so as to meet the mounting seas bow on, and manage to bale her constantly so as to keep her a little free from water, they may live through it all yet; with this hope they labour on steadily, bravely, and hour after hour they thus contend with the storm; the boat is now coming to the worst of the water--to the steep edge of the Sand--and the men feel that, for a time, the danger must increase, and all brace themselves up again, prepared for any further effort, or care, that may be required. The steersman, who has been steering and baling the boat for about four hours, suddenly lets the bowl with which he is baling fly from his hand; he gives a cry of horror, the men cannot help repeating it, for is not this likely to be a death-stroke to them all? The men at once realize the dread increase of danger this misfortune creates. To keep the boat afloat without baling is impossible; the surf breaks into her continually; the men cannot bale with their southwesters, for they must keep rowing; they require both hands, and to exert all their strength to free their oars from the seas, and to keep the blades from being blown up into the air, as the force of the gale catches them; while the steersman must of necessity keep one hand on the tiller; and all must continue labouring without one moment's cessation to keep the boat's head straight to the seas. Most happily the bowl is a wooden one, and there it is floating a few yards from them; they watch it wistfully, as they, and it, are tossed up and down by the quick waves; back the boat down upon the bowl they cannot, for it is on their broadside, and drifting away on the tide faster than they are floating: it would seem, that it must be an easy matter to pick up a bowl that is floating only a few yards from the boat; but not so now, for every moment, racing swiftly after each other, the waves come rushing on. It is strange as they watch the bowl to feel that their lives depend upon their recovering it, and yet how likely they are to perish in the attempt, and thus the men casting anxious glances at the bowl keep steadily to their work; they allow no word of fear or discouragement to be spoken; they must have mind, nerve, and muscle in full play; if a word of hopelessness is let fall, "Don't speak like that--don't speak like that, stick to your oar!" they must be words of encouragement, or no words at all, and in grim silence, except for the few words of direction shouted out by the coxswain, the men wait their fate. Suddenly the coxswain cries, "Here is a lull, round with her, sharp!" The men on the starboard side give a mighty pull; the men on the port back their hardest; one pull all together, the bowl is within reach; the coxswain grasps it with a hasty snatch! "Round! round, with her quick, quick!" and the eager men get her head straight to the seas again, before the waves have time to catch the boat broadside on and roll it over. All breathe again; they have another chance of life. Thank God! thank God! They now pass away from the Sands and get into the Gull stream, but the wind has chopped round and continues to blow a fierce gale; the sea is running very high and broken; and in that rough sea they are still in extreme danger on account of the smallness of their boat, and so many men being in her, and they have to proceed with the greatest care and caution. As they get into the Gull stream they see vessel after vessel running with close-reefed topsails before the gale; the boatmen hail them but they get no answer: one little sloop affords them slight hope, for she is evidently altering her course, but after a moment's apparent hesitation, away she goes again before the gale, and abandons them to their fate. The captain of the little vessel related afterwards, how in the height of the storm he saw some poor fellows in a small boat, and had a great wish to try and save them, but the sea was running so high that he felt it was impossible to heave his vessel to, and so had to leave them, and that they must have been driven on the Sands and lost. This sloop was about a quarter of a mile from the boat, and the men do not again get as near to any other ship, and as vessel after vessel passes, and the night begins to grow dark, the position of the men becomes more and more hopeless--and they all feel that if no vessel picks them up, they must soon be blown in again upon the Sands, and there perish. All of the men, except one, are married; the man in the bow has a wife and five children, and it is his thoughts of them that keep him nerved to his work, for although weak, exhausted, and almost fainting, he still sticks to his oar and feebly paddles on; the only single man in the boat is his brother-in-law; and his mind keeps running as much upon what his sister will do, as a widow with five children, as it does upon the thoughts of his own probable fate; and so although the men will not permit themselves to lament or bemoan their almost certain fate, for fear of weakening their own nerves or discouraging each other, each has his solemn conviction of what must soon happen, and is in his own breast thinking of death, and bidding "Good-bye," to the loved ones who are resting those few miles away. The Downs had been full of ships at the commencement of the storm, but as the wind increased in violence and blew right through, the anchorage was no longer safe, and vessel after vessel slipped her cable and ran before the gale; until at last only one vessel, a large American ship, remains at anchor. The boatmen make her out when they are about half a mile from her, and find, to their great joy, that she is almost directly in the path in which they are drifting; to get alongside her is their last hope, for although the tide is now carrying them against the wind and from the Sands, the tide will very soon turn, and then with the tide, and before the wind, they will be swept with terrible speed right in upon the Sands, and must there at once perish, and it will be impossible for them to row against the tide, as all their efforts will still be required to keep the boat bow on to the seas. Whenever, after the passing of a few of the largest of the waves, there comes a comparative lull, or smooth, and they dare press the boat, they pull a few strokes and shoot ahead, and thus manage to get exactly in the path of the American ship. As they drop slowly towards her they shout time after time, but cannot make themselves heard; and it is getting too dusk for them to be seen at any distance; the seas are running alongside the ship almost gunwale high, and it is impossible to get nearer to her than within fifty yards. Hail after hail the men give, still they get no answer; they can see a man on the poop, but he evidently neither sees nor hears them, and their last chance seems slipping away, for they are fast drifting past the vessel. "Get on the thwart, Dick, and shout with all your might!" the coxswain says to the man pulling stroke-oar; "I'll hold you," hauling in his oar, and catching it under the seat; the man springs upon the thwart, and balancing himself for a second, hails with all his force. "The man is moving, he hears us; hurrah!" is the glad cry in the boat. They can see that he is looking about in astonishment, wondering from where the voice from the sea came. They all shout together; he sees them, waves his arm, and hurries along the poop; other men come hastening up, called by him, and look with astonishment at the little boat so full of men, being tossed about in that wild sea. The boat drifts by the ship, they venture a pull or two and get her under the stern of the vessel, shooting her a little across the seas; they then pull a little harder to try and keep her position, risking a little more to keep near the ship--indeed the vessel somewhat protects them from the rush of the seas. The coxswain sees a man on the vessel throw something overboard--it is a coil of rope with a life-buoy attached; they make it out as it floats near, and manage to get it on board. The pilot is the man who first saw the boat, and has got the life-buoy and thrown it over to them. The captain of the vessel is now on deck; he orders the men to send down a rope from each quarter of the vessel, and to try and keep the boat directly astern of the centre of the ship, for if the boat sheers to one side or the other, and any of the big waves which are racing by the ship catch her on her broadside, she must go over at once. So they shout to the men in the boat, "Hold on--we will send you another rope," and soon another life-buoy with a rope attached, comes floating by; they get it on board, and seeing directly the object for which it is sent, haul the ropes over each bow, and strive to keep the boat in position; but still they are in great danger; their safety hitherto has been in floating with the waves, yielding to them as they rolled on; but now as she is moored to the ship, the little boat has to breast the waves, and at times is tossed high with her bow in the air, and again plunged down, smothered with spray, and in danger every moment of being overturned; indeed it is only by the skilful manoeuvring of the captain that the boat is kept safe at all. He has stationed six men on each quarter of the ship; they hold the ropes to which the boat is fastened; and as the big waves press the boat, the men slacken the rope, and let the boat go with the seas, pulling her up again between the waves, hauling on one rope, and slacking the other if the boat sheers too much on one side. The difficulty now is how to get the men out of the boat, for they dare not haul her up closer to the vessel, as she will not ride with a shorter scope of rope. They send another rope down to the boat, with a bowline knot made in it for the men to sit in, and then shout to the men, "We will haul you on board, one at a time." There is a moment's question as to the order in which the men shall go, for each feels that at any moment the boat may sink under them; it is quickly decided that the men shall leave the boat in the order in which they sit, and one after another, they plunge into the waves, and are hauled on board through the seas. All safe at last! and very soon the boat fills and turns over, and hangs there held by the ropes till the morning. As soon as the men have shaken the water a little from their clothes, and have wiped their eyes and faces somewhat clear, the captain says, "I suppose you have come from the barque that was riding near at the beginning of the gale, and which I missed after a squall, and which must have foundered." (It was supposed that two or three ships went down with all hands that night). "No, sir; we have come from no barque, we were blown away from a wreck some hours ago, near the North Sands Head, and have drifted right over the Goodwin." "Impossible! impossible! no boat could live in such a sea, and over the Sands, impossible!"--"It is true, sir; we are Ramsgate boatmen and belong to a lugger; we went in from her on to the Sands to a wreck, and could not get back to her again." And the captain declares that their escape has been wonderful indeed. The feelings of the men at finding themselves safe are perfectly overwhelming; the reaction after those long hours of almost hopeless and constant struggle; it is too much for them, especially added, as it is, to the condition of physical exhaustion to which they are reduced. Some of them can scarcely speak; one of them, realizing the almost miracle by which they have been saved, leans against the boom, repeating in a broken voice, "What, I saved! I saved--I saved! one of the worst! one of the worst!" Another can only think of the words he had so often repeated to one of his mates, who had seemed almost dying during the night. "Come, cheer up! come, cheer up! stick to your oar, keep up your heart, man," and he continues for some time repeating these words in a strange dreamy way. The coxswain, upon whom the chief anxiety and greatest stress of mind had fallen, for he had hour, after hour, to sit watching every sea as it rolled to them and meet it with the tiller, felt more than the others the effect of the night's work; he soon after fell very ill, was nigh to death's door, and did not recover his strength for a twelvemonth. The captain, officers, and crew of the American ship are full of sympathy and kindness. The captain takes the men into his cabin, and gives them each a little brandy, then offers them dry clothes, and orders beds to be made up for them in the cabin: the clothes and the bed the men think too kind, but the beef-steak supper and the glass of grog all round, as soon as they have eaten a little, is not to be refused; and the hardy fellows are soon sound asleep on the cabin-floor, with all their perils for a time forgotten. In the morning the gale has greatly abated; the men have a hearty breakfast provided by the hospitable captain: their boat is by his orders hauled up, baled out, and as everything has been washed out of her, the captain lends them oars, and they start for Ramsgate, giving their most hearty thanks for the great skill with which they were got on board the ship and saved, and for the kindness they have received on board. When the crew of the _Champion_ lugger had put the men she had saved from the wreck on board the life-boat, they found that they could not well get back to Ramsgate in the then state of the wind and tide, and they were forced to run for Dover. The men on board the _Princess Alice_ remained in the greatest state of anxiety as to the fate of their comrades who went into the wreck in their little boat, and waited on, and on, in the position in which the boat must come to them, if she clears the Sands; hour after hour she cruises backwards and forwards, her crew keeping most anxious watch, and then runs down the back of the Sands, thinking it possible the boat might get out somewhere there; the gale increases; the night comes on; the high tide has swept over the whole of the Sands with its wild seas long before this, and they can only conclude, which they do most positively and sorrowfully, that their companions in many a hard struggle--their friends since childhood--have been lost, overwhelmed in the rage of the sea on the Goodwin. They therefore give up the search, and now regard their own safety, and they also find that they cannot reach Ramsgate, but must make away for Dover. Arriving there, they at once telegraph the sad news to Ramsgate, that they have lost six hands; news that creates the greatest excitement in the town. The next morning the _Princess Alice_ starts at daylight for another cruise round the Sands, hardly with the hope of finding their lost comrades, but possibly fragments of the boat may be found; but they search in vain, and feeling their fears to be altogether confirmed, they steer for Ramsgate. There the arrival of the lugger is most anxiously awaited, and the report of the men increases the excitement, and sorrow, and sympathy, which had been created by the telegraph sent the night before, and now that the names of the missing men are known, there is sad, sad, grief among their supposed widows, and orphans, and their friends. In the meanwhile the boatmen, having left the American ship, row steadily toward Ramsgate. They see a lugger making for the harbour; this proves to be the _Champion_. The lugger takes the men on board, and the boat in tow, her crew rejoicing over their friends whom they had supposed to be drowned. They hoist the lugger's flag in token that they are bearers of good news, and speed towards Ramsgate. The lugger's approach with her flag flying excites the curiosity of the men on the harbour, and a crowd hurries down the pier to watch her arrival. And, as soon as the men missing from the _Princess Alice_ are recognised, the cheers and excitement are wild in the extreme, and men speed off at their hardest to bear the good news. One poor woman in the midst of her agony and mourning for her husband, and surrounded by her weeping friends, is surprised by her door being burst violently open, and at seeing a boatman almost dropping with breathlessness, gasping, and gesticulating, and nodding, but trying in vain to speak; and it is some seconds before he can stammer out "All right! all right! your husband is safe, coming now!" A little subscription was got up by the men and their friends, in order to give to the captain of the American ship and the pilot a small testimonial of the appreciation of their skill and hospitality. The men took the borrowed oars back and presented their thankofferings, in the shape of a silver cigar case each, to the captain and pilot. And as the men told the story of the despair and grief that had existed among the wives and children at home--of the tears of sorrow that were turned into tears of gladness--of the rejoicings that took place upon their return, the brave and feeling American captain shared the emotion of the men as they told their tale, and was much overcome as he thanked them for their present, saying,--he should value it as long as he lived, and ever be deeply grateful that he had in any way been the instrument of saving such honest and brave fellows, and of restoring them to their wives and families. CHAPTER XX. THE SAVING OF "LA MARGUERITE"--(A HOVEL). "The spirit of the storm pursued Their long and toilsome way; At length, in ocean solitude, He sprang upon his prey. 'Havoc!' the shipwreck-demon cried, Loos'd all his tempests on the tide, Gave all his lightnings play." _J. Montgomery._ The case of _La Marguerite_, a small French brig that was rescued from great peril by a Margate lugger, assisted by the Ramsgate steamer and life-boat, will perhaps convey a sufficient idea of the difficulty and danger that frequently occur in rescuing vessels from positions of peril, and in bringing them in their damaged condition safely into port. _La Marguerite_, a small French brig of 187 tons, is owned by her captain, an honest and brave French seaman, and represents to him a great part of the savings of many years' hard work and economy. She is bound from Christiana to Dieppe with a cargo of deals; her hold is full, and her deck piled up and hampered with cargo almost to the level of her gunwale. But on she goes rolling through the seas, with a fair wind and fine weather, and her crew suffer only that amount of discomfort which must always be the case when the deck of a vessel is so crowded with cargo. The fresh breeze increases in force, and threatens a storm; the men close reef the topsails and speed on their way; they make the Orfordness light on the Essex coast, and then, correcting their course, steer for the Knock and Galloper lights, which are stationed to guard sands so named, and which are situated about eighteen miles from the North Foreland. The breeze lulls a little, and they shake out a reef in the sails; it is now getting somewhat thick--they soon make out a couple of lights, but they shine so dimly through the mists that the crew conclude that they are only fishermen's lights, and shaking out another reef, they run fast before the wind, carefully steering their course by the compass; but all this time a strong set of tide has been carrying them to the northward and westward; this they have not discovered, and are quite unaware that they are getting into a dangerous neighbourhood. The captain is on deck; he is well-pleased at the prospect of making a rapid voyage, and seeing that the night is likely to be wet and squally, he gives his crew an extra glass of grog all round and goes below, taking a last look at the compass, and feeling fully assured that they are steering a straight course home. In an hour or two the men on deck have their attention aroused by a hoarse murmur which seems right a head of them, and which sounds like the noise of waves breaking upon the shore. They look at the compass, their course is correct, they cannot account for it; a couple of men run forward, and soon see distinctly a white line of foam gleaming out in the darkness, and make out the flash of the breakers as they leap high in the air; they are terror-stricken at the sight, and, with a loud cry of "Breakers ahead! breakers ahead!" they rush to the hatchway and shout to the captain to come on deck at once; he, poor man, rushes up and hurries to the wheel, round it flies, but before he can get the brig's head round, she mounts upon a breaker, is thrown forward and grounds heavily upon the Sands. Where are they? Where can they be? What horrible mistake have they made? they think they must have run somewhere on the mainland, on the Kent coast; one man proposes to swim ashore with a rope, but the seas come sweeping over them with a degree of violence, that quite does away with any thought of making such an attempt. They hurry to the long boat to try and get it out, but it and the only other boat which is in the brig are speedily swept over board by the seas. The vessel is on the edge of the sands and feels all the force of the waves as they roll in and leap and break upon the bank; with every inrush of the seas she lifts high and pitches, crashing her bow down on the sands, each time with a thump that makes her timbers groan, and almost sends the men flying from the deck. As the big waves recoil and leap against her in all directions she rolls heavily, while her masts sway, and her yard-arms almost touch the water on either side. The tide is rising, and as she lifts she beats each time a yard or two over the Sands; the timbers, piled upon her decks, speedily break loose and are washed away; the hull is writhing and working very badly--her seams open; and so heavily does she strike, that time after time the captain thinks that she must soon break up. This thrashing over the Sands lasts for about twenty minutes, when they find that she is in deep water, but completely water-logged, and torn and wrenched almost to pieces; her rudder is knocked away, and if her cargo were anything but deals she would sink at once, and all would be instantly drowned; as it is, so long as her timbers will hold together her cargo will keep her afloat, and her crew are comparatively safe. But she is by no means a strongly-built vessel, and could not by any possibility stand much more of the thumping and wrenching which she has just gone through, while beating over the Sands. The captain is still unable to make out where they are; they get a heave of the lead, and find that they are in thirteen fathoms of water; it must be a sandbank in the middle of a channel that they have just beaten over--they had better anchor at once for fear the ship should be driven upon another bank. "Is the anchor clear?" "No," cries the mate. (It is neglect of such matters as these that loses many a fine ship.) "Get the anchor and cable clear, then, as quickly as you can, or we shall be on the sands again; for although the brig is water-logged, the wind is driving her fast, and the tide is running with great speed." After some delay they get the anchor overboard, and the brig rides to it, head to wind. The men gather together in the stern of the vessel, and group round the captain, and as there is no work to be done to keep up their excitement, they the more fully realize their danger, and begin to express their fears. They speak of their wives and children, and bemoan their own probable fate. The captain is the greatest sufferer, and the bravest hearted of them all. "Look at me!" he replies. "Have not I got a wife? Have I not got six children? Do I want to be taken from them, any more than you do from yours? Besides, this is my own ship, you know that, and you know that she is all I have got--all I have worked and saved for; if I lose her, I lose all I have, and am a poor man again; you may be sure I'll do all I can to save the ship and our lives too." But the men watch how severely the brig pitches in the heavy seas. The cable strains as if it would tear itself out of the ship, and the men are afraid it will part, or the anchor drag, and think the ship would ride more easily if her masts were cut away; they urge the captain to have it done; but the ship is not insured, and he, poor man, knows how great must be the expense of repairing her if she is saved, and naturally does not wish to increase that expense by losing her masts, so for some time he resists their entreaties; but at last is forced to give an unwilling consent to have the foremast cut away. The carpenter seizes the hatchet, a few heavy blows, and a great notch gapes in the mast, they cut the weather shrouds, and after the ship has given two or three heavy rolls, the mast goes over with a loud crash, falling well over the side clear of the vessel; one man receives a nasty gash in the cheek, from a splinter from the falling mast, but is not much hurt. They cut the rigging of the mast from the vessel, and the mast is speedily carried astern by the tide. The brig certainly now rides more easily; the night passes on, and very long and weary the hours seem. The vessel sinks lower and lower in the water, right down, indeed, to her deck lining. The captain and the crew know how weak she is (like some of the small timber ships, she has no lower hold beams), and they fear that as she is full of water, the buoyancy of the timber cargo may break up her deck, for she is almost all to pieces already, and if the deck bursts, she will break up at once. All hands, therefore, watch eagerly for the daylight, and as soon as they are able to see, begin to make a raft; there are a goodly number of eleven-feet deals stowed on deck which have been jambed too tight to be washed away by the seas, and the crew begin to lash these together as rapidly as they can, although, from the rolling and pitching of the vessel and from the seas washing so frequently over the deck, it is a matter of great difficulty to do so. As soon as it is daylight the wreck is seen from Margate, and all is at once astir down by the jetty and the pier; the life-boat is speedily manned and gets under weigh, and two fine luggers race with her to get first to the vessel. But it is a long beat to windward, and against a fresh gale and strong tide, and it is doubtful whether either of the boats will be able to reach the wreck, at all events, before the turn of the tide, or at the least, slack water. The luggers have, as a matter of course, a sufficient amount of ballast on board, and are in good sailing trim. The life-boat cannot be so heavily ballasted, or she would sink when filled with water, or beat to pieces when grounding on the Sands among the broken seas; the luggers therefore, make to windward much better than the life-boat can, and leave her astern, the life-boat crew soon find that it will be impossible for them to reach the wreck, and return to Margate; the luggers persevere, and one of them runs alongside the brig in fine style; the men on board the other lugger think that the brig is drifting and not at anchor, they therefore make too far to leeward, astern of her, and cannot beat up into position again. The men from the first lugger spring on board the wreck; they find that she is greatly damaged, and working very heavily as she rolls gunwale under; they think she would ride easier with her remaining mast gone, and try to persuade the captain to let them cut it away, but he stoutly refuses his permission, and the Margate men make the best of it, as it is. They get the anchor up, and passing a hawser on board the lugger, seek to tow the brig away from the Sands; knowing the Sands as well as they do, they hope to be able to get clear of them and get the brig into deep water; but it is very difficult work, for with her rudder gone there is no power of steering her, and the weight of the lugger is scarcely sufficient to keep her head straight: they make a little progress, however, the tide being somewhat in their favour, but the tide is on the turn, and they will soon be driven back into their old position, if not in worse, and the men begin almost to despair of saving the vessel, when to their great satisfaction they see the Ramsgate steamboat and life-boat making their way round the North Foreland. The coastguard officer at Margate, when he saw that the Margate life-boat could not reach the brig, and knowing that if any sea got up where the vessel was, that the luggers could be of no use, telegraphed to Ramsgate that a vessel was on the Knock Sands. The steamer and life-boat get under weigh at once, and proceed as fast as possible to the rescue; there is a nasty sea running off Ramsgate, but it is not until they get to the North Foreland that they feel the full force of the gale--here the sea is tremendous, and as the steamer pitches to it, the waves that break upon her bows fly right over her funnel--indeed she buries herself so much in the seas that they have to ease her speed considerably to prevent her being completely overrun by them. No one on board the boat knows where they are being towed; "a telegram from Margate," was the first news "the life-boat wanted;" and then in the hurry and excitement to get under weigh with all possible speed, no one on board had thought of asking for further particulars. The life-boat plunges on, and her crew are ready for the work whatever it is, and wherever it is. As they round the North Foreland they see a brig, with her foremast gone, in tow of a lugger. The boatmen cast off the steamer's tow-rope and make for the brig; they run in close under her lee, and venture too near to her; she is rolling so heavily that her yard-arm comes right over the boat, and the loose ropes swaying about catch in the boat's mast; they cannot get the mast down, and the brig hangs so heavily they fear that she is going to capsize right upon them; an active fellow severs the entangled rope with a hatchet, the brig slowly rolls up again, and the life-boat drops astern. The boatmen get on board the brig; there are six of the lugger's men on board; they find that the lugger is quite unable to make any way with the wreck, and as the tide is on the turn, the vessel is in great peril, for the Sands are just under her lee; no time must be lost, they signal to the steamer to come at once, the life-boatmen take a hawser on board her, and she begins to tow the brig away from the Sands; but the brig's rudder is gone, and she is sheering right and left, jerking the hawser at the end of each sheer with a strain hard enough to break it, and the foremast being cut away, the men cannot carry sail to steady her; she must be steered by the boats. The life-boat and lugger drop astern, each having a rope from the opposite quarter of the wreck. The steamer moves ahead, and as the brig begins to sheer in one direction, both boats steer in the opposite direction, and turning their broadsides to the vessel as much as possible, hang with all their weight, and try and keep her stern straight; then as the vessel sheers again in the other direction, away the boats immediately make across her stern, to check her on the other side. It is difficult and perilous work, this swiftly sheering across the brig's stern in the heavy tumble of sea and strong gale, for the boats can carry no sails to steady them, or they would not be able to sheer quickly from one direction to the other; and thus they are in constant danger of coming into violent collision with each other, and once they strike together very heavily. The French crew on board the brig are utterly exhausted with fatigue and excitement, and are quite ready to leave their vessel in the hands of the English boatmen. The men get the anchor and cable clear and ready for use if wanted; it is of no good attempting anything with the pumps, for the wreck is water-logged; and away the brig goes plunging and rolling with the seas washing over her decks, which are scarcely out of the water, and the two boats sheering and tossing astern, all being towed by the gallant little steamer. As the brig gets good way on her, it is easier to steer her by means of the boats; but still they do not dare attempt to take her through the narrow Cud channel, they therefore find their way through the Gull stream, and round the small Brake-buoy, and then make up for the entrance of Ramsgate harbour. But the tide has not been long on the flood, and the strong northerly wind is checking it; and so they doubt whether there is water enough to take her into the harbour, and wait until they can see the red light showing on the west pier-head; this is the signal that there is ten feet of water at the harbour mouth; the weather is so thick that they cannot for some time see the light, and it has been up for at least an hour before they can make it out. They regret every moment's delay, for although it is of no use attempting to enter the harbour before there is abundance of depth of water, yet the tide is making more and more strongly every minute, and it will be a matter of increasing difficulty to steer the brig, in her present helpless condition, across the strong tide, and through the heavy seas, into the narrow entrance of the harbour. CHAPTER XXI. THE WRECK BROUGHT IN. "God keep those cheery mariners! And temper all the gales, That sweep against the rocky coast To their storm-shattered sails." _P. Benjamin._ As they tow the wreck near to the harbour they shorten the steamers hawser to give the brig less scope for sheering; and as there is not room for both the lugger and the life-boat to hang astern and help the brig steer, the life-boat casts off and makes in to the harbour. In spite of the rough cold night, the interest in life-boat work is too great for all sympathisers to be driven away from the pier-head; and there is a crowd there ready to watch the boat's return, and to welcome the men with a cheer. The steamer approaches cautiously, the brig's head is straight, and she seems well under command; a couple of minutes more and all will be safe, when suddenly the rush of tide catches the wreck on the bow; she overpowers the lugger which is towing astern; round her head flies; she lurches heavily forward, and strikes the east pier-head just outside the bend; crash goes her jibboom; in vain the steamer tows its hardest, she is in the grasp of a strong tide and leaping sea, and again she pitches and plunges heavily against the pier: with a terrible wrench her bowsprit breaks off short; again, and again, she strikes as she drifts round the pier; her figurehead is crushed, her stem broken and twisted, her forefoot torn off, and sweeping round she grounds on the Sands almost alongside the pier, on the outer side, grinding and rubbing her sides against the massive granite walls at each heave and work of the sea. The change of scene on the pier is very sudden, and very great; at one moment the people were cheering the crews of the life-boat and steamer upon the apparently successful ending of their labours; the next, and the work of the brave fellows seems almost more than undone; and there is quick dread peril, and deadly strife, and a wild outcry of fear, and a very wildness of excitement, in the place of apparent safety and congratulation. The people on the pier can look down upon the men on board the brig, can see them clinging to the wreck as the seas break over them, can hear the brig grinding and thumping against the pier as if she would at once break up. Some of the lookers-on run for the life-buoys, which are hanging upon the parapet of the pier and on the pier-house, and throw them down to the men on board the brig, others get ropes, and throwing one end down, shout to the men to make themselves fast, that they will haul them up. The poor Frenchmen are almost paralysed by the scene and by excitement--they cannot make it out; the harbour-master, Captain Braine, has enough to do; he sees the danger of the men on board the brig, but he sees more than this, he sees the danger of the crowd at the pier-head, for the brig's mainmast is swaying backwards and forwards, coming right over the pier as the vessel rolls, and threatens to break and come down upon the people as the brig strikes the pier; and if it does, it will certainly kill some, perhaps many. The women are shrieking, men shouting, some running about here and there, all anxious to do something, and yet not able to render any assistance. The French sailors are making themselves fast to the end of the ropes that have been thrown on board, but the harbour-master sees the great danger the men will be in, of being crushed between the wreck and the pier, if they make the attempt to be hauled up, the vessel is rolling so quickly, and the seas are so heavy, he therefore shouts to them not to try it, and the boatmen hold them back. But still the French sailors struggle to get hold of the ropes, crying out, "Much danger, much danger! What shall we do? what shall we do?" The outcry of the people on the pier naturally adding greatly to their excitement. During this time, which has occupied but very few minutes, the steamer still keeps hold of the hawser. She has been swung against the inside of the pier by the strain of the wreck upon her cable, and by the eddy of the tide, while the wreck has been beating against the outside; now she steams out again with all speed, gets her head round, brings a gradual strain upon the hawser, and makes every effort to tow the brig away from the pier and off the Sands; after a few seconds of hard tugging the brig begins to move, and they get her into deep water again. But during this time the crew of the Margate lugger have been in equal, if not greater, danger than the men on board the brig. As soon as the men on board the lugger saw the brig sweep and crash against the pier, they cast off their tow rope, but before they could hoist any sail, the way they had on the boat, and the rush of the tide, carried the lugger almost between the vessel, as she swung round, and the pier; the men, however, escaped that danger, and indeed death, but the boat was swept to the back of the pier, and in the eddy of the tide was carried into the broken water; there she rolls in the trough of the sea; wave after wave catches and sweeps her up towards the pier as if to crush her against it; but each time the rebound of the water from the pier acts as a fender, and saves her from destruction; but she is an open boat, and if one big wave leaps on board it will fill her, and she must sink at once; and the seas around her are very wild, the surf from their crests breaks into her continually; the people on the pier see her extreme peril; some run to the life-boat men who are preparing to moor the boat, and shout to them to hasten out--that the brig is breaking up, and that the lugger will be swamped; before, however, the life-boat can get out, the brig is towed clear of the pier, and the lugger having gradually drifted to the end of the pier, the men are able to get up a corner of the fore-sail; it cants the lugger's head round; the men get the fore-sail well up; it fills, she draws away from the pier, and away from the broken water, and is clear. The steamer has the brig in tow, but now the wreck has no boats to help her steer, and she therefore yaws about with tremendous lurches. The boatmen have all this time been working their utmost; their danger and the scene of excitement around them having no other effect upon them, than to make them the more cool and determined to do everything they can to save the vessel and themselves. They rig up a stay-sail upon the tottering mainmast, and as soon as the steamer gets a little way on the brig, they try and steer by it, raising and lowering the sail as the brig sheers one way or the other, and doing their utmost to keep her head straight. A very heavy sea strikes her on the bow, and she lurches right across the tide; at that moment the steamer's hawser tightens and strains, and the whole weight of the brig as she lies broadside to the seas dragging upon the rope, it breaks in a weak place, where it has got chafed against the pier. The brig falls into the trough of the sea; the waves begin to make a clean breach over her; water-logged and helpless as she is, with her deck down almost to the level of the sea; the men on board can now do but little, for time after time, as the seas sweep her decks, they have enough to do to hold on; still the boatmen on board work when they can, for they see that their lives depend upon getting the vessel in tow of the steamer before she can strike the Dyke Bank, which is just under her lee. They make all haste to haul in the broken end of the cable; they already have a good part of the cable on board, which they hauled in when they were about making for the harbour. They tell the French captain to get all his men to work, and have the ship's hawser ready, but the brig rapidly drifts before the heavy gale and with the tide towards the Dyke Bank, over which the seas are running with fearful violence, the poor shattered wreck must indeed be very soon broken up altogether if she once strikes amid that terrible rage of waters, and there, too, the waves will sweep over her with a violence sufficient to sweep the men from her decks; they must expect the tottering mast to go at the first shock; there would be no refuge in the rigging, and the deck would be virtually under water; it is doubtful indeed if she strikes whether the men will be able to hold on, even while the life-boat, which is close at hand, can reach them. The life-boatmen had made out to the rescue of the lugger, but when they saw that she was out of danger, and that the brig was under tow of the steamer, they put back, but directly the harbour-master sees that the brig is again adrift, he hastens to order the life-boat out once more to the rescue. Many of the excited people on the pier throng round the harbour-master, and entreat him to order the life-boatmen to take all the boatmen and the crew off the wreck at once. But the harbour-master knows the boatmen too well to think that they will be content to leave the wreck, whatever the danger may be, while there remains a single chance of saving her; he therefore tells the life-boatmen to keep as near to the wreck as possible. The captain of the steamer, directly he sees the hawser break, realizes the deadly peril the wreck and those on board it are in; without a moment's delay, he orders his crew to haul in the broken end of the hawser, and as speedily as possible to back the steamer down to the wreck, which is now within one hundred yards of the Dyke Sand. She is rolling heavily broadside to the seas, which are making a clean sweep over her; the men on board are scarcely able to keep the deck for the wash of water, a few minutes more--two or three--and she will be right in upon the breakers; round the pier-head dashes the life-boat, leaping the seas as she is carried swiftly before the gale, she makes for the wreck, and is ready to plunge into the surf to the rescue of the crew directly the unfortunate vessel touches the Sands. But the steamer may yet be in time to save her: now she is close to her, and they throw the end of a rope on board the wreck; the boatmen on board fasten a cable to it, the steamer's crew haul it in with all possible speed, the steamer moves slowly a-head, the cable gets taught, the steamer tugs and strains, but it is with the greatest difficulty she can get the brig's head straight; now it comes slowly round, but as the wreck faces the tide, she sheers right and left; they see that the wreckage of her bowsprit and jibboom are right across her bow entangled in her cut-water; it is this that causes her to sheer so much, and to hang so heavily that the steamer cannot make any way with her, or keep her head straight for one moment. The English boatmen stand ready to hoist the stay-sail, as soon as the steamer can move her ahead, and keep her at all to the wind. The poor French sailors give way to much excitement in the wildness and peril of the scene; clasping their hands and shouting; and there is little wonder that their fears should be so aroused. "Hold! hold, good rope, for if you break, nothing can save the ship; in a short time she must be torn utterly to pieces by the waves now breaking so wildly, almost directly under her lee!" Each time the brig sheers heavily to one side or the other, she is brought up with a jerk that makes the steamer tremble from stem to stern, and tries the strength of the cable to the utmost. The life-boat continues to cruise round the brig, keeping as near as possible, but taking care to avoid her, as she sheers swiftly from side to side. Suddenly the wreckage clears itself from across the vessel's bow, and to the joy of all, the vessel ceases to sheer so violently, and rests for a minute straight in her course. The boatmen on board at once hoist the stay-sail; it steadies her, and she forges ahead, and they battle their way through the waves, round the west pier-head, and a little out of the rush of the worst of the seas; here, five brave fellows come off in a small boat, and bring a line to her from the pier; with this they haul the second hawser from the vessel to the pier; they get another hawser from the pier to the wreck, and as the tide is setting her in a direction away from the pier, they can hold her fast by these hawsers; the steamer now moves round the wreck, and gets a rope from her stern, but in the meantime they have made the life-boat's cable fast to the stern of the wreck, and passed it on to the pier; the crowd of people on the pier lay hold of it, and begin to pull their hardest, and succeed in moving the wreck fast astern; with such energy do they pull that the small cable breaks in their hands, but the steamer has by this time again got hold of the vessel, and tows her safely into the harbour, and the long hours of peril and of struggling against the storm are at an end. A miserable figure the poor wreck looks, when she is hauled up on the slip-way for repairs. Her masts are out of her, her bow crushed, her stern twisted and broken, the oakum is streaming out of her seams, her timbers are started, her rudder is gone, she looks truly the very wreck she is. Indeed, it was nothing but the fact of her being timber laden that prevented her going down immediately after striking the first time upon the Margate Sands, or has kept her afloat during any one of the many terrible struggles with the seas, that she has had since to endure. The brig was ultimately repaired, and sent to sea; but to whatever extent the general average upon the insured cargo contributed to the bill, the balance required must have made a sad hole in the poor brave-hearted captain's savings. The Margate and Ramsgate men got some few pounds each for salvage: the ship and cargo were not very valuable, and there were many to share the small amount awarded, so there was not much for each one. But the men were thankful, on account of the captain, as well as on their own account, to have saved the vessel through so much peril, and as a result, to have anything at all to share. CHAPTER XXII. THE WRECK OF THE "PROVIDENTIA." "What dangers press'd, when seas ran mountain high, When tempests raved, and horrors veiled the sky; When prudence fail'd, when courage grew dismayed, When the strong fainted, and the wicked prayed;-- Then in the yawning gulf far down we drove, And gazed upon the billowy mount above; Till up that mountain swinging with the gale, We view'd the horrors of the watery vale!" _Crabbe._ A dark stormy December night had been followed by a gloomy morning, a heavy gale had been blowing for some hours from the north-east, and thick drifting snow-squalls still further threw heavy shadows over the sea, and added greatly to the perils of the dangerous navigation around the Goodwin. The men on Ramsgate pier said to each other, "It is _likely weather_." Likely for disaster and for the need of their services; they therefore keep a careful watch, but the snow and drifting fog-clouds shut out the Goodwin Sands and the light-vessels from their view, and so the men can only wait on, speculating upon the possibility of some unseen tragedy being worked out amid the darkness and the wrath of waters that surround the Goodwin. It is now after breakfast-time, about nine o'clock, the weather is too bad for much ordinary work to be going on, and so a large number of boatmen assemble in the look-out houses and at the head of the pier watching the storm. Many are the spy-glasses which are every now and then pointed seaward, scanning any break in the storm-drift; three or four men are at the end of the pier by the watch-house; one of them fancies that he can make out a dark line 'mid the grey gloom; he watches carefully, a sheet of fog lifts for a moment; "Yes, there is! I see a ship on the Goodwin!" "Where? Where?" and another man looks at the direction of his spy-glass, and points his own the same way. No; he can see nothing; and the man himself can now see nothing; it was just a glimpse, that was all, and the cloud closed in upon the Sands and wrapt them in darkness again. "But are you positive you saw anything?" they ask the man. "I am just as sure of it as I am that I am standing here." "What was she like?" "She seemed a large ship with only two masts standing, and high up on the Sands." "Well, if you saw her once, and are certain of it, once is as good as fifty times. Away then for the life-boat." Hurrying up the pier to give the alarm, they shout to some boatmen who are at work helping to stow cargo on board a Dutch steamer--the _Orient_: "A vessel on the Goodwin; Life-boat! Life-boat!" Immediately the men throw down whatever they have in their hands, spring to the gunwale, and are out of the ship, up the steps, on the pier, and running for the life-boat in a moment; and this to the intense astonishment of the Dutch mate, who had not heard the cry of life-boat. He runs along the deck on to the poop, and shakes his fist at the men, shouting after them, "You be bad men you! You be bad men! What for you run away? You come here work no more!" The honest-hearted fellow was, however, more than appeased, when he was told that it was to rush on board the life-boat; to go out in that wild dark storm and terrible sea to the rescue of life, that the men had so suddenly deserted their work and fled from the vessel. One of the pier men runs to the harbour-master, and reports that a large ship has been seen ashore on the Goodwin; the harbour-master hurries to the pier-head, but the lift in the storm has settled down thicker than ever; he can see nothing; he, and all with him, listen attentively for any report of a gun from the Goodwin light-vessels, but can hear nothing; they cross-question the man who saw the wreck. The harbour-master thinks he may have been mistaken--that it was probably a ship sailing through the Gull Channel that he saw. No! the man is positive that it was a ship on the Goodwin, and nothing else; and so the harbour-master, although they can hear no signal from the light-vessels, decides upon sending the life-boat, and orders the coxswain to proceed to sea. Rapid preparation for the start has been going on all this time; and very speedily steamer and life-boat are away in the dark storm speeding their way to the Goodwin Sands. They get to the North Sand light-ship about eleven o'clock, and find a very heavy sea running in the neighbourhood of the Sands, with frequent snow-squalls sweeping along. The men on board the light-vessel say that both they, and the men on board the Gull light-ship, have been making signals since daylight. (The roar of the storm, and the wind not being on shore, the guns were not heard, and the weather was too thick for any signals to be seen). They report that they had seen a ship on shore on the South-East Spit of the Sands. Away go steamer and life-boat, the crew of both alike eager to make up for lost time, and they soon discover the vessel they are in search of looming out in the mist. They see that she is a complete wreck, and that she is settled down upon the Sands, with her bow to the seas; her mizen-mast is gone close to the deck; the seas are running quite over her as they break upon her bow; they mount up and fly over her fore-yard and race along her deck, breaking again upon her deck-house, which they smother in foam. There are no sailors to be seen lashed to the rigging, and it is doubtful whether they can have found shelter anywhere on deck, so great is the rush of water over the ship. Indeed, the life-boat men think that it is very improbable that any of the crew can be left on board. Nevertheless, they determine to get on board the vessel, and see if they can find any poor exhausted seaman still clinging to some portion of the wreck. There is a very heavy sea running, and they have a short consultation as to the best method of getting alongside the vessel; they determine to go in upon the lee quarter, and make preparation for so doing. Now they make in for the wreck; they sail in swiftly; plunge in through the broken water; their anchor is all ready; they watch their distance. Over with it; lower the foresail; and they are about to run the life-boat right alongside the vessel, when the man in the bow shouts, "Up with your helm; up with it hard; sheer off, sheer off!" Up the helm is; swiftly the boat answers, and bears away from the vessel. The mizen-mast, which had been broken off short, has fallen over the quarter of the vessel, and become entangled in the Sands, and with the ship's side, and is standing out at right angles to the wreck, right in the way the life-boat was steering. If it had been night-time the boat would have been steered in right upon the wreck of the mast and yards, when in every probability she would have been stove and rolled over by the seas; the men would then have been washed out of her, and it would have been impossible for them to have got back to her again, against the rush of sea and tide and entangled as she would have been in the wreckage of the mast, she could not have floated down to them; as it is, this very catastrophe nearly happens, for the men hardly see the danger in time; it is a moment of great peril, for the boat is being tossed about violently in the broken water, and becomes somewhat entangled in the wreckage; the men lay hold of the cable, and haul upon it with all their strength, and do what they can to check the way of the boat, and help her head round; now they get a good cant out, they throw out some coils of the cable in one cast, they sheer out well, and get clear of the wreck of the mizen-mast; the seas catch the boat and drive it astern of the vessel, the cable runs out its full length and brings the boat up with a strong jerk. The men, on looking at the wreck, are glad to find that there are some of her crew still alive; they can see three men and a boy crouching down, under the shelter of the deck-house, but they must be but a small proportion of the original crew of the ship, for she is a large vessel, and must have had a crew of certainly not fewer than fifteen or sixteen men. "Thank God," say the life-boat men, "that they are not all gone, and that we are here in time to try and save some." The shipwrecked men have been crouching there for some hours, and have been getting more and more wretched, cold, wet, exhausted, and hopeless; every now and then they heard the loud boom of a gun from one of the light-vessels, but no life-boat came, and the wreck might at any moment break up; they at first felt confident that a life-boat would certainly soon come to their rescue, and had prepared for her coming by getting a life-buoy with a long line fastened to it, ready to throw overboard. But the hours passed by, the seas broke over the vessel with increasing violence, the storm grew more and more wild, they could not understand why the life-boat did not come, but she did not, and they began to despair of being saved. Suddenly, as they crouch under the deck-house in their hopeless misery, they see the life-boat swing round on the tide, and come up to her cable just astern of the ship; never were men more agreeably surprised; it is as a reprieve from death; and they feel their blood course again through their veins, their strength returns, and they start up ready for action; the life-boat men give them a cheer, which they answer with glad cries of welcome. The men on board the wreck throw the life-buoy and line to the life-boat men; there is a tremendous tumble of sea, the life-boat is flying about in all directions, and it is not for some time, and not until after much trouble, that they succeed in getting the life-buoy on board the boat. All hands lay hold of the rope, and do their utmost to haul the life-boat nearer to the wreck; but the heavy gale, the rush of the sea, and the strong tide, are all directly against her, her cable is straining to the utmost, and they cannot get her to move in the least; they struggle on, and on, but it is all in vain. "Pull, men, pull! now all together, as the seas pass; now, try and get a foot or two ahead." Not an inch, strain and pull as they will. "Look out! look out! let go; take care of yourselves!" Too late; a tremendous sea comes rushing over the vessel, right over the life-boat, beats her back with a wrench and jerk that tears one of the timber heads, to which the rope is fastened, right out of her, knocks down by its great weight five or six of the men, who are holding on to the rope, hurts two or three of them somewhat severely, and buries the boat in its very flood of water; for a moment she is swamped, and beaten right away from the wreck; she lifts again, in a few seconds rises to her water-line; she frees herself of water, the men spring to their feet. "Are all there? Are any washed out of her?" "All right! all right!" "Thank God! Now at it again, my men." Happily the anchor still holds, and the boat's cable brings the boat up. But what is to be done to save the poor crew? They feel that it is quite impossible for them to haul the boat any nearer to the ship. To their great surprise, they see the captain spring up from the lee of the deck-house, hurriedly take off his oilskin coat, throw it into the water, and then jumping on the gunwale, grasp the hawser that holds the boat, and slide down it into the boiling sea. A huge wave breaks over him, and washes him away from the rope; he now tries to swim to the boat, but the life-boat is not directly astern, the sheer she has to her cable that is fastened to the anchor which was thrown over some distance to the side of vessel, prevents her dropping right astern; and although the captain has but to swim a few yards out of the direction of the sweep of sea and tide, it is impossible for him to manage it. He is perfectly overwhelmed by the boil of sea, tossed wildly up and down, wave after wave beating over him, it is all that he can do to keep his head above water, and cannot guide his course in the least; the boatmen try all they can to make the boat sheer towards him, so as to reach him, or to throw him a rope, but it is impossible, they cannot get sufficiently near; and in a few seconds they see him swept rapidly by in the swift tide; Jarman, the coxswain of the boat, seizes a life-buoy, and throws it with all his force towards him; the wind catches it and helps the throw; it falls near him; he makes a spring forward and reaches it; the men gladly see that he has got it; they see him put his two hands upon one side as if to get upon it; as he leans forward it falls over his head like a hoop; he gets his arms through it, and shouting to the boatmen "All right," he waves his hand as if to beckon to them to follow him, and goes floating down in the strong tide and among the raging leaping seas in a strange wild dance, that threatens indeed to be a dance of death. It is with deep feelings of dismay and sorrow that the boatmen see him thus drifting away, sea after sea breaking over him; they think it impossible that he can live long; they watch him as far as they can see him; he rises now and again on a sea, and waves his hand to them, but soon disappears from their view, and they seem to have wished him for ever good-bye, for if they go after him at once they will not be able to get back to the ship again, perhaps for hours; and there are two men and a boy still on board whom they must not desert; they must do what they can for these poor fellows first, and then they will hasten away in search of the poor captain, although they have but little hope of then finding him alive, even if they find him at all. At once they are reminded of the dread peril the men on board the ship are in; for a tremendous crash like a peal of thunder startles them all; and looking round they see the tall mainmast of the ship fall swiftly over on the port side of the vessel. The men on board give a loud cry--the terrible crash and rend and shock of the falling mast appals them to the uttermost; it is as if the wreck was breaking to pieces in one vast wrench beneath their feet. The chief mate springs wildly to the starboard quarter, and seizes the end of the mainbrace, which is hanging there; he makes it fast round his waist; and with a rapid spring, and with arms outstretched towards the boat, he jumps into the sea; he is a fine powerful young man, and a very good swimmer; but what can he do in a tide and sea so tremendous that twelve strong men cannot haul the boat one foot against them? and so a fearful tragedy is worked out before the boatmen's eyes; they make every effort to sheer the boat towards the man, but in vain; the tide sweeps him at once away on the lee-bow of the boat; he struggles fearfully hard for his life; the sea takes him and throws him away to the full extent of the rope, which tightens round his waist; the strain of the rope draws him back a little; he falls in the trough of the sea; he is just in the thick of the surf, in the break of the waves, and they curl over him and beat him down beneath their weight, and then again the next rushing wave catches him and flings him out, till he is brought up with a jerk as the rope tightens, that seems almost to tear him in pieces; now he is thrown high in the air on the crest of a wave, now he is buried in a sea, rolled over and over; sheering here and there, as the tangled waves catch him, first on one side, then on the other, but never nearer the life-boat; every now and then he strikes out wildly as if to make a last effort, and cries aloud in his agony and despair. It is indeed a most piteous sight, and it moves the boatmen to the very heart; the poor drowning fellow so near and they unable to render him the least help. They cannot remain doing nothing, although they feel fully assured that all they attempt must be in vain; they haul with all their power on the cable to try and get nearer to the ship when they might sheer down upon the poor fellow; but the sea is raging over them as much as ever, and they cannot get the boat to move at all; the waves rush over the boat in rapid succession, and as they do so the men have to crouch down and cling with all their force to the thwarts, and struggle hard to prevent being washed out of her. As each sea passes, up they spring and again try to haul in the cable; the poor drowning sailor is ahead of the boat, on the starboard bow; if the line which he has round his waist were only a few fathoms longer he might be saved; it would be madness for any of the boatmen to jump overboard to get at him, they would be instantly swept astern of the boat, without a hope of saving him, and at great and useless risk of their own lives; they try and throw the lead-line over the rope which holds the poor fellow; hoping that if they can succeed in doing so, that he may manage to get hold of it, and loosing himself from the rope which fastens him to the ship, be hauled on board the boat; but the boat is pitching and tossing so much that it is hard work attempting to throw the line, but again and again they make the effort. "Now he rises on a wave: now try; heave with a will, well clear of his head. Ah! missed again; look out, hold on all;" a wave rushes over them, boat and all; another half-minute and they make another attempt; no! all in vain, each time it falls short; the struggle cannot last long; strong and young as the man is, his strength cannot possibly endure long in such a conflict; his cries grow more feeble and soon cease; they see him try and get back to the ship, climbing up the rope, but his strength fails, and he falls back; his arms and legs are still tossed wildly about, but it is by the action of the waves; his head drops and sinks; yes! it is all over!--all over! with him; and it is with intense sorrow that the boatmen realize that all hope of saving him is at an end--that he is dead. CHAPTER XXIII. HARDLY SAVED. "Much would it please you sometimes to explore The peaceful dwellings of our borough poor; To view a sailor just returned from sea, His wife beside, a child on either knee, And others crowding near, that none may lose The smallest portion of the welcome news.... The trembling children look with steadfast eyes, And panting, sob involuntary sighs; And sleep awhile his torpid touch delays, And all is joy, and piety, and praise." _Crabbe._ The second mate and cabin-boy still remain on board the wreck; they have watched with the greatest horror and dread the terrible death of the chief mate, and are themselves almost in absolute despair. The seas continue to wash over the ship with great violence; the deck-house, under the protection of which the sailors have been crouching, begins to break up, and wrench, and tear, and is carried away piecemeal; the second mate, as the wreck wrestles and writhes beneath him, under the rush of a huge wave, fears that it is going to break up altogether, that the ship's last moment is come, and he throws himself upon the rope by which the life-boat is made fast to the ship, and begins to make his way along it; it is almost level with the water, for the wreck has so worked herself down in the Sands that her gunwale is but four or five feet above the sea; the breakers rush over the poor fellow as he painfully struggles on; he is again and again buried by the waves, but he clings on; and half working his way, half carried by the seas and tide, he reaches the high bow of the life-boat, which is leaping, and falling, and jerking, tearing the hawser to which the sailor is clinging, up and down through the seas, as if trying its utmost violence to jerk him from his hold. But still he holds on, his hands convulsively clutching the rope as his body is being swayed and thrown violently about; he is exhausted, and breathless--he is half drowned; his face is pale as death, his jaw drops, he seems about to swoon; in another moment he will be gone; he gives a wild despairing look at the life-boat, and as the waves dash him against it, makes an effort to grasp it; the man in the bow of the boat has been watching his every movement, has shuddered with dismay as he saw the seas wash over him, expecting him to be carried away in the strong tide. No! he still grasps the rope, and at last is within reach; in one spring, and with a cry to his mates, "Hold me! hold me!" the boatman throws himself upon the raised foredeck of the life-boat, and with his body half stretched over the stem, he grasps the collar of the sailor; the drowning man throws his arm around the boatman's neck, and clings to him convulsively, by his weight dragging the man's head down and burying it in the water; but the brave fellow clings as hard to the half-dead sailor as the sailor does to him; the seas wash bodily over them and over the bow of the boat; up and down the boat plunges them both, but he still holds on; three or four of the boatmen have hold of his legs, and are doing their utmost to pull him back into the boat, but they cannot do so, and so the struggle goes on; it is only as the boat rises on a wave and throws her bow up in the air that the men can breathe. Now a shout of horror, and a cry--"Look-out! look out! sheer the boat, quick! quick! port--port your helm!" For right down upon the bow of the boat, tossing on the huge seas, and borne swiftly by the tide comes the wreck of one of the ship's largest and heaviest boats; it has been entangled in the mast, which is hanging over the side of the ship, but it has now washed free, and comes driving down as if to stave in the bow of the boat, and crush to death the two poor fellows hanging on to the side:--the boat sheers a little; a cross wave catches the wreckage, and it just sweeps clear. Thank God! is the cry of every man in the boat. The boatmen cannot get the two men in over the high bow of the boat, and the poor fellows are drowning fast; and so they drag the life-boatman by his legs along the side of the boat, he still clinging to the sailor, and get him to the waist of the boat where the gunwale is very low; some of the men can now catch hold of the sailor, they drag him on board, and the boatman is pulled in by his legs. The brave fellow is very exhausted by his great and gallant exertions; but he has saved the man's life, and that is every consolation to him; the mate of the vessel is almost unconscious. If the boatman had not clung to him as the seas broke over them both, he must have let go his hold and soon have been beaten under by the waves, for he was quite incapable of any further exertion. The boatmen again turn their attention to the wreck; they have been so much engaged with the two men struggling in the water, that they have not been able to think of the poor boy still clinging to the vessel in loneliness and fear. The deck-house has by this time been completely washed away, and no longer affords him any protection. The poor little fellow is clinging to the gunwale, holding on to the cleats; and he is calling out in good English, and in the most piteous tones, O save me! O save me! O do save me! He is only thirteen years old. The boatmen answer him back; and much as they have passed through, it affects them very deeply to see the poor child in his fear, and misery, and danger, to hear his cries and sobs, and not to know how to help him. Continually he is completely buried in the seas, and it seems wonderful that he can hold on; each time the waves rush over the wreck, the boatmen expect to find him washed away like a cork, but he still holds on, and again and again his piteous pleading voice is heard 'mid the roar of the storm--"O save me! O save me! O be quick and save me!"--"What can we do? What can we do?" the boatmen ask each other in tones of real sorrow and dismay; there is not a man among them who is not ready to risk his own life to save the boy, but nothing can be done. It is impossible for them to climb on board the wreck by the rope with which the life-boat is fastened to the vessel, for the wreck is now so overrun by the tide that the bend of the rope is continually under water, and the wreckage of the vessel's masts is washing over it; moreover, although it was possible for a man to come down the rope, the sea and tide making with him, it would be impossible for a man to work his way up the rope against such a tremendous rush of water and breaking surf as are continually sweeping over it. The steamer is not in sight, or they might be tempted to go to her, get towed to windward again, and try to run in upon the wreck and grapple her closer; but this would be almost impossible, so wild is the sea on the weather side, and on the lee side the wreck of one of the masts is flying about in the broken water in a way, which would at once prove fatal to the life-boat if she got entangled with it. And so all they can do is to wait on, till the tide slackens, when perhaps they will be able to haul the life-boat up to the wreck, and save the boy. But while the tide runs so fiercely they can only wait, and watch the poor little lad. They do not forget the captain of the vessel, they will go in search of him by-and-by, but they conclude that all life must have been beaten out of him long since; and they must not leave the living to go and search for the body of one whom they think must very certainly be by this time dead. A short time, and the tide rapidly slackens, an eddy comes rushing through some channel in the Sands, and the boat begins to sheer about wildly; and is soon in danger of being crushed against the wreckage of the masts, which is heaving and tossing about among the very heaviest of the seas. "We must make an effort soon," the coxswain cries; "make ready, my men; try and keep the wreckage clear; haul the boat up to the ship sharp, when I tell you: we will soon have the poor little chap." Scarcely are the words shouted out by the coxswain when some of the men give a cry--"What's that! look out! yes, he is overboard, washed over by that big sea. Where is he? where is he? There he is! No! only his cap, there he lifts on that sea--he is coming straight for the boat."--From the change and eddy of the tide, the rush of the sea past the boat is not nearly as rapid as it was, and the poor boy comes floating slowly from the ship; once or twice he has been rolled under by the waves, now he is on the surface again, and near the boat. "Here he comes! look! on that wave! Lost! no, he floats again; slacken the hawsers; now he is within reach, carefully, quick; now you have got him; he is making no effort, and floating with his head under water;" a boatman manages to hook his jacket with a long boat-hook, and pulls him towards the boat--gently the men lift him in, sorrowfully; and tears are in the eyes of more than one, as they look upon the small face. "Poor little chap! too late! too late! he is gone," they say--and think that the delicate little face and slender childlike form suggest that he is fitted rather for quiet home scenes, and home care, than for such scenes of hardship and peril as he has had to endure. "Now, my men," shouts the coxswain; "stations all! put the poor boy down here in the stern-sheets. If we do not look sharp we shall be driven upon the wreck, and likely enough all lost." "Ay! ay! all right. Get the foresail clear! All clear,--hoist as the boat sheers; stand by to cut the cable, and ship's ropes; hoist away! Now she pays round; cut the cable; all gone; round the boat flies; away she goes before the wind. Make all fast. Now come and look to the poor lad again;" and some of the boatmen with tender fatherly pity in their hearts, take up the little fellow. They chafe his hands and rub his back and limbs, and his chest over his heart, with strong rum, put a little rum to his lips, and persevering as well as they can, following the instructions given to all life-boat men, for recovering the apparently drowned, after about half an hour they have the joy of seeing him show signs of life; the men who can be spared from working the boat continue their care of him; his circulation returns, and he can drink a little water; some of the men take off their jackets which have been kept dry by their waterproof overalls, and wrap him up in them; they then spread the mizen sail above him, to prevent the seas breaking over him; and the poor lad lies quiet, gradually recovering his strength. During this time, the coxswain and the men have been consulting about the poor captain, who floated away with the life-buoy round him some two hours before; and they determine to run down the Stream-reach in search of him, dead or alive. But alive scarcely for one moment can they hope to find him. The Stream-reach or Stream-wreckage, as it is called, is where the currents setting down on either side of the Sands meet on the highest part. Most of the wreckage is washed up into it, and what remains of a lost ship or cargo will often be kept in this stream, and float away in one long line some miles to leeward. Along this Stream-reach, and in the heaviest of the seas, the men steer the life-boat, all keeping a keen look-out for the body of the lost captain. They look back at the wreck several times as they speed away; and they soon see the foremast of the vessel go over the side; the hull of the vessel seems also to heave over, and that is the last that is seen of the _Providentia_, for by the next morning her hull is completely torn to pieces, the lower part buried in the Sands, and the remaining portion utterly swept away. They run down the Stream-reach for about two miles; when one of the men fancies that he can see an arm waving. All look in the direction pointed out; and to their astonishment they see the captain in the life-buoy; as he rises on the sea, he shouts to them and again waves his arm. The coxswain at once steers the boat for him, but the seas are so heavy that they knock the boat to leeward, and they just miss him. The brave fellow shouts, "All right!" as they pass a few yards from him. The boatmen lose no time; they take the mizen-sail which covers the mate and lad, set it with all possible haste, shake out all reefs in the foresail, head the boat round, and sail well to windward of the captain; almost capsizing the boat under her press of canvas, so eager are they; they keep a good look-out for him, for the seas are leaping so violently that it is a hard thing to keep the poor fellow in view, and at last they lose sight of him altogether. As soon as the boat is well to windward they make across the Stream-reach, then sail down it, and soon catch sight of the captain again; they lower the mizen and run straight for him; soon they down with the foresail to lessen the speed of the boat, for fear they should over run him, and manage to drop gently down by his side. They lay hold of him and drag him into the boat; the exertion of being pulled in over the side of the boat, and the reaction after his fearful time of suffering and suspense, is too much for his remaining strength, and he seems dying in the men's hands; they try and get him to swallow a little rum, but he cannot do so, and faints. The men now set sail and make for the Gull light-ship; they see the steamer coming round the South Sands Head in search of them; she takes the boat in tow, and they proceed towards Ramsgate. In the meanwhile some of the men have been doing all they can for the captain, rubbing his back and limbs, and doing all they possibly can to restore his circulation; he soon gets a little better, and is able to tell them that his ship was a Russian ship, the _Providentia_, from Finland, and that he is a Russian Fin; this last fact enables the men to account for his wonderful powers of endurance in his long exposure to the beating of the waves and to the coldness of the water, for the Finlanders are the hardiest of all sailors. He also tells the men, that the _Providentia_ was a full rigged ship of 700 tons, bound from Newcastle to the Mediterranean with coals. That they had run ashore about eleven or twelve o'clock the night before, in thick weather. That they made signals, which the light-vessels answered. That they had seen the light-vessels signal to the shore; and as he knew that he was near Ramsgate, he felt sure that the life-boat would come out to their rescue; he therefore tried to persuade the crew, eleven in number, to remain by the ship; but that they took the big boat, and left the ship in so heavy a sea that he feared they must all be lost (they were blown over on the French coast, and at last got into Boulogne). Upon reaching Ramsgate the captain, mate, and the boy were carried to the Sailors' Home, being too weak to walk, and were well cared for. The captain made a long statement as to the gallant services of the life-boat men, and of his deep gratitude to them. We may as well add, that as some of the men, who had run away so suddenly from their work on board the Dutch steamer, to make a rush for the life-boat, were walking upon the pier, they saw the Dutch mate hurrying to them, evidently in a state of excitement. Halloo! What's up now? think the men, remembering how the mate had shouted after them as they left the vessel. Halloo! What's up now? but the honest fellow comes to them, and shaking them heartily by the hands, says with deep feeling,--"Me sorry me called you bad men for running away from the steamer. You good men! you good men! _Me give you_ more work if me can." CHAPTER XXIV. SAVED AT LAST. THE FATAL GOODWIN SANDS. "There are to whom that ship was dear For love and kindred's sake, When these the voice of rumour hear, Their inmost heart shall quake, Shall doubt, and fear, and wish, and grieve, Believe, and long to unbelieve, But never cease to ache; Still doom'd, in sad suspense, to bear The hope that keeps alive despair." _J. Montgomery._ Do we not often find in the winter evening that our warm rooms seem more cosy, and the flames to lap more brightly and closely round the half-consumed log, as a blast of wind moans in the chimney, and perhaps the cry of some poor street hawker tells its plain tale of toiling misery as it goes shiveringly along the streets? Do we not find our sensations of personal comfort increased, and our sympathy for the sufferer quickened, as the wintry gale and slashing rain beat against our well-shuttered windows, and suggest the hardships we should have to endure if we were less cared for and less protected? But if we may learn the deeper to realize our blessings, and the more to enlarge our sympathies, as we contrast our respective positions with such as are endured by many of the poor toilers on shore, truly still more may we do so as we consider the trials and hardships endured by many of the toilers at sea. Jamb down the window harder to prevent those few drops of rain bubbling in, draw the curtain closer and check that one breath of draught; and now think of those of your fellow-men who are breasting the storm in its wildest rage, out in the full perils and dense darkness of the night, where cruel winds and mad seas attack them in all their dread force; but neither daunt their courage, check their efforts, nor frustrate their skill; their errand is to save, and all personal considerations are lost in the grandness and hope of their enterprise. Thinking of these things, we shall not fail again and again to render our ready and full-hearted sympathy, not only for the shipwrecked, crying aloud in their quick peril and deep agony for rescue, but also for the poor brave-hearted boatmen of our coasts, who never hesitate to do all and to dare all when the prospect before them is that of saving life. Let us recall again some of the features in the lives of those whom we may well call the "Storm Warriors" of seafaring life, who not only find their bread upon the waters, but upon the most troubled waters of the most storm-lashed seas; who, the darker the night, the sterner the tempest, the more blinding the snowdrift, are the more full of expectation that their services will be required, and are therefore the more determined to urge their way out into the storm, to be ready to render aid at the first call for assistance, and perhaps to pluck a harvest of saved lives off the very edge of the scythe of death. Yes, my readers, I would once again carry you in thought far away from quiet home scenes and peaceful associations, from the pleasant nooks and sunny corners of memories which you delight to recall, upon which you love to let your thoughts half consciously ponder; but I ask you to take the joy of your home peace--the gladness of your blessings--with you, that you may be quickened in every chord of sympathy as you let me draw your thoughts away into the dread darkness, which is only broken by spectral sheens of light shed by flying foam, there to picture the rolling sea-mountains hurling along their avalanches of white spray; to listen to the dread discords of a howling tempest; to hover in fancy mid a scene of fierce turmoil and strife, where the elements in their rage seem to have cast off all bonds to their fury, and to have determined to sweep from their path every vestige of man and his works; and now to let your eyes centre upon a shattered wreck, to which are clinging a few storm-beaten sailors trembling upon the very verge of a grave. Are you practically interested in life-boat work, then you have a message to them in their hour of agony; you would have a message to many a loving wife and innocent child if they could now realize the danger of those they love, upon whom they depend. And your whisper is of rescue and of hope. Look where a fitful light gleams in the darkness; now rides high on the crest of a huge wave, now falls buried in the trough of the sea, shines out again, is hidden in a cloud of spray, but pressing on and on, getting nearer each moment to the shipwrecked. The light gleams from a life-boat in which a small band of men are battling,--battling on in the teeth of the fierce storm. No terrors stay them, no failures quell their courage and their zeal; are not fellow-men held captive and threatened with death by fierce and cruel seas? and shall they, the Storm Warriors, not be ready at every peril, and at every hardship, and against all difficulties to make in to their rescue. In such scenes we see the men actually at their work in their efforts to save life and property; but the life-boat work does not merely consist in doing the work at the moment of its necessity, but also in the unwearying watch and readiness for when that time of emergency shall come. Many a Ramsgate boatman leaves his poor, but warm and comfortable home, his humble and loving home circle, to pace Ramsgate pier for hours, and this, night after night, for many winter months, and for the mere chance of being among the first to make a rush for the life-boat when the signal is given to man her,--a chance that may not come a dozen times in the season, and which, when it does come, may afford indeed a grand opportunity for daring all and doing all for the saving of life, but not for doing much in the way of refilling the half-empty cupboards at home, or rubbing off the debts that have been gradually growing during the winter season. And in this, the last tale, I propose telling of the doing of the Storm Warriors, the Life Savers, who watch and struggle mid the fierce seas of the Goodwin Sands, I have deeds to relate done by our brave boatmen--acts of daring and determination--for which I claim a place amid the records of the bravest, grandest deeds of heroism of the age; a tale to tell which, unless I fail utterly in the telling--and this God forbid--I reverently pray, and pray it for the sake of noble deeds done, and for the sake of the good life-boat cause--a tale which must excite sympathy for those in suffering and in peril from the dangers of the sea; and sympathy and high esteem for the daring and unselfish workers of brave works;--a tale, the echoes of which may well stir, as a trumpet peal, stout hearts to perseverance and brave deeds, to do and dare all in God's name, and for the right, whatever storms of opposition may impede their onward course, and stand between them and their high and holy aim. The early days of the new year were bleak and cold; strong northerly and easterly winds swept over land and sea; people on shore spoke of the weather as being seasonable, but shuddered over the word. At Ramsgate, on the 5th of January, it was a fresh breeze from the east-south-east, and the anxious boatmen were as usual keeping a good look-out. About half-past eight in the morning, the booming of signal guns was heard; the signals came from both the Goodwin and the Gull light-ships. The boatmen, who had been watching all night in momentary expectation of such a signal, speedily manned the life-boat. The steamer, the _Aid_, was soon ready, with her brave crew full of courage and hardihood, and full of zeal as ever to second every effort made by the life-boat men in saving life. The steamer is steered for the North Sands Head light-vessel. As they were making their way across the Gull stream, they saw what proved to be a shipwrecked crew in their own boat; they took them on board the steamer, and found that they were the crew, eight in number, of the schooner _Mizpah_, of Brixham. The schooner had stranded on the Goodwin in a thick fog the night previously; the weather was still thick, and the men could give no account of the position of their vessel, and thought that it was hopeless to try and find her, and that it would be useless to try and get her off if they did find her, and so the steamer took the boat in tow and returned to Ramsgate. It proved afterwards that the vessel floated off the Sands at high water. A Broadstairs hovelling-lugger, while cruising about, fell in with her, and succeeded in bringing her into Ramsgate. The vessel and cargo were worth £6000 or £7000; the Broadstairs men obtained £350 as salvage. The life-boatmen were glad to take a few hours' rest after their night's watch and morning's work, they therefore found their way homewards, leaving, however, plenty of ready and able boatmen to watch on the pier, eager to make up another crew should a call for their services be made. The cold became hour by hour more intense, and the fresh breeze steadily grew; as the tide made, the sea broke over the pier in heavy clouds of spray, thundered down upon it, and poured over it in foaming cascades into the harbour. The evening grew on, the gale became terrific; heavy snow-storms went sweeping by, showers of freezing sleet rushed on before the wind, and the night was as dreary and dismal, as dark and cold, as night could well be. At about half-past ten the storm was in its full fury, and the sea a very howling wilderness of raging waters. At that moment the boom of a signal gun made itself heard, in spite of the roar of the wind and sea, and rockets were soon seen streaming up from the Gull light-ship. "The life-boat was manned with despatch," would be the short report the coxswain would afterwards make to the harbour-master. This means, that directly the signal was given, all was astir at the pier-head, the harbour-men on watch hurried themselves to lose no moment in getting the life-boat ready for sea; that the crew of the steamer also made all zealous speed; that the boatmen, in spite of the piercing cold and terrific gale, rush along the pier, hurry down the harbour steps, spring into the boat, and at once set to work in preparing her for sea, as readily as schoolboys bound down the school stairs and out on to the common for the joy of a summer holiday. It takes the steamer and life-boat about one hour and a half to urge their way through the terrible storm into the neighbourhood of the Gull light-ship; the crews speak her about one in the morning, and are told that the men on board saw, some time since, a large light burning south-east by south, but they had lost sight of it for about twenty minutes. The steamer at once tows the boat in the direction described; a careful look-out is kept; the snow-storms come down more darkly than ever, and the men find it bitterly cold, as they are continually overrun by the foam and spray, and by the broken crests of the waves, which are very wild and running mountains high; still on and on the brave fellows battle their way, but they can discover no signs of any signal-light. The crew hold a consultation as to what is best to be done; there appears no possibility of any of the crew of the vessel which gave the signals of distress being still alive; she must have broken up at once, in so tremendous a sea, and it would be impossible for any poor fellow to float clinging to any piece of wreckage in the midst of such a terrific turmoil of water. Still some other vessel may be in danger; the night is wild and dark enough for disaster after disaster to occur; and so the men determine to wait and watch for any signal of distress, and not seeing one, to remain in the neighbourhood of the Sands at all events until daylight, that they may feel sure before they leave the Sands that they are not turning their backs upon any whom they might leave to perish in the storm for want of their aid. And so, my readers, while most of you, if not all, were quietly in your beds (the wakeful ones of you perchance listening wistfully to the storm, and perhaps having your hearts moved to great pity and deep prayer for the poor fellows at sea), these brave boatmen, from choice, and not for the hope of money reward, but for the far dearer hope of saving life, waited on and on, by those gloomy storm-beaten Sands, a prey to all the fierceness of the gale, the raging seas, and deadly cold. Time after time the mad rushing waves break over the boat, burying her in clouds of spray and foam, or, coming in heavier volume still, bury her and the men for a moment or two completely under water. It is to the crew something more than intense discomfort; their sufferings become very great, yet they will not give in; they do all that they can to encourage each other, and still let the boat lay to. Willing as every man is to endure to the utmost, they soon find that it is getting beyond their strength; they feel as if frozen through and through, and are rapidly getting numbed and exhausted with the continual wash and beating over them of the heavy seas. There is no help for it, and unwillingly they make a signal for the steamer, and are towed back to Ramsgate, arriving between four and five in the morning. The name of the vessel that was lost during that terrible night was never known; the greedy Sands soon swallowed up every vestige of the ship; her name may perhaps be found among the missing ships at Lloyds'. Hope, doubtless, long lingered, may still linger, in many mournful homes; still the story be told to wondering children, how their father or their brother sailed on such a day from a foreign port, and has not since been heard of; but no clue has ever yet been found as to which of the many missing vessels it was that came to such sudden destruction in that dread night on the Goodwin Sands. Shall we linger another moment or two in thought over the poor fellows thus lost in the fierce seas. We fancy that the bronzing of a tropical sun was still ruddy upon their cheeks; a few weeks since they were ready to rest 'neath the shadow of the sails, and lie about the deck at night; and then speeding north they were met in the chops of the Channel by the rough welcome of a strong adverse wind, against which they sought, day and night, to beat their way, while the sails and cordage grew hard and stiff with frozen rain and spray. Favoured at last with a slant of wind, the vessel finds her way up Channel; the crew already feel the hardship and dangers of their voyage at an end, as they begin to count the hours until they shall be in dock; night falls as they pass the South Foreland. The wind goes moaningly back to the old direction; hour after hour it increases, a gale sweeps along in dread force, the blinding snow bewilders the pilot, who can now see no guiding light, and soon in the darkness of the night, the force of the wind, and the swirl of the tide, the vessel is driven through the raging surf on to the Sands. The crew make a rush for the boats; useless; they would not live a moment in such a boil of sea. The waves fly over the vessel, now lift her, and then let her crash with the force of all her weight down upon the Sands; now they beat with tremendous force against her, and shake her each moment to her keel; the captain burns a blue light, the spray washes it out, the men hasten to get a tar-barrel on deck, knock in the top, fill it with combustibles, and light it; it flares up, and for a time resists the rush of spray with which the air is full; the light-vessel sees the signal, fires a gun and a rocket; the life-boat starts upon her mission, but the waves close in upon the doomed ship in fierce hungry strife, lifting and crashing her down time after time; the decks are soon swept of everything that the force of water can tear from them, the tar-barrel is washed out; the men can no longer remain on the deck, but have to take refuge in the rigging, where they lash themselves to the shrouds, and they wait on in darkness and despair; a tremendous wave comes boiling along, it lifts the vessel, and almost rolls her over; the strong masts snap like reeds; the ship fills and sinks in the hole she has worked by her rolling and beating in the quicksand. Another half-hour, perhaps, and the life-boat is there; too late! only the tangled spars and cordage and broken pieces of wreck float near--tokens of the death and destruction that have been wrought: and a fine ship has been thus utterly and speedily destroyed--and all living things on board being swiftly engulfed, have found their graves in the strife of that deadly sea. CHAPTER XXV. SAVED AT LAST. WE WILL NOT GO HOME WITHOUT THEM. "O, the most piteous cry of the poor souls! Sometimes to see 'em, and not to see 'em; now The ship boring the moon with her mainmast, And anon swallowed with yest and froth; How the poor souls roared, and the sea Mocked them." _Winter's Tale._ As soon as it is daylight the coxswain of the life-boat and others of the boatmen feel very anxious; they fear that, when driven in by exhaustion on the previous night, they may, after all, have left some poor fellows clinging to a remnant of wreck; or perhaps have left a ship on the Sands, lost in the darkness of the night, and unable to make any signal of distress; the men cannot rest, and although the life-boat has only been in a few hours, the coxswain of the boat and the mate of the steamer go to the harbour-master, tell him their fears, and ask his permission to put to sea again and to search round the Sands. The permission is readily given--"Go by all means," and the men are encouraged to make their search. Ten fresh hands join the coxswain and the bowman of the life-boat; and soon after daylight they start on their dangerous and merciful mission. They are towed again by the steamer _Aid_, and make for the North Sands Head light-vessel, keeping a good look-out for the faintest signal of distress. The men discover nothing on the north side of the Sands, and they determine to work their way to the back of the Sands, on the French side, and there pursue their search. Soon they see in the misty distance what seems to be a large vessel on the south-east spit of the Sands; they tow with all speed in her direction; they are proceeding along the edge of the Sand, just outside the broken water. The waves are rolling along in all their fury, and beat down upon the Sands with tremendous force; the surf flying up in great sheets of foam, and the roar of the breakers is like loud quivering thunder; the scene is enough to make the stoutest heart quail; but, without one thought of flinching from whatever lies before them, the men cling to the life-boat as the seas break over them, and patiently bear all the cold and storm, and wash of water, as they are towed on nearer and nearer to the wreck. One of the men said afterwards, in answer to questions as to what his feelings were as he watched the tremendous seas, and knew that shortly he would be battling for his life in the midst of them, "Well, Sir, I think that at all such times a man must naturally have his inward feelings; soldiers say that they have theirs, and I am very sure that we have ours; a man can't help knowing the danger, and thinking about it, and feeling about it too; but we are not going to be made cold-hearted about it, or we shouldn't be out there. We can't help seeing that we've got hard work before us, and we determine by God's help to do it, and we won't flinch. We hope to save others, and feel that we shall do our best to do so, but at the same time we know that we may lose our own lives in making the attempt. We think about this sometimes as we are sitting in the boat, holding on against the wash of the seas, but when we get to the wreck we forget all about ourselves, and only think about saving the others." The seas become still heavier and heavier as they get nearer to the wreck and approach a more exposed part of the Sands; they now have to encounter one great rush of water, which, urged by the hurricane of wind and the strong tide, comes raging along in unbroken course through the Straits of Dover. At last they get within a short distance of the wreck, and find her to be a large barque. She has settled down somewhat on the Sands, has heeled over a good deal, and huge waves are foaming over her. The men look at the awful rage of sea, hear the tremendous roar with which the mountainous waves break upon the Sand, and say to each other, "We have indeed our work cut out for us." The boatmen can see no signs of any of the crew of the vessel being left on board. They may have been swept from the wreck, or have been lost in some vain effort to get to land in their own boat. The flag of distress is still flying, and the steamer tows the boat nearer to the wreck; they can now make out that the crew are crouching down under cover of the deck-house; while the huge waves make a complete breach over the vessel, and threaten every moment to wash the deck-house and the crew away. The steamer tows the boat up to windward. The life-boatmen feel their turn for the battle has come, and make every preparation; they get their sails ready to hoist, make the cable up all clear for paying out; the coxswain sees that they are now far enough to windward, the steamer's tow-rope is cast off; the boat lifts on a huge wave as the strain of the rope is taken off her, they hoist the sail, round she flies in answer to her helm, and she makes in for the wreck; they mount on the top of huge seas, go plunging down into the trough of the waves; the spray flies over them as the gale catches the crests of the towering breakers, and fills the air with clouds of flying foam; a minute more and they are in broken water; the seas rush and leap and recoil, fly high and fall in tangled volumes over the boat; she is tossed in all directions by the wild broken waves, and as she fills again and again with water, becomes almost unmanageable. The men have to cling with all their strength to the thwarts, but still the wind drives the boat on, and they get within about sixty yards of the wreck; the anchor is thrown out, the cable payed out swiftly; the sea is rushing with tremendous force over the ship; the boat sheers in under her lee-quarter; the boatmen cheer to the poor half-dead sailors who are crouching and clinging under shelter of the deck-house. All is hope; "A minute or two more," they think, "and we shall have saved them." A shout from the coxswain of the boat--"Hold on! hold on!" a glance upwards, a huge mountain of a wave comes rolling swiftly on, its crest curls over, breaks, falls upon the boat, the men and the boat are carried down by the tremendous weight of water. Some of the men seem almost crushed by the blow and pressure of the falling wave; they do not know whether the boat is upset or not, so is she rolled about in the whirl of the broken wave; they cling convulsively to her, she soon floats, lifted by her air-tight compartments, and she frees herself. The men breathe again; they find that the wave that buried them has taken the boat in its irresistible flood, and dragging the anchor with it, has carried it more than one hundred yards away from the ship. The men lift themselves up, clear their faces from the water, shake it from their clothes, and look at the vessel; they determine that, please God, they will yet save the crew. They give a cheer to encourage and give hope to the poor fellows, and without further thought of the dread danger they have but just escaped, prepare for another attempt. They hoist the sail quickly and get the boat's head round, and try and sheer her into the ship; but all their efforts are in vain, wave after wave breaks over them, the boat is tossed in all directions by the broken seas--sometimes the coxswain feels as if he would be thrown bodily forward on the men, as the waves lift the boat almost end on end. Again and again are boat and men overrun bodily by the rush of the waves, but the boat behaves splendidly, lifts buoyantly from under the weight of water; her undaunted crew bear up bravely, and all are once more ready for another struggle. They labour on, but without success; they cannot make their way back to the ship: they get the oars out, the waves and wind take them and send them leaping from the rowlocks, and out of the men's hands; they must give it up for this time. All their thoughts are for the poor shipwrecked crew, and the bitter--bitter disappointment they must feel. Again they cheer to them, and shout to them, to keep their hearts up--they will soon be at them again; and they make the best of their way back to the steamer. They have failed in their first attempt. The steamer again tows them into position, and they make for the second time boldly in for the wreck; the coxswain steers as near to the stern as possible, avoiding the danger of being washed over it on to the deck of the vessel, and thus crushed to pieces; they get nearer to the vessel than they did before; the shipwrecked crew begin to stir themselves, the boatmen are about to run the boat alongside, when again they are overwhelmed in the rush of a fearful sea, buried in its deluge of broken water, and the boat is again hurled away by the force of the waves, and carried many fathoms from the vessel; the anchor holds, but the tide is running more strongly than ever, and in the direction to carry them right away from the wreck; and so it is hopeless for them to try to get any nearer to her from where they are. The tide has risen and is nearly at its height; the vessel has fallen still more over upon her side; the lee side of the deck is completely under water, the top of the deck-house is just above the sea; the crew have been driven from their old place of shelter, they have lashed a spar across the mizen shrouds, and are all clinging to it, while the heavy waves beat continually over the poor fellows. It is with terrible agony that the crew on board the wreck witness the second failure of the life-boat: "She will never come again," the captain says, in a voice of despair; "the men cannot do it, the very life must have been washed and beaten out of them." Great is their astonishment to find that no sooner does the life-boat clear herself of the water that seems almost to drown her, no sooner do the men free themselves from the rush of the foam, which has for a time overwhelmed them, than they begin to cheer again, as if only rendered the more determined by their second defeat; the more courageous by the difficulties and dangers they had already endured; and the shipwrecked crew, encouraged by the hoarse cheers of the exhausted half-drowned boatmen, do not lose all hope. The boat is again towed into position, and for the third time makes in for the wreck. This time they throw the anchor overboard farther from the vessel than before, give longer scope to the cable, sail in well under the ship's stern, and again steer as near as possible to the vessel's lee-quarter, and lower the foresail. They are within a dozen yards of the ship; the bowman heaves a rope with all his force; it falls short of the men in the shrouds to whom he throws it, and the boat sweeps on; they check her with the cable, and bring her head to the ship abreast of her, but unhappily some distance off. The captain of the shipwrecked vessel had despaired of the boat being able to come in the third time; but when he saw her coming, he felt fully convinced that it was their last opportunity of being saved, and determined that if the boat were again swept from the wreck, that he would jump into the sea and try and swim to her. The boat comes and misses, and the crew of the boat see the captain hastily throw off his sea-boots, seize a life-buoy, and prepare to plunge into the sea: they shout to him not to do so, and to the crew to hold him back. "The tide in its set off the Sands would sweep him away; the seas would beat his life out of him: they will be back again soon, and won't go home without them." The steamer has followed the boat as closely as possible, running down close to the edge of the Sands, just clear of the broken water. The life-boat has swung out to the full length of her cable, and is in deep water; the men upon being beaten away from the wreck for the third time, look round for the steamer, and to their astonishment see her making in straight towards them. The men on board the steamer had watched with increasing anxiety and dismay the defeat of the successive gallant attempts made by the life-boat crew. They had grown more and more excited each time that the life-boat had returned to them, and feel now prepared to run almost any risk whatever to further help the life-boatmen in their brave but as yet unsuccessful efforts to save the crew. And so the steamer makes right in across the broken water, straight for the life-boat; a rope is thrown from the steamer, and is made fast in the life-boat; they now hope, with the steamer's help, to be able to sheer the boat right in upon the wreck. The boatmen have hold of their own cable, to which their anchor is fast; they gradually draw in upon this cable, and the steamer tries to tow the boat nearer and nearer to the vessel, and for the fourth time the life-boat makes in 'mid the wild raging seas for the rescue of the crew. The steamer ventures into the rage of the sea, and her position becomes one of very great peril; she rolls in the trough of the tremendous waves till her gunwales are right under water; the foam and spray dash completely over her, and tons and tons of water deluge her deck. They gradually approach the vessel; the life-boat sheers in; the seas and tide and wind catch her in their full power, and whirl her away again. A huge wave sweeps bodily over the steamer--she is in extreme danger; the life-boatmen watch her in the greatest alarm, fearing each moment that a wave will swamp her--but rolling, plunging, burying herself in the foaming seas, the steamer bravely holds her own, until to remain longer is certain death to all on board; and sorrowfully the crew of the steamer abandon their most gallant attempt, and make out of the rage of broken water. The life-boatmen rejoice to see the steamer get clear of the deadly peril, but they are scarcely in less peril themselves; they cut the steamer's tow-rope, and then find that they must cut their own cable, to avoid being dashed over the wreck; and away they go again driven on before the gale. They look at each other, but only read courage and determination in each other's countenances. Beaten off for the fourth time, not one heart fails, not one speaks of giving up the attempt, not one of the brave fellows has any such thought for an instant; their one consideration is what next shall be attempted to save the poor fellows from a speedy and terrible death, which indeed threatens them every minute. Thus the only question is, what they shall try next? and weak and exhausted, and almost frozen with cold, but determined, and full of courage and zeal as ever, their one anxiety is for the poor shipwrecked crew, whose peril increases each minute, and they prepare for a fifth effort for their rescue, strong still in their old determination--"that they will not go home without them." CHAPTER XXVI. SAVED AT LAST. VICTORY OR DEATH. "'Tis done--despite the winds--the roll Of that storm-maddened fearful sea; Bravery hath snatched each shivering soul, O greedy death! from thee. Then the rough seamen's hands they wring, And some, o'erpowered by bursting feeling, Their arms around them wildly fling, While tears down many a cheek are stealing; They bless them for their noble deed, True saviours sent in hour of need." _N. Michell._ The ship's hull has now been for some time under water, and it is evident that the wreck is breaking up fast. She has coals and iron on board; this dead weight keeps her steady on the Sands, and prevents the waves lifting her and crashing her down, or she would long since have been torn and broken to fragments. As it is, the decks have burst, and the lighter portions of her cargo are being rapidly washed out of her; the sea in some places is black with coal-dust, and much wreckage, pieces of her deck and forecastle are being swept away by the tide. Each time that the men on board the steamer and life-boat look at the vessel, count the crew still in the rigging, and find that not any are missing, they think it indeed a wondrous mercy that all should still be safe, and get each moment more impressed with feelings of deep sympathy for the poor fellows, and with the greater eagerness to dare all to save them. Daniel Reading, the brave, skilful, and long-tried master of the steamer, is ill on shore, and so she is in charge of John Simpson, the mate; he and William Wharrier, the engineer, consult as to the possibility of making another effort with the steamer, for the tide is setting off the Sands with such force that they do not see how it is possible for the life-boat to get in to the wreck and save the crew, and they find that all the men on board the steamer are perfectly prepared to second them in any effort that they decide upon making. They get the mortar-apparatus ready, and again urge the steamer through the seas in the direction of the wreck; they hope to get near enough to the vessel to fire a line from the mortar into the rigging, to which the shipwrecked crew will attach a rope, and then hauling this rope on board the steamer, they will take it to the life-boat's men, who will by it be able to haul the boat through the seas to the wreck. Cautiously the steamer approaches; the tide has been for some time rising fast; the steamer does not draw much water; they are almost within firing distance; the waves come rushing along and nearly overrun the steamer; at last a breaker larger than the rest catches her, lifts her high upon its crest, and letting her fall down into its trough as down the side of a wall, she strikes the Sands heavily; the engines are instantly reversed, she lifts with the next wave, and being a very quick and handy boat, at once moves astern before she can thump again, and they are saved from shipwreck; and thus the fifth effort to save the shipwrecked crew fails. No time is lost; at once the steamer heads for the life-boat, and makes ready to tow her into position. Again not a word--scarcely a thought--about past failures, only eagerness to commence without delay a fresh attempt; the steamer is alongside the life-boat. "Look out, my men, here is another rope for you." "All right!" the boatmen answer as they catch the line, and haul the hawser into the boat. "All right! tow us well to windward, give us a good position, plenty of room, we must have them this time. All fast! away you go, hurrah!" The men watch the wreck as they are towed past her. "Oh! the poor fellows! to think we have not got them yet. Well, we have had a hard struggle for it, but, please God, we will save them yet--we will save them yet!" "Ah! look how that wave buries them all; there they are again, let us give them a cheer, it will help them to keep their hearts up." And as the boat rose upon a sea, they shouted and waved to the shipwrecked crew. "There, another breaker has gone right over her; how she heaves and works to it! Yes, and do you see how her masts are swinging about, and in different directions? they are getting unstepped and loose; she is breaking up fast, working all over--all of a quiver and tremble! Poor fellows! poor fellows! we have not a moment to spare. It must soon be all over, one way or the other!" Thus the men speak to each other; they are in a glow of eagerness and excitement, and can scarcely restrain themselves to get quietly to work. For as they watch the poor fellows, and time after time see the waves wash over them in quick succession--and as each wave passes, see them still clinging on--they almost feel as if they could jump at them to try and save them, and in their noble and gallant sympathy and determination lose all sense of weakness, and cold, and exhaustion. When describing their feelings, one of the men said, "We were thoroughly warm at our work, and felt like lions, as if nothing could stop us." It is in this spirit that they now consult together, as to the plan upon which they shall make their next effort. First one scheme is suggested, and then another, but these seem to give no better prospect of success than those that have been already tried in vain. At last one of the men proposes a plan which must indeed either prove rescue to the shipwrecked or death to all. "I tell you what, my men, if we are going to save those poor fellows, there is only one way of doing it; it must be a case of save all, or lose all, that is just it. We must go in upon the vessel straight, hit her between the masts, and throw our anchor over right upon her decks." "What a mad-brained trick!" says one. "Why, the boat would be smashed to pieces." "Likely enough; but there is one thing certain, is there not? and that is that we are never going home to leave those poor fellows to perish, and I do not believe that there is any other way of saving them, and so we must just try it. And God help us, and them!" Not a single word against it now! What, charge in upon the vessel in that mad rage of sea! Victory, or death, indeed! Most of the men on board the life-boat are married men with families--loved wives, and loved little ones dependent upon them. Thoughts of this, tender heartfelt thoughts of home, come to them. "Well, and so we have, and have not those poor perishing fellows also got wives and little ones, and are they not thinking of their homes, and loved ones, as much as we are thinking of ours; and shall we go home, having turned back from even the greatest danger, without having tried all it is possible to try; go home to our wives and little ones, and leave them to perish thinking of theirs? No! please God, that shall never be said of us." Such thoughts as these pass through the minds of some of the boatmen. And what think the poor nearly drowned crew of the unfortunate vessel. There they are clinging to the loose and shaking rigging; a few feet above the boil of the hungry and raging sea. They have seen effort after effort made, and effort after effort fail; they have watched the men do more than they ever dreamt it was possible for men to do; and they have watched the life-boat live, and battle with seas with which they never thought it possible a boat could for one moment contend; time after time they have thought that the boatmen were drowned, as they saw the huge curling waves break over the boat, swamp it, bury it in the weight of their falling volume of water, and for some seconds hide all from view; they have been watching the men persevere in attempt after attempt, when they thought that from sheer exhaustion it would be impossible for them to make another effort for their rescue. With equal wonder and admiration they watched the noble efforts of the steamer, marked how nearly she was wrecked, and when she failed, gave up all as lost; deciding in their minds that in such a rush of broken sea, strength of tide and gale of wind, that it is impossible for the boat to reach them, or for them to be saved, and all but one give up all hope. When the captain says in despair, "The life-boat can never make another effort," this man answers, "I have sailed in English ships; I have often heard about life-boat work, and I know that they never leave any one to perish as long as they can see them, and they will not leave us." "And look, here she comes again. O God help them! God help them!" Yes, here she comes again; the steamer had hastened to tow her well into position, well to windward of the wreck. "And here she comes again." Once more the boat heads for the wreck--this time to do, or to die; each man knows it, each man feels it. They are crossing the stern of the vessel; "Look at that breaker--look at that breaker--hold on, hold on, it will be all over with us if it catches us, we shall be thrown high into the masts of the vessel, and shaken out into the sea in a moment! Hold on all, hold on! Now it comes! No, thank God, it breaks ahead of us, and we have escaped. Now, men, be ready, be ready!" Thus shouts the coxswain. Every man is at his station, some with the ropes in hand ready to lower the sails; others by the anchor prepared to throw it overboard at the right moment; round, past the stern of the vessel the boat flies, round in the blast of the gale and the swell of the sea; down helm, round she comes; down foresail; the ship's lee gunwale is under water, the boat shoots forward straight for the wreck, and hits the lee rail with a shock that almost throws all the men from their posts, and then, still forward, she literally leaps on board the wreck. Over! over with the anchor; it falls on the vessel's deck; all the crew of the vessel are in the mizen shrouds, but they cannot get to the boat, a fearful rush of sea is chasing over the vessel, and between them and it. Again and again the boat thumps on the wreck as on a rock, with a shock that almost shakes the men from their hold. The waves soon lift the boat off the deck, and carry her away from the vessel. "Is even this attempt to be a failure? No, thank God! the anchor holds; veer out the cable; steadily, my men, steadily; do not disturb the anchor more than you can help; we shall have them now! we shall have them, all will be well; ease her a bit, ease her, see how she plunges, a little more cable; now for the grappling-iron; quick, throw it over that line; there you have it;" and they haul on board a line which had been made fast to a cork-fender, and thrown overboard from the wreck early in the day, but which the boatmen had never before been able to reach. They get the boat straight, haul in slowly upon both ropes; cheer to the crew: "Hurrah! mates, hurrah!" All is joy and excitement, but at the same time steady attention to orders; now the boat is abreast the mizen rigging, opposite to where the men are clinging. "Down helm, the boat sheers in; haul in upon the ropes, men, handsomely, handsomely;" the boat jumps forward, hits the ship heavily with her stern, crashes off a large piece of her fore-foot. The men are for a moment thrown down with the shock; two of the boatmen spring on to the raised bow gunwale, and seize hold of the captain of the vessel, who seems nearly dead, drag him in over the bows; two of the sailors jump on board; "Hold on all, hold on!" A fearful sea rolls over them, the boat is washed away from the vessel; the anchor still holds; they sheer the boat in again; they make the ropes fast, and lash the boat to the shrouds of the wreck, thus verily nailing their colours to the mast. No! they will not be washed away again until they have all the crew on board. A sailor jumps from the rigging, the boat sinks in the trough of the sea, the man falls between the boat and the wreck; a second more and the boat will be on the top of him, crushing him against the rail of the vessel, upon which the keel of the boat strikes and grinds cruelly; two boatmen seize him, leaning right over the gunwale to do so, they are almost dragged into the water; they are seized in turn by the men in the boat, and all are with difficulty got on board. Up the boat flies and crashes against the spar lashed to the rigging. "Jump in, men, jump in all of you. Now! Now!" In they spring, and tumble, falling upon the men, and all rolling over into the bottom of the boat. All are now on board--all on board! "Hurrah! cut the lashings, there, she falls away from the wreck; cut the cable, quick with the hatchet; all gone! all gone! up foresail." The seas catch the boat and bear her away from the wreck; away she goes with a bound, flying through the broken water; the heavy wind fills the sail; they are fairly under weigh, and with the precious freight for which they had fought so long and so gallantly, safely on board. Thank God! thank God! all are saved at last--_saved at last_. Now the boat is through the broken seas away from the terrible Sands, out in the deep water; the men have time to look at each other; and how gladly, and yes, how fondly, they do so. Strangers though they be, yet at that moment their hearts are warm to each other with more than a brother's love--all is gladness and thankfulness; they shake hands, the rescuers and the rescued, time after time. The saved crew are ten in number. They are Danes, and the wreck the Danish barque _Aurora Borealis_. Some of the sailors can speak a little broken English, and in such terms as they are able the poor fellows express the depth of their gratitude, and their wonder at being saved. The boat makes for the steamer, which is coming down rapidly to meet her; the crew of the steamer greet the life-boatmen with cheers! Who can describe the joy they all feel at the successful ending of their long battle with terrible danger and threatened death! and great indeed is their sympathy with the saved from death, for whom they and the boatmen have so willingly, and to the very utmost, risked their own lives. They lift the captain on board the steamer; he is thoroughly exhausted; they carry him into the engine-room, and in the warmth there, do their best to revive him, and he soon recovers. The Danish seamen will not leave the boat; the life-boat crew tell the mate that his men would be much more comfortable on board the steamer, that the seas will be washing over the boat all the way in; but no, as so frequently happens on such occasions, and as has been before noticed, the rescued men feel so grateful to the life-boatmen, that they are not content to leave the boat until they get to land. And the mate replies, "No! you saved us, you saved us; we thought you never, never do it; you had plenty trouble; we stop with you." And they would not desert their friends, their brothers indeed, who had done so much to save them. In Ramsgate the anxiety is very great. The steamer and life-boat have been out many hours, nothing can be seen of them in the mist that hangs over the Goodwin Sands. "Can anything have happened?" is the question that is restlessly put from one to another. It might well be so, in the terrific sea that must have been raging on the Goodwin in so fearful a storm. At about half-past two, hundreds of people are collected on the pier; for the news that the life-boat is out always spreads like wildfire through the town; and if there is any cause for anxiety on her account, the whole town soon shares the apprehension, and throngs of anxious men crowd the pier and harbour. Now the men who are anxiously on the watch make out something looming in the mist; and speedily the steamer and life-boat are seen, their flags are flying, glad sign of successful effort, of rescue effected; and great is the joy of all the lookers-on; steamer and life-boat speed between the massive granite heads of the two piers, and the crowd that looks down upon them as they come pitching and rolling along, greet them with cheer after cheer. The saved crew land, they are many of them very weak, and worn, and exhausted; but all around is welcome, and sympathy, and active service. They are taken to the Sailors' Home, where warm clothing, and beds, and goodly fare are ready for them, and the poor fellows soon recover; some of them before they attempt to take any rest insist upon writing to the loved ones at home, to tell of their safety, and of their rescue from apparently almost certain death. Doubtless these letters contain simple expressions of gratitude to God, and of deep love for the dear wife, of many many kisses for the sturdy little boy, or the laughing girl, for the children whose bright eyes seemed so often staring at them so wistfully out of the storm, and whom they never thought to see again; and doubtless contain also expressions of great admiration and thankfulness for the untiring courage of the English life-boatmen; and their full belief in the expression of one of their number who told them in the height of their danger, and in the very depth of their despair, "to take courage, for the life-boatmen will never leave us while they can see us." The Board of Trade, in recognition of the gallant services of the men, presented them with one pound each. The King of Denmark forwarded two hundred rix-dollars to be divided among them. The boatmen are all poor men, and these presents proved very acceptable; but the joy with all was, and will be while life lasts, that God had in His providence and mercy so crowned their perseverance with success, and enabled them to save their drowning brother sailors. While all who heard of the circumstances, declared that never by land or by sea was more gallant service rendered than was accomplished by these brave boatmen, who in the face of all danger, and of all hardship, determined to persevere to the death--determined that while the shipwrecked crew still remained alive, "They would not go home without them." CHAPTER XXVII. OF SOME OF THE LIFE-BOAT MEN. "The rank is but the guinea-stamp; The man's the gold for a' that." _Burns._ It may be that some of my readers who have followed the adventures of our Storm Warriors through their varied struggles and heroic deeds, and have felt sympathy more or less deep for the gallant life-savers, would like to know a little of one or two of the leading men among those who, during the last twenty years, or more, have done such good work in the Ramsgate life-boat on the Goodwin Sands. Gallant men who, time after time, have plunged their boat into the thickest of the fray, and heedless of hardship, heedless of peril, forgetful of self, intent only upon rescuing the distressed, have laboured on through the dark stormy nights, 'mid the rush of the waves, the howling winds, the fierce hurricane blasts, the spray, and sleet, and snow--encountering all dangers, and persevering through all difficulties, and repaid for all as they have brought home in the morning's light the brother sailors, or the passengers, whom they have been instrumental in saving from swift and terrible deaths. Quiet, broad-chested, steadfast-eyed men, who, by all the scenes they have witnessed, and by all the hardships they have suffered, and by all the thoughts of the shipwrecked ones that they have brought safely home, have it deeply written in upon their hearts: that (to use their own simple and noble expression) _they have a call to save life_. Well indeed would it be for the world if more of those to whom talents are given, and to whom stewardships are intrusted, and who stand watching the many who are in danger, overrun by the dark troubled waters of social life--wrecked in poverty, in misery, in ignorance--wrecked for want of true teaching, true guidance, true sympathy, true love--well would it be if more of these stewards of God's loans might have the same noble conviction written in upon their hearts: that they have _a call to save life_! Then would more lives grow noble by noble work, and become happy in the consciousness of the happy results, which God grants to the efforts of all those who humbly seek to live and labour for the good of others; grants to those who would sooner put to sea 'mid toil and peril, 'mid self-sacrifice and opposition, rather than let the life-boats God has given for their use rot and canker upon the banks, while the cries of the despairing and the lost plead in vain from the dark storms and troubled waters at their feet. Yes, surely; the humble boatmen of our coasts, our "Storm Warriors," afford a lesson by which many may well profit, in the noble self-sacrificing way in which they realize their mission--_that they have a call to save life_. "Who shall be the first coxswain of our new _Northumberland_ Prize Life-boat?" was the question asked by the Ramsgate Harbour Trustees some two and twenty years ago; and it was an important and anxious question; for the good boat required skilful handling to do efficient service, and if she failed in what was required and expected of her, the life-boat cause would receive a serious check. "No man better than James Hogben for the first coxswain; no man among them all holds a higher character for cool courage, and skill, and experience;" such was the answer. Hogben had been to sea since he was a lad; for some years he was sailing in a small vessel that traded between London and Ostend; then he sailed a little bit of a boat, of about fifteen tons, between Ramsgate and Dunkirk and Boulogne, winter and summer. Ask him about it now, and the dangers he used to run; and he shakes his head, and with a quiet smile tells you that, "He met with a good many very _whole_ breezes, very!" in that little craft of his. After that, he had nearly twenty years of hovelling; cruising about the Goodwin Sands in open luggers in the stormiest winter weather, till he almost knew the Sands by heart; and so James Hogben was appointed first coxswain of the Ramsgate life-boat. Each time that he and his crew went out in her they gained fresh confidence in her powers; and noble work the good boat did under his command; indeed from the time the _Northumberland_ life-boat began her career at Ramsgate to the time she was broken up, from December 1851 to July 1865, no fewer than two hundred and sixty-one lives were saved by her and the gallant Storm Warriors who sailed her, from vessels that were utterly lost; and nineteen vessels, with their crews, were extricated from the Goodwin Sands and brought safely into harbour. For nine years Hogben was coxswain of the life-boat, and then came that dread New Year's Eve, when doubts were thrown upon the telegram that came from Deal; and there was delay; and the life-boat got out to the south of the Goodwin Sands only in time for her crew to see the _Gottenburg_ overwhelmed by the waves, and to hear the last cries of the drowning men. Hogben had been out in the life-boat once before that day, and was exhausted and unwell; and he had a nasty fall in the boat, and hurt his knee badly, and soon fell seriously ill; his nerves were, for a time, utterly shattered, and he who had been remarkable for his dauntless courage became too nervous to walk even down the pier for fear of falling over. And although, after a while, he so far recovered as to be able to be employed as a boatman in the harbour, and as a watchman on the pier, yet he was never able to go to sea again; his iron constitution broken down by some thirty years of Storm Warrior life, during the last nine years of which he had been coxswain of the famous Ramsgate life-boat. Isaac Jarman was appointed coxswain in Hogben's room. Who among Ramsgate boatmen has been better known in his time than Isaac Jarman--or Mr. Jarman, as I suppose I ought to call him now? for is he not master of a thriving public-house, which he will take good care to keep respectable? and it will not be his fault if any of his customers wreck themselves by taking too much drink. But a yarn on Ramsgate pier with the life-boat coxswain, Jarman, was for some years quite an institution with many a visitor to Ramsgate, as well as with many an inhabitant. When I have known Jarman (it does not seem quite natural _Mistering_ my old boatman friend) to be out in the life-boat, enduring all the rage of the storm, and I have imagined the wild scenes 'mid the strife of waters through which he has been passing, another picture, one in very vivid contrast, has often presented itself to my mind. I have remembered the scene I saw one evening when I called upon him, and found him with his family at tea. "Come in, sir, come in; you won't disturb us: glad to see you." His wife and, I think, five little daughters were there, and the baby boy, the only son, was taken out of the cradle to be shown to me. And as Jarman dandled the little fellow in his strong arms he said, "Bless the boy! Bless the boy! he will make a life-boat coxswain some day, that he will;" and I felt that all the thoughts of the danger of the work was lost in the joy of saving life; I glanced at the mother, half expecting some expression of dissent; no, her smile showed that she was proud of her husband, and that all her sympathies were with him in his noble work, and that she was quite content that her only boy should in his day follow in his father's steps and be, like him, one of the gallant band of life-savers who guard our coasts. And I have often felt, that however much such pictures of happy home-circles dwelt in the heart of Jarman, and of his comrades, as they have struggled out through the dark storms, and rushed into conflict with the wild seas, yet that they have never caused them to turn back from any danger, or to lessen one single effort in their warfare to save life. Isaac Jarman was turned out into the North Sea almost from his cradle. His father, a boatman, got severely hurt on board a hovelling-lugger, so much so, that he was never fit for work again; as a matter of course, the family became very poor. Many hungry children to feed, and the arms once so strong now powerless to labour for them, no wonder that the cupboard was often empty, and the growing lads forced to do something for themselves as soon as they were able. And so Isaac Jarman, when a boy of twelve years old, was sent away to sea on board a small fishing-smack called the _Pledge_; she was only twenty-five tons, but used to sail long distances away to fish in the North Sea, in all weathers, summer and winter. The poor lad had all the clothing his parents could supply him with, but that was little more than he stood up in; no waterproof overalls, no sea-boots, the almost child had to rough it hardly enough; in bad weather wet through day and night, with no bed to lie upon, and no change of dry clothes; he used to throw himself down on the floor of the small cabin, and lie coiled up before the little fire that glimmered in the stove; the spray oftentimes washing down the hatchway and surging up against his back, so that he had to be content with being dry one side at a time; but strangely enough it agreed with him; as that rough life, with all its strong sea-breezes, and its abundance of good fish diet, does agree with many a little urchin, who, for sturdiness, is not to be surpassed by any luxury-lapped little fellow in the land. After Jarman had finished his apprenticeship in the fishing-smack, he was for some years in a collier, during which time he was twice wrecked. And after that for seven or eight years he worked as a Ramsgate boatman, always on the look-out in rough weather, day and night, with but short intervals for sleep, for a signal of distress from the Goodwin Sands, and a call for the life-boat; and so all his training well fitted him for the post of life-boat coxswain; and when the vacancy was made by Hogben's illness, Jarman was well chosen to fill the post. For ten years he continued coxswain of the life-boat, going out in her no fewer than one hundred and thirty-two times, and helping to save between three and four hundred lives. You may see many a medal that has been well won--and that is worthily worn--by veteran soldier or sailor, but you will find few that have been better won, or that are more worthily worn, than are the four medals and a clasp that our Storm Warrior Jarman has to show as records of his brave and self-sacrificing services; or the three medals that Hogben can display on high days and holidays; or those given to Reading, the brave master of the steam-tug _Aid_, and those worn by many another gallant boatman or sailor, who, at Ramsgate, or at other stations round the coast, have done true warrior service in saving life from shipwreck. After holding his post of coxswain for ten years, Jarman found the exposure too much for him: he was out nine times in one fortnight, five times in one week; he was seized with a very severe attack of bronchitis, from which he never thoroughly recovered, and had shortly to give up going to sea, and resign his position of coxswain. He had three brothers and a nephew brought up as sailors, all of whom have been drowned; well do I remember the night when his last brother was drowned. It had been blowing a heavy gale for three days and nights, with continual snowstorms; the vessels at sea were in terrible peril: they had no help for it but to drive blindly before the gale, unable to see any of the lights or buoys which mark the sands and shoals. I had heard that a Ramsgate collier was known to have sailed from the North some days since, and could not be far off; and it was with a sad heart and deep anxiety that I lingered on the pier that afternoon watching the storm. I saw the boatmen all ready on the look-out for any signal, but I felt, as they felt, that there could be but little hope of any vessels being able to run the gauntlet of the many sandbanks in that dark storm, or of being able to make any signals heard, or seen, if they got into danger. It was with a deep feeling of dread and apprehension that I left Jarman and his fellow-boatmen to their dreary and almost hopeless watch; and they watched on through the long dark hours of the night, ready at any moment to man the life-boat; but they could discover no signal--the roar of the storm was too great, the fall of snow too continuous. And yet during those sad hours while the boatmen crouched, sheltering themselves as well as they could--watching, and listening, and waiting, but in vain--the terrible tragedy was worked out; at daylight they saw a wreck in Pegwell Bay. Man the life-boat! No, too late, she is bottom up, her masts are gone; she must have been wrecked on the Brake Sand, and been rolled over and over by the tremendous sweep of the sea, and the tide. Yes, it is the Ramsgate collier that was expected, and that Jarman's brother commanded; and he and all his crew have miserably perished--perished within sight of home, and within half a mile or so of the life-boat men who were so eagerly watching and waiting for a call to their rescue, and to whom they could not make their danger known. And to this day you may see the sad record of the disaster in the remains of the hull of the wreck, washed high up on the shore in Pegwell Bay, and there half buried in the sand. A great grief to Jarman this sad loss of his brother; and the poor man left a widow and a large family of children; and when fine weather came, in the early summer, many a friend who had had pleasant chats with the life-boat coxswain on Ramsgate pier, was surprised to find him diligently cruising in and out of offices in London; he was canvassing for votes for the Merchant Seamen's Orphan Asylum, and he laboured on until he succeeded in getting two of his late brother's children into that famous institution. Charles Fish was appointed to succeed Jarman as coxswain, and the life-boat under his guidance continues to do good service; many times has he been out in her, and many times has he, through much hardship and danger, brought saved lives home. And may God in His mercy continue to shield and bless him and the brave men who sail with him, and aid them in their gallant efforts to pluck the shipwrecked and the drowning from all the mighty strife of waters, that battles with such deadly fury when the storms rage round the fatal Goodwin Sands. I cannot refrain from bearing my tribute of admiration to worthy Daniel Reading, a brave, skilful, modest sailor, the master of the steam-tug _Aid_; many and many a time has he rendered service, which for daring and skill could not be well surpassed, threading in and out of the Goodwin Sands 'mid terrible storms while seeking for the position of wrecked vessels, or making short cuts to tow the life-boat into position, that no time should be lost in her efforts to save the drowning crews. Yes! Reading, and James Simpson, the mate of the _Aid_, and William Wharrier, the engineer, who have been together more than twenty years, and have been out on almost every occasion that the life-boat has been called for, have all three of them done noble and gallant service time after time, and are indeed well worthy to be ranked among the Storm Warriors who have nobly fought in the great and good cause of saving life. And many another gallant fellow might I mention, whose name stands worthily on the Ramsgate life-boat roll-call; famous specimens of what a British sailor should be--full of daring and determination, and skill, and hardihood; men who are ready to encounter all danger, and to endure any amount of hardship, in answer to the holy call: to go forth and seek to save the shipwrecked and the perishing. CHAPTER XXVIII. THE NATIONAL LIFE-BOAT INSTITUTION. "The quality of mercy is not strain'd; It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless'd; It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes: 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown;..." Whatever interest my readers may have felt in the narrative of gallant deeds wrought at one life-boat station on the coast, must be intensified at the thought of the noble work that is going on all round our sea-girt land--that, at almost all dangerous places where vessels are likely to be in distress, or lives in peril, there are life-boats ready to be manned, and brave fellows ever anxious promptly to launch forth 'mid the wind and sea, and battle their way to the rescue of the perishing. Yes, thank God, the gallant old Anglo-Saxon blood is still to the fore; the spirit of our ancestors has not died out, and we may well believe, from abundant evidence continually arising from very diversified fields, that it has not even in the least degenerated; for at all times can men be found ready to go forth either by sea or land, to dare all that men should dare, and to do all that men can do, when duty calls them to labours of self-sacrifice, endurance, and courage. And to the old bravery is now added modern science and organization, and the British coasts are guarded by a volunteer navy, equipped and marshalled by the Royal National Life-boat Institution. Two hundred and thirty-three life-boats form, at present, the great storm fleet of the Institution; the boats are stationed at the most dangerous places on the coast, and are kept always ready for service. Those who are living inland may often notice how fast the high clouds are flying overhead, and may listen to the soughing of the rising wind among the branches of the trees; but no dread conflict is pictured by the swift onsweep of the clouds, and the murmur of the wind, fitful and angry though it at times is, scarcely seems to suggest scenes of terrible peril, and of warfare unto life or death; but watch the direction in which the clouds are flying; consider on what part of our coast it is that this fierce gale strikes; imagine the heavy sea that rolls in there, the foaming breakers, the air thick with spray, the sound of the deep-voiced waves as they thunder down upon the rocks over which they break; yes! and fancy that you can make out through the low flying mist that several vessels are in the distance trying to beat their way against the growing gale, and off the dangerous lee-shore, and then rejoice as you feel fully assured, if any of those struggling vessels are overwhelmed by the storm, that it shall not be without a gallant effort for their safety that the poor fellows who form their crews shall be left to perish, for you are convinced that there are, if a life-boat station is near, storm warriors keenly watching the scene, and that they are ready at any moment to launch the life-boat and do battle with the storm and seas for the lives of their brother-sailors. Yes! and it is one of old England's many glories that it should be so. "It is the soul that makes us rich or poor;" the old philosopher tells us, and we feel that it is as true of a nation as of an individual. And we count a nation rich with a true glory, that can point to many good works organized and carried out for great and good ends by the loving heartedness, generosity, unselfishness, and courage of its people. And among such works is life-boat work; there are the rich in soul who have the means and the open hand, and there are the many who are rich in soul and have the courageous and strong hand; and the hand generous with its wealth, clasps the hand generous with its labour and readiness for peril, and together they work out those noble results in which we all rejoice, and which the records of the Life-boat Institution so fully declare. And we should be less proud of our country if it were not so; indeed we are almost inclined to think it a matter of necessity that in our island home, where the history of our country is so interwoven with the triumphs of our sailors, either in contests with our enemies, in pursuit of discovery, or in the development of commerce, that our sympathies with our sailors should indeed be deep and practical, and that while we rejoice in the safety and the comfort afforded by their labours, that we shall ever be prepared to help them in the hour of their distress; and that there can be therefore little room for wonder that those who realize the enormous traffic that is carried on around our shores, the dangerous nature of our coasts, and the constant casualties that are occurring, should earnestly desire the welfare of the life-boat cause, and be ready to labour for its development. The history of the life-boat movement, and of the foundation and gradual development of the Life-boat Institution, are given in the earlier pages of this book. The present condition of the Society tells abundantly of the success it has enjoyed, and of the sympathy it has gained, until now it is able almost to girdle our land with life-boat stations. Every year there is published by the Board of Trade, a register of the number of wrecks that have taken place in the British Isles during the previous year; the Life-boat Institution publishes a wreck-chart compiled from these returns; each wreck is denoted by a black dot which marks on the map the place at which the wreck occurred; and a truly dismal appearance the map has. See how plentifully these black dots are sprinkled round the coast-line, here one, and there two, at other places half-a-dozen side by side, or growing in number to ten or twelve, and then increasing still more rapidly at the more exposed parts of the coast, or where dangerous sands are more directly in the highway of vessels, so that in such places there may be found twenty, thirty, or forty such marks, and at some localities even more than these, as at the Sands off Yarmouth, the Goodwin Sands, the Bristol Channel, and others, where line after line is required to find room for the number of wrecks to be thus recorded. For the past year no fewer than 1958 such marks are necessary to complete the dismal list, for such was the number of the wrecks that took place, within that time, in the seas that surround the British Isles. The months of November and December were especially fatal, heavy gales, thick weather, shifting winds, worked terrible havoc among the shipping; the coasts were strewn with wrecks; and the wreck-chart grew proportionally darker in its outline; and is it not a terrible picture that it presents, as we recognise that almost every mark speaks of a dismal scene of destruction and of peril, of ships with wild seas breaking ruthlessly over them, and of men clinging on, being, perhaps, beaten slowly to death by the constant rush of the heavy waves, until, unless rescued, the shattered wreck breaks up beneath their feet, and they are at once launched into eternity? But let us look again at the chart, and we find red marks on the coast lines opposite to the black dots which stud the sea; and wherever the sea is more dark with the signs of wrecks, there do we find the coast line opposite to such places pencilled the more abundantly with the thin red lines which mark the life-boat stations; and thank God that the red marks on this wreck-chart do now so often confront the black! for if the black colour speaks of death, the red colour speaks of life; if the one tells of terrible danger the other tells of gallant rescue; if the one pictures sailors clinging to a few spars, expecting death at every moment; the other pictures the Storm Warriors ready at their various stations to man the life-boat, and launch forth to wrestle nobly with the cruel seas, to snatch from them their intended prey. And moreover, if the one set of signs tells us of the dangers incurred by the tens of thousands of sailors who are helping to minister to the necessities, and comfort, and luxury of the population of England, the other tells of men and women with warm hearts and generous hands, who let their sympathies go out towards their sailor brethren, and plant our storm-ridden shores with life-boats that shall be for the rescue of those in peril; and who are glad also to encourage and reward the brave men who so often risk their own lives in their efforts to save the lives of others. And so famously has its work gone on, that the Life-boat Society can now report that the number of lives saved, either by the life-boats of the Institution, or by especial exertions for which the Society has granted rewards, presents the grand total of more than 22,000; and we are told that for these services the Society has granted 91 gold medals, 842 silver medals, and more than £40,000 in money, so that now we may well say, that the Institution has truly become one of national importance, as it has ever been one of national necessity. Well indeed was it that Lionel Luken nearly a century ago, "In the morning sowed the seed, and in the evening withheld not his hand;" for although it was not given him to see the results of his labours, yet he commenced a work which has grown into its present noble proportions; while in contrast to all the apathy he met with, we can now point to a wide-spread and positive affection that the people of England feel for the life-boat cause; and in evidence of the hold that the work of the Society has now obtained upon the public mind we can point to its meetings, when its friends assembled have been found to rank among all classes of society, when those who are among the chief of the Royal personages of the land have been present, and have been surrounded by some of the first representatives of our aristocracy, of our army, of our navy, and of our commerce. Among the most memorable of such meetings was one held in the Mansion House in the year 1867, when the Prince of Wales occupied the chair--and the testimony he gave in favour of the Society found an echo, I am sure, in the hearts of all present. It was to the following effect: "My Lord Mayor, my lords, ladies and gentlemen. It affords me great pleasure to occupy the chair upon so interesting an occasion as the present. Among the many benevolent and charitable institutions of this country there are, I think, few which more demand our sympathy and support, and in which we can feel more interest, than the National Life-boat Institution. An institution of this kind is an absolute necessity in a great maritime country like ours. It is wholly different in one respect to many other institutions, because, although lives are to be saved, they can in those cases, in which this society operates, only be saved at the risk of the loss of other lives. I am happy to be able to congratulate the Institution upon its high state of efficiency at the present moment, and on the fact that by its means nearly 1000 lives have been saved during the past year. "I am happy also to be able to say, that life-boats exist not only upon our coasts, but that our example in this matter has been emulated by many foreign maritime countries, some of which have chosen to model their Institutions upon our own.... Half a century ago this Institution originated in this city. In 1852, the late Duke of Northumberland became its president. My lamented father was also the vice-president, and took the warmest interest in its prosperity. I am happy to say that the respected secretary, Mr. Lewis, occupied that position in 1850. He has held it ever since, and much of the success of the Institution is owing to his long experience; and the energetic manner in which he has directed its working has raised the Institution to its present high state of efficiency. "Before concluding my brief remarks, I call upon you once more to offer your support to so excellent an Institution. I congratulate you that it has arrived at so excellent a state, and I feel sure that you would be the last to wish it to decay for the want of support to its funds." Thus spake His Royal Highness, in 1867, and since then the Institution has developed more and mere, completing its organization, perfecting its system, and yearly in its noble results increasing its hold upon the affections of the country. And now, as I write the concluding lines of my book, the reality of the work related is deeply impressed upon my mind, for this morning my two little boys came running downstairs making the house ring with their cries of "The life-boat! the life-boat!" they had seen it from their nursery window. Yes, there she was, being towed by the steamer, the rough seas lashing over her; her flag was flying in triumph. I could see through my glass that there were about a dozen saved men on board the steamer; and as I have since learned, seldom have men more narrowly escaped than did those poor fellows, and seldom have men been saved by a greater exhibition of courage and perseverance than was displayed by our life-boat men while effecting their rescue. The _Scot_, a barque of 345 tons, bound from Sunderland to Algiers with a cargo of coals, after experiencing much stormy and thick weather, ran on the Kentish Knock Sand at five o'clock in the morning; the seas immediately began to break over her; the carpenter sounded the well and found two feet and a half of water in her hold, but as the waves lifted her, and plunged her down upon the Sands, she filled at once with water. The captain sent the steward into the cabin for the ship's papers; he found the water up to the cabin floor; he seized the box in which the papers were, and ran up on deck; a wave rushed over the vessel and swept him along the deck; he caught hold of a rope with one hand, but one of the sailors, overwhelmed by the same wave, threw his legs around his neck and nearly tore him from his hold; the wave passed and the two men were enabled to spring into the rigging: all hands had to take refuge there, for within five minutes of the vessel's striking she began to break up; the boats were washed away, the deck-house was torn to fragments and carried away piecemeal; the deck began to twist, and buckle, and open, and then was speedily ripped up by the force of the seas, and torn away plank after plank. The vessel broke her back and heeled over on the starboard side, and settled down upon the Sands; the men could not make any signal of distress, and if they could have done so, they were miles away from any life-boat, and at any moment the masts might give and they be plunged into the boiling sea. If the weather moderated some passing vessel might see them and be able to send a boat in to their rescue, but not while the gale lasted. The day grew on; many vessels passed the Sands, but not near enough to be able to make out the men in the rigging of the masts, which were only just above water; the weather grew worse and worse, the day was wearing away, and the night coming on; it was all very, very hopeless. At last a brig passed nearer to them than any other vessels had come; the mate said, "If they are looking at the wreck with a good glass, they may, perhaps, see us," and he stood up and waved to them. At that moment, most providentially, the pilot on board the vessel looked at the wreck through a glass, and saw the mate waving his south-wester cap. The brig soon after spoke a smack that was making in for the land, and the smack proceeded to Broadstairs and reported a wreck on the Kentish Knock, with the crew in the rigging, and that a life-boat was wanted for their rescue, for that no ordinary boat could live through the sea that was running over the Sands. At Broadstairs they felt that their own boat could never get there in time without the assistance of a steamer, and they telegraphed to Ramsgate. It was about six o'clock in the evening, the steamer _Aid_, with Reading in command, and the life-boat _Bradford_, with Fish as coxswain, and R. Goldsmith as second coxswain, at once made their way out into the gale and tremendous sea to the rescue of the shipwrecked crew. In the meantime the poor fellows on board the wreck waited on almost in despair, the ship each moment yielding to the force of the storm till the whole deck was washed away, and the masts were working more and more loose; happily she had wire rigging, which stood the heavy swaying and lurching of the masts better than the ordinary rope rigging would have done. It was piteous in talking to the men to hear them describe the condition of utter despair that they were in, and how little ground they could find for any hope whatever; piteous to hear the captain say, "There were just two planks of the deck left floating entangled in a rope, and I kept watching them, thinking that if the mast went I would try and swim to them, and float on them for the chance of being picked up by some vessel;" to hear the mate answer, "But I was just watching them too, with the same idea;" and the carpenter adds, "That was just the plan I had in my mind." And thus the ten men clung to the rigging and to each other, standing on the small crosstrees of one tottering mast, hour after hour. The day passed, still no signs of rescue; it became quite dark; it seemed impossible that they could ever see another day's dawn. They might perish at any moment! at any moment! and all ten of them. This was the conviction of each one. They told me how endless the dark hours of that terrible night seemed; and one man said, "That the thought that seemed ever present with him, was the bitter way that his little boy sobbed and cried when he bid him good-bye, and how he would cry again when he heard that 'Dadda was gone.'" At last there was a streak of dawn, but the mast had fallen over almost to a level with the water and seemed still yielding rapidly; they might see the sunrise again, but that was all; when one of the sailors cried out, "A steamer!" "What good can that be to us?" and they watch her without interest, for there seems little chance of her coming in their direction. "Ah! she is running down the edge of the Sands, and comes nearer, and nearer!"--"Well she can't help us if she does; no boat can come across the Sands to us in this surf--No! no." Shortly, a man cries, "She has a large boat in tow;"--"What! perhaps a life-boat! it may be that some passing vessel made us out yesterday and has sent a life-boat;" Oh, what a thought of hope, of joy, of life! "Can it be so? it is--it is! thank God it is--it is! Look, she has left the steamer and is coming in through the breakers straight towards us!" It is something to remember, the way in which one man said to me, as if almost unnerved by the remembrance, "Oh, what a beauty she looked! what a beauty she looked coming over those seas!" The steamer and life-boat had got out to the Sands after battling with the storm for a distance of twenty-six miles. At about 11 o'clock the night before, they spoke the Lightship on the Kentish Knock, and learnt the bearings of the wreck; but they found that it was impossible to discover her in the darkness of the night and storm, so after several vain efforts they lay to until the morning. As soon as it was light they went in search of the wreck, and the life-boat made in across the Sands, and it was then truly a great matter of heartfelt congratulation to the life-boat men that all their labour and perseverance had not been in vain; for to their great joy they could see the crew in the rigging. They anchored the boat as near to the wreck as they could venture, and then let the cable veer out until the boat was under the vessel's jib-boom. It was low-tide--the seas were not breaking over the wreck so violently as they had been; and the men were able to work their way out on to the bowsprit, and drop into the boat, and thus the ten men were saved, after being twenty-six hours holding on in the maintop of the wreck. The flood-tide was just making; all felt, that as soon as it rose and the wreck began to heave and work again, the mast would speedily go, and they realized to the full that they had only been saved just in time. The life-boat returned to the steamer as speedily as possible, and put the rescued men on board her. The shipwrecked men had not tasted anything for nearly thirty-six hours, as it was before breakfast time that they had run ashore, and they had been in the rigging for twenty-six hours. The life-boat got back to the harbour at 11 o'clock in the morning; the life-boat men had been in the open boat exposed to all the fury of the storm for nearly seventeen hours, and their exhaustion was very great. The kindness of some friends provided the weary and famished men with a good dinner at the house of their old comrade and friend, Jarman, and soon after a telegram came from Mr. Lewis, of the Life-boat Institution, to whom tidings of the rescue had been telegraphed, that the life-boatmen were to have a sovereign each, and a good dinner; but by that time they were all resting at home after their long hours of fatigue. Other friends made recognition by subscription of their noble services; and comfort was thus carried into the homes of our Storm Warriors after their gallant and triumphant efforts in saving life. The shipwrecked men were cared for in our Sailors' Home, and speedily recovered their fatigues. The captain told me he did not think they would have been alive one hour longer, if the life-boat had not come just when she did; and speaking of the life-boat, said with deep feeling, "Oh! she is a noble boat, and nobly manned; there could not be a kinder set of men!" And with these words of the brave and grateful sailor so recently and unexpectedly saved with all his crew, from that which seemed most certain death, I feel inclined to finish my book. But I will add one wish, namely, that we had a better Sailors' Home in which to receive the poor fellows who are brought ashore; 156 wrecked men were received into the Home at Ramsgate last year, 40 in one day; and a little house of £25, or so, rent, and its one sitting-room for the use of the men, only about sixteen feet by fourteen, and eighteen beds crowded together in small rooms is, of course, quite inadequate to afford the accommodation that we would wish to provide for the poor fellows brought in half dead with cold, with exhaustion, and with hunger, plucked by the Storm Warriors from the very jaws of death 'mid the rage of waters on the Goodwin Sands. God speed the life-boat! God guard the Storm Warriors! THE END. LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. 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4398	----	The Tides Of Barnegat by F. Hopkinson Smith CONTENTS I THE DOCTOR'S GIG II SPRING BLOSSOMS III LITTLE TOD FOGARTY IV ANN GOSSAWAY'S RED CLOAK V CAPTAIN NAT'S DECISION VI A GAME OF CARDS VII THE EYES OF AN OLD PORTRAIT VIII AN ARRIVAL IX THE SPREAD OF FIRE X A LATE VISITOR XI MORTON COBDEN'S DAUGHTER XII A LETTER FROM PARIS XIII SCOOTSY'S EPITHET XIV HIGH WATER AT YARDLEY XV A PACKAGE OF LETTERS XVI THE BEGINNING OF THE EBB XVII BREAKERS AHEAD XVIII THE SWEDE'S STORY XIX THE BREAKING OF THE DAWN XX THE UNDERTOW XXI THE MAN IN THE SLOUCH HAT XXII THE CLAW OF THE SEA-PUSS THE TIDES OF BARNEGAT CHAPTER I THE DOCTOR'S GIG One lovely spring morning--and this story begins on a spring morning some fifty years or more ago--a joy of a morning that made one glad to be alive, when the radiant sunshine had turned the ribbon of a road that ran from Warehold village to Barnegat Light and the sea to satin, the wide marshes to velvet, and the belts of stunted pines to bands of purple--on this spring morning, then, Martha Sands, the Cobdens' nurse, was out with her dog Meg. She had taken the little beast to the inner beach for a bath--a custom of hers when the weather was fine and the water not too cold--and was returning to Warehold by way of the road, when, calling the dog to her side, she stopped to feast her eyes on the picture unrolled at her feet. To the left of where she stood curved the coast, glistening like a scimitar, and the strip of yellow beach which divided the narrow bay from the open sea; to the right, thrust out into the sheen of silver, lay the spit of sand narrowing the inlet, its edges scalloped with lace foam, its extreme point dominated by the grim tower of Barnegat Light; aloft, high into the blue, soared the gulls, flashing like jewels as they lifted their breasts to the sun, while away and beyond the sails of the fishing-boats, gray or silver in their shifting tacks, crawled over the wrinkled sea. The glory of the landscape fixed in her mind, Martha gathered her shawl about her shoulders, tightened the strings of her white cap, smoothed out her apron, and with the remark to Meg that he'd "never see nothin' so beautiful nor so restful," resumed her walk. They were inseparable, these two, and had been ever since the day she had picked him up outside the tavern, half starved and with a sore patch on his back where some kitchen-maid had scalded him. Somehow the poor outcast brought home to her a sad page in her own history, when she herself was homeless and miserable, and no hand was stretched out to her. So she had coddled and fondled him, gaining his confidence day by day and talking to him by the hour of whatever was uppermost in her mind. Few friendships presented stronger contrasts: She stout and motherly-looking--too stout for any waistline--with kindly blue eyes, smooth gray hair--gray, not white--her round, rosy face, framed in a cotton cap, aglow with the freshness of the morning--a comforting, coddling-up kind of woman of fifty, with a low, crooning voice, gentle fingers, and soft, restful hollows about her shoulders and bosom for the heads of tired babies; Meg thin, rickety, and sneak-eyed, with a broken tail that hung at an angle, and but one ear (a black-and-tan had ruined the other)--a sandy-colored, rough-haired, good-for-nothing cur of multifarious lineage, who was either crouching at her feet or in full cry for some hole in a fence or rift in a wood-pile where he could flatten out and sulk in safety. Martha continued her talk to Meg. While she had been studying the landscape he had taken the opportunity to wallow in whatever came first, and his wet hair was bristling with sand and matted with burrs. "Come here, Meg--you measly rascal!" she cried, stamping her foot. "Come here, I tell ye!" The dog crouched close to the ground, waited until Martha was near enough to lay her hand upon him, and then, with a backward spring, darted under a bush in full blossom. "Look at ye now!" she shouted in a commanding tone. "'Tain't no use o' my washin' ye. Ye're full o' thistles and jest as dirty as when I throwed ye in the water. Come out o' that, I tell ye! Now, Meg, darlin'"--this came in a coaxing tone--"come out like a good dog--sure I'm not goin' in them brambles to hunt ye!" A clatter of hoofs rang out on the morning air. A two-wheeled gig drawn by a well-groomed sorrel horse and followed by a brown-haired Irish setter was approaching. In it sat a man of thirty, dressed in a long, mouse-colored surtout with a wide cape falling to the shoulders. On his head was a soft gray hat and about his neck a white scarf showing above the lapels of his coat. He had thin, shapely legs, a flat waist, and square shoulders, above which rose a clean-shaven face of singular sweetness and refinement. At the sound of the wheels the tattered cur poked his head from between the blossoms, twisted his one ear to catch the sound, and with a side-spring bounded up the road toward the setter. "Well, I declare, if it ain't Dr. John Cavendish and Rex!" Martha exclaimed, raising both hands in welcome as the horse stopped beside her. "Good-mornin' to ye, Doctor John. I thought it was you, but the sun blinded me, and I couldn't see. And ye never saw a better nor a brighter mornin'. These spring days is all blossoms, and they ought to be. Where ye goin', anyway, that ye're in such a hurry? Ain't nobody sick up to Cap'n Holt's, be there?" she added, a shade of anxiety crossing her face. "No, Martha; it's the dressmaker," answered the doctor, tightening the reins on the restless sorrel as he spoke. The voice was low and kindly and had a ring of sincerity through it. "What dressmaker?" "Why, Miss Gossaway!" His hand was extended now--that fine, delicately wrought, sympathetic hand that had soothed so many aching heads. "You've said it," laughed Martha, leaning over the wheel so as to press his fingers in her warm palm. "There ain't no doubt 'bout that skinny fright being 'Miss,' and there ain't no doubt 'bout her stayin' so. Ann Gossaway she is, and Ann Gossaway she'll die. Is she took bad?" she continued, a merry, questioning look lighting up her kindly face, her lips pursed knowingly. "No, only a sore throat" the doctor replied, loosening his coat. "Throat!" she rejoined, with a wry look on her face. "Too bad 'twarn't her tongue. If ye could snip off a bit o' that some day it would help folks considerable 'round here." The doctor laughed in answer, dropped the lines over the dashboard and leaned forward in his seat, the sun lighting up his clean-cut face. Busy as he was--and there were few busier men in town, as every hitching-post along the main street of Warehold village from Billy Tatham's, the driver of the country stage, to Captain Holt's, could prove--he always had time for a word with the old nurse. "And where have YOU been, Mistress Martha?" he asked, with a smile, dropping his whip into the socket, a sure sign that he had a few more minutes to give her. "Oh, down to the beach to git some o' the dirt off Meg. Look at him--did ye ever see such a rapscallion! Every time I throw him in he's into the sand ag'in wallowin' before I kin git to him." The doctor bent his head, and for an instant watched the two dogs: Meg circling about Rex, all four legs taut, his head jerking from side to side in his eagerness to be agreeable to his roadside acquaintance; the agate-eyed setter returning Meg's attentions with the stony gaze of a club swell ignoring a shabby relative. The doctor smiled thoughtfully. There was nothing he loved to study so much as dogs--they had a peculiar humor of their own, he often said, more enjoyable sometimes than that of men--then he turned to Martha again. "And why are you away from home this morning of all others?" he asked. "I thought Miss Lucy was expected from school to-day?" "And so she is, God bless her! And that's why I'm here. I was that restless I couldn't keep still, and so I says to Miss Jane, 'I'm goin' to the beach with Meg and watch the ships go by; that's the only thing that'll quiet my nerves. They're never in a hurry with everybody punchin' and haulin' them.' Not that there's anybody doin' that to me, 'cept like it is to-day when I'm waitin' for my blessed baby to come back to me. Two years, doctor--two whole years since I had my arms round her. Wouldn't ye think I'd be nigh crazy?" "She's too big for your arms now, Martha," laughed the doctor, gathering up his reins. "She's a woman--seventeen, isn't she?" "Seventeen and three months, come the fourteenth of next July. But she's not a woman to me, and she never will be. She's my wee bairn that I took from her mother's dyin' arms and nursed at my own breast, and she'll be that wee bairn to me as long as I live. Ye'll be up to see her, won't ye, doctor?" "Yes, to-night. How's Miss Jane?" As he made the inquiry his eyes kindled and a slight color suffused his cheeks. "She'll be better for seein' ye," the nurse answered with a knowing look. Then in a louder and more positive tone, "Oh, ye needn't stare so with them big brown eyes o' yourn. Ye can't fool old Martha, none o' you young people kin. Ye think I go round with my eyelids sewed up. Miss Jane knows what she wants--she's proud, and so are you; I never knew a Cobden nor a Cavendish that warn't. I haven't a word to say--it'll be a good match when it comes off. Where's that Meg? Good-by, doctor. I won't keep ye a minute longer from MISS Gossaway. I'm sorry it ain't her tongue, but if it's only her throat she may get over it. Go 'long, Meg!" Dr. Cavendish laughed one of his quiet laughs--a laugh that wrinkled the lines about his eyes, with only a low gurgle in his throat for accompaniment, picked up his whip, lifted his hat in mock courtesy to the old nurse, and calling to Rex, who, bored by Meg's attentions, had at last retreated under the gig, chirruped to his horse, and drove on. Martha watched the doctor and Rex until they were out of sight, walked on to the top of the low hill, and finding a seat by the roadside--her breath came short these warm spring days--sat down to rest, the dog stretched out in her lap. The little outcast had come to her the day Lucy left Warehold for school, and the old nurse had always regarded him with a certain superstitious feeling, persuading herself that nothing would happen to her bairn as long as this miserable dog was well cared for. "Ye heard what Doctor John said about her bein' a woman, Meg?" she crooned, when she had caught her breath. "And she with her petticoats up to her knees! That's all he knows about her. Ye'd know better than that, Meg, wouldn't ye--if ye'd seen her grow up like he's done? But grown up or not, Meg"--here she lifted the dog's nose to get a clearer view of his sleepy eyes--"she's my blessed baby and she's comin' home this very day, Meg, darlin'; d'ye hear that, ye little ruffian? And she's not goin' away ag'in, never, never. There'll be nobody drivin' round in a gig lookin' after her--nor nobody else as long as I kin help it. Now git up and come along; I'm that restless I can't sit still," and sliding the dog from her lap, she again resumed her walk toward Warehold. Soon the village loomed in sight, and later on the open gateway of "Yardley," the old Cobden Manor, with its two high brick posts topped with white balls and shaded by two tall hemlocks, through which could be seen a level path leading to an old colonial house with portico, white pillars supporting a balcony, and a sloping roof with huge chimneys and dormer windows. Martha quickened her steps, and halting at the gate-posts, paused for a moment with her eyes up the road. It was yet an hour of the time of her bairn's arrival by the country stage, but her impatience was such that she could not enter the path without this backward glance. Meg, who had followed behind his mistress at a snail's pace, also came to a halt and, as was his custom, picked out a soft spot in the road and sat down on his haunches. Suddenly the dog sprang up with a quick yelp and darted inside the gate. The next instant a young girl in white, with a wide hat shading her joyous face, jumped from behind one of the big hemlocks and with a cry pinioned Martha's arms to her side. "Oh, you dear old thing, you! where have you been? Didn't you know I was coming by the early stage?" she exclaimed in a half-querulous tone. The old nurse disengaged one of her arms from the tight clasp of the girl, reached up her hand until she found the soft cheek, patted it gently for an instant as a blind person might have done, and then reassured, hid her face on Lucy's shoulder and burst into tears. The joy of the surprise had almost stopped her breath. "No, baby, no," she murmured. "No, darlin', I didn't. I was on the beach with Meg. No, no--Oh, let me cry, darlin'. To think I've got you at last. I wouldn't have gone away, darlin', but they told me you wouldn't be here till dinner-time. Oh, darlin', is it you? And it's all true, isn't it? and ye've come back to me for good? Hug me close. Oh, my baby bairn, my little one! Oh, you precious!" and she nestled the girl's head on her bosom, smoothing her cheek as she crooned on, the tears running down her cheeks. Before the girl could reply there came a voice calling from the house: "Isn't she fine, Martha?" A woman above the middle height, young and of slender figure, dressed in a simple gray gown and without her hat, was stepping from the front porch to meet them. "Too fine, Miss Jane, for her old Martha," the nurse called back. "I've got to love her all over again. Oh, but I'm that happy I could burst meself with joy! Give me hold of your hand, darlin'--I'm afraid I'll lose ye ag'in if ye get out of reach of me." The two strolled slowly up the path to meet Jane, Martha patting the girl's arm and laying her cheek against it as she walked. Meg had ceased barking and was now sniffing at Lucy's skirts, his bent tail wagging slowly, his sneaky eyes looking up into Lucy's face. "Will he bite, Martha?" she asked, shrinking to one side. She had an aversion to anything physically imperfect, no matter how lovable it might be to others. This tattered example struck her as particularly objectionable. "No, darlin'--nothin' 'cept his food," and Martha laughed. "What a horrid little beast!" Lucy said half aloud to herself, clinging all the closer to the nurse. "This isn't the dog sister Jane wrote me about, is it? She said you loved him dearly--you don't, do you?" "Yes, that's the same dog. You don't like him, do you, darlin'?" "No, I think he's awful," retorted Lucy in a positive tone. "It's all I had to pet since you went away," Martha answered apologetically. "Well, now I'm home, give him away, please. Go away, you dreadful dog!" she cried, stamping her foot as Meg, now reassured, tried to jump upon her. The dog fell back, and crouching close to Martha's side raised his eyes appealingly, his ear and tail dragging. Jane now joined them. She had stopped to pick some blossoms for the house. "Why, Lucy, what's poor Meg done?" she asked, as she stooped over and stroked the crestfallen beast's head. "Poor old doggie--we all love you, don't we?" "Well, just please love him all to yourselves, then," retorted Lucy with a toss of her head. "I wouldn't touch him with a pair of tongs. I never saw anything so ugly. Get away, you little brute!" "Oh, Lucy, dear, don't talk so," replied the older sister in a pitying tone. "He was half starved when Martha found him and brought him home--and look at his poor back--" "No, thank you; I don't want to look at his poor back, nor his poor tail, nor anything else poor about him. And you will send him away, won't you, like a dear good old Martha?" she added, patting Martha's shoulder in a coaxing way. Then encircling Jane's waist with her arm, the two sisters sauntered slowly back to the house. Martha followed behind with Meg. Somehow, and for the first time where Lucy was concerned, she felt a tightening of her heart-strings, all the more painful because it had followed so closely upon the joy of their meeting. What had come over her bairn, she said to herself with a sigh, that she should talk so to Meg--to anything that her old nurse loved, for that matter? Jane interrupted her reveries. "Did you give Meg a bath, Martha?" she asked over her shoulder. She had seen the look of disappointment in the old nurse's face and, knowing the cause, tried to lighten the effect. "Yes--half water and half sand. Doctor John came along with Rex shinin' like a new muff, and I was ashamed to let him see Meg. He's comin' up to see you to-night, Lucy, darlin'," and she bent forward and tapped the girl's shoulder to accentuate the importance of the information. Lucy cut her eye in a roguish way and twisted her pretty head around until she could look into Jane's eyes. "Who do you think he's coming to see, sister?" "Why, you, you little goose. They're all coming--Uncle Ephraim has sent over every day to find out when you would be home, and Bart Holt was here early this morning, and will be back to-night." "What does Bart Holt look like?"--she had stopped in her walk to pluck a spray of lilac blossoms. "I haven't seen him for years; I hear he's another one of your beaux," she added, tucking the flowers into Jane's belt. "There, sister, that's just your color; that's what that gray dress needs. Tell me, what's Bart like?" "A little like Captain Nat, his father," answered Jane, ignoring Lucy's last inference, "not so stout and--" "What's he doing?" "Nothin', darlin', that's any good," broke in Martha from behind the two. "He's sailin' a boat when he ain't playin' cards or scarin' everybody down to the beach with his gun, or shyin' things at Meg." "Don't you mind anything Martha says, Lucy," interrupted Jane in a defensive tone. "He's got a great many very good qualities; he has no mother and the captain has never looked after him. It's a great wonder that he is not worse than he is." She knew Martha had spoken the truth, but she still hoped that her influence might help him, and then again, she never liked to hear even her acquaintances criticised. "Playing cards! That all?" exclaimed Lucy, arching her eyebrows; her sister's excuses for the delinquent evidently made no impression on her. "I don't think playing cards is very bad; and I don't blame him for throwing anything he could lay his hands on at this little wretch of Martha's. We all played cards up in our rooms at school. Miss Sarah never knew anything about it--she thought we were in bed, and it was just lovely to fool her. And what does the immaculate Dr. John Cavendish look like? Has he changed any?" she added with a laugh. "No," answered Jane simply. "Does he come often?" She had turned her head now and was looking from under her lids at Martha. "Just as he used to and sit around, or has he--" Here she lifted her eyebrows in inquiry, and a laugh bubbled out from between her lips. "Yes, that's just what he does do," cried Martha in a triumphant tone; "every minute he kin git. And he can't come too often to suit me. I jest love him, and I'm not the only one, neither, darlin'," she added with a nod of her head toward Jane. "And Barton Holt as well?" persisted Lucy. "Why, sister, I didn't suppose there would be a man for me to look at when I came home, and you've got two already! Which one are you going to take?" Here her rosy face was drawn into solemn lines. Jane colored. "You've got to be a great tease, Lucy," she answered as she leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. "I'm not in the back of the doctor's head, nor he in mine--he's too busy nursing the sick--and Bart's a boy!" "Why, he's twenty-five years old, isn't he?" exclaimed Lucy in some surprise. "Twenty-five years young, dearie--there's a difference, you know. That's why I do what I can to help him. If he'd had the right influences in his life and could be thrown a little more with nice women it would help make him a better man. Be very good to him, please, even if you do find him a little rough." They had mounted the steps of the porch and were now entering the wide colonial hall--a bare white hall, with a staircase protected by spindling mahogany banisters and a handrail. Jane passed into the library and seated herself at her desk. Lucy ran on upstairs, followed by Martha to help unpack her boxes and trunks. When they reached the room in which Martha had nursed her for so many years--the little crib still occupied one corner--the old woman took the wide hat from the girl's head and looked long and searchingly into her eyes. "Let me look at ye, my baby," she said, as she pushed Lucy's hair back from her forehead; "same blue eyes, darlin', same pretty mouth I kissed so often, same little dimples ye had when ye lay in my arms, but ye've changed--how I can't tell. Somehow, the face is different." Her hands now swept over the full rounded shoulders and plump arms of the beautiful girl, and over the full hips. "The doctor's right, child," she said with a sigh, stepping back a pace and looking her over critically; "my baby's gone--you've filled out to be a woman." CHAPTER II SPRING BLOSSOMS For days the neighbors in and about the village of Warehold had been looking forward to Lucy's home-coming as one of the important epochs in the history of the Manor House, quite as they would have done had Lucy been a boy and the expected function one given in honor of the youthful heir's majority. Most of them had known the father and mother of these girls, and all of them loved Jane, the gentle mistress of the home--a type of woman eminently qualified to maintain its prestige. It had been a great house in its day. Built in early Revolutionary times by Archibald Cobden, who had thrown up his office under the Crown and openly espoused the cause of the colonists, it had often been the scene of many of the festivities and social events following the conclusion of peace and for many years thereafter: the rooms were still pointed out in which Washington and Lafayette had slept, as well as the small alcove where the dashing Bart de Klyn passed the night whenever he drove over in his coach with outriders from Bow Hill to Barnegat and the sea. With the death of Colonel Creighton Cobden, who held a commission in the War of 1812, all this magnificence of living had changed, and when Morton Cobden, the father of Jane and Lucy, inherited the estate, but little was left except the Manor House, greatly out of repair, and some invested property which brought in but a modest income. On his death-bed Morton Cobden's last words were a prayer to Jane, then eighteen, that she would watch over and protect her younger sister, a fair-haired child of eight, taking his own and her dead mother's place, a trust which had so dominated Jane's life that it had become the greater part of her religion. Since then she had been the one strong hand in the home, looking after its affairs, managing their income, and watching over every step of her sister's girlhood and womanhood. Two years before she had placed Lucy in one of the fashionable boarding-schools of Philadelphia, there to study "music and French," and to perfect herself in that "grace of manner and charm of conversation," which the two maiden ladies who presided over its fortunes claimed in their modest advertisements they were so competent to teach. Part of the curriculum was an enforced absence from home of two years, during which time none of her own people were to visit her except in case of emergency. To-night, the once famous house shone with something of its old-time color. The candles were lighted in the big bronze candelabra--the ones which came from Paris; the best glass and china and all the old plate were brought out and placed on the sideboard and serving-tables; a wood fire was started (the nights were yet cold), its cheery blaze lighting up the brass fender and andirons before which many of Colonel Cobden's cronies had toasted their shins as they sipped their toddies in the old days; easy-chairs and hair-cloth sofas were drawn from the walls; the big lamps lighted, and many minor details perfected for the comfort of the expected guests. Jane entered the drawing-room in advance of Lucy and was busying herself putting the final touches to the apartment,--arranging the sprays of blossoms over the clock and under the portrait of Morton Cobden, which looked calmly down on the room from its place on the walls, when the door opened softly and Martha--the old nurse had for years been treated as a member of the family--stepped in, bowing and curtsying as would an old woman in a play, the skirt of her new black silk gown that Ann Gossaway had made for her held out between her plump fingers, her mob-cap with its long lace strings bobbing with every gesture. With her rosy cheeks, silver-rimmed spectacles, self-satisfied smile, and big puffy sleeves, she looked as if she might have stepped out of one of the old frames lining the walls. "What do ye think of me, Miss Jane? I'm proud as a peacock--that I am!" she cried, twisting herself about. "Do ye know, I never thought that skinny dressmaker could do half as well. Is it long enough?" and she craned her head in the attempt to see the edge of the skirt. "Fits you beautifully, Martha. You look fine," answered Jane in all sincerity, as she made a survey of the costume. "How does Lucy like it?" "The darlin' don't like it at all; she says I look like a pall-bearer, and ye ought to hear her laughin' at the cap. Is there anything the matter with it? The pastor's wife's got one, anyhow, and she's a year younger'n me." "Don't mind her, Martha--she laughs at everything; and how good it is to hear her! She never saw you look so well," replied Jane, as she moved a jar from a table and placed it on the mantel to hold the blossoms she had picked in the garden. "What's she doing upstairs so long?" "Prinkin'--and lookin' that beautiful ye wouldn't know her. But the width and the thickness of her"--here the wrinkled fingers measured the increase with a half circle in the air--"and the way she's plumped out--not in one place, but all over--well, I tell ye, ye'd be astonished! She knows it, too, bless her heart! I don't blame her. Let her git all the comfort she kin when she's young--that's the time for laughin'--the cryin' always comes later." No part of Martha's rhapsody over Lucy described Jane. Not in her best moments could she have been called beautiful--not even to-night when Lucy's home-coming had given a glow to her cheeks and a lustre to her eyes that nothing else had done for months. Her slender figure, almost angular in its contour with its closely drawn lines about the hips and back; her spare throat and neck, straight arms, thin wrists and hands--transparent hands, though exquisitely wrought, as were those of all her race--all so expressive of high breeding and refinement, carried with them none of the illusions of beauty. The mould of the head, moreover, even when softened by her smooth chestnut hair, worn close to her ears and caught up in a coil behind, was too severe for accepted standards, while her features wonderfully sympathetic as they were, lacked the finer modeling demanded in perfect types of female loveliness, the eyebrows being almost straight, the cheeks sunken, with little shadows under the cheek-bones, and the lips narrow and often drawn. And yet with all these discrepancies and, to some minds, blemishes there was a light in her deep gray eyes, a melody in her voice, a charm in her manner, a sureness of her being exactly the sort of woman one hoped she would be, a quick responsiveness to any confidence, all so captivating and so satisfying that 'those who knew her forgot her slight physical shortcomings and carried away only the remembrance of one so much out of the common and of so distinguished a personality that she became ever after the standard by which they judged all good women. There were times, too--especially whenever Lucy entered the room or her name was mentioned--that there shone through Jane's eyes a certain instantaneous kindling of the spirit which would irradiate her whole being as a candle does a lantern--a light betokening not only uncontrollable tenderness but unspeakable pride, dimmed now and then when some word or act of her charge brought her face to face with the weight of the responsibility resting upon her--a responsibility far outweighing that which most mothers would have felt. This so dominated Jane's every motion that it often robbed her of the full enjoyment of the companionship of a sister so young and so beautiful. If Jane, to quote Doctor John, looked like a lily swaying on a slender stem, Lucy, when she bounded into the room to-night, was a full-blown rose tossed by a summer breeze. She came in with throat and neck bare; a woman all curves and dimples, her skin as pink as a shell; plump as a baby, and as fair, and yet with the form of a wood-nymph; dressed in a clinging, soft gown, the sleeves caught up at the shoulders revealing her beautiful arms, a spray of blossoms on her bosom, her blue eyes dancing with health, looking twenty rather than seventeen; glad of her freedom, glad of her home and Jane and Martha, and of the lights and blossoms and the glint on silver and glass, and of all that made life breathable and livable. "Oh, but isn't it just too lovely to be at home!" she cried as she skipped about. "No lights out at nine, no prayers, no getting up at six o'clock and turning your mattress and washing in a sloppy little washroom. Oh, I'm so happy! I can't realize it's all true." As she spoke she raised herself on her toes so that she could see her face in the mirror over the mantel. "Why, do you know, sister," she rattled on, her eyes studying her own face, "that Miss Sarah used to make us learn a page of dictionary if we talked after the silence bell!" "You must know the whole book by heart, then, dearie," replied Jane with a smile, as she bent over a table and pushed back some books to make room for a bowl of arbutus she held in her hand. "Ah, but she didn't catch us very often. We used to stuff up the cracks in the doors so she couldn't hear us talk and smother our heads in the pillows. Jonesy, the English teacher, was the worst." She was still looking in the glass, her fingers busy with the spray of blossoms on her bosom. "She always wore felt slippers and crept around like a cat. She'd tell on anybody. We had a play one night in my room after lights were out, and Maria Collins was Claude Melnotte and I was Pauline. Maria had a mustache blackened on her lips with a piece of burnt cork and I was all fixed up in a dressing-gown and sash. We never heard Jonesy till she put her hand on the knob; then we blew out the candle and popped into bed. She smelled the candle-wick and leaned over and kissed Maria good-night, and the black all came off on her lips, and next day we got three pages apiece--the mean old thing! How do I look, Martha? Is my hair all right?" Here she turned her head for the old woman's inspection. "Beautiful, darlin'. There won't one o' them know ye; they'll think ye're a real livin' princess stepped out of a picture-book." Martha had not taken her eyes from Lucy since she entered the room. "See my little beau-catchers," she laughed, twisting her head so that Martha could see the tiny Spanish curls she had flattened against her temples. "They are for Bart Holt, and I'm going to cut sister out. Do you think he'll remember me?" she prattled on, arching her neck. "It won't make any difference if he don't," Martha retorted in a positive tone. "But Cap'n Nat will, and so will the doctor and Uncle Ephraim and--who's that comin' this early?" and the old nurse paused and listened to a heavy step on the porch. "It must be the cap'n himself; there ain't nobody but him's got a tread like that; ye'd think he was trampin' the deck o' one of his ships." The door of the drawing-room opened and a bluff, hearty, round-faced man of fifty, his iron-gray hair standing straight up on his head like a shoe-brush, dressed in a short pea-jacket surmounted by a low sailor collar and loose necktie, stepped cheerily into the room. "Ah, Miss Jane!" Somehow all the neighbors, even the most intimate, remembered to prefix "Miss" when speaking to Jane. "So you've got this fly-away back again? Where are ye? By jingo! let me look at you. Why! why! why! Did you ever! What have you been doing to yourself, lassie, that you should shed your shell like a bug and come out with wings like a butterfly? Why you're the prettiest thing I've seen since I got home from my last voyage." He had Lucy by both bands now, and was turning her about as if she had been one of Ann Gossaway's models. "Have I changed, Captain Holt?" "No--not a mite. You've got a new suit of flesh and blood on your bones, that's all. And it's the best in the locker. Well! Well! WELL!" He was still twisting her around. "She does ye proud, Martha," he called to the old nurse, who was just leaving the room to take charge of the pantry, now that the guests had begun to arrive. "And so ye're home for good and all, lassie?" "Yes--isn't it lovely?" "Lovely? That's no name for it. You'll be settin' the young fellers crazy 'bout here before they're a week older. Here come two of 'em now." Lucy turned her head quickly, just as the doctor and Barton Holt reached the door of the drawing-room. The elder of the two, Doctor John, greeted Jane as if she had been a duchess, bowing low as he approached her, his eyes drinking in her every movement; then, after a few words, remembering the occasion as being one in honor of Lucy, he walked slowly toward the young girl. "Why, Lucy, it's so delightful to get you back!" he cried, shaking her hand warmly. "And you are looking so well. Poor Martha has been on pins and needles waiting for you. I told her just how it would be--that she'd lose her little girl--and she has," and he glanced at her admiringly. "What did she say when she saw you?" "Oh, the silly old thing began to cry, just as they all do. Have you seen her dog?" The answer jarred on the doctor, although he excused her in his heart on the ground of her youth and her desire to appear at ease in talking to him. "Do you mean Meg?" he asked, scanning her face the closer. "I don't know what she calls him--but he's the ugliest little beast I ever saw." "Yes--but so amusing. I never get tired of watching him. What is left of him is the funniest thing alive. He's better than he looks, though. He and Rex have great times together." "I wish you would take him, then. I told Martha this morning that he mustn't poke his nose into my room, and he won't. He's a perfect fright." "But the dear old woman loves him," he protested with a tender tone in his voice, his eyes fixed on Lucy. He had looked into the faces of too many young girls in his professional career not to know something of what lay at the bottom of their natures. What he saw now came as a distinct surprise. "I don't care if she does," she retorted; "no, I don't," and she knit her brow and shook her pretty head as she laughed. While they stood talking Bart Holt, who had lingered at the threshold, his eyes searching for the fair arrival, was advancing toward the centre of the room. Suddenly he stood still, his gaze fixed on the vision of the girl in the clinging dress, with the blossoms resting on her breast. The curve of her back, the round of the hip; the way her moulded shoulders rose above the lace of her bodice; the bare, full arms tapering to the wrists;--the color, the movement, the grace of it all had taken away his breath. With only a side nod of recognition toward Jane, he walked straight to Lucy and with an "Excuse me," elbowed the doctor out of the way in his eagerness to reach the girl's side. The doctor smiled at the young man's impetuosity, bent his head to Lucy, and turned to where Jane was standing awaiting the arrival of her other guests. The young man extended his hand. "I'm Bart Holt," he exclaimed; "you haven't forgotten me, Miss Lucy, have you? We used to play together. Mighty glad to see you--been expecting you for a week." Lucy colored slightly and arched her head in a coquettish way. His frankness pleased her; so did the look of unfeigned admiration in his eyes. "Why, of course I haven't forgotten you, Mr. Holt. It was so nice of you to come," and she gave him the tips of her fingers--her own eyes meanwhile, in one comprehensive glance, taking in his round head with its closely cropped curls, searching brown eyes, wavering mouth, broad shoulders, and shapely body, down to his small, well-turned feet. The young fellow lacked the polish and well-bred grace of the doctor, just as he lacked his well-cut clothes and distinguished manners, but there was a sort of easy effrontery and familiar air about him that some of his women admirers encouraged and others shrank from. Strange to say, this had appealed to Lucy before he had spoken a word. "And you've come home for good now, haven't you?" His eyes were still drinking in the beauty of the girl, his mind neither on his questions nor her answers. "Yes, forever and ever," she replied, with a laugh that showed her white teeth. "Did you like it at school?" It was her lips now that held his attention and the little curves under her dimpled chin. He thought he had never seen so pretty a mouth and chin. "Not always; but we used to have lots of fun," answered the girl, studying him in return--the way his cravat was tied and the part of his hair. She thought he had well-shaped ears and that his nose and eyebrows looked like a picture she had in her room upstairs. "Come and tell me about it. Let's sit down here," he continued as he drew her to a sofa and stood waiting until she took her seat. "Well, I will for a moment, until they begin to come in," she answered, her face all smiles. She liked the way he behaved towards her--not asking her permission, but taking the responsibility and by his manner compelling a sort of obedience. "But I can't stay," she added. "Sister won't like it if I'm not with her to shake hands with everybody." "Oh, she won't mind me; I'm a great friend of Miss Jane's. Please go on; what kind of fun did you have? I like to hear about girls' scrapes. We had plenty of them at college, but I couldn't tell you half of them." He had settled himself beside her now, his appropriating eyes still taking in her beauty. "Oh, all kinds," she replied as she bent her head and glanced at the blossoms on her breast to be assured of their protective covering. "But I shouldn't think you could have much fun with the teachers watching you every minute," said Bart, moving nearer to her and turning his body so he could look squarely into her eyes. "Yes, but they didn't find out half that was going on." Then she added coyly, "I don't know whether you can keep a secret--do you tell everything you hear?" "Never tell anything." "How do I know?" "I'll swear it." In proof he held up one hand and closed both eyes in mock reverence as if he were taking an oath. He was getting more interested now in her talk; up to this time her beauty had dazzled him. "Never! So help me--" he mumbled impressively. "Well, one day we were walking out to the park--Now you're sure you won't tell sister, she's so easily shocked?" The tone was the same, but the inflection was shaded to closer intimacy. Again Bart cast up his eyes. "And all the girls were in a string with Miss Griggs, the Latin teacher, in front, and we all went in a cake shop and got a big piece of gingerbread apiece. We were all eating away hard as we could when we saw Miss Sarah coming. Every girl let her cake go, and when Miss Sarah got to us the whole ten pieces were scattered along the sidewalk." Bart looked disappointed over the mild character of the scrape. From what he had seen of her he had supposed her adventures would be seasoned with a certain spice of deviltry. "I wouldn't have done that, I'd have hidden it in my pocket," he replied, sliding down on the sofa until his head rested on the cushion next her own. "We tried, but she was too close. Poor old Griggsey got a dreadful scolding. She wasn't like Miss Jones--she wouldn't tell on the girls." "And did they let any of the fellows come to see you?" Bart asked. "No; only brothers and cousins once in a long while. Maria Collins tried to pass one of her beaux, Max Feilding, off as a cousin, but Miss Sarah went down to see him and poor Maria had to stay upstairs." "I'd have got in," said Bart with some emphasis, rousing himself from his position and twisting his body so he could again look squarely in her face. This escapade was more to his liking. "How?" asked Lucy in a tone that showed she not only quite believed it, but rather liked him the better for saying so. "Oh I don't know. I'd have cooked up some story." He was leaning over now, toying with the lace that clung to Lucy's arms. "Did you ever have any one of your own friends treated in that way?" Jane's voice cut short her answer. She had seen the two completely absorbed in each other, to the exclusion of the other guests who were now coming in, and wanted Lucy beside her. The young girl waved her fan gayly in answer, rose to her feet, turned her head close to Bart's, pointed to the incoming guests, whispered something in his ear that made him laugh, listened while he whispered to her in return, and in obedience to the summons crossed the room to meet a group of the neighbors, among them old Judge Woolworthy, in a snuff-colored coat, high black stock, and bald head, and his bustling little wife. Bart's last whisper to Lucy was in explanation of the little wife's manner--who now, all bows and smiles, was shaking hands with everybody about her. Then came Uncle Ephraim Tipple, and close beside him walked his spouse, Ann, in a camel's-hair shawl and poke-bonnet, the two preceded by Uncle Ephraim's stentorian laugh, which had been heard before their feet had touched the porch outside. Mrs. Cromartin now bustled in, accompanied by her two daughters--slim, awkward girls, both dressed alike in high waists and short frocks; and after them the Bunsbys, father, mother, and son--all smiles, the last a painfully thin young lawyer, in a low collar and a shock of whitey-brown hair, "looking like a patent window-mop resting against a wall," so Lucy described him afterward to Martha when she was putting her to bed; and finally the Colfords and Bronsons, young and old, together with Pastor Dellenbaugh, the white-haired clergyman who preached in the only church in Warehold. When Lucy had performed her duty and the several greetings were over, and Uncle Ephraim had shaken the hand of the young hostess in true pump-handle fashion, the old man roaring with laughter all the time, as if it were the funniest thing in the world to find her alive; and the good clergyman in his mildest and most impressive manner had said she grew more and more like her mother every day--which was a flight of imagination on the part of the dear man, for she didn't resemble her in the least; and the two thin girls had remarked that it must be so "perfectly blissful" to get home; and the young lawyer had complimented her on her wonderful, almost life-like resemblance to her grand-father, whose portrait hung in the court-house--and which was nearer the truth--to all of which the young girl replied in her most gracious tones, thanking them for their kindness in coming to see her and for welcoming her so cordially--the whole of Lucy's mind once more reverted to Bart. Indeed, the several lobes of her brain had been working in opposition for the past hour. While one-half of her mind was concocting polite speeches for her guests the other was absorbed in the fear that Bart would either get tired of waiting for her return and leave the sofa, or that some other girl friend of his would claim him and her delightful talk be at an end. To the young girl fresh from school Bart represented the only thing in the room that was entirely alive. The others talked platitudes and themselves. He had encouraged her to talk of HERSELF and of the things she liked. He had, too, about him an assurance and dominating personality which, although it made her a little afraid of him, only added to his attractiveness. While she stood wondering how many times the white-haired young lawyer would tell her it was so nice to have her back, she felt a slight pressure on her arm and turned to face Bart. "You are wanted, please, Miss Lucy; may I offer you my arm? Excuse me, Bunsby--I'll give her to you again in a minute." Lucy slipped her arm into Bart's, and asked simply, "What for?" "To finish our talk, of course. Do you suppose I'm going to let that tow-head monopolize you?" he answered, pressing her arm closer to his side with his own. Lucy laughed and tapped Bart with her fan in rebuke, and then there followed a bit of coquetry in which the young girl declared that he was "too mean for anything, and that she'd never seen anybody so conceited, and if he only knew, she might really prefer the 'tow head' to his own;" to which Bart answered that his only excuse was that he was so lonely he was nearly dead, and that he had only come to save his life--the whole affair culminating in his conducting her back to the sofa with a great flourish and again seating himself beside her. "I've been watching you," he began when he had made her comfortable with a small cushion behind her shoulders and another for her pretty feet. "You don't act a bit like Miss Jane." As he spoke he leaned forward and flicked an imaginary something from her bare wrist with that air which always characterized his early approaches to most women. "Why?" Lucy asked, pleased at his attentions and thanking him with a more direct look. "Oh, I don't know. You're more jolly, I think. I don't like girls who turn out to be solemn after you know them a while; I was afraid you might. You know it's a long time since I saw you." "Why, then, sister can't be solemn, for everybody says you and she are great friends," she replied with a light laugh, readjusting the lace of her bodice. "So we are; nobody about here I think as much of as I do of your sister. She's been mighty good to me. But you know what I mean: I mean those don't-touch-me kind of girls who are always thinking you mean a lot of things when you're only trying to be nice and friendly to them. I like to be a brother to a girl and to go sailing with her, and fishing, and not have her bother me about her feet getting a little bit wet, and not scream bloody murder when the boat gives a lurch. That's the kind of girl that's worth having." "And you don't find them?" laughed Lucy, looking at him out of the corners of her eyes. "Well, not many. Do you mind little things like that?" As he spoke his eyes wandered over her bare shoulders until they rested on the blossoms, the sort of roaming, critical eyes that often cause a woman to wonder whether some part of her toilet has not been carelessly put together. Then he added, with a sudden lowering of his voice: "That's a nice posy you've got. Who sent it?" and he bent his head as if to smell the cluster on her bosom. Lucy drew back and a slight flush suffused her cheek; his audacity frightened her. She was fond of admiration, but this way of expressing it was new to her. The young man caught the movement and recovered himself. He had ventured on a thin spot, as was his custom, and the sound of the cracking ice had warned him in time. "Oh, I see, they're apple blossoms," he added carelessly as he straightened up. "We've got a lot in our orchard. You like flowers, I see." The even tone and perfect self-possession of the young man reassured her. "Oh, I adore them; don't you?" Lucy answered in a relieved, almost apologetic voice. She was sorry she had misjudged him. She liked him rather the better now for her mistake. "Well, that depends. Apple blossoms never looked pretty to me before; but then it makes a good deal of difference where they are," answered Bart with a low chuckle. Jane had been watching the two and had noticed. Bart's position and manner. His easy familiarity of pose offended her. Instinctively she glanced about the room, wondering if any of her guests had seen it. That Lucy did not resent it surprised her. She supposed her sister's recent training would have made her a little more fastidious. "Come, Lucy," she called gently, moving toward her, "bring Bart over here and join the other girls." "All right, Miss Jane, we'll be there in a minute," Bart answered in Lucy's stead. Then he bent his head and said in a low voice: "Won't you give me half those blossoms?" "No; it would spoil the bunch." "Please--" "No, not a single one. You wouldn't care for them, anyway." "Yes, I would." Here he stretched out his hand and touched the blossoms on her neck. Lucy ducked her head in merry glee, sprang up, and with a triumphant curtsy and a "No, you don't, sir--not this time," joined her sister, followed by art. The guests were now separated into big and little groups. Uncle Ephraim and the judge were hob-nobbing around the fireplace, listening to Uncle Ephraim's stories and joining in the laughter which every now and then filled the room. Captain Nat was deep in a discussion with Doctor John over some seafaring matter, and Jane and Mrs. Benson were discussing a local charity with Pastor Dellenbaugh. The younger people being left to themselves soon began to pair off, the white-haired young lawyer disappearing with the older Miss Cromartin and Bart soon following with Lucy:--the outer porch and the long walk down the garden path among the trees, despite the chilliness of the night, seemed to be the only place in which they could be comfortable. During a lull in the discussion of Captain Nat's maritime news and while Mrs. Benson was talking to the pastor, Doctor John seized the opportunity to seat himself again by Jane. "Don't you think Lucy improved?" she asked, motioning the doctor to a place beside her. "She's much more beautiful than I thought she would be," he answered in a hesitating way, looking toward Lucy, and seating himself in his favorite attitude, hands in his lap, one leg crossed over the other and hanging straight beside its fellow; only a man like the doctor, of more than usual repose and of a certain elegance of form, Jane always said, could sit this way any length of time and be comfortable and unconscious of his posture. Then he added slowly, and as if he had given the subject some consideration, "You won't keep her long, I'm afraid." "Oh, don't say that," Jane cried with a nervous start. "I don't know what I would do if she should marry." "That don't sound like you, Miss Jane. You would be the first to deny yourself. You are too good to do otherwise." He spoke with a slight quiver in his voice, and yet with an emphasis that showed he believed it. "No; it is you who are good to think so," she replied in a softer tone, bending her head as she spoke, her eyes intent on her fan. "And now tell me," she added quickly, raising her eyes to his as if to bar any further tribute he might be on the point of paying to her--"I hear your mother takes greatly to heart your having refused the hospital appointment." "Yes, I'm afraid she does. Mother has a good many new-fashioned notions nowadays." He laughed--a mellow, genial laugh; more in the spirit of apology than of criticism. "And you don't want to go?" she asked, her eyes fixed on his. "Want to go? No, why should I? There would be nobody to look after the people here if I went away. You don't want me to leave, do you?" he added suddenly in an anxious tone. "Nobody does, doctor," she replied, parrying the question, her face flushing with pleasure. Here Martha entered the room hurriedly and bending over Jane's shoulder, whispered something in her ear. The doctor straightened himself and leaned back out of hearing. "Well, but I don't think she will take cold," Jane whispered in return, looking up into Martha's face. "Has she anything around her?" "Yes, your big red cloak; but the child's head is bare and there's mighty little on her neck, and she ought to come in. The wind's begun to blow and it's gettin' cold." "Where is she?" Jane continued, her face showing her surprise at Martha's statement. "Out by the gate with that dare-devil. He don't care who he gives cold. I told her she'd get her death, but she won't mind me." "Why, Martha, how can you talk so!" Jane retorted, with a disapproving frown. Then raising her voice so that the doctor could be brought into the conversation, she added in her natural tone, "Whom did you say she was with?" "Bart Holt," cried Martha aloud, nodding to the doctor as if to get his assistance in saving her bairn from possible danger. Jane colored slightly and turned to Doctor John. "You go please, doctor, and bring them all in, or you may have some new patients on your hands." The doctor looked from one to the other in doubt as to the cause of his selection, but Jane's face showed none of the anxiety in Martha's. "Yes, certainly," he answered simply; "but I'll get myself into a hornet's nest. These young people don't like to be told what's good for them," he added with a laugh, rising from his seat. "And after that you'll permit me to slip away without telling anybody, won't you? My last minute has come," and he glanced at his watch. "Going so soon? Why, I wanted you to stay for supper. It will be ready in a few minutes." Her voice had lost its buoyancy now. She never wanted him to go. She never let him know it, but it pained her all the same. "I would like to, but I cannot." All his heart was in his eyes as he spoke. "Someone ill?" she asked. "Yes, Fogarty's child. The little fellow may develop croup before morning. I saw him to-day, and his pulse was not right, he's a sturdy little chap with a thick neck, and that kind always suffers most. If he's worse Fogarty is to send word to my office," he added, holding out his hand in parting. "Can I help?" Jane asked, retaining the doctor's hand in hers as if to get the answer. "No, I'll watch him closely. Good-night," and with a smile he bent his head and withdrew. Martha followed the doctor to the outer door, and then grumbling her satisfaction went back to the pantry to direct the servants in arranging upon the small table in the supper-room the simple refreshments which always characterized the Cobdens' entertainments. Soon the girls and their beaux came trooping in to join their elders on the way to the supper-room. Lucy hung back until the last (she had not liked the doctor's interference), Jane's long red cloak draped from her shoulders, the hood hanging down her back, her cheeks radiant, her beautiful blond hair ruffled with the night wind, an aureole of gold framing her face. Bart followed close behind, a pleased, almost triumphant smile playing about his lips. He had carried his point. The cluster of blossoms which had rested upon Lucy's bosom was pinned to the lapel of his coat. CHAPTER III LITTLE TOD FOGARTY With the warmth of Jane's parting grasp lingering in his own Doctor John untied the mare, sprang into his gig, and was soon clear of the village and speeding along the causeway that stretched across the salt marshes leading past his own home to the inner beach beyond. As he drove slowly through his own gate, so as to make as little noise as possible, the cottage, blanketed under its clinging vines, seemed in the soft light of the low-lying moon to be fast asleep. Only one eye was open; this was the window of his office, through which streamed the glow of a lamp, its light falling on the gravel path and lilac bushes beyond. Rex gave a bark of welcome and raced beside the wheels. "Keep still, old dog! Down, Rex! Been lonely, old fellow?" The dog in answer leaped in the air as his master drew rein, and with eager springs tried to reach his hands, barking all the while in short and joyful yelps. Doctor John threw the lines across the dash-board, jumped from the gig, and pushing open the hall door--it was never locked--stepped quickly into his office, and turning up the lamp, threw himself into a chair at his desk. The sorrel made no attempt to go to the stable--both horse and man were accustomed to delays--sometimes of long hours and sometimes of whole nights. The appointments and fittings of the office--old-fashioned and practical as they were--reflected in a marked degree the aims and tastes of the occupant. While low bookcases stood against the walls surmounted by rows of test-tubes, mortars and pestles, cases of instruments, and a line of bottles labelled with names of various mixtures (in those days doctors were chemists as well as physicians), there could also be found a bust of the young Augustus; one or two lithographs of Heidelberg, where he had studied; and some line engravings in black frames--one a view of Oxford with the Thames wandering by, another a portrait of the Duke of Wellington, and still another of Nell Gwynn. Scattered about the room were easy-chairs and small tables piled high with books, a copy of Tacitus and an early edition of Milton being among them, while under the wide, low window stood a narrow bench crowded with flowering plants in earthen pots, the remnants of the winter's bloom. There were also souvenirs of his earlier student life--a life which few of his friends in Warehold, except Jane Cobden, knew or cared anything about--including a pair of crossed foils and two boxing-gloves; these last hung over a portrait of Macaulay. What the place lacked was the touch of a woman's hand in vase, flower, or ornament--a touch that his mother, for reasons of her own, never gave and which no other woman had yet dared suggest. For an instant the doctor sat with his elbows on the desk in deep thought, the light illuminating his calm, finely chiselled features and hands--those thin, sure hands which could guide a knife within a hair's breadth of instant death--and leaning forward, with an indrawn sigh examined some letters lying under his eye. Then, as if suddenly remembering, he glanced at the office slate, his face lighting up as he found it bare of any entry except the date. Rex had been watching his master with ears cocked, and was now on his haunches, cuddling close, his nose resting on the doctor's knee. Doctor John laid his hand on the dog's head and smoothing the long, silky ears, said with a sigh of relief, as he settled himself in his chair: "Little Tod must be better, Rex, and we are going to have a quiet night." The anxiety over his patients relieved, his thoughts reverted to Jane and their talk. He remembered the tone of her voice and the quick way in which she had warded off his tribute to her goodness; he recalled her anxiety over Lucy; he looked again into the deep, trusting eyes that gazed into his as she appealed to him for assistance; he caught once more the poise of the head as she listened to his account of little Tod Fogarty's illness and heard her quick offer to help, and felt for the second time her instant tenderness and sympathy, never withheld from the sick and suffering, and always so generous and spontaneous. A certain feeling of thankfulness welled up in his heart. Perhaps she had at last begun to depend upon him--a dependence which, with a woman such as Jane, must, he felt sure, eventually end in love. With these thoughts filling his mind, he settled deeper in his chair. These were the times in which he loved to think of her--when, with pipe in mouth, he could sit alone by his fire and build castles in the coals, every rosy mountain-top aglow with the love he bore her; with no watchful mother's face trying to fathom his thoughts; only his faithful dog stretched at his feet. Picking up his brierwood, lying on a pile of books on his desk, and within reach of his hand, he started to fill the bowl, when a scrap of paper covered with a scrawl written in pencil came into view. He turned it to the light and sprang to his feet. "Tod worse," he said to himself. "I wonder how long this has been here." The dog was now beside him looking up into the doctor's eyes. It was not the first time that he had seen his master's face grow suddenly serious as he had read the tell-tale slate or had opened some note awaiting his arrival. Doctor John lowered the lamp, stepped noiselessly to the foot of the winding stairs that led to the sleeping rooms above--the dog close at his heels, watching his every movement--and called gently: "Mother! mother, dear!" He never left his office when she was at home and awake without telling her where he was going. No one answered. "She is asleep. I will slip out without waking her. Stay where you are, Rex--I will be back some time before daylight," and throwing his night-cloak about his shoulders, he started for his gig. The dog stopped with his paws resting on the outer edge of the top step of the porch, the line he was not to pass, and looked wistfully after the doctor. His loneliness was to continue, and his poor master to go out into the night alone. His tail ceased to wag, only his eyes moved. Once outside Doctor John patted the mare's neck as if in apology and loosened the reins. "Come, old girl," he said; "I'm sorry, but it can't be helped," and springing into the gig, he walked the mare clear of the gravel beyond the gate, so as not to rouse his mother, touched her lightly with the whip, and sent her spinning along the road on the way to Fogarty's. The route led toward the sea, branching off within the sight of the cottage porch, past the low, conical ice-houses used by the fishermen in which to cool their fish during the hot weather, along the sand-dunes, and down a steep grade to the shore. The tide was making flood, and the crawling surf spent itself in long shelving reaches of foam. These so packed the sand that the wheels of the gig hardly made an impression upon it. Along this smooth surface the mare trotted briskly, her nimble feet wet with the farthest reaches of the incoming wash. As he approached the old House of Refuge, black in the moonlight and looking twice its size in the stretch of the endless beach, he noticed for the hundredth time how like a crouching woman it appeared, with its hipped roof hunched up like a shoulder close propped against the dune and its overhanging eaves but a draped hood shading its thoughtful brow; an illusion which vanished when its square form, with its wide door and long platform pointing to the sea, came into view. More than once in its brief history the doctor had seen the volunteer crew, aroused from their cabins along the shore by the boom of a gun from some stranded vessel, throw wide its door and with a wild cheer whirl the life-boat housed beneath its roof into the boiling surf, and many a time had he helped to bring back to life the benumbed bodies drawn from the merciless sea by their strong arms. There were other houses like it up and down the coast. Some had remained unused for years, desolate and forlorn, no unhappy ship having foundered or struck the breakers within their reach; others had been in constant use. The crews were gathered from the immediate neighborhood by the custodian, who was the only man to receive pay from the Government. If he lived near by he kept the key; if not, the nearest fisherman held it. Fogarty, the father of the sick child, and whose cabin was within gunshot of this house, kept the key this year. No other protection was given these isolated houses and none was needed. These black-hooded Sisters of the Coast, keeping their lonely vigils, were as safe from beach-combers and sea-prowlers as their white-capped namesakes would have been threading the lonely suburbs of some city. The sound of the mare's feet on the oyster-shell path outside his cabin brought Fogarty, a tall, thin, weather-beaten fisherman, to the door. He was still wearing his hip-boots and sou'wester--he was just in from the surf--and stood outside the low doorway with a lantern. Its light streamed over the sand and made wavering patterns about the mare's feet. "Thought ye'd never come, Doc," he whispered, as he threw the blanket over the mare. "Wife's nigh crazy. Tod's fightin' for all he's worth, but there ain't much breath left in him. I was off the inlet when it come on." The wife, a thick-set woman in a close-fitting cap, her arms bared to the elbow, her petticoats above the tops of her shoes, met him inside the door. She had been crying and her eyelids were still wet and her cheeks swollen. The light of the ship's lantern fastened to the wall fell upon a crib in the corner, on which lay the child, his short curls, tangled with much tossing, smoothed back from his face. The doctor's ears had caught the sound of the child's breathing before he entered the room. "When did this come on?" Doctor John asked, settling down beside the crib upon a stool that the wife had brushed off with her apron. "'Bout sundown, sir," she answered, her tear-soaked eyes fixed on little Tod's face. Her teeth chattered as she spoke and her arms were tight pressed against her sides, her fingers opening and shutting in her agony. Now and then in her nervousness she would wipe her forehead with the back of her wrist as if it were wet, or press her two fingers deep into her swollen cheek. Fogarty had followed close behind the doctor and now stood looking down at the crib with fixed eyes, his thin lips close shut, his square jaw sunk in the collar of his shirt. There were no dangers that the sea could unfold which this silent surfman had not met and conquered, and would again. Every fisherman on the coast knew Fogarty's pluck and skill, and many of them owed their lives to him. To-night, before this invisible power slowly closing about his child he was as powerless as a skiff without oars caught in the swirl of a Barnegat tide. "Why didn't you let me know sooner, Fogarty? You understood my directions?" Doctor John asked in a surprised tone. "You shouldn't have left him without letting me know." It was only when his orders were disobeyed and life endangered that he spoke thus. The fisherman turned his head and was about to reply when the wife stepped in front of him. "My husband got ketched in the inlet, sir," she said in an apologetic tone, as if to excuse his absence. "The tide set ag'in him and he had hard pullin' makin' the p'int. It cuts in turrible there, you know, doctor. Tod seemed to be all right when he left him this mornin'. I had husband's mate take the note I wrote ye. Mate said nobody was at home and he laid it under your pipe. He thought ye'd sure find it there when ye come in." Doctor John was not listening to her explanations; he was leaning over the rude crib, his ear to the child's breast. Regaining his position, he smoothed the curls tenderly from the forehead of the little fellow, who still lay with eyes closed, one stout brown hand and arm clear of the coverlet, and stood watching his breathing. Every now and then a spasm of pain would cross the child's face; the chubby hand would open convulsively and a muffled cry escape him. Doctor John watched his breathing for some minutes, laid his hand again on the child's forehead, and rose from the stool. "Start up that fire, Fogarty," he said in a crisp tone, turning up his shirt-cuffs, slipping off his evening coat, and handing the garment to the wife, who hung it mechanically over a chair, her eyes all the time searching Doctor John's face for some gleam of hope. "Now get a pan," he continued, "fill it with water and some corn-meal, and get me some cotton cloth--half an apron, piece of an old petticoat, anything, but be quick about it." The woman, glad of something to do, hastened to obey. Somehow, the tones of his voice had put new courage into her heart. Fogarty threw a heap of driftwood on the smouldering fire and filled the kettle; the dry splinters crackled into a blaze. The noise aroused the child. The doctor held up his finger for silence and again caressed the boy's forehead. Fogarty, with a fresh look of alarm in his face, tiptoed back of the crib and stood behind the restless sufferer. Under the doctor's touch the child once more became quiet. "Is he bad off?" the wife murmured when the doctor moved to the fire and began stirring the mush she was preparing. "The other one went this way; we can't lose him. You won't lose him, will ye, doctor, dear? I don't want to live if this one goes. Please, doctor--" The doctor looked into the wife's eyes, blurred with tears, and laid his hand tenderly on her shoulder. "Keep a good heart, wife," he said; "we'll pull him through. Tod is a tough little chap with plenty of fight in him yet. I've seen them much worse. It will soon be over; don't worry." Mrs. Fogarty's eyes brightened and even the fisherman's grim face relaxed. Silent men in grave crises suffer most; the habit of their lives precludes the giving out of words that soothe and heal; when others speak them, they sink into their thirsty souls like drops of rain after a long drought. It was just such timely expressions as these that helped Doctor John's patients most--often their only hope hung on some word uttered with a buoyancy of spirit that for a moment stifled all their anxieties. The effect of the treatment began to tell upon the little sufferer--his breathing became less difficult, the spasms less frequent. The doctor whispered the change to the wife, sitting close at his elbow, his impassive face brightening as he spoke; there was an oven chance now for the boy's life. The vigil continued. No one moved except Fogarty, who would now and then tiptoe quickly to the hearth, add a fresh log to the embers, and as quickly move back to his position behind the child's crib. The rising and falling of the blaze, keeping rhythm, as it were, to the hopes and fears of the group, lighted up in turn each figure in the room. First the doctor sitting with hands resting on his knees, his aquiline nose and brow clearly outlined against the shadowy background in the gold chalk of the dancing flames, his black evening clothes in strong contrast to the high white of the coverlet, framing the child's face like a nimbus. Next the bent body of the wife, her face in half-tones, her stout shoulders in high relief, and behind, swallowed up in the gloom, out of reach of the fire-. gleam, the straight, motionless form of the fisherman, standing with folded arms, grim and silent, his unseen eyes fixed on his child. Far into the night, and until the gray dawn streaked the sky, this vigil continued; the doctor, assisted by Fogarty and the wife, changing the poultices, filling the child's lungs with hot steam by means of a paper funnel, and encouraging the mother by his talk. At one time he would tell her in half-whispered tones of a child who had recovered and who had been much weaker than this one. Again he would turn to Fogarty and talk of the sea, of the fishing outside the inlet, of the big three-masted schooner which had been built by the men at Tom's River, of the new light they thought of building at Barnegat to take the place of the old one--anything to divert their minds and lessen their anxieties, stopping only to note the sound of every cough the boy gave or to change the treatment as the little sufferer struggled on fighting for his life. When the child dozed no one moved, no word was spoken. Then in the silence there would come to their ears above the labored breathing of the boy the long swinging tick of the clock, dull and ominous, as if tolling the minutes of a passing life; the ceaseless crunch of the sea, chewing its cud on the beach outside or the low moan of the outer bar turning restlessly on its bed of sand. Suddenly, and without warning, and out of an apparent sleep, the child started up from his pillow with staring eyes and began beating the air for breath. The doctor leaned quickly forward, listened for a moment, his ear to the boy's chest, and said in a quiet, restrained voice: "Go into the other room, Mrs. Fogarty, and stay there till I call you." The woman raised her eyes to his and obeyed mechanically. She was worn out, mind and body, and had lost her power of resistance. As the door shut upon her Doctor John sprang from the stool, caught the lamp from the wall, handed it to Fogarty, and picking the child up from the crib, laid it flat upon his knees. He now slipped his hand into his pocket and took from it a leather case filled with instruments. "Hold the light, Fogarty," he said in a firm, decided tone, "and keep your nerve. I thought he'd pull through without it, but he'll strangle if I don't." "What ye goin' to do--not cut him?" whispered the fisherman in a trembling voice. "Yes. It's his only chance. I've seen it coming on for the last hour--no nonsense now. Steady, old fellow. It'll be over in a minute. ... There, my boy, that'll help you. Now, Fogarty, hand me that cloth. ... All right, little man; don't cry; it's all over. Now open the door and let your wife in," and he laid the child back on the pillow. When the doctor took the blanket from the sorrel tethered outside Fogarty's cabin and turned his horse's head homeward the sails of the fishing-boats lying in a string on the far horizon flashed silver in the morning sun, His groom met him at the stable door, and without a word led the mare into the barn. The lamp in his study was still burning in yellow mockery of the rosy dawn. He laid his case of instruments on the desk, hung his cloak and hat to a peg in the closet, and ascended the staircase on the way to his bedroom. As he passed his mother's open door she heard his step. "Why, it's broad daylight, son," she called in a voice ending in a yawn. "Yes, mother." "Where have you been?" "To see little Tod Fogarty," he answered simply. "What's the matter with him?" "Croup." "Is he going to die?" "No, not this time." "Well, what did you stay out all night for?" The voice had now grown stronger, with a petulant tone through it. "Well, I could hardly help it. They are very simple people, and were so badly frightened that they were helpless. It's the only child they have left to them--the last one died of croup." "Well, are you going to turn nurse for half the paupers in the county? All children have croup, and they don't all die!" The petulant voice had now developed into one of indignation. "No, mother, but I couldn't take any risks. This little chap is worth saving." There came a pause, during which the tired man waited patiently. "You were at the Cobdens'?" "Yes; or I should have reached Fogarty's sooner." "And Miss Jane detained you, of course." "No, mother." "Good-night, John." "Say rather 'Good-day,' mother," he answered with a smile and continued on to his room. CHAPTER IV ANN GOSSAWAY'S RED CLOAK The merrymakings at Yardley continued for weeks, a new impetus and flavor being lent them by the arrival of two of Lucy's friends--her schoolmate and bosom companion, Maria Collins, of Trenton, and Maria's devoted admirer, Max Feilding, of Walnut Hill, Philadelphia. Jane, in her joy over Lucy's home-coming, and in her desire to meet her sister's every wish, gladly welcomed the new arrivals, although Miss Collins, strange to say, had not made a very good impression upon her. Max she thought better of. He was a quiet, well-bred young fellow; older than either Lucy or Maria, and having lived abroad a year, knew something of the outside world. Moreover, their families had always been intimate in the old days, his ancestral home being always open to Jane's mother when a girl. The arrival of these two strangers only added to the general gayety. Picnics were planned to the woods back of Warehold to which the young people of the town were invited, and in which Billy Tatham with his team took a prominent part. Sailing and fishing parties outside of Barnegat were gotten up; dances were held in the old parlor, and even tableaux were arranged under Max's artistic guidance. In one of these Maria wore a Spanish costume fashioned out of a white lace shawl belonging to Jane's grand-mother draped over her head and shoulders, and made the more bewitching by a red japonica fixed in her hair, and Lucy appeared as a dairy-maid decked out in one of Martha's caps, altered to fit her shapely head. The village itself was greatly stirred. "Have you seen them two fly-up-the-creeks?" Billy Tatham, the stage-driver, asked of Uncle Ephraim Tipple as he was driving him down to the boat-landing. "No, what do they look like?" "The He-one had on a two-inch hat with a green ribbon and wore a white bob-tail coat that 'bout reached to the top o' his pants. Looks like he lived on water-crackers and milk, his skin's that white. The She-one had a set o' hoops on her big as a circus tent. Much as I could do to git her in the 'bus--as it was, she come in sideways. And her trunk! Well, it oughter been on wheels--one o' them travellin' houses. I thought one spell I'd take the old plug out the shafts and hook on to it and git it up that-a-way." "Some of Lucy's chums, I guess," chuckled Uncle Ephraim. "Miss Jane told me they were coming. How long are they going to stay?" "Dunno. Till they git fed up and fattened, maybe. If they was mine I'd have killin' time to-day." Ann Gossaway and some of her cronies also gave free rein to their tongues. "Learned them tricks at a finishin' school, did they?" broke out the dressmaker. (Lucy had been the only young woman in Warehold who had ever enjoyed that privilege.) "Wearin' each other's hats, rollin' round in the sand, and hollerin' so you could hear 'em clear to the lighthouse. If I had my way I'd finish 'em, And that's where they'll git if they don't mind, and quick, too!" The Dellenbaughs, Cromartins, and Bunsbys, being of another class, viewed the young couple's visit in a different light. "Mr. Feilding has such nice hands and wears such lovely cravats," the younger Miss Cromartin said, and "Miss Collins is too sweet for anything." Prim Mr. Bunsby, having superior notions of life and deportment, only shook his head. He looked for more dignity, he said; but then this Byronic young man had not been invited to any of the outings. In all these merrymakings and outings Lucy was the central figure. Her beauty, her joyous nature, her freedom from affectation and conventionality, her love of the out-of-doors, her pretty clothes and the way she wore them, all added to her popularity. In the swing and toss of her freedom, her true temperament developed. She was like a summer rose, making everything and everybody glad about her, loving the air she breathed as much for the color it put into her cheeks as for the new bound it gave to her blood. Just as she loved the sunlight for its warmth and the dip and swell of the sea for its thrill. So, too, when the roses were a glory of bloom, not only would she revel in the beauty of the blossoms, but intoxicated by their color and fragrance, would bury her face in the wealth of their abundance, taking in great draughts of their perfume, caressing them with her cheeks, drinking in the honey of their petals. This was also true of her voice--a rich, full, vibrating voice, that dominated the room and thrilled the hearts of all who heard her. When she sang she sang as a bird sings, as much to relieve its own overcharged little body, full to bursting with the music in its soul, as to gladden the surrounding woods with its melody--because, too, she could not help it and because the notes lay nearest her bubbling heart and could find their only outlet through the lips. Bart was her constant companion. Under his instructions she had learned to hold the tiller in sailing in and out of the inlet; to swim over hand; to dive from a plank, no matter how high the jump; and to join in all his outdoor sports. Lucy had been his constant inspiration in all of this. She had surveyed the field that first night of their meeting and had discovered that the young man's personality offered the only material in Warehold available for her purpose. With him, or someone like him--one who had leisure and freedom, one who was quick and strong and skilful (and Bart was all of these)--the success of her summer would be assured. Without him many of her plans could not be carried out. And her victory over him had been an easy one. Held first by the spell of her beauty and controlled later by her tact and stronger will, the young man's effrontery--almost impudence at times--had changed to a certain respectful subservience, which showed itself in his constant effort to please and amuse her. When they were not sailing they were back in the orchard out of sight of the house, or were walking together nobody knew where. Often Bart would call for her immediately after breakfast, and the two would pack a lunch-basket and be gone all day, Lucy arranging the details of the outing, and Bart entering into them with a dash and an eagerness which, to a man of his temperament, cemented the bond between them all the closer. Had they been two fabled denizens of the wood--she a nymph and he a dryad--they could not have been more closely linked with sky and earth. As for Jane, she watched the increasing intimacy with alarm. She had suddenly become aroused to the fact that Lucy's love affair with Bart was going far beyond the limits of prudence. The son of Captain Nathaniel Holt, late of the Black Ball Line of packets, would always be welcome as a visitor at the home, the captain being an old and tried friend of her father's; but neither Bart's education nor prospects, nor, for that matter, his social position--a point which usually had very little weight with Jane--could possibly entitle him to ask the hand of the granddaughter of Archibald Cobden in marriage. She began to regret that she had thrown them together. Her own ideas of reforming him had never contemplated any such intimacy as now existed between the young man and her sister. The side of his nature which he had always shown her had been one of respectful attention to her wishes; so much so that she had been greatly encouraged in her efforts to make something more of him than even his best friends predicted could be done; but she had never for one instant intended that her friendly interest should go any further, nor could she have conceived of such an issue. And yet Jane did nothing to prevent the meetings and outings of the young couple, even after Maria's and Max's departure. When Martha, in her own ever-increasing anxiety, spoke of the growing intimacy she looked grave, but she gave no indication of her own thoughts. Her pride prevented her discussing the situation with the old nurse and her love for Lucy from intervening in her pleasures. "She has been cooped up at school so long, Martha, dear," she answered in extenuation, "that I hate to interfere in anything she wants to do. She is very happy; let her alone. I wish, though, she would return some of the calls of these good people who have been so kind to her. Perhaps she will if you speak to her. But don't worry about Bart; that will wear itself out. All young girls must have their love-affairs." Jane's voice had lacked the ring of true sincerity when she spoke about "wearing itself out," and Martha had gone to her room more dissatisfied than before. This feeling became all the more intense when, the next day, from her window she watched Bart tying on Lucy's hat, puffing out the big bow under her chin, smoothing her hair from the flying strings. Lucy's eyes were dancing, her face turned toward Bart's, her pretty lips near his own. There was a knot or a twist, or a collection of knots and twists, or perhaps Bart's fingers bungled, for minutes passed before the hat could be fastened to suit either of them. Martha's head had all this time been thrust out of the easement, her gaze apparently fixed on a birdcage hung from a hook near the shutter. Bart caught her eye and whispered to Lucy that that "old spy-cat" was watching them; whereupon Lucy faced about, waved her hand to the old nurse, and turning quickly, raced up the orchard and out of sight, followed by Bart carrying a shawl for them to sit upon. After that Martha, unconsciously, perhaps, to herself, kept watch, so far as she could, upon their movements, without, as she thought, betraying herself: making excuses to go to the village when they two went off together in that direction; traversing the orchard, ostensibly looking for Meg when she knew all the time that the dog was sound asleep in the woodshed; or yielding to a sudden desire to give the rascal a bath whenever Lucy announced that she and Bart were going to spend the morning down by the water. As the weeks flew by and Lucy had shown no willingness to assume her share of any of the responsibilities of the house,--any that interfered with her personal enjoyment,--Jane became more and more restless and unhappy. The older village people had shown her sister every attention, she said to herself,--more than was her due, considering her youth,--and yet Lucy had never crossed any one of their thresholds. She again pleaded with the girl to remember her social duties and to pay some regard to the neighbors who had called upon her and who had shown her so much kindness; to which the happy-hearted sister had laughed back in reply: "What for, you dear sister? These old fossils don't want to see me, and I'm sure I don't want to see them. Some of them give me the shivers, they are so prim." It was with glad surprise, therefore, that Jane heard Lucy say in Martha's hearing one bright afternoon: "Now, I'm going to begin, sister, and you won't have to scold me any more. Everyone of these old tabbies I will take in a row: Mrs. Cavendish first, and then the Cromartins, and the balance of the bunch when I can reach them. I am going to Rose Cottage to see Mrs. Cavendish this very afternoon." The selection of Mrs. Cavendish as first on her list only increased Jane's wonder. Rose Cottage lay some two miles from Warehold, near the upper end of the beach, and few of their other friends lived near it. Then again, Jane knew that Lucy had not liked the doctor's calling her into the house the night of her arrival, and had heretofore made one excuse after another when urged to call on his mother. Her delight, therefore, over Lucy's sudden sense of duty was all the more keen. "I'll go with you, darling," she answered, slipping her arm about Lucy's waist, "and we'll take Meg for a walk." So they started, Lucy in her prettiest frock and hat and Jane with her big red cloak over her arm to protect the young girl from the breeze from the sea, which in the early autumn was often cool, especially if they should sit out on Mrs. Cavendish's piazza. The doctor's mother met them on the porch. She had seen them enter the garden gate, and had left her seat by the window, and was standing on the top step to welcome them. Rex, as usual, in the doctor's absence, did the honors of the office. He loved Jane, and always sprang straight at her, his big paws resting on her shoulders. These courtesies, however, he did not extend to Meg. The high-bred setter had no other salutation for the clay-colored remnant than a lifting of his nose, a tightening of his legs, and a smothered growl when Meg ventured too near his lordship. "Come up, my dear, and let me look at you," were Mrs. Cavendish's first words of salutation to Lucy. "I hear you have quite turned the heads of all the gallants in Warehold. John says you are very beautiful, and you know the doctor is a good judge, is he not, Miss Jane?" she added, holding out her hands to them both. "And he's quite right; you are just like your dear mother, who was known as the Rose of Barnegat long before you were born. Shall we sit here, or will you come into my little salon for a cup of tea?" It was always a salon to Mrs. Cavendish, never a "sitting-room." "Oh, please let me sit here," Lucy answered, checking a rising smile at the word, "the view is so lovely," and without further comment or any reference to the compliments showered upon her, she took her seat upon the top step and began to play with Rex, who had already offered to make friends with her, his invariable habit with well-dressed people. Jane meanwhile improved the occasion to ask the doctor's mother about the hospital they were building near Barnegat, and whether she and one or two of the other ladies at Warehold would not be useful as visitors, and, perhaps, in case of emergency, as nurses. While the talk was in progress Lucy sat smoothing Rex's silky ears, listening to every word her hostess spoke, watching her gestures and the expressions that crossed her face, and settling in her mind for all time, after the manner of young girls, what sort of woman the doctor's mother might be; any opinions she might have had two years before being now outlawed by this advanced young woman in her present mature judgment. In that comprehensive glance, with the profound wisdom of her seventeen summers to help her, she had come to the conclusion that Mrs. Cavendish was a high-strung, nervous, fussy little woman of fifty, with an outward show of good-will and an inward intention to rip everybody up the back who opposed her; proud of her home, of her blood, and of her son, and determined, if she could manage it, to break off his attachment for Jane, no matter at what cost. This last Lucy caught from a peculiar look in the little old woman's eyes and a slightly scornful curve of the lower lip as she listened to Jane's talk about the hospital, all of which was lost on "plain Jane Cobden," as the doctor's mother invariably called her sister behind her back. Then the young mind-reader turned her attention to the house and grounds and the buildings lying above and before her, especially to the way the matted vines hung to the porches and clambered over the roof and dormers. Later on she listened to Mrs. Cavendish's description of its age and ancestry: How it had come down to her from her grandfather, whose large estate was near Trenton, where as a girl she had spent her life; how in those days it was but a small villa to which old Nicholas Erskine, her great-uncle, would bring his guests when the August days made Trenton unbearable; and how in later years under the big trees back of the house and over the lawn--"you can see them from where you sit, my dear"--tea had been served to twenty or more of "the first gentlemen and ladies of the land." Jane had heard it all a dozen times before, and so had every other visitor at Rose Cottage, but to Lucy it was only confirmation of her latter-day opinion of her hostess. Nothing, however, could be more gracious than the close attention which the young girl gave Mrs. Cavendish's every word when the talk was again directed to her, bending her pretty head and laughing at the right time--a courtesy which so charmed the dear lady that she insisted on giving first Lucy, and then Jane, a bunch of roses from her "own favorite bush" before the two girls took their leave. With these evidences of her delight made clear, Lucy pushed Rex from her side--he had become presuming and had left the imprint of his dusty paw upon her spotless frock--and with the remark that she had other visits to pay, her only regret being that this one was so short, she got up from her seat on the step, called Meg, and stood waiting for Jane with some slight impatience in her manner. Jane immediately rose from her chair. She had been greatly pleaded at the impression Lucy had made. Her manner, her courtesy, her respect for the older woman, her humoring her whims, show her to be the daughter of a Cobden. As to her own place during the visit, she had never given it a thought. She would always be willing to act as foil to her accomplished, brilliant sister if by so doing she could make other people love Lucy the more. As they walked through the doctor's study, Mrs. Cavendish preceding them, Jane lingered for a moment and gave a hurried glance about her. There stood his chair and his lounge where he had thrown himself so often when tired out. There, too, was the closet where he hung his coat and hat, and the desk covered with books and papers. A certain feeling of reverence not unmixed with curiosity took possession of her, as when one enters a sanctuary in the absence of the priest. For an instant she passed her hand gently over the leather back of the chair where his head rested, smoothing it with her fingers. Then her eyes wandered over the room, noting each appointment in detail. Suddenly a sense of injustice rose in her mind as she thought that nothing of beauty had ever been added to these plain surroundings; even the plants in the boxes by the windows looked half faded. With a quick glance at the open door she slipped a rose from the bunch in her hand, leaned over, and with the feeling of a devotee laying an offering on the altar, placed the flower hurried on the doctor's slate. Then she joined Mrs. Cavendish. Lucy walked slowly from the gate, her eyes every now and then turned to the sea. When she and Jane had reached the cross-road that branched off toward the beach--it ran within sight of Mrs. Cavendish's windows--Lucy said: "The afternoon is so lovely I'm not going to pay any more visits, sister. Suppose I go to the beach and give Meg a bath. You won't mind, will you? Come, Meg!" "Oh, how happy you will make him!" cried Jane. "But you are not dressed warm enough, dearie. You know how cool it gets toward evening. Here, take my cloak. Perhaps I'd better go with you--" "No, do you keep on home. I want to see if the little wretch will be contented with me alone. Good-by," and without giving her sister time to protest, she called to Meg, and with a wave of her hand, the red cloak flying from her shoulders, ran toward the beach, Meg bounding after her. Jane waved back in answer, and kept her eyes on the graceful figure skipping along the road, her head and shoulders in silhouette against the blue sea, her white skirts brushing the yellow grass of the sand-dune. All the mother-love in her heart welled up in her breast. She was so proud of her, so much in love with her, so thankful for her! All these foolish love affairs and girl fancies would soon be over and Bart and the others like him out of Lucy's mind and heart. Why worry about it? Some great strong soul would come by and by and take this child in his arms and make a woman of her. Some strong soul-- She stopped short in her walk and her thoughts went back to the red rose lying on the doctor's desk. "Will he know?" she said to herself; "he loves flowers so, and I don't believe anybody ever puts one on his desk. Poor fellow! how hard he works and how good he is to everybody! Little Tod would have died but for his tenderness." Then, with a prayer in her heart and a new light in her eyes, she kept on her way. Lucy, as she bounded along the edge of the bluff, Meg scurrying after her, had never once lost sight of her sister's slender figure. When a turn in the road shut her from view, she crouched down behind a sand-dune, waited until she was sure Jane would not change her mind and join her, and then folding the cloak over her arm, gathered up her skirts and ran with all her speed along the wet sand to the House of Refuge. As she reached its side, Bart Holt stepped out into the afternoon light. "I thought you'd never come, darling," he said, catching her in his arms and kissing her. "I couldn't help it, sweetheart. I told sister I was going to see Mrs. Cavendish, and she was so delighted she said she would go, too." "Where is she?" he interrupted, turning his head and looking anxiously up the beach. "Gone home. Oh, I fixed that. I was scared to death for a minute, but you trust me when I want to get off." "Why didn't you let her take that beast of a dog with her? We don't want him," he rejoined, pointing to Meg, who had come to a sudden standstill at the sight of Bart. "Why, you silly! That's how I got away. She thought I was going to give him a bath. How long have you been waiting, my precious?" Her hand was on his shoulder now, her eyes raised to his. "Oh, 'bout a year. It really seems like a year, Luce" (his pet name for her), "when I'm waiting for you. I was sure something was up. Wait till I open the door." The two turned toward the house. "Why! can we get in? I thought Fogarty, the fisherman, had the key," she asked, with a tone of pleasant surprise in her voice. "So he has," he laughed. "Got it now hanging up behind his clock. I borrowed it yesterday and had one made just like it. I'm of age." This came with a sly wink, followed by a low laugh of triumph. Lucy smiled. She liked his daring; she liked, too, his resources. When a thing was to be done, Bart always found the way to do it. She waited until he had fitted the new bright key into the rusty lock, her hand in his. "Now, come inside," he cried, swinging wide the big doors. "Isn't it a jolly place?" He slipped his arm about her and drew her to him. "See, there's the stove with the kindling-wood all ready to light when anything comes ashore, and up on that shelf are life-preservers; and here's a table and some stools and a lantern--two of 'em; and there's the big life-boat, all ready to push out. Good place to come Sundays with some of the fellows, isn't it? Play all night here, and not a soul would find you out," he chuckled as he pointed to the different things. "You didn't think, now, I was going to have a cubby-hole like this to hide you in where that old spot-cat Martha can't be watching us, did you?" he added, drawing her toward him and again kissing her with a sudden intensity. Lucy slipped from his arms and began examining everything with the greatest interest. She had never seen anything but the outside of the house before and she always wondered what it contained, and as a child had stood up on her toes and tried to peep in through the crack of the big door. When she had looked the boat all over and felt the oars, and wondered whether the fire could be lighted quick enough, and pictured in her mind the half-drowned people huddled around it in their sea-drenched clothes, she moved to the door. Bart wanted her to sit down inside, but she refused. "No, come outside and lie on the sand. Nobody comes along here," she insisted. "Oh, see how beautiful the sea is! I love that green," and drawing Jane's red cloak around her, she settled herself on the sand, Bart throwing himself at her feet. The sun was now nearing the horizon, and its golden rays fell across their faces. Away off on the sky-line trailed the smoke of an incoming steamer; nearer in idled a schooner bound in to Barnegat Inlet with every sail set. At their feet the surf rose sleepily under the gentle pressure of the incoming tide, its wavelets spreading themselves in widening circles as if bent on kissing the feet of the radiant girl. As they sat and talked, filled with the happiness of being alone, their eyes now on the sea and now looking into each other's, Meg, who had amused himself by barking at the swooping gulls, chasing the sand-snipe and digging holes in the sand for imaginary muskrats, lifted his head and gave a short yelp. Bart, annoyed by the sound, picked up a bit of driftwood and hurled it at him, missing him by a few inches. The narrowness of the escape silenced the dog and sent him to the rear with drooping tail and ears. Bart should have minded Meg's warning. A broad beach in the full glare of the setting sun, even when protected by a House of Refuge, is a poor place to be alone in. A woman was passing along the edge of the bluffs, carrying a basket in one hand and a green umbrella in the other; a tall, thin, angular woman, with the eye of a ferret. It was Ann Gossaway's day for visiting the sick, and she had just left Fogarty's cabin, where little Tod, with his throat tied up in red flannel, had tried on her mitts and played with her spectacles. Miss Gossaway had heard Meg's bark and had been accorded a full view of Lucy's back covered by Jane's red cloak, with Bart sitting beside her, their shoulders touching. Lovers with their heads together interested the gossip no longer, except as a topic to talk about. Such trifles had these many years passed out of the dress-maker's life. So Miss Gossaway, busy with her own thoughts, kept on her way unnoticed by either Lucy or Bart. When she reached the cross-road she met Doctor John driving in. He tightened the reins on the sorrel and stopped. "Lovely afternoon, Miss Gossaway. Where are you from--looking at the sunset?" "No, I ain't got no time for spoonin'. I might be if I was Miss Jane and Bart Holt. Just see 'em a spell ago squattin' down behind the House o' Refuge. She wouldn't look at me. I been to Fogarty's; she's on my list this week, and it's my day for visitin', fust in two weeks. That two-year-old of hers is all right ag'in after your sewing him up; they'll never get over tellin' how you set up all night with him. You ought to hear Mrs. Fogarty go on--'Oh, the goodness of him!'" and she mimicked the good woman's dialect. "'If Tod'd been his own child he couldn't a-done more for him.' That's the way she talks. I heard, doctor, ye never left him till daylight. You're a wonder." The doctor touched his hat and drove on. Miss Gossaway's sharp, rasping voice and incisive manner of speaking grated upon him. He liked neither her tone nor the way in which she spoke of the mistress of Yardley. No one else dared as much. If Jane was really on the beach and with Bart, she had some good purpose in her mind. It may have been her day for visiting, and Bart, perhaps, had accompanied her. But why had Miss Gossaway not met Miss Cobden at Fogarty's, his being the only cabin that far down the beach? Then his face brightened. Perhaps, after all, it was Lucy whom she had seen. He had placed that same red cloak around her shoulders the night of the reception at Yardley--and when she was with Bart, too. Mrs. Cavendish was sitting by her window when the doctor entered his own house. She rose, and putting down her book, advanced to meet him. "You should have come earlier, John," she said with a laugh; "such a charming girl and so pretty and gracious. Why, I was quite overcome. She is very different from her sister. What do you think Miss Jane wants to do now? Nurse in the new hospital when it is built! Pretty position for a lady, isn't it?" "Any position she would fill would gain by her presence," said the doctor gravely. "Have they been gone long?" he asked, changing the subject. He never discussed Jane Cobden with his mother if he could help it. "Oh, yes, some time. Lucy must have kept on home, for I saw Miss Jane going toward the beach alone." "Are you sure, mother?" There was a note of anxiety in his voice. "Yes, certainly. She had that red cloak of hers with her and that miserable little dog; that's how I know. She must be going to stay late. You look tired, my son; have you had a hard day?" added she, kissing him on the cheek. "Yes, perhaps I am a little tired, but I'll be all right. Have you looked at the slate lately? I'll go myself," and he turned and entered his office. On the slate lay the rose. He picked it up and held it to his nose in a preoccupied way. "One of mother's," he said listlessly, laying it back among his papers. "She so seldom does that sort of thing. Funny that she should have given it to me to-day; and after Miss Jane's visit, too." Then he shut the office door, threw himself into his chair, and buried his face in his hands. He was still there when his mother called him to supper. When Lucy reached home it was nearly dark. She came alone, leaving Bart at the entrance to the village. At her suggestion they had avoided the main road and had crossed the marsh by the foot-path, the dog bounding on ahead and springing at the nurse, who stood in the gate awaiting Lucy's return. "Why, he's as dry as a bone!" Martha cried, stroking Meg's rough hair with her plump hand. "He didn't get much of a bath, did he?" "No, I couldn't get him into the water. Every time I got my hand on him he'd dart away again." "Anybody on the beach, darlin'?" "Not a soul except Meg and the sandsnipe." CHAPTER V CAPTAIN NAT'S DECISION When Martha, with Meg at her heels, passed Ann Gossaway's cottage the next morning on her way to the post-office--her daily custom--the dressmaker, who was sitting in the window, one eye on her needle and the other on the street, craned her head clear of the calico curtain framing the sash and beckoned to her. This perch of Ann Gossaway's was the eyrie from which she swept the village street, bordered with a double row of wide-spreading elms and fringed with sloping grassy banks spaced at short intervals by hitching-posts and horse-blocks. Her own cottage stood somewhat nearer the flagged street path than the others, and as the garden fences were low and her lookout flanked by two windows, one on each end of her corner, she could not only note what went on about the fronts of her neighbors' houses, but much of what took place in their back yards. From this angle, too, she could see quite easily, and without more than twisting her attenuated neck, the whole village street from the Cromartins' gate to the spire of the village church, as well as everything that passed up and down the shadow-flecked road: which child, for instance, was late for school, and how often, and what it wore and whether its clothes were new or inherited from an elder sister; who came to the Bronsons' next door, and how long they stayed, and whether they brought anything with them or carried anything away; the peddler with his pack; the gunner on his way to the marshes, his two dogs following at his heels in a leash; Dr. John Cavendish's gig, and whether it was about to stop at Uncle Ephraim Tipple's or keep on, as usual, and whirl into the open gate of Cobden Manor; Billy Tatham's passenger list, as the ricketty stage passed with the side curtains up, and the number of trunks and bags, and the size of them, all indicative of where they were bound and for how long; details of village life--no one of which concerned her in the least--being matters of profound interest to Miss Gossaway. These several discoveries she shared daily with a faded old mother who sat huddled up in a rocking-chair by the stove, winter and summer, whether it had any fire in it or not. Uncle Ephraim Tipple, in his outspoken way, always referred to these two gossips as the "spiders." "When the thin one has sucked the life out of you," he would say with a laugh, "she passes you on to her old mother, who sits doubled up inside the web, and when she gets done munching there isn't anything left but your hide and bones." It was but one of Uncle Ephraim's jokes. The mother was only a forlorn, half-alive old woman who dozed in her chair by the hour--the relict of a fisherman who had gone to sea in his yawl some twenty years before and who had never come back. The daughter, with the courage of youth, had then stepped into the gap and had alone made the fight for bread. Gradually, as the years went by the roses in her cheeks--never too fresh at any time--had begun to fade, her face and figure to shrink, and her brow to tighten. At last, embittered by her responsibilities and disappointments, she had lost faith in human kind and had become a shrew. Since then her tongue had swept on as relentlessly as a scythe, sparing neither flower nor noxious weed, a movement which it was wise, sometimes, to check. When, therefore, Martha, with Meg now bounding before her, caught sight of Ann Gossaway's beckoning hand thrust out of the low window of her cottage--the spider-web referred to by Uncle Ephraim--she halted in her walk, lingered a moment as if undecided, expressed her opinion of the dressmaker to Meg in an undertone, and swinging open the gate with its ball and chain, made her way over the grass-plot and stood outside the window, level with the sill. "Well, it ain't none of my business, of course, Martha Sands," Miss Gossaway began, "and that's just what I said to mother when I come home, but if I was some folks I'd see my company in my parlor, long as I had one, 'stead of hidin' down behind the House o' Refuge. I said to mother soon's I got in, 'I'm goin' to tell Martha Sands fust minute I see her. She ain't got no idee how them girls of hers is carryin' on or she'd stop it.' That's what I said, didn't I, mother?" Martha caught an inarticulate sound escaping from a figure muffled in a blanket shawl, but nothing else followed. "I thought fust it was you when I heard that draggle-tail dog of yours barkin', but it was only Miss Jane and Bart Holt." "Down on the beach! When?" asked Martha. She had not understood a word of Miss Gossaway's outburst. "Why, yesterday afternoon, of course--didn't I tell ye so? I'd been down to Fogarty's; it's my week. Miss Jane and Bart didn't see me--didn't want to. Might a' been a pair of scissors, they was that close together." "Miss Jane warn't on the beach yesterday afternoon," said Martha in a positive tone, still in the dark. "She warn't, warn't she? Well, I guess I know Miss Jane Cobden. She and Bart was hunched up that close you couldn't get a bodkin 'tween 'em. She had that red cloak around her and the hood up ever her head. Not know her, and she within ten feet o' me? Well, I guess I got my eyes left, ain't I?" Martha stood stunned. She knew now who it was. She had taken the red cloak from Lucy's shoulders the evening before. Then a cold chill crept over her as she remembered the lie Lucy had told--"not a soul on the beach but Meg and the sandsnipe." For an instant she stood without answering. But for the window-sill on which her hand rested she would have betrayed her emotion in the swaying of her body. She tried to collect her thoughts. To deny Jane's identity too positively would only make the situation worse. If either one of the sisters were to be criticised Jane could stand it best. "You got sharp eyes and ears, Ann Gossaway, nobody will deny you them, but still I don't think Miss Jane was on the beach yesterday." "Don't think, don't you? Maybe you think I can't tell a cloak from a bed blanket, never havin' made one, and maybe ye think I don't know my own clo'es when I see 'em on folks. I made that red cloak for Miss Jane two years ago, and I know every stitch in it. Don't you try and teach Ann Gossaway how to cut and baste or you'll git worsted," and the gossip looked over her spectacles at Martha and shook her side-curls in a threatening way. Miss Gossaway had no love for the old nurse. There had been a time when Martha "weren't no better'n she oughter be, so everybody said," when she came to the village, and the dressmaker never let a chance slip to humiliate the old woman. Martha's open denunciation of the dressmaker's vinegar tongue had only increased the outspoken dislike each had for the other. She saw now, to her delight, that the incident which had seemed to be only a bit of flotsam that had drifted to her shore and which but from Martha's manner would have been forgotten by her the next day, might be a fragment detached from some floating family wreck. Before she could press the matter to an explanation Martha turned abruptly on her heel, called Meg, and with the single remark, "Well, I guess Miss Jane's of age," walked quickly across the grass-plot and out of the gate, the ball and chain closing it behind her with a clang. Once on the street Martha paused with her brain on fire. The lie which Lucy had told frightened her. She knew why she had told it, and she knew, too, what harm would come to her bairn if that kind of gossip got abroad in the village. She was no longer the gentle, loving nurse with the soft caressing hand, but a woman of purpose. The sudden terror aroused in her heart had the effect of tightening her grip and bracing her shoulders as if the better to withstand some expected shock. She forgot Meg; forgot her errand to the post-office; forgot everything, in fact, except the safety of the child she loved. That Lucy had neglected and even avoided her of late, keeping out of her way even when she was in the house, and that she had received only cool indifference in place of loyal love, had greatly grieved her, but it had not lessened the idolatry with which she worshipped her bairn. Hours at a time she had spent puzzling her brain trying to account for the change which had come over the girl during two short years of school. She had until now laid this change to her youth, her love of admiration, and had forgiven it. Now she understood it; it was that boy Bart. He had a way with him. He had even ingratiated himself into Miss Jane's confidence. And now this young girl had fallen a victim to his wiles. That Lucy should lie to her, of all persons, and in so calm and self-possessed a manner; and about Bart, of all men--sent a shudder through her heart, that paled her cheek and tightened her lips. Once before she had consulted Jane and had been rebuffed. Now she would depend upon herself. Retracing her steps and turning sharply to the right, she ordered Meg home in a firm voice, watched the dog slink off and then walked straight down a side road to Captain Nat Holt's house. That the captain occupied a different station in life from herself did not deter her. She felt at the moment that the honor of the Cobden name lay in her keeping. The family had stood by her in her trouble; now she would stand by them. The captain sat on his front porch reading a newspaper. He was in his shirt-sleeves and bareheaded, his straight hair standing straight out like the bristles of a shoe-brush. Since the death of his wife a few years before he had left the service, and now spent most of his days at home, tending his garden and enjoying his savings. He was a man of positive character and generally had his own way in everything. It was therefore with some astonishment that he heard Martha say when she had mounted the porch steps and pushed open the front door, her breath almost gone in her hurried walk, "Come inside." Captain Holt threw down his paper and rising hurriedly from his chair, followed her into the sitting-room. The manner of the nurse surprised him. He had known her for years, ever since his old friend, Lucy's father, had died, and the tones of her voice, so different from her usual deferential air, filled him with apprehension. "Ain't nobody sick, is there, Martha?" "No, but there will be. Are ye alone?" "Yes." "Then shut that door behind ye and sit down. I've got something to say." The grizzled, weather-beaten man who had made twenty voyages around Cape Horn, and who was known as a man of few words, and those always of command, closed the door upon them, drew down the shade on the sunny side of the room and faced her. He saw now that something of more than usual importance absorbed her. "Now, what is it?" he asked. His manner had by this time regained something of the dictatorial tone he always showed those beneath him in authority. "It's about Bart. You've got to send him away." She had not moved from her position in the middle of the room. The captain changed color and his voice lost its sharpness. "Bart! What's he done now?" "He sneaks off with our Lucy every chance he gets. They were on the beach yesterday hidin' behind the House o' Refuge with their heads together. She had on Miss Jane's red cloak, and Ann Gossaway thought it was Miss Jane, and I let it go at that." The captain looked at Martha incredulously for a moment, and then broke into a loud laugh as the absurdity of the whole thing burst upon him. Then dropping back a step, he stood leaning against the old-fashioned sideboard, his elbows behind him, his large frame thrust toward her. "Well, what if they were--ain't she pretty enough?" he burst out. "I told her she'd have 'em all crazy, and I hear Bart ain't done nothin' but follow in her wake since he seen her launched." Martha stepped closer to the captain and held her fist in his face. "He's got to stop it. Do ye hear me?" she shouted. "If he don't there'll be trouble, for you and him and everybody. It's me that's crazy, not him." "Stop it!" roared the captain, straightening up, the glasses on the sideboard ringing with his sudden lurch. "My boy keep away from the daughter of Morton Cobden, who was the best friend I ever had and to whom I owe more than any man who ever lived! And this is what you traipsed up here to tell me, is it, you mollycoddle?" Again Martha edged nearer; her body bent forward, her eyes searching his--so close that she could have touched his face with her knuckles. "Hold your tongue and stop talkin' foolishness," she blazed out, the courage of a tigress fighting for her young in her eyes, the same bold ring in her voice. "I tell ye, Captain Holt, it's got to stop short off, and NOW! I know men; have known 'em to my misery. I know when they're honest and I know when they ain't, and so do you, if you would open your eyes. Bart don't mean no good to my bairn. I see it in his face. I see it in the way he touches her hand and ties on her bonnet. I've watched him ever since the first night he laid eyes on her. He ain't a man with a heart in him; he's a sneak with a lie in his mouth. Why don't he come round like any of the others and say where he's goin' and what he wants to do instead of peepin' round the gate-posts watchin' for her and sendin' her notes on the sly, and makin' her lie to me, her old nurse, who's done nothin' but love her? Doctor John don't treat Miss Jane so--he loves her like a man ought to love a woman and he ain't got nothin' to hide--and you didn't treat your wife so. There's something here that tells me"--and she laid her hand on her bosom--"tells me more'n I dare tell ye. I warn ye now ag'in. Send him to sea--anywhere, before it is too late. She ain't got no mother; she won't mind a word I say; Miss Jane is blind as a bat; out with him and NOW!" The captain straightened himself up, and with his clenched fist raised above his head like a hammer about to strike, cried: "If he harmed the daughter of Morton Cobden I'd kill him!" The words jumped hot from his throat with a slight hissing sound, his eyes still aflame. "Well, then, stop it before it gets too late. I walk the floor nights and I'm scared to death every hour I live." Then her voice broke. "Please, captain, please," she added in a piteous tone. "Don't mind me if I talk wild, my heart is breakin', and I can't hold in no longer," and she burst into a paroxysm of tears. The captain leaned against the sideboard again and looked down upon the floor as if in deep thought. Martha's tears did not move him. The tears of few women did. He was only concerned in getting hold of some positive facts upon which he could base his judgment. "Come, now," he said in an authoritative voice, "let me get that chair and set down and then I'll see what all this amounts to. Sounds like a yarn of a horse-marine." As he spoke he crossed the room and, dragging a rocking-chair from its place beside the wall, settled himself in it. Martha found a seat upon the sofa and turned her tear-stained face toward him. "Now, what's these young people been doin' that makes ye so almighty narvous?" he continued, lying back in his chair and looking at her from under his bushy eyebrows, his fingers supporting his forehead. "Everything. Goes out sailin' with her and goes driftin' past with his head in her lap. Fogarty's man who brings fish to the house told me." She had regained something of her old composure now. "Anything else?" The captain's voice had a relieved, almost condescending tone in it. He had taken his thumb and forefinger from his eyebrow now and sat drumming with his stiffened knuckles on the arm of the rocker. "Yes, a heap more--ain't that enough along with the other things I've told ye?" Martha's eyes were beginning to blaze again. "No, that's just as it ought to be. Boys and girls will be boys and girls the world over." The tone of the captain's voice indicated the condition of his mind. He had at last arrived at a conclusion. Martha's head was muddled because of her inordinate and unnatural love for the child she had nursed. She had found a spookship in a fog bank, that was all. Jealousy might be at the bottom of it or a certain nervous fussiness. Whatever it was it was too trivial for him to waste his time over. The captain rose from his chair, crossed the sitting-room, and opened the door leading to the porch, letting in the sunshine. Martha followed close at his heels. "You're runnin' on a wrong tack, old woman, and first thing ye know ye'll be in the breakers," he said, with his hand on the knob. "Ease off a little and don't be too hard on 'em. They'll make harbor all right. You're makin' more fuss than a hen over one chicken. Miss Jane knows what she's about. She's got a level head, and when she tells me that my Bart ain't good enough to ship alongside the daughter of Morton Cobden, I'll sign papers for him somewhere else, and not before. I'll have to get you to excuse me now; I'm busy. Good-day," and picking up his paper, he re-entered the house and closed the door upon her. CHAPTER VI A GAME OF CARDS Should Miss Gossaway have been sitting at her lookout some weeks after Martha's interview with Captain Nat Holt, and should she have watched the movements of Doctor John's gig as it rounded into the open gate of Cobden Manor, she must have decided that something out of the common was either happening or about to happen inside Yardley's hospitable doors. Not only was the sorrel trotting at her best, the doctor flapping the lines along her brown back, his body swaying from side to side with the motion of the light vehicle, but as he passed her house he was also consulting the contents of a small envelope which he had taken from his pocket. "Please come early," it read. "I have something important to talk over with you." A note of this character signed with so adorable a name as "Jane Cobden" was so rare in the doctor's experience that he had at once given up his round of morning visits and, springing into his waiting gig, had started to answer it in person. He was alive with expectancy. What could she want with him except to talk over some subject that they had left unfinished? As he hurried on there came into his mind half a dozen matters, any one of which it would have been a delight to revive. He knew from the way she worded the note that nothing had occurred since he had seen her--within the week, in fact--to cause her either annoyance or suffering. No; it was only to continue one of their confidential talks, which were the joy of his life. Jane was waiting for him in the morning-room. Her face lighted up as he entered and took her hand, and immediately relaxed again into an expression of anxiety. All his eagerness vanished. He saw with a sinking of the heart, even before she had time to speak, that something outside of his own affairs, or hers, had caused her to write the note. "I came at once," he said, keeping her hand in his. "You look troubled; what has happened?" "Nothing yet," she answered, leading him to the sofa, "It is about Lucy. She wants to go away for the winter." "Where to?" he asked. He had placed a cushion at her back and had settled himself beside her. "To Trenton, to visit her friend Miss Collins and study music. She says Warehold bores her." "And you don't want her to go?" "No; I don't fancy Miss Collins, and I am afraid she has too strong an influence over Lucy. Her personality grates on me; she is so boisterous, and she laughs so loud; and the views she holds are unaccountable to me in so young a girl. She seems to have had no home training whatever. Why Lucy likes her, and why she should have selected her as an intimate friend, has always puzzled me." She spoke with her usual frankness and with that directness which always characterized her in matters of this kind. "I had no one else to talk to and am very miserable about it all. You don't mind my sending for you, do you?" "Mind! Why do you ask such a question? I am never so happy as when I am serving you." That she should send for him at all was happiness. Not sickness this time, nor some question of investment, nor the repair of the barn or gate or out-buildings--but Lucy, who lay nearest her heart! That was even better than he had expected. "Tell me all about it, so I can get it right," he continued in a straightforward tone--the tone of the physician, not the lover. She had relied on him, and he intended to give her the best counsel of which he was capable. The lover could wait. "Well, she received a letter a week ago from Miss Collins, saying she had come to Trenton for the winter and had taken some rooms in a house belonging to her aunt, who would live with her. She wants to be within reach of the same music-teacher who taught the girls at Miss Parkham's school. She says if Lucy will come it will reduce the expenses and they can both have the benefit of the tuition. At first Lucy did not want to go at all, now she insists, and, strange to say, Martha encourages her." "Martha wants her to leave?" he asked in surprise. "She says so." The doctor's face assumed a puzzled expression. He could account for Lucy's wanting the freedom and novelty of the change, but that Martha should be willing to part with her bairn for the winter mystified him. He knew nothing of the flirtation, of course, and its effect on the old nurse, and could not, therefore, understand Martha's delight in Lucy's and Bart's separation. "You will be very lonely," he said, and a certain tender tone developed in his voice. "Yes, dreadfully so, but I would not mind if I thought it was for her good. But I don't think so. I may be wrong, and in the uncertainty I wanted to talk it over with you. I get so desolate sometimes. I never seemed to miss my father so much as now. Perhaps it is because Lucy's babyhood and childhood are over and she is entering upon womanhood with all the dangers it brings. And she frightens me so sometimes," she continued after a slight pause. "She is different; more self-willed, more self-centred. Besides, her touch has altered. She doesn't seem to love me as she did--not in the same way." "But she could never do anything else but love you," he interrupted quickly, speaking for himself as well as Lucy, his voice vibrating under his emotions. It was all he could do to keep his hands from her own; her sending for him alone restrained him. "I know that, but it is not in the old way. It used to be 'Sister, darling, don't tire yourself,' or 'Sister, dear, let me go upstairs for you,' or 'Cuddle close here, and let us talk it all out together.' There is no more of that. She goes her own way, and when I chide her laughs and leaves me alone until I make some new advance. Help me, please, and with all the wisdom you can give me; I have no one else in whom I can trust, no one who is big enough to know what should be done. I might have talked to Mr. Dellenbaugh about it, but he is away." "No; talk it all out to me," he said simply. "I so want to help you"--his whole heart was going out to her in her distress. "I know you feel sorry for me." She withdrew her hand gently so as not to hurt him; she too did not want to be misunderstood--having sent for him. "I know how sincere your friendship is for me, but put all that aside. Don't let your sympathy for me cloud your judgment. What shall I do with Lucy? Answer me as if you were her father and mine," and she looked straight into his eyes. The doctor tightened the muscles of his throat, closed his teeth, and summoned all his resolution. If he could only tell her what was in his heart how much easier it would all be! For some moments he sat perfectly still, then he answered slowly--as her man of business would have done: "I should let her go." "Why do you say so?" "Because she will find out in that way sooner than in any other how to appreciate you and her home. Living in two rooms and studying music will not suit Lucy. When the novelty wears off she will long for her home, and when she comes back it will be with a better appreciation of its comforts. Let her go, and make her going as happy as you can." And so Jane gave her consent--it is doubtful whether Lucy would have waited for it once her mind was made up--and in a week she was off, Doctor John taking her himself as far as the Junction, and seeing her safe on the road to Trenton. Martha was evidently delighted at the change, for the old nurse's face was wreathed in smiles that last morning as they all stood out by the gate while Billy Tatham loaded Lucy's trunks and boxes. Only once did a frown cross her face, and that was when Lucy leaned over and whispering something in Bart's ear, slipped a small scrap of paper between his fingers. Bart crunched it tight and slid his hand carelessly into his pocket, but the gesture did not deceive the nurse: it haunted her for days thereafter. As the weeks flew by and the letters from Trenton told of the happenings in Maria's home, it became more and more evident to Jane that the doctor's advice had been the wisest and best. Lucy would often devote a page or more of her letters to recalling the comforts of her own room at Yardley, so different from what she was enduring at Trenton, and longing for them to come again. Parts of these letters Jane read to the doctor, and all of them to Martha, who received them with varying comment. It became evident, too, that neither the excitement of Bart's letters, nor the visits of the occasional school friends who called upon them both, nor the pursuit of her new accomplishment, had satisfied the girl. Jane was not surprised, therefore, remembering the doctor's almost prophetic words, to learn of the arrival of a letter from Lucy begging Martha to come to her at once for a day or two. The letter was enclosed in one to Bart and was handed to the nurse by that young man in person. As he did so he remarked meaningly that Miss Lucy wanted Martha's visit to be kept a secret from everybody but Miss Jane, "just as a surprise," but Martha answered in a positive tone that she had no secrets from those who had a right to know them, and that he could write Lucy she was coming next day, and that Jane and everybody else who might inquire would know of it before she started. She rather liked Bart's receiving the letter. As long as that young man kept away from Trenton and confined himself to Warehold, where she could keep her eyes on him, she was content. To Jane Martha said: "Oh, bless the darlin'! She can't do a day longer without her Martha. I'll go in the mornin'. It's a little pettin' she wants--that's all." So the old nurse bade Meg good-by, pinned her big gray shawl about her, tied on her bonnet, took a little basket with some delicacies and a pot of jelly, and like a true Mother Hubbard, started off, while Jane, having persuaded herself that perhaps "the surprise" was meant for her, and that she might be welcoming two exiles instead of one the following night, began to put Lucy's room in order and to lay out the many pretty things she loved, especially the new dressing-gown she had made for her, lined with blue silk--her favorite color. All that day and evening, and far into the next afternoon, Jane went about the house with the refrain of an old song welling up into her heart--one that had been stifled for months. The thought of the round-about way in which Lucy had sent for Martha did not dull its melody. That ruse, she knew, came from the foolish pride of youth, the pride that could not meet defeat. Underneath it she detected, with a thrill, the love of home; this, after all, was what her sister could not do without. It was not Bart this time. That affair, as she had predicted and had repeatedly told Martha, had worn itself out and had been replaced by her love of music. She had simply come to herself once more and would again be her old-time sister and her child. Then, too--and this sent another wave of delight tingling through her--it had all been the doctor's doing! But for his advice she would never have let Lucy go. Half a dozen times, although the November afternoon was raw and chilly, with the wind fresh from the sea and the sky dull, she was out on the front porch without shawl or hat, looking down the path, covered now with dead leaves, and scanning closely every team that passed the gate, only to return again to her place by the fire, more impatient than ever. Meg's quick ear first caught the grating of the wheels. Jane followed him with a cry of joyous expectation, and flew to the door to meet the stage, which for some reason--why, she could not tell--had stopped for a moment outside the gate, dropping only one passenger, and that one the nurse. "And Lucy did not come, Martha!" Jane exclaimed, with almost a sob in her voice. She had reached her side now, followed by Meg, who was springing straight at the nurse in the joy of his welcome. The old woman glanced back at the stage, as if afraid of being overheard, and muttered under her breath: "No, she couldn't come." "Oh, I am so disappointed! Why not?" Martha did not answer. She seemed to have lost her breath. Jane put her arm about her and led her up the path. Once she stumbled, her step was so unsteady, and she would have fallen but for Jane's assistance. The two had now reached the hand-railing of the porch. Here Martha's trembling foot began to feel about for the step. Jane caught her in her arms. "You're ill, Martha!" she cried in alarm. "Give me the bag. What's the matter?" Again Martha did not answer. "Tell me what it is." "Upstairs! Upstairs!" Martha gasped in reply. "Quick!" "What has happened?" "Not here; upstairs." They climbed the staircase together, Jane half carrying the fainting woman, her mind in a whirl. "Where were you taken ill? Why did you try to come home? Why didn't Lucy come with you?" They had reached the door of Jane's bedroom now, Martha clinging to her arm. Once inside, the nurse leaned panting against the door, put her bands to her face as if she would shut out some dreadful spectre, and sank slowly to the floor. "It is not me," she moaned, wringing her hands, "not me--not--" "Who?" "Oh, I can't say it!" "Lucy?" "Yes" "Not ill?" "No; worse!" "Oh, Martha! Not dead?" "O God, I wish she were!" An hour passed--an hour of agony, of humiliation and despair. Again the door opened and Jane stepped out--slowly, as if in pain, her lips tight drawn, her face ghastly white, the thin cheeks sunken into deeper hollows, the eyes burning. Only the mouth preserved its lines, but firmer, more rigid, more severe, as if tightened by the strength of some great resolve. In her hand she held a letter. Martha lay on the bed, her face to the wall, her head still in her palms. She had ceased sobbing and was quite still, as if exhausted. Jane leaned over the banisters, called to one of the servants, and dropping the letter to the floor below, said: "Take that to Captain Holt's. When he comes bring him upstairs here into my sitting-room." Before the servant could reply there came a knock at the front door. Jane knew its sound--it was Doctor John's. Leaning far over, grasping the top rail of the banisters to steady herself, she said to the servant in a low, restrained voice: "If that is Dr. Cavendish, please say to him that Martha is just home from Trenton, greatly fatigued, and I beg him to excuse me. When the doctor has driven away, you can take the letter." She kept her grasp on the hand-rail until she heard the tones of his voice through the open hall door and caught the note of sorrow that tinged them. "Oh, I'm so sorry! Poor Martha!" she heard him say. "She is getting too old to go about alone. Please tell Miss Jane she must not hesitate to send for me if I can be of the slightest service." Then she re-entered the room where Martha lay and closed the door. Another and louder knock now broke the stillness of the chamber and checked the sobs of the nurse; Captain Holt had met Jane's servant as he was passing the gate. He stopped for an instant in the hall, slipped off his coat, and walked straight upstairs, humming a tune as he came. Jane heard his firm tread, opened the door of their room, and she and Martha crossed the hall to a smaller apartment where Jane always attended to the business affairs of the house. The captain's face was wreathed in a broad smile as he extended his hand to Jane in welcome. "It's lucky ye caught me, Miss Jane. I was just goin' out, and in a minute I'd been gone for the night. Hello, Mother Martha! I thought you'd gone to Trenton." The two women made no reply to his cheery salutation, except to motion him to a seat. Then Jane closed the door and turned the key in the lock. When the captain emerged from the chamber he stepped out alone. His color was gone, his eyes flashing, his jaw tight set. About his mouth there hovered a savage, almost brutal look, the look of a bulldog who bares his teeth before he tears and strangles--a look his men knew when someone of them purposely disobeyed his orders. For a moment he stood as if dazed. All he remembered clearly was the white, drawn face of a woman gazing at him with staring, tear-drenched eyes, the slow dropping of words that blistered as they fell, and the figure of the nurse wringing her hands and moaning: "Oh, I told ye so! I told ye so! Why didn't ye listen?" With it came the pain of some sudden blow that deadened his brain and stilled his heart. With a strong effort, like one throwing off a stupor, he raised his head, braced his shoulders, and strode firmly along the corridor and down the stairs on his way to the front door. Catching up his coat, he threw it about him, pulled his hat on, with a jerk, slamming the front door, plunged along through the dry leaves that covered the path, and so on out to the main road. Once beyond the gate he hesitated, looked up and down, turned to the right and then to the left, as if in doubt, and lunged forward in the direction of the tavern. It was Sunday night, and the lounging room was full. One of the inmates rose and offered him a chair--he was much respected in the village, especially among the rougher class, some of whom had sailed with him--but he only waved his hand in thanks. "I don't want to sit down; I'm looking for Bart. Has he been here?" The sound came as if from between closed teeth. "Not as I know of, cap'n," answered the landlord; "not since sundown, nohow." "Do any of you know where he is?" The look in the captain's eyes and the sharp, cutting tones of his voice began to be noticed. "Do ye want him bad?" asked a man tilted back in a chair against the wall. "Yes." "Well, I kin tell ye where to find him," "Where?" "Down on the beach in the Refuge shanty. He and the boys have a deck there Sunday nights. Been at it all fall--thought ye knowed it." Out into the night again, and without a word of thanks, down the road and across the causeway to the hard beach, drenched with the ceaseless thrash of the rising sea. He followed no path, picked out no road. Stumbling along in the half-gloom of the twilight, he could make out the heads of the sand-dunes, bearded with yellow grass blown flat against their cheeks. Soon he reached the prow of the old wreck with its shattered timbers and the water-holes left by the tide. These he avoided, but the smaller objects he trampled upon and over as he strode on, without caring where he stepped or how often he stumbled. Outlined against the sand-hills, bleached white under the dull light, he looked like some evil presence bent on mischief, so direct and forceful was his unceasing, persistent stride. When the House of Refuge loomed up against the gray froth of the surf he stopped and drew breath. Bending forward, he scanned the beach ahead, shading his eyes with his hand as he would have done on his own ship in a fog. He could make out now some streaks of yellow light showing through the cracks one above the other along the side of the house and a dull patch of red. He knew what it meant. Bart and his fellows were inside, and were using one of the ship lanterns to see by. This settled in his mind, the captain strode on, but at a slower pace. He had found his bearings, and would steer with caution. Hugging the dunes closer, he approached the house from the rear. The big door was shut and a bit of matting had been tacked over the one window to deaden the light. This was why the patch of red was dull. He stood now so near the outside planking that he could hear the laughter and talk of those within. By this time the wind had risen to half a gale and the moan on the outer bar could be heard in the intervals of the pounding surf. The captain crept under the eaves of the roof and listened. He wanted to be sure of Bart's voice before he acted. At this instant a sudden gust of wind burst in the big door, extinguishing the light of the lantern, and Bart's voice rang out: "Stay where you are, boys! Don't touch the cards. I know the door, and can fix it; it's only the bolt that's slipped." As Bart passed out into the gloom the captain darted forward, seized him with a grip of steel, dragged him clear of the door, and up the sand-dunes out of hearing. Then he flung him loose and stood facing the cowering boy. "Now stand back and keep away from me, for I'm afraid I'll kill you!" "What have I done?" cringed Bart, shielding his face with his elbow as if to ward off a blow. The suddenness of the attack had stunned him. "Don't ask me, you whelp, or I'll strangle you. Look at me! That's what you been up to, is it?" Bart straightened himself, and made some show of resistance. His breath was coming back to him. "I haven't done anything--and if I did--" "You lie! Martha's back from Trenton and Lucy told her. You never thought of me. You never thought of that sister of hers whose heart you've broke, nor of the old woman who nursed her like a mother. You thought of nobody but your stinkin' self. You're not a man! You're a cur! a dog! Don't move! Keep away from me, I tell ye, or I may lose hold of myself." Bart was stretching out his hands now as if in supplication. He had never seen his father like this--the sight frightened him. "Father, will you listen--" he pleaded. "I'll listen to nothin'--" "Will you, please? It's not all my fault. She ought to have kept out of my way--" "Stop! Take that back! You'd blame HER, would ye--a child just out of school, and as innocent as a baby? By God, you'll do right by her or you'll never set foot inside my house again!" Bart faced his father again. "I want to tell you the whole story before you judge me. I want to--" "You'll tell me nothin'! Will you act square with her?" "I must tell you first. You wouldn't understand unless--" "You won't? That's what you mean--you mean you WON'T! Damn ye!" The captain raised his clenched fist, quivered for an instant as if struggling against something beyond his control, dropped it slowly to his side and whirling suddenly, strode back up the beach. Bart staggered back against the planking, threw out his hand to keep from falling, and watched his father's uncertain, stumbling figure until he was swallowed up in the gloom. The words rang in his ears like a knell. The realization of his position and what it meant, and might mean, rushed over him. For an instant he leaned heavily against the planking until he had caught his breath. Then, with quivering lips and shaking legs, he walked slowly back into the house, shutting the big door behind him. "Boys," he said with a forced smile, "who do you think's been outside? My father! Somebody told him, and he's just been giving me hell for playing cards on Sunday." CHAPTER VII THE EYES OF AN OLD PORTRAIT Before another Sunday night had arrived Warehold village was alive with two important pieces of news. The first was the disappearance of Bart Holt. Captain Nat, so the story ran, had caught him carousing in the House of Refuge on Sunday night with some of his boon companions, and after a stormy interview in which the boy pleaded for forgiveness, had driven him out into the night. Bart had left town the next morning at daylight and had shipped as a common sailor on board a British bark bound for Brazil. No one had seen him go--not even his companions of the night before. The second announcement was more startling. The Cobden girls were going to Paris. Lucy Cobden had developed an extraordinary talent for music during her short stay in Trenton with her friend Maria Collins, and Miss Jane, with her customary unselfishness and devotion to her younger sister, had decided to go with her. They might be gone two years or five--it depended on Lucy's success. Martha would remain at Yardley and take care of the old home. Bart's banishment coming first served as a target for the fire of the gossip some days before Jane's decision had reached the ears of the villagers. "I always knew he would come to no good end," Miss Gossaway called out to a passer-by from her eyrie; "and there's more like him if their fathers would look after 'em. Guess sea's the best place for him." Billy Tatham, the stage-driver, did not altogether agree with the extremist. "You hearn tell, I s'pose, of how Captain Nat handled his boy t'other night, didn't ye?" he remarked to the passenger next to him on the front seat. "It might be the way they did things 'board the Black Ball Line, but 'tain't human and decent, an' I told Cap'n Nat so to-day. Shut his door in his face an' told him he'd kill him if he tried to come in, and all because he ketched him playin' cards on Sunday down on the beach. Bart warn't no worse than the others he run with, but ye can't tell what these old sea-dogs will do when they git riled. I guess it was the rum more'n the cards. Them fellers used to drink a power o' rum in that shanty. I've seen 'em staggerin' home many a Monday mornin' when I got down early to open up for my team. It's the rum that riled the cap'n, I guess. He wouldn't stand it aboard ship and used to put his men in irons, I've hearn tell, when they come aboard drunk. What gits me is that the cap'n didn't know them fellers met there every night they could git away, week-days as well as Sundays. Everybody 'round here knew it 'cept him and the light-keeper, and he's so durned lazy he never once dropped on to 'em. He'd git bounced if the Gov'ment found out he was lettin' a gang run the House o' Refuge whenever they felt like it. Fogarty, the fisherman's, got the key, or oughter have it, but the light-keeper's responsible, so I hearn tell. Git-up, Billy," and the talk drifted into other channels. The incident was soon forgotten. One young man more or less did not make much difference in Warehold. As to Captain Nat, he was known to be a scrupulously honest, exact man who knew no law outside of his duty. He probably did it for the boy's good, although everybody agreed that he could have accomplished his purpose in some more merciful way. The other sensation--the departure of the two Cobden girls, and their possible prolonged stay abroad--did not subside so easily. Not only did the neighbors look upon the Manor House as the show-place of the village, but the girls themselves were greatly beloved, Jane being especially idolized from Warehold to Barnegat and the sea. To lose Jane's presence among them was a positive calamity entailing a sorrow that most of her neighbors could not bring themselves to face. No one could take her place. Pastor Dellenbaugh, when he heard the news, sank into his study chair and threw up his hands as if to ward off some blow. "Miss Jane going abroad!" he cried; "and you say nobody knows when she will come back! I can't realize it! We might as well close the school; no one else in the village can keep it together." The Cromartins and the others all expressed similar opinions, the younger ladies' sorrow being aggravated when they realized that with Lucy away there would be no one to lead in their merrymakings. Martha held her peace; she would stay at home, she told Mrs. Dellenbaugh, and wait for their return and look after the place. Her heart was broken with the loneliness that would come, she moaned, but what was best for her bairn she was willing to bear. It didn't make much difference either way; she wasn't long for this world. The doctor's mother heard the news with ill-concealed satisfaction. "A most extraordinary thing has occurred here, my dear," she said to one of her Philadelphia friends who was visiting her--she was too politic to talk openly to the neighbors. "You have, of course, met that Miss Cobden who lives at Yardley--not the pretty one--the plain one. Well, she is the most quixotic creature in the world. Only a few weeks ago she wanted to become a nurse in the public hospital here, and now she proposes to close her house and go abroad for nobody knows how long, simply because her younger sister wants to study music, as if a school-girl couldn't get all the instruction of that kind here that is necessary. Really, I never heard of such a thing." To Mrs. Benson, a neighbor, she said, behind her hand and in strict confidence: "Miss Cobden is morbidly conscientious over trifles. A fine woman, one of the very finest we have, but a little too strait-laced, and, if I must say it, somewhat commonplace, especially for a woman of her birth and education." To herself she said: "Never while I live shall Jane Cobden marry my John! She can never help any man's career. She has neither the worldly knowledge, nor the personal presence, nor the money." Jane gave but one answer to all inquiries--and there were many. "Yes, I know the move is a sudden one," she would say, "but it is for Lucy's good, and there is no one to go with her but me." No one saw beneath the mask that hid her breaking heart. To them the drawn face and the weary look in her eyes only showed her grief at leaving home and those who loved her: to Mrs. Cavendish it seemed part of Jane's peculiar temperament. Nor could they watch her in the silence of the night tossing on her bed, or closeted with Martha in her search for the initial steps that had led to this horror. Had the Philadelphia school undermined her own sisterly teachings or had her companions been at fault? Perhaps it was due to the blood of some long-forgotten ancestor, which in the cycle of years had cropped out in this generation, poisoning the fountain of her youth. Bart, she realized, had played the villain and the ingrate, but yet it was also true that Bart, and all his class, would have been powerless before a woman of a different temperament. Who, then, had undermined this citadel and given it over to plunder and disgrace? Then with merciless exactness she searched her own heart. Had it been her fault? What safeguard had she herself neglected? Wherein had she been false to her trust and her promise to her dying father? What could she have done to avert it? These ever-haunting, ever-recurring doubts maddened her. One thing she was determined upon, cost what it might--to protect her sister's name. No daughter of Morton Cobden's should be pointed at in scorn. For generations no stain of dishonor had tarnished the family name. This must be preserved, no matter who suffered. In this she was sustained by Martha, her only confidante. Doctor John heard the news from Jane's lips before it was known to the villagers. He had come to inquire after Martha. She met him at the porch entrance, and led him into the drawing-room, without a word of welcome. Then shutting the door, she motioned him to a seat opposite her own on the sofa. The calm, determined way with which this was done--so unusual in one so cordial--startled him. He felt that something of momentous interest, and, judging from Jane's face, of serious import, had happened. He invariably took his cue from her face, and his own spirits always rose or fell as the light in her eyes flashed or dimmed. "Is there anything the matter?" he asked nervously. "Martha worse?" "No, not that; Martha is around again--it is about Lucy and me." The voice did not sound like Jane's. The doctor looked at her intently, but he did not speak. Jane continued, her face now deathly pale, her words coming slowly. "You advised me some time ago about Lucy's going to Trenton, and I am glad I followed it. You thought it would strengthen her love for us all and teach her to love me the better. It has--so much so that hereafter we will never be separated. I hope now you will also approve of what I have just decided upon. Lucy is going abroad to live, and I am going with her." As the words fell from her lips her eyes crept up to his face, watching the effect of her statement. It was a cold, almost brutal way of putting it, she knew, but she dared not trust herself with anything less formal. For a moment he sat perfectly still, the color gone from his cheeks, his eyes fixed on hers, a cold chill benumbing the roots of his hair. The suddenness of the announcement seemed to have stunned him. "For how long?" he asked in a halting voice. "I don't know. Not less than two years; perhaps longer." "TWO YEARS? Is Lucy ill?" "No; she wants to study music, and she couldn't go alone." "Have you made up your mind to this?" he asked, in a more positive tone. His self-control was returning now. "Yes." Doctor John rose from his chair, paced the room slowly for a moment, and crossing to the fireplace with his back to Jane, stood under her father's portrait, his elbows on the mantel, his head in his hand. interwoven with the pain which the announcement had given him was the sharper sorrow of her neglect of him. In forming her plans she had never once thought of her lifelong friend. "Why did you not tell me something of this before?" The inquiry was not addressed to Jane, but to the smouldering coals. "How have I ever failed you? What has my daily life been but an open book for you to read, and here you leave me for years, and never give me a thought." Jane started in her seat. "Forgive me, my dear friend!" she answered quickly in a voice full of tenderness. "I did not mean to hurt you. It is not that I love all my friends here the less--and you know how truly I appreciate your own friendship--but only that I love my sister more; and my duty is with her. I only decided last night. Don't turn your back on me. Come and sit by me, and talk to me," she pleaded, holding out her hand. "I need all your strength." As she spoke the tears started to her eyes and her voice sank almost to a whisper. The doctor lifted his head from his palm and walked quickly toward her. The suffering in her voice had robbed him of all resentment. "Forgive me, I did not mean it. Tell me," he said, in a sudden burst of tenderness--all feeling about himself had dropped away--"why must you go so soon? Why not wait until spring?" He had taken his seat beside her now and sat looking into her eyes. "Lucy wants to go at once," she replied, in a tone as if the matter did not admit of any discussion. "Yes, I know. That's just like her. What she wants she can never wait a minute for, but she certainly would sacrifice some pleasure of her own to please you. If she was determined to be a musician it would be different, but it is only for her pleasure, and as an accomplishment." He spoke earnestly and impersonally, as he always did when she consulted him on any of her affairs, He was trying, too, to wipe from her mind all remembrance of his impatience. Jane kept her eyes on the carpet for a moment, and then said quietly, and he thought in rather a hopeless tone: "It is best we go at once." The doctor looked at her searchingly--with the eye of a scientist, this time, probing for a hidden meaning. "Then there is something else you have not told me; someone is annoying her, or there is someone with whom you are afraid she will fall in love. Who is it? You know how I could help in a matter of that kind." "No; there is no one." Doctor John leaned back thoughtfully and tapped the arm of the sofa with his fingers. He felt as if a door had been shut in his face. "I don't understand it," he said slowly, and in a baffled tone. "I have never known you to do a thing like this before. It is entirely unlike you. There is some mystery you are keeping from me. Tell me, and let me help." "I can tell you nothing more. Can't you trust me to do my duty in my own way?" She stole a look at him as she spoke and again lowered her eyelids. "And you are determined to go?" he asked in his former cross-examining tone. "Yes." Again the doctor kept silence. Despite her assumed courage and determined air, his experienced eye caught beneath it all the shrinking helplessness of the woman. "Then I, too, have reached a sudden resolve," he said in a manner almost professional in its precision. "You cannot and shall not go alone." "Oh, but Lucy and I can get along together," she exclaimed with nervous haste. "There is no one we could take but Martha, and she is too old. Besides she must look after the house while we are away." "No; Martha will not do. No woman will do. I know Paris and its life; it is not the place for two women to live in alone, especially so pretty and light-hearted a woman as Lucy." "I am not afraid." "No, but I am," he answered in a softened voice, "very much afraid." It was no longer the physician who spoke, but the friend. "Of what?" "Of a dozen things you do not understand, and cannot until you encounter them," he replied, smoothing her hand tenderly. "Yes, but it cannot be helped. There is no one to go with us." This came with some positiveness, yet with a note of impatience in her voice. "Yes, there is," he answered gently. "Who?" she asked slowly, withdrawing her hand from his caress, an undefined fear rising in her mind. "Me. I will go with you." Jane looked at him with widening eyes. She knew now. She had caught his meaning in the tones of his voice before he had expressed it, and had tried to think of some way to ward off what she saw was coming, but she was swept helplessly on. "Let us go together, Jane," he burst out, drawing closer to her. All reserve was gone. The words which had pressed so long for utterance could no longer be held back. "I cannot live here alone without you. You know it, and have always known it. I love you so--don't let us live apart any more. If you must go, go as my wife." A thrill of joy ran through her. Her lips quivered. She wanted to cry out, to put her arms around his neck, to tell him everything in her heart. Then came a quick, sharp pain that stifled every other thought. For the first time the real bitterness of the situation confronted her. This phase of it she had not counted upon. She shrank back a little. "Don't ask me that!" she moaned in a tone almost of pain. "I can stand anything now but that. Not now--not now!" Her hand was still under his, her fingers lying limp, all the pathos of her suffering in her face: determination to do her duty, horror over the situation, and above them all her overwhelming love for him. He put his arm about her shoulders and drew her to him. "You love me, Jane, don't you?" "Yes, more than all else in the world," she answered simply. "Too well"--and her voice broke--"to have you give up your career for me or mine." "Then why should we live apart? I am willing to do as much for Lucy as you would. Let me share the care and responsibility. You needn't, perhaps, be gone more than a year, and then we will all come back together, and I take up my work again. I need you, my beloved. Nothing that I do seems of any use without you. You are my great, strong light, and have always been since the first day I loved you. Let me help bear these burdens. You have carried them so long alone." His face lay against hers now, her hand still clasped tight in his. For an instant she did not answer or move; then she straightened a little and lifted her cheek from his. "John," she said--it was the first time in all her life she had called him thus--"you wouldn't love me if I should consent. You have work to do here and I now have work to do on the other side. We cannot work together; we must work apart. Your heart is speaking, and I love you for it, but we must not think of it now. It may come right some time--God only knows! My duty is plain--I must go with Lucy. Neither you nor my dead father would love me if I did differently." "I only know that I love you and that you love me and nothing else should count," he pleaded impatiently. "Nothing else shall count. There is nothing you could do would make me love you less. You are practical and wise about all your plans. Why has this whim of Lucy's taken hold of you as it has? And it is only a whim; Lucy will want something else in six months. Oh, I cannot--cannot let you go. I'm so desolate without you--my whole life is yours--everything I do is for you. O Jane, my beloved, don't shut me out of your life! I will not let you go without me!" His voice vibrated with a certain indignation, as if he had been unjustly treated. She raised one hand and laid it on his forehead, smoothing his brow as a mother would that of a child. The other still lay in his. "Don't, John," she moaned, in a half-piteous tone. "Don't! Don't talk so! I can only bear comforting words to-day. I am too wretched--too utterly broken and miserable. Please! please, John!" He dropped her hand and leaning forward put both of his own to his head. He knew how strong was her will and how futile would be his efforts to change her mind unless her conscience agreed. "I won't," he answered, as a strong man answers who is baffled. "I did not mean to be impatient or exacting." Then he raised his head and looked steadily into her eyes. "What would you have me do, then?" "Wait." "But you give me no promise." "No, I cannot--not now. I am like one staggering along, following a dim light that leads hither and thither, and which may any moment go out and leave me in utter darkness." "Then there is something you have not told me?" "O John! Can't you trust me?" "And yet you love me?" "As my life, John." When he had gone and she had closed the door upon him, she went back to the sofa where the two had sat together, and with her hands clasped tight above her head, sank down upon its cushions. The tears came like rain now, bitter, blinding tears that she could not check. "I have hurt him," she moaned. "He is so good, and strong, and helpful. He never thinks of himself; it is always of me--me, who can do nothing. The tears were in his eyes--I saw them. Oh, I've hurt him--hurt him! And yet, dear God, thou knowest I could not help it." Maddened with the pain of it all she sprang up, determined to go to him and tell him everything. To throw herself into his arms and beg forgiveness for her cruelty and crave the protection of his strength. Then her gaze fell upon her father's portrait! The cold, steadfast eyes were looking down upon her as if they could read her very soul. "No! No!" she sobbed, putting her hands over her eyes as if to shut out some spectre she had not the courage to face. "It must not be--it CANNOT be," and she sank back exhausted. When the paroxysm was over she rose to her feet, dried her eyes, smoothed her hair with both hands, and then, with lips tight pressed and faltering steps, walked upstairs to where Martha was getting Lucy's things ready for the coming journey. Crossing the room, she stood with her elbows on the mantel, her cheeks tight pressed between her palms, her eyes on the embers. Martha moved from the open trunk and stood behind her. "It was Doctor John, wasn't it?" she asked in a broken voice that told of her suffering. "Yes," moaned Jane from between her hands. "And ye told him about your goin'?" "Yes, Martha." Her frame was shaking with her sobs. "And about Lucy?" "No, I could not." Martha leaned forward and laid her hand on Jane's shoulder. "Poor lassie!" she said, patting it softly. "Poor lassie! That was the hardest part. He's big and strong and could 'a' comforted ye. My heart aches for ye both!" CHAPTER VIII AN ARRIVAL With the departure of Jane and Lucy the old homestead took on that desolate, abandoned look which comes to most homes when all the life and joyousness have gone from them. Weeds grew in the roadway between the lilacs, dandelions flaunted themselves over the grass-plots; the shutters of the porch side of the house were closed, and the main gate always thrown wide day and night in ungoverned welcome, was seldom opened except to a few intimate friends of the old nurse. At first Pastor Dellenbaugh had been considerate enough to mount the long path to inquire for news of the travelers and to see how Martha was getting along, but after the receipt of the earlier letters from Jane telling of their safe arrival and their sojourn in a little village but a short distance out of Paris, convenient to the great city, even his visits ceased. Captain Holt never darkened the door; nor did he ever willingly stop to talk to Martha when he met her on the road. She felt the slight, and avoided him when she could. This resulted in their seldom speaking to each other, and then only in the most casual way. She fancied he might think she wanted news of Bart, and so gave him no opportunity to discuss him or his whereabouts; but she was mistaken. The captain never mentioned his name to friend or stranger. To him the boy was dead for all time. Nor had anyone of his companions heard from him since that stormy night on the beach. Doctor John's struggle had lasted for months, but he had come through it chastened and determined. For the first few days he went about his work as one in a dream, his mind on the woman he loved, his hand mechanically doing its duty. Jane had so woven herself into his life that her sudden departure had been like the upwrenching of a plant, tearing out the fibres twisted about his heart, cutting off all his sustenance and strength. The inconsistencies of her conduct especially troubled him. If she loved him--and she had told him that she did, and with their cheeks touching--how could she leave him in order to indulge a mere whim of her sister's? And if she loved him well enough to tell him so, why had she refused to plight him her troth? Such a course was unnatural, and out of his own and everyone else's experience. Women who loved men with a great, strong, healthy love, the love he could give her, and the love he knew she could give him, never permitted such trifles to come between them and their life's happiness. What, he asked himself a thousand times, had brought this change? As the months went by these doubts and speculations one by one passed out of his mind, and only the image of the woman he adored, with all her qualities--loyalty to her trust, tenderness over Lucy and unquestioned love for himself--rose clear. No, he would believe in her to the end! She was still all he had in life. If she would not be his wife she should be his friend. That happiness was worth all else to him in the world. His was not to criticise, but to help. Help as SHE wanted it; preserving her standard of personal honor, her devotion to her ideals, her loyalty, her blind obedience to her trust. Mrs. Cavendish had seen the change in her son's demeanor and had watched him closely through his varying moods, but though she divined their cause she had not sought to probe his secret. His greatest comfort was in his visits to Martha. He always dropped in to see her when he made his rounds in the neighborhood; sometimes every day, sometimes once a week, depending on his patients and their condition--visits which were always prolonged when a letter came from either of the girls, for at first Lucy wrote to the old nurse as often as did Jane. Apart from this the doctor loved the patient caretaker, both for her loyalty and for her gentleness. And she loved him in return; clinging to him as an older woman clings to a strong man, following his advice (he never gave orders) to the minutest detail when something in the management or care of house or grounds exceeded her grasp. Consulting him, too, and this at Jane's special request--regarding any financial complications which needed prompt attention, and which, but for his services, might have required Jane's immediate return to disentangle. She loved, too, to talk of Lucy and of Miss Jane's goodness to her bairn, saying she had been both a sister and a mother to her, to which the doctor would invariably add some tribute of his own which only bound the friendship the closer. His main relief, however, lay in his work, and in this he became each day more engrossed. He seemed never to be out of his gig unless at the bedside of some patient. So long and wearing had the routes become--often beyond Barnegat and as far as Westfield--that the sorrel gave out, and he was obliged to add another horse to his stable. His patients saw the weary look in his eyes--as of one who had often looked on sorrow--and thought it was the hard work and anxiety over them that had caused it. But the old nurse knew better. "His heart's breakin' for love of her," she would say to Meg, looking down into his sleepy eyes--she cuddled him more than ever these days--"and I don't wonder. God knows how it'll all end." Jane wrote to him but seldom; only half a dozen letters in all during the first year of her absence among them one to tell him of their safe arrival, another to thank him for his kindness to Martha, and a third to acknowledge the receipt of a letter of introduction to a student friend of his who was now a prominent physician in Paris, and who might be useful in case either of them fell ill. He had written to his friend at the same time, giving the address of the two girls, but the physician had answered that he had called at the street and number, but no one knew of them. The doctor reported this to Jane in his next letter, asking her to write to his friend so that he might know of their whereabouts should they need his services, for which Jane, in a subsequent letter, thanked him, but made no mention of sending to his friend should occasion require. These subsequent letters said very little about their plans and carefully avoided all reference to their daily life or to Lucy's advancement in her studies, and never once set any time for their coming home. He wondered at her neglect of him, and when no answer came to his continued letters, except at long intervals, he could contain himself no longer, and laid the whole matter before Martha. "She means nothing, doctor, dear," she had answered, taking his hand and looking up into his troubled face. "Her heart is all right; she's goin' through deep waters, bein' away from everybody she loves--you most of all. Don't worry; keep on lovin' her, ye'll never have cause to repent it." That same night Martha wrote to Jane, giving her every detail of the interview, and in due course of time handed the doctor a letter in which Jane wrote: "He MUST NOT stop writing to me; his letters are all the comfort I have"--a line not intended for the doctor's eyes, but which the good soul could not keep from him, so eager was she to relieve his pain. Jane's letter to him in answer to his own expressing his unhappiness over her neglect was less direct, but none the less comforting to him. "I am constantly moving about," the letter ran, "and have much to do and cannot always answer your letters, so please do not expect them too often. But I am always thinking of you and your kindness to dear Martha. You do for me when you do for her." After this it became a settled habit between them, he writing by the weekly steamer, telling her every thought of his life, and she replying at long intervals. In these no word of love was spoken on her side; nor was any reference made to their last interview. But this fact did not cool the warmth of his affection nor weaken his faith. She had told him she loved him, and with her own lips. That was enough--enough from a woman like Jane. He would lose faith when she denied it in the same way. In the meantime she was his very breath and being. One morning two years after Jane's departure, while the doctor and his mother sat at breakfast, Mrs. Cavendish filling the tea-cups, the spring sunshine lighting up the snow-white cloth and polished silver, the mail arrived and two letters were laid at their respective plates, one for the doctor and the other for his mother. As Doctor John glanced at the handwriting his face flushed, and his eyes danced with pleasure. With eager, trembling fingers he broke the seal and ran his eyes hungrily over the contents. It had been his habit to turn to the bottom of the last page before he read the preceding ones, so that he might see the signature and note the final words of affection or friendship, such as "Ever your friend," or "Affectionately yours," or simply "Your friend," written above Jane's name. These were to him the thermometric readings of the warmth of her heart. Half way down the first page--before he had time to turn the leaf--he caught his breath in an effort to smother a sudden outburst of joy. Then with a supreme effort he regained his self-control and read the letter to the end. (He rarely mentioned Jane's name to his mother, and he did not want his delight over the contents of the letter to be made the basis of comment.) Mrs. Cavendish's outburst over the contents of her own envelope broke the silence and relieved his tension. "Oh, how fortunate!" she exclaimed. "Listen, John; now I really have good news for you. You remember I told you that I met old Dr. Pencoyd the last time I was in Philadelphia, and had a long talk with him. I told him how you were buried here and how hard you worked and how anxious I was that you should leave Barnegat, and he promised to write to me, and he has. Here's his letter. He says he is getting too old to continue his practice alone, that his assistant has fallen ill, and that if you will come to him at once he will take you into partnership and give you half his practice. I always knew something good would come out of my last visit to Philadelphia. Aren't you delighted, my son?" "Yes, perfectly overjoyed," answered the doctor, laughing. He was more than delighted--brimming over with happiness, in fact--but not over his mother's news; it was the letter held tight in his grasp that was sending electric thrills through him. "A fine old fellow is Dr. Pencoyd--known him for years," he continued; "I attended his lectures before I went abroad. Lives in a musty old house on Chestnut Street, stuffed full of family portraits and old mahogany furniture, and not a comfortable chair or sofa in the place; wears yellow Nankeen waist-coats, takes snuff, and carries a fob. Oh, yes, same old fellow. Very kind of him, mother, but wouldn't you rather have the sunlight dance in upon you as it does here and catch a glimpse of the sea through the window than to look across at your neighbors' back walls and white marble steps?" It was across that same sea that Jane was coming, and the sunshine would come with her! "Yes; but, John, surely you are not going to refuse this without looking into it?" she argued, eyeing him through her gold-rimmed glasses. "Go and see him, and then you can judge. It's his practice you want, not his house." "No; that's just what I don't want. I've got too much practice now. Somehow I can't keep my people well. No, mother, dear, don't bother your dear head over the old doctor and his wants. Write him that I am most grateful, but that the fact is I need an assistant myself, and if he will be good enough to send someone down here, I'll keep him busy every hour of the day and night. Then, again," he continued, a more serious tone in his voice, "I couldn't possibly leave here now, even if I wished to, which I do not." Mrs. Cavendish eyed him intently. She had expected just such a refusal Nothing that she ever planned for his advancement did he agree to. "Why not?" she asked, with some impatience. "The new hospital is about finished, and I am going to take charge of it." "Do they pay you for it?" she continued, in an incisive tone. "No, I don't think they will, nor can. It's not, that kind of a hospital," answered the doctor gravely. "And you will look after these people just as you do after Fogarty and the Branscombs, and everybody else up and down the shore, and never take a penny in pay!" she retorted with some indignation. "I am afraid I will, mother. A disappointing son, am I not? But there's no one to blame but yourself, old lady," and with a laugh he rose from his seat, Jane's letter in his hand, and kissed his mother on the cheek. "But, John, dear," she exclaimed in a pleading petulance as she looked into his face, still holding on to the sleeve of his coat to detain him the longer, "just think of this letter of Pencoyd's; nothing has ever been offered you better than this. He has the very best people in Philadelphia on his list, and you would get--" The doctor slipped his hand under his mother's chin, as he would have done to a child, and said with a twinkle in his eye--he was very happy this morning: "That's precisely my case--I've got the very best people in three counties on my list. That's much better than the old doctor." "Who are they, pray?" She was softening under her son's caress. "Well, let me think. There's the distinguished Mr. Tatham, who attends to the transportation of the cities of Warehold and Barnegat; and the Right Honorable Mr. Tipple, and Mrs. and Miss Gossaway, renowned for their toilets--" Mrs. Cavendish bit her lip. When her son was in one of these moods it was all she could do to keep her temper. "And the wonderful Mrs. Malmsley, and--" Mrs. Cavendish looked up. The name had an aristocratic sound, but it was unknown to her. "Who is she?" "Why, don't you know the wonderful Mrs. Malmsley?" inquired the doctor, with a quizzical smile. "No, I never heard of her." "Well, she's just moved into Warehold. Poor woman, she hasn't been out of bed for years! She's the wife of the new butcher, and--" "The butcher's wife?" "The butcher's wife, my dear mother, a most delightful old person, who has brought up three sons, and each one a credit to her." Mrs. Cavendish let go her hold on the doctor's sleeve and settled back in her chair. "And you won't even write to Dr. Pencoyd?" she asked in a disheartened way, as if she knew he would refuse. "Oh, with pleasure, and thank him most kindly, but I couldn't leave Barnegat; not now. Not at any time, so far as I can see." "And I suppose when Jane Cobden comes home in a year or so she will work with you in the hospital. She wanted to turn nurse the last time I talked to her." This special arrow in her maternal quiver, poisoned with her jealousy, was always ready. "I hope so," he replied, with a smile that lighted up his whole face; "only it will not be a year. Miss Jane will be here on the next steamer." Mrs. Cavendish put down her tea-cup and looked at her son in astonishment. The doctor still kept his eyes on her face. "Be here by the next steamer! How do you know?" The doctor held up the letter. "Lucy will remain," he added. "She is going to Germany to continue her studies." "And Jane is coming home alone?" "No, she brings a little child with her, the son of a friend, she writes. She asks that I arrange to have Martha meet them at the dock." "Somebody, I suppose, she has picked up out of the streets. She is always doing these wild, unpractical things. Whose child is it?" "She doesn't say, but I quite agree with you that it was helpless, or she wouldn't have protected it." "Why don't Lucy come with her?" The doctor shrugged his shoulders. "And I suppose you will go to the ship to meet her?" The doctor drew himself up, clicked his heels together with the air of an officer saluting his superior--really to hide his joy--and said with mock gravity, his hand on his heart: "I shall, most honorable mother, be the first to take her ladyship's hand as she walks down the gangplank." Then he added, with a tone of mild reproof in his voice: "What a funny, queer old mother you are! Always worrying yourself over the unimportant and the impossible," and stooping down, he kissed her again on the cheek and passed out of the room on the way to his office. "That woman always comes up at the wrong moment," Mrs. Cavendish said to herself in a bitter tone. "I knew he had received some word from her, I saw it in his face. He would have gone to Philadelphia but for Jane Cobden." CHAPTER IX THE SPREAD OF FIRE The doctor kept his word. His hand was the first that touched Jane's when she came down the gangplank, Martha beside him, holding out her arms for the child, cuddling it to her bosom, wrapping her shawl about it as if to protect it from the gaze of the inquisitive. "O doctor! it was so good of you!" were Jane's first words. It hurt her to call him thus, but she wanted to establish the new relation clearly. She had shouldered her cross and must bear its weight alone and in her own way. "You don't know what it is to see a face from home! I am so glad to get here. But you should not have left your people; I wrote Martha and told her so. All I wanted you to do was to have her meet me here. Thank you, dear friend, for coming." She had not let go his hand, clinging to him as a timid woman in crossing a narrow bridge spanning an abyss clings to the strong arm of a man. He helped her to the dock as tenderly as if she had been a child; asking her if the voyage had been a rough one, whether she had been ill in her berth, and whether she had taken care of the baby herself, and why she had brought no nurse with her. She saw his meaning, but she did not explain her weakness or offer any explanation of the cause of her appearance or of the absence of a nurse. In a moment she changed the subject, asking after his mother and his own work, and seemed interested in what he told her about the neighbors. When the joy of hearing her voice and of looking into her dear face once more had passed, his skilled eyes probed the deeper. He noted with a sinking at the heart the dark circles under the drooping lids, the drawn, pallid skin and telltale furrows that had cut their way deep into her cheeks. Her eyes, too, had lost their lustre, and her step lacked the spring and vigor of her old self. The diagnosis alarmed him. Even the mould of her face, so distinguished, and to him so beautiful, had undergone a change; whether through illness, or because of some mental anguish, he could not decide. When he pressed his inquiries about Lucy she answered with a half-stifled sigh that Lucy had decided to remain abroad for a year longer; adding that it had been a great relief to her, and that at first she had thought of remaining with her, but that their affairs, as he knew, had become so involved at home that she feared their means of living might be jeopardized if she did not return at once. The child, however, would be a comfort to both Martha and herself until Lucy came. Then she added in a constrained voice: "Its mother would not, or could not care for it, and so I brought it with me." Once at home and the little waif safely tucked away in the crib that had sheltered Lucy in the old days, the neighbors began to flock in; Uncle Ephraim among the first. "My, but I'm glad you're back!" he burst out. "Martha's been lonelier than a cat in a garret, and down at our house we ain't much better. And so that Bunch of Roses is going to stay over there, is she, and set those Frenchies crazy?" Pastor Dellenbaugh took both of Jane's hands into his own and looking into her face, said: "Ah, but we've missed you! There has been no standard, my dear Miss Jane, since you've been gone. I have felt it, and so has everyone in the church. It is good to have you once more with us." Mrs. Cavendish could hardly conceal her satisfaction, although she was careful what she said to her son. Her hope was that the care of the child would so absorb Jane that John would regain his freedom and be no longer subservient to Miss Cobden's whims. "And so Lucy is to stay in Paris?" she said, with one of her sweetest smiles. "She is so charming and innocent, that sweet sister of yours, my dear Miss Jane, and so sympathetic. I quite lost my heart to her. And to study music, too? A most noble accomplishment, my dear. My grandmother, who was an Erskine, you know, played divinely on the harp, and many of my ancestors, especially the Dagworthys, were accomplished musicians. Your sister will look lovely bending over a harp. My grandmother had her portrait painted that way by Peale, and it still hangs in the old house in Trenton. And they tell me you have brought a little angel with you to bring up and share your loneliness? How pathetic, and how good of you!" The village women--they came in groups--asked dozens of questions before Jane had had even time to shake each one by the hand. Was Lucy so in love with the life abroad that she would never come back? was she just as pretty as ever? what kind of bonnets were being worn? etc., etc. The child in Martha's arms was, of course, the object of special attention. They all agreed that it was a healthy, hearty, and most beautiful baby; just the kind of a child one would want to adopt if one had any such extraordinary desires. This talk continued until they had gained the highway, when they also agreed--and this without a single dissenting voice--that in all the village Jane Cobden was the only woman conscientious enough to want to bring up somebody else's child, and a foreigner at that, when there were any quantity of babies up and down the shore that could be had for the asking. The little creature was, no doubt, helpless, and appealed to Miss Jane's sympathies, but why bring it home at all? Were there not places enough in France where it could be brought up? etc., etc. This sort of gossip went on for days after Jane's return, each dropper-in at tea-table or village gathering having some view of her own to express, the women doing most of the talking. The discussion thus begun by friends was soon taken up by the sewing societies and church gatherings, one member in good standing remarking loud enough to be heard by everybody: "As for me, I ain't never surprised at nothin' Jane Cobden does. She's queerer than Dick's hat-band, and allus was, and I've knowed her ever since she used to toddle up to my house and I baked cookies for her. I've seen her many a time feed the dog with what I give her, just because she said he looked hungry, which there warn't a mite o' truth in, for there ain't nothin' goes hungry round my place, and never was. She's queer, I tell ye." "Quite true, dear Mrs. Pokeberry," remarked Pastor Dellenbaugh in his gentlest tone--he had heard the discussion as he was passing through the room and had stopped to listen--"especially when mercy and kindness is to be shown. Some poor little outcast, no doubt, with no one to take care of it, and so this grand woman brings it home to nurse and educate. I wish there were more Jane Cobdens in my parish. Many of you talk good deeds, and justice, and Christian spirit; here is a woman who puts them into practice." This statement having been made during the dispersal of a Wednesday night meeting, and in the hearing of half the congregation, furnished the key to the mystery, and so for a time the child and its new-found mother ceased to be an active subject of discussion. Ann Gossaway, however, was not satisfied. The more she thought of the pastor's explanation the more she resented it as an affront to her intelligence. "If folks wants to pick up stray babies," she shouted to her old mother on her return home one night, "and bring 'em home to nuss, they oughter label 'em with some sort o' pedigree, and not keep the village a-guessin' as to who they is and where they come from. I don't believe a word of this outcast yarn. Guess Miss Lucy is all right, and she knows enough to stay away when all this tomfoolery's goin' on. She doesn't want to come back to a child's nussery." To all of which her mother nodded her head, keeping it going like a toy mandarin long after the subject of discussion had been changed. Little by little the scandal spread: by innuendoes; by the wise shakings of empty heads; by nods and winks; by the piecing out of incomplete tattle. For the spread of gossip is like the spread of fire: First a smouldering heat--some friction of ill-feeling, perhaps, over a secret sin that cannot be smothered, try as we may; next a hot, blistering tongue of flame creeping stealthily; then a burst of scorching candor and the roar that ends in ruin. Sometimes the victim is saved by a dash of honest water--the outspoken word of some brave friend. More often those who should stamp out the burning brand stand idly by until the final collapse and then warm themselves at the blaze. Here in Warehold it began with some whispered talk: Bart Holt had disappeared; there was a woman in the case somewhere; Bart's exile had not been entirely caused by his love of cards and drink. Reference was also made to the fact that Jane had gone abroad but a short time AFTER Bart's disappearance, and that knowing how fond she was of him, and how she had tried to reform him, the probability was that she had met him in Paris. Doubts having been expressed that no woman of Jane Cobden's position would go to any such lengths to oblige so young a fellow as Bart Holt, the details of their intimacy were passed from mouth to mouth, and when this was again scouted, reference was made to Miss Gossaway, who was supposed to know more than she was willing to tell. The dressmaker denied all responsibility for the story, but admitted that she had once seen them on the beach "settin' as close together as they could git, with the red cloak she had made for Miss Jane wound about 'em. "'Twarn't none o' my business, and I told Martha so, and 'tain't none o' my business now, but I'd rather die than tell a lie or scandalize anybody, and so if ye ask me if I saw 'em I'll have to tell ye I did. I don't believe, howsomever, that Miss Jane went away to oblige that good-for-nothin' or that she's ever laid eyes on him since. Lucy is what took her. She's one o' them flyaways. I see that when she was home, and there warn't no peace up to the Cobdens' house till they'd taken her somewheres where she could git all the runnin' round she wanted. As for the baby, there ain't nobody knows where Miss Jane picked that up, but there ain't no doubt but what she loves it same's if it was her own child. She's named it Archie, after her grandfather, anyhow. That's what Martha and she calls it. So they're not ashamed of it." When the fire had spent itself, only one spot remained unscorched: this was the parentage of little Archie. That mystery still remained unsolved. Those of her own class who knew Jane intimately admired her kindness of heart and respected her silence; those who did not soon forgot the boy's existence. The tavern loungers, however, some of whom only knew the Cobden girls by reputation, had theories of their own; theories which were communicated to other loungers around other tavern stoves, most of whom would not have known either of the ladies on the street. The fact that both women belonged to a social stratum far above them gave additional license to their tongues; they could never be called in question by anybody who overheard, and were therefore safe to discuss the situation at their will. Condensed into illogical shape, the story was that Jane had met a foreigner who had deserted her, leaving her to care for the child alone; that Lucy had refused to come back to Warehold, had taken what money was coming to her, and, like a sensible woman, had stayed away. That there was not the slightest foundation for this slander did not lessen its acceptance by a certain class; many claimed that it offered the only plausible solution to the mystery, and must, therefore, be true. It was not long before the echoes of these scandals reached Martha's ears. The gossips dare not affront Miss Jane with their suspicions, but Martha was different. If they could irritate her by speaking lightly of her mistress, she might give out some information which would solve the mystery. One night a servant of one of the neighbors stopped Martha on the road and sent her flying home; not angry, but terrified. "They're beginnin' to talk," she broke out savagely, as she entered Jane's room, her breath almost gone from her run to the house. "I laughed at it and said they dare not one of 'em say it to your face or mine, but they're beginnin' to talk." "Is it about Barton Holt? have they heard anything from him?" asked Jane. The fear of his return had always haunted her. "No, and they won't. He'll never come back here ag'in. The captain would kill him." "It isn't about Lucy, then, is it?" cried Jane, her color going. Martha shook her head in answer to save her breath. "Who, then?" cried Jane, nervously. "Not Archie?" "Yes, Archie and you." "What do they say?" asked Jane, her voice fallen to a whisper. "They say it's your child, and that ye're afraid to tell who the father is." Jane caught at the chair for support and then sank slowly into her seat. "Who says so?" she gasped. "Nobody that you or I know; some of the beach-combers and hide-by-nights, I think, started it. Pokeberry's girl told me; her brother works in the shipyard." Jane sat looking at Martha with staring eyes. "How dare they--" "They dare do anything, and we can't answer back. That's what's goin' to make it hard. It's nobody's business, but that don't satisfy 'em. I've been through it meself; I know how mean they can be." "They shall never know--not while I have life left in me," Jane exclaimed firmly. "Yes, but that won't keep 'em from lyin'." The two sat still for some minutes, Martha gazing into vacancy, Jane lying back in her chair, her eyes closed. One emotion after another coursed through her with lightning rapidity--indignation at the charge, horror at the thought that any of her friends might believe it, followed by a shivering fear that her father's good name, for all her care and suffering, might be smirched at last. Suddenly there arose the tall image of Doctor John, with his frank, tender face. What would he think of it, and how, if he questioned her, could she answer him? Then there came to her that day of parting in Paris. She remembered Lucy's willingness to give up the child forever, and so cover up all traces of her sin, and her own immediate determination to risk everything for her sister's sake. As this last thought welled up in her mind and she recalled her father's dying command, her brow relaxed. Come what might, she was doing her duty. This was her solace and her strength. "Cruel, cruel people!" she said to Martha, relaxing her hands. "How can they be so wicked? But I am glad it is I who must take the brunt of it all. If they would treat me so, who am innocent, what would they do to my poor Lucy?" CHAPTER X A LATE VISITOR These rumors never reached the doctor. No scandalmonger ever dared talk gossip to him. When he first began to practise among the people of Warehold, and some garrulous old dame would seek to enrich his visit by tittle-tattle about her neighbors, she had never tried it a second time. Doctor John of Barnegat either received the news in silence or answered it with some pleasantry; even Ann Gossaway held her peace whenever the doctor had to be called in to prescribe for her oversensitive throat. He was aware that Jane had laid herself open to criticism in bringing home a child about which she had made no explanation, but he never spoke of it nor allowed anyone to say so to him. He would have been much happier, of course, if she had given him her confidence in this as she had in many other matters affecting her life; but he accepted her silence as part of her whole attitude toward him. Knowing her as he did, he was convinced that her sole incentive was one of loving kindness, both for the child and for the poor mother whose sin or whose poverty she was concealing. In this connection, he remembered how in one of her letters to Martha she had told of the numberless waifs she had seen and how her heart ached for them; especially in the hospitals which she had visited and among the students. He recalled that he himself had had many similar experiences in his Paris days, in which a woman like Jane Cobden would have been a veritable angel of mercy. Mrs. Cavendish's ears were more easily approached by the gossips of Warehold and vicinity; then, again she was always curious over the inmates of the Cobden house, and any little scraps of news, reliable or not, about either Jane or her absent sister were eagerly listened to. Finding it impossible to restrain herself any longer, she had seized the opportunity one evening when she and her son were sitting together in the salon, a rare occurrence for the doctor, and only possible when his patients were on the mend. "I'm sorry Jane Cobden was so foolish as to bring home that baby," she began. "Why?" said the doctor, without lifting his eyes from the book he was reading. "Oh, she lays herself open to criticism. It is, of course, but one of her eccentricities, but she owes something to her position and birth and should not invite unnecessary comment." "Who criticises her?" asked the doctor, his eyes still on the pages. "Oh, you can't tell; everybody is talking about it. Some of the gossip is outrageous, some I could not even repeat." "I have no doubt of it," answered the doctor quietly. "All small places like Warehold and Barnegat need topics of conversation, and Miss Jane for the moment is furnishing one of them. They utilize you, dear mother, and me, and everybody else in the same way. But that is no reason why we should lend our ears or our tongues to spread and encourage it." "I quite agree with you, my son, and I told the person who told me how foolish and silly it was, but they will talk, no matter what you say to them." "What do they say?" asked the doctor, laying down his book and rising from his chair. "Oh, all sorts of things. One rumor is that Captain Holt's son, Barton, the one that quarrelled with his father and who went to sea, could tell something of the child, if he could be found." The doctor laughed. "He can be found," he answered. "I saw his father only last week, and he told me Bart was in Brazil. That is some thousand of miles from Paris, but a little thing like that in geography doesn't seem to make much difference to some of our good people. Why do you listen to such nonsense?" he added as he kissed her tenderly and, with a pat on her cheek, left the room for his study. His mother's talk had made but little impression upon him. Gossip of this kind was always current when waifs like Archie formed the topic; but it hurt nobody, he said to himself--nobody like Jane. Sitting under his study lamp looking up some complicated case, his books about him, Jane's sad face came before him. "Has she not had trouble enough," he said to himself, "parted from Lucy and with her unsettled money affairs, without having to face these gnats whose sting she cannot ward off?" With this came the thought of his own helplessness to comfort her. He had taken her at her word that night before she left for Paris, when she had refused to give him her promise and had told him to wait, and he was still ready to come at her call; loving her, watching ever her, absorbed in every detail of her daily life, and eager to grant her slightest wish, and yet he could not but see that she had, since her return, surrounded herself with a barrier which he could neither understand nor break down whenever he touched on their personal relations. Had he loved her less he would, in justice to himself, have faced all her opposition and demanded an answer--Yes or No--as to whether she would yield to his wishes. But his generous nature forbade any such stand and his reverence for her precluded any such mental attitude. Lifting his eyes from his books and gazing dreamily into the space before him, he recalled, with a certain sinking of the heart, a conversation which had taken place between Jane and himself a few days after her arrival--an interview which had made a deep impression upon him. The two, in the absence of Martha--she had left the room for a moment--were standing beside the crib watching the child's breathing. Seizing the opportunity, one he had watched for, he had told her how much he had missed her during the two years, and how much happier his life was now that he could touch her hand and listen to her voice. She had evaded his meaning, making answer that his pleasure, was nothing compared to her own when she thought how safe the baby would be in his hands; adding quickly that she could never thank him enough for remaining in Barnegat and not leaving her helpless and without a "physician." The tone with which she pronounced the word had hurt him. He thought he detected a slight inflection, as if she were making a distinction between his skill as an expert and his love as a man, but he was not sure. Still gazing into the shadows before him, his unread book in his hand, he recalled a later occasion when she appeared rather to shrink from him than to wish to be near him, speaking to him with downcast eyes and without the frank look in her face which was always his welcome. On this day she was more unstrung and more desolate than he had ever seen her. At length, emboldened by his intense desire to help, and putting aside every obstacle, he had taken her hand and had said with all his heart in his voice: "Jane, you once told me you loved me. Is it still true?" He remembered how at first she had not answered, and how after a moment she had slowly withdrawn her hand and had replied in a voice almost inarticulate, so great was her emotion. "Yes, John, and always will be, but it can never go beyond that--never, never. Don't ask many more questions. Don't talk to me about it. Not now, John--not now! Don't hate me! Let us be as we have always been--please, John! You would not refuse me if you knew." He had started forward to take her in his arms; to insist that now every obstacle was removed she should give him at once the lawful right to protect her, but she had shrunk back, the palms of her hands held out as barriers, and before he could reason with her Martha had entered with something for little Archie, and so the interview had come to an end. Then, still absorbed in his thoughts, his eyes suddenly brightened and a certain joy trembled in his heart as he remembered that with all these misgivings and doubts there were other times--and their sum was in the ascendency--when she showed the same confidence in his judgement and the same readiness to take his advice; when the old light would once more flash in her eyes as she grasped his hand and the old sadness again shadow her face when his visits came to an end. With this he must be for a time content. These and a hundred other thoughts raced through Doctor John's mind as he sat to-night in his study chair, the lamplight falling on his open books and thin, delicately modelled hands. Once he rose from his seat and began pacing his study floor, his hands behind his back, his mind on Jane, on her curious and incomprehensible moods, trying to solve them as he walked, trusting and leaning upon him one day and shrinking from him the next. Baffled for the hundredth time in this mental search, he dropped again into his chair, and adjusting the lamp, pulled his books toward him to devote his mind to their contents. As the light flared up he caught the sound of a step upon the gravel outside, and then a heavy tread upon the porch. An instant later his knocker sounded. Doctor Cavendish gave a sigh--he had hoped to have one night at home--and rose to open the door. Captain Nat Holt stood outside. His pea-jacket was buttoned close up under his chin, his hat drawn tight down over his forehead. His weather-beaten face, as the light fell upon it, looked cracked and drawn, with dark hollows under the eyes, which the shadows from the lamplight deepened. "It's late, I know, doctor," he said in a hoarse, strained voice; "ten o'clock, maybe, but I got somethin' to talk to ye about," and he strode into the room. "Alone, are ye?" he continued, as he loosened his coat and laid his hat on the desk. "Where's the good mother? Home, is she?" "Yes, she's inside," answered the doctor, pointing to the open door leading to the salon and grasping the captain's brawny hand in welcome. "Why? Do you want to see her?" "No, I don't want to see her; don't want to see nobody but you. She can't hear, can she? 'Scuse me--I'll close this door." The doctor looked at him curiously. The captain seemed to be laboring under a nervous strain, unusual in one so stolid and self-possessed. The door closed, the captain moved back a cushion, dropped into a corner of the sofa, and sat looking at the doctor, with legs apart, his open palms resting on his knees. "I got bad news, doctor--awful bad news for everybody," as he spoke he reached into his pocket and produced a letter with a foreign postmark. "You remember my son Bart, of course, don't ye, who left home some two years ago?" he went on. The doctor nodded. "Well, he's dead." "Your son Bart dead!" cried the doctor, repeating his name in the surprise of the announcement. "How do you know?" "This letter came by to-day's mail. It's from the consul at Rio. Bart come in to see him dead broke and he helped him out. He'd run away from the ship and was goin' up into the mines to work, so the consul wrote me. He was in once after that and got a little money, and then he got down with yellow fever and they took him to the hospital, and he died in three days. There ain't no doubt about it. Here's a list of the dead in the paper; you kin read his name plain as print." Doctor John reached for the letter and newspaper clipping and turned them toward the lamp. The envelope was stamped "Rio Janeiro" and the letter bore the official heading of the consulate. "That's dreadful, dreadful news, captain," said the doctor in sympathetic tones. "Poor boy! it's too bad. Perhaps, however, there may be some mistake, after all. Foreign hospital registers are not always reliable," added the doctor in a hopeful tone. "No, it's all true, or Benham wouldn't write me what he has. I've known him for years. He knows me, too, and he don't go off half-cocked. I wrote him to look after Bart and sent him some money and give him the name of the ship, and he watched for her and sent for him all right. I was pretty nigh crazy that night he left, and handled him, maybe, rougher'n I ou'ter, but I couldn't help it. There's some things I can't stand, and what he done was one of 'em. It all comes back to me now, but I'd do it ag'in." As he spoke the rough, hard sailor leaned forward and rested his chin on his hand. The news had evidently been a great shock to him. The doctor reached over and laid his hand on the captain's knee. "I'm very, very sorry, captain, for you and for Bart; and the only son you have, is it not?" "Yes, and the only child we ever had. That makes it worse. Thank God, his mother's dead! All this would have broken her heart." For a moment the two men were silent, then the captain continued in a tone as if he were talking to himself, his eyes on the lamp: "But I couldn't have lived with him after that, and I told him so--not till he acted fair and square, like a man. I hoped he would some day, but that's over now." "We're none of us bad all the way through, captain," reasoned the doctor, "and don't you think of him in that way. He would have come to himself some day and been a comfort to you. I didn't know him as well as I might, and only as I met him at Yardley, but he must have had a great many fine qualities or the Cobdens wouldn't have liked him. Miss Jane used often to talk to me about him. She always believed in him. She will be greatly distressed over this news." "That's what brings me here. I want you to tell her, and not me. I'm afraid it'll git out and she'll hear it, and then she'll be worse off than she is now. Maybe it's best to say nothin' 'bout it to nobody and let it go. There ain't no one but me to grieve for him, and they don't send no bodies home, not from Rio, nor nowheres along that coast. Maybe, too, it ain't the time to say it to her. I was up there last week to see the baby, and she looked thinner and paler than I ever see her. I didn't know what to do, so I says to myself, 'There's Doctor John, he's at her house reg'lar and knows the ins and outs of her, and I'll go and tell him 'bout it and ask his advice.' I'd rather cut my hand off than hurt her, for if there's an angel on earth she's one. She shakes so when I mention Bart's name and gits so flustered, that's why I dar'n't tell her. Now he's dead there won't be nobody to do right by Archie. I can't; I'm all muzzled up tight. She made me take an oath, same as she has you, and I ain't goin' to break it any more'n you would. The little feller'll have to git 'long best way he kin now." Doctor John bent forward in his chair and looked at the captain curiously. His words convey no meaning to him. For an instant he thought that the shock of his son's death had unsettled the man's mind. "Take an oath! What for?" "'Bout Archie and herself." "But I've taken no oath!" "Well, perhaps it isn't your habit; it ain't some men's. I did." "What about?" It was the captain's turn now to look searchingly into his companion's face. The doctor's back was toward the lamp, throwing his face into shadow, but the captain could read its expression plainly. "You mean to tell me, doctor, you don't know what's goin' on up at Yardley? You do, of course, but you won't say--that's like you doctors!" "Yes, everything. But what has your son Bart got to do with it?" "Got to do with it! Ain't Jane Cobden motherin' his child?" The doctor lunged forward in his seat, his eyes staring straight at the captain. Had the old sailor struck him in the face he could not have been more astounded. "His child!" he cried savagely. "Certainly! Whose else is it? You knew, didn't ye?" The doctor settled back in his chair with the movement of an ox felled by a sudden blow. With the appalling news there rang in his ears the tones of his mother's voice retailing the gossip of the village. This, then, was what she could not repeat. After a moment he raised his head and asked in a low, firm voice: "Did Bart go to Paris after he left here?" "No, of course not! Went 'board the Corsair bound for Rio, and has been there ever since. I told you that before. There weren't no necessity for her to meet him in Paris." The doctor sprang from his chair and with eyes biasing and fists tightly clenched, stood over the captain. "And you dare to sit there and tell me that Miss Jane Cobden is that child's mother?" The captain struggled to his feet, his open hands held up to the doctor as if to ward off a blow. "Miss Jane! No, by God! No! Are you crazy? Sit down, sit down, I tell ye!" "Who, then? Speak!" "Lucy! That's what I drove Bart out for. Mort Cobden's daughter--Mort, mind ye, that was a brother to me since I was a boy! Jane that that child's mother! Yes, all the mother poor Archie's got! Ask Miss Jane, she'll tell ye. Tell ye how she sits and eats her heart out to save her sister that's too scared to come home. I want to cut my tongue out for tellin' ye, but I thought ye knew. Martha told me you loved her and that she loved you, and I thought she'd told ye. Jane Cobden crooked! No more'n the angels are. Now, will you tell her Bart's dead, or shall I?" "I will tell her," answered the doctor firmly, "and to-night." CHAPTER XI MORTON COBDEN'S DAUGHTER The cold wind from the sea freighted with the raw mist churned by the breakers cut sharply against Doctor John's cheeks as he sprang into his gig and dashed out of his gate toward Yardley. Under the shadow of the sombre pines, along the ribbon of a road, dull gray in the light of the stars, and out on the broader highway leading to Warehold, the sharp click of the mare's hoofs striking the hard road echoed through the night. The neighbors recognized the tread and the speed, and Uncle Ephraim threw up a window to know whether it was a case of life or death, an accident, or both; but the doctor only nodded and sped on. It WAS life and death--life for the woman he loved, death for all who traduced her. The strange news that had dropped from the captain's lips did not affect him except as would the ending of any young life; neither was there any bitterness in his heart against the dead boy who had wrecked Lucy's career and brought Jane humiliation and despair. All he thought of was the injustice of Jane's sufferings. Added to this was an overpowering desire to reach her side before her misery should continue another moment; to fold her in his arms, stand between her and the world; help her to grapple with the horror which was slowly crushing out her life. That it was past her hour for retiring, and that there might be no one to answer his summons, made no difference to him. He must see her at all hazards before he closed his eyes. As he whirled into the open gates of Yardley and peered from under the hood of the gig at the outlines of the old house, looming dimly through the avenue of bushes, he saw that the occupants were asleep; no lights shone from the upper windows and none burned in the hall below. This discovery checked to some extent the impetus with which he had flung himself into the night, his whole being absorbed and dominated by one idea. The cool wind, too, had begun to tell upon his nerves. He drew rein on the mare and stopped. For the first time since the captain's story had reached his ears his reason began to work. He was never an impetuous man; always a thoughtful and methodical one, and always overparticular in respecting the courtesies of life. He began suddenly to realize that this midnight visit was at variance with every act of his life. Then his better judgment became aroused. Was it right for him to wake Jane and disturb the house at this hour, causing her, perhaps, a sleepless night, or should he wait until the morning, when he could break the news to her in a more gentle and less sensational way? While he sat thus wondering, undetermined whether to drive lightly out of the gate again or to push forward in the hope that someone would be awake, his mind unconsciously reverted to the figure of Jane making her way with weary steps down the gangplank of the steamer, the two years of her suffering deep cut into every line of her face. He recalled the shock her appearance had given him, and his perplexity over the cause. He remembered her refusal to give him her promise, her begging him to wait, her unaccountable moods since her return. Then Lucy's face came before him, her whole career, in fact (in a flash, as a drowning man's life is pictured), from the first night after her return from school until he had bade her good-by to take the train for Trenton. Little scraps of talk sounded in his ears, and certain expressions about the corners of her eyes revealed themselves to his memory. He thought of her selfishness, of her love of pleasure, of her disregard of Jane's wishes, of her recklessness. Everything was clear now. "What a fool I have been!" he said to himself. "What a fool--FOOL! I ought to have known!" Next the magnitude of the atonement, and the cruelty and cowardice of the woman who had put her sister into so false a position swept over him. Then there arose, like the dawning of a light, the grand figure of the woman he loved, standing clear of all entanglements, a Madonna among the saints, more precious than ever in the radiance of her own sacrifice. With this last vision his mind was made up. No, he would not wait a moment. Once this terrible secret out of the way, Jane would regain her old self and they two fight the world together. As he loosened the reins over the sorrel a light suddenly flashed from one of the upper windows disappeared for a moment, and reappeared again at one of the smaller openings near the front steps. He drew rein again. Someone was moving about--who he did not know; perhaps Jane, perhaps one of the servants. Tying the lines to the dashboard, he sprang from the gig, tethered the mare to one of the lilac bushes, and walked briskly toward the house. As he neared the steps the door was opened and Martha's voice rang clear: "Meg, you rascal, come in, or shall I let ye stay out and freeze?" Doctor John stepped upon the porch, the light of Martha's candle falling on his face and figure. "It's I, Martha, don't be frightened; it's late, I know, but I hoped Miss Jane would be up. Has she gone to bed?" The old nurse started back. "Lord, how ye skeered me! I don't know whether she's asleep or not. She's upstairs with Archie, anyhow. I come out after this rapscallion that makes me look him up every night. I've talked to him till I'm sore, and he's promised me a dozen times, and here he is out ag'in. Here! Where are ye? In with ye, ye little beast!" The dog shrank past her and darted into the hall. "Now, then, doctor, come in out of the cold." Doctor John stepped softly inside and stood in the flare of the candle-light. He felt that he must give some reason for his appearance at this late hour, even if he did not see Jane. It would be just as well, therefore, to tell Martha of Bart's death at once, and not let her hear it, as she was sure to do, from someone on the street. Then again, he had kept few secrets from her where Jane was concerned; she had helped him many times before, and her advice was always good. He knew that she was familiar with every detail of the captain's story, but he did not propose to discuss Lucy's share in it with the old nurse. That he would reserve for Jane's ears alone. "Bring your candle into the sitting-room, Martha; I have something to tell you," he said gravely, loosening the cape of his overcoat and laying his hat on the hall table. The nurse followed. The measured tones of the doctor's voice, so unlike his cheery greetings, especially to her, unnerved her. This, in connection with the suppressed excitement under which he seemed to labor and the late hour of his visit, at once convinced her that something serious had happened. "Is there anything the matter?" she asked in a trembling voice. "Yes." "Is it about Lucy? There ain't nothin' gone wrong with her, doctor dear, is there?" "No, it is not about Lucy. It's about Barton Holt." "Ye don't tell me! Is he come back?" "No, nor never will. He's dead! "That villain dead! How do you know?" Her face paled and her lips quivered, but she gave no other sign of the shock the news had been to her. "Captain Nat, his father, has just left my office. I promised I would tell Miss Jane to-night. He was too much broken up and too fearful of its effect upon her to do it himself. I drove fast, but perhaps I'm too late to see her." "Well, ye could see her no doubt,--she could throw somethin' around her--but ye mustn't tell her THAT news. She's been downhearted all day and is tired out. Bart's dead, is he?" she repeated with an effort at indifference. "Well, that's too bad. I s'pose the captain's feelin' putty bad over it. Where did he die?" "He died in Rio Janeiro of yellow fever," said the doctor slowly, wondering at the self-control of the woman. Wondering, too, whether she was glad or sorry over the event, her face and manner showing no index to her feelings. "And will he be brought home to be buried?" she asked with a quick glance at the doctor's face. "No; they never bring them home with yellow fever." "And is that all ye come to tell her?" She was scrutinizing Doctor John's face, her quick, nervous glances revealing both suspicion and fear. "I had some other matters to talk about, but if she has retired, perhaps I had better come to-morrow," answered the doctor in undecided tones, as he gazed abstractedly at the flickering candle. The old woman hesitated. She saw that the doctor knew more than he intended to tell her. Her curiosity and her fear that some other complication had arisen--one which he was holding back--got the better of her judgment. If it was anything about her bairn, she could not wait until the morning. She had forgotten Meg now. "Well, maybe if ye break it to her easy-like she can stand it. I don't suppose she's gone to bed yet. Her door was open on a crack when I come down, and she always shuts it 'fore she goes to sleep. I'll light a couple o' lamps so ye can see, and then I'll send her down to ye if she'll come. Wait here, doctor, dear." The lamps lighted and Martha gone, Doctor John looked about the room, his glance resting on the sofa where he had so often sat with her; on the portrait of Morton Cobden, the captain's friend; on the work-basket filled with needlework that Jane had left on a small table beside her chair, and upon the books her hands had touched. He thought he had never loved her so much as now. No one he had ever known or heard of had made so great a sacrifice. Not for herself this immolation, but for a sister who had betrayed her confidence and who had repaid a life's devotion with unforgivable humiliation and disgrace. This was the woman whose heart he held. This was the woman he loved with every fibre of his being. But her sufferings were over now. He was ready to face the world and its malignity beside her. Whatever sins her sister had committed, and however soiled were Lucy's garments, Jane's robes were as white as snow, he was glad he had yielded to the impulse and had come at once. The barrier between them once broken down and the terrible secret shared, her troubles would end. The whispering of her skirts on the stairs announced her coming before she entered the room. She had been sitting by Archie's crib and had not waited to change her loose white gown, whose clinging folds accentuated her frail, delicate form. Her hair had been caught up hastily and hung in a dark mass, concealing her small, pale ears and making her face all the whiter by contrast. "Something alarming has brought you at this hour," she said, with a note of anxiety in her voice, walking rapidly toward him. "What can I do? Who is ill?" Doctor John sprang forward, held out both hands, and holding tight to her own, drew her close to him. "Has Martha told you?" he said tenderly. "No; only that you wanted me. I came as soon as I could." "It's about Barton Holt. His father has just left my office. I have very sad news for you. The poor boy--" Jane loosened her hands from his and drew back. The doctor paused in his recital. "Is he ill?" she inquired, a slight shiver running through her. "Worse than ill! I'm afraid you'll never see him again." "You mean that he is dead? Where?" "Yes, dead, in Rio. The letter arrived this morning." "And you came all the way up here to tell me this?" she asked, with an effort to hide her astonishment. Her eyes dropped for a moment and her voice trembled. Then she went on. "What does his father say?" "I have just left him. He is greatly shaken. He would not tell you himself, he said; he was afraid it might shock you too much, and asked me to come up. But it is not altogether that, Jane. I have heard something to-night that has driven me half out of my mind. That you should suffer this way alone is torture to me. You cannot, you shall not live another day as you have! Let me help!" Instantly there flashed into her mind the story Martha had brought in from the street. "He has heard it," she said to herself, "but he does not believe it, and he comes to comfort me. I cannot tell the truth without betraying Lucy." She drew a step farther from him. "You refer to what the people about us call a mystery--that poor little child upstairs?" she said slowly, all her self-control in her voice. "You think it is a torture for me to care for this helpless baby? It is not a torture; it is a joy--all the joy I have now." She stood looking at him as she spoke with searching eyes, wondering with the ever-questioning doubt of those denied love's full expression. "But I know--" "You know nothing--nothing but what I have told you; and what I have told you is the truth. What I have not told you is mine to keep. You love me too well to probe it any further, I am sorry for the captain. He has an iron will and a rough exterior, but he has a warm heart underneath. If you see him before I do give him my deepest sympathy. Now, my dear friend, I must go back to Archie; he is restless and needs me. Good-night," and she held out her hand and passed out of the room. She was gone before he could stop her. He started forward as her hand touched the door, but she closed it quickly behind her, as if to leave no doubt of her meaning. He saw that she had misunderstood him. He had intended to talk to her of Archie's father, and of Lucy, and she had supposed he had only come to comfort her about the village gossip. For some minutes he stood like one dazed. Then a feeling of unspeakable reverence stole over him. Not only was she determined to suffer alone and in silence, but she would guard her sister's secret at the cost of her own happiness. Inside that sacred precinct he knew he could never enter; that wine-press she intended to tread alone. Then a sudden indignation, followed by a contempt of his own weakness took possession of him. Being the older and stronger nature, he should have compelled her to listen. The physician as well as the friend should have asserted himself. No woman could be well balanced who would push away the hand of a man held out to save her from ruin and misery. He would send Martha for her again and insist upon her listening to him. He started for the door and stopped irresolute. A new light broke in upon his heart. It was not against himself and her own happiness that she had taken this stand, but to save her father's and her sister's name. He knew how strong was her devotion to her duty, how blind her love for Lucy, how sacred she held the trust given to her by her dead father. No; she was neither obstinate nor quixotic. Hers was the work of a martyr, not a fanatic. No one he had ever known or heard of had borne so great a cross or made so noble a sacrifice. It was like the deed of some grand old saint, the light of whose glory had shone down the ages. He was wrong, cruelly wrong. The only thing left for him to do was to wait. For what he could not tell. Perhaps God in his mercy would one day find the way. Martha's kindly voice as she opened the door awoke him from his revery. "Did she take it bad?" she asked. "No," he replied aimlessly, without thinking of what he said. "She sent a message to the captain. I'll go now. No, please don't bring a light to the door. The mare's only a short way down the road." When the old nurse had shut the front door after him she put out the lamps and ascended the stairs. The other servants were in bed. Jane's door was partly open. Martha pushed it gently with her hand and stepped in. Jane had thrown herself at full length on the bed and lay with her face buried in her hands. She was talking to herself and had not noticed Martha's footsteps. "O God! what have I done that this should be sent to me?" Martha heard her say between her sobs. "You would be big enough, my beloved, to bear it all for my sake; to take the stain and wear it; but I cannot hurt you--not you, not you, my great, strong, sweet soul. Your heart aches for me and you would give me all you have, but I could not bear your name without telling you. You would forgive me, but I could never forgive myself. No, no, you shall stand unstained if God will give me strength!" Martha walked softly to the bed and bent over Jane's prostrate body. "It's me, dear. What did he say to break your heart?" Jane slipped her arm about the old nurse's neck, drawing her closer, and without lifting her own head from the pillow talked on. "Nothing, nothing. He came to comfort me, not to hurt me." "Do ye think it's all true 'bout Bart?" Martha whispered. Jane raised her body from the bed and rested her head on Martha's shoulder. "Yes, it's all true about Bart," she answered in a stronger and more composed tone. "I have been expecting it. Poor boy, he had nothing to live for, and his conscience must have given him no rest." "Did the captain tell him about--" and Martha pointed toward the bed of the sleeping child. She could never bring herself to mention Lucy's name when speaking either of Bart or Archie. Jane sat erect, brushed the tears from her eyes, smoothed her hair back from her temples, and said with something of her customary poise: "No, I don't think so. The captain gave me his word, and he will not break it. Then, again, he will never discredit his own son. The doctor doesn't know, and there will be nobody to tell him. That's not what he came to tell me. It was about the stories you heard last week and which have only just reached his ears. That's all. He wanted to protect me from their annoyance, but I would not listen to him. There is trouble enough without bringing him into it. Now go to bed, Martha." As she spoke Jane regained her feet, and crossing the room, settled into a chair by the boy's crib. Long after Martha had closed her own door for the night Jane sat watching the sleeping child. One plump pink hand lay outside the cover; the other little crumpled rose-leaf was tucked under the cheek, the face half-hidden in a tangle of glossy curls, now spun-gold in the light of the shaded lamp. "Poor little waif," she sighed, "poor little motherless, fatherless waif! Why didn't you stay in heaven? This world has no place for you." Then she rose wearily, picked up the light, carried it across the room to her desk, propped a book in front of it so that its rays would not fall upon the sleeping child, opened her portfolio, and sat down to write. When she had finished and had sealed her letter it was long past midnight. It was addressed to Lucy in Dresden, and contained a full account of all the doctor had told her of Bart's death. CHAPTER XII A LETTER FROM PARIS For the first year Jane watched Archie's growth and development with the care of a self-appointed nurse temporarily doing her duty by her charge. Later on, as the fact became burned into her mind that Lucy would never willingly return to Warehold, she clung to him with that absorbing love and devotion which an unmarried woman often lavishes upon a child not her own. In his innocent eyes she saw the fulfilment of her promise to her father. He would grow to be a man of courage and strength, the stain upon his birth forgotten, doing honor to himself, to her, and to the name he bore. In him, too, she sought refuge from that other sorrow which was often greater than she could bear--the loss of the closer companionship of Doctor John--a companionship which only a wife's place could gain for her. The true mother-love--the love which she had denied herself, a love which had been poured out upon Lucy since her father's death--found its outlet, therefore, in little Archie. Under Martha's watchful care the helpless infant grew to be a big, roly-poly boy, never out of her arms when she could avoid it. At five he had lost his golden curls and short skirts and strutted about in knee-trousers. At seven he had begun to roam the streets, picking up his acquaintances wherever he found them. Chief among them was Tod Fogarty, the son of the fisherman, now a boy of ten, big for his age and bubbling over with health and merriment, and whose life Doctor John had saved when he was a baby. Tod had brought a basket of fish to Yardley, and sneaking Meg, who was then alive--he died the year after--had helped himself to part of the contents, and the skirmish over its recovery had resulted in a friendship which was to last the boys all their lives. The doctor believed in Tod, and always spoke of his pluck and of his love for his mother, qualities which Jane admired--but then technical class distinctions never troubled Jane--every honest body was Jane's friend, just as every honest body was Doctor John's. The doctor loved Archie with the love of an older brother; not altogether because he was Jane's ward, but for the boy's own qualities--for his courage, for his laugh--particularly for his buoyancy. Often, as he looked into the lad's eyes brimming with fun, he would wish that he himself had been born with the same kind of temperament. Then again the boy satisfied to a certain extent the longing in his heart for home, wife, and child--a void which he knew now would never be filled. Fate had decreed that he and the woman he loved should live apart--with this he must be content. Not that his disappointments had soured him; only that this ever-present sorrow had added to the cares of his life, and in later years had taken much of the spring and joyousness out of him. This drew him all the closer to Archie, and the lad soon became his constant companion; sitting beside him in his gig, waiting for him at the doors of the fishermen's huts, or in the cabins of the poor on the outskirts of Barnegat and Warehold. "There goes Doctor John of Barnegat and his curly-head," the neighbors would say; "when ye see one ye see t'other." Newcomers in Barnegat and Warehold thought Archie was his son, and would talk to the doctor about him: "Fine lad you got, doctor--don't look a bit like you, but maybe he will when he gets his growth." At which the doctor would laugh and pat the boy's head. During all these years Lucy's letters came but seldom. When they did arrive, most of them were filled with elaborate excuses for her prolonged stay. The money, she wrote, which Jane had sent her from time to time was ample for her needs; she was making many valuable friends, and she could not see how she could return until the following spring--a spring which never came. In no one of them had she ever answered Jane's letter about Bart's death, except to acknowledge its receipt. Nor, strange to say, had she ever expressed any love for Archie. Jane's letters were always filled with the child's doings; his illnesses and recoveries; but whenever Lucy mentioned his name, which was seldom, she invariably referred to him as "your little ward" or "your baby," evidently intending to wipe that part of her life completely out. Neither did she make any comment on the child's christening--a ceremony which took place in the church, Pastor Dellenbaugh officiating--except to write that perhaps one name was as good as another, and that she hoped he would not disgrace it when he grew up. These things, however, made but little impression on Jane. She never lost faith in her sister, and never gave up hope that one day they would all three be reunited; how or where she could not tell or foresee, but in some way by which Lucy would know and love her son for himself alone, and the two live together ever after--his parentage always a secret. When Lucy once looked into her boy's face she was convinced she would love and cling to him. This was her constant prayer. All these hopes were dashed to the ground by the receipt of a letter from Lucy with a Geneva postmark. She had not written for months, and Jane broke the seal with a murmur of delight, Martha leaning forward, eager to hear the first word from her bairn. As she read Jane's face grew suddenly pale. "What is it?" Martha asked in a trembling voice. For some minutes Jane sat staring into space, her hand pressed to her side. She looked like one who had received a death message. Then, without a word, she handed the letter to Martha. The old woman adjusted her glasses, read the missive to the end without comment, and laid it back on Jane's lap. The writing covered but part of the page, and announced Lucy's coming marriage with a Frenchman: "A man of distinction; some years older than myself, and of ample means. He fell in love with me at Aix." There are certain crises in life with conclusions so evident that no spoken word can add to their clearness. There is no need of comment; neither is there room for doubt. The bare facts stand naked. No sophistry can dull their outlines nor soften the insistence of their high lights; nor can any reasoning explain away the results that will follow. Both women, without the exchange of a word, knew instantly that the consummation of this marriage meant the loss of Lucy forever. Now she would never come back, and Archie would be motherless for life. They foresaw, too, that all their yearning to clasp Lucy once more in their arms would go unsatisfied. In this marriage she had found a way to slip as easily from out the ties that bound her to Yardley as she would from an old dress. Martha rose from her chair, read the letter again to the end, and without opening her lips left the room. Jane kept her seat, her head resting on her hand, the letter once more in her lap. The revulsion of feeling had paralyzed her judgment, and for a time had benumbed her emotions. All she saw was Archie's eyes looking into hers as he waited for an answer to that question he would one day ask and which now she knew she could never give. Then there rose before her, like some disembodied spirit from a long-covered grave, the spectre of the past. An icy chill crept over her. Would Lucy begin this new life with the same deceit with which she had begun the old? And if she did, would this Frenchman forgive her when he learned the facts? If he never learned them--and this was most to be dreaded--what would Lucy's misery be all her life if she still kept the secret close? Then with a pathos all the more intense because of her ignorance of the true situation--she fighting on alone, unconscious that the man she loved not only knew every pulsation of her aching heart, but would be as willing as herself to guard its secret, she cried: "Yes, at any cost she must be saved from this living death! I know what it is to sit beside the man I love, the man whose arm is ready to sustain me, whose heart is bursting for love of me, and yet be always held apart by a spectre which I dare not face." With this came the resolve to prevent the marriage at all hazards, even to leaving Yardley and taking the first steamer to Europe, that she might plead with Lucy in person. While she sat searching her brain for some way out of the threatened calamity, the rapid rumbling of the doctor's gig was heard on the gravel road outside her open window. She knew from the speed with which he drove that something out of the common had happened. The gig stopped and the doctor's voice rang out: "Come as quick as you can, Jane, please. I've got a bad case some miles out of Warehold, and I need you; it's a compound fracture, and I want you to help with the chloroform." All her indecision vanished and all her doubts were swept away as she caught the tones of his voice. Who else in the wide world understood her as he did, and who but he should guide her now? Had he ever failed her? When was his hand withheld or his lips silent? How long would her pride shut out his sympathy? If he could help in the smaller things of life why not trust him in this larger sorrow?--one that threatened to overwhelm her, she whose heart ached for tenderness and wise counsel. Perhaps she could lean upon him without betraying her trust. After all, the question of Archie's birth--the one secret between them--need not come up. It was Lucy's future happiness which was at stake. This must be made safe at any cost short of exposure. "Better put a few things in a bag," Doctor John continued. "It may be a case of hours or days--I can't tell till I see him. The boy fell from the roof of the stable and is pretty badly hurt; both legs are broken, I hear; the right one in two places." She was upstairs in a moment, into her nursing dress, always hanging ready in case the doctor called for her, and down again, standing beside the gig, her bag in her hand, before he had time to turn his horse and arrange the seat and robes for her comfort. "Who is it?" she asked hurriedly, resting her hand in his as he helped her into the seat and took the one beside her, Martha and Archie assisting with her bag and big driving cloak. "Burton's boy. His father was coming for me and met me on the road. I have everything with me, so we will not lose any time. Good-by, my boy," he called to Archie. "One day I'll make a doctor of you, and then I won't have to take your dear mother from you so often. Good-by, Martha. You want to take care of that cough, old lady, or I shall have to send up some of those plasters you love so." They were off and rattling down the path between the lilacs before either Archie or the old woman could answer. To hearts like Jane's and the doctor's, a suffering body, no matter how far away, was a sinking ship in the clutch of the breakers. Until the lifeboat reached her side everything was forgotten. The doctor adjusted the robe over Jane's lap and settled himself in his seat. They had often driven thus together, and Jane's happiest hours had been spent close to his side, both intent on the same errand of mercy, and BOTH WORKING TOGETHER. That was the joy of it! They talked of the wounded boy and of the needed treatment and what part each should take in the operation; of some new cases in the hospital and the remedies suggested for their comfort; of Archie's life on the beach and how ruddy and handsome he was growing, and of his tender, loving nature; and of the thousand and one other things that two people who know every pulsation of each other's hearts are apt to discuss--of everything, in fact, but the letter in her pocket. "It is a serious case," she said to herself--"this to which we are hurrying--and nothing must disturb the sureness of his sensitive hand." Now and then, as he spoke, the two would turn their heads and look into each other's eyes. When a man's face lacks the lines and modellings that stand for beauty the woman who loves him is apt to omit in her eager glance every feature but his eyes. His eyes are the open doors to his soul; in these she finds her ideals, and in these she revels. But with Jane every feature was a joy--the way the smoothly cut hair was trimmed about his white temples; the small, well-turned ears lying flat to his head; the lines of his eyebrows; the wide, sensitive nostrils and the gleam of the even teeth flashing from between well-drawn, mobile lips; the white, smooth, polished skin. Not all faces could boast this beauty; but then not all souls shone as clearly as did Doctor John's through the thin veil of his face. And she was equally young and beautiful to him. Her figure was still that of her youth; her face had not changed--he still caught the smile of the girl he loved. Often, when they had been driving along the coast, the salt wind in their faces, and he had looked at her suddenly, a thrill of delight had swept through him as he noted how rosy were her cheeks and how ruddy the wrists above the gloves, hiding the dear hands he loved so well, the tapering fingers tipped with delicate pink nails. He could, if he sought them, find many telltale wrinkles about the corners of the mouth and under the eyelids (he knew and loved them all), showing where the acid of anxiety had bitten deep into the plate on which the record of her life was being daily etched, but her beautiful gray eyes still shone with the same true, kindly light, and always flashed the brighter when they looked into his own. No, she was ever young and ever beautiful to him! To-day, however, there was a strange tremor in her voice and an anxious, troubled expression in her face--one that he had not seen for years. Nor had she once looked into his eyes in the old way. "Something worries you, Jane," he said, his voice echoing his thoughts. "Tell me about it." "No--not now--it is nothing," she answered quickly. "Yes, tell me. Don't keep any troubles from me. I have nothing else to do in life but smooth them out. Come, what is it?" "Wait until we get through with Burton's boy. He may be hurt worse than you think." The doctor slackened the reins until they rested on the dashboard, and with a quick movement turned half around and looked searchingly into Jane's eyes. "It is serious, then. What has happened?" "Only a letter from Lucy." "Is she coming home?" "No, she is going to be married." The doctor gave a low whistle. Instantly Archie's laughing eyes looked into his; then came the thought of the nameless grave of his father. "Well, upon my soul! You don't say so! Who to, pray?" "To a Frenchman." Jane's eyes were upon his, reading the effect of her news. His tone of surprise left an uncomfortable feeling behind it. "How long has she known him?" he continued, tightening the reins again and chirruping to the mare.. "She does not say--not long, I should think." "What sort of a Frenchman is he? I've known several kinds in my life--so have you, no doubt," and a quiet smile overspread his face. "Come, Bess! Hurry up, old girl." "A gentleman, I should think, from what she writes. He is much older than Lucy, and she says very well off." "Then you didn't meet him on the other side?" "And never heard of him before?" "Not until I received this letter." The doctor reached for his whip and flecked off a fly that had settled on the mare's neck. "Lucy is about twenty-seven, is she not?" "Yes, some eight years younger than I am. Why do you ask, John?" "Because it is always a restless age for a woman. She has lost the protecting ignorance of youth and she has not yet gained enough of the experience of age to steady her. Marriage often comes as a balance-weight. She is coming home to be married, isn't she?" "No; they are to be married in Geneva at his mother's." "I think that part of it is a mistake," he said in a decided tone. "There is no reason why she should not be married here; she owes that to you and to herself." Then he added in a gentler tone, "And this worries you?" "More than I can tell you, John." There was a note in her voice that vibrated through him. He knew now how seriously the situation affected her. "But why, Jane? If Lucy is happier in it we should do what we can to help her." "Yes, but not in this way. This will make her all the more miserable. I don't want this marriage; I want her to come home and live with me and Archie. She makes me promises every year to come, and now it is over six years since I left her and she has always put me off. This marriage means that she will never come. I want her here, John. It is not right for her to live as she does. Please think as I do!" The doctor patted Jane's hand--it was the only mark of affection he ever allowed himself--not in a caressing way, but more as a father would pat the hand of a nervous child. "Well, let us go over it from the beginning. Maybe I don't know all the facts. Have you the letter with you?" She handed it to him. He passed the reins to her and read it carefully to the end. "Have you answered it yet?" "No, I wanted to talk to you about it. What do you think now?" "I can't see that it will make any difference. She is not a woman to live alone. I have always been surprised that she waited so long. You are wrong, Jane, about this. It is best for everybody and everything that Lucy should be married." "John, dear," she said in a half-pleading tone--there were some times when this last word slipped out--"I don't want this marriage at all. I am so wretched about it that I feel like taking the first steamer and bringing her home with me. She will forget all about him when she is here; and it is only her loneliness that makes her want to marry. I don't want her married; I want her to love me and Martha and--Archie--and she will if she sees him." "Is that better than loving a man who loves her?" The words dropped from his lips before he could recall them--forced out, as it were, by the pressure of his heart. Jane caught her breath and the color rose in her cheeks. She knew he did not mean her, and yet she saw he spoke from his heart. Doctor John's face, however, gave no sign of his thoughts. "But, John, I don't know that she does love him. She doesn't say so--she says HE loves her. And if she did, we cannot all follow our own hearts." "Why not?" he replied calmly, looking straight ahead of him: at the bend in the road, at the crows flying in the air, at the leaden sky between the rows of pines. If she wanted to give him her confidence he was ready now with heart and arms wide open. Perhaps his hour had come at last. "Because--because," she faltered, "our duty comes in. That is holier than love." Then her voice rose and steadied itself--"Lucy's duty is to come home." He understood. The gate was still shut; the wall still confronted him. He could not and would not scale it. She had risked her own happiness--even her reputation--to keep this skeleton hidden, the secret inviolate. Only in the late years had she begun to recover from the strain. She had stood the brunt and borne the sufferings of another's sin without complaint, without reward, giving up everything in life in consecration to her trust. He, of all men, could not tear the mask away, nor could he stoop by the more subtle paths of friendship, love, or duty to seek to look behind it--not without her own free and willing hand to guide him. There was nothing else in all her life that she had not told him. Every thought was his, every resolve, every joy. She would entrust him with this if it was hers to give. Until she did his lips would be sealed. As to Lucy, it could make no difference. Bart lying in a foreign grave would never trouble her again, and Archie would only be a stumbling-block in her career. She would never love the boy, come what might. If this Frenchman filled her ideal, it was best for her to end her days across the water--best certainly for Jane, to whom she had only brought unhappiness. For some moments he busied himself with the reins, loosening them from where they were caught in the harness; then he bent his head and said slowly, and with the tone of the physician in consultation: "Your protest will do no good, Jane, and your trip abroad will only be a waste of time and money. If Lucy has not changed, and this letter shows that she has not, she will laugh at your objections and end by doing as she pleases. She has always been a law unto herself, and this new move of hers is part of her life-plan. Take my advice: stay where you are; write her a loving, sweet letter and tell her how happy you hope she will be, and send her your congratulations. She will not listen to your objections, and your opposition might lose you her love." Before dark they were both on their way back to Yardley. Burton's boy had not been hurt as badly as his father thought; but one leg was broken, and this was soon in splints, and without Jane's assistance. Before they had reached her door her mind was made up. The doctor's words, as they always did, had gone down deep into her mind, and all thoughts of going abroad, or of even protesting against Lucy's marriage, were given up. Only the spectre remained. That the doctor knew nothing of, and that she must meet alone. Martha took Jane's answer to the post-office herself. She had talked its contents over with the old nurse, and the two had put their hearts into every line. "Tell him everything," Jane wrote. "Don't begin a new life with an old lie. With me it is different. I saved you, my sister, because I loved you, and because I could not bear that your sweet girlhood should be marred. I shall live my life out in this duty. It came to me, and I could not put it from me, and would not now if I could, but I know the tyranny of a secret you cannot share with the man who loves you. I know, too, the cruelty of it all. For years I have answered kindly meant inquiry with discourteous silence, bearing insinuations, calumny, insults--and all because I cannot speak. Don't, I beseech you, begin your new life in this slavery. But whatever the outcome, take him into your confidence. Better have him leave you now than after you are married. Remember, too, that if by this declaration you should lose his love you will at least gain his respect. Perhaps, if his heart is tender and he feels for the suffering and wronged, you may keep both. Forgive me, dear, but I have only your happiness at heart, and I love you too dearly not to warn you against any danger which would threaten you. Martha agrees with me in the above, and knows you will do right by him." When Lucy's answer arrived weeks afterward--after her marriage, in fact--Jane read it with a clutching at her throat she had not known since that fatal afternoon when Martha returned from Trenton. "You dear, foolish sister," Lucy's letter began, "what should I tell him for? He loves me devotedly and we are very happy together, and I am not going to cause him any pain by bringing any disagreeable thing into his life. People don't do those wild, old-fashioned things over here. And then, again, there is no possibility of his finding out. Maria agrees with me thoroughly, and says in her funny way that men nowadays know too much already." Then followed an account of her wedding. This letter Jane did not read to the doctor--no part of it, in fact. She did not even mention its receipt, except to say that the wedding had taken place in Geneva, where the Frenchman's mother lived, it being impossible, Lucy said, for her to come home, and that Maria Collins, who was staying with her, had been the only one of her old friends at the ceremony. Neither did she read it all to Martha. The old nurse was growing more feeble every year and she did not wish her blind faith in her bairn disturbed. For many days she kept the letter locked in her desk, not having the courage to take it out again and read it. Then she sent for Captain Holt, the only one, beside Martha, with whom she could discuss the matter. She knew his strong, honest nature, and his blunt, outspoken way of giving vent to his mind, and she hoped that his knowledge of life might help to comfort her. "Married to one o' them furriners, is she?" the captain blurted out; "and goin' to keep right on livin' the lie she's lived ever since she left ye? You'll excuse me, Miss Jane,--you've been a mother, and a sister and everything to her, and you're nearer the angels than anybody I know. That's what I think when I look at you and Archie. I say it behind your back and I say it now to your face, for it's true. As to Lucy, I may be mistaken, and I may not. I don't want to condemn nothin' 'less I'm on the survey and kin look the craft over; that's why I'm partic'lar. Maybe Bart was right in sayin' it warn't all his fault, whelp as he was to say it, and maybe he warn't. It ain't up before me and I ain't passin' on it,--but one thing is certain, when a ship's made as many voyages as Lucy has and ain't been home for repairs nigh on to seven years--ain't it?" and he looked at Jane for confirmation--"she gits foul and sometimes a little mite worm-eaten--especially her bilge timbers, unless they're copper-fastened or pretty good stuff. I've been thinkin' for some time that you ain't got Lucy straight, and this last kick-up of hers makes me sure of it. Some timber is growed right and some timber is growed crooked; and when it's growed crooked it gits leaky, and no 'mount o' tar and pitch kin stop it. Every twist the ship gives it opens the seams, and the pumps is goin' all the time. When your timber is growed right you kin all go to sleep and not a drop o' water'll git in. Your sister Lucy ain't growed right. Maybe she kin help it and maybe she can't, but she'll leak every time there comes a twist. See if she don't." But Jane never lost faith nor wavered in her trust. With the old-time love strong upon her she continued to make excuses for this thoughtless, irresponsible woman, so easily influenced. "It is Maria Collins who has written the letter, and not Lucy," she kept saying to herself. "Maria has been her bad angel from her girlhood, and still dominates her. The poor child's sufferings have hardened her heart and destroyed for a time her sense of right and wrong--that is all." With this thought uppermost in her mind she took the letter from her desk, and stirring the smouldering embers, laid it upon the coals. The sheet blazed and fell into ashes. "No one will ever know," she said with a sigh. CHAPTER XIII SCOOTSY'S EPITHET Lying on Barnegat Beach, within sight of the House of Refuge and Fogarty's cabin, was the hull of a sloop which had been whirled in one night in a southeaster, with not a soul on board, riding the breakers like a duck, and landing high and dry out of the hungry clutch of the surf-dogs. She was light at the time and without ballast, and lay stranded upright on her keel. All attempts by the beach-combers to float her had proved futile; they had stripped her of her standing rigging and everything else of value, and had then abandoned her. Only the evenly balanced hull was left, its bottom timbers broken and its bent keelson buried in the sand. This hulk little Tod Fogarty, aged ten, had taken possession of; particularly the after-part of the hold, over which he had placed a trusty henchman armed with a cutlass made from the hoop of a fish barrel. The henchman--aged seven--wore knee-trousers and a cap and answered to the name of Archie. The refuge itself bore the title of "The Bandit's Home." This new hulk had taken the place of the old schooner which had served Captain Holt as a landmark on that eventful night when he strode Barnegat Beach in search of Bart, and which by the action of the ever-changing tides, had gradually settled until now only a hillock marked its grave--a fate which sooner or later would overtake this newly landed sloop itself. These Barnegat tides are the sponges that wipe clean the slate of the beach. Each day a new record is made and each day it is wiped out: records from passing ships, an empty crate, broken spar or useless barrel grounded now and then by the tide in its flow as it moves up and down the sand at the will of the waters. Records, too, of many footprints,--the lagging steps of happy lovers; the dimpled feet of joyous children; the tread of tramp, coast-guard or fisherman--all scoured clean when the merciful tide makes ebb. Other records are strewn along the beach; these the tide alone cannot efface--the bow of some hapless schooner it may be, wrenched from its hull, and sent whirling shoreward; the shattered mast and crosstrees of a stranded ship beaten to death in the breakers; or some battered capstan carried in the white teeth of the surf-dogs and dropped beyond the froth-line. To these with the help of the south wind, the tides extend their mercy, burying them deep with successive blankets of sand, hiding their bruised bodies, covering their nakedness and the marks of their sufferings. All through the restful summer and late autumn these battered derelicts lie buried, while above their graves the children play and watch the ships go by, or stretch themselves at length, their eyes on the circling gulls. With the coming of the autumn all this is changed. The cruel north wind now wakes, and with a loud roar joins hands with the savage easter; the startled surf falls upon the beach like a scourge. Under their double lash the outer bar cowers and sinks; the frightened sand flees hither and thither. Soon the frenzied breakers throw themselves headlong, tearing with teeth and claws, burrowing deep into the hidden graves. Now the forgotten wrecks, like long-buried sins, rise and stand naked, showing every scar and stain. This is the work of the sea-puss--the revolving maniac born of close-wed wind and tide; a beast so terrible that in a single night, with its auger-like snout, it bites huge inlets out of farm lands--mouthfuls deep enough for ships to sail where but yesterday the corn grew. In the hull of this newly stranded sloop, then--sitting high and dry, out of the reach of the summer surf,--Tod and Archie spent every hour of the day they could call their own; sallying forth on various piratical excursions, coming back laden with driftwood for a bonfire, or hugging some bottle, which was always opened with trembling, eager fingers in the inmost recesses of the Home, in the hope that some tidings of a lost ship might be found inside; or with their pockets crammed with clam-shells and other sea spoils with which to decorate the inside timbers of what was left of the former captain's cabin. Jane had protested at first, but the doctor had looked the hull over, and found that there was nothing wide enough, nor deep enough, nor sharp enough to do them harm, and so she was content. Then again, the boys were both strong for their age, and looked it, Tod easily passing for a lad of twelve or fourteen, and Archie for a boy of ten. The one danger discovered by the doctor lay in its height, the only way of boarding the stranded craft being by means of a hand-over-hand climb up the rusty chains of the bowsprit, a difficult and trousers-tearing operation. This was obviated by Tod's father, who made a ladder for the boys out of a pair of old oars, which the two pirates pulled up after them whenever an enemy hove in sight. When friends approached it was let down with more than elaborate ceremony, the guests being escorted by Archie and welcomed on board by Tod. Once Captain Holt's short, sturdy body was descried in the offing tramping the sand-dunes on his way to Fogarty's, and a signal flag--part of Mother Fogarty's flannel petticoat, and blood-red, as befitted the desperate nature of the craft over which it floated, was at once set in his honor. The captain put his helm hard down and came up into the wind and alongside the hulk. "Well! well! well!" he cried in his best quarterdeck voice--"what are you stowaways doin' here?" and he climbed the ladder and swung himself over the battered rail. Archie took his hand and led him into the most sacred recesses of the den, explaining to him his plans for defence, his armament of barrel hoops, and his ammunition of shells and pebbles, Tod standing silently by and a little abashed, as was natural in one of his station; at which the captain laughed more loudly than before, catching Archie in his arms, rubbing his curly head with his big, hard hand, and telling him he was a chip of the old block, every inch of him--none of which did either Archie or Tod understand. Before he climbed down the ladder he announced with a solemn smile that he thought the craft was well protected so far as collisions on foggy nights were concerned, but he doubted if their arms were sufficient and that he had better leave them his big sea knife which had been twice around Cape Horn, and which might be useful in lopping off arms and legs whenever the cutthroats got too impudent and aggressive; whereupon Archie threw his arms around his grizzled neck and said he was a "bully commodore," and that if he would come and live with them aboard the hulk they would obey his orders to a man. Archie leaned over the rotten rail and saw the old salt stop a little way from the hulk and stand looking at them for some minutes and then wave his hand, at which the boys waved back, but the lad did not see the tears that lingered for an instant on the captain's eyelids, and which the sea-breeze caught away; nor did he hear the words, as the captain resumed his walk: "He's all I've got left, and yet he don't know it and I can't tell him. Ain't it hell?" Neither did they notice that he never once raised his eyes toward the House of Refuge as he passed its side. A new door and a new roof had been added, but in other respects it was to him the same grewsome, lonely hut as on that last night when he had denounced his son outside its swinging door. Often the boys made neighborly visits to friendly tribes and settlers. Fogarty was one of these, and Doctor Cavendish was another. The doctor's country was a place of buttered bread and preserves and a romp with Rex, who was almost as feeble as Meg had been in his last days. But Fogarty's cabin was a mine of never-ending delight. In addition to the quaint low house of clapboards and old ship-timber, with its sloping roof and little toy windows, so unlike his own at Yardley, and smoked ceilings, there was a scrap heap piled up and scattered over the yard which in itself was a veritable treasure-house. Here were rusty chains and wooden figure-heads of broken-nosed, blind maidens and tailless dolphins. Here were twisted iron rods, fish-baskets, broken lobster-pots, rotting seines and tangled, useless nets--some used as coverings for coops of restless chickens--old worn-out rope, tangled rigging--everything that a fisherman who had spent his life on Barnegat beach could pull from the surf or find stranded on the sand. Besides all these priceless treasures, there was an old boat lying afloat in a small lagoon back of the house, one of those seepage pools common to the coast--a boat which Fogarty had patched with a bit of sail-cloth, and for which he had made two pairs of oars, one for each of the "crew," as he called the lads, and which Archie learned to handle with such dexterity that the old fisherman declared he would make a first-class boatman when he grew up, and would "shame the whole bunch of 'em." But these two valiant buccaneers were not to remain in undisturbed possession of the Bandit's Home with its bewildering fittings and enchanting possibilities--not for long. The secret of the uses to which the stranded craft bad been put, and the attendant fun which Commodore Tod and his dauntless henchman, Archibald Cobden, Esquire, were daily getting out of its battered timbers, had already become public property. The youth of Barnegat--the very young youth, ranging from nine to twelve, and all boys--received the news at first with hilarious joy. This feeling soon gave way to unsuppressed indignation, followed by an active bitterness, when they realized in solemn conclave--the meeting was held in an open lot on Saturday morning--that the capture of the craft had been accomplished, not by dwellers under Barnegat Light, to whom every piece of sea-drift from a tomato-can to a full-rigged ship rightfully belonged, but by a couple of aliens, one of whom wore knee-pants and a white collar,--a distinction in dress highly obnoxious to these lords of the soil. All these denizens of Barnegat had at one time or another climbed up the sloop's chains and peered down the hatchway to the sand covering the keelson, and most of them had used it as a shelter behind which, in swimming-time, they had put on or peeled off such mutilated rags as covered their nakedness, but no one of them had yet conceived the idea of turning it into a Bandit's Home. That touch of the ideal, that gilding of the commonplace, had been reserved for the brain of the curly-haired boy who, with dancing eyes, his sturdy little legs resting on Tod's shoulder, had peered over the battered rail, and who, with a burst of enthusiasm, had shouted: "Oh, cracky! isn't it nice, Tod! It's got a place we can fix up for a robbers' den; and we'll be bandits and have a flag. Oh, come up here! You never saw anything so fine," etc., etc. When, therefore, Scootsy Mulligan, aged nine, son of a ship-caulker who worked in Martin Farguson's ship-yard, and Sandy Plummer, eldest of three, and their mother a widow--plain washing and ironing, two doors from the cake-shop--heard that that French "spad," Arch Cobden what lived up to Yardley, and that red-headed Irish cub, Tod Fogarty--Tod's hair had turned very red--had pre-empted the Black Tub, as the wreck was irreverently called, claiming it as their very own, "and-a-sayin' they wuz pirates and bloody Turks and sich," these two quarrelsome town rats organized a posse in lower Barnegat for its recapture. Archie was sweeping the horizon from his perch on the "poop-deck" when his eagle eye detected a strange group of what appeared to be human beings advancing toward the wreck from the direction of Barnegat village. One, evidently a chief, was in the lead, the others following bunched together. All were gesticulating wildly. The trusty henchman immediately gave warning to Tod, who was at work in the lower hold arranging a bundle of bean-poles which had drifted inshore the night before--part of the deck-load, doubtless, of some passing vessel. "Ay, ay, sir!" cried the henchman with a hoist of his knee-pants, as a prelude to his announcement. "Ay, ay, yerself!" rumbled back the reply. "What's up?" The commodore had not read as deeply in pirate lore as had Archie, and was not, therefore, so ready with its lingo. "Band of savages, sir, approaching down the beach." "Where away?" thundered back the commodore, his authority now asserting itself in the tones of his voice. "On the starboard bow, sir--six or seven of 'em." "Armed or peaceable?" "Armed, sir. Scootsy Mulligan is leadin' 'em." "Scootsy Mulligan! Crickety! he's come to make trouble," shouted back Tod, climbing the ladder in a hurry--it was used as a means of descent into the shallow hold when not needed outside. "Where are they? Oh, yes! I see 'em--lot of 'em, ain't they? Saturday, and they ain't no school. Say, Arch, what are we goin' to do?" The terminal vowels softening his henchman's name were omitted in grave situations; so was the pirate lingo. "Do!" retorted Archie, his eyes snapping. "Why, we'll fight 'em; that's what we are pirates for. Fight 'em to the death. Hurray! They're not coming aboard--no sir-ee! You go down, Toddy [the same free use of terminals], and get two of the biggest bean-poles and I'll run up the death flag. We've got stones and shells enough. Hurry--big ones, mind you!" The attacking party, their leader ahead, had now reached the low sand heap marking the grave of the former wreck, but a dozen yards away--the sand had entombed it the year before. "You fellers think yer durned smart, don't ye?" yelled Mr. William Mulligan, surnamed "Scootsy" from his pronounced fleetness of foot. "We're goin' to run ye out o' that Tub. 'Tain't yourn, it's ourn--ain't it, fellers?" A shout went up in answer from the group on the hillock. "You can come as friends, but not as enemies," cried Archie grandiloquently. "The man who sets foot on this ship without permission dies like a dog. We sail under the blood-red flag!" and Archie struck an attitude and pointed to the fragment of mother Fogarty's own nailed to a lath and hanging limp over the rail. "Hi! hi! hi!" yelled the gang in reply. "Oh, ain't he a beauty! Look at de cotton waddin' on his head!" (Archie's cropped curls.) "Say, sissy, does yer mother know ye're out? Throw that ladder down; we're comin' up there--don't make no diff'rence whether we got yer permish or not--and we'll knock the stuffin' out o' ye if ye put up any job on us. H'ist out that ladder!" "Death and no quarter!" shouted back Archie, opening the big blade of Captain Holt's pocket knife and grasping it firmly in his wee hand. "We'll defend this ship with the last drop of our blood!" "Ye will, will ye!" retorted Scootsy. "Come on, fellers--go for 'em! I'll show 'em," and he dodged under the sloop's bow and sprang for the overhanging chains. Tod had now clambered up from the hold. Under his arm were two stout hickory saplings. One he gave to Archie, the other he kept himself. "Give them the shells first," commanded Archie, dodging a beach pebble; "and when their hands come up over the rail let them have this," and he waved the sapling over his head. "Run, Tod,--they're trying to climb up behind. I'll take the bow. Avast there, ye lubbers!" With this Archie dropped to his knees and crouched close to the heel of the rotting bowsprit, out of the way of the flying missiles--each boy's pockets were loaded--and looking cautiously over the side of the hulk, waited until Scootsy's dirty fingers--he was climbing the chain hand over hand, his feet resting on a boy below him--came into view. "Off there, or I'll crack your fingers!" "Crack and be--" Bang! went Archie's hickory and down dropped the braggart, his oath lost in his cries. "He smashed me fist! He smashed me fist! Oh! Oh!" whined Scootsy, hopping about with the pain, sucking the injured hand and shaking its mate at Archie, who was still brandishing the sapling and yelling himself hoarse in his excitement. The attacking party now drew off to the hillock for a council of war. Only their heads could be seen--their bodies lay hidden in the long grass of the dune. Archie and Tod were now dancing about the deck in a delirium of delight--calling out in true piratical terms, "We die, but we never surrender!" Tod now and then falling into his native vernacular to the effect that he'd "knock the liver and lights out o' the hull gang," an expression the meaning of which was wholly lost on Archie, he never having cleaned a fish in his life. Here a boy in his shirt-sleeves straightened up in the yellow grass and looked seaward. Then Sandy Plummer gave a yell and ran to the beach, rolling up what was left of his trousers legs, stopping now and then to untie first one shoe and then the other. Two of the gang followed on a run. When the three reached the water's edge they danced about like Crusoe's savages, waving their arms and shouting. Sandy by this time had stripped off his clothes and had dashed into the water. A long plank from some lumber schooner was drifting up the beach in the gentle swell of the tide. Sandy ran abreast of it for a time, sprang into the surf, threw himself upon it flat like a frog, and then began paddling shoreward. The other two now rushed into the water, grasping the near end of the derelict, the whole party pushing and paddling until it was hauled clean of the brine and landed high on the sand. A triumphant yell here came from the water's edge, and the balance of the gang--there were seven in all--rushed to the help of the dauntless three. Archie heaped a pile of pebbles within reach of his hand and waited the attack. What the savages were going to do with the plank neither he nor Tod could divine. The derelict was now dragged over the sand to the hulk, Tod and Archie pelting its rescuers with stones and shells as they came within short range. "Up with her, fellers!" shouted Sandy, who, since Scootsy's unmanly tears, had risen to first place. "Run it under the bowsprit--up with her--there she goes! Altogether!" Archie took his stand, his long sapling in his hand, and waited. He thought first he would unseat the end of the plank, but it was too far below him and then again he would be exposed to their volleys of stones, and if he was hurt he might not get back on his craft. Tod, who had resigned command in favor of his henchman after Archie's masterly defence in the last fight, stood behind him. Thermopylae was a narrow place, and so was the famous Bridge of Horatius. He and his faithful Tod would now make the fight of their lives. Both of these close shaves for immortality were closed books to Tod, but Archie knew every line of their records, Doctor John having spent many an hour reading to him, the boy curled up in his lap while Jane listened. Sandy, emboldened by the discovery of the plank, made the first rush up and was immediately knocked from his perch by Tod, whose pole swung around his head like a flail. Then Scootsy tried it, crawling up, protecting his head by ducking it under his elbows, holding meanwhile by his hand. Tod's blows fell about his back, but the boy struggled on until Archie reached over the gunwale, and with a twist of his wrist, using all his strength, dropped the invader to the sand below. The success of this mode of attack was made apparent, provided they could stick to the plank. Five boys now climbed up. Archie belabored the first one with the pole and Tod grappled with the second, trying to throw him from the rail to the sand, some ten feet below, but the rat close behind him, in spite of their efforts, reached forward, caught the rail, and scrambled up to his mate's assistance. In another instant both had leaped to the sloop's deck. "Back! back! Run, Toddy!" screamed Archie, waving his arms. "Get on the poop-deck; we can lick them there. Run!" Tod darted back, and the two defenders clearing the intervening rotten timbers with a bound, sprang upon the roof of the old cabin--Archie's "poop." With a whoop the savages followed, jumping over the holes in the planking and avoiding the nails in the open beams. In the melee Archie had lost his pole, and was now standing, hat off, his blue eves flashing, all the blood of his overheated little body blazing in his face. The tears of defeat were trembling under his eyelids, He had been outnumbered, but he would die game. In his hand he carried, unconsciously to himself, the big-bladed pocket knife the captain had given him. He would as soon have used it on his mother as upon one of his enemies, but the Barnegat invaders were ignorant of that fact, knives being the last resort in their environment. "Look out, Sandy!" yelled Scootsy to his leader, who was now sneaking up to Archie with the movement of an Indian in ambush;--"he's drawed a knife." Sandy stopped and straightened himself within three feet of Archie. His hand still smarted from the blow Archie had given it. The "spad" had not stopped a second in that attack, and he might not in this; the next thing he knew the knife might be between his ribs. "Drawed a knife, hev ye!" he snarled. "Drawed a knife, jes' like a spad that ye are! Ye oughter put yer hair in curl-papers!" Archie looked at the harmless knife in his hand. "I can fight you with my fists if you are bigger than me," he cried, tossing the knife down the open hatchway into the sand below. "Hold my coat, Tod," and he began stripping off his little jacket. "I ain't fightin' no spads," sneered Sandy. He didn't want to fight this one. "Yer can't skeer nobody. You'll draw a pistol next. Yer better go home to yer mammy, if ye kin find her." "He ain't got no mammy," snarled Scootsy. "He's a pick-up--me father says so." Archie sprang forward to avenge the insult, but before he could reach Scootsy's side a yell arose from the bow of the hulk. "Yi! yi! Run, fellers! Here comes old man Fogarty! he's right on top o' ye! Not that side--this way. Yi! yi!" The invaders turned and ran the length of the deck, scrambled over the side and dropped one after the other to the sand below just as the Fogarty head appeared at the bow. It was but a step and a spring for him, and with a lurch he gained the deck of the wreck. "By jiminy, boys, mother thought ye was all killed! Has them rats been botherin' ye? Ye oughter broke the heads of 'em. Where did they get that plank? Come 'shore, did it? Here, Tod, catch hold of it; I jes' wanted a piece o' floorin' like that. Why, ye're all het up, Archie! Come, son, come to dinner; ye'll git cooled off, and mother's got a mess o' clams for ye. Never mind 'bout the ladder; I'll lift it down." On the way over to the cabin, Fogarty and Tod carrying the plank and Archie walking beside them, the fisherman gleaned from the boys the details of the fight. Archie had recovered the captain's knife and it was now in his hand. "Called ye a 'pick-up' did he, the rat, and said ye didn't have no mother. He's a liar! If ye ain't got a mother, and a good one, I don't know who has. That's the way with them town-crabs, allus cussin' somebody better'n themselves." When Fogarty had tilted the big plank against the side of the cabin and the boys had entered the kitchen in search of the mess of clams, the fisherman winked to his wife, jerked his head meaningly over one shoulder, and Mrs. Fogarty, in answer, followed him out to the woodshed. "Them sneaks from Barnegat, Mulligan's and Farguson's boys, and the rest of 'em, been lettin' out on Archie: callin' him names, sayin' he ain't got no mother and he's one o' them pass-ins ye find on yer doorstep in a basket. I laughed it off and he 'peared to forgit it, but I thought he might ask ye, an' so I wanted to tip ye the wink." "Well, ye needn't worry. I ain't goin' to tell him what I don't know," replied the wife, surprised that he should bring her all the way out to the woodshed to tell her a thing like that. "But ye DO know, don't ye?" "All I know is what Uncle Ephraim told me four or five years ago, and he's so flighty half the time and talks so much ye can't believe one-half he says--something about Miss Jane comin' across Archie's mother in a horsepital in Paris, or some'er's and promisin' her a-dyin' that she'd look after the boy, and she has. She'd do that here if there was women and babies up to Doctor John's horsepital 'stead o' men. It's jes' like her," and Mrs. Fogarty, not to lose her steps, stooped over a pile of wood and began gathering up an armful. "Well, she ain't his mother, ye know," rejoined Fogarty, helping his wife with the sticks. "That's what they slammed in his face to-day, and he'll git it ag'in as he grows up. But he don't want to hear it from us." "And he won't. Miss Jane ain't no fool. She knows more about him than anybody else, and when she gits ready to tell him she'll tell him. Don't make no difference who his mother was--the one he's got now is good enough for anybody. Tod would have been dead half a dozen times if it hadn't been for her and Doctor John, and there ain't nobody knows it better'n me. It's just like her to let Archie come here so much with Tod; she knows I ain't goin' to let nothin' happen to him. And as for mothers, Sam Fogarty," here Mrs. Fogarty lifted her free hand and shook her finger in a positive way--"when Archie gits short of mothers he's got one right here, don't make no difference what you or anybody else says," and she tapped her broad bosom meaningly. Contrary, however, to Fogarty's hopes and surmises, Archie had forgotten neither Sandy's insult nor Scootsy's epithet. "He's a pick-up" and "he ain't got no mammy" kept ringing in his ears as he walked back up the beach to his home. He remembered having heard the words once before when he was some years younger, but then it had come from a passing neighbor and was not intended for him. This time it was flung square in his face. Every now and then as he followed the trend of the beach on his way home he would stop and look out over the sea, watching the long threads of smoke being unwound from the spools of the steamers and the sails of the fishing-boats as they caught the light of the setting sun. The epithet worried him. It was something to be ashamed of, he knew, or they would not have used it. Jane, standing outside the gate-post, shading her eyes with her hand, scanning the village road, caught sight of his sturdy little figure the moment he turned the corner and ran to meet him. "I got so worried--aren't you late, my son?" she asked, putting her arm about him and kissing him tenderly. "Yes, it's awful late. I ran all the way from the church when I saw the clock. I didn't know it was past six. Oh, but we've had a bully day, mother! And we've had a fight. Tod and I were pirates, and Scootsy Mulligan tried to--" Jane stopped the boy's joyous account with a cry of surprise. They were now walking back to Yardley's gate, hugging the stone wall. "A fight! Oh, my son!" "Yes, a bully fight; only there were seven of them and only two of us. That warn't fair, but Mr. Fogarty says they always fight like that. I could have licked 'em if they come on one at a time, but they got a plank and crawled up--" "Crawled up where, my son?" asked Jane in astonishment. All this was an unknown world to her. She had seen the wreck and had known, of course, that the boys were making a playhouse of it, but this latter development was news to her. "Why, on the pirate ship, where we've got our Bandit's Home. Tod is commodore and I'm first mate. Tod and I did all we could, but they didn't fight fair, and Scootsy called me a 'pick-up' and said I hadn't any mother. I asked Mr. Fogarty what he meant, but he wouldn't tell me. What's a 'pick-up,' dearie?" and he lifted his face to Jane's, his honest blue eyes searching her own. Jane caught her hand to her side and leaned for a moment against the stone wall. This was the question which for years she had expected him to ask--one to which she had framed a hundred imaginary answers. When as a baby he first began to talk she had determined to tell him she was not his mother, and so get him gradually accustomed to the conditions of his birth. But every day she loved him the more, and every day she had put it off. To-day it was no easier. He was too young, she knew, to take in its full meaning, even if she could muster up the courage to tell him the half she was willing to tell him--that his mother was her friend and on her sick-bed had entrusted her child to her care. She had wanted to wait until he was old enough to understand, so that she should not lose his love when he came to know the truth. There had been, moreover, always this fear--would he love her for shielding his mother, or would he hate Lucy when he came to know? She had once talked it all over with Captain Holt, but she could never muster up the courage to take his advice. "Tell him," he had urged. "It'll save you a lot o' trouble in the end. That'll let me out and I kin do for him as I want to. You've lived under this cloud long enough--there ain't nobody can live a lie a whole lifetime, Miss Jane. I'll take my share of the disgrace along of my dead boy, and you ain't done nothin', God knows, to be ashamed of. Tell him! It's grease to yer throat halyards and everything'll run smoother afterward. Take my advice, Miss Jane." All these things rushed through her mind as she stood leaning against the stone wall, Archie's hand in hers, his big blue eyes still fixed on her own. "Who said that to you, my son?" she asked in assumed indifference, in order to gain time in which to frame her answer and recover from the shock. "Scootsy Mulligan." "Is he a nice boy?" "No, he's a coward, or he wouldn't fight as he does." "Then I wouldn't mind him, my boy," and she smoothed back the hair from his forehead, her eyes avoiding the boy's steady gaze. It was only when someone opened the door of the closet concealing this spectre that Jane felt her knees give way and her heart turn sick within her. In all else she was fearless and strong. "Was he the boy who said you had no mother?" "Yes. I gave him an awful whack when he came up the first time, and he went heels over head." "Well, you have got a mother, haven't you, darling?" she continued, with a sigh of relief, now that Archie was not insistent. "You bet I have!" cried the boy, throwing his arms around her. "Then we won't either of us bother about those bad boys and what they say," she answered, stooping over and kissing him. And so for a time the remembrance of Scootsy's epithet faded out of the boy's mind. CHAPTER XIV HIGH WATER AT YARDLEY Ten years have passed away. The sturdy little fellow in knee-trousers is a lad of seventeen, big and strong for his age; Tod is three years older, and the two are still inseparable. The brave commander of the pirate ship is now a full-fledged fisherman and his father's main dependence. Archie is again his chief henchman, and the two spend many a morning in Tod's boat when the blue-fish are running. Old Fogarty does not mind it; he rather likes it, and Mother Fogarty is always happier when the two are together. "If one of 'em gits overboard," she said one day to her husband, "t'other kin save him." "Save him! Well, I guess!" he replied. "Salt water skims off Archie same's if he was a white bellied gull; can't drown him no more'n you kin a can buoy." The boy has never forgotten Scootsy's epithet, although he has never spoken of it to his mother--no one knows her now by any other name. She thought the episode had passed out of his mind, but she did not know everything that lay in the boy's heart. He and Tod had discussed it time and again, and had wondered over his own name and that of his nameless father, as boys wonder, but they had come to no conclusion. No one in the village could tell them, for no one ever knew. He had asked the doctor, but had only received a curious answer. "What difference does it make, son, when you have such a mother? You have brought her only honor, and the world loves her the better because of you. Let it rest until she tells you; it will only hurt her heart if you ask her now." The doctor had already planned out the boy's future; he was to be sent to Philadelphia to study medicine when his schooling was over, and was then to come into his office and later on succeed to his practice. Captain Holt would have none of it. "He don't want to saw off no legs," the bluff old man had blurted out when he heard of it. "He wants to git ready to take a ship 'round Cape Horn. If I had my way I'd send him some'er's where he could learn navigation, and that's in the fo'c's'le of a merchantman. Give him a year or two before the mast. I made that mistake with Bart--he loafed round here too long and when he did git a chance he was too old." Report had it that the captain was going to leave the lad his money, and had therefore a right to speak; but no one knew. He was closer-mouthed than ever, though not so gruff and ugly as he used to be; Archie had softened him, they said, taking the place of that boy of his he "druv out to die a good many years ago." Jane's mind wavered. Neither profession suited her. She would sacrifice anything she had for the boy provided they left him with her. Philadelphia was miles away, and she would see him but seldom. The sea she shrank from and dreaded. She had crossed it twice, and both times with an aching heart. She feared, too, its treachery and cruelty. The waves that curled and died on Barnegat beach--messengers from across the sea--brought only tidings fraught with suffering. Archie had no preferences--none yet. His future was too far off to trouble him much. Nor did anything else worry him. One warm September day Archie turned into Yardley gate, his so'wester still on his head framing his handsome, rosy face; his loose jacket open at the throat, the tarpaulins over his arm. He had been outside the inlet with Tod--since daybreak, in fact--fishing for bass and weakfish. Jane had been waiting for him for hours. She held an open letter in her hand, and her face was happier, Archie thought as he approached her, than he had seen it for months. There are times in all lives when suddenly and without warning, those who have been growing quietly by our side impress their new development upon us. We look at them in full assurance that the timid glance of the child will be returned, and are astounded to find instead the calm gaze of the man; or we stretch out our hand to help the faltering step and touch a muscle that could lead a host. Such changes are like the breaking of the dawn; so gradual has been their coming that the full sun of maturity is up and away flooding the world with beauty and light before we can recall the degrees by which it rose. Jane realized this--and for the first time--as she looked at Archie swinging through the gate, waving his hat as he strode toward her. She saw that the sailor had begun to assert itself. He walked with an easy swing, his broad shoulders--almost as broad as the captain's and twice as hard--thrown back, his head up, his blue eyes and white teeth laughing out of a face brown and ruddy with the sun and wind, his throat and neck bare except for the silk handkerchief--one of Tod's--wound loosely about it; a man really, strong and tough, with hard sinews and capable thighs, back, and wrists--the kind of sailorman that could wear tarpaulins or broadcloth at his pleasure and never lose place in either station. In this rude awakening Jane's heart-strings tightened. She became suddenly conscious that the Cobden look had faded out of him; Lucy's eyes and hair were his, and so was her rounded chin, with its dimple, but there was nothing else about him that recalled either her own father or any other Cobden she remembered. As he came near enough for her to look into his eyes she began to wonder how he would impress Lucy, what side of his nature would she love best--his courage and strength or his tenderness? The sound of his voice shouting her name recalled her to herself, and a thrill of pride illumined her happy face like a burst of sunlight as he tossed his tarpaulins on the grass and put his strong arms about her. "Mother, dear! forty black bass, eleven weakfish, and half a barrel of small fry--what do you think of that?" "Splendid, Archie. Tod must be proud as a peacock. But look at this!" and she held up the letter. "Who do you think it's from? Guess now," and she locked one arm through his, and the two strolled back to the house. "Guess now!" she repeated, holding the letter behind her back. The two were often like lovers together. "Let me see," he coaxed. "What kind of a stamp has it got?" "Never you mind about the stamp." "Uncle John--and it's about my going to Philadelphia." Jane laughed. "Uncle John never saw it." "Then it's from--Oh, you tell me, mother!" "No--guess. Think of everybody you ever heard of. Those you have seen and those you--" "Oh, I know--Aunt Lucy." "Yes, and she's coming home. Home, Archie, think of it, after all these years!" "Well, that's bully! She won't know me, will she? I never saw her, did I?" "Yes, when you were a little fellow." It was difficult to keep the tremor out of her voice. "Will she bring any dukes and high daddies with her?" "No," laughed Jane, "only her little daughter Ellen, the sweetest little girl you ever saw, she writes." "How old is she?" He had slipped his arm around his mother's waist now and the two were "toeing it" up the path, he stopping every few feet to root a pebble from its bed. The coming of the aunt was not a great event in his life. "Just seven her last birthday." "All right, she's big enough. We'll take her out and teach her to fish. Hello, granny!" and the boy loosened his arm as he darted up the steps toward Martha. "Got the finest mess of fish coming up here in a little while you ever laid your eyes on," he shouted, catching the old nurse's cap from her head and clapping it upon his own, roaring with laughter, as he fled in the direction of the kitchen. Jane joined in the merriment and, moving a chair from the hall, took her seat on the porch to await the boy's return. She was too happy to busy herself about the house or to think of any of her outside duties. Doctor John would not be in until the afternoon, and so she would occupy herself in thinking out plans to make her sister's home-coming a joyous one. As she looked down over the garden as far as the two big gate-posts standing like grim sentinels beneath the wide branches of the hemlocks, and saw how few changes had taken place in the old home since her girl sister had left it, her heart thrilled with joy. Nothing really was different; the same mass of tangled rose-vines climbed over the porch--now quite to the top of the big roof, but still the same dear old vines that Lucy had loved in her childhood; the same honeysuckle hid the posts; the same box bordered the paths. The house was just as she left it; her bedroom had really never been touched. What few changes had taken place she would not miss. Meg would not run out to meet her, and Rex was under a stone that the doctor had placed over his grave; nor would Ann Gossaway peer out of her eyrie of a window and follow her with her eyes as she drove by; her tongue was quiet at last, and she and her old mother lay side by side in the graveyard. Doctor John had exhausted his skill upon them both, and Martha, who had forgiven her enemy, had sat by her bedside until the end, but nothing had availed. Mrs. Cavendish was dead, of course, but she did not think Lucy would care very much. She and Doctor John had nursed her for months until the end came, and had then laid her away near the apple-trees she was so fond of. But most of the faithful hearts who had loved her were still beating, and all were ready with a hearty welcome. Archie was the one thing new--new to Lucy. And yet she had no fear either for him or for Lucy. When she saw him she would love him, and when she had known him a week she would never be separated from him again. The long absence could not have wiped out all remembrance of the boy, nor would the new child crowd him from her heart. When Doctor John sprang from his gig (the custom of his daily visits had never been broken) she could hardly wait until he tied his horse--poor Bess had long since given out--to tell him the joyful news. He listened gravely, his face lighting up at her happiness. He was glad for Jane and said so frankly, but the situation did not please him. He at heart really dreaded the effect of Lucy's companionship on the woman he loved. Although it had been years since he had seen her, he had followed her career, especially since her marriage, with the greatest interest and with the closest attention. He had never forgotten, nor had he forgiven her long silence of two years after her marriage, during which time she had never written Jane a line, nor had he ever ceased to remember Jane's unhappiness over it. Jane had explained it all to him on the ground that Lucy was offended because she had opposed the marriage, but the doctor knew differently. Nor had he ceased to remember the other letters which followed, and how true a story they told of Lucy's daily life and ambitions. He could almost recall the wording of one of them. "My husband is too ill," it had said, "to go south with me, and so I will run down to Rome for a month or so, for I really need the change." And a later one, written since his death, in which she wrote of her winter in Paris and at Monte Carlo, and "how good my mother-in-law is to take care of Ellen." This last letter to her sister, just received--the one he then held in his hand, and which gave Jane such joy, and which he was then reading as carefully as if it had been a prescription--was to his analytical mind like all the rest of its predecessors. One sentence sent a slight curl to his lips. "I cannot stay away any longer from my precious sister," it said, "and am coming back to the home I adore. I have no one to love me, now that my dear husband is dead, but you and my darling Ellen." The news of Lucy's expected return spread rapidly. Old Martha in her joy was the mouthpiece. She gave the details out at church the Sunday morning following the arrival of Lucy's letter. She was almost too ill to venture out, but she made the effort, stopping the worshippers as they came down the board walk; telling each one of the good news, the tears streaming down her face. To the children and the younger generation the announcement made but little difference; some of them had never heard that Miss Jane had a sister, and others only that she lived abroad. Their mothers knew, of course, and so did the older men, and all were pleased over the news. Those of them who remembered the happy, joyous girl with her merry eyes and ringing laugh were ready to give her a hearty welcome; they felt complimented that the distinguished lady--fifteen years' residence abroad and a rich husband had gained her this position--should be willing to exchange the great Paris for the simple life of Warehold. It touched their civic pride. Great preparations were accordingly made. Billy Tatham's successor (his son)--in his best open carriage--was drawn up at the station, and Lucy's drive through the village with some of her numerous boxes covered with foreign labels piled on the seat beside the young man--who insisted on driving Lucy and the child himself--was more like the arrival of a princess revisiting her estates than anything else. Martha and Archie and Jane filled the carriage, with little Ellen on Archie's lap, and more than one neighbor ran out of the house and waved to them as they drove through the long village street and turned into the gate. Archie threw his arms around Lucy when he saw her, and in his open, impetuous way called her his "dear aunty," telling her how glad he was that she had come to keep his good mother from getting so sad at times, and adding that she and granny had not slept for days before she came, so eager were they to see her. And Lucy kissed him in return, but with a different throb at her heart. She felt a thrill when she saw how handsome and strong he was, and for an instant there flashed through her a feeling of pride that he was her own flesh and blood. Then there had come a sudden revulsion, strangling every emotion but the one of aversion--an aversion so overpowering that she turned suddenly and catching Ellen in her arms kissed her with so lavish a display of affection that those at the station who witnessed the episode had only praise for the mother's devotion. Jane saw the kiss Lucy had given Archie, and a cry of joy welled up in her heart, but she lost the shadow that followed. My lady of Paris was too tactful for that. Her old room was all ready. Jane, with Martha helping, had spent days in its preparation. White dimity curtains starched stiff as a petticoat had been hung at the windows; a new lace cover spread on the little mahogany, brass-mounted dressing-table--her great grandmother's, in fact--with its tiny swinging mirror and the two drawers (Martha remembered when her bairn was just high enough to look into the mirror), and pots of fresh flowers placed on the long table on which her hooks used to rest. Two easy-chairs had also been brought up from the sitting-room below, covered with new chintz and tied with blue ribbons, and, more wonderful still, a candle-box had been covered with cretonne and studded with brass tacks by the aid of Martha's stiff fingers that her bairn might have a place in which to put her dainty shoes and slippers. When the trunks had been carried upstairs and Martha with her own hands had opened my lady's gorgeous blue morocco dressing-case with its bottles capped with gold and its brushes and fittings emblazoned with cupids swinging in garlands of roses, the poor woman's astonishment knew no bounds. The many scents and perfumes, the dainty boxes, big and little, holding various powders--one a red paste which the old nurse thought must be a salve, but about which, it is needless to say, she was greatly mistaken--as well as a rabbit's foot smirched with rouge (this she determined to wash at once), and a tiny box of court-plaster cut in half moons. So many things, in fact, did the dear old nurse pull from this wonderful bag that the modest little bureau could not hold half of them, and the big table had to be brought up and swept of its plants and belongings. The various cosmetics and their uses were especial objects of comment. "Did ye break one of the bottles, darlin'?" she asked, sniffing at a peculiar perfume which seemed to permeate everything. "Some of 'em must have smashed; it's awful strong everywhere--smell that"--and she held out a bit of lace which she had taken from the case, a dressing-sacque that Lucy had used on the steamer. Lucy laughed. "And you don't like it? How funny, you dear old thing! That was made specially for me; no one else in Paris has a drop." And then the dresses! Particularly the one she was to wear the first night--a dress flounced and furbelowed and of a creamy white (she still wore mourning--delicate purples shading to white--the exact tone for a husband six months dead). And the filmy dressing-gowns, and, more wonderful than all, the puff of smoke she was to sleep in, held together by a band of violet ribbon; to say nothing of the dainty slippers bound about with swan's-down, and the marvellous hats, endless silk stockings of mauve, white, and black, and long and short gloves. In all her life Martha had never seen or heard of such things. The room was filled with them and the two big closets crammed to overflowing, and yet a dozen trunks were not yet unpacked, including the two small boxes holding little Ellen's clothes. The night was one long to be remembered. Everyone said the Manor House had not been so gay for years. And they were all there--all her old friends and many of Jane's new ones, who for years had looked on Lucy as one too far above them in station to be spoken of except with bated breath. The intimates of the house came early. Doctor John first, with his grave manner and low voice--so perfectly dressed and quiet: Lucy thought she had never seen his equal in bearing and demeanor, nor one so distinguished-looking--not in any circle in Europe; and Uncle Ephraim, grown fat and gouty, leaning on a cane, but still hearty and wholesome, and overjoyed to see her; and Pastor Dellenbaugh--his hair was snow-white now--and his complacent and unruffled wife; and the others, including Captain Holt, who came in late. It was almost a repetition of that other home-coming years before, when they had gathered to greet her, then a happy, joyous girl just out of school. Lucy in their honor wore the dress that had so astonished Martha, and a diamond-studded ornament which she took from her jewel-case and fastened in her hair. The dress followed the wonderful curves of her beautiful body in all its dimpled plumpness and the jewel set off to perfection the fresh, oval face, laughing blue eyes--wet forget-me-nots were the nearest their color--piquant, upturned nose and saucy mouth. The color of the gown, too, harmonized both with the delicate pink of her cheeks and with the tones of her rather too full throat showing above the string of pearls that clasped it. Jane wore a simple gray silk gown which followed closely the slender and almost attenuated lines of her figure. This gown the doctor always loved because, as he told her, it expressed so perfectly the simplicity of her mind and life. Her only jewels were her deep, thoughtful eyes, and these, to-night, were brilliant with joy over her sister's return. As Jane moved about welcoming her guests the doctor, whose eyes rarely left her face, became conscious that at no time in their lives had the contrast between the two sisters been greater. One, a butterfly of thirty-eight, living only in the glow of the sunlight, radiant in plumage, alighting first on one flower and then on another, but always on flowers, never on weeds; gathering such honey as suited her taste; never resting where she might by any chance be compelled to use her feet, but always poised in air; a woman, rich, brilliant, and beautiful, and--here was the key-note of her life--always, year in and year out, warmed by somebody's admiration, whose she didn't much mind nor care, so that it gratified her pride and relieved her of ennui. The other--and this one he loved with his whole soul--a woman of forty-six, with a profound belief in her creeds; quixotic sometimes in her standards, but always sincere; devoted to her traditions, to her friends and to her duty; unselfish, tender-hearted, and self-sacrificing; whose feet, though often tired and bleeding, had always trodden the earth. As Lucy greeted first one neighbor and then another, sometimes with one hand, sometimes with two, offering her cheek now and then to some old friend who had known her as a child, Jane's heart swelled with something of the pride she used to have when Lucy was a girl. Her beautiful sister, she saw, had lost none of the graciousness of her old manner, nor of her tact in making her guests feel perfectly at home. Jane noticed, too--and this was new to her--a certain well-bred condescension, so delicately managed as never to be offensive--more the air of a woman accustomed to many sorts and conditions of men and women, and who chose to be agreeable as much to please herself as to please her guests. And yet with all this poise of manner and condescending graciousness, there would now and then dart from Lucy's eyes a quick, searching glance of inquiry, as she tried to read her guests' thoughts, followed by a relieved look on her own face as she satisfied herself that no whisper of her past had ever reached them. These glances Jane never caught. Doctor John was most cordial in his greeting and talked to her a long time about some portions of Europe, particularly a certain cafe in Dresden where he used to dine, and another in Paris frequented by the beau monde. She answered him quite frankly, telling him of some of her own experiences in both places, quite forgetting that she was giving him glimpses of her own life while away--glimpses which she had kept carefully concealed from Jane or Martha. She was conscious, however, after he had left her of a certain uncomfortable feeling quivering through her as his clear, steadfast eyes looked into hers, he listened, and yet she thought she detected his brain working behind his steadfast gaze. It was as if he was searching for some hidden disease. "He knows something," she said to herself, when the doctor moved to let someone else take his place. "How much I can't tell. I'll get it all out of sister." Blunt and bluff Captain Holt, white-whiskered and white-haired now, but strong and hearty, gave her another and a different shock. What his first words would be when they met and how she would avoid discussing the subject uppermost in their minds if, in his rough way, he insisted on talking about it, was one of the things that had worried her greatly when she decided to come home, for there was never any doubt in her mind as to his knowledge. But she misjudged the captain, as had a great many others who never looked beneath the rugged bark covering his heart of oak. "I'm glad you've come at last," he said gravely, hardly touching her hand in welcome, "you ought to have been here before. Jane's got a fine lad of her own that she's bringin' up; when you know him ye'll like him." She did not look at him when she answered, but a certain feeling of relief crept over her. She saw that the captain had buried the past and intended never to revive it. The stern look on his face only gave way when little Ellen came to him of her own accord and climbing up into his lap said in her broken English that she heard he was a great captain and that she wanted him to tell her some stories like her good papa used to tell her. "He was gray like you," she said, "and big," and she measured the size with her plump little arms that showed out of her dainty French dress. With Doctor John and Captain Holt out of the way Lucy's mind was at rest. "Nobody else round about Yardley except these two knows," she kept saying to herself with a bound of relief, "and for these I don't care. The doctor is Jane's slave, and the captain is evidently wise enough not to uncover skeletons locked up in his own closet." These things settled in her mind, my lady gave herself up to whatever enjoyment, compatible with her rapidly fading mourning, the simple surroundings afforded, taking her cue from the conditions that confronted her and ordering her conduct accordingly and along these lines: Archie was her adopted nephew, the son of an old friend of Jane's, and one whom she would love dearly, as, in fact, she would anybody else whom Jane had brought up; she herself was a gracious widow of large means recovering from a great sorrow; one who had given up the delights of foreign courts to spend some time among her dear people who had loved her as a child. Here for a time would she bring up and educate her daughter. "To be once more at home, and in dear old Warehold, too!" she had said with upraised Madonna-like eyes and clasped hands to a group of women who were hanging on every word that dropped from her pretty lips. "Do you know what that is to me? There is hardly a day I have not longed for it. Pray, forgive me if I do not come to see you as often as I would, but I really hate to be an hour outside of the four walls of my precious home." CHAPTER XV A PACKAGE OF LETTERS Under the influence of the new arrival it was not at all strange that many changes were wrought in the domestic life at Cobden Manor. My lady was a sensuous creature, loving color and flowers and the dainty appointments of life as much in the surroundings of her home as in the adornment of her person, and it was not many weeks before the old-fashioned sitting-room had been transformed into a French boudoir. In this metamorphosis she had used but few pieces of new furniture--one or two, perhaps, that she had picked up in the village, as well as some bits of mahogany and brass that she loved--but had depended almost entirely upon the rearrangement of the heirlooms of the family. With the boudoir idea in view, she had pulled the old tables out from the walls, drawn the big sofa up to the fire, spread a rug--one of her own--before the mantel, hung new curtains at the windows and ruffled their edges with lace, banked the sills with geraniums and begonias, tilted a print or two beside the clock, scattered a few books and magazines over the centre-table, on which she had placed a big, generous lamp, under whose umbrella shade she could see to read as she sat in her grandmother's rocking-chair--in fact, had, with that taste inherent in some women--touched with a knowing hand the dead things about her and made them live and mean something;--her talisman being an unerring sense of what contributed to personal comfort. Heretofore Doctor John had been compelled to drag a chair halfway across the room in order to sit and chat with Jane, or had been obliged to share her seat on the sofa, too far from the hearth on cold days to be comfortable. Now he could either stand on the hearth-rug and talk to her, seated in one corner of the pulled-up sofa, her work-basket on a small table beside her, or he could drop into a big chair within reach of her hand and still feel the glow of the fire. Jane smiled at the changes and gave Lucy free rein to do as she pleased. Her own nature had never required these nicer luxuries; she had been too busy, and in these last years of her life too anxious, to think of them, and so the room had been left as in the days of her father. The effect of the rearrangement was not lost on the neighbors. They at once noticed the sense of cosiness everywhere apparent, and in consequence called twice as often, and it was not long before the old-fashioned sitting-room became a stopping-place for everybody who had half an hour to spare. These attractions, with the aid of a generous hospitality, Lucy did her best to maintain, partly because she loved excitement and partly because she intended to win the good-will of her neighbors--those who might be useful to her. The women succumbed at once. Not only were her manners most gracious, but her jewels of various kinds, her gowns of lace and frou-frou, her marvellous hats, her assortment of parasols, her little personal belongings and niceties--gold scissors, thimbles, even the violet ribbons that rippled through her transparent underlaces--so different from those of any other woman they knew--were a constant source of wonder and delight. To them she was a beautiful Lady Bountiful who had fluttered down among them from heights above, and whose departure, should it ever take place, would leave a gloom behind that nothing could illumine. To the men she was more reserved. Few of them ever got beyond a handshake and a smile, and none of them ever reached the borders of intimacy. Popularity in a country village could never, she knew, be gained by a pretty woman without great discretion. She explained her foresight to Jane by telling her that there was no man of her world in Warehold but the doctor, and that she wouldn't think of setting her cap for him as she would be gray-haired before he would have the courage to propose. Then she kissed Jane in apology, and breaking out into a rippling laugh that Martha heard upstairs, danced out of the room. Little Ellen, too, had her innings; not only was she prettily dressed, presenting the most joyous of pictures, as with golden curls flying about her shoulders she flitted in and out of the rooms like a sprite, but she was withal so polite in her greetings, dropping to everyone a little French courtesy when she spoke, and all in her quaint, broken dialect, that everybody fell in love with her at sight. None of the other mothers had such a child, and few of them knew that such children existed. Jane watched the workings of Lucy's mind with many misgivings. She loved her lightheartedness and the frank, open way with which she greeted everybody who crossed their threshold. She loved, too, to see her beautifully gowned and equipped and to hear the flattering comments of the neighbors on her appearance and many charms; but every now and then her ear caught an insincere note that sent a shiver through her. She saw that the welcome Lucy gave them was not from her heart, but from her lips; due to her training, no doubt, or perhaps to her unhappiness, for Jane still mourned over the unhappy years of Lucy's life--an unhappiness, had she known it, which had really ended with Archie's safe adoption and Bart's death. Another cause of anxiety was Lucy's restlessness. Every day she must have some new excitement--a picnic with the young girls and young men, private theatricals in the town hall, or excursions to Barnegat Beach, where they were building a new summer hotel. Now and then she would pack her bag and slip off to New York or Philadelphia for days at a time to stay with friends she had met abroad, leaving Ellen with Jane and Martha. To the older sister she seemed like some wild, untamable bird of brilliant plumage used to long, soaring flights, perching first on one dizzy height and then another, from which she could watch the world below. The thing, however, which distressed Jane most was Lucy's attitude towards Archie. She made every allowance for her first meeting at the station, and knew that necessarily it must be more or less constrained, but she had not expected the almost cold indifference with which she had treated the boy ever since. As the days went by and Lucy made no effort to attach Archie to her or to interest herself either in his happiness or welfare, Jane became more and more disturbed. She had prayed for this home-coming and had set her heart on the home-building which was sure to follow, and now it seemed farther off than ever. One thing troubled and puzzled her: while Lucy was always kind to Archie indoors, kissing him with the others when she came down to breakfast, she never, if she could help it, allowed him to walk with her in the village, and she never on any occasion took him with her when visiting the neighbors. "Why not take Archie with you, dear?" Jane had said one morning to Lucy, who had just announced her intention of spending a few days in Philadelphia with Max Feilding's sister Sue, whom she had met abroad when Max was studying in Dresden--Max was still a bachelor, and his sister kept house for him. He was abroad at the time, but was expected by every steamer. "Archie isn't invited, you old goosie, and he would be as much out of place in Max's house as Uncle Ephraim Tipple would be in Parliament." "But they would be glad to see him if you took him. He is just the age now when a boy gets impressions which last him through--" "Yes, the gawky and stumble-over-things age! Piano-stools, rugs, anything that comes in his way. And the impressions wouldn't do him a bit of good. They might, in fact, do him harm," and she laughed merrily and spread her fingers to the blaze. A laugh was often her best shield. She had in her time dealt many a blow and then dodged behind a laugh to prevent her opponent from striking back. "But, Lucy, don't you want to do something to help him?" Jane asked in a pleading tone. "Yes, whatever I can, but he seems to me to be doing very well as he is. Doctor John is devoted to him and the captain idolizes him. He's a dear, sweet boy, of course, and does you credit, but he's not of my world, Jane, dear, and I'd have to make him all over again before he could fit into my atmosphere. Besides, he told me this morning that he was going off for a week with some fisherman on the beach--some person by the name of Fogarty, I think." "Yes, a fine fellow; they have been friends from their boyhood." She was not thinking of Fogarty, but of the tone of Lucy's voice when speaking of her son. "Yes--most estimable gentleman, no doubt, this Mr. Fogarty, but then, dear, we don't invite that sort of people to dinner, do we?" and another laugh rippled out. "Yes, sometimes," answered Jane in all sincerity. "Not Fogarty, because he would be uncomfortable if he came, but many of the others just as humble. We really have very few of any other kind. I like them all. Many of them love me dearly." "Not at all strange; nobody can help loving you," and she patted Jane's shoulder with her jewelled fingers. "But you like them, too, don't you? You treat them as if you did." Lucy lifted her fluted petticoat, rested her slippered foot on the fender, glanced down at the embroidered silk stocking covering her ankle, and said in a graver tone: "I like all kinds of people--in their proper place. This is my home, and it is wise to get along with one's neighbors. Besides, they all have tongues in their heads like the rest of the human race, and it is just as well to have them wag for you as against you." Jane paused for a moment, her eyes watching the blazing logs, and asked with almost a sigh: "You don't mean, dear, that you never intend to help Archie, do you?" "Never is a long word, Jane. Wait till he grows up and I see what he makes of himself. He is now nothing but a great animal, well built as a young bull, and about as awkward." Jane's eyes flashed and her shoulders straightened. The knife had a double edge to its blade. "He is your own flesh and blood, Lucy," she said with a ring of indignation in her voice. "You don't treat Ellen so; why should you Archie?" Lucy took her foot from the fender, dropped her skirts, and looked at Jane curiously. From underneath the half-closed lids of her eyes there flashed a quick glance of hate--a look that always came into Lucy's eyes whenever Jane connected her name with Archie's. "Let us understand each other, sister," she said icily. "I don't dislike the boy. When he gets into trouble I'll help him in any way I can, but please remember he's not my boy--he's yours. You took him from me with that understanding and I have never asked him back. He can't love two mothers. You say he has been your comfort all these years. Why, then, do you want to unsettle his mind?" Jane lifted her head and looked at Lucy with searching eyes--looked as a man looks when someone he must not strike has flung a glove in his face. "Do you really love anything, Lucy?" she asked in a lower voice, her eyes still fastened on her sister's. "Yes, Ellen and you." "Did you love her father?" she continued in the same direct tone. "Y-e-s, a little-- He was the dearest old man in the world and did his best to please me; and then he was never very well. But why talk about him, dear?" "And you never gave him anything in return for all his devotion?" Jane continued in the same cross-examining voice and with the same incisive tone. "Yes, my companionship--whenever I could. About what you give Doctor John," and she looked at Jane with a sly inquiry as she laughed gently to herself. Jane bit her lips and her face flushed scarlet. The cowardly thrust had not wounded her own heart. It had only uncovered the love of the man who lay enshrined in its depths. A sudden sense of the injustice done him arose in her mind and then her own helplessness in it all. "I would give him everything I have, if I could," she answered simply, all her insistency gone, the tears starting to her eyes. Lucy threw her arms about her sister and held her cheek to her own. "Dear, I was only in fun; please forgive me. Everything is so solemn to you. Now kiss me and tell me you love me." That night when Captain Holt came in to play with the little "Pond Lily," as he called Ellen, Jane told him of her conversation with Lucy, not as a reflection on her sister, but because she thought he ought to know how she felt toward Archie. The kiss had wiped out the tears, but the repudiation of Archie still rankled in her breast. The captain listened patiently to the end. Then he said with a pause between each word: "She's sailin' without her port and starboard lights, Miss Jane. One o' these nights with the tide settin' she'll run up ag'in somethin' solid in a fog, and then--God help her! If Bart had lived he might have come home and done the decent thing, and then we could git her into port some'er's for repairs, but that's over now. She better keep her lights trimmed. Tell her so for me." What this "decent thing" was he never said--perhaps he had but a vague idea himself. Bart had injured Lucy and should have made reparation, but in what way except by marriage--he, perhaps, never formulated in his own mind. Jane winced under the captain's outburst, but she held her peace. She knew how outspoken he was and how unsparing of those who differed from him and she laid part of his denunciation to this cause. Some weeks after this conversation the captain started for Yardley to see Jane on a matter of business, and incidentally to have a romp with the Pond Lily. It was astonishing how devoted the old sea-dog was to the child, and how she loved him in return. "My big bear," she used to call him, tugging away at his gray whiskers. On his way he stopped at the post-office for his mail. It was mid-winter and the roads were partly blocked with snow, making walking difficult except for sturdy souls like Captain Nat. "Here, Cap'n Holt, yer jest the man I been a-waitin' for," cried Miss Tucher, the postmistress, from behind the sliding window. "If you ain't goin' up to the Cobdens, ye kin, can't ye? Here's a lot o' letters jest come that I know they're expectin'. Miss Lucy's" (many of the village people still called her Miss Lucy, not being able to pronounce her dead husband's name) "come in yesterday and seems as if she couldn't wait. This storm made everything late and the mail got in after she left. There ain't nobody comin' out to-day and here's a pile of 'em--furrin' most of 'em. I'd take 'em myself if the snow warn't so deep. Don't mind, do ye? I'd hate to have her disapp'inted, for she's jes' 's sweet as they make 'em." "Don't mind it a mite, Susan Tucher," cried the captain. "Goin' there, anyhow. Got some business with Miss Jane. Lord, what a wad o' them!" "That ain't half what she gits sometimes," replied the postmistress, "and most of 'em has seals and crests stamped on 'em. Some o' them furrin lords, I guess, she met over there." These letters the captain held in his hand when he pushed open the door of the sitting-room and stood before the inmates in his rough pea-jacket, his ruddy face crimson with the cold, his half-moon whiskers all the whiter by contrast. "Good-mornin' to the hull o' ye!" he shouted. "Cold as blue blazes outside, I tell ye, but ye look snug enough in here. Hello, little Pond Lily! why ain't you out on your sled? Put two more roses in your cheeks if there was room for 'em. There, ma'am," and he nodded to Lucy and handed her the letters, "that's 'bout all the mail that come this mornin'. There warn't nothin' else much in the bag. Susan Tucher asked me to bring 'em up to you count of the weather and 'count o' your being in such an all-fired hurry to read 'em." Little Ellen was in his arms before this speech was finished and everybody else on their feet shaking hands with the old salt, except poor, deaf old Martha, who called out, "Good-mornin', Captain Holt," in a strong, clear voice, and in rather a positive way, but who kept her seat by the fire and continued her knitting; and complacent Mrs. Dellenbaugh, the pastor's wife, who, by reason of her position, never got up for anybody. The captain advanced to the fire, Ellen still in his arms, shook hands with Mrs. Dellenbaugh and extended three fingers, rough as lobster's claws and as red, to the old nurse. Of late years he never met Martha without feeling that he owed her an apology for the way he had treated her the day she begged him to send Bart away. So he always tried to make it up to her, although he had never told her why. "Hope you're better, Martha? Heard ye was under the weather; was that so? Ye look spry 'nough now," he shouted in his best quarter-deck voice. "Yes, but it warn't much. Doctor John fixed me up," Martha replied coldly. She had no positive animosity toward the captain--not since he had shown some interest in Archie--but she could never make a friend of him. During this greeting Lucy, who had regained her chair, sat with the letters unopened in her lap. None of the eagerness Miss Tucher had indicated was apparent. She seemed more intent on arranging the folds of her morning-gown accentuating the graceful outlines of her well-rounded figure. She had glanced through the package hastily, and had found the one she wanted and knew that it was there warm under her touch--the others did not interest her. "What a big mail, dear," remarked Jane, drawing up a chair. "Aren't you going to open it?" The captain had found a seat by the window and the child was telling him everything she had done since she last saw him. "Oh, yes, in a minute," replied Lucy. "There's plenty of time." With this she picked up the bunch of letters, ran her eye through the collection, and then, with the greatest deliberation, broke one seal after another, tossing the contents on the table. Some she merely glanced at, searching for the signatures and ignoring the contents; others she read through to the end. One was from Dresden, from a student she had known there the year before. This was sealed with a wafer and bore the address of the cafe where he took his meals. Another was stamped with a crest and emitted a slight perfume; a third was enlivened by a monogram in gold and began: "Ma chere amie," in a bold round hand. The one under her hand she did not open, but slipped into the pocket of her dress. The others she tore into bits and threw upon the blazing logs. "I guess if them fellers knew how short a time it would take ye to heave their cargo overboard," blurted out the captain, "they'd thought a spell 'fore they mailed their manifests." Lucy laughed good-naturedly and Jane watched the blaze roar up the wide chimney. The captain settled back in his chair and was about to continue his "sea yarn," as he called it, to little Ellen, when he suddenly loosened the child from his arms, and leaning forward in his seat toward where Jane sat, broke out with: "God bless me! I believe I'm wool-gathering. I clean forgot what I come for. It is you, Miss Jane, I come to see, not this little curly head that'll git me ashore yet with her cunnin' ways. They're goin' to build a new life-saving station down Barnegat way. That Dutch brig that come ashore last fall in that so'easter and all them men drownded could have been saved if we'd had somethin' to help 'em with. We did all we could, but that house of Refuge ain't half rigged and most o' the time ye got to break the door open to git at what there is if ye're in a hurry, which you allus is. They ought to have a station with everything 'bout as it ought to be and a crew on hand all the time; then, when somethin' comes ashore you're right there on top of it. That one down to Squam is just what's wanted here." "Will it be near the new summer hotel?" asked Lucy carelessly, just as a matter of information, and without raising her eyes from the rings on her beautiful hands. "'Bout half a mile from the front porch, ma'am"--he preferred calling her so--"from what I hear. 'Tain't located exactly yet, but some'er's along there. I was down with the Gov'ment agent yesterday." "Who will take charge of it, captain?" inquired Jane, reaching over her basket in search of her scissors. "Well, that's what I come up for. They're talkin' about me," and the captain put his hands behind Ellen's head and cracked his big knuckles close to her ear, the child laughing with delight as she listened. The announcement was received with some surprise. Jane, seeing Martha's inquiring face, as if she wanted to hear, repeated the captain's words to her in a loud voice. Martha laid down her knitting and looked at the captain over her spectacles. "Why, would you take it, captain?" Jane asked in some astonishment, turning to him again. "Don't know but I would. Ain't no better job for a man than savin' lives. I've helped kill a good many; 'bout time now I come 'bout on another tack. I'm doin' nothin'--haven't been for years. If I could get the right kind of a crew 'round me--men I could depend on--I think I could make it go." "If you couldn't nobody could, captain," said Jane in a positive way. "Have you picked out your crew?" "Yes, three or four of 'em. Isaac Polhemus and Tom Morgan--Tom sailed with me on my last voyage--and maybe Tod." "Archie's Tod?" asked Jane, replacing her scissors and searching for a spool of cotton. "Archie's Tod," repeated the captain, nodding his head, his big hand stroking Ellen's flossy curls. "That's what brought me up. I want Tod, and he won't go without Archie. Will ye give him to me?" "My Archie!" cried Jane, dropping her work and staring straight at the captain. "Your Archie, Miss Jane, if that's the way you put it," and he stole a look at Lucy. She was conscious of his glance, but she did not return it; she merely continued listening as she twirled one of the rings on her finger. "Well, but, captain, isn't it very dangerous work? Aren't the men often drowned?" protested Jane. "Anything's dangerous 'bout salt water that's worth the doin'. I've stuck to the pumps seventy-two hours at a time, but I'm here to tell the tale." "Have you talked to Archie?" "No, but Tod has. They've fixed it up betwixt 'em. The boy's dead set to go." "Well, but isn't he too young?" "Young or old, he's tough as a marline-spike--A1, and copper fastened throughout. There ain't a better boatman on the beach. Been that way ever since he was a boy. Won't do him a bit of harm to lead that kind of life for a year or two. If he was mine it wouldn't take me a minute to tell what I'd do." Jane leaned back in her chair, her eyes on the crackling logs, and began patting the carpet with her foot. Lucy became engrossed in a book that lay on the table beside her. She didn't intend to take any part in the discussion. If Jane wanted Archie to serve as a common sailor that was Jane's business. Then again, it was, perhaps, just as well for a number of reasons to have him under the captain's care. He might become so fond of the sea as to want to follow it all his life. "What do you think about it, Lucy?" asked Jane. "Oh, I don't know anything about it. I don't really. I've lived so long away from here I don't know what the young men are doing for a living. He's always been fond of the sea, has he not, Captain Holt?" "Allus," said the captain doggedly; "it's in his blood." Her answer nettled him. "You ain't got no objections, have you, ma'am?" he asked, looking straight at Lucy. Lucy's color came and went. His tone offended her, especially before Mrs. Dellenbaugh, who, although she spoke but seldom in public had a tongue of her own when she chose to use it. She was not accustomed to being spoken to in so brusque a way. She understood perfectly well the captain's covert meaning, but she did not intend either to let him see it or to lose her temper. "Oh, not the slightest," she answered with a light laugh. "I have no doubt that it will be the making of him to be with you. Poor boy, he certainly needs a father's care." The captain winced in turn under the retort and his eyes flashed, but he made no reply. Little Ellen had slipped out of the captain's lap during the colloquy. She had noticed the change in her friend's tone, and, with a child's intuition, had seen that the harmony was in danger of being broken. She stood by the captain's knee, not knowing whether to climb back again or to resume her seat by the window. Lucy, noticing the child's discomfort, called to her: "Come here, Ellen, you will tire the captain." The child crossed the room and stood by her mother while Lucy tried to rearrange the glossy curls, tangled by too close contact with the captain's broad shoulder. In the attempt Ellen lost her balance and fell into her mother's lap. "Oh, Ellen!" said her mother coldly; "stand up, dear. You are so careless. See how you have mussed my gown. Now go over to the window and play with your dolls." The captain noted the incident and heard Lucy's reproof, but he made no protest. Neither did he contradict the mother's statement that the little girl had tired him. His mind was occupied with other things--the tone of the mother's voice for one, and the shade of sadness that passed over the child's face for another. From that moment he took a positive dislike to her. "Well, think it over, Miss Jane," he said, rising from his seat and reaching for his hat. "Plenty of time 'bout Archie. Life-savin' house won't be finished for the next two or three months; don't expect to git into it till June. Wonder, little Pond Lily, if the weather's goin' to be any warmer?" He slipped his hand under the child's chin and leaning over her head peered out of the window. "Don't look like it, does it, little one? Looks as if the snow would hold on. Hello! here comes the doctor. I'll wait a bit--good for sore eyes to see him, and I don't git a chance every day. Ask him 'bout Archie, Miss Jane. He'll tell ye whether the lad's too young." There came a stamping of feet on the porch outside as Doctor John shook the snow from his boots, and the next instant he stepped into the room bringing with him all the freshness and sunshine of the outside world. "Good-morning, good people," he cried, "every one of you! How very snug and cosey you look here! Ah, captain, where have you been keeping yourself? And Mrs. Dellenbaugh! This is indeed a pleasure. I have just passed the dear doctor, and he is looking as young as he did ten years ago. And my Lady Lucy! Down so early! Well, Mistress Martha, up again I see; I told you you'd be all right in a day or two." This running fire of greetings was made with a pause before each inmate of the room--a hearty hand-shake for the bluff captain, the pressing of Mrs. Dellenbaugh's limp fingers, a low bow to Lucy, and a pat on Martha's plump shoulder. Jane came last, as she always did. She had risen to greet him and was now unwinding the white silk handkerchief wrapped about his throat and helping him off with his fur tippet and gloves. "Thank you, Jane. No, let me take it; it's rather wet," he added as he started to lay the heavy overcoat over a chair. "Wait a minute. I've some violets for you if they are not crushed in my pocket. They came last night," and he handed her a small parcel wrapped in tissue paper. This done, he took his customary place on the rug with his back to the blazing logs and began unbuttoning his trim frock-coat, bringing to view a double-breasted, cream-white waistcoat--he still dressed as a man of thirty, and always in the fashion--as well as a fluffy scarf which Jane had made for him with her own fingers. "And what have I interrupted?" he asked, looking over the room. "One of your sea yarns, captain?"--here he reached over and patted the child's head, who had crept back to the captain's arms--"or some of my lady's news from Paris? You tell me, Jane," he added, with a smile, opening his thin, white, almost transparent fingers and holding them behind his back to the fire, a favorite attitude. "Ask the captain, John." She had regained her seat and was reaching out for her work-basket, the violets now pinned in her bosom--her eyes had long since thanked him. "No, do YOU tell me," he insisted, moving aside the table with her sewing materials and placing it nearer her chair. "Well, but it's the captain who should speak," Jane replied, laughing, as she looked up into his face, her eyes filled with his presence. "He has startled us all with the most wonderful proposition. The Government is going to build a life-saving station at Barnegat beach, and they have offered him the position of keeper, and he says he will take it if I will let Archie go with him as one of his crew." Doctor John's face instantly assumed a graver look. These forked roads confronting the career of a young life were important and not to be lightly dismissed. "Well, what did you tell him?" he asked, looking down at Jane in the effort to read her thoughts. "We are waiting for you to decide, John." The tone was the same she would have used had the doctor been her own husband and the boy their child. Doctor John communed with himself for an instant. "Well, let us take a vote," he replied with an air as if each and every one in the room was interested in the decision. "We'll begin with Mistress Martha, and then Mrs. Dellenbaugh, and then you, Jane, and last our lady from over the sea. The captain has already sold his vote to his affections, and so must be counted out." "Yes, but don't count me in, please," exclaimed Lucy with a merry laugh as she arose from her seat. "I don't know a thing about it. I've just told the dear captain so. I'm going upstairs this very moment to write some letters. Bonjour, Monsieur le Docteur; bonjour, Monsieur le Capitaine and Madame Dellenbaugh," and with a wave of her hand and a little dip of her head to each of the guests, she courtesied out of the room. When the door was closed behind her she stopped in the hall, threw a glance at her face in the old-fashioned mirror, satisfied herself of her skill in preserving its beautiful rabbit's-foot bloom and freshness, gave her blonde hair one or two pats to keep it in place, rearranged the film of white lace about her shapely throat, and gathering up the mass of ruffled skirts that hid her pretty feet, slowly ascended the staircase. Once inside her room and while the vote was being taken downstairs that decided Archie's fate she locked her door, dropped into a chair by the fire, took the unopened letter from her pocket, and broke the seal. "Don't scold, little woman," it read. "I would have written before, but I've been awfully busy getting my place in order. It's all arranged now, however, for the summer. The hotel will be opened in June, and I have the best rooms in the house, the three on the corner overlooking the sea. Sue says she will, perhaps, stay part of the summer with me. Try and come up next week for the night. If not I'll bring Sue with me and come to you for the day. "Your own Max." For some minutes she sat gazing into the fire, the letter in her hand. "It's about time, Mr. Max Feilding," she said at last with a sigh of relief as she rose from her seat and tucked the letter into her desk. "You've had string enough, my fine fellow; now it's my turn. If I had known you would have stayed behind in Paris all these months and kept me waiting here I'd have seen you safe aboard the steamer. The hotel opens in June, does it? Well, I can just about stand it here until then; after that I'd go mad. This place bores me to death." CHAPTER XVI THE BEGINNING OF THE EBB Spring has come and gone. The lilacs and crocuses, the tulips and buttercups, have bloomed and faded; the lawn has had its sprinkling of dandelions, and the duff of their blossoms has drifted past the hemlocks and over the tree-tops. The grass has had its first cutting; the roses have burst their buds and hang in clusters over the arbors; warm winds blow in from the sea laden with perfumes from beach and salt-marsh; the skies are steely blue and the cloud puffs drift lazily. It is summer-time--the season of joy and gladness, the season of out-of-doors. All the windows at Yardley are open; the porch has donned an awning--its first--colored white and green, shading big rocking-chairs and straw tables resting on Turkish rugs. Lucy had wondered why in all the years that Jane had lived alone at Yardley she had never once thought of the possibilities of this porch. Jane had agreed with her, and so, under Lucy's direction, the awnings had been put up and the other comforts inaugurated. Beneath its shade Lucy sits and reads or embroiders or answers her constantly increasing correspondence. The porch serves too as a reception-room, the vines being thick and the occupants completely hidden from view. Here Lucy often spreads a small table, especially when Max Feilding drives over in his London drag from Beach Haven on Barnegat beach. On these occasions, if the weather is warm, she refreshes him with delicate sandwiches and some of her late father's rare Scotch whiskey (shelved in the cellar for thirty years) or with the more common brands of cognac served in the old family decanters. Of late Max had become a constant visitor. His own ancestors had made honorable records in the preceding century, and were friends of the earlier Cobdens during the Revolution. This, together with the fact that he had visited Yardley when Lucy was a girl--on his first return from Paris, in fact--and that the acquaintance had been kept up while he was a student abroad, was reason enough for his coming with such frequency. His drag, moreover, as it whirled into Yardley's gate, gave a certain air of eclat to the Manor House that it had not known since the days of the old colonel. Nothing was lacking that money and taste could furnish. The grays were high-steppers and smooth as satin, the polished chains rattled and clanked about the pole; the body was red and the wheels yellow, the lap-robe blue, with a monogram; and the diminutive boy studded with silver buttons bearing the crest of the Feilding family was as smart as the tailor could make him. And the owner himself, in his whity-brown driving-coat with big pearl buttons, yellow gloves, and gray hat, looked every inch the person to hold the ribbons. Altogether it was a most fashionable equipage, owned and driven by a most fashionable man. As for the older residents of Warehold, they had only words of praise for the turnout. Uncle Ephraim declared that it was a "Jim Dandy," which not only showed his taste, but which also proved how much broader that good-natured cynic had become in later years. Billy Tatham gazed at it with staring eyes as it trundled down the highway and turned into the gate, and at once determined to paint two of his hacks bright yellow and give each driver a lap-robe with the letter "T" worked in high relief. The inmates of Yardley were not quite so enthusiastic. Martha was glad that her bairn was having such a good time, and she would often stand on the porch with little Ellen's hand in hers and wave to Max and Lucy as they dashed down the garden road and out through the gate, the tiger behind; but Jane, with that quick instinct which some women possess, recognized something in Feilding's manner which she could not put into words, and so held her peace. She had nothing against Max, but she did not like him. Although he was most considerate of her feelings and always deferred to her, she felt that any opposition on her part to their outings would have made no difference to either one of them. He asked her permission, of course, and she recognized the courtesy, but nothing that he ever did or said overcame her dislike of him. Doctor John's personal attitude and bearing toward Feilding was an enigma not only to Jane, but to others who saw it. He invariably greeted him, whenever they met, with marked, almost impressive cordiality, but it never passed a certain limit of reserve; a certain dignity of manner which Max had recognized the first day he shook hands with him. It recalled to Feilding some of his earlier days, when he was a student in Paris. There had been a supper in Max's room that ended at daylight--no worse in its features than dozens of others in the Quartier--to which an intimate friend of the doctor's had been invited, and upon which, as Max heard afterward, the doctor had commented rather severely. Max realized, therefore, but too well that the distinguished physician--known now over half the State--understood him, and his habits, and his kind as thoroughly as he did his own ease of instruments. He realized, too, that there was nothing about his present appearance or surroundings or daily life that could lead so thoughtful a man of the world as Dr. John Cavendish, of Barnegat, to conclude that he had changed in any way for the better. And yet this young gentleman could never have been accused of burning his candle at both ends. He had no flagrant vices really--none whose posters were pasted on the victim's face. Neither cards nor any other form of play interested him, nor did the wine tempt him when it was red--or of any other color, for that matter, nor did he haunt the dressing-rooms of chorus girls and favorites of the hour. His innate refinement and good taste prevented any such uses of his spare time. His weakness--for it could hardly be called a vice--was narrowed down to one infirmity, and one only: this was his inability to be happy without the exclusive society of some one woman. Who the woman might be depended very largely on whom he might be thrown with. In the first ten years of his majority--his days of poverty when a student--it had been some girl in exile, like himself. During the last ten years--since his father's death and his inheritance--it had been a loose end picked out of the great floating drift--that social flotsam and jetsam which eddies in and out of the casinos of Nice and Monte Carlo, flows into Aix and Trouville in summer and back again to Rome and Cairo in winter--a discontented wife perhaps; or an unmarried woman of thirty-five or forty, with means enough to live where she pleased; or it might be some self-exiled Russian countess or English-woman of quality who had a month off, and who meant to make the most of it. All most respectable people, of course, without a breath of scandal attaching to their names--Max was too careful for that--and yet each and every one on the lookout for precisely the type of man that Max represented: one never happy or even contented when outside the radius of a waving fan or away from the flutter of a silken skirt. It was in one of these resorts of the idle, a couple of years before, while Lucy's husband and little Ellen were home in Geneva, that Max had met her, and where he had renewed the acquaintance of their childhood--an acquaintance which soon ripened into the closest friendship. Hence his London drag and appointments; hence the yacht and a four-in-hand--then a great novelty--all of which he had promised her should she decide to join him at home. Hence, too, his luxuriously fitted-up bachelor quarters in Philadelphia, and his own comfortable apartments in his late father's house, where his sister Sue lived; and hence, too, his cosey rooms in the best corner of the Beach Haven hotel, with a view overlooking Barnegat Light and the sea. None of these things indicated in the smallest degree that this noble gentleman contemplated finally settling down in a mansion commensurate with his large means, where he and the pretty widow could enjoy their married life together; nothing was further from his mind--nothing could be--he loved his freedom too much. What he wanted, and what he intended to have, was her undivided companionship--at least for the summer; a companionship without any of the uncomfortable complications which would have arisen had he selected an unmarried woman or the wife of some friend to share his leisure and wealth. The woman he picked out for the coming season suited him exactly. She was blonde, with eyes, mouth, teeth, and figure to his liking (he had become critical in forty odd years--twenty passed as an expert); dressed in perfect taste, and wore her clothes to perfection; had a Continental training that made her mistress of every situation, receiving with equal ease and graciousness anybody, from a postman to a prince, sending them away charmed and delighted; possessed money enough of her own not to be too much of a drag upon him; and--best of all (and this was most important to the heir of Walnut Hill)--had the best blood of the State circling in her veins. Whether this intimacy might drift into something closer, compelling him to take a reef in his sails, never troubled him. It was not the first time that he had steered his craft between the Scylla of matrimony and the Charybdis of scandal, and he had not the slightest doubt of his being able to do it again. As for Lucy, she had many plans in view. One was to get all the fun possible out of the situation; another was to provide for her future. How this was to be accomplished she had not yet determined. Her plans were laid, but some of them she knew from past experience might go astray. On one point she had made up her mind--not to be in a hurry. In furtherance of these schemes she had for some days--some months, in fact--been making preparations for an important move. She knew that its bare announcement would come as a surprise to Jane and Martha and, perhaps, as a shock, but that did not shake her purpose. She furthermore expected more or less opposition when they fully grasped her meaning. This she intended to overcome. Neither Jane nor Martha, she said to herself, could be angry with her for long, and a few kisses and an additional flow of good-humor would soon set them to laughing again. To guard against the possibility of a too prolonged interview with Jane, ending, perhaps, in a disagreeable scene--one beyond her control--she had selected a sunny summer morning for the stage setting of her little comedy and an hour when Feilding was expected to call for her in his drag. She and Max were to make a joint inspection that day of his new apartment at Beach Haven, into which he had just moved, as well as the stable containing the three extra vehicles and equine impedimenta, which were to add to their combined comfort and enjoyment. Lucy had been walking in the garden looking at the rose-beds, her arm about her sister's slender waist, her ears open to the sound of every passing vehicle--Max was expected at any moment--when she began her lines. "You won't mind, Jane, dear, will you, if I get together a few things and move over to Beach Haven for a while?" she remarked simply, just as she might have done had she asked permission to go upstairs to take a nap. "I think we should all encourage a new enterprise like the hotel, especially old families like ours. And then the sea air always does me so much good. Nothing like Trouville air, my dear husband used to tell me, when I came back in the autumn. You don't mind, do you?" "For how long, Lucy?" asked Jane, with a tone of disappointment in her voice, as she placed her foot on the top step of the porch. "Oh, I can't tell. Depends very much on how I like it." As she spoke she drew up an easy-chair for Jane and settled herself in another. Then she added carelessly: "Oh, perhaps a month--perhaps two." "Two months!" exclaimed Jane in astonishment, dropping into her seat. "Why, what do you want to leave Yardley for? O Lucy, don't--please don't go!" "But you can come over, and I can come here," rejoined Lucy in a coaxing tone. "Yes; but I don't want to come over. I want you at home. And it's so lovely here. I have never seen the garden look so beautiful; and you have your own room, and this little porch is so cosey. The hotel is a new building, and the doctor says a very damp one, with everything freshly plastered. He won't let any of his patients go there for some weeks, he tells me. Why should you want to go? I really couldn't think of it, dear. I'd miss you dreadfully." "You dear old sister," answered Lucy, laying her parasol on the small table beside her, "you are so old-fashioned. Habit, if nothing else, would make me go. I have hardly passed a summer in Paris or Geneva since I left you; and you know how delightful my visits to Biarritz used to be years ago. Since my marriage I have never stayed in any one place so long as this. I must have the sea air." "But the salt water is right here, Lucy, within a short walk of our gate, and the air is the same." Jane's face wore a troubled look, and there was an anxious, almost frightened tone in her voice. "No, it is not exactly the same," Lucy answered positively, as if she had made a life-long study of climate; "and if it were, the life is very different. I love Warehold, of course; but you must admit that it is half-asleep all the time. The hotel will be some change; there will be new people and something to see from the piazzas. And I need it, dear. I get tired of one thing all the time--I always have." "But you will be just as lonely there." Jane in her astonishment was like a blind man feeling about for a protecting wall. "No; Max and his sister will be at Beach Haven, and lots of others I know. No, I won't be lonely," and an amused expression twinkled in her eyes. Jane sat quite still. Some of Captain Holt's blunt, outspoken criticisms floated through her brain. "Have you any reason for wanting to leave here?" she asked, raising her eyes and looking straight at Lucy. "No, certainly not. How foolish, dear, to ask me! I'm never so happy as when I am with you." "Well, why then should you want to give up your home and all the comforts you need--your flowers, garden, and everything you love, and this porch, which you have just made so charming, to go to a damp, half-completed hotel, without a shrub about it--only a stretch of desolate sand with the tide going in and out?" There was a tone of suspicion in Jane's voice that Lucy had never heard from her sister's lips--never, in all her life. "Oh, because I love the tides, if nothing else," she answered with a sentimental note in her voice. "Every six hours they bring me a new message. I could spend whole mornings watching the tides come and go. During my long exile you don't know how I dreamed every night of the dear tides of Barnegat. If you had been away from all you love as many years as I have, you would understand how I could revel in the sound of the old breakers." For some moments Jane did not answer. She knew from the tones of Lucy's voice and from the way she spoke that she did not mean it. She had heard her talk that way to some of the villagers when she wanted to impress them, but she had never spoken in the same way to her. "You have some other reason, Lucy. Is it Max?" she asked in a strained tone. Lucy colored. She had not given her sister credit for so keen an insight into the situation. Jane's mind was evidently working in a new direction. She determined to face the suspicion squarely; the truth under some conditions is better than a lie. "Yes," she replied, with an assumed humility and with a tone as if she had been detected in a fault and wanted to make a clean breast of it. "Yes--now that you have guessed it--it IS Max." "Don't you think it would be better to see him here instead of at the hotel?" exclaimed Jane, her eyes still boring into Lucy's. "Perhaps"--the answer came in a helpless way--"but that won't do much good. I want to keep my promise to him if I can." "What was your promise?" Jane's eyes lost their searching look for an instant, but the tone of suspicion still vibrated. Lucy hesitated and began playing with the trimming on her dress. "Well, to tell you the truth, dear, a few days ago in a burst of generosity I got myself into something of a scrape. Max wants his sister Sue to spend the summer with him, and I very foolishly promised to chaperon her. She is delighted over the prospect, for she must have somebody, and I haven't the heart to disappoint her. Max has been so kind to me that I hate now to tell him I can't go. That's all, dear. I don't like to speak of obligations of this sort, and so at first I only told you half the truth." "You should always keep your promise, dear," Jane answered thoughtfully and with a certain relieved tone. (Sue was nearly thirty, but that did not occur to Jane.) "But this time I wish you had not promised. I am sorry, too, for little Ellen. She will miss her little garden and everything she loves here; and then again, Archie will miss her, and so will Captain Holt and Martha. You know as well as I do that a hotel is no place for a child." "I am glad to hear you say so. That's why I shall not take her with me." As she spoke she shot an inquiring glance from the corner of her eyes at the anxious face of her sister. These last lines just before the curtain fell were the ones she had dreaded most. Jane half rose from her seat. Her deep eyes were wide open, gazing in astonishment at Lucy. For an instant she felt as if her heart had stopped beating. "And you--you--are not going to take Ellen with you!" she gasped. "No, of course not." She saw her sister's agitation, but she did not intend to notice it. Besides, her expectant ear had caught the sound of Max's drag as it whirled through the gate. "I always left her with her grandmother when she was much younger than she is now. She is very happy here and I wouldn't be so cruel as to take her away from all her pleasures. Then she loves old people. See how fond she is of the Captain and Martha! No, you are right. I wouldn't think of taking her away." Jane was standing now, her eyes blazing, her lips quivering. "You mean, Lucy, that you would leave your child here and spend two months away from her?" The wheels were crunching the gravel within a rod of the porch. Max had already lifted his hat. "But, sister, you don't understand--" The drag stopped and Max, with uncovered head, sprang out and extended his hand to Jane. Before he could offer his salutations Lucy's joyous tones rang out. "Just in the nick of time, Max," she cried. "I've just been telling my dear sister that I'm going to move over to Beach Haven to-morrow, bag and baggage, and she is delighted at the news. Isn't it just like her?" CHAPTER XVII BREAKERS AHEAD The summer-home of Max Feilding, Esq., of Walnut Hill, and of the beautiful and accomplished widow of the dead Frenchman was located on a levelled sand-dune in full view of the sea. Indeed, from beneath its low-hooded porticos and piazzas nothing else could be seen except, perhaps, the wide sky--gray, mottled, or intensely blue, as the weather permitted--the stretch of white sand shaded from dry to wet and edged with tufts of yellow grass; the circling gulls and the tall finger of Barnegat Light pointing skyward. Nothing, really, but some scattering buildings in silhouette against the glare of the blinding light--one the old House of Refuge, a mile away to the north, and nearer by, the new Life Saving Station (now complete) in charge of Captain Nat Holt and his crew of trusty surfmen. This view Lucy always enjoyed. She would sit for hours under her awnings and watch the lazy boats crawling in and out of the inlet, or the motionless steamers--motionless at that distance--slowly unwinding their threads of smoke. The Station particularly interested her. Somehow she felt a certain satisfaction in knowing that Archie was at work and that he had at last found his level among his own people--not that she wished him any harm; she only wanted him out of her way. The hostelry itself was one of those low-roofed, shingle-sided and shingle-covered buildings common in the earlier days along the Jersey coast, and now supplanted by more modern and more costly structures. It had grown from a farm-house and out-buildings to its present state with the help of an architect and a jig-saw; the former utilizing what remained of the house and its barns, and the latter transforming plain pine into open work patterns with which to decorate its gable ends and facade. When the flags were raised, the hanging baskets suspended in each loop of the porches, and the merciless, omnipresent and ever-insistent sand was swept from its wide piazzas and sun-warped steps it gave out an air of gayety so plausible and enticing that many otherwise sane and intelligent people at once closed their comfortable homes and entered their names in its register. The amusements of these habitues--if they could be called habitues, this being their first summer--were as varied as their tastes. There was a band which played mornings and afternoons in an unpainted pine pagoda planted on a plot of slowly dying grass and decorated with more hanging baskets and Chinese lanterns; there was bathing at eleven and four; and there was croquet on the square of cement fenced about by poles and clothes-lines at all hours. Besides all this there were driving parties to the villages nearby; dancing parties at night with the band in the large room playing away for dear life, with all the guests except the very young and very old tucked away in twos in the dark corners of the piazzas out of reach of the lights and the inquisitive--in short, all the diversions known to such retreats, so necessary for warding off ennui and thus inducing the inmates to stay the full length of their commitments. In its selection Max was guided by two considerations: it was near Yardley--this would materially aid in Lucy's being able to join him--and it was not fashionable and, therefore, not likely to be overrun with either his own or Lucy's friends. The amusements did not interest him; nor did they interest Lucy. Both had seen too much and enjoyed too much on the other side of the water, at Nice, at Monte Carlo, and Biarritz, to give the amusements a thought. What they wanted was to be let alone; this would furnish all the excitement either of them needed. This exclusiveness was greatly helped by the red and yellow drag, with all its contiguous and connecting impedimenta, a turnout which never ceased to occupy everybody's attention whenever the small tiger stood by the heads of the satin-coated grays awaiting the good pleasure of his master and his lady. Its possession not only marked a social eminence too lofty for any ordinary habitue to climb to unless helped up by the proffered hand of the owner, but it prevented anyone of these would-be climbers from inviting either its owner or his companion to join in other outings no matter how enjoyable. Such amusements as they could offer were too simple and old-fashioned for two distinguished persons who held the world in their slings and who were whirling it around their heads with all their might. The result was that their time was their own. They filled it at their pleasure. When the tide was out and the sand hard, they drove on the beach, stopping at the new station, chatting with Captain Holt or Archie; or they strolled north, always avoiding the House of Refuge--that locality had too many unpleasant associations for Lucy, or they sat on the dunes, moving back out of the wet as the tide reached them, tossing pebbles in the hollows, or gathering tiny shells, which Lucy laid out in rows of letters as she had done when a child. In the afternoon they drove by way of Yardley to see how Ellen was getting on, or idled about Warehold, making little purchases at the shops and chatting with the village people, all of whom would come out to greet them. After dinner they would generally betake themselves to Max's portico, opening out of his rooms, or to Lucy's--they were at opposite ends of the long corridor--where the two had their coffee while Max smoked. The opinions freely expressed regarding their social and moral status, and individual and combined relations, differed greatly in the several localities in which they were wont to appear. In Warehold village they were looked upon as two most charming and delightful people, rich, handsome, and of proper age and lineage, who were exactly adapted to each other and who would prove it before the year was out, with Pastor Dellenbaugh officiating, assisted by some dignitary from Philadelphia. At the hostelry many of the habitues had come to a far different conclusion. Marriage was not in either of their heads, they maintained; their intimacy was a purely platonic one, born of a friendship dating back to childhood--they were cousins really--Max being the dearest and most unselfish creature in the world, he having given up all his pleasures elsewhere to devote himself to a most sweet and gracious lady whose grief was still severe and who would really be quite alone in the world were it not for her little daughter, now temporarily absent. This summary of facts, none of which could be questioned, was supplemented and enriched by another conclusive instalment from Mrs. Walton Coates, of Chestnut Plains, who had met Lucy at Aix the year before, and who therefore possessed certain rights not vouchsafed to the other habitues of Beach Haven--an acquaintance which Lucy, for various reasons, took pains to encourage--Mrs. C.'s social position being beyond question, and her house and other appointments more than valuable whenever Lucy should visit Philadelphia: besides, Mrs. Coates's own and Lucy's apartments joined, and the connecting door of the two sitting-rooms was often left open, a fact which established a still closer intimacy. This instalment, given in a positive and rather lofty way, made plain the fact that in her enforced exile the distinguished lady not only deserved the thanks of every habitue of the hotel, but of the whole country around, for selecting the new establishment in which to pass the summer, instead of one of the more fashionable resorts elsewhere. This outburst of the society leader, uttered in the hearing of a crowded piazza, had occurred after a conversation she had had with Lucy concerning little Ellen. "Tell me about your little daughter," Mrs. Coates had said. "You did not leave her abroad, did you?" "Oh, no, my dear Mrs. Coates! I am really here on my darling's account," Lucy answered with a sigh. "My old home is only a short distance from here. But the air does not agree with me there, and so I came here to get a breath of the real sea. Ellen is with her aunt, my dear sister Jane. I wanted to bring her, but really I hadn't the heart to take her from them; they are so devoted to her. Max loves her dearly. He drives me over there almost every day. I really do not know how I could have borne all the sorrows I have had this year without dear Max. He is like a brother to me, and SO thoughtful. You know we have known each other since we were children. They tell such dreadful stories, too, about him, but I have never seen that side of him, he's a perfect saint to me." From that time on Mrs. Coates was her loyal mouthpiece and devoted friend. Being separated from one's child was one of the things she could not brook; Lucy was an angel to stand it as she did. As for Max--no other woman had ever so influenced him for good, nor did she believe any other woman could. At the end of the second week a small fly no larger than a pin's head began to develop in the sunshine of their amber. It became visible to the naked eye when Max suddenly resolved to leave his drag, his tiger, his high-stepping grays, and his fair companion, and slip over to Philadelphia--for a day or two, he explained. His lawyer needed him, he said, and then again he wanted to see his sister Sue, who had run down to Walnut Hill for the day. (Sue, it might as well be stated, had not yet put in an appearance at Beach Haven, nor had she given any notice of her near arrival; a fact which had not disturbed Lucy in the least until she attempted to explain to Jane.) "I've got to pull up, little woman, and get out for a few days," Max had begun. "Morton's all snarled up, he writes me, over a mortgage, and I must straighten it out. I'll leave Bones [the tiger] and everything just as it is. Don't mind, do you?" "Mind! Of course I do!" retorted Lucy. "When did you get this marvellous idea into that wonderful brain of yours, Max? I intended to go to Warehold myself to-morrow." She spoke with her usual good-humor, but with a slight trace of surprise and disappointment in her tone. "When I opened my mail this morning; but my going won't make any difference about Warehold. Bones and the groom will take care of you." Lucy leaned back in her chair and looked over the rail of the porch. She had noticed lately a certain restraint in Max's manner which was new to her. Whether he was beginning to get bored, or whether it was only one of his moods, she could not decide--even with her acute knowledge of similar symptoms. That some change, however, had come over him she had not the slightest doubt. She never had any trouble in lassoing her admirers. That came with a glance of her eye or a lift of her pretty shoulders: nor for that matter in keeping possession of them as long as her mood lasted. "Whom do you want to see in Philadelphia, Max?" she asked, smiling roguishly at him. She held him always by presenting her happiest and most joyous side, whether she felt it or not. "Sue and Morton--and you, you dear girl, if you'll come along." "No; I'm not coming along. I'm too comfortable where I am. Is this woman somebody you haven't told me of, Max?" she persisted, looking at him from under half-closed lids. "Your somebodies are always thin air, little girl; you know everything I have ever done in my whole life," Max answered gravely. She had for the last two weeks. Lucy threw up her hands and laughed so loud and cheerily that an habitue taking his morning constitutional on the boardwalk below turned his head in their direction. The two were at breakfast under the awnings of Lucy's portico, Bones standing out of range. "You don't believe it?" "Not one word of it, you fraud; nor do you. You've forgotten one-half of all you've done and the other half you wouldn't dare tell any woman. Come, give me her name. Anybody Sue knows?" "Nobody that anybody knows, Honest John." Then he added as an after-thought, "Are you sorry?" As he spoke he rose from his seat and stood behind her chair looking down over her figure. She had her back to him. He thought he had never seen her look so lovely. She was wearing a light-blue morning-gown, her arms bare to the elbows, and a wide Leghorn hat--the morning costume of all others he liked her best in. "No--don't think I am," she answered lightly. "Fact is I was getting pretty tired of you. How long will you be gone?" "Oh, I think till the end of the week--not longer." He reached over the chair and was about to play with the tiny curls that lay under the coil of her hair, when he checked himself and straightened up. One of those sudden restraints which had so puzzled Lucy had seized him. She could not see his face, but she knew from the tones of his voice that the enthusiasm of the moment had cooled. Lucy shifted her chair, lifted her head, and looked up into his eyes. She was always entrancing from this point of view: the upturned eyelashes, round of the cheeks, and the line of the throat and swelling shoulders were like no other woman's he knew. "I don't want you to go, Max," she said in the same coaxing tone of voice that Ellen might have used in begging for sugar-plums. "Just let the mortgage and old Morton and everybody else go. Stay here with me." Max straightened up and threw out his chest and a determined look came into his eyes. If he had had any doubts as to his departure Lucy's pleading voice had now removed them. "No, can't do it," he answered in mock positiveness. "Can't 'pon my soul. Business is business. Got to see Morton right away; ought to have seen him before." Then he added in a more serious tone, "Don't get worried if I stay a day or two longer." "Well, then, go, you great bear, you," and she rose to her feet and shook out her skirts. "I wouldn't let you stay, no matter what you said." She was not angry--she was only feeling about trying to put her finger on the particular button that controlled Max's movements. "Worried? Not a bit of it. Stay as long as you please." There WAS a button, could she have found it. It was marked "Caution," and when pressed communicated to the heir of Walnut Hill the intelligence that he was getting too fond of the pretty widow and that his only safety lay in temporary flight. It was a favorite trick of his. In the charting of his course he had often found two other rocks beside Scylla and Charybdis in his way; one was boredom and the other was love. When a woman began to bore him, or he found himself liking her beyond the limit of his philosophy, he invariably found relief in change of scene. Sometimes it was a sick aunt or a persistent lawyer or an engagement nearly forgotten and which must be kept at all hazards. He never, however, left his inamorata in either tears or anger. "Now, don't be cross, dear," he cried, patting her shoulder with his fingers. "You know I don't want to leave you. I shall be perfectly wretched while I'm gone, but there's no help for it. Morton's such a fussy old fellow--always wanting to do a lot of things that can, perhaps, wait just as well as not. Hauled me down from Walnut Hill half a dozen times once, and after all the fellow wouldn't sell. But this time it's important and I must go. Bones," and he lifted his finger to the boy, "tell John I want the light wagon. I'll take the 11.12 to Philadelphia." The tiger advanced ten steps and stood at attention, his finger at his eyebrow. Lucy turned her face toward the boy. "No, Bones, you'll do nothing of the kind. You tell John to harness the grays to the drag. I'll go to the station with Mr. Feilding." Max shrugged his shoulders. He liked Lucy for a good many things--one was her independence, another was her determination to have her own way. Then, again, she was never so pretty as when she was a trifle angry; her color came and went so deliciously and her eyes snapped so charmingly. Lucy saw the shrug and caught the satisfied look in his face. She didn't want to offend him and yet she didn't intend that he should go without a parting word from her--tender or otherwise, as circumstances might require. She knew she had not found the button, and in her doubt determined for the present to abandon the search. "No, Bones, I've changed my mind," she called to the boy, who was now half way down the piazza. "I don't think I will go. I'll stop here, Max, and do just what you want me to do," she added in a softened voice. "Come along," and she slipped her hand in his and the two walked toward the door of his apartments. When the light wagon and satin-skinned sorrel, with John on the seat and Bones in full view, stopped at the sanded porch, Mrs. Coates and Lucy formed part of the admiring group gathered about the turn-out. All of Mr. Feilding's equipages brought a crowd of onlookers, no matter how often they appeared--he had five with him at Beach Haven, including the four-in-hand which he seldom used--but the grays and the light wagon, by common consent, were considered the most "stylish" of them all, not excepting the drag. After Max had gathered the reins in his hands, had balanced the whip, had settled himself comfortably and with a wave of his hand to Lucy had driven off, Mrs. Coates slipped her arm through my lady's and the two slowly sauntered to their rooms. "Charming man, is he not?" Mrs. Coates ventured. "Such a pity he is not married! You know I often wonder whom such men will marry. Some pretty school-girl, perhaps, or prim woman of forty." Lucy laughed. "No," she answered, "you are wrong. The bread-and-butter miss would never suit Max, and he's past the eye-glass and side-curl age. The next phase, if he ever reaches it, will be somebody who will make him do--not as he pleases, but as SHE pleases. A man like Max never cares for a woman any length of time who humors his whims." "Well, he certainly was most attentive to that pretty Miss Billeton. You remember her father was lost overboard four years ago from his yacht. Mr. Coates told me he met her only a day or so ago; she had come down to look after the new ball-room they are adding to the old house. You know her, don't you?" "No--never heard of her. How old is she?" rejoined Lucy in a careless tone. "I should say twenty, maybe twenty-two--you can't always tell about these girls; very pretty and very rich. I am quite sure I saw Mr. Feilding driving with her just before he moved his horses down here, and she looked prettier than ever. But then he has a new flame every month, I hear." "Where were they driving?" There was a slight tone of curiosity in Lucy's voice. None of Max's love-affairs ever affected her, of course, except as they made for his happiness; all undue interest, therefore, was out of place, especially before Mrs. Coates. "I don't remember. Along the River Road, perhaps--he generally drives there when he has a pretty woman with him." Lucy bit her lip. Some other friend, then, had been promised the drag with the red body and yellow wheels! This was why he couldn't come to Yardley when she wrote for him. She had found the button. It rang up another woman. The door between the connecting sitting-rooms was not opened that day, nor that night, for that matter. Lucy pleaded a headache and wished to be alone. She really wanted to look the field over and see where her line of battle was weak. Not that she really cared--unless the girl should upset her plans; not as Jane would have cared had Doctor John been guilty of such infidelity. The eclipse was what hurt her. She had held the centre of the stage with the lime-light full upon her all her life, and she intended to retain it against Miss Billeton or Miss Anybody else. She decided to let Max know at once, and in plain terms, giving him to understand that she didn't intend to be made a fool of, reminding him at the same time that there were plenty of others who cared for her, or who would care for her if she should but raise her little finger. She WOULD raise it, too, even if she packed her trunks and started for Paris--and took him with her. These thoughts rushed through her mind as she sat by the window and looked out over the sea. The tide was making flood, and the fishing-boats anchored in the inlet were pointing seaward. She could see, too, the bathers below and the children digging in the sand. Now and then a boat would head for the inlet, drop its sail, and swing round motionless with the others. Then a speck would break away from the anchored craft and with the movement of a water-spider land the fishermen ashore. None of these things interested her. She could not have told whether the sun shone or whether the sky was fair or dull. Neither was she lonely, nor did she miss Max. She was simply angry--disgusted--disappointed at the situation; at herself, at the woman who had come between them, at the threatened failure of her plans. One moment she was building up a house of cards in which she held all the trumps, and the next instant she had tumbled it to the ground. One thing she was determined upon--not to take second place. She would have all of him or none of him. At the end of the third day Max returned. He had not seen Morton, nor any of his clerks, nor anybody connected with his office. Neither had he sent him any message or written him any letter. Morton might have been dead and buried a century so far as Max or his affairs were concerned. Nor had he laid his eyes on the beautiful Miss Billeton; nor visited her house; nor written her any letters; nor inquired for her. What he did do was to run out to Walnut Hill, have a word with his manager, and slip back to town again and bury himself in his club. Most of the time he read the magazines, some pages two or three times over. Once he thought he would look up one or two of his women friends at their homes--those who might still be in town--and then gave it up as not being worth the trouble. At the end of the third day he started for Barnegat. The air was bad in the city, he said to himself, and everybody he met was uninteresting. He would go back, hitch up the grays, and he and Lucy have a spin down the beach. Sea air always did agree with him, and he was a fool to leave it. Lucy met him at the station in answer to his telegram sent over from Warehold. She was dressed in her very best: a double-breasted jacket and straw turban, a gossamer veil wound about it. Her cheeks were like two red peonies and her eyes bright as diamonds. She was perched up in the driver's seat of the drag, and handled the reins and whip with the skill of a turfman. This time Bones, the tiger, did not spring into his perch as they whirled from the station in the direction of the beach. His company was not wanted. They talked of Max's trip, of the mortgage, and of Morton; of how hot it was in town and how cool it was on her portico; of Mrs. Coates and of pater-familias Coates, who held a mortgage on Beach Haven; of the dance the night before--Max leading in the conversation and she answering either in mono-syllables or not at all, until Max hazarded the statement that he had been bored to death waiting for Morton, who never put in an appearance, and that the only human being, male or female, he had seen in town outside the members of the club, was Sue. They had arrived off the Life-Saving Station now, and Archie had called the captain to the door, and both stood looking at them, the boy waving his hand and the captain following them with his eyes. Had either of them caught the captain's remark they, perhaps, would have drawn rein and asked for an explanation: "Gay lookin' hose-carriage, ain't it? Looks as if they was runnin' to a fire!" But they didn't hear it; would not, probably have heard it, had the captain shouted it in their ears. Lucy was intent on opening up a subject which had lain dormant in her mind since the morning of Max's departure, and the gentleman himself was trying to cipher out what new "kink," as he expressed it to himself, had "got it into her head." When they had passed the old House of Refuge Lucy drew rein and stopped the drag where the widening circle of the incoming tide could bathe the horses' feet. She was still uncertain as to how she would lead up to the subject-matter without betraying her own jealousy or, more important still, without losing her temper. This she rarely displayed, no matter how goading the provocation. Nobody had any use for an ill-tempered woman, not in her atmosphere; and no fly that she had ever known had been caught by vinegar when seeking honey. There might be vinegar-pots to be found in her larder, but they were kept behind closed doors and sampled only when she was alone. As she sat looking out to sea, Max's brain still at work on the problem of her unusual mood, a schooner shifted her mainsail in the light breeze and set her course for the inlet. "That's the regular weekly packet," Max ventured. "She's making for Farguson's ship-yard. She runs between Amboy and Barnegat--Captain Ambrose Farguson sails her." At times like these any topic was good enough to begin on. "How do you know?" Lucy asked, looking at the incoming schooner from under her half-closed lids. The voice came like the thin piping of a flute preceding the orchestral crash, merely sounded so as to let everybody know it was present. "One of my carriages was shipped by her. I paid Captain Farguson the freight just before I went away." "What's her name?"--slight tremolo--only a note or two. "The Polly Walters," droned Max, talking at random, mind neither on the sloop nor her captain. "Named after his wife?" The flute-like notes came more crisply. "Yes, so he told me." Max had now ceased to give any attention to his answers. He had about made up his mind that something serious was the matter and that he would ask her and find out. "Ought to be called the Max Feilding, from the way she tacks about. She's changed her course three times since I've been watching her." Max shot a glance athwart his shoulder and caught a glimpse of the pretty lips thinned and straightened and the half-closed eyes and wrinkled forehead. He was evidently the disturbing cause, but in what way he could not for the life of him see. That she was angry to the tips of her fingers was beyond question; the first time he had seen her thus in all their acquaintance. "Yes-that would fit her exactly," he answered with a smile and with a certain soothing tone in his voice. "Every tack her captain makes brings him the nearer to the woman he loves." "Rather poetic, Max, but slightly farcical. Every tack you make lands you in a different port--with a woman waiting in every one of them." The first notes of the overture had now been struck. "No one was waiting in Philadelphia for me except Sue, and I only met her by accident," he said good-naturedly, and in a tone that showed he would not quarrel, no matter what the provocation; "she came in to see her doctor. Didn't stay an hour." "Did you take her driving?" This came in a thin, piccolo tone-barely enough room for it to escape through her lips. All the big drums and heavy brass were now being moved up. "No; had nothing to take her out in. Why do you ask? What has happened, little--" "Take anybody else?" she interrupted. "No." He spoke quite frankly and simply. At any other time she would have believed him. She had always done so in matters of this kind, partly because she didn't much care and partly because she made it a point never to doubt the word of a man, either by suspicion or inference, who was attentive to her. This time she did care, and she intended to tell him so. All she dreaded was that the big horns and the tom-toms would get away from her leadership and the hoped-for, correctly played symphony end in an uproar. "Max," she said, turning her head and lifting her finger at him with the movement of a conductor's baton, "how can you lie to me like that? You never went near your lawyer; you went to see Miss Billeton, and you've spent every minute with her since you left me. Don't tell me you didn't. I know everything you've done, and--" Bass drums, bass viols, bassoons--everything--was loose now. She had given up her child to be with him! Everything, in fact--all her people at Yardley; her dear old nurse. She had lied to Jane about chaperoning Sue--all to come down and keep him from being lonely. What she wanted was a certain confidence in return. It made not the slightest difference to her how many women he loved, or how many women loved him; she didn't love him, and she never would; but unless she was treated differently from a child and like the woman that she was, she was going straight back to Yardley, and then back to Paris, etc., etc. She knew, as she rushed on in a flood of abuse such as only a woman can let loose when she is thoroughly jealous and entirely angry, that she was destroying the work of months of plotting, and that he would be lost to her forever, but she was powerless to check the torrent of her invective. Only when her breath gave out did she stop. Max had sat still through it all, his eyes expressing first astonishment and then a certain snap of admiration, as he saw the color rising and falling in her cheeks. It was not the only time in his experience that he had had to face similar outbursts. It was the first time, however, that he had not felt like striking back. Other women's outbreaks had bored him and generally had ended his interest in them--this one was more charming than ever. He liked, too, her American pluck and savage independence. Jealous she certainly was, but there was no whine about it; nor was there any flop at the close--floppy women he detested--had always done so. Lucy struck straight out from her shoulder and feared nothing. As she raged on, the grays beating the water with their well-polished hoofs, he continued to sit perfectly still, never moving a muscle of his face nor changing his patient, tolerant expression. The best plan, he knew, was to let all the steam out of the boiler and then gradually rake the fires. "My dear little woman,"' he began, "to tell you the truth, I never laid eyes on Morton; didn't want to, in fact. All that was an excuse to get away. I thought you wanted a rest, and I went away to let you have it. Miss Billeton I haven't seen for three months, and couldn't if I would, for she is engaged to her cousin and is now in Paris buying her wedding clothes. I don't know who has been humbugging you, but they've done it very badly. There is not one word of truth in what you've said from beginning to end." There is a certain ring in a truthful statement that overcomes all doubts. Lucy felt this before Max had finished. She felt, too, with a sudden thrill, that she still held him. Then there came the instantaneous desire to wipe out all traces of the outburst and keep his good-will. "And you swear it?" she asked, her belief already asserting itself in her tones, her voice falling to its old seductive pitch. "On my honor as a man," he answered simply. For a time she remained silent, her mind working behind her mask of eyes and lips, the setting sun slanting across the beach and lighting up her face and hair, the grays splashing the suds with their impatient feet. Max kept his gaze upon her. He saw that the outbreak was over and that she was a little ashamed of her tirade. He saw, too, man of the world as he was, that she was casting about in her mind for some way in which she could regain for herself her old position without too much humiliation. "Don't say another word, little woman," he said in his kindest tone. "You didn't mean a word of it; you haven't been well lately, and I oughtn't to have left you. Tighten up your reins; we'll drive on if you don't mind." That night after the moon had set and the lights had been turned out along the boardwalk and the upper and lower porticos and all Beach Haven had turned in for the night, and Lucy had gone to her apartments, and Mr. and Mrs. Coates and the rest of them, single and double, were asleep, Max, who had been pacing up and down his dressing-room, stopped suddenly before his mirror, and lifting the shade from the lamp, made a critical examination of his face. "Forty, and I look it!" he said, pinching his chin with his thumb and forefinger, and turning his cheek so that the light would fall on the few gray hairs about his temples. "That beggar Miggs said so yesterday at the club. By gad, how pretty she was, and how her eyes snapped! I didn't think it was in her!" CHAPTER XVIII THE SWEDE'S STORY Captain Holt had selected his crew--picked surfmen, every one of them--and the chief of the bureau had endorsed the list without comment or inquiry. The captain's own appointment as keeper of the new Life-Saving Station was due as much to his knowledge of men as to his skill as a seaman, and so when his list was sent in--men he said he could "vouch for"--it took but a moment for the chief to write "Approved" across its face. Isaac Polhemus came first: Sixty years of age, silent, gray, thick-set; face scarred and seamed by many weathers, but fresh as a baby's; two china-blue eyes--peep-holes through which you looked into his open heart; shoulders hard and tough as cordwood hands a bunch of knots; legs like snubbing-posts, body quick-moving; brain quick-thinking; alert as a dog when on duty, calm as a sleepy cat beside a stove when his time was his own. Sixty only in years, this man; forty in strength and in skill, twenty in suppleness, and a one-year-old toddling infant in all that made for guile. "Uncle Ike" some of the younger men once called him, wondering behind their hands whether he was not too old and believing all the time that he was. "Uncle Ike" they still called him, but it was a title of affection and pride; affection for the man underneath the blue woollen shirt, and pride because they were deemed worthy to pull an oar beside him. The change took place the winter before when he was serving at Manasquan and when he pulled four men single-handed from out of a surf that would have staggered the bravest. There was no life-boat within reach and no hand to help. It was at night--a snowstorm raging and the sea a corral of hungry beasts fighting the length of the beach. The shipwrecked crew had left their schooner pounding on the outer bar, and finding their cries drowned by the roar of the waters, had taken to their boat. She came bow on, the sea-drenched sailors clinging to her sides. Uncle Isaac Polhemus caught sight of her just as a savage pursuing roller dived under her stern, lifted the frail shell on its broad back, and whirled it bottom side up and stern foremost on to the beach. Dashing into the suds, he jerked two of the crew to their feet before they knew what had struck them; then sprang back for the others clinging to the seats and slowly drowning in the smother. Twice he plunged headlong after them, bracing himself against the backsuck, then with the help of his steel-like grip all four were dragged clear of the souse. Ever after it was "Uncle Isaac" or "that old hang-on," but always with a lifting of the chin in pride. Samuel Green came next: Forty-five, long, Lincoln-bodied, and bony; coal-black hair, coal-black eyes, and charcoal-black mustache; neck like a loop in standing rigging; arms long as cant-hooks, with the steel grips for fingers; sluggish in movement and slow in action until the supreme moment of danger tautened his nerves to breaking point; then came an instantaneous spring, quick as the recoil of a parted hawser. All his life a fisherman except the five years he spent in the Arctic and the year he served at Squan; later he had helped in the volunteer crew alongshore. Loving the service, he had sent word over to Captain Holt that he'd like "to be put on," to which the captain had sent back word by the same messenger "Tell him he IS put on." And he WAS, as soon as the papers were returned from Washington. Captain Nat had no record to look up or inquiries to make as to the character or fitness of Sam Green. He was the man who the winter before had slipped a rope about his body, plunged into the surf and swam out to the brig Gorgus and brought back three out of the five men lashed to the rigging, all too benumbed to make fast the shot-line fired across her deck. Charles Morgan's name followed in regular order, and then Parks--men who had sailed with Captain Holt, and whose word and pluck he could depend upon; and Mulligan from Barnegat, who could pull a boat with the best of them; and last, and least in years, those two slim, tightly knit, lithe young tiger-cats, Tod and Archie. Captain Nat had overhauled each man and had inspected him as closely as he would have done the timber for a new mast or the manila to make its rigging. Here was a service that required cool heads, honest hearts, and the highest technical skill, and the men under him must be sound to the core. He intended to do his duty, and so should every man subject to his orders. The Government had trusted him and he held himself responsible. This would probably be his last duty, and it would be well done. He was childless, sixty-five years old, and had been idle for years. Now he would show his neighbors something of his skill and his power to command. He did not need the pay; he needed the occupation and the being in touch with the things about him. For the last fifteen or more years he had nursed a sorrow and lived the life almost of a recluse. It was time he threw it off. During the first week of service, with his crew about him, he explained to them in minute detail their several duties. Each day in the week would have its special work: Monday would be beach drill, practising with the firing gun and line and the safety car. Tuesday was boat drill; running the boat on its wagon to the edge of the sea, unloading it, and pushing it into the surf, each man in his place, oars poised, the others springing in and taking their seats beside their mates. On Wednesdays flag drills; practising with the international code of signals, so as to communicate with stranded vessels. Thursdays, beach apparatus again. Friday, resuscitation of drowning men. Saturday, scrub-day; every man except himself and the cook (each man was cook in turn for a week) on his knees with bucket and brush, and every floor, chair, table, and window scoured clean. Sunday, a day of rest, except for the beach patrol, which at night never ceased, and which by day only ceased when the sky was clear of snow and fog. This night patrol would be divided into watches of four hours each at eight, twelve, and four. Two of the crew were to make the tramp of the beach, separating opposite the Station, one going south two and a half miles to meet the surfman from the next Station, and the other going north to the inlet; exchanging their brass checks each with the other, as a record of their faithfulness. In addition to these brass checks each patrol would carry three Coston signal cartridges in a water-proof box, and a holder into which they were fitted, the handle having an igniter working on a spring to explode the cartridge, which burned a red light. These will-o'-the-wisps, flashed suddenly from out a desolate coast, have sent a thrill of hope through the heart of many a man clinging to frozen rigging or lashed to some piece of wreckage that the hungry surf, lying in wait, would pounce upon and chew to shreds. The men listened gravely to the captain's words and took up their duties. Most of them knew them before, and no minute explanations were necessary. Skilled men understand the value of discipline and prefer it to any milder form of government. Archie was the only member who raised his eyes in astonishment when the captain, looking his way, mentioned the scrubbing and washing, each man to take his turn, but he made no reply except to nudge Tod and say under his breath: "Wouldn't you like to see Aunt Lucy's face when she comes some Saturday morning? She'll be pleased, won't she?" As to the cooking, that did not bother him; he and Tod had cooked many a meal on Fogarty's stove, and mother Fogarty had always said Archie could beat her any day making biscuit and doughnuts and frying ham. Before the second week was out the Station had fallen into its regular routine. The casual visitor during the sunny hours of the soft September days when practice drill was over might see only a lonely house built on the sand; and upon entering, a few men leaning back in their chairs against the wall of the living-room reading the papers or smoking their pipes, and perhaps a few others leisurely overhauling the apparatus, making minor repairs, or polishing up some detail the weather had dulled. At night, too, with the radiance of the moon making a pathway of silver across the gentle swell of the sleepy surf, he would doubtless wonder at their continued idle life as he watched the two surfmen separate and begin their walk up and down the beach radiant in the moonlight. But he would change his mind should he chance upon a north-easterly gale, the sea a froth in which no boat could live, the slant of a sou'wester the only protection against the cruel lash of the wind. If this glimpse was not convincing, let him stand in the door of their house in the stillness of a winter's night, and catch the shout and rush of the crew tumbling from their bunks at the cry of "Wreck ashore!" from the lips of some breathless patrol who had stumbled over sand-dunes or plunged through snowdrifts up to his waist to give warning. It will take less than a minute to swing wide the doors, grapple the life-boat and apparatus and whirl them over the dunes to the beach; and but a moment more to send a solid shot flying through the air on its mission of mercy. And there is no time lost. Ten men have been landed in forty-five minutes through or over a surf that could be heard for miles; rescuers and rescued half dead. But no man let go his grip nor did any heart quail. Their duty was in front of them; that was what the Government paid for, and that was what they would earn--every penny of it. The Station house in order, the captain was ready for visitors--those he wanted. Those he did not want--the riffraff of the ship-yard and the loungers about the taverns--he told politely to stay away; and as the land was Government property and his will supreme, he was obeyed. Little Ellen had been the first guest, and by special invitation. "All ready, Miss Jane, for you and the doctor and the Pond Lily; bring her down any time. That's what kind o' makes it lonely lyin' shut up with the men. We ain't got no flowers bloomin' 'round, and the sand gits purty white and blank-lookin' sometimes. Bring her down, you and the doctor; she's better'n a pot full o' daisies." The doctor, thus commanded, brought her over in his gig, Jane, beside him, holding the child in her lap. And Archie helped them out, lifting his good mother in his arms clear of the wheel, skirts and all--the crew standing about looking on. Some of them knew Jane and came in for a hearty handshake, and all of them knew the doctor. There was hardly a man among them whose cabin he had not visited--not once, but dozens of times. With her fair cheeks, golden curls, and spotless frock, the child, among those big men, some in their long hip boots and rough reefing jackets, looked like some fairy that had come in with the morning mist and who might be off on the next breeze. Archie had her hugged close to his breast and had started in to show her the cot where he slept, the kitchen where he was to cook, and the peg in the hall where he hung his sou'wester and tarpaulins--every surfman had his peg, order being imperative with Captain Nat--when that old sea-dog caught the child out of the young fellow's arms and placed her feet on the sand. "No, Cobden,"--that was another peculiarity of the captain's,--every man went by his last name, and he had begun with Archie to show the men he meant it. "No, that little posy is mine for to-day. Come along, you rosebud; I'm goin' to show you the biggest boat you ever saw, and a gun on wheels; and I've got a lot o' shells the men has been pickin' up for ye. Oh, but you're goin' to have a beautiful time, lassie!" The child looked up in the captain's face, and her wee hand tightened around his rough stubs of fingers. Archie then turned to Jane and with Tod's help the three made a tour of the house, the doctor following, inspecting the captain's own room with its desk and papers, the kitchen with all its appointments, the outhouse for wood and coal, the staircase leading to the sleeping-rooms above, and at the very top the small ladder leading to the cupola on the roof, where the lookout kept watch on clear days for incoming steamers. On their return Mulligan spread a white oil-cloth on the pine table and put out a china plate filled with some cake that he had baked the night before, and which Green supplemented by a pitcher of water from the cistern. Each one did something to please her. Archie handed her the biggest piece of cake on the dish, and Uncle Isaac left the room in a hurry and stumbling upstairs went through his locker and hauled out the head of a wooden doll which he had picked up on the beach in one of his day patrols and which he had been keeping for one of his grand-children--all blighted with the sun and scarred with salt water, but still showing a full set of features, much to Ellen's delight; and Sam Green told her of his own little girl, just her age, who lived up in the village and whom he saw every two weeks, and whose hair was just the color of hers. Meanwhile the doctor chatted with the men, and Jane, with her arm locked in Archie's, so proud and so tender over him, inspected each appointment and comfort of the house with ever-increasing wonder. And so, with the visit over, the gig was loaded up, and with Ellen waving her hand to the men and kissing her finger-tips in true French style to the captain and Archie, and the crew responding in a hearty cheer, the party drove, past the old House of Refuge, and so on back to Warehold and Yardley. One August afternoon, some days after this visit, Tod stood in the door of the Station looking out to sea. The glass had been falling all day and a dog-day haze had settled down over the horizon. This, as the afternoon advanced, had become so thick that the captain had ordered out the patrols, and Archie and Green were already tramping the beach--Green to the inlet and Archie to meet the surfmen of the station below. Park, who was cook this week, had gone to the village for supplies, and so the captain and Tod were alone in the house, the others, with the exception of Morgan, who was at his home in the village with a sprained ankle, being at work some distance away on a crosshead over which the life-line was always fired in gun practice. Suddenly Tod, who was leaning against the jamb of the door speculating over what kind of weather the night would bring, and wondering whether the worst of it would fall in his watch, jerked his neck out of his woollen shirt and strained his eyes in the direction of the beach until they rested upon the figure of a man slowly making his way over the dunes. As he passed the old House of Refuge, some hundreds of yards below, he stopped for a moment as if undecided on his course, looked ahead again at the larger house of the Station, and then, as if reassured, came stumbling on, his gait showing his want of experience in avoiding the holes and tufts of grass cresting the dunes. His movements were so awkward and his walk so unusual in that neighborhood that Tod stepped out on the low porch of the Station to get a better view of him. From the man's dress, and from his manner of looking about him, as if feeling his way, Tod concluded that he was a stranger and had tramped the beach for the first time. At the sight of the surfman the man left the dune, struck the boat path, and walked straight toward the porch. "Kind o' foggy, ain't it?" "Yes," replied Tod, scrutinizing the man's face and figure, particularly his clothes, which were queerly cut and with a foreign air about them. He saw, too, that he was strong and well built, and not over thirty years of age. "You work here?" continued the stranger, mounting the steps and coming closer, his eyes taking in Tod, the porch, and the view of the sitting-room through the open window. "I do," answered Tod in the same tone, his eyes still on the man's face. "Good job, is it?" he asked, unbuttoning his coat. "I get enough to eat," answered Tod curtly, "and enough to do." He had resumed his position against the jamb of the door and stood perfectly impassive, without offering any courtesy of any kind. Strangers who asked questions were never very welcome. Then, again, the inquiry about his private life nettled him. The man, without noticing the slight rebuff, looked about for a seat, settled down on the top step of the porch, pulled his cap from his head, and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of one hand. Then he said slowly, as if to himself: "I took the wrong road and got consid'able het up." Tod watched him while he mopped his head with a red cotton handkerchief, but made no reply. Curiosity is not the leading characteristic of men who follow the sea. "Is the head man around? His name's Holt, ain't it?" continued the stranger, replacing his cap and stuffing his handkerchief into the side-pocket of his coat. As the words fell from his lips Tod's quick eye caught a sudden gleam like that of a search-light flashed from beneath the heavy eyebrows of the speaker. "That's his name," answered Tod. "Want to see him? He's inside." The surfman had not yet changed his position nor moved a muscle of his body. Tiger cats are often like this. Captain Holt's burly form stepped from the door. He had overheard the conversation, and not recognizing the voice had come to find out what the man wanted. "You lookin' for me? I'm Captain Holt. What kin I do for ye?" asked the captain in his quick, imperious way. "That's what he said, sir," rejoined Tod, bringing himself to an erect position in deference to his chief. The stranger rose from his seat and took his cap from his head. "I'm out o' work, sir, and want a job, and I thought you might take me on." Tod was now convinced that the stranger was a foreigner. No man of Tod's class ever took his hat off to his superior officer. They had other ways of showing their respect for his authority--instant obedience, before and behind his back, for instance. The captain's eyes absorbed the man from his thick shoes to his perspiring hair. "Norwegian, ain't ye?" "No, sir; Swede." "Not much difference. When did ye leave Sweden? You talk purty good." "When I was a boy." "What kin ye do?" "I'm a good derrick man and been four years with a coaler." "You want steady work, I suppose." The stranger nodded. "Well, I ain't got it. Gov'ment app'ints our men. This is a Life-Saving Station." The stranger stood twisting his cap. The first statement seemed to make but little impression on him; the second aroused a keener interest. "Yes, I know. Just new built, ain't it? and you just put in charge? Captain Nathaniel Holt's your name--am I right?" "Yes, you're just right." And the captain, dismissing the man and the incident from his mind, turned on his heel, walked the length of the narrow porch and stood scanning the sky and the blurred horizon line. The twilight was now deepening and a red glow shimmered through the settling fog. "Fogarty!" cried the captain, beckoning over his shoulder with his head. Tod stepped up and stood at attention; as quick in reply as if two steel springs were fastened to his heels. "Looks rather soapy, Fogarty. May come on thick. Better take a turn to the inlet and see if that yawl is in order. We might have to cross it to-night. We can't count on this weather. When you meet Green send him back here. That shot-line wants overhaulin'." Here the captain hesitated and looked intently at the stranger. "And here, you Swede," he called in a louder tone of command, "you go 'long and lend a hand, and when you come back I'll have some supper for ye." One of Tod's springs must have slid under the Swede's shoes. Either the prospect of a meal or of having a companion to whom he could lend a hand--nothing so desolate as a man out of work--a stranger at that--had put new life into his hitherto lethargic body. "This way," said Tod, striding out toward the surf. The Swede hurried to his side and the two crossed the boat runway, ploughed through the soft drift of the dune, and striking the hard, wet sand of the beach, headed for the inlet. Tod having his high, waterproof boots on, tramped along the edge of the incoming surf, the half-circles of suds swashing past his feet and spreading themselves up the slope. The sand was wet here and harder on that account, and the walking better. The Swede took the inside course nearer the shore. Soon Tod began to realize that the interest the captain had shown in the unknown man and the brief order admitting him for a time to membership in the crew placed the stranger on a different footing. He was, so to speak, a comrade and, therefore, entitled to a little more courtesy. This clear in his mind, he allowed his tongue more freedom; not that he had any additional interest in the man--he only meant to be polite. "What you been workin' at?" he asked, kicking an empty tin can that the tide had rolled within his reach. Work is the universal topic; the weather is too serious a subject to chatter about lightly. "Last year or two?" asked the Swede, quickening his pace to keep up. Tod's steel springs always kept their original temper while the captain's orders were being executed and never lost their buoyancy until these orders were entirely carried out. "Yes," replied Tod. "Been a-minin'; runnin' the ore derricks and the shaft h'isters. What you been doin'?" And the man glanced at Tod from under his cap. "Fishin'. See them poles out there? You kin just git sight o' them in the smoke. Them's my father's. He's out there now, I guess, if he ain't come in." "You live 'round here?" The man's legs were shorter than Tod's, and he was taking two steps to Tod's one. "Yes, you passed the House o' Refuge, didn't ye, comin' up? I was watchin' ye. Well, you saw that cabin with the fence 'round it?" "Yes; the woman told me where I'd find the cap'n. You know her, I s'pose?" asked the Swede. "Yes, she's my mother, and that's my home. I was born there." Tod's words were addressed to the perspective of the beach and to the way the haze blurred the horizon; surfmen rarely see anything else when walking on the beach, whether on or off duty. "You know everybody 'round here, don't you?" remarked the Swede in a casual tone. The same quick, inquiring glance shot out of the man's eyes. "Yes, guess so," answered Tod with another kick. Here the remains of an old straw hat shared the fate of the can. "You ever heard tell of a woman named Lucy Cobden, lives 'round here somewheres?" Tod came to a halt as suddenly as if he had run into a derelict. "I don't know no WOMAN," he answered slowly, accentuating the last word. "I know a LADY named Miss Jane Cobden. Why?" and he scrutinized the man's face. "One I mean's got a child--big now--must be fifteen or twenty years old--girl, ain't it?" "No, it's a boy. He's one of the crew here; his name's Archie Cobden. Me and him's been brothers since we was babies. What do you know about him?" Tod had resumed his walk, but at a slower pace. "Nothin'; that's why I ask." The man had also become interested in the flotsam of the beach, and had stopped to pick up a dam-shell which he shied into the surf. Then he added slowly, and as if not to make a point of the inquiry, "Is she alive?" "Yes. Here this week. Lives up in Warehold in that big house with the brick gate-posts." The man walked on for some time in silence and then asked: "You're sure the child is livin' and that the mother's name is Jane?" "Sure? Don't I tell ye Cobden's in the crew and Miss Jane was here this week! He's up the beach on patrol or you'd 'a' seen him when you fust struck the Station." The stranger quickened his steps. The information seemed to have put new life into him again. "Did you ever hear of a man named Bart Holt," he asked, "who used to be 'round here?" Neither man was looking at the other as they talked. The conversation was merely to pass the time of day. "Yes; he's the captain's son. Been dead for years. Died some'er's out in Brazil, so I've heard my father say. Had fever or something." The Swede walked on in silence for some minutes. Then he stopped, faced Tod, took hold of the lapel of his coat, and said slowly, as he peered into his eyes: "He ain't dead, no more'n you and I be. I worked for him for two years. He run the mines on a percentage. I got here last week, and he sent me down to find out how the land lay. If the woman was dead I was to say nothing and come back. If she was alive I was to tell the captain, his father, where a letter could reach him. They had some bad blood 'twixt 'em, but he didn't tell me what it was about. He may come home here to live, or he may go back to the mines; it's just how the old man takes it. That's what I've got to say to him. How do you think he'll take it?" For a moment Tod made no reply. He was trying to make up his mind what part of the story was true and what part was skilfully put together to provide, perhaps, additional suppers. The improbability of the whole affair struck him with unusual force. Raising hopes of a long-lost son in the breast of a father was an old dodge and often meant the raising of money. "Well, I can't say," Tod answered carelessly; he had his own opinion now of the stranger. "You'll have to see the captain about that. If the man's alive it's rather funny he ain't showed up all these years." "Well, keep mum 'bout it, will ye, till I talk to him? Here comes one o' your men." Green's figure now loomed up out of the mist. "Where away, Tod?" the approaching surfman cried when he joined the two. "Captain wants me to look after the yawl," answered Tod. "It's all right," cried Green; "I just left it. Went down a-purpose. Who's yer friend?" "A man the cap'n sent along to lend a hand. This is Sam Green," and he turned to the Swede and nodded to his brother surfman. The two shook hands. The stranger had not volunteered his name and Tod had not asked for it. Names go for little among men who obey orders; they serve merely as labels and are useful in a payroll, but they do not add to the value of the owner or help his standing in any way. "Shorty" or "Fatty" or "Big Mike" is all sufficient. What the man can DO and how he does it, is more important. "No use goin' to the inlet," continued Green. "I'll report to the captain. Come along back. I tell ye it's gettin' thick," and he looked out across the breakers, only the froth line showing in the dim twilight. The three turned and retraced their steps. Tod quickened his pace and stepped into the house ahead of the others. Not only did he intend to tell the captain of what he had heard, but he intended to tell him at once. Captain Holt was in his private room, sitting at his desk, busy over his monthly report. A swinging kerosene lamp hanging from the ceiling threw a light full on his ruddy face framed in a fringe of gray whiskers. Tod stepped in and closed the door behind him. "I didn't go to the inlet, sir. Green had thought of the yawl and had looked after it; he'll report to you about it. I just heard a strange yarn from that fellow you sent with me and I want to tell ye what it is." The captain laid down his pen, pushed his glasses from his eyes, and looked squarely into Tod's face. "He's been askin' 'bout Miss Jane Cobden and Archie, and says your son Bart is alive and sent him down here to find out how the land lay. It's a cock-and-bull story, but I give it to you just as I got it." Once in the South Seas the captain awoke to look into the muzzle of a double-barrelled shot-gun held in the hand of the leader of a mutiny. The next instant the man was on the floor, the captain's fingers twisted in his throat. Tod's eyes were now the barrels of that gun. No cat-like spring followed; only a cold, stony stare, as if he were awaking from a concussion that had knocked the breath out of him. "He says Bart's ALIVE!" he gasped. "Who? That feller I sent with ye?" "Yes." The captain's face grew livid and then flamed up, every vein standing clear, his eyes blazing. "He's a liar! A dirty liar! Bring him in!" Each word hissed from his lips like an explosive. Tod opened the door of the sitting-room and the Swede stepped in. The captain whirled his chair suddenly and faced him. Anger, doubt, and the flicker of a faint hope were crossing his face with the movement of heat lightning. "You know my son, you say?" "I do." The answer was direct and the tone positive. "What's his name?" "Barton Holt. He signs it different, but that's his name." "How old is he?" The pitch of the captain's voice had altered. He intended to riddle the man's statement with a cross-fire of examination. "'Bout forty, maybe forty-five. He never told "What kind of eyes?" "Brown, like yours." "What kind of hair?" "Curly. It's gray now; he had fever, and it turned." "Where--when?" Hope and fear were now struggling for the mastery. "Two years ago--when I first knew him; we were in hospital together." "What's he been doin'?" The tone was softer. Hope seemed to be stronger now. "Mining out in Brazil." The captain took his eyes from the face of the man and asked in something of his natural tone of voice: "Where is he now?" The Swede put his hand in his inside pocket and took out a small time-book tied around with a piece of faded tape. This he slowly unwound, Tod's and the captain's eyes following every turn of his fingers. Opening the book, he glanced over the leaves, found the one he was looking for, tore it carefully from the book, and handed it to the captain. "That's his writing. If you want to see him send him a line to that address. It'll reach him all right. If you don't want to see him he'll go back with me to Rio. I don't want yer supper and I don't want yer job. I done what I promised and that's all there is to it. Good-night," and he opened the door and disappeared in the darkness. Captain Holt sat with his head on his chest looking at the floor in front of him. The light of the banging lamp made dark shadows under his eyebrows and under his chin whiskers. There was a firm set to his clean-shaven lips, but the eyes burned with a gentle light; a certain hope, positive now, seemed to be looming up in them. Tod watched him for an instant, and said: "What do ye think of it, cap'n?" "I ain't made up my mind." "Is he lyin'?" "I don't know. Seems too good to be true. He's got some things right; some things he ain't. Keep your mouth shut till I tell ye to open it--to Cobden, mind ye, and everybody else. Better help Green overhaul that line. That'll do, Fogarty." Tod dipped his head--his sign of courteous assent--and backed out of the room. The captain continued motionless, his eyes fixed on space. Once he turned, picked up the paper, scrutinized the handwriting word for word, and tossed it back on the desk. Then he rose from his seat and began pacing the floor, stopping to gaze at a chart on the wall, at the top of the stove, at the pendulum of the clock, surveying them leisurely. Once he looked out of the window at the flare of light from his swinging lamp, stencilled on the white sand and the gray line of the dunes beyond. At each of these resting-places his face assumed a different expression; hope, fear, and anger again swept across it as his judgment struggled with his heart. In one of his turns up and down the small room he laid his hand on a brick lying on the window-sill--one that had been sent by the builders of the Station as a sample. This he turned over carefully, examining the edges and color as if he had seen it for the first time and had to pass judgment upon its defects or merits. Laying it back in its place, he threw himself into his chair again, exclaiming aloud, as if talking to someone: "It ain't true. He'd wrote before if he were alive. He was wild and keerless, but he never was dirt-mean, and he wouldn't a-treated me so all these years. The Swede's a liar, I tell ye!" Wheeling the chair around to face the desk, he picked up a pen, dipped it into the ink, laid it back on the desk, picked it up again, opened a drawer on his right, took from it a sheet of official paper, and wrote a letter of five lines. This he enclosed in the envelope, directed to the name on the slip of paper. Then he opened the door. "Fogarty." "Yes, cap'n." "Take this to the village and drop it in the post yourself. The weather's clearin', and you won't be wanted for a while," and he strode out and joined his men. CHAPTER XIX THE BREAKING OF THE DAWN September weather on Barnegat beach! Fine gowns and fine hats on the wide piazzas of Beach Haven! Too cool for bathing, but not too cool to sit on the sand and throw pebbles and loll under kindly umbrellas; air fresh and bracing, with a touch of June in it; skies full of mares'-tails--slips of a painter's brush dragged flat across the film of blue; sea gone to rest; not a ripple, no long break of the surf, only a gentle lift and fall like the breathing of a sleeping child. Uncle Isaac shook his head when he swept his eye round at all this loveliness; then he turned on his heel and took a look at the aneroid fastened to the wall of the sitting-room of the Life-Saving Station. The arrow showed a steady shrinkage. The barometer had fallen six points. "What do ye think, Captain Holt?" asked the old surfman. "I ain't thinkin', Polhemus; can't tell nothin' 'bout the weather this month till the moon changes; may go on this way for a week or two, or it may let loose and come out to the sou'-east I've seen these dog-days last till October." Again Uncle Isaac shook his head, and this time kept his peace; now that his superior officer had spoken he had no further opinion to express. Sam Green dropped his feet to the floor, swung himself over to the barometer, gazed at it for a moment, passed out of the door, swept his eye around, and resumed his seat--tilted back against the wall. What his opinion might be was not for publication--not in the captain's hearing. Captain Holt now consulted the glass, picked up his cap bearing the insignia of his rank, and went out through the kitchen to the land side of the house. The sky and sea--feathery clouds and still, oily flatness--did not interest him this September morning. It was the rolling dune that caught his eye, and the straggly path that threaded its way along the marshes and around and beyond the clump of scrub pines and bushes until it was lost in the haze that hid the village. This land inspection had been going on for a month, and always when Tod was returning from the post-office with the morning mail. The men had noticed it, but no one had given vent to his thoughts. Tod, of course, knew the cause of the captain's impatience, but no one of the others did, not even Archie; time enough for that when the Swede's story was proved true. If the fellow had lied that was an end to it; if he had told the truth Bart would answer, and the mystery be cleared up. This same silence had been maintained toward Jane and the doctor; better not raise hopes he could not verify--certainly not in Jane's breast. Not that he had much hope himself; he dared not hope. Hope meant a prop to his old age; hope meant joy to Jane, who would welcome the prodigal; hope meant relief to the doctor, who could then claim his own; hope meant redemption for Lucy, a clean name for Archie, and honor to himself and his only son. No wonder, then, that he watched for an answer to his letter with feverish impatience. His own missive had been blunt and to the point, asking the direct question: "Are you alive or dead, and if alive, why did you fool me with that lie about your dying of fever in a hospital and keep me waiting all these years?" Anything more would have been superfluous in the captain's judgment--certainly until he received some more definite information as to whether the man was his son. Half a dozen times this lovely September morning the captain had strolled leisurely out of the back door and had mounted the low hillock for a better view. Suddenly a light flashed in his face, followed by a look in his eyes that they had not known for weeks--not since the Swede left. The light came when his glance fell upon Tod's lithe figure swinging along the road; the look kindled when he saw Tod stop and wave his hand triumphantly over his head. The letter had arrived! With a movement as quick as that of a horse touched by a whip, he started across the sand to meet the surfman. "Guess we got it all right this time, captain," cried Tod. "It's got the Nassau postmark, anyhow. There warn't nothin' else in the box but the newspapers," and he handed the package to his chief. The two walked to the house and entered the captain's office. Tod hung back, but the captain laid his hand on his shoulder. "Come in with me, Fogarty. Shut the door. I'll send these papers in to the men soon's I open this." Tod obeyed mechanically. There was a tone in the captain's voice that was new to him. It sounded as if he were reluctant to be left alone with the letter. "Now hand me them spectacles." Tod reached over and laid the glasses in his chief's hand. The captain settled himself deliberately in his revolving chair, adjusted his spectacles, and slit the envelope with his thumb-nail. Out came a sheet of foolscap closely written on both sides. This he read to the end, turning the page as carefully as if it had been a set of official instructions, his face growing paler and paler, his mouth tight shut. Tod stood beside him watching the lights and shadows playing across his face. The letter was as follows: "Nassau, No. 4 Calle Valenzuela, "Aug. 29, 18--. "Father: Your letter was not what I expected, although it is, perhaps, all I deserve. I am not going into that part of it, now I know that Lucy and my child are alive. What has been done in the past I can't undo, and maybe I wouldn't if I could, for if I am worth anything to-day it comes from what I have suffered; that's over now, and I won't rake it up, but I think you would have written me some word of kindness if you had known what I have gone through since I left you. I don't blame you for what you did--I don't blame anybody; all I want now is to get back home among the people who knew me when I was a boy, and try and make up for the misery I have caused you and the Cobdens. I would have done this before, but it has only been for the last two years that I have had any money. I have got an interest in the mine now and am considerably ahead, and I can do what I have always determined to do if I ever had the chance and means--come home to Lucy and the child; it must be big now--and take them back with me to Bolivia, where I have a good home and where, in a few years, I shall be able to give them everything they need. That's due to her and to the child, and it's due to you; and if she'll come I'll do my best to make her happy while she lives. I heard about five years ago from a man who worked for a short time in Farguson's ship-yard how she was suffering, and what names the people called the child, and my one thought ever since has been to do the decent thing by both. I couldn't then, for I was living in a hut back in the mountains a thousand miles from the coast, or tramping from place to place; so I kept still. He told me, too, how you felt toward me, and I didn't want to come and have bad blood between us, and so I stayed on. When Olssen Strom, my foreman, sailed for Perth Amboy, where they are making some machinery for the company, I thought I'd try again, so I sent him to find out. One thing in your letter is wrong. I never went to the hospital with yellow fever; some of the men had it aboard ship, and I took one of them to the ward the night I ran away. The doctor at the hospital wanted my name, and I gave it, and this may have been how they thought it was me, but I did not intend to deceive you or anybody else, nor cover up any tracks. Yes, father, I'm coming home. If you'll hold out your hand to me I'll take it gladly. I've had a hard time since I left you; you'd forgive me if you knew how hard it has been. I haven't had anybody out here to care whether I lived or died, and I would like to see how it feels. But if you don't I can't help it. My hope is that Lucy and the boy will feel differently. There is a steamer sailing from here next Wednesday; she goes direct to Amboy, and you may expect me on her. Your son, "Barton." "It's him, Tod," cried the captain, shaking the letter over his head; "it's him!" The tears stood in his eyes now, his voice trembled; his iron nerve was giving way. "Alive, and comin' home! Be here next week! Keep the door shut, boy, till I pull myself together. Oh, my God, Tod, think of it! I haven't had a day's peace since I druv him out nigh on to twenty year ago. He hurt me here"--and he pointed to his breast--"where I couldn't forgive him. But it's all over now. He's come to himself like a man, and he's square and honest, and he's goin' to stay home till everything is straightened out. O God! it can't be true! it CAN'T be true!" He was sobbing now, his face hidden by his wrist and the cuff of his coat, the big tears striking his pea-jacket and bounding off. It had been many years since these springs had yielded a drop--not when anybody could see. They must have scalded his rugged cheeks as molten metal scalds a sand-pit. Tod stood amazed. The outburst was a revelation. He had known the captain ever since he could remember, but always as an austere, exacting man. "I'm glad, captain," Tod said simply; "the men'll be glad, too. Shall I tell 'em?" The captain raised his head. "Wait a minute, son." His heart was very tender, all discipline was forgotten now; and then he had known Tod from his boyhood. "I'll go myself and tell 'em," and he drew his hand across his eyes as if to dry them. "Yes, tell 'em. Come, I'll go 'long with ye and tell 'em myself. I ain't 'shamed of the way I feel, and the men won't be 'shamed neither." The sitting-room was full when he entered. Dinner had been announced by Morgan, who was cook that week, by shouting the glad tidings from his place beside the stove, and the men were sitting about in their chairs. Two fishermen who had come for their papers occupied seats against the wall. The captain walked to the corner of the table, stood behind his own chair and rested the knuckles of one hand on the white oilcloth. The look on his face attracted every eye. Pausing for a moment, he turned to Polhemus and spoke to him for the others: "Isaac, I got a letter just now. Fogarty brought it over. You knew my boy Bart, didn't ye, the one that's been dead nigh on to twenty years?" The old surfman nodded, his eyes still fastened on the captain. This calling him "Isaac" was evidence that something personal and unusual was coming. The men, too, leaned forward in attention; the story of Bart's disappearance and death had been discussed up and down the coast for years. "Well, he's alive," rejoined the captain with a triumphant tone in his voice, "and he'll be here in a week--comin' to Amboy on a steamer. There ain't no mistake about it; here's his letter." The announcement was received in dead silence. To be surprised was not characteristic of these men, especially over a matter of this kind. Death was a part of their daily experience, and a resurrection neither extraordinary nor uncommon. They were glad for the captain, if the captain was glad--and he, evidently was. But what did Bart's turning up at this late day mean? Had his money given out, or was he figuring to get something out of his father--something he couldn't get as long as he remained dead? The captain continued, his voice stronger and with a more positive ring in it: "He's part owner in a mine now, and he's comin' home to see me and to straighten out some things he's interested in." It was the first time in nearly twenty years that he had ever been able to speak of his son with pride. A ripple of pleasure went through the room. If the prodigal was bringing some money with him and was not to be a drag on the captain, that put a new aspect on the situation. In that case the father was to be congratulated. "Well, that's a comfort to you, captain," cried Uncle Isaac in a cheery tone. "A good son is a good thing. I never had one, dead or alive, but I'd 'a' loved him if I had had. I'm glad for you, Captain Nat, and I know the men are." (Polhemus's age and long friendship gave him this privilege. Then, of course, the occasion was not an official one.) "Been at the mines, did ye say, captain?" remarked Green. Not that it was of any interest to him; merely to show his appreciation of the captain's confidence. This could best be done by prolonging the conversation. "Yes, up in the mountains of Brazil some'er's, I guess, though he don't say," answered the captain in a tone that showed that the subject was still open for discussion. Mulligan now caught the friendly ball and tossed it back 'with: "I knowed a feller once who was in Brazil--so he said. Purty hot down there, ain't it, captain?" "Yes; on the coast. I ain't never been back in the interior." Tod kept silent. It was not his time to speak, nor would it be proper for him, nor necessary. His chief knew his opinion and sympathies and no word of his could add to their sincerity. Archie was the only man in the room, except Uncle Isaac, who regarded the announcement as personal to the captain. Boys without fathers and fathers without boys had been topics which had occupied his mind ever since he could remember. That this old man had found one of his own whom he loved and whom he wanted to get his arms around, was an inspiring thought to Archie. "There's no one happier than I am, captain," he burst out enthusiastically. "I've often heard of your son, and of his going away and of your giving him up for dead. I'm mighty glad for you," and he grasped his chief's hand and shook it heartily. As the lad's fingers closed around the rough hand of the captain a furtive look flashed from out Morgan's eyes. It was directed to Parks--they were both Barnegat men--and was answered by that surfman with a slow-falling wink. Tod saw it, and his face flushed. Certain stories connected with Archie rose in his mind; some out of his childhood, others since he had joined the crew. The captain's eyes filled as he shook the boy's hand, but he made no reply to Archie's outburst. Pausing for a moment, as if willing to listen to any further comments, and finding that no one else had any word for him, he turned on his heel and reentered his office. Once inside, he strode to the window and looked out on the dunes, his big hands hooked behind his back, his eyes fixed on vacancy. "It won't be long, now, Archie, not long, my lad," he said in a low voice, speaking aloud to himself. "I kin say you're my grandson out loud when Bart comes, and nothin' kin or will stop me! And now I kin tell Miss Jane." Thrusting the letter into his inside pocket, he picked up his cap, and strode across the dune in the direction of the new hospital. Jane was in one of the wards when the captain sent word to her to come to the visiting-room. She had been helping the doctor in an important operation. The building was but half way between the Station and Warehold, which made it easier for the captain to keep his eye on the sea should there be any change in the weather. Jane listened to the captain's outburst covering the announcement that Bart was alive without a comment. Her face paled and her breathing came short, but she showed no signs of either joy or sorrow. She had faced too many surprises in her life to be startled at anything. Then again, Bart alive or dead could make no difference now in either her own or Lucy's future. The captain continued, his face brightening, his voice full of hope: "And your troubles are all over now, Miss Jane; your name will be cleared up, and so will Archie's, and the doctor'll git his own, and Lucy kin look everybody in the face. See what Bart says," and he handed her the open letter. Jane read it word by word to the end and handed it back to the captain. Once in the reading she had tightened her grasp on her chair as if to steady herself, but she did not flinch; she even read some sentences twice, so that she might be sure of their meaning. In his eagerness the captain had not caught the expression of agony that crossed her face as her mind, grasping the purport of the letter, began to measure the misery that would follow if Bart's plan was carried out. "I knew how ye'd feel," he went on, "and I've been huggin' myself ever since it come when I thought how happy ye'd be when I told ye; but I ain't so sure 'bout Lucy. What do you think? Will she do what Bart wants?" "No," said Jane in a quiet, restrained voice; "she will not do it." "Why?" said the captain in a surprised tone. He was not accustomed to be thwarted in anything he had fixed his mind upon, and he saw from Jane's expression that her own was in opposition. "Because I won't permit it." The captain leaned forward and looked at Jane in astonishment. "You won't permit it!" "No, I won't permit it." "Why?" The word came from the captain as if it had been shot from a gun. "Because it would not be right." Her eyes were still fixed on the captain's. "Well, ain't it right that he should make some amends for what he's done?" he retorted with increasing anger. "When he said he wouldn't marry her I druv him out; now he says he's sorry and wants to do squarely by her and my hand's out to him. She ain't got nothin' in her life that's doin' her any good. And that boy's got to be baptized right and take his father's name, Archie Holt, out loud, so everybody kin hear." Jane made no answer except to shake her head. Her eyes were still on the captain's, but her mind was neither on him nor on what fell from his lips. She was again confronting that spectre which for years had lain buried and which the man before her was exorcising back to life. The captain sprang from his seat and stood before her; the words now poured from his lips in a torrent. "And you'll git out from this death blanket you been sleepin' under, bearin' her sin; breakin' the doctor's heart and your own; and Archie kin hold his head up then and say he's got a father. You ain't heard how the boys talk 'bout him behind his back. Tod Fogarty's stuck to him, but who else is there 'round here? We all make mistakes; that's what half the folks that's livin' do. Everything's been a lie--nothin' but lies--for near twenty years. You've lived a lie motherin' this boy and breakin' your heart over the whitest man that ever stepped in shoe leather. Doctor John's lived a lie, tellin' folks he wanted to devote himself to his hospital when he'd rather live in the sound o' your voice and die a pauper than run a college anywhere else. Lucy has lived a lie, and is livin' it yet--and LIKES IT, TOO, that's the worst of it. And I been muzzled all these years; mad one minute and wantin' to twist his neck, and the next with my eyes runnin' tears that the only boy I got was lyin' out among strangers. The only one that's honest is the little Pond Lily. She ain't got nothin' to hide and you see it in her face. Her father was square and her mother's with her and nothin' can't touch her and don't. Let's have this out. I'm tired of it--" The captain was out of breath now, his emotions still controlling him, his astonishment at the unexpected opposition from the woman of all others on whose assistance he most relied unabated. Jane rose from her chair and stood facing him, a great light in her eyes: "No! No! NO! A thousand times, no! You don't know Lucy; I do. What you want done now should have been done when Archie was born. It was my fault. I couldn't see her suffer. I loved her too much. I thought to save her, I didn't care how. It would have been better for her if she had faced her sin then and taken the consequences; better for all of us. I didn't think so then, and it has taken me years to find it out. I began to be conscious of it first in her marriage, then when she kept on living her lie with her husband, and last when she deserted Ellen and went off to Beach Haven alone--that broke my heart, and my mistake rose up before me, and I KNEW!" The captain stared at her in astonishment. He could hardly credit his ears. "Yes, better, if she'd faced it. She would have lived here then under my care, and she might have loved her child as I have done. Now she has no tie, no care, no responsibility, no thought of anything but the pleasures of the moment. I have tried to save her, and I have only helped to ruin her." "Make her settle down, then, and face the music!" blurted out the captain, resuming his seat. "Bart warn't all bad; he was only young and foolish. He'll take care of her. It ain't never too late to begin to turn honest. Bart wants to begin; make her begin, too. He's got money now to do it; and she kin live in South America same's she kin here. She's got no home anywhere. She don't like it here, and never did; you kin see that from the way she swings 'round from place to place. MAKE her face it, I tell ye. You been too easy with her all your life; pull her down now and keep her nose p'inted close to the compass." "You do not know of what you talk," Jane answered, her eyes blazing. "She hates the past; hates everything connected with it; hates the very name of Barton Holt. Never once has she mentioned it since her return. She never loved Archie; she cared no more for him than a bird that has dropped its young out of its nest. Besides, your plan is impossible. Marriage does not condone a sin. The power to rise and rectify the wrong lies in the woman. Lucy has not got it in her, and she never will have it. Part of it is her fault; a large part of it is mine. She has lived this lie all these years, and I have only myself to blame. I have taught her to live it. I began it when I carried her away from here; I should have kept her at home and had her face the consequences of her sin then. I ought to have laid Archie in her arms and kept him there. I was a coward and could not, and in my fear I destroyed the only thing that could have saved her--the mother-love. Now she will run her course. She's her own mistress; no one can compel her to do anything." The captain raised his clenched hand: "Bart will, when he comes." "How?" "By claimin' the boy and shamin' her before the world, if she don't. She liked him well enough when he was a disgrace to himself and to me, without a dollar to his name. What ails him now, when he comes back and owns up like a man and wants to do the square thing, and has got money enough to see it through? She's nothin' but a THING, if she knew it, till this disgrace's wiped off'n her. By God, Miss Jane, I tell you this has got to be put through just as Bart wants it, and quick!" Jane stepped closer and laid her hand on the captain's arm. The look in her eyes, the low, incisive, fearless ring in her voice, overawed him. Her courage astounded him. This side of her character was a revelation. Under their influence he became silent and humbled--as a boisterous advocate is humbled by the measured tones of a just judge. "It is not my friend, Captain Nat, who is talking now. It is the father who is speaking. Think for a moment. Who has borne the weight of this, you or I? You had a wayward son whom the people here think you drove out of your home for gambling on Sunday. No other taint attaches to him or to you. Dozens of other sons and fathers have done the same. He returns a reformed man and lives out his life in the home he left. "I had a wayward sister who forgot her mother, me, her womanhood, and herself, and yet at whose door no suspicion of fault has been laid. I stepped in and took the brunt and still do. I did this for my father's name and for my promise to him and for my love of her. To her child I have given my life. To him I am his mother and will always be--always, because I will stand by my fault. That is a redemption in itself, and that is the only thing that saves me from remorse. You and I, outside of his father and mother, are the only ones living that know of his parentage. The world has long since forgotten the little they suspected. Let it rest; no good could come--only suffering and misery. To stir it now would only open old wounds and, worst of all, it would make a new one." "In you?" "No, worse than that. My heart is already scarred all over; no fresh wound would hurt." "In the doctor?" "Yes and no. He has never asked the truth and I have never told him." "Who, then?" "In little Ellen. Let us keep that one flower untouched." The captain rested his head in his hand, and for some minutes made no answer. Ellen was the apple of his eye. "But if Bart insists?" "He won't insist when he sees Lucy. She is no more the woman that he loved and wronged than I am. He would not know her if he met her outside this house." "What shall I do?" "Nothing. Let matters take their course. If he is the man you think he is he will never break the silence." "And you will suffer on--and the doctor?" Jane bowed her head and the tears sprang to her eyes. "Yes, always; there is nothing else to do." CHAPTER XX THE UNDERTOW Within the month a second letter was handed to the captain by Tod, now regularly installed as postman. It was in answer to one of Captain Holt's which he had directed to the expected steamer and which had met the exile on his arrival. It was dated "Amboy," began "My dear father," and was signed "Your affectionate son, Barton." This conveyed the welcome intelligence--welcome to the father--that the writer would be detained a few days in Amboy inspecting the new machinery, after which he would take passage for Barnegat by the Polly Walters, Farguson's weekly packet. Then these lines followed: "It will be the happiest day of my life when I can come into the inlet at high tide and see my home in the distance." Again the captain sought Jane. She was still at the hospital, nursing some shipwrecked men--three with internal injuries--who had been brought in from Forked River Station, the crew having rescued them the week before. Two of the regular attendants were worn out with the constant nursing, and so Jane continued her vigils. She had kept at her work--turning neither to the right nor to the left, doing her duty with the bravery and patience of a soldier on the firing-line, knowing that any moment some stray bullet might end her usefulness. She would not dodge, nor would she cower; the danger was no greater than others she had faced, and no precaution, she knew, could save her. Her lips were still sealed, and would be to the end; some tongue other than her own must betray her sister and her trust. In the meantime she would wait and bear bravely whatever was sent to her. Jane was alone when the captain entered, the doctor having left the room to begin his morning inspection. She was in her gray-cotton nursing-dress, her head bound about with a white kerchief. The pathos of her face and the limp, tired movement of her figure would have been instantly apparent to a man less absorbed in his own affairs than the captain. "He'll be here to-morrow or next day!" he cried, as he advanced to where she sat at her desk in the doctor's office, the same light in his eyes and the same buoyant tone in his voice, his ruddy face aglow with his walk from the station. "You have another letter then?" she said in a resigned tone, as if she had expected it and was prepared to meet its consequences. In her suffering she had even forgotten her customary welcome of him--for whatever his attitude and however gruff he might be, she never forgot the warm heart beneath. "Yes, from Amboy," panted the captain, out of breath with his quick walk, dragging a chair beside Jane's desk as he spoke. "He got mine when the steamer come in. He's goin' to take the packet so he kin bring his things--got a lot o' them, he says. And he loves the old home, too--he says so--you kin read it for yourself." As he spoke he unbuttoned his jacket, and taking Bart's letter from its inside pocket, laid his finger on the paragraph and held it before her face. "Have you talked about it to anybody?" Jane asked calmly; she hardly glanced at the letter. "Only to the men; but it's all over Barnegat. A thing like that's nothin' but a cask o' oil overboard and the bung out--runs everywhere--no use tryin' to stop it." He was in the chair now, his arms on the edge of the desk. "But you've said nothing to anybody about Archie and Lucy, and what Bart intends to do when he comes, have you?" Jane inquired in some alarm. "Not a word, and won't till ye see him. She's more your sister than she is his wife, and you got most to say 'bout Archie, and should. You been everything to him. When you've got through I'll take a hand, but not before." The captain always spoke the truth, and meant it; his word settled at once any anxieties she might have had on that score. "What have you decided to do?" She was not looking at him as she spoke; she was toying with a penholder that lay before her on the desk, apparently intent on its construction. "I'm goin' to meet him at Farguson's ship-yard when the Polly comes in," rejoined the captain in a positive tone, as if his mind had long since been made up regarding details, and he was reciting them for her guidance--"and take him straight to my house, and then come for you. You kin have it out together. Only one thing, Miss Jane"--here his voice changed and something of his old quarter-deck manner showed itself in his face and gestures--"if he's laid his course and wants to keep hold of the tiller I ain't goin' to block his way and he shall make his harbor, don't make no difference who or what gits in the channel. Ain't neither of us earned any extry pay for the way we've run this thing. You've got Lucy ashore flounderin' 'round in the fog, and I had no business to send him off without grub or compass. If he wants to steer now he'll STEER. I don't want you to make no mistake 'bout this, and you'll excuse me if I put it plain." Jane put her hand to her head and looked out of the window toward the sea. All her life seemed to be narrowing to one small converging path which grew smaller and smaller as she looked down its perspective. "I understand, captain," she sighed. All the fight was out of her; she was like one limping across a battlefield, shield and spear gone, the roads unknown. The door opened and the doctor entered. His quick, sensitive eye instantly caught the look of despair on Jane's face and the air of determination on the captain's. What had happened he did not know, but something to hurt Jane; of that he was positive. He stepped quickly past the captain without accosting him, rested his hand on Jane's shoulder, and said in a tender, pleading tone: "You are tired and worn out; get your cloak and hat and I'll drive you home." Then he turned to the captain: "Miss Jane's been up for three nights. I hope you haven't been worrying her with anything you could have spared her from--at least until she got rested," and he frowned at the captain. "No, I ain't and wouldn't. I been a-tellin' her of Bart's comin' home. That ain't nothin' to worry over--that's something to be glad of. You heard about it, of course?" "Yes, Morgan told me. Twenty years will make a great difference in Bart. It must have been a great surprise to you, captain." Both Jane and the captain tried to read the doctor's face, and both failed. Doctor John might have been commenting on the weather or some equally unimportant topic, so light and casual was his tone. He turned to Jane again. "Come, dear--please," he begged. It was only when he was anxious about her physical condition or over some mental trouble that engrossed her that he spoke thus. The words lay always on the tip of his tongue, but he never let them fall unless someone was present to overhear. "You are wrong, John," she answered, bridling her shoulders as if to reassure him. "I am not tired--I have a little headache, that's all." With the words she pressed both hands to her temples and smoothed back her hair--a favorite gesture when her brain fluttered against her skull like a caged pigeon. "I will go home, but not now--this afternoon, perhaps. Come for me then, please," she added, looking up into his face with a grateful expression. The captain picked up his cap and rose from his seat. One of his dreams was the marriage of these two. Episodes like this only showed him the clearer what lay in their hearts. The doctor's anxiety and Jane's struggle to bear her burdens outside of his touch and help only confirmed the old sea-dog in his determination. When Bart had his way, he said to himself, all this would cease. "I'll be goin' along," he said, looking from one to the other and putting on his cap. "See you later, Miss Jane. Morgan's back ag'in to work, thanks to you, doctor. That was a pretty bad sprain he had--he's all right now, though; went on practice yesterday. I'm glad of it--equinox is comin' on and we can't spare a man, or half a one, these days. May be blowin' a livin' gale 'fore the week's out. Good-by, Miss Jane; good-by, doctor." And he shut the door behind him. With the closing of the door the sound of wheels was heard--a crisp, crunching sound--and then the stamping of horses' feet. Max Feilding's drag, drawn by the two grays and attended by the diminutive Bones, had driven up and now stood beside the stone steps of the front door of the hospital. The coats of the horses shone like satin and every hub and plate glistened in the sunshine. On the seat, the reins in one pretty gloved hand, a gold-mounted whip in the other, sat Lucy. She was dressed in her smartest driving toilette--a short yellow-gray jacket fastened with big pearl buttons and a hat bound about with the breast of a tropical bird. Her eyes were dancing, her cheeks like ripe peaches with all the bloom belonging to them in evidence, and something more, and her mouth all curves and dimples. When the doctor reached her side--he had heard the sound of the wheels, and looking through the window had caught sight of the drag--she had risen from her perch and was about to spring clear of the equipage without waiting for the helping hand of either Bones or himself. She was still a girl in her suppleness. "No, wait until I can give you my hand," he said, hurrying toward her. "No--I don't want your hand, Sir Esculapius. Get out of the way, please--I'm going to jump! There--wasn't that lovely?" And she landed beside him. "Where's sister? I've been all the way to Yardley, and Martha tells me she has been here almost all the week. Oh, what a dreadful, gloomy-looking place! How many people have you got here anyhow, cooped up in this awful-- Why, it's like an almshouse," she added, looking about her. "Where did you say sister was?" "I'll go and call her," interpolated the doctor when he could get a chance to speak. "No, you won't do anything of the kind; I'll go myself. You've had her all the week, and now it's my turn." Jane had by this time closed the lid of her desk, had moved out into the hall, and now stood on the top step of the entrance awaiting Lucy's ascent. In her gray gown, simple head-dress, and resigned face, the whole framed in the doorway with its connecting background of dull stone, she looked like one of Correggio's Madonnas illumining some old cloister wall. "Oh, you dear, DEAR sister!" Lucy cried, running up the short steps to meet her. "I'm so glad I've found you; I was afraid you were tying up somebody's broken head or rocking a red-flannelled baby." With this she put her arms around Jane's neck and kissed her rapturously. "Where can we talk? Oh, I've got such a lot of things to tell you! You needn't come, you dear, good doctor. Please take yourself off, sir--this way, and out the gate, and don't you dare come back until I'm gone." My Lady of Paris was very happy this morning; bubbling over with merriment--a condition that set the doctor to thinking. Indeed, he had been thinking most intently about my lady ever since he had heard of Bart's resurrection. He had also been thinking of Jane and Archie. These last thoughts tightened his throat; they had also kept him awake the past few nights. The doctor bowed with one of his Sir Roger bows, lifted his hat first to Jane in all dignity and reverence, and then to Lucy with a flourish--keeping up outwardly the gayety of the occasion and seconding her play of humor--walked to the shed where his horse was tied and drove off. He knew these moods of Lucy's; knew they were generally assumed and that they always concealed some purpose--one which neither a frown nor a cutting word nor an outbreak of temper would accomplish; but that fact rarely disturbed him. Then, again, he was never anything but courteous to her--always remembering Jane's sacrifice and her pride in her. "And now, you dear, let us go somewhere where we can be quiet," Lucy cried, slipping her arm around Jane's slender waist and moving toward the hall. With the entering of the bare room lined with bottles and cases of instruments her enthusiasm began to cool. Up to this time she had done all the talking. Was Jane tired out nursing? she asked herself; or did she still feel hurt over her refusal to take Ellen with her for the summer? She had remembered for days afterward the expression on her face when she told of her plans for the summer and of her leaving Ellen at Yardley; but she knew this had all passed out of her sister's mind. This was confirmed by Jane's continued devotion to Ellen and her many kindnesses to the child. It was true that whenever she referred to her separation from Ellen, which she never failed to do as a sort of probe to be assured of the condition of Jane's mind, there was no direct reply--merely a changing of the topic, but this had only proved Jane's devotion in avoiding a subject which might give her beautiful sister pain. What, then, was disturbing her to-day? she asked herself with a slight chill at her heart. Then she raised her head and assumed a certain defiant air. Better not notice anything Jane said or did; if she was tired she would get rested and if she was provoked with her she would get pleased again. It was through her affections and her conscience that she could hold and mould her sister Jane--never through opposition or fault-finding. Besides, the sun was too bright and the air too delicious, and she herself too blissfully happy to worry over anything. In time all these adverse moods would pass out of Jane's heart as they had done a thousand times before. "Oh, you dear, precious thing!" Lucy began again, all these matters having been reviewed, settled, and dismissed from her mind in the time it took her to cross the room. "I'm so sorry for you when I think of you shut up here with these dreadful people; but I know you wouldn't be happy anywhere else," she laughed in a meaning way. (The bringing in of the doctor even by implication was always a good move.) "And Martha looks so desolate. Dear, you really ought to be more with her; but for my darling Ellen I don't know what Martha would do. I miss the child so, and yet I couldn't bear to take her from the dear old woman." Jane made no answer. Lucy had found a chair now and had laid her gloves, parasol, and handkerchief on another beside her. Jane had resumed her seat; her slender neck and sloping shoulders and sparely modelled head with its simply dressed hair--she had removed the kerchief--in silhouette against the white light of the window. "What is it all about, Lucy?" she asked in a grave tone after a slight pause in Lucy's talk. "I have a great secret to tell you--one you mustn't breathe until I give you leave." She was leaning back in her chair now, her eyes trying to read Jane's thoughts. Her bare hands were resting in her lap, the jewels flashing from her fingers; about her dainty mouth there hovered, like a butterfly, a triumphant smile; whether this would alight and spread its wings into radiant laughter, or disappear, frightened by a gathering frown, depended on what would drop from her sister's lips. Jane looked up. The strong light from the window threw her head into shadow; only the slight fluff of her hair glistened in the light. This made an aureole which framed the Madonna's face. "Well, Lucy, what is it?" she asked again simply. "Max is going to be married." "When?" rejoined Jane in the same quiet tone. Her mind was not on Max or on anything connected with him. It was on the shadow slowly settling upon all she loved. "In December," replied Lucy, a note of triumph in her voice, her smile broadening. "Who to?" "Me." With the single word a light ripple escaped from her lips. Jane straightened herself in her chair. A sudden faintness passed over her--as if she had received a blow in the chest, stopping her breath. "You mean--you mean--that you have promised to marry Max Feilding!" she gasped. "That's exactly what I do mean." The butterfly smile about Lucy's mouth had vanished. That straightening of the lips and slow contraction of the brow which Jane knew so well was taking its place. Then she added nervously, unclasping her hands and picking up her gloves: "Aren't you pleased?" "I don't know," answered Jane, gazing about the room with a dazed look, as if seeking for a succor she could not find. "I must think. And so you have promised to marry Max!" she repeated, as if to herself. "And in December." For a brief moment she paused, her eyes again downcast; then she raised her voice quickly and in a more positive tone asked, "And what do you mean to do with Ellen?" "That's what I want to talk to you about, you dear thing." Lucy had come prepared to ignore any unfavorable criticisms Jane might make and to give her only sisterly affection in return. "I want to give her to you for a few months more," she added blandly, "and then we will take her abroad with us and send her to school either in Paris or Geneva, where her grandmother can be near her. In a year or two she will come to us in Paris." Jane made no answer. Lucy moved uncomfortably in her chair. She had never, in all her life, seen her sister in any such mood. She was not so much astonished over her lack of enthusiasm regarding the engagement; that she had expected--at least for the first few days, until she could win her over to her own view. It was the deadly poise--the icy reserve that disturbed her. This was new. "Lucy!" Again Jane stopped and looked out of the window. "You remember the letter I wrote you some years ago, in which I begged you to tell Ellen's father about Archie and Barton Holt?" Lucy's eyes flashed. "Yes, and you remember my answer, don't you?" she answered sharply. "What a fool I would have been, dear, to have followed your advice!" Jane went straight on without heeding the interruption or noticing Lucy's changed tone. "Do you intend to tell Max?" "I tell Max! My dear, good sister, are you crazy! What should I tell Max for? All that is dead and buried long ago! Why do you want to dig up all these graves? Tell Max--that aristocrat! He's a dear, sweet fellow, but you don't know him. He'd sooner cut his hand off than marry me if he knew!" "I'm afraid you will have to--and this very day," rejoined Jane in a calm, measured tone. Lucy moved uneasily in her chair; her anxiety had given way to a certain ill-defined terror. Jane's voice frightened her. "Why?" she asked in a trembling voice. "Because Captain Holt or someone else will, if you don't." "What right has he or anybody else to meddle with my affairs?" Lucy retorted in an indignant tone. "Because he cannot help it. I intended to keep the news from you for a time, but from what you have just told me you had best hear it now. Barton Holt is alive. He has been in Brazil all these years, in the mines. He has written to his father that he is coming home." All the color faded from Lucy's cheeks. "Bart! Alive! Coming home! When?" "He will be here day after to-morrow; he is at Amboy, and will come by the weekly packet. What I can do I will. I have worked all my life to save you, and I may yet, but it seems now as if I had reached the end of my rope." "Who said so? Where did you hear it? It CAN'T be true!" Jane shook her head. "I wish it was not true--but it is--every word of it. I have read his letter." Lucy sank back in her chair, her cheeks livid, a cold perspiration moistening her forehead. Little lines that Jane had never noticed began to gather about the corners of her mouth; her eyes were wide open, with a strained, staring expression. What she saw was Max's eyes looking into her own, that same cold, cynical expression on his face she had sometimes seen when speaking of other women he had known. "What's he coming for?" Her voice was thick and barely audible. "To claim his son." "He--says--he'll--claim--Archie--as--his--son!" she gasped. "I'd like to see any man living dare to--" "But he can TRY, Lucy--no one can prevent that, and in the trying the world will know." Lucy sprang from her seat and stood over her sister: "I'll deny it!" she cried in a shrill voice; "and face him down. He can't prove it! No one about here can!" "He may have proofs that you couldn't deny, and that I would not if I could. Captain Holt knows everything, remember," Jane replied in her same calm voice. "But nobody else does but you and Martha!" The thought gave her renewed hope--the only ray she saw. "True; but the captain is enough. His heart is set on Archie's name being cleared, and nothing that I can do or say will turn him from his purpose. Do you know what he means to do?" "No," she replied faintly, more terror than curiosity in her voice. "He means that you shall marry Barton, and that Archie shall be baptized as Archibald Holt. Barton will then take you both back to South America. A totally impossible plan, but--" "I marry Barton Holt! Why, I wouldn't marry him if he got down on his knees. Why, I don't even remember what he looks like! Did you ever hear of such impudence! What is he to me?" The outburst carried with it a certain relief. "What he is to you is not the question. It is what YOU are to Archie! Your sin has been your refusal to acknowledge him. Now you are brought face to face with the consequences. The world will forgive a woman all the rest, but never for deserting her child, and that, my dear sister, IS PRECISELY WHAT YOU DID TO ARCHIE." Jane's gaze was riveted on Lucy. She had never dared to put this fact clearly before--not even to herself. Now that she was confronted with the calamity she had dreaded all these years, truth was the only thing that would win. Everything now must be laid bare. Lucy lifted her terrified face, burst into tears, and reached out her hands to Jane. "Oh, sister,--sister!" she moaned. "What shall I do? Oh, if I had never come home! Can't you think of some way? You have always been so good--Oh, please! please!" Jane drew Lucy toward her. "I will do all I can, dear. If I fail there is only one resource left. That is the truth, and all of it. Max can save you, and he will if he loves you. Tell, him everything!" CHAPTER XXI THE MAN IN THE SLOUCH HAT The wooden arrow on the top of the cupola of the Life-Saving Station had had a busy night of it. With the going down of the sun the wind had continued to blow east-southeast--its old course for weeks--and the little sentinel, lulled into inaction, had fallen into a doze, its feather end fixed on the glow of the twilight. At midnight a rollicking breeze that piped from out the north caught the sensitive vane napping, and before the dawn broke had quite tired it out, shifting from point to point, now west, now east, now nor'east-by-east, and now back to north again. By the time Morgan had boiled his coffee and had cut his bacon into slivers ready for the frying-pan the restless wind, as if ashamed of its caprices, had again veered to the north-east, and then, as if determined ever after to lead a better life, had pulled itself together and had at last settled down to a steady blow from that quarter. The needle of the aneroid fastened to the wall of the sitting-room, and in reach of everybody's eye, had also made a night of it. In fact, it had not had a moment's peace since Captain Holt reset its register the day before. All its efforts for continued good weather had failed. Slowly but surely the baffled and disheartened needle had sagged from "Fair" to "Change," dropped back to "Storm," and before noon the next day had about given up the fight and was in full flight for "Cyclones and Tempests." Uncle Isaac Polhemus, sitting at the table with one eye on his game of dominoes (Green was his partner) and the other on the patch of sky framed by the window, read the look of despair on the honest face of the aneroid, and rising from his chair, a "double three" in his hand, stepped to where the weather prophet hung. "Sompin's comin' Sam," he said solemnly. "The old gal's got a bad setback. Ain't none of us goin' to git a wink o' sleep to-night, or I miss my guess. Wonder how the wind is." Here he moved to the door and peered out. "Nor'-east and puffy, just as I thought. We're goin' to hev some weather, Sam--ye hear?--some WEATHER!" With this he regained his chair and joined the double three to the long tail of his successes. Good weather or bad weather--peace or war--was all the same to Uncle Isaac. What he wanted was the earliest news from the front. Captain Holt took a look at the sky, the aneroid and the wind--not the arrow; old sea-dogs know which way the wind blows without depending on any such contrivance--the way the clouds drift, the trend of the white-caps, the set of a distant sail, and on black, almost breathless nights, by the feel of a wet finger held quickly in the air, the coolest side determining the wind point. On this morning the clouds attracted the captain's attention. They hung low and drifted in long, straggling lines. Close to the horizon they were ashy pale; being nearest the edge of the brimming sea, they had, no doubt, seen something the higher and rosier-tinted clouds had missed; something of the ruin that was going on farther down the round of the sphere. These clouds the captain studied closely, especially a prismatic sun-dog that glowed like a bit of rainbow snipped off by wind-scissors, and one or two dirt spots sailing along by themselves. During the captain's inspection Archie hove in sight, wiping his hands with a wad of cotton waste. He and Parks had been swabbing out the firing gun and putting the polished work of the cart apparatus in order. "It's going to blow, captain, isn't it?" he called out. Blows were what Archie was waiting for. So far the sea had been like a mill-pond, except on one or two occasions, when, to the boy's great regret, nothing came ashore. "Looks like it. Glass's been goin' down and the wind has settled to the nor'east. Some nasty dough-balls out there I don't like. See 'em goin' over that three-master?" Archie looked, nodded his head, and a certain thrill went through him. The harder it blew the better it would suit Archie. "Will the Polly be here to-night?" he added. "Your son's coming, isn't he?" "Yes; but you won't see him to-night, nor to-morrow, not till this is over. You won't catch old Ambrose out in this weather" (Captain Ambrose Farguson sailed the Polly). "He'll stick his nose in the basin some'er's and hang on for a spell. I thought he'd try to make the inlet, and I 'spected Bart here to-night till I saw the glass when I got up. Ye can't fool Ambrose--he knows. Be two or three days now 'fore Bart comes," he added, a look of disappointment shadowing his face. Archie kept on to the house, and the captain, after another sweep around, turned on his heel and reentered the sitting-room. "Green!" "Yes, captain." The surfman was on his feet in an instant, his ears wide open. "I wish you and Fogarty would look over those new Costons and see if they're all right. And, Polhemus, perhaps you'd better overhaul them cork jackets; some o' them straps seemed kind o' awkward on practice yesterday--they ought to slip on easier; guess they're considerable dried out and a little mite stiff." Green nodded his head in respectful assent and left the room. Polhemus, at the mention of his name, had dropped his chair legs to the floor; he had finished his game of dominoes and had been tilted back against the wall, awaiting the dinner-hour. "It's goin' to blow a livin' gale o' wind, Polhemus," the captain continued; "that's what it's goin' to do. Ye kin see it yerself. There she comes now!" As he spoke the windows on the sea side of the house rattled as if shaken by the hand of a man and as quickly stopped. "Them puffs are jest the tootin' of her horn--" this with a jerk of his head toward the windows. "I tell ye, it looks ugly!" Polhemus gained his feet and the two men stepped to the sash and peered out. To them the sky was always an open book--each cloud a letter, each mass a paragraph, the whole a warning. "But I'm kind o' glad, Isaac." Again the captain forgot the surfman in the friend. "As long as it's got to blow it might as well blow now and be over. I'd kind o' set my heart on Bart's comin', but I guess I've waited so long I kin wait a day or two more. I wrote him to come by train, but he wrote back he had a lot o' plunder and he'd better put it 'board the Polly; and, besides, he said he kind o' wanted to sail into the inlet like he used to when he was a boy. Then again, I couldn't meet him; not with this weather comin' on. No--take it all in all, I'm glad he ain't comin'." "Well, I guess yer right, captain," answered uncle Isaac in an even tone, as he left the room to overhaul the cork jackets. The occasion was not one of absorbing interest to Isaac. By the time the table was cleared and the kitchen once more in order not only were the windows on the sea side of the house roughly shaken by the rising gale, but the sand caught from the dunes was being whirled against their panes. The tide, too, egged on by the storm, had crept up the slope of the dunes, the spray drenching the grass-tufts. At five o'clock the wind blew forty miles an hour at sundown it had increased to fifty; at eight o'clock it bowled along at sixty. Morgan, who had been to the village for supplies, reported that the tide was over the dock at Barnegat and that the roof of the big bathing-house at Beach Haven had been ripped off and landed on the piazza. He had had all he could do to keep his feet and his basket while crossing the marsh on his way back to the station. Then he added: "There's a lot o' people there yit. That feller from Philadelphy who's mashed on Cobden's aunt was swellin' around in a potato-bug suit o' clothes as big as life." This last was given from behind his hand after he had glanced around the room and found that Archie was absent. At eight o'clock, when Parks and Archie left the Station to begin their patrol, Parks was obliged to hold on to the rail of the porch to steady himself, and Archie, being less sure of his feet, was blown against the water-barrel before he could get his legs well under him. At the edge of the surf the two separated for their four hours' patrol, Archie breasting the gale on his way north, and Parks hurrying on, helped by the wind, to the south. At ten o'clock Parks returned. He had made his first round, and had exchanged his brass check with the patrol at the next station. As he mounted the sand-dune he quickened his steps, hurried to the Station, opened the sitting-room door, found it empty, the men being in bed upstairs awaiting their turns, and then strode on to the captain's room, his sou'wester and tarpaulin drenched with spray and sand, his hip-boots leaving watery tracks along the clean floor. "Wreck ashore at No. 14, sir!" Parks called out in a voice hoarse with fighting the wind. The captain sprang from his cot--he was awake, his light still burning. "Anybody drownded?" "No, sir; got 'em all. Seven of 'em, so the patrol said. Come ashore 'bout supper-time." "What is she?" "A two-master from Virginia loaded with cord-wood. Surf's in bad shape, sir; couldn't nothin' live in it afore; it's wuss now. Everything's a bobble; turrible to see them sticks thrashin' 'round and slammin' things." "Didn't want no assistance, did they?" "No, sir; they got the fust line 'round the foremast and come off in less'n a hour; warn't none of 'em hurted." "Is it any better outside?" "No, sir; wuss. I ain't seen nothin' like it 'long the coast for years. Good-night," and Parks took another hole in the belt holding his tarpaulins together, opened the back door, walked to the edge of the house, steadied himself against the clapboards, and boldly facing the storm, continued his patrol. The captain stretched himself again on his bed; he had tried to sleep, but his brain was too active. As he lay listening to the roar of the surf and the shrill wail of the wind, his thoughts would revert to Bart and what his return meant; particularly to its effect on the fortunes of the doctor, of Jane and of Lucy. Jane's attitude continued to astound him. He had expected that Lucy might not realize the advantages of his plan at first--not until she had seen Bart and listened to what he had to say; but that Jane, after the confession of her own weakness should still oppose him, was what he could not under stand, he would keep his promise, however, to the very letter. She should have free range to dissuade Bart from his purpose. After that Bart should have his way. No other course was possible, and no other course either honest or just. Then he went over in his mind all that had happened to him since the day he had driven Bart out into the night, and from that same House of Refuge, too, which, strange to say, lay within sight of the Station. He recalled his own and Bart's sufferings; his loneliness; the bitterness of the terrible secret which had kept his mouth closed all these years, depriving him of even the intimate companionship of his own grandson. With this came an increased love for the boy; he again felt the warm pressure of his hand and caught the look in his eyes the morning Archie congratulated him so heartily on Bart's expected return, he had always loved him; he would love him now a thousand times more when he could put his hand on the boy's shoulder and tell him everything. With the changing of the patrol, Tod and Polhemus taking the places of Archie and Parks, he fell into a doze, waking with a sudden start some hours later, springing from his bed, and as quickly turning up the lamp. Still in his stocking feet and trousers--on nights like this the men lie down in half their clothes--he walked to the window and peered out. It was nearing daylight; the sky still black. The storm was at its height; the roar of the surf incessant and the howl of the wind deafening. Stepping into the sitting-room he glanced at the aneroid--the needle had not advanced a point; then turning into the hall, he mounted the steps to the lookout in the cupola, walked softly past the door of the men's room so as not to waken the sleepers, particularly Parks and Archie, whose cots were nearest the door--both had had four hours of the gale and would have hours more if it continued--and reaching the landing, pressed his face against the cool pane and peered out. Below him stretched a dull waste of sand hardly distinguishable in the gloom until his eyes became accustomed to it, and beyond this the white line of the surf, whiter than either sky or sand. This writhed and twisted like a cobra in pain. To the north burned Barnegat Light, only the star of its lamp visible. To the south stretched alternate bands of sand, sky, and surf, their dividing lines lost in the night. Along this beach, now stopping to get their breath, now slanting the brim of their sou'westers to escape the slash of the sand and spray, strode Tod and Polhemus, their eyes on and beyond the tumbling surf, their ears open to every unusual sound, their Costons buttoned tight under their coats to keep them from the wet. Suddenly, while his eyes were searching the horizon line, now hardly discernible in the gloom, a black mass rose from behind a cresting of foam, see-sawed for an instant, clutched wildly at the sky, and dropped out of sight behind a black wall of water. The next instant there flashed on the beach below him, and to the left of the station, the red flare of a Coston signal. With the quickness of a cat Captain Holt sprang to the stairs shouting: "A wreck, men, a wreck!" The next instant he had thrown aside the door of the men's room. "Out every one of ye! Who's on the beach?" And he looked over the cots to find the empty ones. The men were on their feet before he had ceased speaking, Archie before the captain's hand had left the knob of the door. "Who's on the beach, I say?" he shouted again. "Fogarty and Uncle Ike," someone answered. "Polhemus! Good! All hands on the cart, men; boat can't live in that surf. She lies to the north of us!" And he swung himself out of the door and down the stairs. "God help 'em, if they've got to come through that surf!" Parks said, slinging on his coat. "The tide's just beginnin' to make flood, and all that cord-wood'll come a-waltzin' back. Never see nothin' like it!" The front door now burst in and another shout went ringing through the house: "Schooner in the breakers!" It was Tod. He had rejoined Polhemus the moment before he flared his light and had made a dash to rouse the men. "I seen her, Fogarty, from the lookout," cried the captain, in answer, grabbing his sou'wester; he was already in his hip-boots and tarpaulin. "What is she?" "Schooner, I guess, sir." "Two or three masts?" asked the captain hurriedly, tightening the strap of his sou'wester and slipping the leather thong under his gray whiskers. "Can't make out, sir; she come bow on. Uncle Ike see her fust." And he sprang out after the men. A double door thrown wide; a tangle of wild cats springing straight at a broad-tired cart; a grappling of track-lines and handle-bars; a whirl down the wooden incline, Tod following with the quickly lighted lanterns; a dash along the runway, the sand cutting their cheeks like grit from a whirling stone; over the dune, the men bracing the cart on either side, and down the beach the crew swept in a rush to where Polhemus stood waving his last Coston. Here the cart stopped. "Don't unload nothin'," shouted Polhemus. "She ain't fast; looks to me as if she was draggin' her anchors." Captain Holt canted the brim of his sou'wester, held his bent elbow against his face to protect it from the cut of the wind, and looked in the direction of the surfman's fingers. The vessel lay about a quarter of a mile from the shore and nearer the House of Refuge than when the captain had first seen her from the lookout. She was afloat and drifting broadside on to the coast. Her masts were still standing and she seemed able to take care of herself. Polhemus was right. Nothing could be done till she grounded. In the meantime the crew must keep abreast of her. Her fate, however, was but a question of time, for not only had the wind veered to the southward--a-dead-on-shore wind--but the set of the flood must eventually strand her. At the track-lines again, every man in his place, Uncle Isaac with his shoulder under the spokes of the wheels, the struggling crew keeping the cart close to the edge of the dune, springing out of the way of the boiling surf or sinking up to their waists into crevices of sluiceways gullied out by the hungry sea. Once Archie lost his footing and would have been sucked under by a comber had not Captain Holt grapped him by the collar and landed him on his feet again. Now and then a roller more vicious than the others would hurl a log of wood straight at the cart with the velocity of a torpedo, and swoop back again, the log missing its mark by a length. When the dawn broke the schooner could be made out more clearly. Both masts were still standing, their larger sails blown away. The bowsprit was broken short off close to her chains. About this dragged the remnants of a jib sail over which the sea soused and whitened. She was drifting slowly and was now but a few hundred yards from the beach, holding, doubtless, by her anchors. Over her deck the sea made a clean breach. Suddenly, and while the men still tugged at the track-ropes, keeping abreast of her so as to be ready with the mortar and shot-line, the ill-fated vessel swung bow on toward the beach, rose on a huge mountain of water, and threw herself headlong. When the smother cleared her foremast was overboard and her deck-house smashed. Around her hull the waves gnashed and fought like white wolves, leaping high, flinging themselves upon her. In the recoil Captain Holt's quick eye got a glimpse of the crew; two were lashed to the rigging and one held the tiller--a short, thickset man, wearing what appeared to be a slouch hat tied over his ears by a white handkerchief. With the grounding of the vessel a cheer went up from around the cart. "Now for the mortar!" "Up with it on the dune, men!" shouted the captain, his voice ringing above the roar of the tempest. The cart was forced up the slope--two men at the wheels, the others straining ahead--the gun lifted out and set, Polhemus ramming the charge home, Captain Holt sighting the piece; there came a belching sound, a flash of dull light, and a solid shot carrying a line rose in the air, made a curve like a flying rocket, and fell athwart the wreck between her forestay and jib. A cheer went up from the men about the gun. When this line was hauled in and the hawser attached to it made fast high up on the mainmast and above the raging sea, and the car run off to the wreck, the crew could be landed clear of the surf and the slam of the cord-wood. At the fall of the line the man in the slouch hat was seen to edge himself forward in an attempt to catch it. The two men in the rigging kept their hold. The men around the cart sprang for the hawser and tally-blocks to rig the buoy, when a dull cry rose from the wreck. To their horror they saw the mainmast waver, flutter for a moment, and sag over the schooner's side. The last hope of using the life-car was gone! Without the elevation of the mast and with nothing but the smashed hull to make fast to, the shipwrecked men would be pounded into pulp in the attempt to drag them through the boil of wreckage. "Haul in, men!" cried the captain. "No use of another shot; we can't drag 'em through that surf!" "I'll take my chances," said Green, stepping forward. "Let me, cap'n. I can handle 'em if they haul in the slack and make fast." "No, you can't," said the captain calmly. "You couldn't get twenty feet from shore. We got to wait till the tide cleans this wood out. It's workin' right now. They kin stand it for a while. Certain death to bring 'em through that smother--that stuff'd knock the brains out of 'em fast as they dropped into it. Signal to 'em to hang on, Parks." An hour went by--an hour of agony to the men clinging to the grounded schooner, and of impatience to the shore crew, who were powerless. The only danger was of exhaustion to the shipwrecked men and the breaking up of the schooner. If this occurred there was nothing left but a plunge of rescuing men through the surf, the life of every man in his hand. The beach began filling up. The news of a shipwreck had spread with the rapidity of a thunder-shower. One crowd, denser in spots where the stronger men were breasting the wind, which was now happily on the wane, were moving from the village along the beach, others were stumbling on through the marshes. From the back country, along the road leading from the hospital, rattled a gig, the horse doing his utmost. In this were Doctor John and Jane. She had, contrary to his advice, remained at the hospital. The doctor had been awakened by the shouts of a fisherman, and had driven with all speed to the hospital to get his remedies and instruments. Jane had insisted upon accompanying him, although she had been up half the night with one of the sailors rescued the week before by the crew of No. 14. The early morning air--it was now seven o'clock--would do her good, she pleaded, and she might be of use if any one of the poor fellows needed a woman's care. Farther down toward Beach Haven the sand was dotted with wagons and buggies; some filled with summer boarders anxious to see the crew at work. One used as the depot omnibus contained Max Feilding, Lucy, and half a dozen others. She had passed a sleepless night, and hearing the cries of those hurrying by had thrown a heavy cloak around her and opening wide the piazza door had caught sight of the doomed vessel fighting for its life. Welcoming the incident as a relief from her own maddening thoughts, she had joined Max, hoping that the excitement might divert her mind from the horror that overshadowed her. Then, too, she did not want to be separated a single moment from him. Since the fatal hour when Jane had told her of Bart's expected return Max's face had haunted her. As long as he continued to look into her eyes, believing and trusting in her there was hope. He had noticed her haggard look, but she had pleaded one of her headaches, and had kept up her smiles, returning his caresses. Some way would be opened; some way MUST be opened! While waiting for the change of wind and tide predicted by Captain Holt to clear away the deadly drift of the cord-wood so dangerous to the imperilled men, the wreckage from the grounded schooner began to come ashore--crates of vegetables, barrels of groceries, and boxes filled with canned goods. Some of these were smashed into splinters by end-on collisions with cord-wood; others had dodged the floatage and were landed high on the beach. During the enforced idleness Tod occupied himself in rolling away from the back-suck of the surf the drift that came ashore. Being nearest a stranded crate he dragged it clear and stood bending over it, reading the inscription. With a start he beckoned to Parks, the nearest man to him, tore the card from the wooden slat, and held it before the surfman's face. "What's this? Read! That's the Polly Walters out there, I tell ye, and the captain's son's aboard! I've been suspicionin' it all the mornin'. That's him with the slouch hat. I knowed he warn't no sailor from the way he acted. Don't say nothin' till we're sure." Parks lunged forward, dodged a stick of cord-wood that drove straight at him like a battering-ram and, watching his chance, dragged a floating keg from the smother, rolled it clear of the surf, canted it on end, and took a similar card from its head. Then he shouted with all his might: "It's the Polly, men! It's the Polly--the Polly Walters! O God, ain't that too bad! Captain Ambrose's drowned, or we'd a-seen him! That feller in the slouch hat is Bart Holt! Gimme that line!" He was stripping off his waterproofs now ready for a plunge into the sea. With the awful words ringing in his ears Captain Holt made a spring from the dune and came running toward Parks, who was now knotting the shot-line about his waist. "What do you say she is?" he shouted, as he flung himself to the edge of the roaring surf and strained his eyes toward the wreck. "The Polly--the Polly Walters!" "My God! How do ye know? She ain't left Amboy, I tell ye!" "She has! That's her--see them kerds! They come off that stuff behind ye. Tod got one and I got t'other!" he held the bits of cardboard under the rim of the captain's sou'wester. Captain Holt snatched the cards from Parks's hand, read them at a glance, and a dazed, horror-stricken expression crossed his face. Then his eye fell upon Parks knotting the shot-line about his waist. "Take that off! Parks, stay where ye are; don't ye move, I tell ye." As the words dropped from the captain's lips a horrified shout went up from the bystanders. The wreck, with a crunching sound, was being lifted from the sand. She rose steadily, staggered for an instant and dropped out of sight. She had broken amidships. With the recoil two ragged bunches showed above the white wash of the water. On one fragment--a splintered mast--crouched the man with the slouch hat; to the other clung the two sailors. The next instant a great roller, gathering strength as it came, threw itself full length on both fragments and swept on. Only wreckage was left and one head. With a cry to the men to stand by and catch the slack, the captain ripped a line from the drum of the cart, dragged off his high boots, knotted the bight around his waist, and started on a run for the surf. Before his stockinged feet could reach the edge of the foam, Archie seized him around the waist and held him with a grip of steel. "You sha'n't do it, captain!" he cried, his eyes blazing. "Hold him, men--I'll get him!" With the bound of a cat he landed in the middle of the floatage, dived under the logs, rose on the boiling surf, worked himself clear of the inshore wreckage, and struck out in the direction of the man clinging to the shattered mast, and who was now nearing the beach, whirled on by the inrushing seas. Strong men held their breath, tears brimming their eyes. Captain Holt stood irresolute, dazed for the moment by Archie's danger. The beach women--Mrs. Fogarty among them--were wringing their hands. They knew the risk better than the others. Jane, at Archie's plunge, had run down to the edge of the surf and stood with tight-clenched fingers, her gaze fixed on the lad's head as he breasted the breakers--her face white as death, the tears streaming down her cheeks. Fear for the boy she loved, pride in his pluck and courage, agony over the result of the rescue, all swept through her as she strained her eyes seaward. Lucy, Max, and Mrs. Coates were huddled together under the lee of the dune. Lucy's eyes were staring straight ahead of her; her teeth chattering with fear and cold. She had heard the shouts of Parks and the captain, and knew now whose life was at stake. There was no hope left; Archie would win and pull him out alive, and her end would come. The crowd watched the lad until his hand touched the mast, saw him pull himself hand over hand along its slippery surface and reach out his arms. Then a cheer went up from a hundred throats, and as instantly died away in a moan of terror. Behind, towering over them like a huge wall, came a wave of black water, solemn, merciless, uncrested, as if bent on deadly revenge. Under its impact the shattered end of the mast rose clear of the water, tossed about as if in agony, veered suddenly with the movement of a derrick-boom, and with its living freight dashed headlong into the swirl of cord-wood. As it ploughed through the outer drift and reached the inner line of wreckage, Tod, whose eyes had never left Archie since his leap into the surf, made a running jump from the sand, landed on a tangle of drift, and sprang straight at the section of the mast to which Archie clung. The next instant the surf rolled clear, submerging the three men. Another ringing order now rose above the roar of the waters, and a chain of rescuing surfmen--the last resort--with Captain Nat at the head dashed into the turmoil. It was a hand-to-hand fight now with death. At the first onslaught of the battery of wreckage Polhemus was knocked breathless by a blow in the stomach and rescued by the bystanders just as a log was curling over him. Green was hit by a surging crate, and Mulligan only saved from the crush of the cord-wood by the quickness of a fisherman. Morgan, watching his chance, sprang clear of a tangle of barrels and cord-wood, dashed into the narrow gap of open water, and grappling Tod as he whirled past, twisted his fingers in Archie's waistband. The three were then pounced upon by a relay of fishermen led by Tod's father and dragged from under the crunch and surge of the smother. Both Tod and Morgan were unhurt and scrambled to their feet as soon as they gained the hard sand, but Archie lay insensible where the men had dropped him, his body limp, his feet crumpled under him. All this time the man in the slouch hat was being swirled in the hell of wreckage, the captain meanwhile holding to the human chain with one hand and fighting with the other until he reached the half-drowned man whose grip had now slipped from the crate to which he clung. As the two were shot in toward the beach, Green, who had recovered his breath, dodged the recoil, sprang straight for them, threw the captain a line, which he caught, dashed back and dragged the two high up on the beach, the captain's arm still tightly locked about the rescued man. A dozen hands were held out to relieve the captain of his burden, but he only waved them away. "I'll take care of him!" he gasped in a voice almost gone from buffeting the waves, as the body slipped from his arms to the wet sand. "Git out of the way, all of you!" Once on his feet, he stood for an instant to catch his breath, wrung the grime from his ears with his stiff fingers, and then shaking the water from his shoulders as a dog would after a plunge, he passed his great arms once more under the bedraggled body of the unconscious man and started up the dune toward the House of Refuge, the water dripping from both their wet bodies. Only once did he pause, and then to shout: "Green,--Mulligan! Go back, some o' ye, and git Archie. He's hurt bad. Quick, now! And one o' ye bust in them doors. And-- Polhemus, pull some coats off that crowd and a shawl or two from them women if they can spare 'em, and find Doctor John, some o' ye! D'ye hear! DOCTOR JOHN!" A dozen coats were stripped from as many backs, a shawl of Mrs. Fogarty's handed to Polhemus, the doors burst in and Uncle Isaac lunging in tumbled the garments on the floor. On these the captain laid the body of the rescued man, the slouch hat still clinging to his head. While this was being done another procession was approaching the house. Tod and Parks were carrying Archie's unconscious form, the water dripping from his clothing. Tod had his hands under the boy's armpits and Parks carried his feet. Behind the three walked Jane, half supported by the doctor. "Dead!" she moaned. "Oh, no--no--no, John; it cannot be! Not my Archie! my brave Archie!" The captain heard the tramp of the men's feet on the board floor of the runway outside and rose to his feet. He had been kneeling beside the form of the rescued man. His face was knotted with the agony he had passed through, his voice still thick and hoarse from battling with the sea. "What's that she says?" he cried, straining his ears to catch Jane's words. "What's that! Archie dead! No! 'Tain't so, is it, doctor?" Doctor John, his arm still supporting Jane, shook his head gravely and pointed to his own forehead. "It's all over, captain," he said in a broken voice. "Skull fractured." "Hit with them logs! Archie! Oh, my God! And this man ain't much better off--he ain't hardly breathin'. See for yerself, doctor. Here, Tod, lay Archie on these coats. Move back that boat, men, to give 'em room, and push them stools out of the way. Oh, Miss Jane, maybe it ain't true, maybe he'll come round! I've seen 'em this way more'n a dozen times. Here, doctor let's get these wet clo'es off 'em." He dropped between the two limp, soggy bodies and began tearing open the shirt from the man's chest. Jane, who had thrown herself in a passion of grief on the water-soaked floor beside Archie, commenced wiping the dead boy's face with her handkerchief, smoothing the short wet curls from his forehead as she wept. The man's shirt and collar loosened, Captain Holt pulled the slouch hat from his head, wrenched the wet shoes loose, wrapped the cold feet in the dry shawl, and began tucking the pile of coats closer about the man's shoulders that he might rest the easier. For a moment he looked intently at the pallid face smeared with ooze and grime, and limp body that the doctor was working over, and then stepped to where Tod now crouched beside his friend, the one he had loved all his life. The young surfman's strong body was shaking with the sobs he could no longer restrain. "It's rough, Tod," said the captain, in a choking voice, which grew clearer as he talked on. "Almighty rough on ye and on all of us. You did what you could--ye risked yer life for him, and there ain't nobody kin do more. I wouldn't send ye out again, but there's work to do. Them two men of Cap'n Ambrose's is drowned, and they'll come ashore some'er's near the inlet, and you and Parks better hunt 'em up. They live up to Barnegat, ye know, and their folks'll be wantin' 'em." It was strange how calm he was. His sense of duty was now controlling him. Tod had raised himself to his feet when the captain had begun to speak and stood with his wet sou'wester in his hand. "Been like a brother to me," was all he said, as he brushed the tears from his eyes and went to join Parks. The captain watched Tod's retreating figure for a moment, and bending again over Archie's corpse, stood gazing at the dead face, his hands folded across his girth--as one does when watching a body being slowly lowered into a grave. "I loved ye, boy," Jane heard him say between her sobs. "I loved ye! You knowed it, boy. I hoped to tell ye so out loud so everybody could hear. Now they'll never know." Straightening himself up, he walked firmly to the open door about which the people pressed, held back by the line of surfmen headed by Polhemus, and calmly surveyed the crowd. Close to the opening, trying to press her way in to Jane, his eyes fell on Lucy. Behind her stood Max Feilding. "Friends," said the captain, in a low, restrained voice, every trace of his grief and excitement gone, "I've got to ask ye to git considerable way back and keep still. We got Doctor John here and Miss Jane, and there ain't nothin' ye kin do. When there is I'll call ye. Polhemus, you and Green see this order is obeyed." Again he hesitated, then raising his eyes over the group nearest the door, he beckoned to Lucy, pushed her in ahead of him, caught the swinging doors in his hands, and shut them tight. This done, he again dropped on his knees beside the doctor and the now breathing man. CHAPTER XXII THE CLAW OF THE SEA-PUSS With the closing of the doors the murmur of the crowd, the dull glare of the gray sky, and the thrash of the wind were shut out. The only light in the House of Refuge now came from the two small windows, one above the form of the suffering man and the other behind the dead body of Archie. Jane's head was close to the boy's chest, her sobs coming from between her hands, held before her face. The shock of Archie's death had robbed her of all her strength. Lucy knelt beside her, her shoulder resting against a pile of cordage. Every now and then she would steal a furtive glance around the room--at the boat, at the rafters overhead, at the stove with its pile of kindling--and a slight shudder would pass through her. She had forgotten nothing of the past, nor of the room in which she crouched. Every scar and stain stood out as clear and naked as those on some long-buried wreck dug from shifting sands by a change of tide. A few feet away the doctor was stripping the wet clothes from the rescued man and piling the dry coats over him to warm him back to life. His emergency bag, handed in by Polhemus through the crack of the closed doors, had been opened, a bottle selected, and some spoonfuls of brandy forced down the sufferer's throat. He saw that the sea-water had not harmed him; it was the cordwood and wreckage that had crushed the breath out of him. In confirmation he pointed to a thin streak of blood oozing from one ear. The captain nodded, and continued chafing the man's hands--working with the skill of a surfman over the water-soaked body. Once he remarked in a half-whisper--so low that Jane could not hear him: "I ain't sure yet, doctor. I thought it was Bart when I grabbed him fust; but he looks kind o' different from what I expected to see him. If it's him he'll know me when he comes to. I ain't changed so much maybe. I'll rub his feet now," and he kept on with his work of resuscitation. Lucy's straining ears had caught the captain's words of doubt, but they gave her no hope. She had recognized at the first glance the man of all others in the world she feared most. His small ears, the way the hair grew on the temples, the bend of the neck and slope from the chin to the throat. No--she had no misgivings. These features had been part of her life--had been constantly before her since the hour Jane had told her of Bart's expected return. Her time had come; nothing could save her. He would regain consciousness, just as the captain had said, and would open those awful hollow eyes and would look at her, and then that dreadful mouth, with its thin, ashen lips, would speak to her, and she could deny nothing. Trusting to her luck--something which had never failed her--she had continued in her determination to keep everything from Max. Now it would all come as a shock to him, and when he asked her if it was true she could only bow her head. She dared not look at Archie--she could not. All her injustice to him and to Jane; her abandonment of him when a baby; her neglect of him since, her selfish life of pleasure; her triumph over Max--all came into review, one picture after another, like the unrolling of a chart. Even while her hand was on Jane's shoulder, and while comforting words fell from her lips, her mind and eyes were fixed on the face of the man whom the doctor was slowly bringing back to life. Not that her sympathy was withheld from Archie and Jane. It was her terror that dominated her--a terror that froze her blood and clogged her veins and dulled every sensibility and emotion. She was like one lowered into a grave beside a corpse upon which every moment the earth would fall, entombing the living with the dead. The man groaned and turned his head, as if in pain. A convulsive movement of the lips and face followed, and then the eyes partly opened. Lucy clutched at the coil of rope, staggered to her feet, and braced herself for the shock. He would rise now, and begin staring about, and then he would recognize her. The captain knew what was coming; he was even now planning in his mind the details of the horrible plot of which Jane had told her! Captain Holt stooped closer and peered under the half-closed lids. "Brown eyes," she heard him mutter to himself, "just 's the Swede told me." She knew their color; they had looked into her own too often. Doctor John felt about with his hand and drew a small package of letters from inside the man's shirt. They were tied with a string and soaked with salt water. This he handed to the captain. The captain pulled them apart and examined them carefully. "It's him," he said with a start, "it's Bart! It's all plain now. Here's my letter," and he held it up. "See the printing at the top--'Life-Saving Service'? And here's some more--they're all stuck together. Wait! here's one--fine writing." Then his voice dropped so that only the doctor could hear: "Ain't that signed 'Lucy'? Yes--'Lucy'--and it's an old one." The doctor waved the letters away and again laid his hand on the sufferer's chest, keeping it close to his heart. The captain bent nearer. Jane, who, crazed with grief, had been caressing Archie's cold cheeks, lifted her head as if aware of the approach of some crisis, and turned to where the doctor knelt beside the rescued man. Lucy leaned forward with straining eyes and ears. The stillness of death fell upon the small room. Outside could be heard the pound and thrash of the surf and the moan of the gale; no human voice--men and women were talking in whispers. One soul had gone to God and another life hung by a thread. The doctor raised his finger. The man's face twitched convulsively, the lids opened wider, there came a short, inward gasp, and the jaw dropped. "He's dead," said the doctor, and rose to his feet. Then he took his handkerchief from his pocket and laid it over the dead man's face. As the words fell from his lips Lucy caught at the wall, and with an almost hysterical cry of joy threw herself into Jane's arms. The captain leaned back against the life-boat and for some moments his eyes were fixed on the body of his dead son. "I ain't never loved nothin' all my life, doctor," he said, his voice choking, "that it didn't go that way." Doctor John made no reply except with his eyes. Silence is ofttimes more sympathetic than the spoken word. He was putting his remedies back into his bag so that he might rejoin Jane. The captain continued: "All I've got is gone now--the wife, Archie, and now Bart. I counted on these two. Bad day's work, doctor--bad day's work." Then in a firm tone, "I'll open the doors now and call in the men; we got to git these two bodies up to the Station, and then we'll get 'em home somehow." Instantly all Lucy's terror returned. An unaccountable, unreasoning panic took possession of her. All her past again rose before her. She feared the captain now more than she had Bart. Crazed over the loss of his son he would blurt out everything. Max would hear and know--know about Archie and Bart and all her life! Springing to her feet, maddened with an undefinable terror, she caught the captain's hand as he reached out for the fastenings of the door. "Don't--don't tell them who he is! Promise me you won't tell them anything! Say it's a stranger! You are not sure it's he--I heard you say so!" "Not say it's my own son! Why?" He was entirely unconscious of what was in her mind. Jane had risen to her feet at the note of agony in Lucy's voice and had stepped to her side as if to protect her. The doctor stood listening in amazement to Lucy's outbreak. He knew her reasons, and was appalled at her rashness. "No! Don't--DON'T!" Lucy was looking up into the captain's face now, all her terror in her eyes. "Why, I can't see what good that'll do!" For the moment he thought that the excitement had turned her head. "Isaac Polhemus'll know him," he continued, "soon's he sets his eyes on him. And even if I was mean enough to do it, which I ain't, these letters would tell. They've got to go to the Superintendent 'long with everything else found on bodies. Your name's on some o' 'em and mine's on some others. We'll git 'em ag'in, but not till Gov'ment see 'em." These were the letters which had haunted her! "Give them to me! They're mine!" she cried, seizing the captain's fingers and trying to twist the letters from his grasp. A frown gathered on the captain's brow and his voice had an ugly ring in it: "But I tell ye the Superintendent's got to have 'em for a while. That's regulations, and that's what we carry out. They ain't goin' to be lost--you'll git 'em ag'in." "He sha'n't have them, I tell you!" Her voice rang now with something of her old imperious tone. "Nobody shall have them. They're mine--not yours--nor his. Give them--" "And break my oath!" interrupted the captain. For the first time he realized what her outburst meant and what inspired it. "What difference does that make in a matter like this? Give them to me. You dare not keep them," she cried, tightening her fingers in the effort to wrench the letters from his hand. "Sister--doctor--speak to him! Make him give them to me--I will have them!" The captain brushed aside her hand as easily as a child would brush aside a flower. His lips were tight shut, his eyes flashing. "You want me to lie to the department?" "YES!" She was beside herself now with fear and rage. "I don't care who you lie to! You brute--you coward-- I want them! I will have them!" Again she made a spring for the letters. "See here, you she-devil. Look at me!"--the words came in cold, cutting tones. "You're the only thing livin', or dead, that ever dared ask Nathaniel Holt to do a thing like that. And you think I'd do it to oblige ye? You're rotten as punk--that's what ye are! Rotten from yer keel to yer top-gallant! and allus have been since I knowed ye!" Jane started forward and faced the now enraged man. "You must not, captain--you shall not speak to my sister that way!" she commanded. The doctor stopped between them: "You forget that she is a woman. I forbid you to--" "I will, I tell ye, doctor! It's true, and you know it." The captain's voice now dominated the room. "That's no reason why you should abuse her. You're too much of a man to act as you do." "It's because I'm a man that I do act this way. She's done nothin' but bring trouble to this town ever since she landed in it from school nigh twenty year ago. Druv out that dead boy of mine lyin' there, and made a tramp of him; throwed Archie off on Miss Jane; lied to the man who married her, and been livin' a lie ever since. And now she wants me to break my oath! Damn her--" The doctor laid his hand over the captain's mouth. "Stop! And I mean it!" His own calm eyes were flashing now. "This is not the place for talk of this kind. We are in the presence of death, and--" The captain caught the doctor's wrist and held it like a vice. "I won't stop. I'll have it out--I've lived all the lies I'm goin' to live! I told you all this fifteen year ago when I thought Bart was dead, and you wanted me to keep shut, and I did, and you did, too, and you ain't never opened your mouth since. That's because you're a man--all four square sides of ye. You didn't want to hurt Miss Jane, and no more did I. That's why I passed Archie there in the street; that's why I turned round and looked after him when I couldn't see sometimes for the tears in my eyes; and all to save that THING there that ain't worth savin'! By God, when I think of it I want to tear my tongue out for keepin' still as long as I have!" Lucy, who had shrunk back against the wall, now raised her head: "Coward! Coward!" she muttered. The captain turned and faced her, his eyes blazing, his rage uncontrollable: "Yes, you're a THING, I tell ye!--and I'll say it ag'in. I used to think it was Bart's fault. Now I know it warn't. It was yours. You tricked him, damn ye! Do ye hear? Ye tricked him with yer lies and yer ways. Now they're over--there'll be no more lies--not while I live! I'm goin' to strip ye to bare poles so's folks 'round here kin see. Git out of my way--all of ye! Out, I tell ye!" The doctor had stepped in front of the infuriated man, his back to the closed door, his open palm upraised. "I will not, and you shall not!" he cried. "What you are about do to is ruin--for Lucy, for Jane, and for little Ellen. You cannot--you shall not put such a stain upon that child. You love her, you--" "Yes--too well to let that woman touch her ag'in if I kin help it!" The fury of the merciless sea was in him now--the roar and pound of the surf in his voice. "She'll be a curse to the child all her days; she'll go back on her when she's a mind to just as she did on Archie. There ain't a dog that runs the streets that would 'a' done that. She didn't keer then, and she don't keer now, with him a-lyin' dead there. She ain't looked at him once nor shed a tear. It's too late. All hell can't stop me! Out of my way, I tell ye, doctor, or I'll hurt ye!" With a wrench he swung back the doors and flung himself into the light. "Come in, men! Isaac, Green--all of ye--and you over there! I got something to say, and I don't want ye to miss a word of it! You, too, Mr. Feilding, and that lady next ye--and everybody else that kin hear! "That's my son, Barton Holt, lyin' there dead! The one I druv out o' here nigh twenty year ago. It warn't for playin' cards, but on account of a woman; and there she stands--Lucy Cobden! That dead boy beside him is their child--my own grandson, Archie! Out of respect to the best woman that ever lived, Miss Jane Cobden, I've kep' still. If anybody ain't satisfied all they got to do is to look over these letters. That's all!" Lucy, with a wild, despairing look at Max, had sunk to the floor and lay cowering beneath the lifeboat, her face hidden in the folds of her cloak. Jane had shrunk back behind one of the big folding doors and stood concealed from the gaze of the astonished crowd, many of whom were pressing into the entrance. Her head was on the doctor's shoulder, her fingers had tight hold of his sleeve. Doctor John's arms were about her frail figure, his lips close to her cheek. "Don't, dear--don't," he said softly. "You have nothing to reproach yourself with. Your life has been one long sacrifice." "Oh, but Archie, John! Think of my boy being gone! Oh, I loved him so, John!" "You made a man of him, Jane. All he was he owed to you." He was holding her to him--comforting her as a father would a child. "And my poor Lucy," Jane moaned on, "and the awful, awful disgrace!" Her face was still hidden in his shoulder, her frame shaking with the agony of her grief, the words coming slowly, as if wrung one by one out of her breaking heart. "You did your duty, dear--all of it." His lips were close to her ear. No one else heard. "And you knew it all these years, John--and you did not tell me." "It was your secret, dear; not mine." "Yes, I know--but I have been so blind--so foolish. I have hurt you so often, and you have been so true through it all. O John, please--please forgive me! My heart has been so sore at times--I have suffered so!" Then, with a quick lifting of her head, as if the thought alarmed her, she asked in sudden haste: "And you love me, John, just the same? Say you love me, John!" He gathered her closer, and his lips touched her cheek: "I never remember, my darling, when I did not love you. Have you ever doubted me?" "No, John, no! Never, never! Kiss me again, my beloved. You are all I have in the world!" THE END 
31259	----	THE BOY WITH THE U. S. LIFE-SAVERS BOOKS BY FRANCIS ROLT-WHEELER U. S. Service Series Illustrations from Photographs taken for U. S. Government. Large 12mo. Cloth. Price $1.50 each. THE BOY WITH THE U. S. SURVEY THE BOY WITH THE U. S. FORESTERS THE BOY WITH THE U. S. CENSUS THE BOY WITH THE U. S. FISHERIES THE BOY WITH THE U. S. INDIANS THE BOY WITH THE U. S. EXPLORERS LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO., BOSTON [Illustration: THE GLEAM THAT BRINGS HOPE. Coast Guard patrol burning the Coston Light as signal to wrecked vessel that help is at hand. Courtesy of Outing Magazine.] U. S. SERVICE SERIES. THE BOY WITH THE U. S. LIFE-SAVERS BY FRANCIS ROLT-WHEELER With Forty-eight Illustrations, nearly all from Photographs Loaned by Bureaus of the U. S. Government [Illustration] BOSTON LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO. Published, August, 1915 COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO. _All rights reserved_ THE BOY WITH THE U. S. LIFE-SAVERS Norwood Press BERWICK & SMITH CO. NORWOOD, MASS. U. S. A. PREFACE Upon the hungry rock-bound shores of Maine, and over the treacherous quicksands of Cape Hatteras, the billows of the Atlantic roll; the tropical storms of the Gulf of Mexico whip a high surf over the coral reefs of Florida; upon the Pacific coast, six thousand miles of sea fling all their fury on the land; yet no one fears. Serene in the knowledge that the United States Coast Guard and the Lighthouse Bureau never sleep, vessels from every corner of the world converge to the great seaports of America. The towers that stand sentinel all day, or flame their unceasing vigilance all night, hold out their message of welcome or of warning to every ship that nears the coast, and not a point of danger is unprotected. Should an unreckoned-with disaster cast a vessel on the breakers, there is not a mile of beach that the Coast Guard does not watch. Far in the northern Bering Sea, a Coast Guard cutter blazes the hidden trail through Polar ice for the oncoming fleet of whalers, and carries American justice to where, as yet, no court has been; out in the mid-Atlantic, when the Greenland icebergs follow their silent path of ghostly menace, a Coast Guard cutter watches and warns the great ocean liners of their peril; and when, in spite of all that skill and watchfulness can do, the sea claims its toll of wreck, it is the Coast Guard cutter that is first upon the scene of rescue. To show the stern work done by the U. S. Coast Guard, to depict the indomitable men who overcome dangers greater than are known to any others who traffic on the sea, to point to the manly boyhood of America this arm of our country's national defense, whose history is one long record of splendid heroism, is the aim and purpose of THE AUTHOR. CONTENTS CHAPTER I A RESCUE BY MOONLIGHT 1 CHAPTER II THE LIGHTS THAT NEVER SLEEP 28 CHAPTER III HEROES OF THE UNDERGROUND 61 CHAPTER IV SNATCHED FROM A FROZEN DEATH 96 CHAPTER V SAVED BY THE BREECHES-BUOY 120 CHAPTER VI A BLAZON OF FLAME AT SEA 156 CHAPTER VII REINDEER TO THE RESCUE 187 CHAPTER VIII THE BELCHING DEATH OF A VOLCANO 222 CHAPTER IX DEFYING THE TEMPEST'S VIOLENCE 246 CHAPTER X ADRIFT ON A DERELICT 274 CHAPTER XI THE WRECKERS OF THE SPANISH MAIN 294 CHAPTER XII THE GRAVEYARD OF THE DEEP 322 ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE The Gleam That Brings Hope _Frontispiece_ The Light That Never Sleeps 10 The Lonely Watcher of the Coast 20 Where Patrols Meet. The Half-way Point 20 Breaking a Death-Clutch from Behind 32 Breaking a Death-Clutch from the Front 32 The "Eddystone" of America 42 Lighthouse Tender Approaching Buoy 54 Refilling Pintsch Gas Buoy 54 Sliding Down to Work 64 The Defier of the Pacific 76 A Beacon Masked in Ice 86 Wrecked! And the Ice Between! 100 Laying the Lyle Gun 110 Firing the Shot and Line 110 Gold Life-Saving Medal 118 Life-boat Capsize-Drill 138 Rushing the Apparatus-Cart 146 Breeches-Buoy Drill. Firing 158 Breeches-Buoy Drill. Rescuing Survivor 158 The Lightship That Went Ashore 168 Guarding the Graveyard of the Deep 168 Coast Guard Cutter, _Miami_, on July Fourth 194 The _Bear_ in the Ice Pack 202 The _Bear_ Breaking Free from the Ice 202 Reindeer Messengers of Rescue 210 Reindeer That Saved Three Hundred Lives 210 Signals That Guard Our Coast 224 Going to Pieces Fast 234 "We Saved 'Em All" 234 Native Refugees from Katmai Eruption 244 "The Iron Rim Rolling Savagely" 256 "The Boat Went into Matchwood" 266 Man's Waterspout. A Derelict's End 280 Preparing to Blow Up a Derelict 280 The Greatest Menace of the Seas 290 Burned to the Water's Edge 290 Foam--The Derelict's Only Tombstone 300 Mining a Lurking Peril 300 Stranded! After Storm Has Ceased and Tide Has Ebbed 310 The Signal of Distress That Was Never Seen 320 Iceberg with _Miami_ in the Background 330 The Ghostly Ally of Disaster 330 A Rescue on the Diamond Shoals 340 THE BOY WITH THE U. S. LIFE-SAVERS CHAPTER I A RESCUE BY MOONLIGHT "Help! Help!" The cry rang out despairingly over the almost-deserted beach at Golden Gate Park. Jumping up so suddenly that the checker-board went in one direction, the table in another, while the checkers rolled to every corner of the little volunteer life-saving station house, Eric Swift made a leap for the door. Quick as he was to reach the boat, he was none too soon, for the coxswain and two other men were tumbling over the gunwale at the same time. Before the echoes of the cry had ceased, the boat was through the surf and was heading out to sea like an arrow shot from a Sioux war-bow. Although this was the second summer that Eric had been with the Volunteers, it had never chanced to him before to be called out on a rescue at night. The sensation was eerie in the extreme. The night was still, with a tang of approaching autumn in the air to set the nerves a-tingle. Straight in the golden path of moonlight the boat sped. The snap that comes from exerting every muscle to the full quickened the boy's eagerness and the tense excitement made everything seem unreal. The coxswain, with an intuition which was his peculiar gift, steered an undeviating course. Some of the life-savers used to joke with him and declare that he could smell a drowning man a mile away, for his instinct was almost always right. For once, Eric thought, the coxswain must have been at fault, for nothing was visible, when, after a burst of speed which seemed to last minutes--though in reality it was but seconds--the coxswain held up his hand. The men stopped rowing. The boy had slipped off his shoes while still at his oar, working off first one shoe and then the other with his foot. It was so late in the evening that not a single man in the crew was in the regulation bathing-suit, all were more or less dressed. Eric's chum, a chap nicknamed the "Eel" because of his curious way of swimming, with one motion slipped off all his clothing and passed from his thwart to the bow of the boat. A ripple showed on the surface of the water. Eric could not have told it from the roughness of a breaking wave, but before ever the outlines of a rising head were seen, the Eel sprang into the sea. Two of those long, sinuous strokes of his brought him almost within reach of the drowning man. Blindly the half-strangled sufferer threw up his arms, the action sending him under water again, a gurgled "Help!" being heard by those in the boat as he went down. The Eel dived. Eric, who had followed his chum headforemost into the water hardly half a second later, swam around waiting for the other to come up. In three quarters of a minute the Eel rose to the surface with his living burden. Suddenly, with a twist, almost entirely unconscious, the drowning man grappled his rescuer. Eric knew that his chum was an adept at all the various ways of "breaking away" from these grips, a necessary part of the training of every life-saver, but he swam close up in case he might be able to help. "Got him all right?" he asked. "He's got me!" grunted the Eel, disgustedly. "P'raps I'd better give you a hand to break," suggested the boy, reaching over with the intention of helping his friend, for the struggling swimmer had secured a tight grip around the Eel's neck. The life-saver, however, covering the nose and mouth of the half-drowned man with one hand, pulled him close with the other and punched him vigorously in the wind with his knee. "Now he'll be good," said the Eel, grinning as well as he could with a mouth full of water. He spat out the brine, shook the water out of his eyes, and putting his hands on either side of the drowning man's head, started for the shore. Using a powerful "scissors" stroke, the Eel made quick time, though he seemed to be taking it in leisurely fashion. Eric, although a good swimmer, had all he could do to keep up. "How do you think he is?" the lad asked. "Oh, he'll come around all right," the Eel replied, "I don't believe he's swallowed such an awful lot of water. I guess he's been able to swim a bit." The rescued man was a good weight and not fat, so that he floated deep. The sea was choppy, too, with a nasty little surf on the beach. But the Eel brought the sufferer in with the utmost ease. As soon as they reached shore, Eric grabbed the drowning man's feet while the Eel took him by the shoulders and lifted him on a stretcher which two other members of the Volunteer Corps had brought. As soon as the rescued man was placed on this, the bearers started at a quick pace for the life-saving station, and artificial respiration was begun. In spite of the fact that the boy had seen dozens of half-drowned persons brought back to consciousness, the process never lost to him its half-terrible fascination. He always felt the lurking danger and he had been well-trained never to forget how much hung in the balance. Always it was a human life, flickering like a candle-flame in a gusty wind. Always the outcome was unknown. Once Eric had worked for a solid hour over a man who had been brought in from the beach before he had been rewarded by any sign of life. The U. S. Volunteer Corps had drilled into him very thoroughly the knowledge that tireless patience and grim persistence will almost work miracles. Accordingly, when it came his turn, he joined readily in the work of restoration. The swim had tired him a little, and he was glad to quit when another member of the station took his place over the half-drowned man's body. "Why do we use the Schaefer method, Doctor?" Eric asked. "It's the best system for our work," was the reply, "because it can be done by one person. Quite often, a fellow may make a rescue and bring some one to shore, so that he will have to work alone. You're not going to be right at a station always." "That's true," the boy said meditatively. "Watch, now," continued the doctor, pointing to the life-saver, who was at work and who was kneeling astride the prone figure of the unconscious man. "You see Johnson's hands are pressing right between the short ribs, aren't they?" "Yes, that's the base of the lungs, isn't it?" Eric queried. "It is," the doctor answered. "Now when a man brings down the weight of the upper part of his body on his hands--the way Johnson is doing there--it means that about one hundred pounds of pressure is applied to those lungs, doesn't it?" "Sure; fifty pounds on each lung," agreed the boy. "You can see how that forces out nearly every bit of air in the lungs. Then, as soon as he leans backwards again, and takes off the pressure, the air rushes in to fill the lungs. That makes artificial breathing, doesn't it?" "Of course." "That's the whole secret of restoration; that, and keeping everlastingly at it." "But if the Schaefer method is the best way," protested Eric, "I don't see why everybody doesn't use it." "Such as--" "Well, the Life-Saving end of the Coast Guard doesn't!" "I don't say the Schaefer is the only good method," answered the doctor; "nothing of the kind. It's the one that suits us best." He stepped over to the prostrate man, never relaxing his vigilant watch for the first sign of life. Then, returning to Eric, he continued, "The Coast Guard uses the Sylvester method, doesn't it?" "One of the forms of it, Father told me," the boy answered. "He showed me how. It's quite different from what we do here." "How did he show you?" asked the doctor interestedly; "there are so many different ways." "Father told me to stand or kneel at the head of the chap who had been rescued, then, grabbing hold of the arms above the elbows, to draw them up over the head, keep them there a couple of seconds, then force them down and press them against the sides of the chest. I suppose the principle is about the same." "Exactly the same," the doctor said, "but of course every one has his preference. I like the Schaefer method best, myself, because in it the tongue hangs out and the water runs from the mouth naturally, while in the Sylvester method, the tongue has to be tied." "But which is the better?" persisted Eric. "There really doesn't seem to be much difference in the result," was the reply, "it's the man behind the gun, not the system. The Coast Guard so far holds the record for the most wonderful cases of recovery and theirs is the older method. The important thing is to know exactly what you're doing, and to do it with everlasting perseverance. Never give up! I've seen some wonderful examples of fellows just snatched back to life long after we thought they had gone. There was one, I remember--" "Doctor!" called Johnson, "I think he's coming to!" The rescued man gave a gasp and his eyelids fluttered. The doctor was beside him in an instant, but instead of seeming satisfied by his examination he shook his head doubtfully as he rose from the side of his patient. "Going all right?" queried Eric. "No," was the answer, "he's not. I think he's got smokers' heart. You'd better watch him a bit closely, boys! One can't ever tell in these cases." "You mean he's not out of the woods yet, Doctor?" the lad asked. "Not by a long shot," was the reply. "You can't play any monkey-shines with the heart. Judging by the shape that fellow's heart is in, I should be inclined to say he's been smoking for nearly ten years, smoking pretty heavily, too. And he can't be a day over twenty-three!" "Do you suppose that had anything to do with his drowning?" "Of course it had," the doctor answered. "Swimming is a real athletic exercise and you've got to keep in shape to swim well. What's more, you've got to have a decent heart to start with. But if a youngster piles into cigarettes, it's a safe bet that he's going to cripple himself for athletics in manhood." "But you smoke, Doctor!" "Sure I do," the other rejoined. "And I swim, pretty nearly as well as any of you young fellows. But I didn't start any cigarette business when I was a kid, the way lots of boys do now. It wasn't until I was in college that I smoked my first pipe." "Then you think it's all right for a chap to smoke after he's grown up?" "I wouldn't go as far as to say that," the doctor said, "but there's no doubt that the cases which have turned out worst are those in which the habit began early. Nature's a wise old scout, Eric, and you're apt to find that a man who's likely to be hurt by smoking won't develop a craving for it unless he started too young, or unless he forced himself to excess." The boy wanted to question the doctor further, for he was thoroughly interested in finding out that smoking prevents an athletic manhood, when the speaker was interrupted by a cry from the half-conscious man. "Jake!" he called. The doctor was beside him in a second. "What is it, son?" he said, bending his head down so that his grizzled mustache almost brushed the man's face. [Illustration: THE LIGHT THAT NEVER SLEEPS. A powerful automatic beacon on Richardson's Rock, Cal., that burns half a year without attention. Courtesy of U.S. Bureau of Lighthouses.] "Jake! Where's Jake?" A sudden silence swept over the station. Only the Eel moved. With that queer sliding step of his that was almost noiseless, he went to the door of the little house that faced the sea. "Jake!" again the cry came. "Where's Jake?" The man was relapsing into unconsciousness when the doctor quickly took a powerful restorative from his medicine-bag, which lay beside the cot, and held it to the man's nose. The fumes roused him. "Where did you leave him?" queried the doctor. "I--I couldn't get him," gasped the rescued man, breathing heavily. There was a general rustle and every man half-turned to the door. In the silence a man's boot, being kicked off, clattered noisily on the floor. "How do you mean you couldn't get him?" the doctor persisted. "Was he swimming with you?" "He went down--sudden--" came the answer, weakly, "and when I tried ... to help ... he pulled at my legs." The words were hardly out of his lips before the station-house was empty save for the doctor and the rescued swimmer. As the door slid back behind them, Eric heard the man cry in a quavering voice, "I've drowned him! I've drowned him! I had to kick him free to save myself!" Outside, not a word was said. The men knew their work and their places. The coxswains were ready and the three white boats were sliding down the beach, the big boat down the runway, as the men heard that cry again, "I've drowned him! I've drowned him. I had to kick him free to save myself!" The words rang hauntingly in Eric's ears as his boat hit the first incoming billow. The former rescue in the moonlight had held a quick thrill, but it had been nothing like this tense eager race in the darkness. Nearly a quarter of an hour had passed in the station-house before the rescued man had recovered consciousness and the rescue had taken at least five minutes. Almost twenty-five minutes had elapsed, then, since the first cry of help had been heard. The boats leapt forward like swift dogs released from leash. The oars were made to resist extreme strain, but they bent under the terrific strokes of the life-savers. Over six thousand miles of sea the Pacific rolled in with slow surges, and out in the darkness, somewhere, was a drowning man, probably beyond help, but with just the faintest shred of possibility for life if he could be found immediately. With that uncanny intuition which made him so marvelous in the work, the coxswain of Eric's boat steered a course fifty feet away from that of the larger boat. Not a word was spoken until, above the swish of the water and the rattle of the rowlocks, the Eel said quietly, "We picked him up a little to wind'ard of here!" Three men, among them Eric, slipped into the water. Almost at the same moment, five or six men plunged in from the other boats. The lieutenant stopped Eric's chum. "You'd better stay aboard, Eel," he said; "you've already had quite a swim." The Eel shrugged his shoulders disapprovingly, but, after all, orders were orders, and the captain of the Golden Gate station was a disciplinarian to his finger-tips. In the broken gleams of the moonlight flickering on the tumbled water, the forms of the dozen members of the corps could be seen. Ever and again one would disappear from sight for a deep dive to try to find the body. This was a part of the work in which Eric was particularly good. He had a strong leg-stroke and was compactly built, although large-boned for his age. Tired though he was from swimming ashore with the Eel on the first rescue, he went down as often as any of his comrades. Looking back at the boat, he saw the Eel wave his hand in a direction a little south of where he had dived before. Following out the suggestion, Eric took a long breath and went down. It was a deep dive, and he thought he saw a gleam of white below him. The boy tried to swim down a foot or two farther, but his breath failed him, and he shot up, gasping, to the surface. Not wanting to give a false alarm, yet knowing well that every second counted, the boy merely stayed long enough to get his breath, then, putting every ounce of power he possessed into a supreme effort, he went down again. This time he got a foot nearer, but not near enough to be quite sure. Again he darted up to the surface. "Here, fellows!" he shouted. The boat shot up beside him. "Found him, Eric?" "I think so, sir," the boy answered, "but he was too far down for me." The Eel had stripped. He stood up and looked pleadingly at the lieutenant. "Sure you're not tired?" The Eel smiled. "Overboard with you, then!" He dived. Dozens of times though Eric had seen the Eel dive, and often as he had tried to imitate him, the boy never ceased to envy his comrade his extraordinary power of going into the water without the slightest splash. Powerful dive though it was, scarcely a drop of water seemed to be displaced as the Eel went down. During the few seconds that passed while these sentences were being interchanged, three or four others of the life-savers had rallied to Eric's call and were headed for the boat. One man, especially, a big, burly fellow who looked as though he would be too heavy to swim, but who possessed an astounding amount of endurance and who could hold his breath longer than any one else in the station, followed the Eel to the bottom. Eric was game, and although he was beginning to feel thoroughly done up, he joined the quest in the depths of the sea. Moonlight gives no reflections beneath the water, and the sea was dark. The Eel was already out of sight below him, but as the boy made his way down, the powerful figure of the heavy swimmer came past him like a shadow. A few seconds later, the Eel shot up by him, bringing an unconscious man in his grasp. The other swimmer followed. By the time Eric reached the boat he was exhausted and had to be helped in. The rescued man had been lifted into the large boat, and before the boy was even aboard, the other craft was half-way to the shore, racing like mad. The other boats followed. As soon as the surf-boat touched the beach, the big man jumped out, two other members of the corps threw the unconscious figure across his shoulders for the "fireman's carry," and while the keel of the boat was still grinding on the beach, the rescued man was well on the way toward the house. The doctor was waiting. The victim of the drowning accident, apparently dead, was put into hot blankets. His arms and legs were stiff. The lips were quite blue and the whole of the face discolored. At the sight of him, and the little slimy ooze from his lips, the doctor looked grave. The big life-saver who had carried the sufferer in was already at work in an attempt at resuscitation. A moment or two later, the first man who had been rescued and who was feeling a little stronger, turned over on the stretcher. He saw the swollen and discolored face of his friend and sent up a piercing cry, "He's dead!" Then, after a pause and a silence broken only by the rhythmic beat of the regular motions of the process of causing artificial respiration, came the cry again, "I've drowned him! I've drowned him! I had to kick him free to save myself!" Although the house was kept empty save for the four men, the doctor beckoned to one of the officers standing outside--so that there should be as much air as possible in the station--to come in and try to quiet the frenzied man. "Bromides, Doctor?" queried the lieutenant, who had come in. "Yes. Give him just one of the triple. No, that won't hurt him," he continued in answer to a look; "it's excessive stimulation that a man with smokers' heart can't stand." The life-saver gave the required dose and succeeded in soothing the poor fellow, who was still terribly weak. The men sat on the steps outside, talking in low tones. Every one of them was keenly conscious of the strain. For twenty minutes there was no sound from within the station except the hard breathing of the man who was putting in all his strength to give the recumbent figure the motions of respiration. "Ryan!" the doctor called suddenly. A strapping young fellow jumped up like a shot and darted into the station to take the place of the exhausted worker. Wiping his forehead and breathing hard, the latter came out to his companions. "Do you think there's any change, Jim?" one of them asked. "Not so far as I can see," the other answered, shaking his head. "How long do you suppose he was under?" queried another. Close comparison of watches gave the actual time as between nineteen and twenty-one minutes. "Has any one ever been saved who has been under water as long as that?" asked Eric. "Eighteen minutes is the longest I've ever seen," answered Johnson, the veteran of the corps, "but, of course, there's the Mooney case." The boy listened a moment, but no sound came from the station. It was less nerve-racking to talk than to listen, so he went on, "What was the Mooney case?" "That was a Coast Guard job, in the days when the United States Life-Saving Service was a separate bureau. It was quite a queer case in a good many ways." "How long was Mooney under water? Half an hour, wasn't it?" questioned another of the men. "Thirty-one minutes, according to general reports," Johnson replied, "but to make sure that they weren't stretching it, the official report made it 'twenty minutes or over.' One of my pals worked on the man." "How was it?" queried Eric. "In a storm?" "Beautiful sunny Fourth of July," was the reply. "And, what's more, it was in shallow water, near shore, and the man could swim!" "But how in the world--" "That's exactly what I'm telling," Johnson continued, resenting the interruption. "It was during a boat race on Point Judith Pond in Rhode Island. My pal, who was a surfman, had been assigned to duty there. Naturally, he was watching the races. On the other side of the pond a small flat-bottomed skiff, carrying one sail, capsized. There were three men in her. Streeter, that's the fellow I know, saw the boat capsize, but he knew that the water was shallow and noted that it was near shore. Just the same, he kept an eye on the boat. As soon as he saw two men clinging to the sides of the skiff, he started for the scene of the accident. He was about a third of a mile away. "What had happened was this. When the boat capsized, the swinging boom struck Mooney on the head, making him unconscious. He was swept under the sail and pinned down by it. The other two men, neither of whom could swim, managed to scramble on to the capsized skiff. They saw no sign of Mooney, and knowing that he was a swimmer, thought he had struck out for the shore. It wasn't until several minutes later that it occurred to one of them that their comrade might be pinned under the sail. "With a good deal of personal risk, for his hold was insecure and he couldn't swim, this chap managed to get hold of the canvas and somehow--he said he didn't know how, himself--succeeded in getting Mooney out from under the sail. He gripped Mooney's collar, but could not lift his head above water. All that he could do was barely to hold on." [Illustration: THE LONELY WATCHER OF THE COAST. Courtesy of Outing Magazine.] [Illustration: WHERE PATROLS MEET. THE HALF-WAY POINT. Courtesy of Outing Magazine.] "Showed a good deal of grit to do even that, it seems to me," said one of the life-savers. "It's an awful feeling to be nearly drowned." "It did show grit," agreed Johnson. "If it had been a drowning woman with long hair, she could have been held up all right; but a grip on the collar, when the head is hanging forward, means a dead lift out of water. I don't wonder that the young fellow wasn't able to do it. "When my pal reached there, he got Mooney aboard, the other two clambered in and they started for the shore. Mooney was as purple as a grape and his arms were so stiff that two men, one on each side, could barely move them. Nearly a quart of water was got out of him, and they had an awful job prying open his jaws. "They worked over him for an hour and twenty minutes before there was the slightest sign of life. Not until twenty-five minutes more did the heart begin, and Mooney did not regain consciousness until nine hours later. As his watch had stopped at 4:20 P.M. and it was 4:53 when Streeter got ashore, that man's heart had stopped, his breathing had stopped and he had been practically dead for more than two hours." "Just goes to show," said one of the others, "that it isn't merely swallowing water that drowns a fellow." "It isn't swallowing water at all, as I understand," rejoined another member of the group. "Drowning's a kind of poisoning of the blood because the lungs can't get oxygen. It's just like choking to death or being hanged." There was a call from within. "Murchison!" The life-saver who had just been speaking, got up quickly and went in to relieve Ryan. "Any luck?" Johnson asked, as the latter came out. The Irishman shook his head. "There's nothin' yet, but he moight come round anny minute," was his reply, with the invincible optimism of his race. Eric had been thinking of Murchison's description of drowning. "Why did they roll half-drowned people on a barrel in the old times?" he asked. "Sure, they were ijits," Ryan answered cheerfully. "But what was the idea? To get the water out?" "Just that. They used to think the lungs were a tank." "Murchison was saying that people drowned because they couldn't get oxygen. Isn't there oxygen in water?" "Av coorse there is," the Irishman replied. "But ye've got to have the gills of a fish to use it. Annyhow, a man's got warm blood an' a fish has cold. It takes a lot of oxygen to get a man's blood warm. An' if he doesn't get it, he dies. "Ye see, Eric," he continued, "that's why ye've got to go on workin' over a drowned man. Ye can't tell how badly he's poisoned. An' it's honest I am in tellin' ye that I think we've got a chance in there." "You do?" "I do that," was the cheery answer. "There's no tellin'." Again came that cry from the station, a cry whose very repetition made it all the more nerve-racking, "I've drowned him! I've drowned him! I had to kick him free to save myself!" Eric shivered. There was something gruesome in the monotony of the same words over and over again. The noises on the beach died down. Several of the men, who did not live at the station-house, went to their cottages. The boy gave a jump when he heard a step behind him and saw the old doctor standing there. The night was very still. Nothing could be heard but the roar of the surf on the beach. Eric, who was imaginative, thought that the surf seemed to be triumphing in having snatched another life. Feeling sure that the doctor would understand him, the boy turned and said, "Doctor, shall we be able to beat out the sea?" The Highland imagination of the doctor instantly caught the lad's meaning. "You've heard it, too!" he said. "Many and many's the time I've thought the sea was skreeling in triumph when a drowned man was brought ashore. But I've snatched a many back." "Will you--" began the boy. "Doctor!" came a cry from within. "Well?" he answered eagerly, stepping to the door. "I thought I caught a breath!" The doctor's keen eyes glinted as he knelt beside the prostrate figure. Nine, ten, eleven times the weight of the life-saver was brought forward and released. At the twelfth, there was a slight respiration. "Did you see, Doctor?" he cried, pausing in his work. "What the mischief are you stopping for?" was the doctor's impatient answer. Then he added, "You're doing splendidly, Murchison; just keep it up!" Five more minutes passed without a single sign. Both men had begun to feel that possibly they had been mistaken, when there was a definite flutter of an eyelid. The surfman would have given a triumphant shout but for the doctor's rebuke a moment or two before. Quietly the old Scotchman began to promote circulation by rubbing the legs upward, so as to drive the venous blood to the heart and thus try to start its action. Almost ten minutes elapsed before the doctor's patience was rewarded with the faint throb of a heart-beat, then another. It was soft and irregular at first, but gradually the blood began to move through the arteries and in a few minutes a pulse could be felt. The lips lost a little of their blue color and breathing began. "He's got a grand heart!" said the old doctor, ten minutes later, as the pulse-beats began to come with regularity. "I hardly believed that we could bring him round. It's a good thing it was this chap and not the other. We could never have saved yon man if he had been half as long submerged." "You really think that we shall save him?" queried Eric, more to hear the doctor's assurance than because of any doubt of the result. "We have saved him," was the reply. "In a day or two he'll be as well as he ever was. And, to my thinking, he'll be wiser than he was before, for he'll never do such a silly thing as to go out for a swim at night-time after dinner with--well, after a heavy dinner." "Seems too bad that we can't tell his friend," the boy suggested. "It's just awful to hear him accusing himself all through the night." "If he's asleep," the doctor answered, "that's better for him than anything else. Oh, I don't know," he continued, "he seems to be stirring. Do you want to tell him?" Eric flashed a grateful glance at the doctor. "If I might?" "Go ahead!" "Mr. Willett," said the boy, coming close to the stretcher. "Mr. Willett!" "Well?" said the rescued man, waking out of a remorse-haunted dream. "Jake has been saved. He's all right." In spite of his exhaustion and his sudden awakening from sleep, the first man who had been rescued sat up on the stretcher and craned his head forward to see his friend. In spite of the sufferer's bruised and swollen appearance, it was evident to the most inexperienced eye that life was not extinct. The convalescent looked at the doctor and tried to find words, but something in his throat choked him. He reached out and grasped the boy's hand, holding it tightly. Then, looking around the station, he said softly, "A man's world is a good world to live in!" CHAPTER II THE LIGHTS THAT NEVER SLEEP It was a happy awakening in the life-saving station the next morning, for both the rescued men were well on the road to recovery. Eric had intended to be the first to tell Willett the entire story, but the events of the night had been a heavy strain on him and he had slept late. Indeed, he did not waken until the gang of boys came round for their morning drill. Drill was scheduled at nine o'clock, but it was seldom that there failed to be at least half a dozen urchins around the station by eight, or even earlier. "What's all this drill the kids are talking about?" Willett asked Eric, as the boy came back from breakfast. "To hear the way they go on, you'd think it was the only important thing that had been scheduled since the world began!" "That's the Commodore's doing," replied Eric, with a laugh. "He's got us all going that way. You know Hailer is one of those chaps who believes so much in what he's doing that everybody else has to believe in it, too." "But I thought Hailer was commodore in New York, not out here in 'Frisco." "So he is," agreed the boy. "But a mere trifle like a few thousand miles doesn't seem to weaken his influence much. Of course the biggest part of his time is given to superintending the New York end, but the work's spreading in every direction and all our reports go to headquarters. After all, organization does make a heap of difference, don't you think? How about it? Are you fit enough to come and see the youngsters at their work?" "I'm a bit wobbly," the rescued man answered. "I suppose I ought to expect that. But I feel all right. I can get as far as that bench, anyway, and I'd like to see the drill. You teach them all to swim?" "We try to teach everybody we can get hold of," replied Eric. "Hailer has an idea that every man, woman, and child in the United States ought to be able to swim, even when asleep. I've heard him say that it was as much a part of our job to prevent accidents as to do the best we can after accidents have happened. I think he's about right. Everybody ought to swim, just the same way as they know how to walk. Then we wouldn't have to fetch out of the water a lot of people who are already half-drowned." "You do that in great shape, too," said Willett gratefully, "I can testify to that! I was a goner last night, sure, if you fellows hadn't been there. And the way you brought Jake around--I wouldn't have thought it possible." "We were mighty lucky," agreed the boy. "You were!" exclaimed Willett. "I think we're the lucky ones." "I suppose you are," said Eric. "But, after all, if both your chum and you had been A No. 1 swimmers, just see how easy it would have been! You could have got ashore in a few minutes. That's what we want to do with the kids. We want to teach them to swim so that if they tumble off a dock with their duds on they can strike out for shore like so many frogs. We manage to break in nearly every youngster who comes down to this beach. Most of them want to get the hang of it, anyway, and when there's a bunch of youngsters to start with, it's a cinch to get the rest to join in." "But still I don't see how you can teach them on land," Willett objected. "Why not?" "You're supposed to swim with your legs as well as your hands, aren't you?" "Of course. It's the legs that you really do the swimming with." "That's what I thought. But how can you kick out with both legs when you're standing on them?" "Oh, that's what's troubling you," said Eric laughing. "But there's nothing difficult in that. The idea in the leg motions of swimming is to bring the legs to the body, isn't it?" "That's what I always thought." "It doesn't make any difference if you bring the body to the legs, does it?" "I--suppose not," the other said, dubiously. "Of course it doesn't. That's just the idea. You watch the kids going through the drill and you'll get on to it. Why, I can put a bunch wise to swimming, though they're a thousand miles away from any water deep enough to drown in." Eric had hardly got outside the station when the boys flocked to him in a body. He answered their fusillade of greetings with equal heartiness and then called them to attention. "Get to business, now!" he called, and the group lined up in fours, each boy about six feet from his neighbor. "Ready!" he called. "One! Hands together, palms to each other. Swing 'em around a little behind the level of the shoulders turning 'em palm outward as you go. This way!" He showed the motion. "At the word 'Two'--bring the hands in to the breast. At 'Three' put the hands forward. All together, now: One! Two! Three!" The boys followed the motions, some doing it well, but others looking very clumsy and awkward. A dozen times or more the boys went through the drill until a certain amount of regularity began to appear. "Leg motions next," Eric called briskly. "At the word 'One!' bring the body down to the heels in a sitting position. At the word 'Two' straighten up and jump with both legs wide apart. At the word 'Three,' jump and bring the legs close together. That's the one that shoots you ahead." This was repeated a dozen or more times and then Eric started the youngsters doing both the arm and leg motions together. It was really hard work, but when he let the urchins go at the end of about half an hour, some of them could do it like clockwork. [Illustration: BREAKING A DEATH-CLUTCH FROM BEHIND. Courtesy of U.S. Volunteer Life-Saving Corps.] [Illustration: BREAKING A DEATH-CLUTCH FROM THE FRONT. Teaching life-saving at its best, the Commodore [the tallest man in uniform] watching. Courtesy of U.S. Volunteer Life-Saving Corps.] "How much real swimming do you suppose the kids learn from that stuff?" Willett asked. "About one-third of them can swim right away," Eric answered. "It's mostly in getting used to it. After all, if a kid gets hold of the right stroke and practises enough so that he can do it automatically, he can't do anything else but that when he gets into the water. The more scared he is, the surer he is to do the thing he's got used to doing. What sends people down in the water, is that they've got a wrong idea. They wave their arms about, and as soon as your arms are out of the water, it just alters the balance enough to put your mouth under." "Seems to me I might learn something from that myself--" Willett was beginning, when a long-continued whistle blast sounded from the station. Eric was off like a shot. Quick as he was, however, he was only just in time to scramble into the first boat. "What is it?" the boy asked. "Motor-boat on fire," answered the coxswain, "an explosion, most likely. I guess the boat's done for, but the Eel saw the trouble the minute it happened, so we oughtn't to have any trouble picking the people up. He said there were girls, though, and probably they can't swim." As the life-saving boat cut through the water, it passed three or four swimmers who had started out from the beach on seeing the accident. There was a great deal of excitement on shore, as, being a fine Sunday morning, the beach was crowded. "We'll be with you in a minute," shouted one of the intending rescuers as the boat swept by. As usual, the Eel was the first man overboard, and his queer snake-like stroke showed to full effect. There had been five people in the boat, three men and two girls, one of them just a child. One of the men and one of the women couldn't swim a stroke. The woman had already given up and the Eel took care of her. Another of the life-savers tackled the struggling man. It was evident that there was no need for more help there, so Eric swam to where the little girl was striking out bravely for the shore. "Can I give you a hand?" he asked. The child, though swimming pluckily, evidently was hampered by being fully dressed. "Can't swim a bit with my boots on," she gurgled. The boy smiled with genuine appreciation of her grit. "You're the real thing," he said. "But it is hard swimming with boots on. Suppose you let me take you to shore. It's just as easy!" He swam in front of the child. "Put your hands on my shoulders," he said, "and keep your feet well up. Are you all right now?" "Quite all right," she answered, dashing the water out of her eyes. "I see they've put the fire out," said Eric, swimming quietly and easily, for the girl's touch was like a feather on his shoulder. "I don't believe the boat's much hurt." "I'd be awfully glad if it wasn't," she answered, "because Jack just borrowed it for the day and I'm sure he's feeling terribly. We were just going to buy one this week." "Perhaps this will scare him off." In spite of her fatigue and fright the girl laughed brightly as Eric's feet touched bottom and he stood up. "It might him, but it won't me," she said, with a joyous disregard of grammar. "And Jack's buying the boat mainly for me. I really can swim quite well, but I suppose the explosion scared me. I don't believe I'd have been frightened a bit if I had jumped in of my own accord. But it was all so sudden!" "Well," said Eric, "it's a good thing for you it didn't happen a long way from shore. And I'm glad I was able to help a bit, too, because this is my last day on duty and having helped you is about the best way of celebrating it that could have happened." "Your last day?" she said, with a note of regret in her voice. "You're going away?" "Yes," Eric replied, as they came to the water's edge and the crowd began to congregate to meet them, "I'm just getting ready to join the Coast Guard!" "Great!" she exclaimed, her eyes sparkling, as she shook back her wet hair. "But how can I thank you?" "You have thanked me," the boy answered, as he took her to the beach where the lifeboat had landed and where her friends were anxiously awaiting her, "you've given me a chance to quit in a sort of 'blaze of glory.' Don't you think that's something?" "But won't you tell me who you are?" she pleaded. "United States Volunteer Life-Saving Corps," he answered with a smile, as he turned to go back to the station, "that's where the credit ought to go." "So this is your last day, Eric," said the Eel, an hour or so later, as the boy stood on the platform of the life-saving station, looking regretfully at the strip of beach. "Yes, Eel," Eric rejoined thoughtfully. "I hate to leave here, too." "I always hate to go, of course," his chum agreed, "but then it's different with me. This is my vacation. When I quit here, it means that I've got to get back to work. You're only going back to school." "Not my fault," was the half-rueful answer; "I'd a heap sooner be going into the Coast Guard right away. But I'm not ready yet." "You will be, next year," said his friend, sympathetically. "I know. But next year's a long way off and I wanted to stay here until I was sure of my appointment. If Father were only going to stay another year on the coast, I could finish my work here and then get ready for the exams in June." "Is he leaving?" "Of course. Don't you remember I told you before!" "Yes, so you did. I'd forgotten." "We're hiking off at the end of this month. Father's been put in charge of one of the districts on the Great Lakes." "But I thought he was inspector here?" "He's been acting-inspector for quite a while. But that was a temporary appointment, while the inspector was ill." "And you're going home a couple of weeks ahead to help pack, eh?" "Ye-es," Eric answered, "of course that's a part of it. But I'm going now because I want to see Uncle Eli before I go East. He's on Tillamook Rock, you know." "I knew he used to be," the Eel said, "but I thought when he made that big real estate haul, he quit." "He tried to," the boy agreed, "but he found he couldn't. Uncle Eli's an old-timer, Eel. I used to be jealous of the Tillamook Light. He's just as fond of it as he is of me, more, I think. I can quite see how he would feel that way. It's always been just like his child. He was there when the light was born." "You mean its designing?" "I mean its being born," Eric insisted. "Nearly all my people have been in the Lighthouse Service, you know. They all have that way of thinking of the lights as if they were real folks. It's something like a captain's idea about his ship. She's always alive. And lights are just as responsive. Some way, I've a bit of that same feeling myself." "Yes," the Eel said thoughtfully, "I can see that, in a way. They do seem a bit human, don't they? And it must be deadly lonely for the keepers, out of reach of everybody, with nothing to do." "What?" shouted Eric, so loudly that the Eel jumped. "With nothing to do?" "Except just attend to the light," his chum said apologetically. "What else is there?" "I suppose you think they just light the lantern when they have a mind to and then snore all night long?" "N-no, of course they can't," the Eel replied, humbly, "I hadn't thought of that. I suppose they have to keep watch." "You bet they do," Eric said emphatically, "and a mighty close watch at that. And when it comes to discipline--the Lighthouse Service has every civilian organization in America beaten to a frazzle." "I didn't know it was so strict." "Strict! Carelessness means dishonorable dismissal, right off the bat! Not that there's ever much chance of such a thing ever being needed. The Commissioner has built up such a sense of pride in the service that a chap would do anything rather than neglect his duty. I'll tell you a story of a woman light-keeper, a woman, mind you, Eel, that'll show you. You know Angel Island?" "Right here in San Francisco Bay?" "That's the one. You know that there's a light and a fog signal there?" "I hadn't ever thought of it," the other replied. "Yes, I guess there is." "There's a new fog-horn on that point now, Eel, but when I was quite a small shaver, in 1906, the fog signal was a bell, rung with a clapper. In July of that year the clapper broke and couldn't be used. A heavy fog came down and blanketed the island so that you couldn't see anything a foot away. That woman light-keeper stood there with a watch in one hand and a nail-hammer in the other and struck that bell once every twenty seconds for twenty hours and thirty-five minutes until the fog lifted. She didn't stop for meals or sleep. Two days later, the bell not having yet been fixed, another fog came down at night and she did the same thing the whole night long. That's what I call being on the job!" "Yes," the Eel agreed with admiration, "you can't beat that, anywhere." "And you spoke of light-keepers being idle!" continued Eric, warming to his subject. "Keeping a lighthouse in the shape that the Commissioner insists on isn't any easy chore. I tell you, the operating room of a hospital isn't any cleaner than the inside of a lighthouse. They tell a story in the service of a hot one that was handed to a light-keeper by one of the inspectors. The keeper hadn't shaved that morning. The instant the inspector saw him, he said: "'If the lamp doesn't look better kept than you do, you're fired!'" "That's swift enough!" the older boy answered, with a whistle. "Nothing saved that light-keeper but the fact that everything else about the place was in apple-pie order. I've heard Father tell how some of the inspectors go around with a white handkerchief, and if they find any dust--there's trouble for somebody!" "Don't you think that's carrying it a bit too far?" queried his chum. "I used to think so," Eric said, "but I don't now. I've got the idea that's behind the rule. Everybody isn't cut out to be a light-keeper. The work calls for just one thing, a tremendous conscientiousness. There's no one to keep constant tab on men in isolated stations. Men who haven't got the right point of view won't stay in the service, and those who have got it, get it developed a lot more. The way it looks to me, the Commissioner has built up an organization of men who do their work because they believe in it, and who naturally have a liking for regularity and order." "You're sure stuck on the Lighthouse Service, Eric," said his chum with a laugh. "Why wouldn't I be?" the lad replied. "If all my folks are in it, I've probably got some of that same sort of feeling in my blood. But I'm different, too. The same thing to do over and over again, day after day, month after month, would get my goat. I want to do something that's got more variety and more opportunity. That's why I'm going to join the Coast Guard--if I can get in." [Illustration: THE "EDDYSTONE" OF AMERICA. Minot's Ledge Light, off Boston, one of the most important lighthouses on the American coast, a triumph of engineering. Courtesy of U.S. Bureau of Lighthouses.] "Well," the Eel said, sighing, "I envy you. So far as I can see, I'm like your lighthouse-keeper. I'm stuck at a desk for the rest of my life. You go ahead, Eric, and do the big stuff in rescue work, with uniform and epaulets and all the rest of it. I'll stay right on my job in the city and--on Saturdays, Sundays, and vacations--I'll do my little best in the volunteer job on this beach." "It's bully work here, all right," agreed Eric, "and I'm only sorry I can't be in two places at once. Good luck, old man," he continued, shaking hands with his chum heartily, "I'll drop you a line written right on Tillamook Rock, and maybe it'll have the real sea flavor to it!" Eric was quite excited in joining his father at Astoria, where they were to take the lighthouse-tender _Manzanita_ to Tillamook Rock. During all the years his father had been connected with the light, both as light-keeper and as inspector, he had never taken his wife or son there. Of course, under no circumstances would they have been allowed to stay over night, but Eric had never even visited the rock. The boy had begged for a chance to stay over one night, just to stand one watch in the lighthouse, but--rules were rules. The utmost privilege he could get was permission to go to the lighthouse with his father, when the latter was making his final inspection before transfer to another district. "I hear you've been distinguishing yourself, Eric," the veteran said, when the _Manzanita_ had cast off from the wharf. "How do you mean, Father?" "Rescues, and that sort of thing. It made me feel quite proud of my son." "There were a few," the lad answered, with a quick flush of pride at his father's praise, "but at that I don't think I got my full share. We had a fellow there we called the 'Eel.' Nobody else had a chance to get anything when he was around." "Good swimmer, eh?" "He was a wonder! Why, Father, he used to swim under water nearly all the time, just putting his nose out to breathe once in a while, and at the end of his side stroke he had a little wiggle that shot him ahead like greased lightning. Funniest stroke you ever saw!" "Couldn't you pick it up?" "Oh, I got the stroke all right," Eric answered confidently, "but I can't do it the way he did. And you should have seen him dive!" "I always was glad you took kindly to that work," said the inspector thoughtfully, "because I believe it is pretty well handled, now that it's on an official basis. It certainly supplements the government's life-saving work very well. I've wondered, sometimes, whether it oughtn't to be taken hold of by the nation." "I don't think it's necessary, Father," Eric replied. "You see, if it was a government station, the regular crew would have to be on duty all the time. There's no need for that. There aren't any accidents there, except when the beach is crowded, and that's just for Saturdays and Sundays, mainly, and a couple of months in the summer." "That may all be true, but when an accident does occur, experts are needed in a hurry. Amateur work doesn't amount to much as a rule." "This isn't amateur!" protested the boy. "Why, Father, do you know what a chap has to do before he can even enlist?" "No," the other replied. "I never heard the requirements, or if I did, I've forgotten them. What are they?" "A fellow who applies has got to show that he can swim at least a hundred yards in good style, and twenty yards of that must be in coat, trousers, and shoes. He's got to be able to dive and bring up something from the bottom, at a depth of ten feet. He's got to swim twenty yards carrying a person his own weight and show that he knows three different ways of carrying a drowning person in deep water. He's got to show that he can do at least three of the ways to 'break' death-grips made by a drowning person. And besides that, he's got to know all about first aid, especially resuscitation." "You mean that an applicant has to pass that test before entering the volunteers at all?" "He sure has, and he's got to show that he can do it easily, too!" "That's good and stiff," said the old inspector. "You can do all that, Eric, eh?" The boy smiled. "I've got a Proficiency Medal, Father," he said, not a little proudly. "What's that for?" "That's the test to show you're really A 1. To get that medal you've got to swim under water for over thirty-five feet, you've got to know all the 'breaks,' and you've got to show a 'break' to be made by a third party if you're rescuing a rescuer who has got into the clutch of a drowning man in any way that he can't shake loose. Besides that, you've got to swim back-stroke sixty feet with the hands clear out of water, and sixty feet side, using one arm only. Then, just to show that it isn't exhibition stuff but the real goods in training for life-saving, you're made to swim sixty feet fully dressed and back forty feet, on the return carrying a man your own weight; dropping him, you have to start right off for another sixty feet out and forty feet back, this time carrying the man back by a different method." "It's real swimming!" exclaimed the veteran of the sea. "You bet," said Eric, "and I'm not nearly through. There's another sixty-foot swim, and at the end of it you've got to dive at least twelve feet and bring up from the bottom a dead weight of not less than ten pounds and swim ten feet carrying that weight. I tell you, Father, that's quite a stunt! And then, besides all the swimming stuff, you've got to show that you're Johnny-on-the-spot in throwing a life-buoy, to say nothing of a barrel of tests in first aid, and in splicing and knot-tying of nearly every sort and shape. You don't get any chance to rest, either. All that swimming business has to be done on the same day. It's a good test of endurance, all right." "And you passed it, son?" "I got ninety per cent.," Eric answered. "I thought I'd told you all about it. No, I guess it came off when you were on one of your trips. I don't go much on boasting, Father, but I really can swim." "Well, my boy," the other said, "I'll take a little credit for that. Don't forget I was your first swimming teacher! But I couldn't do all those things you've been telling me about, now. I'm glad to know they've got as high a standard as that in the Volunteer Corps. I shouldn't wonder if the Coast Guard would be able to get some of its best men from the volunteer ranks. Take yourself, for example." "It's done me a lot of good," said the boy. "Of course it has. It would do anybody good. But I've been wanting to ask you, Eric, what effect the formation of this new Coast Guard will have on your plans?" "It won't hurt them a bit," the boy answered. "I wrote to the Captain Commandant about it and he sent me the dandiest letter! I'll show it to you when my trunk gets home. You see, Father, when the Life-Saving Service and the Revenue Cutter Service joined together under the name of the Coast Guard, it was arranged that every member of both services might reenlist without examination. And my application was in last year. So that there's nothing special, I'm just going through the regular order of things. That is, if I can make the Coast Guard Academy." "You ought to manage it, I think," said his father. "I'm really glad you have made up your mind to it, Eric," he continued; "it's a good full-size man's job. And you have quite a bit of the salt in your veins, my lad, for, after all, most of your kin are seafaring folk." "You never had anything to do with the old Revenue Cutter Service, had you, Father?" "I was never a member of it," the other replied, "but I've seen it at work, many times these forty years. No, I got into the Lighthouse Service when I was about your age and I've given every bit of myself to it ever since. I'm glad I did. I think the last fifty years has shown the greatest development of safety at sea since the days of the discovery of the compass." "Yet you didn't want me to join!" "Not now," the old inspector answered. "Conditions have changed. The Lighthouse Service of to-day is a complete and perfected organization. Every mile of United States territory is covered by a beacon light. We were pioneers." "I see," said the boy thoughtfully. "It's a good deal the same sort of development that's struck the cattle country," the Westerner said, meditatively. "When I was a youngster, a cattle-puncher was really the wild and woolly broncho-buster that you read about in books. In the days of the old Jones and Plummer trail, when there wasn't a foot of barbed wire west of the Mississippi, a cowboy's life was adventurous enough. A round-up gang might meet a bunch of hostile Indians 'most any time, and a man had to ride hard and shoot straight. But now the ranges are all divided up and fenced in. The range-runner has given way to the stock-raiser. It's like comparing Dan'l Boone to a commercial traveler!" "I don't quite see how that fits the Lighthouse Service," said Eric, smiling at the Daniel Boone comparison. "Well, it does to a certain extent. When I first went into the Service, half the coast wasn't protected at all. And even the important lights we had were weak, compared with what we have now. Why, Eric, we've got lights so powerful now that we can't even tell how strong they are!" The boy looked up incredulously. "It's an absolute fact," the old inspector continued. "The most powerful light we have is on Navesink Highlands, near the entrance of New York Harbor. It's reckoned at between two million and ten million candle-power. Nobody's been able to measure it. The United States Bureau of Standards was going to do it, but so far, they've left it severely alone." "How far can that be seen, Father?" "All depends on the height of the ship's deck from the water," was the reply. "The curvature of the earth determines that. Say, thirty miles on a vessel of moderate size. But the reflection of the Navesink Light on the sky has been seen as far away as eighty miles." "White light?" "Yes, white flashing," was the reply. "I've noticed," the boy said thoughtfully, "that red is only used for the smaller lights. I wanted to ask you about that the other day. Now there's Point Adams Light," he continued, pointing off the starboard bow as the lighthouse-tender steamed out of the mouth of the Columbia River, "it looks just as big as this light on the other side, on Cape Disappointment, but it's a lot harder to see. When I've been headed for home, on a misty night, after a day's fishing, I've missed Point Adams when Cape Disappointment was as clear as could be." "But you could see other lights?" "Oh, yes, there wasn't any difficulty in making the harbor, either in or out. I was just wondering whether the color of the light had anything to do with making it seem dim?" "Of course," his father answered; "a red glass cuts off sixty per cent, of the light. You can't see the Point Adams Light for more than about eleven miles, but, in ordinarily clear weather, you can see the fixed white light of Cape Disappointment for all of twenty-two nautical miles." "I don't quite see why," said the boy, puzzled. "That's because you're not taking the trouble to think," was the impatient reply. "You know that light is made up of all the colors of the rainbow?" "Of course." "And red is only a small part of that, isn't it?" "Yes." "Well, don't you see? Red glass only lets the red rays through and cuts off all the rest. How could it help being a lot fainter? And, what's more, red doesn't excite the nerves of the eye as much as white does, so that if there were two lights of equal power, one red and one white, the red would be less easily seen." "Why do the railroads use red for danger signals, then?" "Habit, mainly. It's wrong, of course, and a good many of the railroads are changing their danger signals from red to yellow. So far as we're concerned in the Lighthouse Service, however, we're getting rid of all the fixed red lights wherever a long-range warning is needed." "How do you distinguish the different lights, then?" "Using flashing lights, with flashes of different duration." "Why didn't you always do that?" asked Eric. "Didn't know enough," was the simple reply. "It's only lately that we've found out how to work a flashing light without any loss of power. In the old days we used to depend on occulting lights, but now, flashing lights are much more powerful. You know the difference?" "Sure! An occulting light means that some of the time the light is shut off, and at others it isn't. Wasn't it worked by a revolving shutter with wide slits in it?" "That was the old idea. We use it still as a cheap way of changing a fixed light to one with a definite character. It works all right, only it's a waste of power to have the light darkened part of the time. Then, too, if the shutter revolves too quickly, the light is like little flashes of lightning, while, if it goes too slowly, a lookout might happen to scan that point on the horizon at the instant it was dark. In that way the value of the warning would be lessened." "I know the flashing light is quite different, Father, but just how is it worked?" asked the boy. "It's because of some arrangement of the lens, isn't it?" "Exactly. Light travels in straight lines in every direction. One of the problems of illumination in lighthouse work is to make all these beams come to one focus. We don't want to light the sky, nor the sea at the foot of the lighthouse. So a first-order light is built up of rows on rows of prisms so arranged that the light will be refracted from every direction to one point. An ordinary student's reading lamp, inside a big lighthouse lens, would give a light that could be seen a good many miles!" [Illustration: REFILLING PINTSCH GAS BUOY. Courtesy of Safety Car Lighting Co.] [Illustration: LIGHTHOUSE TENDER APPROACHING BUOY. Courtesy of Safety Car Lighting Co.] "That is, if it were high enough up." "Of course." "Just how quickly does the earth's curve come into play, Father? I know the earth is round, of course, but, somehow, it seems so big that one never thinks of taking it into any practical account." "It works mighty rapidly, my boy," said the old inspector. "You put a light right at sea level, on a day when there isn't a ripple on the sea, and five miles away, at sea level, you won't see a sign of it! Fifteen feet is the unit. Fifteen feet above sea level, you can see a light fifteen feet above sea level, seven miles away." "Then why not build lighthouses like the Eiffel Tower, a thousand feet high!" "Once in a while, Eric," his father said, rebukingly, "you talk absolutely without thinking. Didn't I just show you that the rays of a lantern had to be sent out in a single beam?" "Yes, but what of that?" "Can't you see that if your light is too high, the beam will have to strike the water at such an angle that its horizontal effect would be lost? That would mean that a ship could see the light seventy miles away, and lose it at fifty or forty miles from the lighthouse. No, boy, that wouldn't work. Tillamook Rock is quite high enough!" "It does look high," agreed the boy, following his father's gaze to where, over the port bow, rose the menacing and forbidding reef on which the light stood. "It's the meanest bit on the coast," said the inspector. "Wouldn't you say the sea was fairly smooth?" "Like a mill-pond," declared Eric. "Why?" "That just shows you," said his father. "You'd have to nail the water down to keep it from playing tricks around Tillamook. Look at it now!" The lad's glance followed the pointing finger. There was hardly a ripple on the sea, but a long slow lazy swell suggested a storm afar off. Slight as the swell was, it struck Tillamook Rock with a vengeful spirit. Long white claws of foam tore vainly at the grim reef's sides and the roar of the surf filled the air. "Mill-pond, eh?" said the inspector. "Well, I can see where I get good and wet in that same mill-pond." He slipped on a slicker and a sou'wester. "You'd better dig up some oilskins, Eric," he said. "Any of the men will let you have them." The boy slipped off part of his clothes, standing up in undershirt and trousers. "I like it better this way," he said. The old inspector looked at his son with approval and even admiration. Considering his years, the lad was wonderfully well developed, largely as a result of swimming, and his summer with the Volunteer Corps had sunburned him as brown as a piece of weathered oak. "I think I'd rather go in that kind of a costume myself," his father said, with a chuckle, "but I'm afraid it would hardly do for my official uniform on an inspection trip!" As he spoke, the rattle of the boat-davits was heard. "Come along then, lad," said the inspector. "Just a moment, though. Don't get any fool idea about showing off with any kind of a swimming performance. You just be good and thankful to be hauled up by a crane!" The boy took another look at Tillamook Rock, frowning above the surf. "I'm not hankering after a swim there," he said; "I don't claim to be amphibious, exactly. As you say, it's calm enough on the open water, but I don't think anything except a seal or a walrus or something of that kind could land on that rock. Not for me, thank you. I'll take the crane, and gladly." The ropes rattled through the davit blocks, and, as the _Manzanita_ heeled over a little, the boat took water, the blocks were unhooked, her bows given a sharp shove and she was off. Down at water level, the slight swell seemed considerably larger. Indeed, it actually was increasing. And, as they pulled in toward the entrance of the reef, the boat met a rip in the current that seemed to try to twist the oars from the hands of the boat-pullers. But lighthouse-tender sailors are picked men, and though the little boat was thrown about like a cork, she fairly clawed her way through the rip. As they neared the entrance in the reef, the surf rushed between the rocks, throwing up spume and spray as though a storm were raging. Eric had to look back out to sea to convince himself that the ocean was still as calm as it had seemed a moment or two before. In among the crags to which the boat was driving, there was a turmoil of seething waters, which came thundering in and which shrank away with a sucking sound, as though disappointed of a long hoped-for vengeance. "It's like a witches' pot!" shouted Eric to his father. "This is about as calm as it ever gets," was the inspector's unmoved reply. "You ought to see Tillamook when it's rough weather! I've seen it with a real gale blowing, when it seemed impossible that the rock could stand up five minutes against the terrific battering. Yet it just stands there and defies the Pacific at its worst, as it has, I suppose, for a hundred thousand years or more, and the light shines on serenely." With consummate steering and a finer handling of the oars than Eric had ever seen before--and he was something of an oarsman himself--the boat from the lighthouse-tender neared the Rock. It was held immediately under the crane and a rope was lowered with a loop on the end of it. The inspector swung himself into this and went shooting up in the air, like some oilskin-covered sea-gull. He took it as a matter of course, all a part of the day's work, but, just the same, it gave Eric a queer sensation. It was his turn next. In a moment the loop was down again for him. The rest of the boat's crew were busy getting ready the mail bag, the provisions and the other supplies that they had brought with them, so the boy stepped unhesitatingly into the loop. Swish! He was on his upward flight almost before he knew it. The back curl of a breaker, baffled in its attack on the rock, drenched him to the skin. He laughed, for this was just what he had bargained for. Beneath him, already but a small spot on the sea, was the boat he had left; above him the grim nakedness of the barren rock, and below, snarling with impotent fury, was the defeated surf. The crane above him creaked as it swung inboard. Drenched, cold, but thoroughly happy, Eric stood on Tillamook Rock. For the moment, at least, he was one with that little band of men which is Uncle Sam's farthest outpost against the tempest-armies of the western seas. CHAPTER III HEROES OF THE UNDERGROUND Knowing that his father had spent many years on Tillamook Rock, Eric was eager to see every nook and cranny of the building, and he importuned his uncle to go with him over the structure. But, although the inspector and the light-keeper were brothers, the trip was an official one, and his uncle deputed one of the assistant light-keepers to show the lad around. Eric was not slow in making use of his time. He climbed up to the lantern and saw for himself close at hand the lens he had so often heard described, astonishing his guide with all sorts of questions. Most of these showed an extraordinary knowledge of lights and lighthouses, in which a mass of information was combined with utter ignorance of detail. This was due to the boy's long acquaintance with the Lighthouse Service through the several members of his family who had served in it. "You know," said Eric, "I had the idea that Tillamook Rock would seem a lot higher, when one was on top of it. When you look at it from the sea, it stands up so sheer and straight that it seems almost like a mountain." "Well, lad," the assistant-keeper answered, "it is tolerable high. It's nigh a hundred feet to the level o' the rock, an' the light's another forty. It's none too high, at that." "Why? The sea can't hurt you much, this high up!" said Eric, leaning over the railing of the gallery around the light and looking down. "Even a twenty-foot wave's a big one, and you're six or seven times as high up as that." "You think we're sort o' peacefully floatin' in a zone o' quiet up here? You've got to revise your notion o' the Pacific quite a much! Neptoon can put up a better article of fight right around this same spot here than anywheres else I know. Maybe you didn' hear o' the time the sea whittled off a slice o' rock weighin' a ton or so and sort o' chucked it at the light?" "No," said Eric, "I never heard a word about it. When was it?" "Nigh about twelve years ago," the light-keeper said reminiscently. "It was the winter I got sick, an' I've got that night stuck good an' fast in my think-bank. There was a howlin' nor'wester comin' down. She'd been blowin' plenty fresh for a couple o' weeks, but instead o' letting up, the sea kep' on gettin' more wicked. The way some o' the big ones would come dashin' in an' shinnin' up the rock as if they were a-goin' to snatch the buildin' down, was sure wearin' on the nerves. That winter, there was more'n once I thought the sea was goin' to nip off the lighthouse like a ball takin' off the last pin in a bowlin' frame." "Dashing up against the lighthouse!" exclaimed the boy. "Aren't you putting that on a bit? Why you're over a hundred feet above sea level." "In 'most any big storm the surf dashes up to the top o' the rock. But on this day I'm talkin' of, there was one gee-whopper of a sea. It broke off a chunk of rock weighin' every ounce o' half a ton, the way you'd bite off a piece o' candy, an' just chucked that rock at the lantern, breakin' a pane of glass, clear at the top of the tower." The boy whistled incredulously. "It's a dead cold fact," the other confirmed. "If you think I'm stretchin' it a bit, you read the Annual Report an' you'll find it's so." "What did you do?" "We put in a new glass," said the keeper. "During the storm?" "We haven't got any business to worry about storms, we've only got to keep the light goin'," was the reply. "If the End o' the World was scheduled to come off in the middle of the night, you can bet it would find the Tillamook Rock Light burnin'! Storm! Takes a sight more than a sixty mile gale an' a ragin' sea to stop a Lighthouse crowd. You know that yourself, or you oughter, with your folks. No, sir! There's no storm ever invented that can crimp the Service. We had that broken glass out and a new one in place, in just exactly eighteen minutes. It was some job, too! The chaps workin' on the outside had to be lashed on to the platform." "Why, because of the wind?" "Just the wind. That little breeze would have picked up a two-hundred-pound man like a feather." "Weren't you scared?" "No," said the light-keeper, "didn't have time to think of it. Cookie was scared, all right." "Have you a cook on the rock?" said Eric in surprise, "I thought you all took turns to cook." "The men do, in most o' the lighthouses," was the reply, "but Tillamook's so cut off from everything that we've five men on the post. That means quite a bit o' cookin', an' so we have a chef all our own. Didn't you ever hear the story o' Cookie?" [Illustration: SLIDING DOWN TO WORK. Lighthouse-builders on cableway from top of cliff to platform beside reef, unapproachable by boats.] "Never," said the boy, "go ahead!" "Quite a while ago," the light-keeper began, "the Service hired a cook for Tillamook. He was a jim-dandy of a cook an' could get good money ashore. But he'd been crossed in love, or he'd lost his money, or something, I don't remember what, an' so he wanted to forget his sorrows in isolation." "Sort of hermit style?" suggested Eric. "That's it, exactly. Well, Cookie took the job, an' the tender tried to land him here. Three times the tender came out, an' each trip the sea was kickin' up didoes so that he couldn't land. He got scared right down to his toes an' they couldn't make him get into the boat. But each time he went back to town, after having renigged that way, his friends used to josh the life out of him. "So, one day, when it was fairly calm, he said he would go. He'd been teased into it. The captain o' the tender chuckled, for he knew there was quite a sea running outside, but they started all right. Sure enough, soon as they rounded the cape, the sea was runnin' a bit. It didn't look so worse from the deck o' the tender, an' Breuger--that was the cook's name--was telling the first officer how the world was going to lose the marvelous cookin' that he alone could do. "But, as soon as Tillamook Rock come in sight, Cookie's courage began to ooze. He talked less of his cookin' and more o' what he called 'the perils of the sea.' As soon as the tender come close to the rock, he fell silent. The boat was swung out an' Cookie was told to get in. As before, he refused. "'That's all right,' said the skipper, who had been expectin' him to back out. 'We'll help you. It's a bit hard climbing with the rheumatism.'" "Did he have rheumatism?" asked the boy, grinning in anticipation. "You couldn't prove he didn't have it!" responded the light-keeper with an answering flicker of a smile. "The captain turned to a couple of sailors. 'Give him a hand,' he said, 'he needs it.' "Two husky A.B.'s chucked Breuger into the boat, an' before Cookie realized what was happenin', the boat was in the water an' cast off from the side o' the tender. But he had some sense, after all, for he saw there was no use makin' a fuss then. It was a bad landin' that day, four or five times worse than this afternoon, an' I guess it looked dangerous enough to a landsman to be a bit scarin'. One of the men went up with him, holdin' on to him, so he wouldn't get frightened an' drop, an' in a minute or two he was swung in to the landin'-place. "There was one of our fellows here who was as funny as a goat, an' we had an awful time to keep him from raggin' Cookie. But we knew that Breuger was goin' to fix our grub for quite a spell and keepin' him in a good humor was a wise move. Anyway, when you're goin' to live in quarters as small as a lighthouse, you can't afford to have any quarrelin'. A funny man's all right, but he needs lots of room. "So, instead of hazin' him for showin' the white feather so often, I praised Cookie for having made so brave a landin' on such an awful day. Quick as a wink, his manner changed. He just strutted. He slapped himself on the chest an' boasted of his line of warlike ancestors--seemed to go back to somewhere about the time of Adam. It never once struck him that every one else on the rock had had to make a landin' there, too. He gave himself the airs of bein' the sole hero on Tillamook. There were days when this was a bit tryin', but we forgave him. He could cook. Shades of a sea-gull! How he could cook! We used to threaten to put an extra padlock on the lens, lest he should try to fricassee it!" "Easy there!" protested Eric. "Well," said the other, "you know the big Arctic gull they call the Burgomaster?" "Yes, I've seen it in winter once or twice." "Breuger could cook that oily bird so's it would taste like a pet squab. He used to take a pride in it, too, an' he liked best the men who ate most. Now I was real popular with Cookie. Those were the days for eats!" and the light-keeper sighed regretfully. "How long did he stay?" queried the boy. "That's just the point," the other answered. "He never went back." "Never?" "Not alive," responded the light-keeper. "He'd had one experience of landin' an' he'd never risk another. He stayed on Tillamook for over eighteen years, never leavin' it, even for a day. An' he died here." "Well," the boy commented, "this is where I'm going to differ from Cookie, for there's Father coming down." He looked over the edge. "It would make a great dive," he said, "if it weren't for the surf." "It'd be your last," was the response. "Nobody could get out alive from that poundin'. More'n one good man's been drowned there. The first man that ever tried to build a lighthouse on this rock got washed off. That was the end of him." "Tell me about it?" pleaded the boy. "There's just time enough!" "Ask your dad," said the other; "he's got the early history o' Tillamook by heart. Meantime, I wish you all sorts of luck, lad, an' if ever you're in a Coast Guard vessel on this coast and see Tillamook flashin', don't forget the boys that never let a light go out!" "Father," said Eric, a little later, when they had boarded the lighthouse-tender and got into dry clothes, "tell me the story of the building of Tillamook Lighthouse. They told me, over there, that you knew all about it." "I ought to," the inspector replied, "I helped build it. And it was a job! I suppose Tillamook would be classed among the dozen hardest lighthouse-building jobs of the world." "What would be the others?" "Well, in America, on the Pacific Coast there's St. George's Reef. Spectacle Reef in the Great Lakes, and Minot's Ledge off Boston, were bad. There are a lot around England and Scotland, like Eddystone, Wolf Rock, the Long Ships, and Bell Rock--that's the old 'Inchcape Rock' you read about in school--and there was a particularly bad one called Or-Mar, in the Bay of Biscay. It took the engineer one year and a week before he could make the first landing on Or-Mar." "Over a year!" "A year and a week," the inspector repeated. "And Tillamook wasn't much better. It was in December 1878 that we got orders for a preliminary survey of the reef for the purpose of choosing a lighthouse site. After a dozen or more attempts, the engineer returned baffled. In the following June, six months later, the rock was still unviolated. No human foot had ever trodden it. "Then the Department began to make demands. Washington got insistent. Urgent orders were issued that the rock would have to be scaled. The engineer was instructed to make a landing. Fortunately, toward the end of the month there came a spell of calm weather." "Like the calm to-day?" "Just about. That's as calm as Tillamook ever gets. After several more attempts, lasting nearly a week, the boat was run close to the rocks and two sailors got ashore. A line was to be thrown to them. No sooner were they ashore than the boat backed away, to keep from being stove in. Remembering that it had been six months before the boat had a chance of getting as near the rock as it had the minute before, the two sailors became panicky at seeing the boat back away. Both being powerful swimmers, they threw themselves into the sea and the boat managed to pick them up before the surf caught them. "This had been enough to show that landing was not impossible. With the evidence that two sailors had ventured, the engineer could not withdraw. He was a bold and daring fellow himself. Two days later, although the sea was not nearly as calm, the boat was brought up to the rock again, and at almost the same landing-place as before, he succeeded in getting ashore. "One of the things that makes Tillamook so dangerous is that you can never tell when it is suddenly going to change from its ordinary wildness to a pitch of really savage fury. A ground swell, hardly perceptible on the surface of the sea, will kick up no end of a smother on the rock. The engineer lost no time in his survey. He had already made a study of the rock from every point of the sea around it, so that he was able to do his actual survey ashore quickly. Less than an hour was enough. By that time he had every detail needed for his report. "But when he was ready to go, Tillamook was less ready to loose her capture. The waves were dashing over the landing place and the sky was rapidly becoming beclouded. Yet, for the engineer, there was no question of choice! To stay there meant being marooned, death from exposure and starvation. There was nothing to do but dare. The engineer, beckoning for the boat to come in as near the rock as possible, cast himself into the sea. It was touch and go, but we picked him up, although he was nearly done for when we got him. The report was duly sent into Washington and approved. "The next thing was to arrange about the actual building. For this a man of skill and experience was needed. John W. Trewavas, a famous lighthouse expert, one of the constructors of the Wolf Rock Light off the English Coast, came to America to pit his knowledge and his strength against the Pacific Ocean. Although it was summer weather, he hung around Tillamook for a month before there was even a chance to make a landing. Then, on September 18, 1879--I was steering the boat--Mr. Trewavas thought he saw his opportunity. I took the boat right in, so that her nose almost touched the rock. He leaped ashore, and, at the same instant, with a tremendous back-water stroke, the oarsmen jumped the surf-boat back out of danger. One second's--yes, half a second's--delay, and the boat would have been in splinters. "The slope on which Trewavas had landed was wet and covered with slippery seaweed. Experienced and cautious, he waited for a moment to make sure of his foothold, well knowing the dangers of slipping. Peril was nearer him than he knew. A roller came breaking in, sending a spurt of water right over the spot where he was standing. So precarious was his footing that he did not dare move away quickly. Trewavas had just shuffled his feet a few inches further on that slippery slope when a comber heaved its great length along the rock. Almost without a curl it struck just below the landing and a boiling torrent of spume and spray hid the daring man from sight. Just for a second, but when the wave receded, he was gone. The rock was empty." "Couldn't you pick him up, Father?" "We never even saw him again, in that whirlpool of currents. The undertow dragged him down immediately and he never came to the surface. The body was never found." "Who was the next to land?" asked Eric. "I was," his father said, "and I landed on exactly the same spot. I had taken off my boots, but even so, the seaweed was slippery and dangerous. Remembering poor Trewavas' fate, in a jiffy I was off the slope and on the level platform of the rock. They threw me a line from the boat, and I pulled ashore some tools and supplies. With a rope to help them, several of the men joined me. That was the beginning of the conquest of Tillamook." "And did that sort of business last all through?" queried the boy. "Pretty much. Once, when the lighthouse was about half built, the schooner on which the men lived, and which was anchored a little distance off the rock, was blown from her moorings. A revenue cutter picked her up and brought her back. I tell you the men who were still on the rock had a sure-enough scare when they saw the schooner gone. They made sure they were marooned and done for. I had a job to keep them at work. "Then there was another time, just when we were finishing the house, a terrific storm came up and the seas washed clear over the lower part of the rock. In the middle of the night there was an awful crash. Some of the men wanted to rush out to see what it was. I had to stand by the door with a revolver and threaten to shoot the first man who left." "Why?" "If they'd gone out, it's more than likely that some of them would have been washed or blown away, and I was responsible. In the morning we found that one of the tool-houses had been blown in. I watched those men like a hen does her chickens, and we didn't have a single accident in the building of Tillamook Rock Light after the work of actual construction was begun." "You're sorry to say good-by to the old light, Father," said the boy sympathetically. The old inspector roused himself from a reverie into which he had fallen. "Yes," he admitted, "I am. But what the Commissioner says, goes! Of course it's always interesting to face new problems, and I'll have a freer hand on the Lakes. It'll be easier for you to get home from the East, too, when you're at the Academy." "That's providing I get there all right," agreed Eric. "Winning into the Coast Guard is just about the one thing I want most in the world." "And like everything else in the world that's worth getting, you've got to work for it," his father added. "Well, here we are at the wharf again. This is probably the last time you'll smell the old Pacific, Eric, for in another week it'll be a case of 'Go East, young man, go East!'" "I hope it isn't going to be too cold for Mother," the boy suggested. "It'll be cold enough, don't you worry about that," the other answered, "I've heard enough about the Great Lakes. But it's a clear cold, not damp like it is out here. The cold won't hurt you, anyway. It'll give you a chance to harden up." When, ten days later, Eric helped the family to settle in its new home in Detroit, the headquarters of the Eleventh Lighthouse District, he thought his fears of cold would be unfounded. The unusual beauty of the city of Detroit in the haze of an autumn afternoon, gave no sense of a rigorous winter. This feeling received a jolt, however, when, strolling along the river front next day, he came across two of the huge ice-breaker car ferries, awaiting their call to defy Jack Frost. He was standing watching them, and trying to picture 'the Dardanelles of America' under the grip of ice, when a boy about his own age, with one arm in a sling, slapped him on the shoulder. [Illustration: THE DEFIER OF THE PACIFIC. Tillamook Rock, against which six thousand miles of ocean surges beat in vain. Courtesy of U.S. Bureau of Lighthouses.] "Ed!" exclaimed Eric. "Who'd have thought of seeing you here!" "Why not, old man?" said the other laughing, "I live here." "Do you? Bully! So do I. The folks moved here yesterday." "Your father, too?" "Sure." "I thought he'd never leave the Coast." "He didn't want to," said Eric, "but he was appointed inspector in charge of this district, so he had to come. But what's happened to you," the lad continued, "what have you been doing with yourself?" "Got my arm broken in a mine rescue," the other said. "What kind of a mine rescue? An accident?" "Coal-mine explosion." "But what are you doing with coal mines?" "I'm trying to qualify as a mining expert. You're not the only one who thinks Uncle Sam's the best boss there is. I'm going into the government, too." "You are? In the Geological Survey?" "Bureau of Mines," the other answered. "How about you? Still thinking of the Revenue Cutter Service--no, Coast Guard it is now, isn't it?" "Yes, Coast Guard," Eric agreed. "You bet I'm going in, if I can make it. But the exams are the stiffest things you ever saw! I'm going to cram for them this whole winter." "Isn't that great! I'm doing special work here, too. What's your end? Mathematics and navigation, I suppose?" "Mostly mathematics," Eric replied. "What's yours?" "Mineralogy and chemistry," his friend replied. "I'm going to try to specialize on the prevention of accidents in mines. I've got a good reason to remember my subject." He nodded with a certain grim humor to his bandaged arm. "How did you do it?" "I was down with a rescue party," said the older lad, "and we got caught. That was all." With his characteristic impetuosity, Eric took hold of his friend's unbandaged arm and led him to a seat in Owen Park, just facing Belle Isle, the most beautiful island park in the United States. With his love of lighthouses, the Light at the northeast corner seemed to Eric like an old friend. "There," he said. "Now you're going to sit right there, Ed, and tell me all about it. I've only had two or three letters from you since you left 'Frisco, and we were in First-Year High together." "That's so," his friend agreed. "All right, if you've got to have the yarn, here goes." He leaned back on the bench, and began his story. "You remember that Father was interested in mines?" "Of course," Eric answered; "he showed me that little model of a colliery he kept in his study." "You do remember that," the other said, his eyes kindling. "I helped him make it. It was a lot of fun. Dad was a crank on conservation. He was one of the first men in America to take it up. You know it was his influence that swung Washington into line? The waste in coal really used to worry him. He was always afraid of a coal famine, and he spent a lot of time doping out ways to stop the waste in mining. He was just daffy about it, then." "I can remember that, too," the boy said reminiscently. "He had pictures showing how quickly the coal was being used up, and how much coal every person in the United States was consuming, and all that sort of stuff. It was always mighty interesting to me. Your dad and I got along finely together." "You did," his friend agreed. "Well, after a while, Dad decided to drop his business in 'Frisco and go mining. He'd always kept close tabs on the coal question, so that, when he got ready to start, nothing would satisfy him but small holdings in half a dozen parts of the country." "What for?" "You see, Dad wasn't trying to make a pile of money out of mining; he wanted to experiment with all sorts of coal and find some way to use it so that there wouldn't be so much waste. The locomotive, for instance, only converts about thirty per cent. of the coal into power. The other seventy per cent. goes up the smokestack. Same thing with an ocean liner." "I know," said the boy. "All right. So Dad bought a mine in Illinois, and one in Manitoba, and took a half-share in some Minnesota mines and another in a Michigan mine. Then he joined a company in Pennsylvania, and I don't know what all. Anyhow, he's got stuff all over the place. It was out of the question for the rest of us to be traveling from mine to mine all the time, the way Dad jumps around, and so we settled here. It's sort of central for him. "Being mixed up in such a lot of mines, Dad had a chance to work out some of his pet schemes. He'd always been enthusiastic over the government's relations with the miners, and when it started rescue work, he was one of the first to equip a rescue car and ask some of the experts to come out and instruct his miners how to handle it. You know Dad--everything he does, every one else has got to do?" "He always was like that," Eric agreed. "He's that way still. So, of course, I was elected to that first-aid business right away. I had to know it all! There's nothing half-way about Dad. Cæsar's Ghost! How I slaved over that stuff! Luckily for me, they sent out a cracker-jack from Washington, and it was such good sport working with him that I soon picked it up. The next move was that I should go from one to another of Dad's mines and organize the rescue work. I've been doing that for the last year." "I should think that was bully!" exclaimed Eric. "But how do you do it?" "It's easy enough to start." The young fellow laughed. "I'm a regular rescue 'fan' now. I usually get two or three teams together and have a match. Talk about your kids on a baseball diamond in a vacant lot! Those miners' rescue teams have the youngsters skinned a mile for excitement when there's a rival test." "But I don't see how you could have a fire-rescue match," said Eric, puzzled, "you can't set a mine on fire just to have a drill!" "Scarcely! At least, you can't set a whole mine on fire. Once in a while, though, you can use an old mine shaft. But we generally do it in the field. There the entries and rooms are outlined with ropes on stakes. Across the entrances of these supposed rooms crossbars are laid, just the height of a mine gallery. "The contest is to find out how good the men are, individually, and to teach them team work. Each man has a breathing apparatus, and a safety and electric lamp, while each crew has a canary bird." "A what?" "A canary bird!" "What kind of a machine is that?" asked Eric, thinking the other was referring to some name for a piece of rescue apparatus. "A canary bird? It's a yellow machine with feathers, and sings," said Ed, laughing. "You mean a real canary bird?" "Yes, a live one." "But what the crickets do they need a canary bird for?" "To give them a pointer as to when the air is bad. You see, Eric, there's all sorts of different kinds of poisonous gases in coal mines. Some you can spot right off, but there's others you can't." "I thought gas was just gas," Eric answered, "'damp,' don't they call it?" "There's several different 'damps.' Take 'fire damp' or just plain 'gas' as the miners call it. That's really methane, marsh gas, the same stuff that makes the will-o'-the-wisp you can see dancing around over a marsh. It'll explode, all right, but there's got to be a lot of it around before much damage'll be done. 'Fire damp' is like a rattlesnake, he's a gentleman." "How do you mean?" queried the boy. "Well, just the same way that a rattler'll never strike before giving you warning, 'fire damp' always gives you a chance ahead of time." "How?" "You know every miner carries a safety lamp?" "Yes." "'Fire damp' makes a sort of little cap over the flame of the lamp, like a small sugar-loaf hat. As soon as a miner sees this, he knows that there's enough 'gas' around to make it dangerous. As it's a gas that it doesn't do much harm to breathe, you see he can always make a get-away. Isn't that being a gentleman, all right?" "Yes, I guess it is." "Then there's 'black damp.' That's ordinary carbon dioxide, or carbonic acid gas." "Isn't that just the stuff we breathe out?" questioned Eric. "Exactly," his former schoolmate replied. "In an old mine, though, you've got to remember, nearly all the oxygen is absorbed by the coal. That gives a lot less chance for a leak of carbonic acid gas to mix with enough oxygen to keep the air pure. For 'black damp' though, the lamp's a good guide again. When a miner sees that his lamp is beginning to burn dim, it's a sign the air's short of oxygen." "Of course," said Eric, "we used to have that experiment in our high school chemistry." "We did. But do you remember just how much oxygen a lamp has to have?" "No," the boy was forced to admit, "I've plumb forgot." "A safety lamp will go right out with less than seventeen per cent. of oxygen, while a man can live fairly comfortably on fifteen or sixteen per cent. So the flickering out of a lamp is a sure sign that the danger line's not far off." "It's a gentleman, too, then," said Eric with a laugh. "Yes," the other assented dubiously, "but there's less margin. Now, 'white damp,' or carbon monoxide, is a horse of a different color. That's the real danger, Eric. Pretty nearly all the cases of poisoning in mines are due to 'white damp.' Just the other day, in Pennsylvania, two hundred men were killed--whouf!--just like blowing out a match. But 'white damp' hasn't got any effect on the flame of a safety lamp. If anything, it may hit it up even a trifle brighter. So the lamp isn't any good. That's where the mice come in." "Mice? I thought you said canaries!" "We use both mice and canaries. When you haven't got a canary, take a mouse." "Which is the better?" "Canary! 'White damp' catches him quicker. That means he gives an earlier warning. A canary will fall off his perch in four minutes when the air's only got one-fifth of one per cent, of 'white damp.'" "And how long could a fellow stand that much of the gas?" "About ten minutes, without being really put to the bad, though twenty minutes of it would make him mighty sick. You see, that gives a party six minutes clear before any harm's done. Any time a canary gives a warning, if the miners turn back right then and there, nobody'd be hurt. Isn't that a great little alarm, though?" "It is that," Eric agreed. "But what happens to the canary?" "Oh, he comes around again in about five minutes. If a bird gets too much 'white damp,' though, he loses some of his value, because he gets immune and can stand almost ten minutes. So you see, Eric, the 'yellow machine with feathers' can be a real help sometimes." [Illustration: A BEACON MASKED IN ICE. Racine Reef Light, in the Great Lakes, where navigation has perils unknown to the open sea. Courtesy of U.S. Bureau of Lighthouses.] "Great!" said Eric, "I'll always look at a canary with respect after this. But I've been taking you away from the yarn, Ed, with all my questions. You were telling about the drill." "So I was. Well, as soon as all the men are fitted up and the teams are ready, a signal is given. All the men are examined for their general health, their heart, pulse, breathing and all that sort of thing, and then they are made to get into the special helmet and sent into a smoke-house filled with the worst kind of fumes. They have to be there ten minutes. When they come out, the doctor examines them again. If any man shows poor condition, his team is penalized. "Then all the lights are fixed up and examined, and there's a sure enough penalty if any one slips up on the lamp test. After that, a team is sent on the run to fetch a miner who is supposed to be lying unconscious in a working. No one knows where he is. The team to find him quickest and bring him back counts one point. Then the unconscious man is supposed to be revived. The team that does that best gets another point and so on." "Real first-aid stuff," said Eric. "You bet. We question the miners swiftly on accidents and they have to know bandaging and everything else. Running stretchers in a working that's only three feet or three feet six high isn't any joke." "Are the galleries as small as that?" said Eric in surprise. "How can you stand up?" "You can't. In lots of mines the men work all day long and never get a chance to straighten their backs. Then, in a really big drill, a miner is supposed to be imprisoned by a fall of roof. The team has to find him, to inspect the roof, to show how it should be timbered, and to put out a supposed fire in one of the workings. I tell you, a man who has a certificate from the Bureau of Mines as a trained mine-rescue man is trained all right. It was in one of those drills that I got hurt." "Oh," cried Eric, disappointed, "I thought it was a real accident!" "It was," his friend answered. "I said it was during a drill, not at one. It was in Central Pennsylvania. The contest was going ahead in good shape, when a chap came tearing down the road in a wagon, his horses on the gallop. "'Explosion in the Eglinton, Shaft Three!' he called as soon as he got within hearing. 'There's hundreds of men caught!' "Everybody looked at me. I wasn't a government man, and I was only there because I had trained most of the teams. I'm willing enough to be the whole thing, but after all I've got some gumption, and I wasn't going to take hold of something that needed an experienced man's handling. There was one old operator there, on one of the judging committees. He'd been watching me closely. 'Mr. Barnett,' I said hurriedly, 'will you take charge?' "I tell you, Eric, you should have seen his face change! He jumped forward with a cheer. With a word here, an order there, in two minutes' time he had that wagon off again with two rescue teams fully equipped, himself leading, and I was heading all the rest of the men on a steady dog-trot to the place. Old man Barnett was a leader, all right! "When we got to the mine shaft, it was surrounded by women, some crying, but most of them silent. The two rescue crews had been working like fiends, and work was needed, too. "I didn't see how I could be much use, anyway. The miners were 'way ahead of me. I haven't had enough experience underground. Just the same, as soon as Barnett saw me, he shouted, "'Down with you, boy!' and down I had to go. "As I passed him, I said, "'Mr. Barnett, I don't know much about the practical end of this!' "'I know ye don't,' he answered grimly, 'ye don't have to. But men always need a leader. Get on down!' "As soon as the bucket rattled me to the bottom of the shaft, I fixed on my apparatus, ready to start with the rest of my team. I'd been through that mine once and the comment I'd heard at the pit mouth had told me where the trouble was, so we started off boldly. "We went 'way in and met one of the parties coming out with a stretcher. We were near enough to make signs to them, just visible in the dull gloom of dimly burning safety lamps when, woof! down came a mass of roof. I saw it coming and dodged back, but not quite in time, for a chunk of coal caught my shoulder. It twisted me round so that I fell with my left arm stretched out, and then a big chunk rolled full on me, just above the wrist." "Broke it?" "Yes, quite a nasty smash,--a comminuted fracture, the doctor called it. My boys snaked that coal off and got me up in a hurry, but the party with the stretcher was cut off. That fall of the roof had choked up the passage solid. The men were already at work at it, using their pickaxes like demons. Seeing I couldn't do any good with a broken arm, I ran back for reënforcements." "Didn't your arm hurt like blazes?" "I suppose it did, but I don't remember noticing it much at the time. I got back to the mine entrance and steered another gang to where the cave-in had occurred. But what do you suppose I found when we got there?" "What?" called Eric, excitedly. "My men were poisoned!" "How?" "White damp." "You mean they were dead?" exclaimed the boy, horror-stricken. "No, they were all at work," said the other, "but they were pickaxing the rock in a listless sort of way that I recognized at once. You see, I'd done quite a bit of reading along those lines--Dad was so keen on it--so I could tell at once that they'd had a dose of carbon monoxide, and a bad dose at that. "'Come back, boys!' I cried. 'Come back! The place is full of 'white damp'! "But they were a plucky lot of fellows. Their comrades were entombed on the other side of the cave-in and they wouldn't quit. And all the while they were breathing in the fumes." "So were you!" exclaimed Eric. "Yes, but I wasn't working. I couldn't do much, with my arm all smashed up, and so I wasn't breathing in as deeply and taking in as much of that stuff as they were. I urged them to come back, but they were Americans, and wouldn't give in as long as there was any hope of rescue. "Then I ordered them back. I think they thought I was crazy. I picked up a shovel and threatened to smash it across the face of the first man who didn't follow orders. They grumbled, but, after all, they'd been well trained and they knew that they had to do what the leader ordered. The second gang that had come up had its own leader, you see, and he told them to go on. That made my men all the harder to handle, but I brought them back. "Just as we got near the mine entrance, one of the men collapsed. That gave me an awful scare. I sent one of the men up to tell Barnett, while I ran back into the workings." "What for?" "To try to get that second gang back, anyway." "But wasn't it an awful chance to take, to go back into that stuff?" "Who bothers about chances?" exclaimed the other. "But I took the canary!" "Well?" "I wasn't more than half-way to the gang when the bird began to quiver and just as I reached them, it fell off the perch. I held out the cage. That was all the proof I needed." "'Guess the kid's right,' the foreman of the gang said. 'Go back, boys.' "They raised a howl with him the same way that my own men did with me. But he was an old-timer, and without wasting any words, he smashed the foremost of the workers across the jaw. Under a torrent of abuse, the men fell back. I was half-way to the entrance when everything turned black before me. Next thing I knew, I was in the Mine Superintendent's house with a trained nurse." "White damp?" queried Eric. "That's what the doctor said." "What happened to the imprisoned bunch?" "Old Man Barnett had just reached the entrance to the working with a large rescue party all equipped with breathing apparatus, when I collapsed. He got the trapped men out." "I should think they'd have been poisoned for fair," said Eric. "Not a bit of it," his friend replied. "The leak of white damp had all come on the outside of the roof-fall, and there was hardly any of it on the other side. Some of the men were pretty weak from lack of air and that sort of thing, but not seriously hurt. It was the rescuers who suffered." "How was that, Ed?" "Three of the five men who were in my gang died," said the other mournfully. "Great guns! Died?" "Yes," the young miner said, "poor fellows, they went under. Another man and I were the only ones who got over it." "Died in saving others! That's sure tough!" There was a pause, and Eric added, "What got you two clear?" "The other chap had been lying full length on the ground, while working, and as white damp rises, he had breathed less of the gas than the others. I wasn't able to work, so I didn't have to breathe deep." He looked down at his broken arm. "It's a queer thing," he said, "but it was breaking my arm that saved my life." CHAPTER IV SNATCHED FROM A FROZEN DEATH "Father! Father! What do you think?" cried Eric, bursting into the sitting room at breakfast one morning, a couple of weeks after his encounter with his young mining friend, "I'm going into the Life-Saving work right away!" "What's the excitement?" his father asked, speaking for the rest of the family. "Cool down a bit, my boy, and tell us all about it." "I've--I've just got a letter from the Captain Commandant," replied Eric, fairly stuttering in his haste to tell the good news, "and he says I can enlist in one of the lake stations until the close of navigation. I'll get some real practical training that way, he says, and then I can take up prep. work for the Academy all winter." In view of the fact that there had been considerable correspondence between the ruling head of the Coast Guard and Mr. Swift, the old inspector was less surprised than the boy expected. Not for the world would the lad's father have let him think that there had been any consultation about this plan. He wanted the boy to have the sense of being "on his own"! "I remember now," he said, "you said something about writing along that line a couple of weeks ago." "I did write, Father, I did want so awfully to get a chance. But I hardly believed that they'd actually let me do it." "I don't see why they wouldn't. After all you told me about your swimming, they ought to have made a special bid for you," he added smiling. "You don't mind my going, do you?" "I'm perfectly willing, my boy," his father said. "I'm sufficiently on to your curves, Eric, to know that it isn't much use trying to pin you down to books while there are a few weeks of summer left. You'll be out of mischief at a Coast Guard station, that's one sure thing. I think I'll take you out to meet old Icchia, the veteran of the Lakes. He holds the record for one of the most sensational rescues in the history of the service. I've often heard your Uncle Jim tell the story, but I won't spoil the yarn for you by telling it myself, I'll let Icchia do that." "When can we go to see him, Father?" The old inspector smiled at his son's enthusiasm. "It happens that I've got to start off on an inspection trip to-morrow, which will take me away for a week or so," he answered, "so, if you have no other plans, we might go to-day." "I'll get ready now!" cried Eric, jumping up from the table. "You'll do nothing of the kind," his father said rebukingly, while his mother smiled at the boy's impetuosity, "we won't go until after lunch, that is--if you can wait so long!" "All right, but isn't it bully!" and, unable to contain himself, Eric launched into a panegyric of the Life-Saving Service, most of the history of which he knew by heart. The lad's excitement increased tenfold when, that afternoon, they approached the little cottage of the old keeper. It was right on the seashore in an outlying suburb looking out over the peaceful stretch of Lake St. Clair. "Mr. Icchia," said the old inspector, after greetings had been exchanged, "my boy here is going to join one of the lake stations and, to give him an idea of what the service can do, I want you to tell him the story of that night off Chocolay Island." "It's a deal like beatin' a big drum," began the old keeper in a quavering voice, "to bid an ol' fellow like me tell of his own doin's!" "But you're not doing it to show off," Mr. Swift said, "I wouldn't ask you to do that. It's because I know you think a good deal of the Service that I wanted my boy to meet you, and to hear a real story of life-saving told by one of the men who was in it." "It wasn't so much at that--" the old man began. But the lighthouse inspector interrupted. "Spin the yarn, Icchia," he said, "it's a poor trick to make a lot of excuses! Besides, it spoils the story." Now the old keeper had a firm belief in his own value as a story-teller and it piqued his pride to have it thought that he was spoiling a good yarn, so without further preamble he began. "I don' know what the world is comin' to," he said, after he had filled his pipe and lit it, "but there's no sech winters to-day as there was in my young days. I kin remember, when I wasn't no older'n that bub there, there was more snow in one winter 'n we have in five, now; an' Lake Huron was always friz up. Life-savin' was a lot harder in them days, ye'd better believe me, an' not only in the winter but all year round." "Why?" asked the boy. "There wasn't no sech lights then as there is now, for one thing, an' a skipper had to keep his eyes peeled an' his lead goin'. An', for 'nother thing, in the days I'm talkin' of, they was mostly all sailin' craft. Now I'm not sayin' nothin' in favor of steamers--I was raised on an ol'-time clipper. I will say that when a gale ain't too bad, a steamer kin handle herself more easy-like 'n a sailin' craft, when there ain't but a little seaway. But when she's blowin' good an' strong, an' the gale's got more heft 'n a steamer's screws, what use is her machines to her?" "Not much," said the boy. "Ye're sayin' it," the old keeper continued. "An' in the ol' days, when steamers first run on the Lakes, they weren't no such boats as ye see now. Our worst wrecks in them days were the steamers. This one, that your pappy wants me to tell ye 'bout, was a steamer an' a three-masted fore-an'-after she had in tow. "This yarn I'm a spinnin' reely begins down at Marquette Breakwater. It was on the seventeenth day of November, an', let me see, it must have been in 'eighty-six, the same year my youngest was born. The winter had broke in early that year, not with any reel stormy weather, but jest a bunch o' pesky squalls. An' cold! We was in the boat mighty near every day, an' I used ter forget what bein' warm felt like. There was allers somethin' hittin' a shoal or tryin' to make a hole in the beach. It was squally an' shiftin', ye see. An' the mush-ice set in early." [Illustration: WRECKS! AND THE ICE BETWEEN! Steamer ashore near St. Joseph, Mich., under conditions all but impossible for life-saving, yet not a soul was lost. Courtesy of U.S. Bureau of Lighthouses.] "What's mush-ice?" interrupted Eric. "Mush-ice," said the old keeper, "is a mixture of frozen spray, an' ice, an' bits o' drift, an' everythin' that kin freeze or be friz over, pilin' up on the beach. It's floatin', ye understan', an', as a rule, 'bout two or three foot thick. Owin' to the movin' o' the water, it don't never freeze right solid, but the surf on the beach breaks it into bits anywheres from the size of 'n apple to a keg. An' it joggles up 'n' down, 'n' the pieces grin' agin each other. It's jest a seesawin' edge o' misery on a frozen beach." "That's as bad as Alaska!" exclaimed the boy. "It's a plumb sight worse," the other answered. "I ain't never been no further north 'n Thunder Cape, jest by Nipigon. An' what's more, I ain't goin'! But even up there, the ice freezes solid 'n' you kin do somethin' with it. Mush-ice never gits solid, but like some sort o' savage critter born o' the winter, champs its jaws of ice, waitin' for its prey." "How do you like that, Eric?" asked his father. "That's some of the 'fun' you're always talking about." "Can't scare me, Dad," replied Eric with a laugh. "I'm game." "Ye'll need all yer gameness," put in the old life-saver. "Wait till ye hear the end o' the yarn! As I was sayin', it was in November. The fust big storm o' the winter broke sudden. I never see nothin' come on so quick. It bust right out of a snow-squall, 'n' the glass hadn' given no warnin'. We wa'n't expectin' trouble an' it was all we c'd do to save the boats. Ye couldn't stand up agin it, an' what wasn't snow an' sleet, was spray. "All mornin' the gale blew, an' in the middle o' the afternoon the breakwater went to bits. The keepers o' the light at the end o' the breakwater lighted the lantern, 'n' you take my word for it, they were takin' their lives in their hands in doin' it. Jest half 'n hour later, the whole shebang, light, lighthouse, 'n' the end o' the breakwater, went flyin' down to leeward in a heap o' metal 'n splinters. "Jest about that time, some folks down Chocolay way, lookin' out to sea, took a notion they saw what looked like white ghosts o' ships 'way out on the bar. She was jest blowin' tiger cats with the claws out! 'Twa'n't a day for no Atlantic greyhound to be out, much less a small boat. But I tell ye, boy, when there's lives to be saved, there's allers some Americans 'round that's goin' to have a try at it. Over the ice 'n' through the gale, eight men helpin', the fishermen o' Chocolay carried a yawl an' life-lines to the point o' the beach nearest the wreck. Four men clumb into her." "Without cork-jackets or anything?" asked Eric. "Without nothin' but a Michigan man's spunk. Well, siree, those four men clumb into that yawl, an' a bunch of others jumped into the mush-ice an' toted her 'way out to clear water. With a yell, the fisherman put her nose inter the gale an' pulled. But it wa'n't no use. No yawl what was ever made could have faced that sea. The spray friz in the air as it come, an' the men were pelted with pieces of jagged ice, mighty near as big 's a bob-cherry. Afore they was ten feet away from the mush, a sea come over 'n' half filled the boat. It wa'n't no use much ter bail, for it friz as soon's it struck. They hadn't shipped more'n four seas when the weight of ice on the boat begun to sink her." "Fresh water, of course," said Eric. "It would freeze quickly. I hadn't thought of that." "In spite o' the ice," continued the veteran of seventy Lake winters, "two o' the men were for goin' on, but the oldest man o' the crowd made 'em turn back. He was only jest in time, for as the yawl got back to the edge o' the mush she went down." "Sank?" "Jest like as if she was made o' lead." "And the men?" asked the boy eagerly. "They was all right. I told you it was nigh the beach. The crowd got to the yawl 'n' pulled her up on shore. They burned a flare to let 'em know aboard the wrecks that they was bein' helped an' to hold out a hope o' rescue, but there wasn't no answer. Only once in a great while could any one on shore see those ghosts o' ships 'way out on the bar. An' every time the snow settled down, it was guessin' if they'd be there next time it cleared away, or not. "Seein' that there was nothin' doin' with the yawl, the crowd reckoned on callin' us in to the deal. We was the nearest life-savin' station to Chocolay bar, an' we was over a hundred miles away." "A hundred miles!" "All o' that an' more. We was on Ship Island, six miles from Houghton. As I was sayin', seein' that nothin' could be done from their end, Cap'n John Frink, master of a tug, hiked off to the telegraph office at Marquette, 'n' called up Houghton. That's a hundred 'n' ten miles off, by rail. He told 'em o' the wrecks 'n' said he thought as we could get 'em off if we could come right down. The wires were down between Houghton 'n' Ship Islan' and there wa'n't no way o' lettin' us know. The operators sent word all over, to try an' get a message to us, an' mighty soon nigh everybody on the peninsula knowed that we'd been sent for. "The skipper of a big tug in Houghton heard about it, jest as he was goin' to bed. He come racin' down to the wharf an' rousted out the crew. His engineer was still on board an' they got steam up like winkin'. The gale was blowin' even worse up our way, but the old tug snorted into it jest the same. Out into the dark an' the snow an' the storm she snubbed along, tootin' her whistle like as if it were the Day of Jedgment. An' if it had been," continued the old man in parenthesis, "no one would've known it in that storm!" "When did you see the tug?" queried the boy. "Couldn't see nothin'," was the answer, "we jest heard that ol' whistle toot. One o' the men guessed it was the big tug all right an' wondered if she was ashore somewheres with a tow. But, fust thing we know, she come up out o' the muck o' snow an' sleet an' the ol' skipper bellered to us through a speakin'-trumpet that he was come to take us to a wreck. We snaked the gear on to that tug in about half no time, takin' the big surf-boat an' all the apparatus. The tug was a blowin' off steam, like as if she was connected to a volcaner. I tell you there must have been some fire under them boilers. An' when we started--I'm an old hand, boy, but I'm tellin' ye that I never thought to see Houghton. The ol' skipper sent that tug through at racin' speed like as if it was a moonlight summer night an' he had all the sea-room in a couple of oceans. "'Air ye goin' to stop at Houghton?' I asks him, sort o' sarcastic, 'or are ye gittin' up speed enough to run on a mile or two after ye hit the shore?' "'Don't ye worry,' he said, with a short laugh, 'ye c'n tie my ears an' eyes up doorin' a hurricane, 'n' I can smell my way to port!' "An' I'm tellin' ye he did. Without nary a light nor nothin' to guide him--for the snow was worse 'n any fog--he went full speed ahead. An' when he tinkled that little telegraph bell to the engine room, I was wonderin' if he was within ten miles o' the place. But as that craft slowed down, ye can b'lieve me or not 's you like, she glided up to her own pier like as if it was a ferry-boat in a dead calm. "'I've got to hand it to you, Cap'n,' I says to him, 'I wouldn't ha' believed it unless I seen it.' "'That's my end,' say the cap'n, 'I know my work, same's you know yours. I'm bettin' my pile on you fellers makin' good 'most any ol' time.' Made me feel good, all right." "It sure does make a difference," put in Eric, "when you know that people have confidence in you." "Right you are, boy," said the old keeper, and continued his story. "That pier was jest a mass o' folks, thick as they c'd stand. An' when they saw the tug with us on board, they cheered, 'n' cheered, 'n' cheered. There was a dozen to grab the lines 'n' make 'em fast, 'n' before she was even tied up, a mob grabbed our boat an' apparatus an' rushed it to the railroad. "While we was a-comin' over the strait, the superintendent o' the railroad division was got up, 'n' told all about the wreck. He was a spry man, too, 'n' by the time the tug was in, he had orders out to clear the track 'n' a special train was waitin' in the station. She was ready fitted up with a couple of open cars for the boat an' apparatus, an' one coach for us. "They didn't let us touch nothin'. "'Keep your strength, men,' the superintendent said to the crew, 'my boys will put your stuff aboard.' "They did. That boat an' the apparatus an' everything else was aboard that special, jest about as quick as we could climb into the cars. We had a special train all right! She jest whizzed along that track, not worryin' about nothin'. Signals didn't matter, for the track had been cleared in advance. The superintendent had come on the train with us. He'd wired ahead to Marquette, an' when we slowed up there was another bunch in the station to welcome us. The train was covered in ice an' snow, an' the front of the locomotive looked like a dummy engine made out o' plaster o' Paris. "The station was alive with men, all just on edge with waitin'. They had sleighs but no horses, the footin' was too bad. An' so the boat an' the apparatus-car was put on the sleighs, an' the men dragged it along themselves at a whole of a clip! They wouldn't even let us walk, but toted us along in a sleigh, too." "Why?" asked Eric. "To keep us from bein' tired. We needed all the strength we had. An' we made good time, I'm tellin' ye. They carried out the boat an' the cart to the beach an' then their end of it was done. It was up to us, now. An' I tell ye, I was anxious. There was somethin' mighty thrillin' in that wild train ride through the night. I've often run big chances in a boat, but this was different-like. Usooally no one knows what we're doin', but this time, the news was bein' flashed all over the country. "When we actooally got on the beach it didn't look so bad. The boats were lyin' right on the bar 'bout two hundred 'n' fifty foot, off shore. We rigged the gun, loaded her, 'n' fired. I dropped a line jest abaft the pilot-house, where we figured the men must be waitin'. It was a good shot an' I reckoned that there wa'n't goin' to be no trouble at all. It heartened me right up. We'd got there in time, an' first crack out o' the box, there was a line, right across the steamer. The path o' rescue had been made! "But there was one thing I hadn't figured on." "What was that?" queried Eric excitedly. "The weather 'n' the cold. The seas had come up, over 'n' over that steamer, ontil the decks were one straight glare of ice. There wa'n't nothin' a man could get hold of. If a sailor stepped out on that ice, he couldn't stand, for she was heelin' over to port like the side of a hill. An' the lee bulwark was torn away. Worst of all, the waves kep' a dashin' over 'n' over without stoppin'. Our line wa'n't more'n fifteen feet from the pilot-house, but no one couldn' get to that line without bein' washed off. "In a way, we'd done all that was necessary. We'd dropped a line where they'd ought to be able to get it. We couldn't know there wa'n't no way for 'em to do it. But when the minutes went by 'n' there was no sign from the steamer, it begun to look bad. If it hadn't been for the ice on the decks they was as good as rescued, but with the way it was, they wa'n't no better off, even with rescue fifteen feet away, than when our crew was a hundred miles off in Ship Island. There wa'n't nothin' for us to do but tackle the job ourselves. [Illustration: LAYING THE LYLE GUN. Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.] [Illustration: FIRING THE SHOT AND LINE. Note line being paid out from the faking-box. This shot carried a sixth of a mile. Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.] "The fishermen, the ones that had been out in the yawl, came aroun' an' said it couldn't be done. My coxswain agreed it couldn't be done, but we'd do it just the same." "And you?" asked the boy. "I jest started gettin' the boat ready," the old keeper said, simply. "It was 'way after midnight, reckon it was nearly one o'clock, an', if anything, the sea was wilder. An' I felt nothin' so cold afore in all my life. The women o' Chocolay, they was out that night, bringin' steamin mugs o' coffee. There's a deal o' credit comin' to them, too, the way I look at it." "I don't see that they could have done much less," said Eric. "Maybe aye, maybe no," said the veteran, "but I reckon, no matter how little a woman does, the right kind o' man's goin' to think it's a lot. Well, as I was sayin', I turned to the boys to launch the boat. We got hold of her by the rails an' waded in through the mush-ice, same as the fishermen had done. I tell you, it guv me a big sense o' pride in men like our Michigan fishermen when I tackled what they'd tackled. They hadn't no cork-jackets, and they wa'n't rigged up for it. Their boat wa'n't built for no such work but they didn't stop to think o' their own lives or their own boat. An' a fisherman's boat, like's not, is all he's got to make a livin' with. It makes a man feel good to think there's other men like that! "That mush reached two hundred yards f'm land. I don't know how them fisher chaps ever got through the ice at all. It took us nigh half 'n hour to make the last hundred yards. When the water deepened so's we could get into the boat, every man's clothes was drenched an' they friz right on to him. Every time we dipped the oars in that mush they'd stick, 'n' onless we'd pulled 'em out mighty fast they'd have friz right there. 'Bout every ten yards we had to chop the oar-locks free of ice an' the only part of our slickers what wa'n't friz was where the muscles was playin'. The cox'n, he looked like one of them petrified men ye read about. "At last we got through the mush. All the way through it, with the load o' floatin' ice 'n' muck, the sea wa'n't tossin' much. But jest the very minute we got clear of it an' started out, the sea hit us fair. I was pullin' stroke an' it didn't git me so hard, but the cox'n, who was facin' bow, got it full. The wind was dead ahead an' the sea was a-tumblin' in as if there wa'n't no land between us an' the North Pole. "The blades o' the oars got covered with ice, makin' 'em round, like poles, instead of oars, an' we couldn't get no purchase. I hit up the stroke a bit, exhaustin' though it was, 'n' maybe we made about twenty feet further. She was self-bailin' or we'd ha' been swamped right away. Every sea that come aboard left a layer of ice, makin' her heavier to handle. Then, suddenly, along comes a sea, bigger'n any before, an' it takes that lifeboat 'n' chucks us back on the mush-ice, bang! The shock smashes the rudder 'n' puts us out o' business. I forces the boat ashore for repairs. "'Too bad,' says the railroad superintendent, to me; 'for a minute, there, I thought you were going to make it.' "'We jest are goin' to make it,' says I, 'if we have to swim!' "Then one o' those fisher chaps had a good idee. While we was a-fixin' up the rudder an' gittin' ready for another trip, the rest o' the crowd chops the ice off'n the boat, 'n' off'n the oars. Then this fisher chap I was a tellin' about, he comes back with a can of tallow an' smears that thick all over the boat an' the oars an' our slickers an' near everything that he c'd find to put a bit o' tallow on." "What was that for?" queried Eric. "So as the water'd run off, o' course," the old man answered. "It worked, too. In about twenty minutes we was off again, in the mush-ice, jest as afore. We hadn't had no chance to get warm, an' our clothes was wet an' friz. I thought sure some o' the men would be frost-bit. But I guess we was all too tough. "The second trip started jest the same. As soon as we got out o' the ice a breaker come along 'n' hove that boat 'way up, 'n' then chucked it back on the ice, smashin' the new rudder same's the old one. "I wa'n't goin' to have no monkey-business with rudders any more, 'n' I yelled to Brown, he was the cox'n, "'Take 'n oar, Bill!' "He grabs a spare oar 'n' does all he knows how to steer with that. Again we druv our oars into it an' got out o' the ice, 'n' again it threw us back. We did that five times 'n' then one of the fellers got hurt, when his oar struck a chunk of ice, 'n' we went ashore again. I reckon we'd been at it nigh four hours, then." "I suppose you hadn't any trouble finding a volunteer?" the boy said. "We could ha' got nigh every man on the beach. But we took one o' the fishermen who had gone out on his own hook afore. If we was goin' to do any savin' it was on'y fair he should have a share o' the credit. An' then, any chap who was willin' to resk his life in a bit of a yawl in that weather was worth puttin' in a boat. "So we'd had to make three starts afore we really got away an' clear o' the ice. I never see no such gale in all my days. It was an hour an' more, steady pullin' with every pound o' muscle in the crew, before we got in reach o' the tug. An' then, when we was right up on her, there wa'n't one man aboard who come out to catch a line. We found out why, arterwards. The gale took us by her like we was racin', 'n' the boys had to work like Sam Patch to get back. I guess it took nigh half 'n hour to creep up to wind'ard of her again. "One o' my crew, a young fellow from Maine, as lively a little grig as ever I see, volunteered to board her. We ran under her bow, an' somehow or other he clumb up on board, I swear I don't see how he ever done it, an' snaked a line round her funnel. I went aboard an' one other o' the crew, a man we used to call Ginger. "Then we found out why the men aboard the steamer hadn't come out to pick up our line. The door o' the pilot-house was smothered in ice, more'n an inch thick. Every window was friz in. We was sure up against it. We couldn't stand on the glassy deck, 'n' there was no way to get the men out. The surf-boat was a-ridin' twenty fathom behind, we'd let her out on a long line, an' there was another cold wait while we hauled her up an' got an ax out of her. We lashed ourselves fast or we'd ha' gone over the side, sure. "When Ginger, who was an old lumber-jack, gits the ax, he slides along to the pilot-house, an' starts to chop. He'd been choppin' jest about a minute when along comes a sea, smashes one o' the ventilators an' hurls it along the deck. The cussed thing hits Ginger jest as he's swingin' the ax, 'n' sweeps him overboard. "The crew in the surf-boat see him go an' they cast off the line an' picked him up. But, with two men shy, it was a full hour afore the boat worked back to place to catch our line. They must ha' pulled like fiends to git thar at all. By the time they'd made it, we'd managed to get through that door an' the crew o' the tug was ready to be taken in the boat. It was jest six hours from the time we landed on the beach at Chocolay before we got the first man ashore." "And the crew of the schooner?" queried the boy. "We got them off without no trouble. They was sailors! We jest hove a line aboard 'n' got 'em into the boat. They hadn't suffered much. The schooner was higher on the shoal 'n the tug, bein' lighter, 'n' the men'd been able to stay below. They'd kep' a couple o' lookouts on the job, relievin' 'em every hour shipshape and Bristol fashion." "How many men did you rescue?" the boy asked. "Nine men from the steamer 'n' six from the schooner. It was nigh eight in the mornin' before they was all ashore, drinkin' coffee an' gittin' eats. The women o' the commoonity was still on the job. I'm doubtin' if we could ha' ever made it without somethin' like that. We wa'n't any too soon, neither." "Why not?" "In less 'n an hour after we got 'em ashore the tug capsized 'n' went to pieces. The old schooner stood it out better, but she was pretty much a wreck, too, when the weather cleared. We'd our work to do, 'n' we done it. Jest the same, I've allers had a feelin' as if there was as much to be said for the fishermen, 'n' the train-hands, 'n' the cap'n o' the tug, 'n' all the rest that j'ined in. "It's the biggest rescue on the lakes, but there's nothin' more wonderful in it to me than the way it shows how everybody gets in 'n' gives a hand when help is needed. Don't ye ever forget, in times o' need, that ye've only got ter call, 'n' some one's goin' to hear. An' ye're like enough ter need help in the life-savin' business. I ain't saying as storms is as bad now as they was, but there's enough of 'em still ter keep any crew right on the jump." "I'll remember, Mr. Icchia," the boy replied, "and I'll be mighty proud if I can ever do half as well. I'm proud enough, now, just to be given the chance." The old man knocked the ashes from his pipe on his horny and weather-beaten hand and answered, "As long as there's life-savin' to be done, there's goin' ter be life-savers to do it. I don' hold with none o' this nonsense ye hear sometimes about the world gittin' worse. If ever I did get that idee, I'd only have to go 'n' look at a surf-boat, 'n' I'd know different. It's a good world, boy, 'n' the goodness don't lay in tryin' to be a hero, but jest in plain bein' a man." [Illustration: GOLD LIFE-SAVING MEDAL. Given only in recognition of heroism wherein loss of life was risked by the rescuer. Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.] CHAPTER V SAVED BY THE BREECHES-BUOY The last words of the old keeper, "Goodness don't lay in tryin' to be a hero, but jest in plain bein' a man," rang through Eric's mind, many and many a day after, when, on his own Coast Guard station, he had to face some difficulty. His post chanced to be in a somewhat sheltered spot, and thus gave him an opportunity to become a good oarsman. His work with the volunteer corps had made him a first-class swimmer and a fair boatman. The government service, however, he found to be a very different matter. There, efficiency had to be carried to the highest degree. He snatched every opportunity, too, to get ahead with his studies, and luck came his way in a most unexpected shape. It happened that quite near the Coast Guard station was the hut of a queer old hermit sort of fellow, called "Dan." He had been a life-saver many years before, but in a daring rescue had injured his back, and could never enter a boat again. In those days there were no pensions, so for forty years and more he had made a living by inventing riddles and puzzles, tricks of various kinds, and clever Christmas toys. His especial hobby was mathematical puzzles. He used to drop into the station quite frequently, for he was very popular with the men. "Dan," said Eric to him one day, "I don't see how you can be so interested in that stuff. It's the bane of my life. I'm nailing as hard as I can to try and get in shape for a Coast Guard exam., and I simply can't get hold of the mathematics end of it." "Why for not?" "Don't know enough, I guess," the boy answered. "I'm right up on everything but mathematics, but that gets me every time. I know there's some sense in it, but I can't see it. Everything else I've got to study I can find some interest in, but mathematics is as dull as ditch-water. How you can find any fun in it, I can't see!" This was like telling a painter that color had no emotion, or a scientist that science had no reasonableness. The old puzzle-maker gasped. "No fun!" he exclaimed. "It is the mos' fun in the world. I show you!" Pulling from his pocket a pencil and an old envelope he drew a baseball diamond, and marked the positions of the players. Eric's interest arose at once, for he was a keen baseball fan. As the sketch grew the old man talked, describing a queer entanglement of play. "Now!" said the old man, "what shall he do?" The boy, judging from his knowledge of the game, made a suggestion, which the other negatived. As soon as the boy made a guess, the other showed him to be wrong. Eric, really interested in the baseball problem, cudgelled his brains, but could find no way out. "I show you!" the old man repeated. Using a very simple rule of algebra, which the boy knew quite well, but giving an application he never would have thought of, Dan brought the solution in a second. Hardly believing that mere mathematics could be of any service in a baseball game, Eric tested the result. It was exactly as the old man had said. "Gee," he said, "that's great!" The puzzle-maker smiled, and showed him how mass-play in football was a matter of science, not strength, and how lacrosse was a question of trajectory. "Not only in games," he said. "'Rithmetic, geometry--in everything. You know Muldoon." "Sure I know Muldoon," the boy said. "Have you seen him shoot?" "With the Lyle gun, you mean? Isn't he a dandy at it?" "That is what I would say," the old man continued. "How does he fire him?" "Why, he just fires it! No," he corrected himself, "he doesn't either. I see what you're driving at. That's right, I did see him doing some figuring the other day." "I teach Muldoon," said the old man. "I show him how to tell how much wind, how to tell how far away a ship, how to tell when a line is heavy or light. He figure everything, then fire. Bang! And the line to bring the drowning men home falls right over the ship. It is?" "It is, all right," the boy agreed. "Muldoon gets there every time. I always thought he just aimed the gun, sort of naturally." "It is all mathematics," said the old man. "You have guns in the Coast Guard?" "Rapid-fire six-pounders," the boy answered. "At least I know that's what the _Itasca's_ got. She's the practice-ship at New London, you know." "Do you have to learn gunnery?" "Rather," said the lad. "Every breed of gunnery that there is. You know a Coast Guard cutter becomes a part of the navy in time of war, so an officer has got to know just as much about big guns as an officer in the navy. He might have to take his rank on a big battleship if the United States was at war. You bet I'll have to learn gunnery. That ought to be heaps of fun." "But gunnery is ballistics," the old man said. "And ballistics is trigonometry. Big gun is fired by figuring, not by looking." "I'm only afraid," the lad replied, "that I'll never have a chance at the big gun. Everywhere I go, it's nothing but figuring. And I simply can't get figures into my head." "You really want to learn?" "You bet I do," said Eric. "I'm working like a tinker at the stuff every chance I get, but I don't seem to get the hang of it somehow." "If you come to me, I teach you." "Teach me all I want to know?" said the boy in amazement. The old man shook his head. "Teach you to want to know all you have to know. Teach you to like figures." Eric looked at him a minute. "All right, Dan," he said, "I'll go you. I've still got some of the money I saved up from my work this summer and I was going to spend part of it on tutoring this winter, anyway. I'll tutor under you, whenever I'm off duty, and if you can teach me to like figures, you're a good one. Any way, your cottage is so near that I can get right on the job if the station calls." True to his word, a few days later Eric appeared at the tiny little cottage--it was scarcely more than a hut--which was the home of the eccentric old puzzle-maker. The top part of it was a home-made observatory, and the whole building looked a good deal like a large beehive. "String in the corner," said the old man, after welcoming him. "Get him." "It's all knotted, Dan," the boy replied, holding up a piece of rope with a couple of dozen strings hanging from it, of various colors, all intertwined. "Of course he is," the old man replied. "Read him." "What?" asked the boy. "Read him," repeated the old man. "What does it mean?" "He's what Incas used to count treasure with," the old man said. "He's quipu, a copy of one Cortez found in City of Sun. You like to read what he says?" "You bet I would." "Bring him here." Wondering a good deal at the odd puzzle-maker's manner, for the lad had gone to the cottage in good faith with his books, expecting to work on the problems that were disturbing him, he brought over the knotted quipu. "Green string means corn," said the puzzle-maker, "because he's the color of growing corn. What you suppose white is?" "Silver," guessed the boy. "Right. And yellow?" "Gold." "Right, too. And red?" "Copper?" hazarded the boy. "Not bad guess," the old man said. "Not copper color, red." "Red stands for war," said Eric meditatively, then, with an inspiration, "in those days a country was rich if it had soldiers. Does the red mean soldiers, Dan?" "Soldiers, right," the old man answered. "The Quipucamayocuna--" "The what, Dan?" "Knot officers," explained the other, "kept track of him all. They counted tens, single knot meant ten; double knot, hundred. Now read him. Cross-knotting is for groups." Eric worked for a quarter of an hour and then looked up. "I've got it," he said. "What is he?" "In this town," said the boy, "there were seven regiments of soldiers, I've got down the exact number of men in each regiment. Some had plenty of food in the regimental storehouse, some had only a little. But--if I get it right--there was money belonging to each regiment in a treasure-house, somewhere, like a bank. I suppose they could exchange this for food. And, if I've read it right, there was one regiment which had money but no men. I suppose they were wiped out in battle." "Very good," answered the puzzle-maker, looking pleased. "You keep accounts, your own money?" "Of course," answered the boy, pulling out a little diary from his pocket. "Here, string," said the old man. "Write your week's accounts in quipu." Thoroughly interested, Eric took up a pile of colored strings, from the corner and started to convert his week's accounting into quipu. He worked for half an hour, but couldn't make it come out right. It proved an exasperating puzzle, because it seemed impossible and yet conveyed the suggestion that there ought to be some way of doing it. Already Eric had so keen a sense of the old man's comments that he hated to say that he couldn't do it. But, after a while, red in the face and quite ashamed, he said, "I can't do it, Dan." "No, he is not possible," said the puzzle-maker cheerfully. "That's what I wanted you to find. The quipu is wonderful but he's not wonderful enough, eh?" "We'd have trouble trying to handle a big modern banking business by it, all right," the boy agreed. "But, Dan, how about this studying I'm supposed to do?" "You know Latin numerals?" the old man replied. "Of course!" Eric answered indignantly. "I couldn't even tell the time if I didn't!" "Write 'Four,'" came the order. Promptly the boy wrote "IV." "Now look at watch." "It's got four ones there," Eric said ruefully. "The 'IV' form is late," said the puzzle-maker. "I show you something. Copy column of pocket cash-book in Roman numerals, then, without thinking in figures, add up column." Not in the least understanding what were the old man's ideas the boy did as he was told. It was easy enough to write down the numbers, but when he came to add them up, he found himself thinking of Arabic figures in spite of himself. "I'm cheating," said Eric suddenly, "I can't help adding up in the old way." "Good boy," said the puzzle-maker. "I knew that. I show you some more. Simple addition. Write in Roman numerals one billion, seven hundred and forty-two million, nine hundred and eighty-three thousand, four hundred and twenty-seven and eleven-sixteenths." Although pretty well posted, Eric had a hard time writing down the number and had to ask a lot of questions before he could even write it correctly. Then the puzzle-maker gave him half a dozen figures of the same kind. It looked weird on paper. "Now add him up," the old man charged him. The boy started bravely. But he hadn't gone very far before he got absolutely stuck. He wrestled with that sum of simple addition for nearly an hour. At last he got a result which seemed right. "Put him down in ordinary figures," came the order. "Add him up." Eric did so, having his own difficulties in re-transcribing from the Roman numerals. "Are they the same?" "No," the boy said, "I got the other wrong somewhere." "S'posin' you had him right," the puzzle-maker said, "it took you hour. Ordinary figures you did him in thirty-two seconds." "I see," said Eric, "it's another case of wonderful but not wonderful enough, isn't it?" "Exactly. Here," the other continued, reaching down a manuscript portfolio, "is every kind of numbers ever made. You find that the Hindu--or wrongly called Arabic--numerals are the only ones wonderful enough for modern uses." Thoroughly interested, the boy sat down with this big manuscript book. Weird schemes of numeration rioted over the pages, from the Zuni finger and the Chinese knuckle systems to the latest groups of symbols, used in modern higher mathematics, of which the boy had not even heard. It was noon before he realized with a start that the morning was gone. "Oh, Dan!" he said reproachfully, "we haven't done anything to-day." "Never mind," said the old man, "we get a start after a while." That afternoon, when the boy settled down to do some work on his own account, he felt a much greater friendliness to the mere look of figures. They seemed like old friends. Before, a figure had only been something in a "sum," but now he felt that each one had a long history of its own. Little did he realize that the biggest step of his mathematics was accomplished. Never again would he be able to look at a page of figures with revulsion. They had come to life for him. The next morning, Eric found the old puzzle-maker busy with a chess-board. "Aren't we going to do any work to-day, either?" he asked, disappointedly. "Soon as I finish," the old man answered. "Get pencil and paper. As I move knight from square to square, you draw." Shrugging his shoulders slightly, but not so noticeably that the puzzle-maker could see, Eric obeyed. It seemed very silly to him. But as the knight went from square to square in the peculiar move which belongs to that piece in chess, the boy was amazed to find a wonderful and fascinating geometrical design growing under his hand. "Another way, too," said the old man thoughtfully, the instant the figure was finished, not giving the boy a chance to make any comment. And, without further preface he started again. This time an even stranger but equally perfect design was formed. "But that's great!" said Eric, "how do you know it's going to come out like that! I wonder if I could do it?" "Try him," the puzzle-maker answered, getting up from the board. For half an hour Eric moved the knight about, but never got as perfect an example as the old man. "Are there only those two ways?" said the boy at last. "Over thirty-one million ways of moving the knight so that he occupies each square once," was the reply. "Every one makes a different design." "I'll try some this evening," said the boy. "But it's funny, too. Why does it always make a regular design?" "You want to know? Very well." And the puzzle-maker quietly explained some of the most famous mathematical problems of all time, working them out with the chessmen and the board. "You know what they call him, magic?" queried the old man. "Magic! No!" exclaimed Eric pricking up his ears at the word. "Tell me about it, Dan." "Numbers all friends, live together, work together," the puzzle-maker answered. "I show you." And, taking pencil and paper, he dotted down in forms of squares and cubes rows and rows of figures. "Add him up," he said, "up and down, cross-wise, any way. He all make same number." "They do, sure enough," said Eric, after testing half a dozen magic squares, "but how do you do it? Do you have to remember all those figures and just where they go?" "Don't remember any of him," the other answered. "He has to go so." "But I can't make them come that way," exclaimed the boy, after trying for a few minutes. "What's the trick?" "All friends," repeated the old man, and in his curiously jolting speech he told Eric the startling links that are found in the powers of numbers. As soon as he had the principle clearly in mind, the boy found that there was no great difficulty in making up the most astonishing magic squares. As the winter drew on, and calls for help on the stormy waters increased, the opportunities for sessions with the shrewd old mathematician grew fewer, but Eric stuck fast to his promise to spend all the time he could afford with his instructor. He was keenly disappointed that the puzzle-maker showed such an absolute disregard of the actual things the boy wanted to prepare for in his examinations. But Eric had been rigidly trained by his father in the sportsmanlike attitude of never complaining about any arrangement he had made himself, and he paid for his coaching out of his small earnings without a word. In order to make up for what he inwardly felt was lost time, he worked by himself at his books in such few minutes as he was able to snatch from his life-saving duties. And, although he was tired almost to exhaustion, many and many a day, he found that even in that work he was getting along quite well. Eric could never get his eccentric teacher to look at the books required in his preparatory work. What was more, he had a feeling that he couldn't really be getting much good from his hours spent with Dan, because he enjoyed them so much. Early schooldays had made him associate progress with discomfort. For example, one day Dan showed him tricks with cards--and then explained the mathematics of it, making the most puzzling mysteries seem only unusual applications of very simple principles. Another day, the puzzle-maker told him of curious problems of chance, by dice, by lotteries, and so forth, and almost before Eric realized what the old man was driving at, the essential ideas of insurance and actuary work were firmly fixed in his mind. It was not until a couple of weeks before the expected close of navigation that the puzzle-maker said, "Let me see book!" Astonished at the now unexpected request, Eric handed him the much bethumbed volume over which he had struggled so hard. The old man skimmed through its pages, nodding his head from time to time and mumbling in a satisfied way. Then, like a man driving in a nail, he pounded Eric with question after question. He seemed to be asking them from the book, but Eric knew that none of the problems had their origin in it, for they dealt with the work he had been doing in the little cottage by the sea. Yet to almost every one the boy returned a correct answer, or at least, one which was correct in its approach. For two long hours the puzzle-maker questioned him, without ever a minute's let up. At the end of it, Eric was as limp as a rag. At last the old man laid down the book. "When your examination is?" he asked. "Next June," the boy replied. "You can pass him now." Eric stared at the old man with wild surprise in his gaze and with a down-dropped jaw. "But I haven't even started on the second half of the book," he said. "And I've got to do it all!" "You pass him now," was the quiet answer. "The second part--you have done him, too. Learn rules, if you like. No matter. You know him. See!" He showed the very last set of examples in the book and Eric recognized problems of the kind he had been doing, all unwitting to himself. "Mathematics not to learn," he said, "he is to think. You now can think. To know a rule, to do sum--bah! he is nothing! To know why a rule and because a sum--he is much. You do him." In the few remaining visits that Eric paid the puzzle-maker, he found the old man's words to be quite true. Having learned the inside of mathematics, its actual workings seemed reasonable. The clew gave Eric the sense of exploring a new world of thought instead of being lost in a tangled wilderness. Meantime, he had become absolutely expert in every detail of the station. His particular delight was the capsize drill. The keeper had got the crew trained down to complete the whole performance within fifty seconds from the time he gave the order. The boat had to be capsized, every man underneath the boat. Then they had to clamber on the upturned boat, right it again, and be seated on the thwarts with oars ready to pull before the fiftieth second was past. It was quick work, and although only a drill, was as exciting as the lad could wish. Two or three times, one of the men, who wasn't quite as quick as the rest, got "waterlogged" and the crew had to help him up. When that occurred, there was an awful howl. Once, only once, Eric delayed the drill about two seconds and it was weeks before he overcame his sense of shame at the occurrence. But, before the winter finally closed down, Eric was as able a coast-guardsman as any on the Great Lakes. It was well that he was, for a day was coming which would test his fortitude to the full. Navigation had been lessening rapidly, and the boy was beginning to think about Thanksgiving Day. They were just sitting down to supper, when one of the men came in with haste. "Heard anything of a wreck round Au Sable way?" he asked breathlessly. "No," said the keeper, "what did you hear?" "Nothin' definite," said the other, "but as I was comin' along a chap stopped me and asked me if I were goin' out to the wreck off Au Sable. He said he really didn't know anything about it, except there was a report that the _City of Nipigon_ was on the rocks near Grand Point." [Illustration: Fifth Second.] [Illustration: Twelfth Second.] [Illustration: Twenty-third Second] [Illustration: Fiftieth Second. LIFE-BOAT CAPSIZE-DRILL. Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.] The keeper jumped up and went to the telephone. "Anything doing?" he asked, when the Au Sable operator got on the wire. The chat in the station stopped to hear what the reply might be. Au Sable was the most exposed point on the coast and there was a gale beating in from the northwest. "You'll let us know, then," said the keeper, and hung up the receiver. "Says he's heard something about a wreck, but nothin' definite," he added, turning to the crew. "Says a boy ran in with the news, but the kid was too excited to give much information." "Think there's anything in it?" queried one of the men. "Hope not," said another, "I was out that way day before yesterday an' there's an ice wall there about twenty feet high. I don't know how we'd ever get a boat over it." "We'd get it over, all right." "How?" asked Eric interestedly. "Aeroplane, if necessary," said the keeper laughing. "No, but really," the boy protested. "Brute strength and luck, I guess," the other said, "but I'm hopin' that we don't have to go out to-night." "Me too," added the boy. "I've got some 'trig'"-- The telephone bell rang. "That's it, likely enough," said one of the men, getting up resignedly and going over to the locker for his oilskins. "Well," said the keeper, as he took off the receiver. Then, a minute later turning to the men, he repeated to the crew, "'Steamer, _City of Nipigon_, seven men aboard, burnin' distress signals, on rocks north and by west of Au Sable light, quarter of a mile from land.' Right you are, boys, we're off!" There was a transformation scene. When the keeper began the sentence, the Coast Guard station had been a scene of peace and comfort with a group of men lounging around a hot fire, some reading, some playing dominoes and others plying needle and thread. But, before the sentence was over, almost every man was in his oilskins, some were just pulling on their long boots, while others, even more nimble, had reached the boat and the apparatus-cart. They were standing by for orders when the keeper joined them. "She's less'n a quarter of a mile out, boys," he said. "I reckon we'd better try an' get her with the gun. After, if that doesn't work, we can get the boat. But if we can put a line across her right away, it'll be safer an' quicker. I don't fancy handling the boat down any such ice as Jefferson talked about." The apparatus-cart was out of the shed and started almost before the keeper had finished his orders. Eric, who was no mean athlete, was glad of every ounce of strength he possessed before he had gone a hundred yards. The cart, fully loaded, weighed 1120 pounds and there were seven men to drag it, a fairly good load on decent ground. But the ground was all of eight inches deep in new-fallen snow into which the wheels sank. The on-shore wind was dead against them, swirling like a blizzard. The temperature was only about five degrees below zero, but there was an icy tang that cut like a jagged knife. In spite of the intense cold, so laborious was the dragging of that cart through the snow, that Eric broke out in a violent perspiration. What troubled him still more was the realization that he was already tiring, although the party was still on the beaten road. In a very short while, he knew, they would have to strike off from the track, across wild and unbroken country to the beach. To his surprise, the keeper kept right on, leaving the light on the left hand. The boy, forgetting discipline in his eagerness and excitement, spoke out, "I thought they said 'west' of the light!" The keeper turned and looked. He spoke not a word. There was no need. Eric colored to the roots of his hair. He felt the rebuke. Finally when they had passed the light by nearly half a mile, the road went up a slight hill, and the keeper led the way at right angles along a ridge of rock. It was rough almost beyond believing, but its very barrenness had made it useful. As the keeper had shrewdly hoped, the swirling blizzard had left its rough length bare, when all the lower ground was deep in snow. For the hundredth time since he had been on the station, Eric had to admit the wise foreknowledge of his chief. As they swung on to the ridge the keeper turned and looked at Eric again. He caught the boy's apologetic glance and smiled back. No word was passed, but both understood. The ridge helped them gallantly, though the wind whistled over it as though it were the roof-pole of the world. More than once it seemed to Eric as though the apparatus-cart would be turned upside down by some of the terrific gusts, and the boy had a mental picture of the crew floundering in the snow-drifts beneath. Near the lighthouse, the ridge that had so befriended them merged into the level, and the crew forced its way on through ever deepening drifts. For about fifty yards the snow was above the hubs of the wheels, and more than once it seemed that the apparatus cart was so deeply stuck as to be immovable. The men left the shafts, and crowding round the cart like ants they forced it free, and half carried and half pushed it through the snow. "Is there any shnow left at all?" queried Muldoon, when the worst of this was overpassed. "What do you mean?" one of the men asked. "I thought we'd waded through all the shnow in the worrld," the Irishman replied. For a little space it was easy going until they came to the dunes above the beach. There the crew halted. As Jefferson had said, sloping upwards at an angle of forty degrees, was a steep sheet of glare ice, almost as smooth as though it had been planed. It would have taken a fly to walk on that surface, yet on the farther side of it was the only road to the wreck. The light was on the end of a little spit and the vessel in distress could be seen only from this spit. Without going on that neck of land she could not be reached by the gun, and this passage was grimly guarded by that sloping embattlement of ice. "Up it, lads!" said the keeper. The crew, gathered around the apparatus-cart, started up the slope. Six feet was as far as they could get. Even without added weight no one could stand on that glistening surface, and with the drag of the cart it was impossible. Several times the men tried it, only to come sprawling in a heap at the bottom of the hill. "Two of you get up to the top!" ordered the keeper. Two of the lightest men started. One of them, picking his steps with great care, managed to get half-way up; the other, going back for a run, tried to take the hill with a tremendous spurt. His impetus took him almost up to the top, but he was a few feet short and slipped back. He returned for another attempt. In the meantime Eric had an idea. Instead of attacking the cliff at the point the others were trying, and where it was shallowest, he went twenty yards farther west, where the cliff was steeper, but rougher. Taking an ax he started to cut niches for steps up the cliff. He knew it would take a long time, but if the others did not succeed before him, he would at least get there. If the others succeeded, the loss of his time did not matter. So, steadily, inch by inch, foot by foot, he made his way up the cliff, taking the time to make the notches deep enough for surety. The ice was not extremely hard, and Eric soon won his way to the top. He found the edge exceedingly difficult to walk on and very dangerous, for it fell in an almost sheer precipice on the water side, with the mush-ice beating up against it. The top, too, was soft and honeycombed. Using as much care in going along the edge as he had in scaling it, the boy soon found himself on the cliff immediately above the cart. "Here, you fellows," he called, "heave me up a line!" There was a second's surprise when the other members of the crew saw Eric on the crest of the ice-barrier which so far had defied them all. "Good work!" called the keeper. "Jefferson, toss up the line." Eric caught it. "Have you a spike or anything?" he called, "I'll haul it up!" The keeper yanked out one of the spikes of the frame on which the line was faked and the boy carefully hauled it up, then drove it into the ice as hard as he could, using his heavy boot for a hammer. He next took the line, and wound it around the spike to help him in holding it. "Now," he yelled through the storm, "some one can come up the rope." "Muldoon," said the keeper to the Irishman, "you're about the lightest, you go up first." "'Tis meself will do it," was the reply, "an' it's blitherin' idjits we were not to think o' the way the kid did it." Then he shinned up the rope like a monkey on a stick. With both Muldoon and Eric hanging to the rope, it was not long until five men got to the top. The keeper, seeing how successful Eric's plan had proved, ordered every man to cut for himself a good foothold in the ice, and then, tailing on to the rope, they got the apparatus-cart up the slope, two men behind trying to guide it from below. It was a difficult haul, but at last they got the cart to the summit, and, in order to keep it from sliding down, straddled the wheels atop. [Illustration: RUSHING THE APPARATUS-CART. Coast Guard Crew with life-gun, line-box, shots, hawser, breeches-buoy and signal-lights, ploughing through heavy sand to wreck on beach a mile away. Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.] The cart rocked unsteadily. Suddenly, as a particularly vicious blast came whistling by, it canted as though it were going to fall. Eric, who was a few feet away from the cart, jumped forward to save it, but missed his footing and fell into the mush-ice twenty feet below, going clear through. There was no time for orders. Muldoon, quick as a wink, almost before any one else had grasped the accident, knotted a line around the cart and taking the other end in his hand jumped into the mush-ice after the boy. So true was his eye that he struck almost the same point and a few seconds later appeared above the surface with Eric. Neither was hurt, but both were wet through, handicapping them for work on so cold a night. Eric's ruse in getting the apparatus-cart to the top of the cliff, however, had solved the biggest part of the difficulty. By carefully sliding the cart along the face of the cliff for ten yards or a little more, they found themselves above the road leading out to the spit. It was then merely a matter of lowering the cart to the other side. Meantime Muldoon had raced the boy to the lighthouse for a chance to change their clothes before they froze on them. No sooner did he knock on the door than the lighthouse-keeper came out, and the open door showed his daughter behind. Edith Abend was only seventeen years old, but she had already saved two lives. "You got here at last, then," said the lighthouse-keeper gruffly. Edith, with a readier sense that help was needed, said quickly, "What has happened? Is there anything wrong?" "Nothin' wrong at all, darlint," said the Irishman, with his national readiness to say nice things to a pretty girl, "only we've had a trifle of a duckin' an' if there's annything like dhry clothes in this house it would help us to our work. The lad here's quite wet." "I don't see that I'm any wetter than you are!" protested Eric. The light-keeper looked them over. "Yon's the crew?" he asked. "Yes," said Eric, "we've had a hard time getting here." "I was wonderin' how ye were goin' to get over the ice-wall." "We got over, all right," the boy replied. "I see ye did. Well, I reckon I've some old things ye can have," the keeper said grouchily. The girl disappeared and a moment later came back into the room. "They're all in there," she said simply, pointing to the next room. "'Tis yourself that's the jewel," Muldoon said, leading the way in with alacrity. There was nothing the matter with the Irishman's movements. When he wanted to be quick he could move like a streak of extra-greased lightning. He was out of his wet clothes and into a complete set of the keeper's in a hurry. Eric was not many seconds behind. They put on their own slickers, which had been dripping at the fireside, and were ready for work again. Great was the boy's surprise, as he tied on his sou'wester, to see a small figure covered from head to foot in oilskins waiting for them. Still greater was his amazement when he saw that this was the girl. "Is it comin' out to watch us ye are, Miss?" said Muldoon. "Sure the wind will blow ye away entirely. It's admiring the pluck of ye I am, but ye'd better stay indoors. 'Tis no night to be watchin'." "I'm not going to watch, I'm going to work," the girl said calmly. "And I don't think you ought to waste time talking, either." So saying, she walked out of the door to avoid further argument. The light-keeper looked longingly after the three as though he would like to join them, and help in the rescue, but his duty was with his light and he could not leave it. So quickly had all this passed that Muldoon, Eric and the girl got to the edge of the spit just as the five members of the Coast Guard crew had unshipped the gun, placed it in position and loaded it. "That you, Muldoon?" said the keeper. "Yis, sorr, it's me." "You'd better take the gun. You're the best shot. That is, if you're all right after your ducking." "I'm in warrm, dhry clothes," the Irishman answered, "an' I'll do as you say. But you're just as good a shot yourself," he added. "Don't blatherskite," the keeper said. "Grab hold an' lay her straight." The Lyle gun, being so short, gives little real opportunity for aim, and the best man is one who has an intuition. This, Muldoon had. Besides, the old puzzle-maker had taught him how to allow for the drop of the line and how to estimate the force of the wind. He fussed around for a minute or two, saw that the line was free on the pins and that the case was free, and waited for the gusts of wind to die down to a steadier gait. Then he fired. The red flare of the short cannon showed clear against the ice and the line went sailing out gracefully. "Too far for'ard," said Eric disappointedly, as he saw it start. Muldoon only shook his head. "'Tis not far off," he said. Sure enough, as the missile was about half-way out to the wreck, the wind took the line and drove it sideways till it fell right abaft the funnel. A flare from the steamer showed that the line had been received. "Nice shooting, Muldoon," the keeper said. "We'll have to give the credit to that well-fittin' coat you've got on." The lighthouse-keeper was at least twice the Irishman's size. Muldoon looked particularly proud, because he had wanted to distinguish himself before the girl. It was of vital urgency, moreover, for if Muldoon had not been able to land the line, it would have meant a trip back to the Coast Guard station to get out the surf-boat, with very little likelihood of being able to force her up against the gale. The men on the steamer started to haul in and the life-savers bent on a larger rope with a block and tackle. Again the steamer burned a flare to show that the block had been hauled on board and securely fastened, and then the coastguardsmen began to haul on the line, pulling out to the ship a heavy hawser on which ran the carriage for the breeches-buoy. Everything worked without a hitch, the hawser was got on board and the breeches-buoy hauled out. Then the trouble began. The steamer lay partly submerged. She was a small boat and her only mast had gone by the board. The bridge was a tangle of wreckage. The breeches-buoy, therefore, could only be made fast to the stump of the mast a few feet above the deck. Ashore, the same difficulty prevailed. There was no high land, the tripod being down almost on water-line. As soon as the hawser got wet and heavy with snow and the ice from the blowing spray, it began to sag so that it nearly touched the water. With the weight of a man on it, the breeches-buoy line sank below the surface of the water, or rather the mush-ice. It was bad enough for the rescued men, already nearly perishing with exhaustion, to have to get a ducking, but there was still a greater danger. This was that the tackle might not stand the strain of dragging the breeches-buoy, with a man in it, through the mush-ice. The increased resistance might break the line and risk anew the perishing of every life on board. The keeper saw the difficulty and decided promptly. "Jefferson and Harris," he shouted, "you're the tallest. Get out into that mush-ice and see how deep it is. Wade out as far as you can go. Follow the line and stand ready to catch the breeches-buoy." The two men chosen waded out, battling almost for their lives with big pieces of ice. Fortunately the bottom sloped gradually and they were able to walk out a considerable distance. Shouting to them through his trumpet to wait there, the keeper ordered the rest of the crew to haul in the first man. As the keeper had expected, the rope sagged terribly, but, by drawing up his legs, the rescued man did not actually sink into the mush-ice until nearly up to the spot where Jefferson and Harris stood. The two men grasped the buoy and started pulling it ashore, one man holding the survivor's head above the water and ice, while the other made a path in the ice by forcing his way ahead of the buoy. Half-way in, Harris collapsed. It afterwards developed that he had been quite badly hurt on the ice-barrier but had not said a word about it. As four men were needed on shore and there should be three to help in the ice, the crew was a man short. "I wish we had a third man!" said the keeper irritably. "Confoundedly annoying that Harris should have got hurt now." "You have a third," said a quiet voice, and Edith Abend stepped forward. "But, Miss!" "Your orders, keeper?" the girl put in quietly. The keeper looked at her sharply. He was a man of judgment and accustomed to read faces. Without another word, and in the tone he would have used in speaking to another man he said, "Get right out there and hold the man's head above water as he comes in. Jefferson and you, Eric, will break the way for the buoy." And so it was, that with a light-keeper's daughter, a girl seventeen years old, as the seventh in the crew, the life-savers of Point Au Sable saved from the _City of Nipigon_ every soul on board. CHAPTER VI A BLAZON OF FLAME AT SEA Three weeks after the rescue of the crew of the _City of Nipigon_, navigation on Lake Superior closed down for the winter. Although the work had been hard and, during the last month, quite exhausting, Eric felt keen regrets in leaving the station and in bidding good-by to Dan. He had become quite attached to the old puzzle-maker and had grown to realize how valuable his help had been. Eric found, moreover, that not only had the hermit mathematician started him along the right road to algebra, to "trig." and even toward the geometry which he once hated, but also that his training with the old puzzle-maker had taught him how to study. He settled down in deadly earnest in Detroit, keeping up with all his special studies and also doing a good deal of hard reading with his father's help. The inspector knew that the entrance examination to the Coast Guard Academy was one of the stiffest tests in the government service and he willingly gave his time to help Eric. It was a winter of hard work and, aside from some skating and ice-hockey, Eric took little time off from his books. Largely as a result of the puzzle-maker's guidance and by his own persistent digging, Eric was well prepared for the examinations in June. He had some difficulty with rules and forms, but the essential principles of things were fixed solidly in his mind, so that when the lists were published, Eric found his name third, and second in Mathematics. His rival was a young fellow, named Homer Tierre, from Webb Academy, who was entering as a cadet engineer. The two boys struck up a friendship outside the examination room, and Eric was delighted to find that his new acquaintance had passed, with him, so high in the list that the acceptance of both was sure. Although, at the Academy, Homer and Eric were apart a good deal, the one being a cadet of engineers and the other a cadet of the line, still they had many classes together. Eric, accustomed to the life-saving work, was able to be a good deal of help to his friend and taught him many tricks of swimming that he had learned from the Eel, two years before. Moreover, having been used to the strict discipline of the old lighthouse inspector at home, Eric fell readily into the rigid rules of the Academy and often was able to save his friend from some pickle for which the latter was headed. Homer's assistance was equally valuable to Eric, for the young cadet engineer had been daft about machinery ever since he was old enough to bang a watch to pieces to find out what made it go, and he was able to instill into Eric some of his own enthusiasm. This friendship was an added joy to Eric's delight in the Academy. He had never been more happy than during his first year as a cadet. Eric was fortunate in having the right angle to life on entering the Academy, so that he did not have any difficulty in understanding the character of the discipline. A number of his classmates, conscious that they were training for commissions, considered themselves as junior officers. They were quickly set right on this mistaken idea, but the process of disabusing some of them was a sharp one. One member of the class, in particular, had the notion that the Academy was a matter of books, smart uniforms, and a preparation for epaulets. When he found that he had to drill as a private, toil as a member of a gun crew, handle heavy work, use his delicate fingers in knotting and splicing and so forth, he entered a mild protest. He was set right by a homely rebuke from one of the instructors, an old sea-dog who knew everything about seamanship from the log of Noah's Ark to the rigging of a modern sea-plane. [Illustration: BREECHES-BUOY DRILL. Firing Lyle gun in corner; shot seen carrying line to mast to right of flagpole; rest of crew preparing to erect tripod. Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.] [Illustration: BREECHES-BUOY DRILL. RESCUING SURVIVORS. Line has been carried to mast, and made fast; hawser pulled out; shore end carried over tripod; third line run out with block carrying breeches-buoy line; crew is seen hauling on line which brings in the survivor. Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.] "You, Mr. Van Sluyd," he said bluntly, "if you haven't the nerve to do an enlisted man's work, nor the brains to do it better'n he can, what use'll you be as an officer?" To do Van Sluyd justice, however, he took the call-down in good part and knuckled to at the practical end of his training. Eric soon found that this rather drastic phrase was a very fair presentation of the point of view of the Academy. The several instructors absolutely demanded a greater efficiency from the cadets than from the enlisted men. They had to receive instruction from the non-commissioned officers, just like the men did. This was no joke, either, for a warrant officer in the Coast Guard, especially a boatswain, has a knowledge of his craft far beyond a landsman's imaginings. "Homer," said Eric to his friend one day, after a particularly stiff bout of gunnery mechanics, "is there anything that's ever been invented that we don't have to do here?" "If there is, I haven't heard of it," his chum agreed. "Let's see, we've got navigation, and surveying, and physics, and chemistry, and gunnery, and tactics, and engineering, and ship-building, and--" "Stop it, Homer," protested Eric, "you'd have to talk for a week just to make a list. I've often wondered if all this stuff is necessary." "It sure is," his chum answered; "that's why I came into the Coast Guard instead of the Navy. There's a heap more variety, by nature of the work. A fellow's got to know everything about the handling of sailing ships, because part of the job is the handling of sailing ships in distress. He's got to be a sharp on towage, because he's got to take risks in storms that drive an ocean-going tug to port. He's got to know every breed of steamship and variety of engine, because the information's apt to be called on 'most any time." "Yes, I suppose that's so," agreed Eric. "Navigation is just as bad. In the engineering end, you don't have as much of that, Homer, as we do, but I tell you, it's a fright the amount of stuff we have to learn. You take an ordinary ship captain. He only has to run into a few ports, and, in any case, he never goes near dangerous shoals. All he's got to learn is to keep away from them. But there isn't an inch on the American coast from Maine to Texas or from Alaska to Southern California that we don't have to remember. Almost any day a fellow's likely to have to chase into a bad shoal to help some ship that's fast on a lee shore; and that's usually in bad weather--it's no time to guess, then, you've got to be sure." "I sometimes doubt," said Homer, "if all this infantry drill is going to be any use." "Oh, I can see the use of that, all right," replied Eric. "In the Spanish-American War, the Coast Guard cutters did a lot of work, and, just the other day, our men were called on to keep San Domingo in order. After all, Homer, the Coast Guard is a military arm, just as much as the navy." "They don't worry you the way they do us," groaned the young cadet engineer, "over all the different sorts of machinery for the handling of big guns. It's thorough, all right; there isn't a chap in our class who couldn't figure out and explain every process of manufacture and mounting, up to the actual work of handling the gun in an engagement." "I don't see that you've got any kick coming," Eric retorted, "you always said you liked machinery. Now I haven't much use for mathematics, though I don't hate it quite as much as I did, and yet we get enough coast and geodetic surveying to prepare us for exploring a new world. I suppose they figure that if the United States ever annexes Mars, a Coast Guard crew will be put in charge." "Likely enough," said the other, "but isn't that what you like about it?" "Sure, it's great," agreed Eric. "I'm just crazy over the Academy. I wouldn't be anywhere else in the world. I don't believe there's a college within a mile of it for real training. There's all the pep to it that a Naval School has got to have, and although they hold us down so hard, after all, we get a lot of fun out of it. And take them 'by and large,' as the shellbacks say, don't you think the Coast Guard crowd is just about the finest ever?" "You bet," Homer answered with emphasis. "It was seeing how they handled things that first headed me for the service. Did I ever tell you what made me want to join?" "No," Eric replied, "I don't think you ever did." "It was in New York," his friend began. "I was there with Father. We were doing the sights of the town and he took me down with him to the water-front. He took the occasion to call on the Senior Captain of the Coast Guard stationed there. They were old cronies. "While they were talking, there came a 'phone from the Navy Yard. On account of the Great European War the Coast Guard had undertaken some special neutrality duty in New York harbor. The Navy had lent a tug for the purpose. The 'phone message was to say that while the Coast Guard was perfectly welcome to the tug, on which the patrol was being done, the tug captain was compulsorily absent in sick bay. "The lieutenant, who had charge of the patrol,--he didn't look much older than I do--answered the 'phone. Evidently the admiral in command of the Brooklyn Navy Yard must have been talking to him, personally, because I heard his answer, "'Certainly, Admiral. I shall be able to take her out without the master on board. As far as that goes, sir,' he added with an earnest laugh in his voice, 'I think I could take out anything you've got, from a first-class battleship down!'" "That was going some!" exclaimed Eric. "Wasn't it? But the joke of it was that the Admiral, not knowing that the Senior Captain had been in the office all the while, called him up and told him the story, ending with the statement, "'I don't know that I'd be willing to say as much for all my lieutenants!' "'I would!' the Coast Guard senior captain answered. And I figured right then and there, that the Coast Guard was what I wanted." "I almost feel like that lieutenant now," said Eric, "and I'm not through the first year. And after the cruise I'll be Johnny-on-the-spot, for sure." In some ways Eric was not altogether wrong in this statement, for his thorough knowledge of mathematics stood him in good stead in navigation. Questions such as "Great Circle Sailing" he ate alive, and a well known problem of "Equations of Equal Altitudes" was, to use his own expression, nuts to him. Eric had the sense of gratitude strongly developed, and he always kept the old puzzle-maker informed of his progress. In return, the old man used to send him weird arithmetical problems, that it took the whole class weeks to work out. In spite of the strong discipline, the spirit of the Academy was so congenial that the cadets were able to get into personal relations with the instructors. There was never the faintest overstepping of the most rigid rule, there was nothing remotely resembling familiarity between any cadet and an instructor, but, at the same time, the heartiest good feeling existed. For example, realizing the value of outside mathematical interests, the instructor in that subject used to allow the class to bring to him any kind of problem. On more than one occasion the instructor was as much interested in the puzzle-maker's devices as were the boys themselves. Great was the triumph of the class, when, on one occasion, they worked out a problem that had been too much for the queer old mathematician in Michigan. The spring cruise on the practice ship _Itasca_ more than fulfilled Eric's hopes. The salt of the sea was in his veins and he actually secured an approving phrase from the boatswain on one occasion--a compliment harder to get than from the Commandant of the Academy himself. It was real hard training; the cadets had to handle the ship and do all the work aboard her, as well as to keep up with their studies. None the less, it was enjoyable, every minute of it, bad weather as well as good, and at the end of his first year's cruise, Eric realized to the full that he had chosen the career for which he was best suited. The boy's passionate interest in his work and his doggedness in study stood him in good stead. He had not dreamed that the course would be so thorough, nor that it would require such an incessant grind, but he never let up. By the end of the second year he was regarded as one of the most promising men in his class, and he had made several substantial friendships with his classmates. The Academy had none of the "prize" incentives of many colleges. A cadet had to work for all that he was worth just to pass. There were no half-way measures. Either a cadet passed or he failed. It wasn't healthy to fail. By the end of his second year Eric was well up in his class. He had qualified as a corporal in the military drills, he had secured the coveted honor of gunner's mate, and he was even looked upon with favor by "Tattoo Tim," alias Boatswain Egan of the _Itasca_. Eric never forgot the first day when he was allowed to con a ship. It was right at the beginning of his third cruise. He had put a gun crew through its drill, under the eye of the officer, and felt that he had acquitted himself creditably. "Mr. Swift," said the first lieutenant to him, "put the ship's position on the chart." Eric saluted and withdrew. A few minutes later, returning to the executive officer, he answered: "Forty-one degrees ten minutes north; seventy-one degrees twenty-two minutes west, sir." "Very good: Lay off a course from this point to a point ten miles north by west from Cape Race light." In less than ten minutes Eric was back with a diagram of the course, which the officer inspected thoroughly. "You may steer the course," he said. Eric's nerves were in good control, but he had a jumpy feeling when he realized that he was actually in charge. Once, and only once, he got a little panicky, and, turning to the officer on the bridge, said: "Should I keep her out a bit, sir?" "You are steering the course," was the officer's reply. It was all up to the boy. "Make it nor'west by west half west," Eric said a little tremulously to the helmsman, as they came in sight of Sankaty Head on Nantucket Island. "Nor'west by west half west, sir," the helmsman repeated, porting his helm a trifle. After the ship had proceeded a certain distance, the lieutenant called another of the first-class men on the bridge and he took his turn. At the end of the trip the officer summoned the class. "Mr. Swift," he queried, "why did you not take the Muskeget Channel?" Eric colored. "I hadn't remembered exactly, sir," he explained, "the depths of the channels near the Cross Rip Shoals. I think I had them right, sir, but I wasn't sure enough of myself to feel that I ought to risk the ship." "You will remember them, hereafter?" "Yes, sir." "Mr. Van Sluyd," continued the lieutenant, turning to another member of Eric's class. "Yes, sir." [Illustration: THE LIGHTSHIP THAT WENT ASHORE. Columbia River vessel which blew over a sand-bar and had to be taken overland through a forest to be launched again. Courtesy of U.S. Bureau of Lighthouses.] [Illustration: GUARDING THE GRAVEYARD OF THE DEEP. The Diamond Shoal Lightship, anchored outside the quicksands off Cape Hatteras that no other vessel can face and live. Courtesy of U.S. Bureau of Lighthouses.] "Near Monomoy you stood in a little too close. Keep farther out from the Shovelful Shoal. If, for any reason, you are compelled to go as close as you did to the point, keep the lead going." "Yes, sir." "Mr. Cunningham?" "Yes, sir." "In rounding Cape Cod, sailing an arc, change your course more frequently. It will save time and coal." "Yes, sir." And, in similar fashion, the officer took up each little detail, dealing with the first-class men after they had shown what they could do. From that test of responsibility many of the cadets came down, white-lipped. It was a striking test of a lad's character as well as of his abilities. Some daring youths would shape as close a course as possible, shaving dangers by the narrowest margin. They were reminded that if a Coast Guard cutter touched bottom, no matter how lightly, even without the slightest injury, there would be an investigation. If it were found that the officer in charge had been guilty of negligence, even in the smallest degree, court martial was possible. Other cadets, again, timid by nature or not sure of the course, would steer a long way round. They would be reminded of wastage and also of the fact that in rescue work, minutes, even seconds, might mean everything. If, under the test, a cadet showed ignorance of his duties, then he was in for a grilling. In gunnery, Eric did not shine. He could always work out the necessary problems of elevating the gun to the right height and figuring out the drop of a shell of a certain weight at a certain distance. Yet, in spite of himself, there was always some little trick he could not catch. That was Van Sluyd's specialty. He had the "feel" of it, some way, and by the end of his third year he was as expert in gunnery as Eric was in seamanship. In the handling of a ship Eric was easily the best in his class. It was not until nearly the end of this third and last cruise on the _Itasca_, however, that he found his opportunity for personal distinction. It was a dark, blowy night. Eight bells of the second dog watch had only been struck a few minutes before and the officers were chatting after dinner. Eric was on duty on the bridge with the second lieutenant, when the wireless sending apparatus began to buzz "S O S," "S O S," as the operator relayed a message he evidently had just received. At the same moment the shrill whistle of the speaking-tube that connects the bridge with the wireless room was heard. "You may answer, Mr. Swift," the lieutenant said. Eric picked up the tube, answered "Hello!" and then repeated the operator's words to the officer: "Liner _Kirkmore_, on fire and sinking, forty-one degrees, eleven minutes north; thirty-five, sixteen west; crew and passengers to boats." With a word to Eric, the lieutenant dispatched the messenger to report to the captain, plotted the position of the _Kirkmore_ on the chart, and, less than two minutes after the receipt of the wireless message, the _Itasca_ had changed her course and was speeding under forced draught into the night. The cutter had broadcasted the call and word had been received from land stations and other vessels that the call had been heard. Still the _Itasca_ was one of the nearest to the reported location of the vessel in distress and she fairly hissed through the water. Presently there was another message from the wireless room, and, as before, Eric took up the speaking tube and reported to the officer of the deck. "'Very strange thing, sir,' he repeated, after the operator, 'I'm picking up a faint call from a small apparatus. I think it must be on one of the boats. The _Lucania_ is racing for the _Kirkmore_, I've picked up her call.'" "Ask him what he considers strange?" said the officer. Eric put the query and again repeated: "He says, sir: 'It's this way, sir. The first call stated that all the passengers and crew had taken to the boats.'" "Well?" "That call has been repeated several times and every one picked it up that way. Then there's a message coming from the boats, giving just where they are." "That all seems straight enough." "Yes, sir. But the operator says the wireless is still working on the ship!" "On the _Kirkmore_?" "Yes, sir. And Jenkins says he is sure that it's not the regular operator. It's an amateur." "That sounds as if there were some people still left on the ship. Ask him what the message is?" Eric transmitted the request. "He says it's the same call, sir, exactly." "The first one?" "Yes, sir. That every one is in the boats. Only he says it's given jerkily and very slow." "Find out what you can about it, Mr. Swift." "Yes, sir." Eric ran down to the wireless room. "Acts like a man who doesn't know much about wireless, sir. I'm sure, sir, that it couldn't be the operator, not even on a tramp steamer. There's hardly an amateur who would make such a mess of it," said the operator. "What does he say?" asked Eric. "Can't you get word to him?" "No, sir. That's what's puzzling me. I've called and called, and he pays no attention." "Do you suppose your sending apparatus is in good order?" "Yes, sir," the operator replied. "Working perfectly. There's two or three other ships calling the _Kirkmore_, and she doesn't answer them either. I've talked to most o' them, sir." "Who's the nearest?" "We seem to be nearest to the ship, sir," said the operator, "but the _Lucania_ is the nearest to the boats. They seem quite a bit to the south'ard." "Running into the line of travel, I suppose," said Eric. "What do you think is the meaning of that call?" he added. "I think, sir," said the operator, "somebody must have been forgotten and left behind." "But why doesn't he answer?" "Maybe the receiving apparatus is broken down. There it is again, sir," the Coast Guard operator paused. "No, sir, it's not the operator. I don't think I could even tell what he means if it hadn't been gone over so often." "Well," the captain said, when Eric reported the circumstances, "if the _Lucania_ is nearer the boats than we are, and we are nearer the ship, we'd better find out who's sending that call." "Yes, sir," Eric answered formally. In the meantime the knowledge of the disaster had spread through the ship, and there was much excitement, when, one point off the port bow, the glare of the burning steamer showed against the murk of midnight. Every one not on duty, and those on duty who were able, ran to the port rail. As the _Itasca_ steamed on, under forced draught, quivering as her engines throbbed under her, the flare on the bow increased in brightness. In half an hour's time it could be quite clearly made out as a steamer on fire, the dense cloud of smoke being illumined from below by the glare of the flames. "I hope the operator was wrong. If there is anybody on board," said Eric, in a low voice, to his friend Homer, "they wouldn't have much chance." "Is the call still coming?" his chum asked. "No," Eric answered, "nothing for twenty minutes." The Coast Guard cutter speedily raised the hull of the burning steamer. Her stern was much higher out of water than her bow, and amidships she was all aflame, belching up dense volumes of smoke. A message came into the radio room. "The _Lucania_ reports that she has picked up three of the boats," said the operator through the tube to the first lieutenant on the bridge. "The fourth boat is still missing." "What's that craft over there, I wonder?" queried Eric, pointing to the starboard bow where a searchlight flickered into the sky. "That's the _La Savoie_, I heard some one say," his friend replied; "she must have been coming up on the jump. We'll have half a dozen big liners here before morning." "It's a wonderful thing, the wireless," the boy said meditatively; "from hundreds of miles away, every one rushes to the rescue. When you realize that every extra ten miles means hundreds of dollars out of the pockets of steamship companies and every hour's delay may be a serious inconvenience, it does look great to see the way every one drops personal concerns to go to the rescue." "I wonder what would happen if a captain didn't?" "There'd be a whale of a row. Court-martial and all that sort of thing." "You can't court-martial a merchant-service man," protested Homer. "He'd lose his ship, anyway." "But suppose he made out he didn't hear the call?" "Be sensible," Eric retorted. "How could he do that? Bribe the operator, or threaten him?" "That's true," said Homer, thoughtfully. "It would look pretty bad if the wireless outfit on a ship was shut down, as soon as an 'S O S' came in." "I don't believe there's a wireless operator in the business who'd stand for it," the boy declared. "They're a high-grade bunch of men. I'd be willing to bet if any operator got such an order, before he quit he'd send out a message to the nearest station or ship, telling the whole story." "And then what?" "Why, if the wireless was shut down then, and the operator told the truth of it, they'd tar and feather that skipper. Commercialism may be all right on land, but when you come right down to the bones of the thing, there's mighty few men on salt water that'll ever do a dirty trick to another man." "Right you are," agreed Homer; "a shellback is the real thing in a pinch. By ginger," he continued, "doesn't she burn! Surely there can't be anybody on board of her." The _Itasca_ was now rapidly approaching the burning steamer. Amid the roar of the flames and the hiss of the sea against heated iron was heard the thin whine of the speaking tube whistle. "Call from the burning steamer, sir, I think," said the operator, "but there's no meaning to it." The captain spoke rapidly to the first lieutenant and the good ship began to tremble from stem to stern as the engines were reversed and the helm shifted so as to bring the sea a little on the port bow. "Mr. Sutherland," came the first lieutenant's voice, "clear away the starboard whaleboat." Eric stepped forward, for this was his station. The boat's crew sprang to their stations, the whaleboat was lowered to the rail, and as the _Itasca_ lost her headway, the boat was neatly dropped in the water. The sea had looked a bit rough from the bridge, but down at the water's edge the waves were distinctly high. Lieutenant Sutherland, who was also the instructor in mathematics, was an absolute wonder in many ways, but small boat work was not much in his line. Still, he handled her well. To Eric, of course, the rough sea did not matter. He was used to that in his life-saving work, and, indeed, every one forgot the danger as the boat pulled on in the lurid crimson of the burning ship. They came close, and hailed. There was no answer, nothing but the dull roar of the flames in the hold and the spitting hiss as some spray was flung over the vessel's side. No one appeared on deck. The bow, where it was high above the water was cherry red hot, and even the more submerged stern seemed absolutely untenable. "There can't be any one on board," said the third lieutenant. "You didn't hear a hail?" "No, sir," answered Eric, "but Jenkins caught another call just before we left." "Very strange," commented the officer, looking thoughtfully at the derelict. The boat was pulling up towards the lee side and the smoke was stifling. The burning steamer was rolling heavily and there was a litter of wreckage to leeward. "Can't board there," the officer said to himself. He gave orders to pull again to windward. "Men," he said suddenly, "there may still be some one aboard that craft. Who'll volunteer?" A chorus answered him. Almost every man of the crew volunteered. "Which of you is the best swimmer?" There was a moment's pause and then one of the sailors answered, "Maryon is, sir." "Do you think you can get on board?" the officer said, turning to the sailor mentioned. "I can get to her all right, sir," the sailor answered, "and I'll try to get on board." "You may try then," was the reply; "we'll drop you right by her. You can swim around the stern and try the lee quarter." The sailor stripped, and fastening a light line under his arms, waited for the boat to take the required place. How Eric wished that the Eel were there! But Maryon was a fair swimmer, and as soon as he struck out for the ship, the boy felt that he need have no fears for him. The sailor was still a couple of fathoms away from the side of the ship when, suddenly, a piece of wreckage up-ended on a sea and struck him. Those in the boat could not see how heavy was the blow, but it was clear that the sailor was incapacitated, and the crew hauled him inboard. He had a nasty cut on his cheek and his collar-bone was broken. While his hurts were being attended to, Eric saluted the officer. "Well, Mr. Swift?" "Mr. Sutherland," he said, "I've done a lot of life-saving work, sir." "Well?" "I'd like to volunteer, sir, if I might," the boy replied. "You don't think it's too much for you?" "No, sir." "I remember. You are an expert swimmer, are you not?" "Yes, sir." "You are sure of yourself?" "Yes, sir." "Very well, Mr. Swift," the officer answered, looking over him keenly, "You may go." With a quick pulse in his ears throbbing in excitement and elation, the boy slipped out of his cadet uniform and tied the life-line round him. A swirl of eager oars brought the boat again beneath the stern of the burning steamer. Eric plunged into the sea, the thought flashing through his mind as he did so that he wished he could make a spectacular dive like those he used to envy in the Eel. That he was a swimmer showed itself the minute he touched the water. Without appearing to use one-half the effort Maryon had needed, the boy covered the distance between the boat and the flaming vessel in a few long strokes, watching warily for wreckage. There was a treacherous suction as the vessel rolled, but Eric, trained to every form of danger in the line of rescue, kept close guard. He knew better than to make a false move from too great haste, and swam round cautiously, seeking for a place to board. The heat from that floating mass of belching flame was terrific, and more than once, as a gust brought down a cloud of fumes over him, the boy thought he would suffocate. At last he saw, trailing over the quarter, a wire rope, one of the stays of the after derrick, and he made ready to climb. The stay evidently had been melted through at the derrick head, but the heated end had fallen in the water and cooled. Up this the swimmer swarmed, though the frayed wire drew blood from his hands and legs at every point he touched it. At last he reached the bulwark, grasped it and jumped aboard. With a sharp cry of pain he leaped back to the rail again. The deck was burning hot! In spite of the spray that now and again came spattering over the derelict, the heat had been conducted throughout the craft. Not having thought of the possibility of a heated metal deck, Eric was barefoot. Of what use was it for him to be on board unless he could find out whether any one were there! The decks were empty. The steamer had sunk too deep for any one to be below, and live. There was only one place in which a survivor might still be--the sole remaining deck-house. Thither the wireless aerial led! There, if anywhere, was some deserted creature, author of the unread message that had sparked across the sea. There, and there only--and between Eric and that deck-house lay the stretch of red-hot deck, a glowing barrier to attempted rescue. Surely it was beyond attempt! Like a flash came to the boy's remembrance the old ordeal for witchcraft in which a man had to walk fifty feet over red-hot plowshares, in which, if he succeeded without collapse, he was adjudged innocent. At once Eric realized that some must have survived that awful test if the ordeal was of any value. What man had done, man again could do! It was at least as good a cause to save some man or woman from a fearful death as it was to save oneself from penalty of witchcraft. Daring all, he leaped down from the rail on to the superheated deck. In spite of his stoicism, the boy could not repress a cry of agony, that rang cruelly in the ears of his comrades in the boat. They had seen his figure outlined black against the red glare of the burning craft, and exulted. At the boy's cry, they shuddered, and more than one man blenched. The iron seared and crisped his flesh as his feet touched the torture. He could feel the skin curl and harden. Gritting his teeth, he sped at topmost speed of the house whither the aerials led. The door was jammed! Though the skin of his head seemed to tighten like a metal band, though his lungs stabbed within him as he breathed, though the pain in his feet was unendurable, Eric wrenched again and again at the handle, but the door would not budge. He called, but there was no answer. Almost delirious with baffled rage and excruciating suffering, the boy hurled himself against the door, throwing his shoulder out of joint with the power of the blow. The door fell inwards and he fell with it. The heat that poured from the room was overpowering, a dull red glow in the far corner of the floor showing that the flames were immediately beneath. With a gasp and a clutch on his reeling senses, Eric saw stretched out on the wireless table before him the figure of a man, moaning slightly, but insensible. Unable to stand on the hot floor, unable to escape from the room in which he had become trapped, he had lain down on the instruments and his writhings near the key had sent those tangled messages that the operator on the _Itasca_ had not been able to understand. Had it not been for the instinctive stimulus of his life-saving training, Eric would have deemed that the man was beyond help and would have sought safety himself. But his whirling senses held the knowledge how often life lingers when it appears extinct. Scarcely conscious himself of what he did, Eric grasped the unconscious man in his arms, raced back across the terror of the red-hot deck, reached the stern--how, he never knew--threw his moaning burden overboard and dived in after him. The shock as his parched and blistered body struck the cold sea water steadied Eric for a second, just long enough to grasp the man he had rescued, as the latter came floating to the surface. Then the pain of the salt water upon his cruel burns smote him, and he felt himself give way. He tugged twice at the life-line as a signal that he was at his last gasp, bidding them pull in. Then, gripping the last flicker of his purposed energy on the one final aim--not to loose hold in the sea of the man he had rescued from an intolerable death, the boy locked himself to the sufferer in the "side carry" he once had known so well. A sinking blackness came over him, flashes of violet flame danced before his eyes, his head suddenly seemed to be as though of lead, his legs stiffened and refused to move, and in the lurid glare of the burning steamer, rescuer and rescued sank beneath the waves. The last thing that Eric felt was the tug on the life-line underneath his arms. His cry for help was answered! The Coast Guard boat was near. CHAPTER VII REINDEER TO THE RESCUE When, the following morning, Eric awoke to consciousness in his bunk on the _Itasca_ he found himself the hero of the hour. He had been well-liked in his class before, but his daring feat increased this tenfold. Like all clean-cut Americans, the cadets held plucky manliness to be the most worth-while thing in the world. The surgeon, who was bandaging his burns, told him, in answer to the boy's questions, that the rescued man would probably recover. "You're not the only one I've got to take care of, though," the doctor said to him. "Van Sluyd's in sick bay this morning, too." "What's the matter with him?" queried Eric. "Van Sluyd's got grit," was the reply. "What did he do?" "I'm just going to tell you. About half an hour after the two of you had been brought on board, and while I was still examining your burns, Van Sluyd came up and asked if he could have a word with me. "'Of course,' I answered, 'what's on your mind?' "'My father's a doctor,' he said, 'and I've picked up a little medicine. Is the fellow that Swift rescued badly burned?' "'Yes,' I answered, 'he is.' "'Wouldn't he have a better chance if some skin-grafting were done?' "'Not a bit of doubt of it,' said I. "'Then,' he said, 'if it won't incapacitate me for the service, you can go ahead on me.'" "Who'd have thought it of Van Sluyd!" exclaimed Eric. "Talk about nerve, that's the real thing! What did you do, Doctor?" "I went and had a chat with the captain and told him just what was needed. I told him that it would put Van Sluyd out of active training for several weeks and might set him back in his examinations." "What did the captain say?" questioned the boy. "He just asked me if I thought that the man's recovery was in any way dependent on it, and when I said I thought it was, he answered that I could go ahead. You can be sure Van Sluyd won't lose out by it." "But won't it cripple him?" "Not a bit," the surgeon answered. "I'll just take a few square inches of skin off the thigh and he'll be all right in a few weeks." "Won't he have an awful scar?" "There'll be a bit of a scar. But he won't have any more scars than you, at that, my boy." "Are my feet going to take a long time to heal, Doctor?" "I'm afraid it'll be quite a while before they feel all right. We'll have you up and around before examinations, however, just the same. That's more than I can say for my other patient, though. He's badly burned." "Have you found out who he was?" queried Eric. "Certainly. He's the chief engineer of the craft, or, to speak more rightly, he was the chief engineer." "How do you suppose he got left behind?" "That's quite a story," the surgeon answered, as he tore off a piece of bandage. "He's too sick to do much talking, but it seems that when the fire was reported beyond control he sent all hands on deck out of the engine room, remaining behind himself to look after the pump-engines. The passengers and crew immediately took to the boats. When he tried to get up on deck a few minutes later he found that he was cut off. He had to get a crowbar and wrench his way through an iron grating, before he could get to the open air. "In the meantime, every one supposed that he was in one or other of the boats, and they had pushed off, leaving him marooned. For an hour or more the flames smoldered, and the deck was quite bearable. He tried to gather materials for a raft, but almost everything on the ship was iron. The cabin fittings were wood, but he couldn't find an ax, the sockets where the axes were usually kept being empty. "Then he remembered that the wireless instruments were clamped on to a wooden bench and he went into the deck-house to try to tear that apart. The door slammed as he went in, and while he was yanking at the bench the ship buckled and the pressure jammed the door, making him a prisoner. He seems to remember very little after that, but he must have tried hard to get out, for he broke his arm in some way." "How about the wireless messages?" "He says the operator had jotted down the original message he had sent, and he tried to repeat it as best he could. Of course all that last stuff no one could understand was sent when he was semi-conscious." Eric winced as the other touched his shoulder. "Get ready now," the surgeon said, "I'm going to snap that bone back into place. Ready?" "Go ahead," the boy answered through set teeth. The surgeon gave a quick sharp twist and there was a click as the shoulder went back. "That's going to be a bit sore for a while," he said, "but you ought to be mighty thankful you put it out of joint." "Why?" "You'd have broken something instead, if it hadn't slipped," was the reply; "you must have hit that door an awful welt, for you're bruised on that side from the shoulder down. Just black and blue with a few touches of reddish purple. You're an impressionist sketch on the bruise line, I tell you! But there's nothing serious there. Using your carcass for a battering ram is apt to make a few contusions, and you've done well to get off so easily." "I had to get into that deck-house. I wanted to be sure no one was there." "It took more than wanting," the surgeon said, "you must have been just about crazy. A man's got to be nearly in the state of a maniac before he'll hurl himself against an iron door like that without thinking of the consequences to himself. You were out of your head with pain, Swift, the way it looks to me, you'd never have tried it in your sober senses." "Glad I got crazy, then, Doctor," said Eric, gingerly moving himself a fraction of an inch, but wincing as he did so; "if I hadn't, I'd have failed." "Well," the surgeon said, rising to go, "I think the fates have been mighty good to you, Swift, if you ask me. There's many a man has the daring and the pluck to do what you've done, but never has the chance. You had your chance. And you made good!" As a matter of course, Eric's bunk became a center round which the other cadets gravitated, and his classmates did everything they could to make things as pleasant for him as possible. He was glad, none the less, when two or three days later, he was told that he might go up on deck. The boy was scarcely aware of it, but with his shoulder and arm bandaged and both feet heavily swathed, he made rather a pathetic sight, which his white and drawn face accentuated. A hammock had been rigged up on the sunny side of the deck and to this he was carried. Just as soon as he appeared on deck, for an instant there was a cessation of all work that was going on. Then, suddenly, started by no one knew whom, from the throat of every man on deck came a burst of cheers. It was the tribute of gallant men to a gallant lad. Weakly, and with a lump in his throat, Eric saluted with his left hand, in reply. It was an infraction of discipline, no doubt, but the officer in charge of the deck ignored it. Indeed, he was afterwards heard to say that he had difficulty in not joining in himself. A little later in the day, the captain himself came on deck. Before going below, he came amidships where Eric was lying, feeling weak, but thoroughly happy. "I have the pleasure of informing you, Mr. Swift," he said, formally, "that I have entered your name in the ship's log for distinguished services." This was more than Eric could have hoped for and he saluted gratefully. The boy realized how much more significant was this actual visit of the captain than if it had followed the usual custom of a message sent through the executive officer of the ship, and his pride and delight in the Coast Guard was multiplied. Naturally, under the conditions, there was a slight relaxation of discipline in Eric's case, and more than once the first lieutenant came and chatted to the lad. Finding out that he was especially interested in Alaska, the lieutenant talked with him about the work of the Coast Guard in the Bering Sea and the Arctic Ocean. The officer was an enthusiast about the Eskimo, holding them to be a magnificent race, enduring the rigors of the far north and holding themselves clean from the vices of civilization. As one of his classmates was taking up Eskimo language, Eric also took up the study of it, since he had spare time on his hands while in sick-bay. Meantime, however, he kept up his studies at top notch. The value of the Eskimo language to him, however, Eric never realized until the close of his third year. Though limping a good deal, he had been able to be up and around for a month before the exams and he had been slaving like a forty-mule team. Still, work as hard as he could, the boy was conscious that there were others who could surpass him. Especially there was one, a fellow called Pym Arbuthnot, who was a hard competitor. [Illustration: COAST GUARD CUTTER, _MIAMI_, ON JULY FOURTH. Vessel on which Eric was lieutenant, dressed for national holiday and firing a salute. Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.] They used to say of Pym that he could learn a subject by looking at the outside of a book, and his memory was as retentive as his acquisition was quick. He was always first--in everything but mathematics. There Eric had him. Often he blessed the memory of the old puzzle-maker, as week by week his success in mathematics kept him right abreast of his rival. When at last the exams came off and the lists were made known, Eric was second. He had not quite been able to catch up with Pym, who was first, as every one had expected. To Eric's great delight, moreover, Homer was first in the engineering class. About a week later, the commandant called him into his office. "Lieutenant Swift," he said, and the boy's face glowed at this first use of the title, "you have been commissioned and ordered to the _Bear_. I am told that you know a little Eskimo." "Yes, sir, a little," Eric answered. "Your showing in the Academy has been creditable," the commandant continued, "and I have the pleasure of informing you that your appointment as United States Commissioner on the _Bear_ on her next trip has been forwarded to me," and he touched a paper lying on the desk. "I have to thank Mr. Sutherland for that, sir," Eric answered. "It is a matter of record, sir," the commandant answered a trifle sternly, "that you have done your duty. Appointments in the Coast Guard, Mr. Swift, are made upon the single basis of efficiency and fitness. I have the honor to congratulate you upon your commission and to wish you well." Walking from the commandant's office, Eric, now "Lieutenant Swift," met the first lieutenant. He looked so excited that the officer stopped and spoke to him. "You wanted to speak to me?" "I've been ordered to the _Bear_, sir," blurted out Eric, for a moment dropping the official speech and talking eagerly, "and I've got the Commissionership, too!" The first lieutenant raised his eyebrows slightly at the conversational form of address, but he realized that the boy was bubbling over with his news. "I'm very glad, Mr. Swift," he said heartily; "perhaps you'll be able to use a little of that Eskimo you learned." "I'm so grateful to you, Mr. Sutherland," Eric began, but the other stopped him with a slight gesture. "I rather envy you your first trip into the Arctic," he said; "it's an experience that no one ever forgets. And you will find out for yourself whether I have overestimated the Eskimo as a race." He put his hand kindly on the lad's shoulder, as he noticed the slight limp, and remembered. "You're going to extremes," he continued; "from the red-hot decks of a burning ship to the ice hummocks of the polar seas. In that country I'll pass on to you a word of warning that Commodore Peary once gave me. Make it your motto in the Arctic. It is this--'Be bold, but never desperate.'" With a grateful answer, and with his commission as third lieutenant and his appointment as United States Commissioner in his hand, Eric walked out a full-fledged officer of the Coast Guard and Uncle Sam's representative in the Arctic seas. Several weeks later, Eric reported on board the _Bear_. He had broken his trip west for a couple of days at home and had managed to snatch the time to run up to his old Coast Guard station and to visit his friend, the puzzle-maker. He really felt that he owed the initial success of his career to the old mathematician, and in this he was far more nearly right even than he imagined. He carried with him into the Arctic the old man's last advice. "I'm gittin' old," the puzzle-maker had said to him, "not here when you come back. Life--he is like figuring, you think him straight, you work him careful, right every time!" It was with a keen delight that Eric realized, when he boarded the _Bear_, that sailorship was not merely a thing of the books. Although he knew that the Coast Guard vessel was a converted whaler, it had never fixed itself in his mind that the _Bear_ was a sailing vessel with auxiliary steam, and that she was handled as a sailing vessel. Barkentine-rigged, with square sails on the foremast and fore-and-aft rig on her main and mizzen, Eric found later by experience that her sailing powers were first-class. His delight in the handling of the ship added to his popularity with his brother officers, all of whom, as older men, had been trained in clipper days. At Seattle the _Bear_ took aboard the mail for Nome and St. Michael. This consisted of over 400 sacks, an indication of the growth of a city which in the spring of 1897 consisted only of a row of tents on a barren beach. At Unalaska, in the Aleutian Islands, five destitute natives were taken aboard the _Bear_ for transportation to their homes in St. Michael. Off Nunivak Island, Eric had his first sight of polar ice, but the pack was well broken up and gave little trouble. Norton Sound was comparatively free of ice, however, and the _Bear_ reached St. Michael's ten days later. As St. Michael's Bay was filled with ice-floes, the vessel anchored to await favorable conditions for landing mail. A "lead" or opening in the ice having formed between Whale Island and the mainland, after a clear night's work, the Coast Guard cutter dropped her anchors inside the ice. A couple of days later the floes cleared partly away and the _Bear_ crossed over to Nome. Endeavoring to make St. Lawrence Island, where the head government reindeer herder was to be landed, the _Bear_ struck a heavy ice pack, and the little vessel had to give up the attempt to land. She worked to the northeast, out of the ice, and the captain changed the ship's course for King Island. This was the first opportunity Eric had to use his U. S. Commissionership. One of the natives, who had been associated with the white prospectors, was accused of ill-treatment towards his children, a very unusual condition in the Arctic. He had boasted a good deal to the other natives that the United States had no judges so far north, and that the white men could not punish him. In order to teach him a lesson, Eric heard the case, found the man guilty and sentenced the native to a day's imprisonment in the ship's brig, in irons, releasing him shortly before the vessel sailed. A sick native, with his wife and three small children were taken on board, for transportation to the hospital at Nome. The young lieutenant also made an inspection of Prince of Wales village. During the entire winter there had not been a single case of disturbance and hardly a case of sickness. "There are mighty few villages of the same size in the States," said the surgeon to Eric, as they were returning to the boat, "which could show as good a record as these Eskimo villages. Nobody sick, nobody living on charity, nobody headed for jail!" Returning to Nome, what was Eric's delight to find Homer Tierre awaiting them! He had been assigned to duty on the _Bear_ to relieve one of the juniors, who had been assigned to another cutter, and the two young officers greeted each other warmly. The head government reindeer-herder was eager to get to his post, so the _Bear_ made a second attempt, this time successfully. On the island only one case came up before Eric as United States Commissioner, that of a native who had allowed his dogs to run in the reindeer herds, four deer having been killed. Eric, before whom the case was tried, ruled that the native should be made to pay for the deer. As the margin of living in those barren islands is very small, this was quite a heavy punishment, and struck terror into the hearts of the natives. They had been ignoring the government's regulations concerning the corralling of the huskies, believing that there was no one with power to punish infractions of the law. From there the _Bear_ went to Cape Prince of Wales, and here Eric fell in with Joey Blake, the former first mate of one of the whaling vessels rescued by the famous Overland Expedition in 1897. For the first time Eric heard the whole story of that heroic trip when the Coast Guard sent three men to save the lives of three hundred men, imprisoned in the polar ice. He heard how the men who were now his brother officers had done that which no white man had ever done before, how they had gone from Nome to Point Barrow in the dead of winter, their only base of support in those months of frozen night being their own fortitude and resourcefulness. Joey Blake, now in charge of the Point Barrow station of one of the commercial whaling companies, waxed eloquent as he told how the Coast Guard men had risked their lives over and over again, to reach the herd of reindeer, who might be driven on the hoof over mountains that had never before been crossed. He told how, thereby, they had saved from starvation and death the crews of several vessels fast in the crushing grasp of the ice-pack of the Arctic Seas. From one of the men who owed his life to that magnificent piece of daring, Eric learned the tale of the great march across the ice and round the inhospitable shores in the bleak darkness of the Arctic night. He understood why Congress had voted special thanks and medals to the three men who carried to success the greatest rescue in Arctic history, full as that record has been of sacrifice and heroism. [Illustration: THE _BEAR_ IN THE ICE PACK. Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.] [Illustration: THE _BEAR_ BREAKING FREE FROM THE ICE. Whaler, still fast, left behind, while Coast Guard cutter forces her way clear. Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.] In November, 1897, word reached the United States that eight whaling vessels, with 287 men on board, were fast in the ice north of Point Barrow. Nothing was known of their condition, save that the provisions of the entire fleet could not be counted upon to give them food beyond the end of January. Possibly hunting and fishing might enable this to be spun out a month or so, but not more. The way through Bering Straits would not be open until June, at the earliest. Starvation, therefore, was imminent. The United States Government naturally turned to the Coast Guard--then known as the Revenue Cutter Service--well assured that whatever was possible in the realm of human courage and skill would be done. Between the marooned whalers and civilization lay a thousand miles and more of the most fearful road that man has ever had to travel, a road untrod, with cold like to the bitterness of death as its constant state and the howl of the blizzard for its sole companion. Not only must this blind and awful trail be conquered, with possible disaster in every mile and a sure heritage of suffering and pain in every step, but food sufficient to last 300 men for over four months had to be taken over those desolate wastes. The _Bear_, though only three weeks back from a six months' cruise in Arctic waters, was ordered back to the desperate attempt. There was no need to ask for volunteers in the Revenue Cutter Service. Every man in the service, from the most recently enlisted man to the Captain Commandant would have stepped forward. As it was, the expedition contained three of the ablest and most vigorous men in the entire service. It was under the command of Lieutenant Jarvis, with Lieutenant Bertholf (now the Captain Commandant of the Coast Guard) as the second in command. Only one other white man, Surgeon Call, accompanied the expedition. The _Bear_, under sail and steam, headed for the north. Every mile gained by sea meant a vast help to the expedition. Yet, when Cape Nome was still 85 miles distant, the little vessel ran into thick mush-ice. Beating around for clearer water the wind began to die down and the _Bear_ was almost caught. Had she been frozen in then, ten miles to the east of Southeast Cape, the expedition would have been frustrated and the whalers left unrescued. It was a narrow escape and the commander of the _Bear_ turned back to Cape Vancouver, and the next morning steamed to within five miles of a native village, not marked on any chart, but visible from the ship. Minutes counted, and two boats were sent off to the shore. The settlement was found to be the village of Tununak, in which, by good fortune, was a half-breed trader, Alexis, who had dogs. On December 18th the overland expedition started, far south of Nome, with four sleds and forty-one dogs, nine dogs being harnessed to each of the sleds belonging to Alexis and fourteen to the heavy one from the ship. From Tununak they went to Ukogamute, and because a southeast wind had cleared away the ice from the shore, the party was compelled to climb a range of mountains between the two villages. "Did you ever climb a mountain with a dog team?" queried Joey Blake. "Take my word, it's some job. You've got to tackle a thing like that to get the heartbreak of it. It's bad enough to have to run ahead of a dog team on the level, but in mountain country it's something fierce." "Do you have to run ahead of the dogs?" Eric said in surprise. "What for? To break a trail?" "Sure. A dog team can trot faster than a man can walk but not as fast as he can run. So a fellow's got to run in the deep snow a hundred yards or so, then walk, then run, an' so on. I met Alexis a year or two after the expedition an' he told me all his troubles. They got to the top of the mountain, he said, in the midst of a furious snowstorm. It was so thick that the natives could not decide on the road an' it was impossible to stay up on the crest without freezin' to death. At last they decided to chance it. The side of the mountain was so steep that the dogs couldn't keep up with the sleds an' there was nothing to do but toboggan to the bottom of the hill. "What fun," exclaimed Eric. "Ye-es," the other said dubiously, "but it was a two-thousand-foot slide! They wound small chains around the runners of the sleds to try an' check their speed a little, an' hoping that they wouldn't hit anything, let 'em go. Just as the first sled had begun slidin', Alexis told me he called out that he thought they were a little too much to the north an' all the sleds would go off a precipice into the sea. It was too late to stop, then. It took three hours to climb one side of the mountain, an' less than three minutes to go down the other side. "From there they went straight along the coast to Kiyilieugamute, where they had reckoned on gettin' dogs to replace the young dogs on the 'scratch teams' Alexis had made up. All the dogs had gone on a trip for fish an' the natives said it would be two days before they arrived. So Jarvis went ahead with the two good teams, leavin' Bertholf to follow as soon as the native dogs arrived. Four days of hard traveling, stoppin' at Akoolukpugamute, Chukwoktulieugamute, Kogerchtehmute, and Chukwoktulik brought 'em to the Yukon at the old Russian trading post of Andreavski. "On the Yukon, I guess they made good time. You know, in the fall, when there are sou'westerly gales in the Bering Sea, the water rises in the lower Yukon, an' as it freezes quickly, there may be a trail of smooth glare ice for miles. Then there's prime traveling. But, often as not, the water flows back again before the ice is thick enough to travel on. It makes a thin shell, an' dogs, sleds an' everybody goes through an' brings up on the solid ice below. "As a matter of fact, it put Jarvis' teams down an' out; most of his dogs were bleeding at every step from ice-cuts in the cushions of their feet. He had trouble with the natives, too. Two of them got violent colds, an' they were no use for traveling." "Seems queer to think of Eskimos catching cold," said Eric; "now if it had been Lieutenant Jarvis, I wouldn't have been surprised." "There's nothing as tough as a white man," said the whaler. "If you look up stories of explorers you'll always find it's the natives that get used up first." "Why, do you suppose?" "A white man is more used to putting out energy. After all, natives are lazy, an' a white man on an exploring expedition or a rescue is pushing natives faster than they have ever been used to going." "He's taking the same trouble himself!" objected the boy. "Sure, he is. But then, in one way or another, he's pushing all the time. Jarvis told me that the next two or three days were bad. Off Point Romanoff the ice-crush was piled high an' they had to lift the sleds over the hummocks for two days on end. A snowstorm came up in the middle of it, an' I guess it was touch and go until they made Pikmiktallik, nine miles further on. Next day, late in the afternoon, they drove into St. Michael's, havin' covered three hundred and seventy-five miles in twenty-one days, with only one day's rest. "The story of how Jarvis got teams at St. Michael's and Unalaklik is a yarn all by itself. Anyway, he got 'em, and on January fifth left Unalaklik, by a mountainous trail along the shore. A wild bit of road delayed 'em before they reached Norton's Bay. On the further shore, I guess they had real trouble. Jarvis told me--and the phrase has stuck in my mind ever since--that the ice looked like a cubist picture. I've seen stuff like that, but I never had to travel over it." "It sounds awful," said Eric. "It's worse than that," was the reply. "I don't want any of that sort of travel in my dish, thanks. Well, to go on. It was right there that Jarvis' an' Bertholf's trail divided. Orders had been left at Unalaklik for Bertholf to go on an' meet Jarvis at Cape Blossom, on the north side of Kotzebue Sound, with a thousand pounds of provisions." "How could he catch up with Jarvis with a load like that," queried the boy, "when the first part of the expedition was traveling light?" "Jarvis had to make a nine-hundred-mile roundabout, clear the way round the Seward Peninsula," explained the whaler. "What for?" "To get the reindeer." "That's right," said Eric. "I forgot about the reindeer." "They're the whole story," the other reminded him. "They couldn't have got food up to us with dogs, nohow. It would have taken an army of dogs." "I don't see why?" "You've got to feed dogs," was the answer. "Two hundred an' fifty pounds is a good weight for a dog team an' half of that is dog-feed. The food for the humans in the party is nigh another fifty pound. So, you see, a dog team on a long journey will only get in with about a hundred pounds. At the rate of a pound a day a man for four months, it would take all of five hundred dog teams of ten dogs each to get the stuff up there! An' what would you do with the five thousand dogs when you got 'em up there? [Illustration: REINDEER MESSENGERS OF RESCUE. Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.] [Illustration: REINDEER THAT SAVED THREE HUNDRED LIVES. Part of Charlie Artisarlook's herd, driven a thousand miles through blizzards by three Coast Guard heroes. Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.] "No, winter travel in Alaska's got to be by reindeer. You mayn't know it, but it's the U. S. Government that has made the Eskimos happy. There's one man, Sheldon Jackson, of the Bureau of Education, who's brought more peace and happiness to a larger number of people than 'most any man I know." "How? By introducing reindeer?" "Just that," the whaler answered. "The Eskimo would have been wiped off the face of the earth but for that one man's work. He started the reindeer idea, he brought in a few himself, he got the Government interested an' now reindeer are the backbone of northern Alaska. Our steam whalers had driven the whales an' the walrus an' the seal so far north that the Eskimo couldn't reach them. They were slowly starvin' to death by hundreds when Uncle Sam stepped in. And your captain commandant, that's Bertholf, who I'm telling you about now, he did a lot for Alaska when he brought in the bigger breed, the Tunguse reindeer, which are comin' to be the real beasts o' burden here in the north. It was knowin' what could be done with reindeer that sent Jarvis round to Point Rodney and Cape Prince of Wales to get the herds together an' start 'em north." "I thought," said Eric, wrinkling up his forehead, "there was a herd nearer than that. How about the Teller Station at Port Clarence? Isn't that a reindeer layout?" "It is," said the old whaler, "but distress among the miners in the Upper Yukon had been reported earlier, an' that herd had been started off for there. Jarvis figured on rounding up Artisarlook's herd at Point Rodney, and the Government herd under C. M. Lopp at Cape Prince of Wales, an' arrangin' to drive 'em to Point Barrow. Then, by pickin' up Bertholf, who was to cut straight across the Seward Peninsula with the dog-teams and the provisions, he would be sure of having enough supplies to push north. "Then Jarvis struck snow-drifts! The guides traveled with snowshoes an' did their best to make a trail, Jarvis doing a big share o' the work. The runners of the sleds went clear down an' the dogs sank nearly out of sight in their struggles to move 'em. The men had to go backwards and forwards a dozen times in front of the sled, stamping it down hard. Then the dogs would drag it ten feet or so an' they'd have to pound the snow again. There's something that's exhaustin'. Even the dogs played out an' simply lay down in the snow, refusin' to go any farther." "Without any shelter?" "Huskies don't need any shelter. They're tough brutes so far as weather is concerned. Durin' the coldest winter weather in the worst blizzards they'll curl up anywhere on the snow an' sleep, an' when the snow has drifted over 'em, get up, shake themselves, an' lie down in the same place again for another sleep." "They scrap a lot, too, don't they?" "At feedin' time. When bein' fed they are like wild animals an' snarl an' bite each other, keepin' up one continual fight until everything is eaten. It's more than one man's job with a club to keep 'em quiet enough for all the dogs to get their share. But when all the grub is done with, they'll get moderately quiet again. "At Golovin Bay, Jarvis found the Teller reindeer herd under Dr. Kettleson. He was on his way to St. Michael for the Upper Yukon, same as I told you, an' had started from Port Clarence three weeks before but had been stopped by the deep snow. So Jarvis sent back the dog teams to Bertholf, who was waiting for them at Unalaklik, and started out with reindeer teams." "How do reindeer travel?" queried the boy. "All right, in winter, but they're irregular," the other replied. "Every one has got to be ready in the morning for the start, for the instant the head team moves, all the deer are off with a jump, full gallop. For half an hour or so they go like an express train, then they sober down to a more steady rate of speed, an' finally, when they are tired, they'll drop into a walk. Jarvis' deer played him a nasty trick on this trip." "What was that?" asked the boy. "It was on the way to Point Rodney. It was blowing a living gale an' the snow was blinding. In the dark Jarvis' deer wandered from the trail, got entangled in a lot of driftwood on the beach, which was half covered over with snow, took fright, an' finally wound up by running the sled full speed agin a stump, breakin' the harness, draggin' the line out of Jarvis' hand an' disappearin' in the darkness an' the flying snow. Luckily Jarvis knew enough not to try and follow him. He stayed right there." "All night?" queried the boy. "Luckily, he didn't have to," the other answered. "Two hours later, a search party found him. They dug a hole in the snow an' camped right there. "The next day they only made five miles. The storm was so bad that the man breakin' trail couldn't stand up an' had to crawl on his hands and knees. Even the reindeer wouldn't travel in a straight line, wantin' to turn their tails to the blast. This would have taken the party straight out to sea over the ice. After three days' delay, Jarvis insisted on travel, an' he nearly had a mutiny on his hands. But he put it through. He's one of the kind of men that always keeps on going! "Then came the time for diplomacy. Jarvis had to persuade 'Charlie' Artisarlook, just on his say-so, to give up his whole herd, his entire wealth, promisin' that the same number of deer should be returned. As a small village had grown up around this herd of Artisarlook's--which made him quite the most prominent member of his race for miles around--an' as they depended entirely for their food and clothing on the reindeer herd, it was like askin' a city to empty its houses of everything for the sake of men they'd never even seen. I think it says a lot for the Eskimos that they agreed." "It's bully!" "That's me, too. It's something to give up every penny you own merely on a promise that it will be returned, to leave your wife, family an' neighbors starving, an' go eight hundred miles from home in an Arctic winter over a terrible road to help a party of white men in distress. "When Artisarlook agreed, Jarvis and he went on ahead, leaving Surgeon Call to follow with the herd to Cape Prince of Wales. This, Jarvis told me, was one of the worst bits of road on the entire trip. Here's what Jarvis said himself about it: "'As I remember it, the thermometer was over thirty below zero and there was a tidy blizzard blowing when we started for Cape Prince of Wales. The going was rough beyond words. In the afternoon, suddenly Artisarlook wanted to camp, but I thought he was trying to work on my fears, so I made him go on. But the boy was right, for shortly after it got dark we struck the bluffs near Cape York and our road was over the ice crushes that lined the shore. "'I have never seen such a road. Artisarlook went ahead to try and pick out the way, if indeed it could be called a way, which was nothing but blocks of ice heaped in confusion and disorder. I stayed behind to manage the heavy sled which was continually capsizing in the rough ice. By eight o'clock I was done out and quite willing to camp. But this time Artisarlook would not stop. It was too cold to camp on the ice without shelter or wood--the ice we were on was in danger of breaking away from the bluffs at any minute, and then it might be the end of us. We must get on beyond the line of bluffs before stopping. "'To make matters worse I stepped through a crack in the ice into the water, and, almost instantaneously, my leg to the knee was a mass of ice. I was now compelled to go on to some place where the foot-gear could be dried. As though in a dream, suffering the most horrible tortures of fatigue, we pushed on dispiritedly until midnight, when we came to a small hut about ten by twelve, in which fifteen people were already sleeping. It was the most horrible place I have ever been in, but, at the same time, I was never so happy to be under a roof before. Though I had eaten nothing all day, I was too tired to do more than to crawl into my sleeping-bag and sleep. "'The blizzard raged as fiercely outside as on the day before, but I could not stay in that pestilential and filthy hut. Even Artisarlook--and an Eskimo is not over-particular--found difficulty in eating his breakfast. For my part--I could not breathe. The air was horrible and it was refreshing to get outside and to be going through the storm and over the rough ice. Fortunately there was another village about ten miles further on and we stopped there and had a good meal to fortify ourselves against the battle around the mountains of the Cape York. "'At last I had struck the worst road in the world. All the tremendous pressure of the Polar Seas forcing the ice to the southward was checked by the land masses of Siberia and Alaska. The ice, twisted and broken, crushed and mangled, piled in a welter of frozen confusion along the shore. Darkness set in before we came to the worst of it, and a faint moon gave little light for such a road. For fifteen miles there was not ten feet of level ground. Though the temperature was thirty below zero, Artisarlook and I were wet to the skin with perspiration from the violence of the work. We would have to get under the heavy sled and lift it to the top of an ice hummock sometimes as high as our shoulders or even higher and then ease it down on the other side. Three times out of four it would capsize. "'It was a continuous jumble of dogs, sleds, men and ice--particularly ice--and it would be hard to tell which suffered most, men or dogs. Once in helping the sled over a bad place, I was thrown nearly nine feet down a slide, landing on the back of my head with the sled on me. Our sleds were racked and broken, our dogs played out and we ourselves scarce able to move when we finally reached Mr. Lopp's house at the Cape.'" "Glorious!" cried Eric, his eyes shining; "they won through!" "Yes, they got through all right," the whaler answered. "They still had a terrible journey ahead of them, but success was sure. Two or three days later Dr. Call reported with Artisarlook's herd. Lopp, of course, was an expert in handling deer an', besides, knew the country well. With sleds and over four hundred reindeer, equipped in every way except for provisions, Jarvis started for the north. He met Bertholf at the appointed meeting-place, Bertholf having done miracles in crossing the divide with the provisions. "Meantime Lopp took a chance with the deer that no one less experienced in local conditions dared ha' done. In the teeth of a blizzard he forced the deer herd over the ice of Kotzebue Sound, miles away from land. Though he himself was badly frostbitten, an' though every one of the herders arrived on the further shore with severe frost-bites, the crossing was achieved, savin' several weeks o' time. "So, with the deer comin' over the mountains, where they could find moss, an' with the Coast Guard men coming up the coast in the dog teams Bertholf had brought, rescue came up to us on Point Barrow. "I've seen some strange sights in my time an' I've lived all my life with men who sported with death daily. But I've never seen a stranger sight than strong men creepin' out of the snow-banked hovels where they'd been for four long months, half-starved and three-quarters sick, to actually feel Jarvis to make sure that he was real. "Many and many a man reckoned it was delirium to think that help had come. It seemed beyond belief. An' when Jarvis told 'em that four hundred reindeer were only a day's journey away, an' that there was fresh meat enough for all--old seadogs that hadn't had any sort of feeling for years, just broke down and cried like children. "Then, while the excitement was at its height, and everybody was asking questions at the same time, a grizzled old whaler, who had been whalin' for half a century an' more, I guess, half-blind with scurvy, crept forward and laid his hand on Jarvis' shoulder. "'Boys,' he said in a quavering voice, 'this ain't just one man, it's the whole United States.'" CHAPTER VIII THE BELCHING DEATH OF A VOLCANO The whaler's story of the great Overland Expedition set Eric questioning about the work of the Coast Guard with the reindeer. He learned that, partly as a result of his handling of the trip, the government had selected Lieutenant Bertholf to make an exploration of northern Siberia for the purpose of importing Tunguse reindeer, which were reported to be bigger and better fitted for Alaska than the Lapp reindeer. He found out how over 200 head of the larger species had been successfully imported, and a couple of days later had a very vivid demonstration of the fact in seeing an Eskimo trot by, riding a Tunguse reindeer like a saddle horse. The more the boy saw of the Eskimo, too, the more he learned to value their race strength. It was true that they were dirty and that their houses smelt horribly. But, after all, Eric reasoned, it is a little hard to keep the habit of baths in a country where, during six months in the year, a man would freeze solid in a bath like a fly in a piece of amber. The Eskimo's indifference to smells, moreover, he learned to understand one day, quite suddenly. He was pacing up and down the deck with the whaler a day or two before the _Bear_ reached Point Barrow. "You're always worryin' over those smells," Joey had said to him. "You've lived in a city, haven't you?" "Nearly all my life," the boy replied. "Have you ever been in a city what wasn't noisy with street cars, an' wagons, an' automobile horns, an' children playing, an' music-boxes an' pianos goin' an' all the rest of it?" "It is noisy," Eric admitted, "but you soon get used to that." "Hearin' is just one o' the five senses, ain't it?" "Yes." "An' smellin' is another?" "Of course." "Well, an Eskimo's nose gets to be like a city man's ear, one smells all the time an' doesn't notice it, the other hears all the while an' doesn't care. You can't judge a people by its smell. An' when it comes to fair dealin', you won't find anywhere a squarer people to deal with than the Eskimo. You're Commissioner, ain't you?" "Yes," the boy answered. "An' you haven't found much crime, have you, eh?" "Mighty little," he admitted. "It's the same every year. They're a fine race, the Eskimo. I'll tell you just one little thing about 'em, that I don't think could be said of any other native race in the whole world." "What's that?" the boy asked. "You know," the whaler said, "how natives go to pieces when civilization hits 'em." "Generally." "What do you suppose is the reason?" "Whisky and white men's ways," answered Eric promptly. "Right, first shot," said the other. "Soon after Alaska was opened up, the Eskimo learned the excitin' effects of whisky. Fearin' trouble, a strict watch was kept on the sale of liquor to the natives, an' as it was easy enough to find out where the whisky had come from an' no vessel could escape from the Arctic without being known, tradin' spirits to the Eskimo soon had to be given up. [Illustration: SIGNALS THAT GUARDS OUR COAST. Flags flying at Quogue Station, warning vessels far out to sea.] "But, in order to increase business, the traders taught one old Eskimo chief, named Ah-tung-owra, how to make whisky out of flour and molasses." "They made it themselves?" "Yes." "But where could they get stills? I should think it was as easy to catch a trader selling stills as selling whisky." "They're home-made stills," the whaler explained. "There ain't much to the apparatus. It is just a five-gallon coal-oil tin, an old gun-barrel an' a wooden tub. The liquor they make tastes like chain lightnin', and makes up in strength what it hasn't got in flavor. "But what I think wonderful is this. When the Coast Guard--it was the Revenue Cutter Service then--began its patrol of the Arctic, one of the first things it did was to show the Eskimo the result of their drunken bouts. Takin' whisky to native tribes an' then teachin' 'em to let it alone is the white man's long suit. "But the main difference between the Eskimo an' the rest of 'em, is that these tribes listened. They asked a pile o' questions an' at last agreed that the reasons given were good an' the habit was bad. Off their own bat they broke up all the stills on the coast, an' months after the clean-up a native told me that he had told his friends inland what Bertholf had said, an' that all the stills there had been destroyed, too. There's liquor enough in the south, but by the Eskimo's own choosin' there isn't a blind tiger to-day between Cape Prince of Wales, Point Barrow and Mackenzie Bay." In consequence of this self-control on the part of the natives, the young United States Commissioner found very little strain on his judicial powers. One of the things that did trouble him was the constant request of the natives to get married. The problem seemed so difficult that he asked advice from the first lieutenant, who, many years before, had been Commissioner on a similar assignment to that of Eric. "I don't like marrying these natives, sir," he said, "because, so far as I can make out, they haven't any idea of the legal end of it. I've been talking to Ahyatlogok, a bridegroom, and he really doesn't intend to do anything more than try out the bride for a season, Eskimo fashion, to see if he likes her. And if he doesn't and they both want to separate, if I've married them, they can't." "Why not?" "Ahyatlogok's not rich enough to take that long trip to Nome to get a divorce. It's a year's journey, nearly. And unless he does, next time the _Bear_ comes up he'll be a criminal. And yet he'll have done just what his father did before him and nearly all his neighbors are doing." "Mr. Swift," the senior officer answered, with a slight twinkle in his eye, "do you tie a granny knot in a reef-point?" "No, sir, never!" exclaimed Eric in surprise. "Why not?" "Because a granny knot jams, and a reef-point may have to be untied." "There's your answer," said the first lieutenant, smiling as he turned away. With these constant small matters and with all the excitements of his trip through the Arctic, Eric's summer passed rapidly. After having touched Point Barrow, the _Bear_ came south, landing supplies at Cape Lisburne and returning to Nome. As certain repairs to the machinery were needed, and as her coal bunkers were growing empty, the _Bear_ headed to the southward for Unalaska. The cutter was within half a day's steaming of the port when the radio began to buzz and buzz loudly, answering the call of a vessel in distress off Chirikof Island. As the steamer was known to be carrying a number of passengers, thus endangered, the _Bear_ did not stop at Unalaska, but putting on full speed, arrived off Cape Sarichef Lighthouse at 4 o'clock in the morning, proceeding through Unimak Pass and Inside Passage. The naval radio station from Unalga Island confirmed the report, but could give no further details. Under full speed the _Bear_ reached the scene of the disaster the next day. Of the vessel, _Oregon Queen_, not a sign could be seen, but, save for three persons, all the crew and passengers were safe on Chirikof Island. They were almost without food, however--many of them insufficiently clad and utterly destitute. As the _Oregon Queen_ had been bound for St. Paul, Kodiak Island, and a large number of the passengers could depend upon assistance there, the _Bear_ picked them up, and the day following, despite extraordinary weather conditions, landed them at St. Paul. Little did the shipwrecked men realize that they had only escaped one danger to be imperilled by another. "Homer," said Eric to his friend the following afternoon, as the _Bear_ lay outside the barge _St. James_ at the wharf at St. Paul, "what do you make of that cloud to the sou'west'ard?" "Snow," was the terse reply. "I don't," the boy objected. "It's a mighty queer-looking sort of cloud. It doesn't look a bit like anything I've ever seen before." "There's lots of things you've never seen," was his friend's reply. "That's one of them," the boy answered gravely, not at all in his friend's jovial vein. "But I don't think it's snow. There's something awfully queer about it. Gives me the shivers, somehow! It looks too solid for snow!" Minutes passed. Little by little a curious feeling of unrest began to spread over the ship. The sailors stopped in their work to glance up at the strange and menacing cloud. Its edges were black with an orange fringing, and as clean cut as though it were some gigantic plate being moved across the sky. In the distance there was a low rumble, as of thunder. The portent rose slowly. Almost an hour passed before the cloud was half-way up the zenith. Shortly before two bells in the first dog watch, Eric, passing his hand along the rail, realized that it was covered with a fine coat of dust. This was not black, like coal dust, but a light gray. "Say, Homer," he said, "that's ashes." "Forest fire somewhere," said the other. "No," said Eric, "it looks like pumice-stone." "Volcanic, I'll bet," said the other, with a quickened interest. He scooped up a pinch of the fine dust and looked at it. "It's volcanic, sure enough. There must be a big eruption somewhere!" "I wish it were right handy near by," said Eric; "I've never seen an eruption." "You talk as if they were as frequent as moving pictures," said the other. "But there's trouble somewhere, you can lay to that. And it's not far off, either! See, there's another cloud coming up from the nor'ard!" Steadily, and with a slowness that only increased its threatening aspect, the cloud to the northward joined the vast overhanging canopy that had been seen earlier in the day. By half-past six in the evening it was black as the densest night, the murk only being lighted by the constant flashes of lightning. The air was highly electrified and the wireless was made silent. During the evening the island was shaken by many light earthquake shocks and several people from St. Paul came to take refuge on the _Bear_. At midnight a fine dust was falling steadily, but by six bells of the middle watch it had lessened and when the sun rose the next morning, he could be seen as a dull red ball. The air was still full of dust and ash, but the eruption was believed to be over. Early in the morning scores of people came to the ship for drinking-water, many of the streams and wells in the village having been choked. About five inches of ashes had fallen. The captain of the _Bear_ started the evaporators going, to provide drinking-water for the folk ashore. Shortly before noon the ashes began to fall again, even more heavily than before. When Eric came up from below after lunch, the air was so full of a heavy gritty ash that it was impossible to see the length of the ship. The _Bear_ was evidently in a place of danger and there was no means of determining what was happening or what would happen. "Do you suppose we'll strike out to sea?" queried Eric of his friend. "We ought to, for safety, but I don't see how we can leave the place unprotected." "We'd never do that," replied the other. "Things don't work out that way in the Coast Guard. You'll see. We'll stick here till the last gun's fired." It was a relief to Eric when at three o'clock that afternoon he was ordered to accompany a shore party. All hands had been on duty since seven that morning, and when Eric went ashore the sailors were keeping regular shifts with shovels, clearing the decks, while four streams of water from the fire mains were playing incessantly in an effort to clear the ship of its horrible burden. More than once, when the rain of volcanic débris grew especially heavy, the men fell behind, work as hard as they might. Herein lay real danger, for if the deck-load of ashes grew too heavy the _Bear_ might turn turtle. Then all hope of rescue would be lost. The captain of the _Bear_ summoned a meeting of the principal citizens. He sent to the two saloons in the village and finding that they were crowded, requested the proprietors to close. This they did without demur, realizing that at a time of such peculiar danger, when no one knew what had happened, what was happening, or where the next outbreak might come, it was necessary for everybody to be on the alert. Through the afternoon the darkness increased into a horrid gloom far worse than the darkest night. Men collided with each other working about the decks, for the feeble glow of electric lights and lanterns was deadened by the yellowish compost so that they could not be seen five feet away. When nightfall came, no one knew, it had been scarcely less dark at three o'clock in the afternoon than at midnight. All night long men worked steadily in shifts, clearing away the ash. Ashore the conditions were equally terrifying and all night long the bell of the Russian Church boomed out in the blackness. There were few of its followers who did not grope their way to the building at some time during that awful night. Sunrise and the coming of daylight passed unseen and unnoticed. Only chronometers and watches served to tell the change from night to day. The three pilots of the place were summoned to discuss the possibility of getting the _Bear_ safely out to sea, with all the population of the village on board. As every landmark was obliterated, and as the ship's bow could not be seen from the bridge, not one of the pilots would undertake to con the ship through the narrow channel. Somewhere the sun was shining, but not a glint of light passed the impenetrable veil overhead. Still the sailors worked steadily, shoveling off the ash over the vessel's side, still the pumps worked, though now the water brought up from the harbor was like gruel and scarcely could be forced through the pipes. Every few minutes, from the hills around the village, avalanches of ashes could be heard, the terrible clouds of débris flying over the town and adding to the choking smother. Orders were given for all people to gather on the vessel or the wharf. By ten o'clock the last of the gray ash-covered ghosts was mustered in, 185 people on the vessel, 149 in the warehouse on the wharf. Blinded by ash, with throats so burned by the acrid fumes that even a hoarse whisper was agony, with nostrils bleeding from constant effort to keep them from being clogged with the fine dust, and with a stabbing pain in the lungs with every breath one drew, the people were at the extremity of their endurance. The situation looked desperate both for the residents and for the officers and crew of the Coast Guard cutter. The officers of the _Bear_ worked incessantly. In the dark they were here, there and everywhere, and Eric, filled with the spirit of the service, was on the jump. He was busy in the storehouse shortly before eleven o'clock in the morning when a man groped his way in, saying that he had just escaped an avalanche and that several men were marooned in a steamer lying off the cannery wharf half a mile below the dock. This was Eric's chance. So often had he made the trip from the ship to the storehouse that morning that even in the dark and through the flying spume of yellow horror he made his way direct to the first lieutenant, and saluted. [Illustration: GOING TO PIECES FAST. Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.] [Illustration: "WE SAVED 'EM ALL." Coast Guard crew (including the dog) which rescued every sailor of wrecked vessel's crew. Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.] "Yes, Mr. Swift?" "I have information, sir," he said, "that there are seven men cut off either in a steamer near the cannery, or in the cannery itself, half a mile below the pier. I am told there is neither food nor water in the building and that it is at the base of a hill from which it may be overwhelmed by an avalanche at any minute. I think, sir, that a party could reach them." The lieutenant nodded and sought the captain. He returned a few moments later. "There are high hills between the village and the cannery," he said, "and the road winds along the beach. We have absolutely no means of knowing what the conditions may be. Under the circumstances the captain does not feel justified in ordering a party on what might prove to be their death. But--" "Yes, sir?" "He directed me to say that neither would he feel justified in refusing permission to those who desired to attempt a rescue. If there should be volunteers, I have no doubt that you would be given the opportunity to lead the party." Eric saluted, though in that dim strange dark he could scarcely see his superior's face, and withdrew. In spite of the unknown nature of the ordeal not a man drew back. Eric chose his friend, Homer, two warrant officers, three enlisted men, one local resident for a guide, and the master of the imperilled steamer. The road was level, the distance only half a mile, but so great was the danger of ash avalanches that every man was roped to the other--all carried lanterns and there were several shovels. "Hope we don't get buried under this stuff!" Eric whispered to Homer, as they started out. "I feel just about buried now," was the hoarse reply. At the end of the score of houses that made the village street, the party struck a deep drift of the volcanic ash. It took the guide to his waist and he stumbled and fell. The fine acrid pumice filled his mouth and his nostrils, and when Eric picked him up, he feared the man would strangle to death. A mouthful of fresh air would have meant much to the sufferer, but there was nothing but the sulphur-laden atmosphere to breathe. In a minute or two, however, choking and gasping, the guide cleared his nasal passages and throat of the burning dust. Blinded and staggering, he recovered enough to be able to walk, but Eric took his place and led the way. Warned by this accident, which had so nearly proved a fatality, the boy proceeded with extreme caution, digging a shovel before him every step to make sure that the ashes did not hide some newly opened earthquake crevice into which the party might fall. Under the slope of the mountainous shores the swirling spume of gray-yellow dust was so dense and yet so light in weight that the men struggled in ashes to their waists, and it was hard to tell where earth ended and air began. It was as though the earth had no surface. Unconsciously Eric found himself using the motions of swimming, in order to cleave his way through the semi-solid dust. Suddenly, as Eric prodded the ground before him, the shovel went through with a jolt, almost precipitating the boy on his face. Had it not been for the slowness and the care with which he was advancing, he might have had the same fate as the guide. Lifting up the spade, what was his horror to find that it was wet! With quick alarm Eric realized that the rescue party was in the utmost peril. They had wandered from the shore and were in very truth within a few inches of disaster. They were walking on the sea! The layer of floating ash, though several feet thick, was but a treacherous surface which might break through at any moment and land them in the water below. There, certain death awaited them, for they would smother and drown under the hideous pall. With his heart in his throat Eric turned sharply to the right, trusting only to a vague sense of direction. A score of steps brought him to a slight billowing of the ash, and with a sigh of relief he knew he was on solid ground again. The danger was little less upon the shore. Huge avalanches could be heard hurtling down the mountain-side and with each new slide the air became, if possible, more unbreathable than before. A new fear possessed the lad. It might be that they would return alive to the ship, but might not every member of the party be made helpless for life by the clogging of the lung-passages with dust? Presently he felt a tug at the line which roped the members of the party together, and he stopped. "What's the trouble?" he passed back word. "Duncan's gone under, sir." Eric made an uncomplimentary reference to Duncan under his breath, then questioned, "Unconscious?" Came back the answer, "Yes, sir; completely collapsed." The boy was puzzled what to do. He could detach two members of the party to carry back the unconscious sailor, but that would reduce his strength from eight men to five. He could not leave the man alone, for if he lay on the ground for even ten minutes, he would be covered with volcanic ash and could never be found again. "The two men nearest on the line pick Duncan up and bring him along," he ordered, and the party proceeded. They had covered another hundred yards, when overhead they heard a fearful roar. In the murk and blinding confusion no one could tell what new peril was threatening, but a piece of pumice almost the size of an apple came whistling down, midway of the party. One of the sailors, with great presence of mind, whipped out his sheath knife and cut the rope, shouting, "Forward! Quick as you can!" then doubled on those behind him, crying, "Back! Back!" He was not a moment too soon, for full between the two halves of the party came a pouring torrent of ash. Its greasy and slippery character made it flow almost like water, though sending up clouds of dust. Choking and blinded, the rear members of the party gave back. While they waited, not knowing whether the whole mountain side might not plunge down upon them, Duncan gasped and came to. Meantime, Eric passed back word to see how the rest of the party had fared. What was his horror to hear, from the fourth man in the line, "No one back o' me, sir. An' the line's been cut through. Not broken, sir; cut clean!" "Right about and go back," ordered Eric. "We've got to find the rest of them!" "Beg your pardon, sir, but I can't." "Why not?" "There's a Niagerer of stuff comin' down the mounting, sir, and no one could stand up agin it for a minnit." "Shout, then, and try if you can hear the others." The sailor shouted, and then called to Eric, "Yes, sir, there's an answerin' hail." Then, a moment later, "They say everything's all right. Four of them's there, sir, and Duncan's come around." The rushing "whoosh" of the ash-slide began to lessen, and presently, gallantly plowing through the still sliding pumice, came the first sailor. The rope was knotted and the party went on. A quarter of an hour later they reached the cannery. The _Redondo_ was lying anchored off the cannery wharf and Eric managed to attract the attention of the crew and get them to launch their boat. The boat pulled in as close to the beach as possible, until it was fast in the ash, then a line was thrown to the shore and the boat pulled in, though the last fifteen feet were like thick porridge. The seven men were brought along the beach and returned to the vessel. Not a sign remained of the trail the party had made on its outward trip. It had taken three hours for the rescue, and as soon as the eight men reached the vessel, they gave way. Even Eric was compelled to put himself in the hands of the ship's surgeon. The doctors, one from the ship and one from the village, had been working night and day. Hollow-eyed and unsleeping, they continued their task of reviving people suffocated by the fumes or strangled with ashes. More than one worker had collapsed utterly as the result of an unceasing fight against the volcanic fiery rain. In the afternoon of that third day the sky began to clear and by three o'clock objects became dimly visible. Absolute dark gave place to an orange-brown light, under which, every object, cloaked in a mask of ashes, looked horribly unfamiliar. It was like waking into a new world where nothing would ever be the same. The slight tremblings of the earth increased, and almost at the same time as the clearing of the sky, there was a serious shake. On board the _Bear_ the trouble was not so noticeable, but ashore the occupants of the storehouse fled in terror, crying that the building would fall on them. Their fears were not without justification, for the big frame building creaked and swayed in an alarming manner. This decided the matter. Every one was somehow stowed on board the _Bear_ and at slow speed, only enough to give steerage way, with two leads going, and the oldest and most experienced pilot in the bow to con her through the narrow channel, the cutter made her way out safely. She anchored in the outer harbor, fortunately having secured a bearing from Woody Island, whereby she could run out to sea by compass course should conditions warrant. This also gave an opportunity to relieve the suffering on Woody Island, and 104 persons were brought on board, making 486 people to be fed from the supplies handled by the _Bear_. It was incredible how so many could be accommodated, but the organization was perfect. The night was spent in great suspense; but Eric, who had been relieved from duty, slept through it. It was noon before he finally wakened, to find a bright sunlit sky and a ship clear of ashes. In the afternoon, as the effects of the eruption cleared away, three expeditions were sent to Woody Island, to St. Paul, and to the neighboring islands. Eric was sent with the _Redondo_ on the rescue party that was headed for Afognak. There it was learned that the eruption had come from Mount Katmai, on the mainland of the Alaska Peninsula, opposite Kodiak Island, and that there were people in distress in the region of the volcano. Without an instant's delay the _Redondo_ was headed out of the harbor, and despite a dense fog, she was run through the Kupreanoff Straits and across Shelikoff Straits to Kaflia Bay. At half-past two in the morning, the _Redondo_ dropped anchor near the volcano, and as soon as it grew light, Eric was sent to head a landing party. Every hut was covered with ashes, and a native, pointing to one of the drifts, said it was as high as "five houses," or about fifty feet high. All the streams were buried; there was not a drop of liquid of any kind, and the villagers had lived in the tortures of that ash-choked air for three days, waterless. Two were delirious from thirst, all were at the point of exhaustion when the Coast Guard men appeared to save them. With her engines throbbing at their utmost speed, the _Redondo_ passed from point to point of the stricken coast, saving over fourscore lives that a half a day's delay would have rendered too late to save. When the dusk of that day deepened into evening, the _Redondo_ turned homeward from those shrouded shores, bearing to safety the homeless victims of the peninsula and islands close at hand. [Illustration: NATIVE REFUGEES FROM KATMAI ERUPTION. From waterless shores covered six feet deep with orange-grey dust, come famishing fishers in their kayaks. Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.] Still in the far distance rumbled the defeated earthquake, still upon the sky was reflected the lurid glow of the volcano, which, through the daring and the courage of the Coast Guard men, claimed not a single victim. CHAPTER IX DEFYING THE TEMPEST'S VIOLENCE "I've been wondering," said Eric to Homer, a few days after his rescue trip on the _Redondo_, "what we're going to do with all these natives. We can't take them back to the Katmai country. They just about live on fish and everything that swims was killed during the eruption. How are they going to exist? It'll be years before the fish come back." "I can tell you all about that," his friend replied. "You know the commanding officer of the Bering Sea fleet came up, while you were away?" "Yes, you told me." "I heard all about the plans which the department had approved, on his suggestion. A new village is going to be built at the place which the Coast Guard picks out along the shore as being the best site for a town. It's going to be a regularly laid out place, with sanitary arrangements and everything else complete." "Give them all a new start, eh?" "That's it, exactly. One of the other ships of the fleet is cruising now along the coast to pick out the best spot. We're to send a carpenter ashore there and leave him for the winter to look after the erection of igloos. He'll be in charge of enough supplies to last the settlement till spring." "Whereabouts is this town going to be?" asked the boy. "It's not definitely decided yet," was the reply, "but probably it'll be on Stepnovak Bay. It'll be quite a place, too, because it'll start out with a population of over 500 natives, maybe a thousand." "That's a metropolis for Alaska," agreed Eric. "And, what's more," continued the young engineer, "they're going to give the new town the name of 'Perry,' in honor of our skipper, as the department said, for 'recognition of his heroic services at the time of the eruption.'" As soon as arrangements for the wintering of the homeless natives had been completed, the _Bear_ returned to Unalaska and thence made one more trip to Nome on business connected with the Federal Courts at that place. Then, as winter was closing in, the Coast Guard cutter stood out to sea up toward the Bering Straits, to await the outcoming of the several vessels in the whaling fleet, and make sure of the safety of every American sailor in the Arctic. The last of the whalers cleared the straits on October 29, and on the following day the _Bear_ started on her southerly course, leaving the Arctic to its annual eight months of unvisited silence. Eric had wondered a good deal what assignment or appointment he would get for the winter. Great was his delight to find that both he and his chum had been assigned to the _Miami_, and were to report for duty on December tenth. The extra couple of days allowed him on the journey across the continent gave the boy a chance to visit his relatives in San Francisco, and he also managed it so that he took a short run up to Detroit to see his family and to have a chat with his old friend, the puzzle-maker. He found the _Miami_ to be a beauty. Unlike the Bear, which depended as much on sails as on steam, the _Miami_ was well-engined. Almost the first thing that struck Eric when he came to go over her arrangements was her unusually large coal and water capacity. "No wonder she can stay out for months at a time on ice patrol, or chasing up a derelict," said Eric; "she's got coal enough for a trip around the world!" "Wouldn't mind if she was going to," said Homer, with a grin. Eric shook his head. "Not for mine," he answered; "I've a notion there's enough going on right around here. Anyhow, the Gulf of Mexico will feel good after a norther like this," and he shivered in his uniform, for the wind was nipping. "How would it feel to be somewhere around Point Barrow now?" his friend suggested. "It might be all right if a fellow were used to it, and dressed for it. At that, I don't believe I'd want to put in a whole winter up in that country. It isn't so much the actual cold I'd hate as it would be having to stay indoors half the time because it was too cold to go outside." He sniffed the salt air. "Guess my folks have been sea-dogs too many hundred years for me to cotton to anything that means indoors." "Me, too," said his chum. "From what I know about the _Miami_, what's more, I don't believe we're going to spend too much time ashore. When are we sailing, have you heard?" "Day after to-morrow, I believe," Eric replied. "We're going right down to our southern station." "The Gulf?" "Yes, and Florida waters as far north as Fernandina," was the answer. "The sooner the quicker, so far as I'm concerned," said the other, as they strolled below. Two days later the _Miami_ was steaming down Chesapeake Bay. The weather was ugly and there was a little cross-current that kept the cutter dancing. Eric had his sea legs, after his summer on the _Bear_, but he was surprised to find how different was the motion of a steamer and a sailing ship. The other junior lieutenant, whom he had already come to like rather well, laughed as Eric stumbled at a particularly vicious roll. "This isn't anything," he said. "Wait until we strike the edge of the Gulf Stream. Then she's apt to kick up her heels a bit. And you ought to see the _Yamacraw_! She's got any of these modern dances pushed off the map!" "I don't mind it," Eric answered, "only it's a different kind of roll. I'm just off the _Bear_. She rolls enough, but it's a longer sort of roll, not short jerks like this." "Of course," said the other, nodding; "bound to be. A ship under sail is more or less heeled over and she's kept steady by the pressure of the wind on the sail. The long roll you're talking about isn't the sea, but the gustiness of the wind. That's what makes the long roll." "At that," said Eric, "it seems to me that the _Miami's_ pretty lively now for all the sea there is." "There's more sea than you'd reckon," was the reply. "Chesapeake Bay can kick up some pretty didoes when in the mood. You'd never believe how suddenly a storm can strike, nor how much trouble it can make. You see that skeleton lighthouse over there?" "Yes," said the boy. "Smith's Point, isn't it? I remember learning all these lights by heart," and he rattled off a string of names, being the lights down Chesapeake Bay. "I see you haven't forgotten the Academy yet," said the other. "Yes, that's Smith's Point Tower. And while it's not a particularly imposing looking sort of building, it's a very important light. It was when they came to build that light, they found out what Chesapeake Bay can be like. Aside from some of the really big lighthouses like Minot's Ledge, Smith's Point gave as much trouble to build as any lighthouse on the United States coast." "Why?" "Bad weather and natural difficulties," said the other. "My father was the designer, and because Mother was dead, Father and I used to be together all the time. I was a small shaver of twelve years of age at the time so I was right in the thick of it." "Tell the yarn," pleaded Eric. The lieutenant smiled at the boy's eagerness, but filled his pipe and began. "Right opposite Smith's Point," he said, "on the Virginia shore, the tides and currents at the mouth of the Potomac River and at the entrance of Chesapeake Bay have built out a shoal which, if you remember your chart, you will recall juts out in the bay over nine miles from the land. The same tides had scoured Smith's Island on the other hand--port side going out of the bay, but there are some nasty rocks in the channel. It's a tricky spot, that Smith's Point Shoal, and many a good vessel has gone to pieces on it. "It was the wreck of the barque _Mary Louise_ that drew public attention to Smith's Point. She struck the shoal and went down with all hands. Less than two hours after she sank, a steamer came along and hit the wreckage. The steamer was so badly injured that it was only by a good deal of luck and clever handling that her captain succeeded in beaching her and saving all the passengers. The Lighthouse Board had made several recommendations for the erection of a lighthouse at that point, and when public attention had been focussed to this danger by the disaster, it was easy enough to get the appropriation through Congress. So the money was set aside and Father was given the contract of designing and erecting the lighthouse. "By the end of the next month a huge unwieldly foundation caisson was on the ways at a shipyard in Baltimore. I was just a kid at the time, but the queer shape of this interested me right from the start. It was like a bottomless box, thirty-two feet square on the inside and twelve feet high. It was so thick that a tall man could lie down crosswise on one of the walls and stretch out his arms to the full, and then there would be several inches beyond the tips of his fingers and the ends of his feet." "My word," said Eric, "it must have had some timber in it!" "It had a lot of weight to support," said the other. "After a while, it was launched--I was there--and dropped into the bay near Sparrow's Point. On it were built the first two courses of the iron cylinder which was to be the lower part of the lighthouse. Although that wooden caisson weighed over a hundred tons, so heavy and solid was the cylinder that it sank the wooden structure out of sight." "How big was the cylinder?" queried the boy. "It was thirty feet in diameter and each of the courses was six feet high. That's twelve feet for the two courses. Inside the big cylinder was a second smaller one, like an air-shaft, five feet in diameter. A pump was rigged on the edge of the cylinder for the journey down the bay, in case any water should splash over the sides from the wake of the tug. "When the springtime came and there was a reasonable prospect of fair weather, quite a fleet set out for Baltimore with Father and me in the leading tug. I felt as proud of myself as if I'd been an admiral! I wasn't quite sure," he added, laughing, "whether Father was the boss of the job or whether I was, myself. "We had a large ocean-going tug towing the caisson, but we went ahead at very slow speed. Besides the big tug there were two tugs towing seven barges with the iron work, with building materials, stone, cement, and all that sort of thing. It made quite a gallant show. "I want to tell you right now, we missed our guess when we supposed that Chesapeake Bay was being coddled by any of the softening influences of the gentle springtime! It was only lying low! It took us three days to get to the site of the lighthouse, which was marked by a buoy. We reached there on a quiet and peaceful evening, the sort that landlubber poets write about. A little after sundown it began to breeze up, and by four bells of the first watch, there was a stiffish wind, which at midnight began to climb into half a gale. "Then the sea began to rise. It only takes a capful of wind to make things nasty on the bay, and that iron cylinder began to toss like a cork. We'd left four men aboard the cylinder and by half an hour after midnight they were pumping for their lives. There was a big searchlight on the tug and Father came tumbling up from below and ordered the searchlight turned on to the cylinder. "I tell you, that was a sight. There was nothing to be seen in the smother but the great black iron rim rolling savagely, the white water spouting about it, and, as it heaved above the waves, the searchlight showed its black sides with the water streaming down. There, clustered at the pumps, were the four men, working like a bunch of madmen and shouting for help as the cylinder rose above the water, strangling and clinging to the pump-handles like grim death as she went under. It was for their lives that they were working, for if ever half a dozen tons of water should slop over the side of the black monster, it would sink straight to the bottom, and so great would be the suction that there was not the slightest chance that any of them would ever come up alive. "That was one time I saw Father in action. He yelled for the lifeboat and got volunteers. Out of the blank confusion he brought order, and in less than two minutes the lifeboat was over the side with twelve men aboard, Father one of them. The little boat rose on the waves like a feather and the third wave dashed it against the rim of the cylinder. As the frail craft crushed like an eggshell, every man leaped for the edge, hanging on to the sharp iron edge like grim death. "Down came the cylinder again and as she careened, every man clambered on. The added weight made her top-heavy and she began to ship water badly. Four of the fresh men were put at the pumps to relieve the others who were exhausted by their efforts. [Illustration: "THE IRON RIM ROLLING SAVAGELY." The cylinder of the Smith's Point Lighthouse caught in a storm while being towed down Chesapeake Bay. Courtesy of McClure's Magazine.] "Father had climbed on the cylinder, with a rope slung over his shoulders. He called to the men to haul in. At the end of it was a large piece of canvas, an old sail. With nothing to which they could hold on, with the waves dashing high and that great iron drum reeling drunkenly on the sea, those men lay flat on their stomachs and spread that sail over the top of the cylinder. More than once it seemed as though wind and sea would get under that sail and with one vast heave, pitch every man into the sea, but they held on. One of the men, an old time shellback, bent that sail on to the cylinder so snugly and cleverly that almost two-thirds of the surface was protected. With teeth as well as hands the men held on, and lashed the canvas into place. "Every second they expected to feel the cylinder founder beneath their feet, for though the pumps were going steadily and furiously, more water was being shipped than could be taken out. Once the sail was lashed fast, however, the cylinder shed most of the wash and the pumps, now working at top speed with eight men at the handles, began to gain. Water still scuttled down the iron sides, and as the sea was rising, she put her whole side under for the fraction of a second, twice. I was watching it all from the steamer, our searchlight playing full on the ungainly craft. "Presently, so perilous did the situation grow and so rough the sea, that the captain of the steamer signaled to one of the smaller tugs to take up her anchor and stand by to pick up survivors should the cylinder founder. He broke away his anchor himself and the big ocean-going tug steamed to windward of the cylinder, letting down a heavy coat of oil on the sea. It worked like a charm. The smoothening effect of the oil was just sufficient to enable the men to work on the cylinder with a slight, a very slight, margin of safety. "Six men scuttled down the rope ladders on the inside of the cylinder. It chanced that there were four buckets on the iron drum and with this they organized a bucket brigade. The water was still three feet deep and swishing about like a whirlpool. Every man knew that one large wave would send them to Davy Jones' locker. "Down in the bowels of that iron cylinder they toiled. Not a gleam of light was anywhere, the white shaft of the searchlight overhead only making the shadows denser. No man could see his fellow; only by feeling were the buckets passed from hand to hand. But, between the bucket brigade and the pumps, little by little the water lessened, the load of the cylinder lightened and she rode higher in the water. Little choice was theirs, either to bail unceasingly or to drown like rats in a hole. "Daybreak found them still at work, spent with exhaustion, hollow-eyed and suffering from the night of terrible strain. The wind had dropped a little with the dawn, but the sea still ran high. Seeing that the men were too thoroughly wearied out to be of any use, even though the weather should improve rapidly, Father gave the order for the fleet to run to the nearest shelter. We sought the lee of Smith's Island, off the Maryland Shore, and stayed there for a week. "At last, with every one rested and eager for another tussle, the fleet crept out again. All the weather indications were favorable, and, so far as the experts could foretell, there wasn't a storm in sight for a week or more." "Weather experts aren't much on guessing," commented Eric. "Not in Chesapeake Bay, anyhow," the other rejoined. "Not anywhere!" "I wouldn't go so far as that," the other answered. "There'd be a lot more wrecks than there are if it weren't for the storm signals of the Weather Bureau. They can always warn ships of the coming of a big storm, one of these West Indian hurricanes, for instance. Squalls, of course, they can't foresee. Usually, that doesn't matter, because no seaworthy vessel is going to be worried by a squall. But that iron cylinder wasn't seaworthy. At least, you should have heard what the men called it who had been on board the night it nearly went down!" "I can imagine," said Eric. "Then you've a healthy imagination," his friend replied grimly. "As I was saying," he continued, "the fleet started out under sunny skies and a smooth sea. They reached the place where the buoy was moored and Father took very careful observations to make sure that the buoy had not shifted during the storm. Everything was all right, and the instant the cylinder was immediately over the precise spot, the valves were opened and the water began to pour in. "The tugs at once brought up the two barges containing heavy blocks of stone, and the instant that the cylinder touched the bottom, the gangs of men started to heave the stones overboard." "What in the wide world was that for?" "To prevent the water from scouring away the sand. You see it's all sand there, that's why the caisson was made. As soon as the current would strike an obstruction like the cylinder, it would make a gyratory sweep around its base. With the strong tides of Chesapeake Bay, even an hour would be enough to scoop out the sand and plunge the whole structure edgewise into the sea. So overboard the stones went, all round the cylinder, making a rough protecting wall against the undermining force of the water. The swirl, instead of striking the smooth iron side of the cylinder, would be broken against the pile of rocks. Moreover, with the sand thus protected it could not be washed away so easily by the force of the current. "At the same time, another gang of men was sent aboard the cylinder, and one of the smaller tugs brought up a barge loaded with concrete. The men tumbled into the compartments of the cylinder. From the barge two pipes were thrust. Down one of these poured a steady stream of cement, from the other a torrent of small grit, while an unceasing cataract of salt water rushed down from the pumps of the steamer. "In this awful mess of cement, water, and small stones the men wallowed and struggled, mixing the concrete and packing it down hard into place. Wet to the skin, covered with cement dust, it was all that they could do to keep from turning into concrete statues, and the foreman was continually advising the men to put hands and faces directly under the stream of water and not to give the cement dust a chance to harden on their faces. For two hours they slaved, working in a frenzy of haste. "Then, when everything was proceeding so well and so rapidly, a black storm-cloud came up out of the sea to the southeast, and the waves began to roll in. The whistle for recall blew shrilly. Up from the cylinder poured the shovelers, covered with concrete and looking like gray images of men. There was a wild flight for the steamer. One of the barges snapped a hawser and it was only by the herculean efforts of the smaller tug that she was kept from collision with the cylinder. Had that tug, loaded down with building material, ever canted against the cylinder, the whole effort would have been in vain. "One of the lifeboats, containing sixteen men, was picked up by a wave and thrown against the iron rim as a child throws a ball. The boat went into matchwood and every one of the sixteen men was thrown into the water. But Father had taken the precaution of not engaging any man who was not a good swimmer, and the other tug had received instructions to follow each boatload of workmen every trip they took. Accordingly, when the men were thrown into the sea, the tug was not twenty yards away and every one was picked up without injury. "The next morning, to the horror of every man in the fleet, the cylinder was seen to be inclining four feet from the perpendicular. Although the waves were running high, a gang was sent on one of the stone barges and another two hundred tons of stone were thrown off on the side to which the cylinder was inclining." "Why?" asked Eric. "I should have thought that it ought to be on the other side." "Not at all," his friend rejoined. "The reason that the cylinder had listed was because there had been some scouring away of the sand in spite of the stones. If, therefore, the stones were put on the side from which the sand had already been cut away, the action of the water on the other side would undermine the sand there and gradually straighten up the cylinder. At least, that was the idea." "And did it work?" "Perfectly. Two days passed before the cylinder was absolutely level, and in the meantime the tug had taken one of the barges for more stone. Another hundred tons was dumped down as soon as the cylinder was straight again, and it was thereby kept from further scouring. The weather had become good again, and the concrete work was continued. On April 21st the entire gang began work. Barge hands, cooks, everybody that could handle a shovel at all, was sent aboard the cylinder." "Did you go?" "You bet I did, and I worked as hard as any of the men--for a while. Two or three hours of it did me up, though. I was only twelve years old, remember, but most of the men kept on the job for forty-eight hours straight with only fifteen minutes allowed for meals. By that time the foundation was secure with thirty feet of solid concrete twenty-two feet thick." "That ought to hold it," said Eric. "That was only the beginning," said his friend. "What would hold it, resting on the top of the sand?" "I'd thought of that," admitted the boy, "but I supposed the weight would be enough to drive it in." "Never," the other said. "The next step was to drive it down into the hard sand at the bottom of the bay. Father had made borings and found a true sea-bottom sand fifteen feet and a half below the level of the shoal. It was to that depth that the whole caisson had to be sunk. "You remember that I told you there was an air-shaft in the middle of the caisson?" "Yes." "Well, on the top of this air-shaft an air-lock was built. The water in the air-shaft was forced out by compressed air and the men entered the caisson." "Into the compressed air?" "Yes. It takes a special kind of worker for the job. In the air-lock, you know, the men have to stay for a while before they enter the chamber, so as to get used to the compressed air gradually. Lots of people can't stand it." "Did you try it?" "Yes. I asked Father and he wouldn't let me. But I slipped into the air-lock once and tried it, anyhow." "Well?" "Not for me!" said his friend. "I got out in less than five minutes. My head seemed bursting, and I was bleeding from the ears as well as the nose. But some of them, especially an old chap called Griffin, the foreman, didn't seem to mind it at all. "As soon as the caisson was clear of water and the men were ready, they entered the caisson, crawled down the long ladder and began to dig away the sand. A large four-inch pipe led up the air-shaft and over the sea. The sand and small stones were shoveled into a chamber from which a valve opened into the pipe and the compressed air drove up the sand and stones like a volcano into the sea. The work proceeded rapidly and without a hitch until the caisson had been sunk thirteen feet and a half. Then, when only two feet from the total desired depth, an unexpected and terrible thing happened. [Illustration: "THE BOAT WENT INTO MATCHWOOD." A sudden tempest breaking upon Smith's Point Lighthouse in the early stages of its construction. Courtesy of McClure's Magazine.] "At three o'clock in the afternoon a low hissing was heard in the caisson, and with a quick flicker the candles first burned low, then flamed anew, the color of the flame a lambent green. For a few moments none of the men realized what had happened, and stood there, stupefied and staggering. An acrid burning sensation gripped the men by the throat and they were stricken blind. Suffering terrible agony, every man managed to climb the long ladder, each step of which seemed an eternity, and entered the air-lock. Ten hale and hearty men had entered the caisson, ten wrecks emerged, the flesh of the inside of their throats raw and their eyes swollen and reddened beyond recognition. "A telegram was sent to the Lighthouse Inspector of the district, and the doctor attached to the building party sent for medical help. Next day the inspector came down, with assistants, and accompanied by another physician and a nurse. They found that the caisson workers had tapped a vein of sulphuretted hydrogen, probably due to the decay of some deep beds of vegetable matter, such as sea-weed. One of the assistants to the inspector, who was a clever young scientist, suggested that after a day or two it might be possible to enter the caisson again, but that it would be necessary to proceed with extreme care, as another pocket might be tapped, with a recurrence of the danger. "Although before them, in their bunks, lay their ten comrades, when Father called for volunteers, fourteen men came forward. They knew, they could not help knowing, that they were not only going into possible danger, but into absolutely certain torture. Their comrades lay there--it was not certain that some of them would ever see again, it was not certain that some of them would recover. Absolute agony of the most horrible kind awaited them. But the lighthouse had to be built. It is easy to make a problematic sacrifice of life, it is hard to walk without shrinking into a chamber of awful pain. From this ordeal these fourteen men did not shrink. "They were headed by Griffin, the old caisson foreman, who had a record of having withstood the greatest pressure possible, a pressure of eight and a half atmospheres. They went down at nine o'clock in the morning. The pain must have been fearful, but they stuck to it to the end. One man went through the air-lock and got food, returning to his comrades. He had been down four hours, and his condition was so terrible that the doctor ordered him to stay out of the lock. "'I'm not that breed,' he said in a horrid whisper over his raw and swollen throat, 'I'm goin' to see it through.' "'Better keep away, my man,' the doctor said; 'I won't answer for what will happen to you if you go back.' "'I ain't no quitter,' was the answer. 'I'm a Boston wharf-rat, I am, an' I stays wid de gang!' "That doesn't sound like a heroic speech, Eric," said the first lieutenant, "but it looks to me like it's the real stuff." "It surely is," agreed the boy. "He went back with a bite of food for all the men below and they worked on steadily. By the way the stuff came up the pipe they must have worked like demons. Every ear was keen for sign or sound of trouble, but the afternoon wore on, the sand came hurtling from the pipe and the caisson sank lower and lower. "'How much further?' I asked Father, just as the evening was beginning to draw in. "'Not more than an inch or two,' he said triumphantly. 'I tell you what, I envy those fellows down there. They're real men. I doubt if I'd have the nerve to do it myself.' "Suddenly there came a muffled roar below. "'There it is!' cried the young scientist, and he made a bolt for the air-lock. "Father was not more than a second behind him, waiting only to make sure of the point to which the structure had been sunk. The caisson was within three quarters of an inch of the required depth! "Meantime, down in the caisson, the feared disaster had occurred. The gas had come up with a rush, almost like an explosion. In the green glare of the candles, burning sulphur and hydrogen flames instead of oxygen, the men were staggering, here and there, unable to find the way out. "Griffin took charge. It was his hand that led every man to the ladder. Nine men crawled up. "As the minutes passed, the anxiety at the head of the shaft grew intense. No more workers came. Fourteen men had gone down; only nine had returned. There were then five men still unaccounted for. First one rope was dropped without result, then another. This time some groping hand--it proved to be Griffin's--encountered the rope, and found a sufferer. He tied the rope around his comrade and the man was hoisted up. Four times this was done, but the fourth was a huge, powerful Irishman, called Howard. When he was pulled up, entirely unconscious, he stuck fast in the hole and could not be pulled out. "By an exertion of self-control and endurance, that no one ever has been able to understand, Griffin climbed that ladder into the top where the gases were at their foulest. Though all his comrades had been too far gone for several minutes to move, even to help themselves, he succeeded in pushing and pulling Howard's unconscious body until it passed through the hole. "A hand was stretched down to reach Griffin and bring him to life and safety, when the overwrought system gave way. He loosed his handhold on the ladder and fell. "A groan went up from those above. It was a thirty-foot fall. Had the rescuer, the hero, been killed? Scarcely could a man fall in such a way in an air shaft and live. "There was no need to ask for volunteers. Two men, one of those who had been in the caisson all day and was one of the first rescued, and another, who had not gone down at all, leaped for the ladder. The doctor caught the first by the shoulder and thrust him aside. The other descended a few feet and then came up again, to fall unconscious at the edge of the shaft. Another sprang forward, and yet another, clamoring for leave to go down. "Just at that moment there was a faint tug at the rope, the first rope, which had been left hanging down in the pit. Hardly expecting anything, one of the men started to haul it in. "'Come here, boys,' he cried; 'Griffin's on!' "With their hearts in their mouths, the men hauled in, and the limp and apparently lifeless body of the foreman came to the surface. How he had ever managed to fasten the rope around him was a mystery. His hands, with the flesh rubbed from them to the bone, showed that when he had lost hold on the ladder he had still retained presence of mind enough to grasp the sides and had slid to the foot. There he had found the end of the rope hanging and in a last flicker of understanding had tied it around himself." "Did he get all right again?" asked Eric eagerly. "He was blind for six weeks, but finally recovered. Two of the men were seven months in hospital, and one became permanently insane. Four got 'bends,' that fearful disease that strikes caisson-workers, but happily, none died from the terrible experience." "And the three quarters of an inch still lacking?" "The cylinder settled just that much and no one ever had to go down the shaft again. The caisson was filled with concrete and the air-shaft sealed." "And that was the final effort of the sea?" "Not quite. A month later a storm came up and drove the steamer against the cylinder with such force that eight of the plates--though an inch thick and braced with rigid solidity--were crushed in. Father had taken precautions against such an accident by having had a number of extra plates made, and the lighthouse was finished and turned over to the government three days before the expiration of the time required by the contract. It was a case of man's struggle with the elements, and man won." "But the honors are with the caisson-men," suggested Eric. "Yes," agreed the other, "the hero of Smith's Point lighthouse is Griffin, the caisson-man." CHAPTER X ADRIFT ON A DERELICT "Looks to me as though we're going to have a ripsnorter for Christmas," said Eric to his friend, Homer, the day before the festive season. "If the sea gets much higher, Cookie won't have to stir the plum duff at all!" "How's that?" "All he's got to do is to leave the raisins and the flour and the currants and whatever else goes into the duff lying loose on a table. The old lady is kicking loose enough to mix it up all right. Doesn't she pitch!" "Great cook you'd make," laughed the other. "I'm glad we don't have to mess from your galley. But you're right about the weather. It's all right to go hunting for derelicts, but I don't know how the deuce anybody can be expected to find one in a sea like this!" "We might hit her," suggested Eric, cheerfully. "You're a hopeful prophet, you are," retorted his chum. "I'm not aching to feed the fishes yet awhile." "Well, we might bump, just the same. Then the _Seminole_ would have a chance to hunt us as a derelict, and Van Sluyd--he's on her now, you know--would have the time of his young life." "I don't think you need to worry about sending a message to Van Sluyd yet awhile," the other answered; "after all, the _Miami_ is still above water." "She is, once in a while," Eric commented, as the cutter "took it green" and the water came flooding down the deck. Homer, seeing the wave coming, scuttled for the companion hatchway and went below. As Eric had said, it seemed difficult to try to locate a derelict in a half a gale of wind. Yet, so dangerous to navigation was the floating wreck which the _Miami_ was seeking, that the risk was worth taking. When he remembered what the lieutenant of the _Bear_ had said to him once about derelicts, he realized the terrible importance of the quest. "Every year," he had said, "hundreds of vessels, both sail and steam, leave their home ports for foreign shores, or start from foreign ports for home. The day of the expected arrival comes and goes, two or three days drag by, and still there is no sign of them. Anxious relatives and friends besiege the shipping offices daily for word, and no word comes. When suspense has passed into assured disaster, the underwriters inscribe against that vessel's name the one word, "Missing!" An average of a vessel a day is the toll of the Seven Seas upon the world's shipping. And the principal cause is--derelicts." As the _Miami_ plowed her way through the water, dipping her nose into the waves raised by a stiff southeaster, Eric thought of the suddenness of the catastrophe if the Coast Guard cutter, in the darkness, should strike one of those abandoned hulks, floating almost level with the water, and scarcely visible from the vessel's decks. It was a night calculated to shake the nerve of a youngster who knew that this deadly menace to the life of every one on board might be suddenly lurking in the trough of any one of the waves, that came shouldering their vengeful resentment against the sturdy little vessel that defied them. They had nourished their grudge against Man, the violator of their ancient domain, over a thousand leagues of sea, for the _Miami_ was a hundred miles to the eastward of the Lookout Shoal, though westward of the limit of the Gulf Stream. The billows thus had a stretch of unbroken ocean from the frozen continent of Antarctica. Of this they made full use, and staunch little vessel though the cutter was, she was making bad weather of it. The fog was dense and the gale whipped the spray into a blinding sheet. This was varied by squalls of sleet and hail and for three hours a blinding snowstorm added to the general discomfort. Less than thirty miles to the eastward lay the Gulf Stream, where the water was over 70° and where no snow could ever be, but that gave the crew of the _Miami_ little comfort. It was not a coast on which vigilance could be relaxed, and Eric was glad when the search for the _Madeleine Cooney_ was abandoned for a while. It was time, too, for the _Miami_ had all she could do to take care of herself. The Coast Guard vessel was midway between the Frying Pan and the Lookout Shoals, two of the most famous danger points on the Atlantic coast, and the wind had risen to a living gale. The first lieutenant was on the bridge a great deal of the time. For forty-eight hours there had been absolutely no sign of the sun or any star. There was no way to determine the vessel's position except by dead reckoning--always a dangerous thing to trust when there is much leeway and many cross-currents. The lead was going steadily, heaved every few minutes, while the _Miami_ crept along cautiously under the guidance of that ancient safeguard of the mariner. It was the evening of the second day after the worst part of the blow started that the _Miami_ dropped her anchor in eight fathoms of water off the North Carolina coast. Steam was kept full up, although the position of the cutter in the lee of a point of land precluded the immediate possibility of her dragging her anchors. Almost exactly at noon the next day, the wireless operator intercepted a message from the Norfolk Navy Yard that the steamer _Northwestern_ was anchored 55 miles southwest of Lookout Shoals, with her propeller gone. As this position, pricked on the chart, showed the steamer to be in a dangerous and exposed position, and as, moreover, she was a menace to navigation, being full in the path of vessels, the _Miami_ got under way immediately. As soon as the Coast Guard cutter reached the bar, a snowstorm, which seemed to have been waiting around, as if for that very purpose, struck down upon the water and the _Miami_ clawed out over the bar in a blinding smother. There was a nasty, choppy sea, the wind having hauled round to the westward, though it was not as violent as the day before. At two o'clock in the afternoon the radio operator received a storm warning for a nor'wester. A passing vessel spoke the _Miami_ by wireless and stated that she had sighted the _Northwestern_, but gave her position twelve miles to the westward of the point first quoted. It was evening before the steamer in distress was sighted. The Coast Guard cutter ran up under her stern, and asked if she could hold on for a while. The captain of the steamer answered that he could. "I'm all right, so far," he shouted back through the megaphone; "it's that blithering bally-hoo of a propeller!" His language was picturesque, fluent, and convincing, and everybody on board the cutter grinned while the old sea-dog expressed a highly colored opinion of the whole tribe of ship-fitters, machinists, and mechanics generally. After ten minutes of descriptive shouting, during which he never repeated an adjective twice, he wound up by saying that he considered "an engine-room an insult to a seaman's intelligence," and said that "he'd like to pave the bottom of the sea with the skeletons of engineers diving a thousand fathom for his lost propeller!" Following which, he seemed to feel better, and discussed what was best to be done with his ship. The situation was dangerous. The sea was far too rough for the lowering of a boat, no matter how well handled. The gale was such that it was unsafe for the _Miami_ to anchor. In the case of the _Northwestern_, anchoring had been her last resort. There was fully twenty fathom of water, and fortunately the steamer's anchors held. The captain had put ninety fathom of chain on each anchor, and though the weight pulled her nose into the water, so that she snubbed into the sea like a ram trying to butt down a wall, still everything held. The _Miami_ stood by all night, keeping close to the imperilled vessel. Next morning the conditions were no better. The advantages of daylight were more than overcome by the increased fury of the sea. The _Northwestern_ lay in an angry rip, for the gale had come on in full force and was countering the long rollers from the southeast that had been blown up by the storm of two days before, the same which had driven the _Miami_ to shelter and which had crippled the big steamer, twice the size of the revenue cutter. The _Miami_ stayed near by, hove to, waiting for the storm to abate. But of this there were no signs. The force of the gale increased steadily through the day. [Illustration: MAN'S WATERSPOUT. A DERELICT'S END. Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.] [Illustration: PREPARING TO BLOW UP A DERELICT. Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.] The _Northwestern_ was pitching terribly. She was heavily loaded with a cargo of crude oil, and as she swung to the squalls, the sea breached her completely and continuously. Only her high bow, poop, and pilot-house were out of the water for any length of time. The big steamer was tearing viciously at her anchors and it was amazing that they held. The long scope of chain, however, was probably her salvation. As darkness came on, the captain of the _Miami_ called the first lieutenant. "Mr. Keelson," he said, "I think we'd better get a line to the steamer." "Very well, sir," the other answered. "If we're going to take her in tow," said Eric to Homer, overhearing the order, "we're apt to get our stern works pulled out of us. She's pitching like all billy-o!" "We'll make it if the skipper says so," his friend said cheerfully. It was then nearly half past four o'clock, and fortunately there was just a slight lull in the storm. Swinging across the _Northwestern's_ bow the gunner shot a line into her rigging. The steamer's crew were on the alert--they had good men aboard that craft--and tailed on to the line. The _Miami_ forged ahead and dropped anchor with sixty fathom of chain on the disabled steamer's starboard bow. The _Northwestern_ had got enough steam up for the donkey engine. It did not take long for them to get first a strong rope and then the big hawser aboard, and make fast. As soon as the hawser was aboard, the _Northwestern_ began to heave up to her anchors. Closely watching, the _Miami_ hove up to hers, ready to break at the same instant that the steamer broke free. The instant the larger vessel's anchor raised, the _Miami_ swung hers free, to avoid fouling, for in so fierce a gale the merest touch would have been fatal to one or both vessels. The _Northwestern_ swung down broadside to the sea and stood a fair chance of being swamped. The _Miami_, however, going ahead at full speed, just managed to bring the strain on the tow-line in time to swing the steamer clear into the crest of a huge comber which struck her bow harmlessly instead of hurling its tons of water on her unprotected deck. The strain on the _Miami_ was extremely great, but the hawser held well, although the _Northwestern_ yawed frightfully. She would run up on the line, and the sea would strike her bow, throwing her off, tightening the tow-line suddenly with a jolt that shook the _Miami_ from stem to stern. It was an awful night's tow, but just at eight bells of the middle watch the cutter and the rescued vessel passed the Frying Pan Shoals Lightship, and as soon as they got within lee of the shoals they met a smoother sea. At nine o'clock the next morning the _Northwestern_ was safe and sound in a good anchorage in Southport at the mouth of the Cape Fear River. When Eric came on deck again, he found the _Miami_ on her way south again on the search for the derelict, _Madeleine Cooney_, this time reported by the United States Army mine planter, _Schofield_. Two days afterwards in latitude 27° 52' N., longitude 84° 34' W., a vessel was found in 65 fathom of water, with her anchor down, burned to her main deck and on fire aft. She was dismasted and her bowsprit had gone. Eric was sent in charge of one of the boats to run a line. The sea was comparatively smooth, so that the _Miami_ made fast alongside her stern and put two lines of hose aboard. The cutter's heavy pumps were attached and in fifteen minutes the fire was out. The anchor chain was fouled, so the first lieutenant gave orders that the cable should be slipped. Some of the cutter's men worked around the masts floating alongside and the entangled rigging, and cut away enough of the rigging to make a heavy wire bridle which was passed through the hawse-pipes in the burned vessel's bow. This was necessary as none of the upper works of the ship remained to which a tow-line could be attached. To this bridle was bent the ten-inch hawser of the _Miami_, and the derelict was towed into Tampa Bay. On the way, however, rough weather came up and the masts and spars broke adrift. As they were right in the path of traffic, the _Miami_ went back to destroy these. The spars were separated and allowed to drift, as the set of the current would soon take them ashore out of harm's way. This got rid of everything except the lower part of the mainmast. As this heavy spar itself might be the means of sinking a vessel if left adrift, tossing on the waves, the _Miami_ parbuckled the big timber on board, chopped it into small pieces--none of them large enough to do a vessel any damage--and set them afloat. The weather continued squally as the _Miami_ ran down the coast, the tag end of the gale blowing itself to tatters on the stretch from Cape Hatteras to Cape Fear. Little though Eric realized it then, before the year was out, he was destined to know that coast from painful experience and every curl of those hungry breakers was going to be imprinted on his brain. The _Miami_ was off Cape Canaveral when a radio message was received that there was a derelict bark two hundred miles to the westward of Abaco Island, the northernmost of the Bahamas. In less than three minutes after the receipt of the message over the wireless, the captain had been advised, the course changed and the _Miami_ was headed for the derelict at full speed. She had been running for a little over an hour when a second radio was received from a land station, relayed from a steamer. "Schooner _Marie-Rose_ reports passing water-logged vessel 23° 40' N. and 73° 10' W. Signs of distress observed. _Marie-Rose_, crippled and running before gale, could not heave to. Not known whether any one on board." Then the wireless began to be busy. Within twenty minutes the same message was received from Washington, from the station at Beaufort, N. C., from Fernandina, Fla., from Key West and from Nassau. Then by relays from vessels on the coast, from the _Seneca_, the Coast Guard's great derelict destroyer, far out on the Atlantic; from the _Algonquin_, stationed at Porto Rico; from the _Onondaga_ patrolling the coast north of Cape Hatteras and from the _Seminole_ in port at Arundel Cove undergoing repairs, came orders from the Coast Guard Headquarters. The _Miami_ was instructed to proceed at once to the point indicated, to rescue survivors if such were to be found and to destroy the derelict which was floating into the trade route and was a menace to navigation. Meanwhile, the long harsh "buzz" of the answer sounded all over the ship from the wireless room as the operator answered the various calls with the information that the _Miami_ was already proceeding under full speed. "Van Sluyd will be sore," said Eric to Homer, as the message from the _Seminole_ was received; "she'd be sent instead of us if she weren't in dock. When he hears that we're going on this chase instead of his own craft, he'll be green with envy." "He'll get over that," said his friend; "he's under a good man. There's very little gets by the _Seminole_ that is possible of achievement." Dawn was breaking as the _Miami_ neared the spot indicated by the wireless messages as the location of the derelict bark. Using this point as a center, the navigating officer of the _Miami_ plotted a chart of the U-shaped course which would enable her to cruise and cover the greatest amount of space without doubling. At about four bells in the afternoon watch the speaking tube on the bridge whistled. "Something that looks like a derelict, sir," came the message from the man in the crow's-nest, "bearing about a point and a half for'ard of the port beam." The officer of the deck gave a sharp order to change the course and the _Miami_ swung round. The captain was on the bridge at the time. "Observed anything, Mr. Hamilton?" he queried. "Lookout reports an object, now right ahead, sir," was the reply. He picked up the tube again. "Can you see the derelict now?" "Yes, sir," came the reply; "we're a-raisin' her fast." "She must be nearly flush with the water," said the officer of the deck, handing the glass to the captain; "I don't see her yet." In half an hour, however, there was no doubt that this was the derelict that had been reported by the _Marie-Rose_. As the _Miami_ neared her it was evident that she was heavily water-logged. Her bow was deep under water, only her stern appearing above the surface. On the poop rail had been hung a shirt, the white gleam of which might have been the distress signal referred to in the message of the _Marie-Rose_. The _Miami_ slowed up as she neared the derelict to survey the wreck. Suddenly there came an order, "Clear away both cutters! Lively now, lads!" The men sprang to stations at the word. "Lower away together! Easy now! Let go all!" And with the routine of clockwork two of the _Miami's_ boats were in the water and off for the derelict. The sea was choppy but not high, and the water-logged bark lay so heavily that she scarcely moved. The waves came up and dashed over her almost like a rock. One of the second lieutenants, who was in charge of the large boat, was first to round the derelict. From the lee side, he pointed with his finger. "There must be somebody aboard her," said Eric, rightly guessing the meaning of the gesture. Then, noting the manner in which the other boat kept away, he realized that the wreckage was on that side. Wrenching the tiller round, he called, "Back starboard!" The boat spun round like a top, sweeping right under the vessel's stern. "Give way to starboard! Easy port!" The boat slid up alongside the derelict as though coming to a landing place. The men trailed their oars, the bow oar grappled with a boat-hook and Eric leaped for the poop rail of the vessel, and swung himself aboard. The deck was pitched forward at an angle of 30 degrees, but evidently the vessel had floated in that condition for some time, for a sort of barricade had been made, with the right angle of the half-sunk cabin companion hatchway as a base, and on this three bodies were lying. A keg of water and a maggoty ham--the latter exposed to the full sunlight of the tropics--was all the food in sight. Eric slid down the deck to this barricade. The first man seemed to be dead, the heart of the second was beating feebly, but the third, a white-haired old man, appeared only to be asleep, the deep sleep of exhaustion. When the boy put his hand on his shoulder, the old man opened his eyes wide. "So you have come the third time," he said, in a queer far-away voice, "but it is too late." Eric slipped his hand into his coat pocket and brought out a small phial of restorative he had provided just before leaving the cutter. He gave the survivor a few sips. The old man changed not a muscle, only repeated in the same dull and far-away voice, "So you have come the third time, but it is too late!" Perceiving that the sufferer regarded him as an apparition and that in his hallucinations born of exhaustion and exposure he must have believed he saw rescuers before, Eric picked the old man up bodily and, half crouching, half climbing on the sloping deck, carried him to the derelict's side. Two of the sailors climbed up and helped him lower the old man to the boat. Meantime the other boat had made fast and the second lieutenant joined him. He was a man of considerable experience, and while Eric was quite proud of his knowledge and skill as a life-saver, he was amazed at the deft handling of his superior officer. [Illustration: THE GREATEST MENACE OF THE SEAS. A sunken derelict ready to sink any vessel that strikes her. Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.] [Illustration: BURNED TO THE WATER'S EDGE. Vessel abandoned and floating in the path of commerce, hunted as a dangerous beast, and found by the Coast Guard cutters. Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.] "I think this one's gone," said Eric in a low voice, pointing to the first man he had seen. The other cast a quick look at him and shook his head. "Pretty far gone, but not quite," he answered. "There's always a fighting chance that we can pull him through. I'll take these two into my boat and get back to the cutter. We'll probably blow this craft up, afterwards; we couldn't ever tow her this way." "Why, sir? Because she's too heavy?" "Not only that, but she lies too low. On end, the way she is now, she's probably drawing thirty-five or forty feet of water. She might stick in a channel somewhere and that would be worse than getting rid of her out here." The boats raced back to the ship and the survivors were handed up to the _Miami_ where the surgeon immediately took charge. All preparations had been made, meanwhile, for the placing of mines and Eric was told off in the boat under the second lieutenant to see to the placing of the charges. This was work to which Eric was unaccustomed and he watched with considerable interest the gunner's handling of the mines. It was easy enough to place the charges in the upper works of the stern where they would be sure to blow that part of the ship to pieces, but so much of the forward portion of the hulk was under water that the problem there was more difficult. In order to make sure of the job, five mines were set and connected with each other by electric wiring. A long strand of insulated wire was then carried to the boat, over a hundred feet in length. At a signal given him by the lieutenant, Eric pressed the button. There was a tremendous roar as a waterspout shot up from the surface of the sea. As though some vast leviathan had passed underneath the old bark and shouldered her out of the water, the long black hull heaved herself up slowly. She seemed to hang poised for a fraction of a second on the surface of the water as if, in her death agony, she had for a moment thought of her old life when, under press of sail, she flew bounding over the billows, defying the very elements which at last had worked her ruin. Only for a moment she hung there, then with a dull crash she broke her back. The bow plunged downward with a sullen plunge, but the stern still held poised. Then, quite suddenly, the air imprisoned in the hull broke free and slowly, almost, it seemed, with dignity, the remainder of the vessel sank forever beneath the surface of the waters. It was the end of the _Luckenback_ and somewhere at the bottom of the sea her distorted steel plating marks the spot where rest the nine members of her crew lost before the rescuing Coast Guard cutter hove in sight. CHAPTER XI THE WRECKERS OF THE SPANISH MAIN "Well, Eric," said Homer Tierre to his friend, as they stood together one evening a few days after the rescue of the survivors of the _Luckenback_, watching the phosphorescence of the sea, "we're getting down to the old Spanish Main, now." "Isn't that a great word for bringing up ideas!" exclaimed Eric in reply. "It makes one think of the old stories we used to read as kids, of the black flag with the skull and crossbones and all that sort of thing. Too bad there aren't any pirates left!" "I suppose you'd want us to go chasing them!" "Of course. We should have to, if there were any, wouldn't we?" "Certainly," his friend answered. "Don't you remember how the old bos'n of the _Itasca_ used to tell us about the early days of the Revenue Cutter Service when chasing pirates was a regular part of its duties? Officially it is still, I suppose, but there aren't any more pirates to chase." "What has put them all out of business?" Eric said thoughtfully. "I've often wondered." "Steam, mainly," his friend replied, "that 'insult to a seaman's intelligence,' as our friend the fluent skipper of the _Northwestern_ called it." "But I don't see why," persisted Eric. "After all, in the days of sailing ships, the pirates only had sailing ships--and they weren't always such an awful lot faster. Why couldn't pirates to-day have steamships, just as fast in comparison to the steamers of to-day as their clippers were to the sailing ships of old? They'd get much bigger hauls. Why, one good hold-up of an Atlantic steamer would make a pirate crew rich for life!" "You'd better take to the trade," suggested his companion. "I'd sooner do the chasing," replied the boy; "it's much more fun, anyway, and I'd rather be on the right side, every time. But don't you think that there really would be a chance for a big Atlantic greyhound pirate?" "I don't think so," the other answered meditatively. "For one thing, we'd have pirates if there was any such chance. After all, Eric, you've got to remember that a pirate was successful because of his own personality. They were a mighty forceful lot--Kidd, Blackbeard, Lolonnois, and all those early pirates. On a big steamer, the pirate captain wouldn't have the same sort of chance. There's too many in a crew, for one thing. Then he'd be practically at the mercy of his engineers and engine hands. In a mutiny, he'd be up against it for fair." "But if a pirate captain could bluff a couple of mates and forty sailors in his crew, I don't see why he shouldn't he able to bluff a couple of engineers and fifty stokers," suggested Eric. "Even supposing he did," said the other, "suppose he had every man on board terrorized, or so heavily bribed that they would obey him to the letter, still his troubles would have hardly begun. In the old days, as long as there was food and water aboard, a sailing ship could cruise around for months at a time. A steamer needs coal." "She could take the coal from the bunkers of the ships she held up," suggested the boy. "It would be a good deal more of a job than you reckon," the other answered. "She couldn't do it at all if there was any sea running, and even on a calm day, it's a tricky proposition. If you've ever seen a man-o'-war on a sea cruise trying to coal from a naval collier, that's built just for that very purpose, you'd get an idea how hard it is. Meantime, what would the crew and passengers of the liner be doing?" "Putting in coal, or getting shot down if they resisted." "You've a bloodthirsty turn of mind," his friend rejoined. "I know the idea, 'scuppers pouring blood,' and that sort of business, eh?" "Sure," answered Eric. "You're forgetting a lot of things," the other said. "An old time sailing-ship just had the one deck. When a boarding pirate crew had won the deck, they were masters of the ship. But a modern steamer is like a building with several floors, one on top of the other. A pirate crew which could put aboard a steamer as many men as the steamer itself carried, and still handle itself, would be a small army. What's more, on a modern steamship, with half a dozen stairways and the whole inside a labyrinth of rooms, the pirates would be ambushed like rats in a trap a dozen times over." "Yes, there's something in that," the boy agreed. "Then there's the wireless," continued Homer. "Supposing a pirate steamer hailed a craft. Long before the first boatload of men could board, or before the ships could have grappled, the wireless operator would send an 'S O S' call, with a description of the piratic vessel and the latitude and longitude. The pirate couldn't get coal aboard in less than twelve hours, and by that time half a dozen vessels would be steaming at full speed to the spot." "What difference would that make?" said Eric. "If the pirate were armed with heavy guns, she could stand off a fleet of commercial vessels that didn't have any armament." "Your imagination is working in great shape, Eric," his engineer friend replied. "It's a pity you don't think far enough ahead." "How's that?" "I suppose you'd have your pirate vessel chosen for speed?" "Of course," the boy answered. "She'd have to be fast in order to make a getaway." "Here's where you're forgetting your ship-building," his friend warned him. "Could she have speed if she were armed with heavy guns? Wouldn't she necessarily have to be partly the build of a man-o'-war, say a cruiser?" "Perhaps she would," said the boy thoughtfully. "And if she had the build of a cruiser, would she have the speed of an Atlantic greyhound?" "That's true," admitted Eric, "she wouldn't. Still that wouldn't matter, if the only craft that could chase her was a craft without guns." "Wouldn't it?" his friend queried. "Do you know how they chase wolves in some parts of Western Canada?" "No." "They use a couple of greyhounds and two or three heavy dogs, like bulldogs or Airedales or wolfhounds. The wolf can easily outrun the heavy dogs, but when it comes to real speed he isn't in it with a greyhound. The greyhounds overtake Mr. Wolf in less than no time, nip at him, worry him, anger him until he turns on them. They won't even try to fight and he hasn't a chance of catching them. Meantime, the heavy dogs, following up the scent, come pounding along the trail. The wolf sees them and lopes off again, the greyhounds after him. They badger and worry him again, and again he turns. By the time this has happened three or four times, the heavy dogs have caught up to their quarry, and the fight is on. Two or three minutes and it's all over, and there's one wolf the less to harry the flocks of sheep." "Well?" "That's just about what would happen to this pirate of yours. Suppose he did stop an Atlantic steamer, suppose he did board her successfully, suppose he got his coal bunkers full, suppose he carried a heap of treasure to his own vessel flying the Jolly Roger and got away with it. He'd have the other ships around, wouldn't he?" "I suppose he would," Eric admitted. "You can bet your last dollar he would. And their wireless would be working overtime, wouldn't it?" "Of course." "Piracy is a matter that every maritime nation is interested in. The newspapers of the world would have the story by wireless the next morning, the governments of the world would know almost as quickly. By noon the next day half a dozen warships would be steaming from different directions in search of the pirate, led as straight as a magnet to the pole by the radio information constantly being sent from the light passenger steamers that were pursuing. If the naval fleet included a destroyer with a thirty-knot speed, where would your pirate get off at?" [Illustration: FOAM--THE DERELICT'S ONLY TOMBSTONE. Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.] [Illustration: MINING A LURKING PERIL. A submerged derelict, waterlogged, scarcely visible, for which a diver must be sent down to place the mines. Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.] "He wouldn't have a show. I see," continued Eric, regretfully, "I'll have to give up the hope of being able to join in a real pirate chase." "Of course," the young engineer said thoughtfully, "a pirate in a submarine might be able to do something." "Now there's a real idea," exclaimed Eric. "Maybe there's a chance yet!" "I'm afraid not, even there," answered the other, smiling at his friend's eagerness, "mainly because of that same question of fuel. The captain of the submarine would have to be in cahoots with some supply station, and with the howl that would be made all over the world by modern piracy, it would be hard for the fuel contractor to hide his output. The only way that I can see would be for such a pirate to watch out for ships loaded with what was most needed, run up and threaten to torpedo the craft with everybody on board unless they took to the boats, put a prize crew aboard and run that steamer to a lonely beach on an uninhabited island and start a supply depot of his own there." "But a submarine couldn't carry a large enough crew to conquer a steamer." "They wouldn't need to," said Homer. "It would be enough to send one man aboard to demand the treasure." "Well?" "The submarine could lie to, with her submerged torpedo tubes pointing full at the vessel. If within a given space of time the treasure was not shipped and the pirate lieutenant returned safe, a torpedo would be fired which would send the steamer to Davy Jones with all hands. As a captain is more responsible for the lives of his passengers than for their gold, he would have to consent. One might easily get half a million dollars from one of the larger vessels. Three or four cruises of that kind would be quite enough, and our friend, the imaginary pirate captain and all his crew, could retire from the profession." "But do you really think such a thing is possible?" "It's very unlikely," his friend replied, "but there's no doubt that it's possible. Several submarines have been sunk in the Great War, and one or more of these might be fished up by wreckers. Being hermetically sealed, no water would have got in, and their machinery would be as good as ever, even if they had been lying under the water for some months. As for crew--if the pay were big enough, there would be always enough desperate fellows to be found to make the venture. Yes, that plan is feasible enough. And, what's more, it would be hard to stop. Really, the more you think of it, the more possible it seems. The only weakness is the coaling." "It seems to me," Eric said, "that if she could coal at sea, sink the ship and tow the boats containing the crew within reach of land, she would be pretty safe." "Yes," his friend answered, "if she could stay at sea indefinitely until treasure enough had been accumulated, I believe a submarine could get away with it. There might be difficulty afterwards in getting rid of the bullion and the jewels, but, after all, that's a different question. It has nothing to do with the piracy." Eric peered into the darkness, putting his hand over his eyes as though to look intently. "Pirate, ahoy!" he called softly. "Three points off the starboard bow!" The young lieutenant of engineers laughed. "You'll be dreaming of pirates in your next watch below," he said, as he turned away, "or you'll be running up the skull and cross-bones instead of the Stars and Stripes and we'll have to court-martial you." "Little chance of that," replied the boy, "but maybe there'll be a submarine pirate some day that we'll have a chance to chase. I'll live in hopes!" By a somewhat curious coincidence, a few days after this conversation, the _Miami_ passed the Dry Tortugas, the old-time capital of that Buccaneer Empire which for forty years held the navies of the entire world at bay. It was a curious chapter in the history of the seas, and Eric caught himself wondering whether the future of navigation held any such surprising and adventurous period in store. He was to learn shortly, however, that the Coast Guard was thoroughly fitted to meet similar emergencies and that her naval powers could be made swiftly operative even in times of peace. As the cutter was proceeding to her station at Key West, she sighted a schooner, which, by signal flags, reported that she had that morning passed a bark flying the reversed ensign, with her yards awry and her sails aback. On running close to the schooner the _Miami_ learned that the bark had changed her course when the schooner approached, and when the schooner fell on her course the bark came aback again. A second time the schooner went to her relief, and again the bark squared off on her course. "Queer thing," said Eric, after the flags had been read. "What do you suppose it is?" "Looks like mutiny," said his chum. "I suppose we'll chase her and find out. Too bad the schooner never got near enough to see her name." "What's the odds? We've got a description. Hello! Forced draft, eh?" "Yes, it looks like trouble. You wanted to see a pirate chase, Eric. I don't believe that's on the boards, but at least a mutiny chase smacks of the old days." The information given by the schooner proved to be startlingly correct, for a couple of hours later the lookout in the crow's-nest reported, "Sail on the port bow!" "Where away?" asked the chief officer. "Nearly dead ahead, sir," was the reply. The captain leveled his glass at the craft. Eric watched him closely, for his expression was puzzling. In an hour's time the _Miami_ which, under forced draft, was flying through the water, overhauled the vessel. Just as the schooner had reported, the bark was in irons, with her yards braced athwartwise and her sails aback. The British merchant flag was flying at her mizzen-gaff, with the ensign down. No sooner was the _Miami_ within a mile or two of the bark than the vessel squared around her yards and began to scud before the wind. She had a good pair of heels and it was not surprising that the schooner had not started to pursue. There was no real reason why she should interfere. But with the Coast Guard cutter it was another matter. A signal of distress had been seen, an American vessel had called on the cutter, and now the suspected craft was running away. The chase began. No sooner did the bark realize that she was actually being chased than men were sent aloft, and the fore-royal and main sky-sail were set, a heavy press of the sail for the full breeze. This absolutely determined the fact that the Coast Guard cutter would chase, for the bark was fleeing. It was getting late in the afternoon, and within a couple of hours darkness would close down. The moon would not rise until nearly midnight, so that there would be two or three hours in which the sailing vessel could give the cutter the slip. Little by little, however, the _Miami_ began to close up. The breeze freshened, increasing the chances of the fugitive, but still the cutter lessened the distance between them. Immediately after dinner, a few minutes before eight bells struck in the second dog watch, the first lieutenant, at the captain's direction, gave orders to clear away the bow gun. The gun crew sprang to stations, and a moment later the sharp crack of a rapid fire six-pounder sounded across the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, an order from Uncle Sam for the fleeing bark to stop. But the stranger paid no heed. With the glass, figures could be seen on the main deck and on the poop, but it was too far away to determine what they were doing. The captain turned suddenly to the officer of the deck. "Did you see anything, Mr. Keelson?" he asked. The officer, who had his eyes glued to his glass, replied, "I thought I saw the smoke of shots!" "That's what I thought," the captain answered. Then, in a quick voice of command, he added, "You may use solid shot!" A few seconds sufficed to carry out the work. "Try for her upper spars!" was the next order. The sharp crack of a shot from the six-pounder was the reply, and simultaneously, holes appeared in the gaff topsail and the main topgallant staysail. The wind immediately slivered the sails to ribbons and they began lashing about the rigging. At this, the main yards were swung round, the mainsails came aback and ten minutes later the _Miami_ was alongside. Two boats' crews, fully armed, were sent aboard. The situation which greeted Eric, in the second lieutenant's boat, was unusual. A rope ladder had been thrown over the ship's side from the main deck. Above the ladder was an excited group, all shouting at the top of their voices. The senior second lieutenant, who was in charge of the boat to which Eric had been assigned, took command of the party. He asked for the captain. One of the men pointed to the helmsman. "Are you the captain?" the Coast Guard officer demanded. "Si, signor," the man answered, "I the captain." "Johnson," said the lieutenant, "relieve the wheel!" One of the Coast Guard men saluted, stepped forward and took the wheel. The vessel was hove to. "Are you English?" the lieutenant asked, when this manoeuver had been completed. "Italiano!" the captain of the bark replied. "Then what's that flag doing there?" the Coast Guard officer asked, pointing to the reversed British merchant flag which still hung at the gaff. The other shrugged his shoulders. "The only one I have. The mate he take the others," he answered. "Where's the mate?" An evil-looking fellow with rings in his ears and a long knife stuck in his belt slouched forward. He did not come alone. Half a dozen sailors, evidently part of a gang, came aft with him. Thinking that a little example might be salutary, the lieutenant turned to the file of men who had come on board with him. The men had their rifles at the carry. "'Tion! Order arms!" The butts of the rifles came down on the ship's deck with the precision of clockwork and the rattle was ominous. The Coast Guard officer had a steely note in his voice, as he continued. "You're the mate?" "Yes," the man said sulkily, but in good English, "I'm the first mate, all right." "Did you remove the signal flags from the locker?" "What if I did?" "Did you receive orders from your captain to do so?" "Not exactly--" "Yes or no!" "N-no!" "And was he on deck at the time?" "Yes." "Did he order you not to haul down the flag?" "I don't have to do everything he tells me." "Did he order you not to haul down the flag? Yes or no?" "Well, yes." "And did you haul it down several times?" "Yes, but--" "I don't want to hear your excuses or your reasons. That's mutiny," the lieutenant said, simply. Then, turning to the captain, he said, "Do you accuse him of mutiny?" "Yes," the master answered, "he mutiny." "Put the irons on him, Quartermaster," said the lieutenant, and handcuffs were snapped on the first mate's wrist. [Illustration: STRANDED! AFTER STORM HAS CEASED AND TIDE HAS EBBED. The end of a gallant bark driven on a lee shore, but from which the Coast Guard rescued every one on board. Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.] "Any more of your men mutiny, Captain?" asked the lieutenant. "I tell you whole story," the shipmaster answered. "You speak Italian?" "French," the Coast Guard officer answered, "but not Italian." "French? Fine!" the captain replied, and stepping forward, he told the story of the trip. It appeared that the ship had part of her cargo consigned to Vera Cruz, consisting of cartridges, designed for the Mexican government. The mate had practically seized the ship and demanded that the captain sail her to Puerto Mexico, one of the southern ports, in the hands of the Zapatistas. The Mexican rebel general was to pay a good price for the ammunition, and then the captain was to be allowed to proceed with the ship unmolested on the rest of his cruise. As the ammunition had been shipped from an American port, the Coast Guard lieutenant realized that complications might ensue. Accordingly, since it was only a few hours' run to Apalachicola, and the wind was fair, the lieutenant advised the Italian captain to run for that port and deal with the question of the mate and the other three mutineers before the proper court. A file of men, under command of Gunner Sternow, was left on board the bark to preserve order. The mate and the three other mutineers were thrust in irons into the carpenter's shop, which was converted into a prison for the purpose, one of the cutter's men standing on guard. The following morning, the harbor authorities of Apalachicola having been notified by wireless, a tug came off bearing authority for the formal arrest of the four men, who were taken ashore and put in prison, pending action by the Italian consul and the civil authorities. "I suppose this mutiny business is rather rare," said Eric to Homer, as the _Miami_ swung out of Apalachicola Bay. "Not so rare as you'd fancy," his friend answered. "There's not a season goes by that some of the cutters don't have to take a hand in settling mutiny. Why, only last year, a crew seized a vessel, in the real old-fashioned pigtail and tarred-trousers style, imprisoned the master in the cabin, and started to sail the ship back to the United States on their own hook." "Where were they bound for?" "'Frisco, from Philadelphia, round the Horn. She was the _Manga Reva_, an American full-rigged ship with a crew of twenty-three men. She was about 600 miles out when the men mutinied and sailed her back to Delaware Breakwater. The master succeeded in running up a distress signal, which was reported to the _Onondaga_. You know her station is just north of Hatteras. The _Onondaga_ put an armed crew on board, and took the mutineers on board the cutter, steamed up the river to Wilmington, Delaware, where they were turned over to the Federal authorities to await trial." "What did they get?" "Pretty heavy terms of imprisonment," the other answered; "mutiny on the high seas is a mighty ticklish thing." "What do you suppose this mate we collared will get?" "Hard to say," the other answered. "After all, he's an Italian, sailing under Italian colors. Uncle Sam's always careful about international law. But the Italian maritime laws are very strict, and if he's sent back to Italy, I'm sorry for him." For the next two months, little of adventurous importance occurred. The _Miami_ disposed of several more dangerous derelicts in the gulf of Mexico. She assisted a small steamer belonging to the Public Health Service of Key West, which had anchored in an exposed position, and towed her to safe moorings. She rescued two men in a small motor boat, out of sight of land, who had drifted after the machinery had broken down. In addition to this, she floated and towed to harbor three sailing-vessels which had struck on the treacherous reefs of the waters of the Florida Keys. The work was constant, and the Coast Guard cutter was on the job without ceasing, but there was little to stir the complement to their utmost. Then came trouble. From the wireless station,--that continuous recorder of difficulty and disaster, came word that a Norwegian steamer was ashore on Twisted Cay, and asking for immediate assistance against native wreckers. The _Miami_ immediately started for the scene of the disaster, and about noon of the next day arrived in sight of the vessel. "They've been having trouble of some sort," said Eric, as the cutter steamed up to the scene of the wreck. "And look at the nerve of them; they don't seem to pay any attention to us!" The boats' crews were ordered out, and Eric, as before, was in the smaller craft. The two boats pulled to the side of the vessel, and the boy accompanied the second lieutenant on board. The steamer was lying with her head to the southward and westward, with a decided list to starboard. Twenty or thirty small sailing-boats were clustered round her, like ants round a piece of sugar. What was still more daring, while most of the wreckers had left the stranded steamer on the arrival of the cutter, others actually stayed on board. They were an evil-looking lot, and heavily armed. The scene on board was a striking one. The first thing noticed by Eric was the presence of two men propped up against the starboard rail, pale and roughly bandaged. "Where's the captain?" was the lieutenant's first question. "I'm Captain Jorgsen," was the reply, as a finely built, ruddy middle-aged man advanced. "Glad to see you on board." "Good morning, Captain. You reported by wireless having trouble with these wreckers," the Coast Guard officer remarked; "are these men of yours badly hurt?" "One of them is," the captain answered. "Have you a doctor in your party?" "We've one aboard. Mr. Swift," he continued, turning to Eric, "will you please take the boat and bring Dr. Fuhrman here?" Eric saluted and was in his boat almost on the instant. The doctor, guessing that possibly the call might be for him, was waiting at the ladder with his instrument-bag in case he should be needed. Formalities were unnecessary, so that when the boat pulled alongside and Eric, looking up, saw the doctor at the rail he called, "Couple of patients for you, Doctor." "Right you are," was the answer, and the surgeon came down the ladder as nimbly as Eric could have done himself. On arriving at the wrecked steamer, it was found that the injuries were knife-wounds, one of them deep and necessitating an immediate operation. As there was a good deal of likelihood that the steamer might go to pieces on the reef if a storm blew up, it was decided to take the two injured men to the _Miami_, where the doctor could give them better attention. Owing to the difficulty of the steamer's position on the reef, with the surf breaking over her to the windward and the rocks to lee, this trans-shipment of the injured men was not accomplished without difficulty, but by three o'clock in the afternoon, the men were safely on board the cutter. Meantime the lieutenant had been trying to place the responsibility for the crime, but this was impossible. All that the captain of the steamer could say was that, during a fight with the wreckers the preceding night, these two men had been knifed. In response to questions, Captain Jorgsen expressed the hope that some of the wreckers had got hurt themselves, but he regretted that his crew had been defenseless, with nothing but belaying pins and such like weapons for their protection. As the belaying pins in question were iron and twice as heavy as a policeman's club, Eric could not help smiling at the suggestion of inoffensiveness that the captain conveyed. At the request of the captain of the steamer, the _Miami_ agreed to lie by her through the night, until the arrival of a wrecking tug from Havana, a message having been received by the _Miami_ that the tug had started for the scene of the disaster. Steam had been kept up on the wrecked steamer for the handling of the winches and so forth. Suddenly, in the middle of the night, about two bells in the middle watch, a succession of short, sharp whistles from the steamer pierced the darkness. The first lieutenant of the _Miami_ was on the deck in a few moments. Meantime, the officer of the watch had ordered the searchlight thrown on the steamer. The light revealed the deck a struggling mass of men. In the darkness all the wreckers had gathered to board their victim, and at a given signal not less than a hundred and fifty men had swarmed on to the vessel's decks. The crew was pinned back into two groups, fighting like wild-cats. Most of them, powerfully built Scandinavians, were sweeping aside the natives before them, but the odds were overpowering. The negroes shouted and yelled as they tried to beat the sailors down. Already the main hatch had been forced open and a stream of men was pouring down, for the wreckers knew of valuables which formed a part of the cargo. A few sharp orders, and the cutter's boats were off to the wreck, the crews armed, their rifles loaded with ball. At the same time, one of the six-pounders was let loose and sent a few shots whistling over the steamer, illumined only by the patch of intense white light thrown by the searchlight of the _Miami_. The boats were half-way across to the steamer, where there was a sudden cessation of the fighting, and over the side of the vessel the wreckers came swarming like rats leaving a sinking ship. But the _Miami's_ men had been too quick for all to escape and more than a dozen of the natives were pinned on board. As soon as the wreckers had heard the _Miami's_ guns and fled, the tide of battle turned, and on the dozen which remained, the crew of the steamer had taken a swift vengeance. None of them was seriously hurt, but they had been beaten up in a way that they would remember to the end of their days. Captain Jorgsen, who had been in the thick of the fight, was to the front when the cutter boats landed. "I wish you'd put a hole in every one of those thieving boats," he growled. "They deserve it, all right," the Coast Guard officer answered, "but I doubt if the Department would approve." "If I had a gun like yours," said Captain Jorgsen, grimly, "I'd fire at 'em an' keep firing until I didn't have a shot left in the locker." "I'm afraid we can't very well send you over one of our six-pounders," said the other, "but it seems to me you have a right to protect yourself from being boarded in this way. I'll send over some small-arms and ammunition in the morning and we'll stand by you and keep these black rascals in order. But I wanted to ask you, Captain Jorgsen, how did you come to be so far out of your course?" "I was right on my course," the skipper growled. "That's what makes me so sore. But when I passed Cross Keys light, I thought I must have figured wrong. I never stopped to think why the light was nearly a quarter of a degree from where she should have been by my reckoning, and I changed my course by that." "Well?" "One of my men heard those chicken-livered black-hided cowards laughing to themselves about the way they fooled vessels with their 'patent light.'" [Illustration: THE SIGNAL OF DISTRESS THAT WAS NEVER SEEN. The missing lifeboat from the burned steamer, Columbian, abandoned. Note the coat at the masthead. Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.] "You mean that the wreckers have put up a false light to lead vessels on to the reefs?" "It's that decoy light that brought me here," said the skipper, "and if you hadn't come when you did, I reckon every one of us would have had our throats cut and the vessel would have been skinned by this time." CHAPTER XII THE GRAVEYARD OF THE DEEP Following on the information given by the captain of the Norwegian steamer, which had so nearly been looted by wreckers, the _Miami_ started on a search for the decoy light that had led that steamer to her fate. The captain was an able navigator, and, until the moment he had seen the false light and been led astray by it, he had been absolutely upon his right course. Under such circumstances it was not difficult to find the latitude and longitude where the captain reported having first seen the light. He had also given the bearing in the log, so the _Miami_ crept slowly forward in the direction indicated, heaving the lead constantly for treacherous shoals. From where the captain of the steamer had cited his position there was not a single sign of a lighthouse or a light. But, as the _Miami_ crept on, far out of the regular ship's channel, as suddenly as though it had been just placed there, rose a spar, held in place with three wire stays. On the top was a little round platform, not more than a foot across, and spikes had been driven into the mast to act as a ladder by which to climb it. The _Miami_ was almost on the tiny outcrop of rock before the mast was visible. It was painted a watery blue, which merged in with the color of both sea and sky, and was exceedingly difficult to see. A boat's crew was sent ashore to demolish the mast and also to make a search for the light. To Eric, who went ashore with the men, it was quite an exciting hunt, "almost like looking for Captain Kidd's treasure," as he said afterwards to his chum, the young lieutenant of engineers. The quest was in vain, for though every inch of the islet was searched, there was no sign that the ground had been disturbed. So far as that went, there was very little ground to disturb, for the islet was little more than a coral rock, nearly covered at high tide. It was evident that the wreckers, when they were ready for their work, brought the light with them. As the light for which the decoy was intended to be a substitute was quite a powerful light, with a regular occulting flash, the decoy itself must be powerful, and the _Miami_ was anxious to trace it. If the native wreckers had such a lantern in their possession, probably they had some kind of clockwork and could alter the occultation of their decoy so that it would duplicate any one of several different lights on the coast. It was not until some time afterwards that the Lighthouse Service learned that there actually had been such a light in the hands of the wreckers at one time. In a quarrel among themselves, however, over the division of the spoils of a small schooner which had run ashore, one of the disgruntled wreckers had thrown the lantern overboard in deep water. "I hadn't supposed there was anything of that sort going on now, sir," said Eric to one of the junior lieutenants, discussing the question of the wreckers' lights. "Nor had I," was the rejoinder. "The business of being a wrecker has changed a good deal. There's plenty of it, still, but it has become a recognized profession. A wrecker, now, has offices in a big seaport, with a fleet of ocean-going tugs and a big bank-roll. When a ship is reported ashore, either her owners pay him to float her, or he buys the wreck outright and takes his chances of being able to recover the purchase price. If luck is with him, he may get a good ship and cargo cheap, but if fortune frowns and a storm breaks her up before he can save the cargo, then he suffers a heavy loss. It's a good business, but a big gamble." "I should think there was a lot of excitement in that business, yet!" "Yes, there is. But it is organized now and wonderfully handled commercially. It's only in places like these outlying fringes of the Bahamas, that the native wrecker--the one who lives by robbery and loot--can still be found. In the old days, a decoy light was a regular thing. There were organizations that had offices in the cities, who used to make a business of this wrecking. Barnegat, New Jersey, was a famous point in the first part of last century. All the inhabitants were in league with the wreckers, there. Many and many a good vessel, in the early days of American shipping, was lured directly on to the treacherous beach, while the wreckers looted everything they could get, and plundered the passengers and crew. That's all done away with now. The United States coast is too thoroughly patrolled by the Coast Guard for any such business as that to flourish. "I think the Wolf Rock story is perhaps the best example of the idea of deliberately wrecking vessels. You've heard of Wolf Rock?" "Yes, sir," said the boy, "it's in the English Channel, off the coast of Devonshire." "Did you ever hear why that particular rock was called Wolf Rock?" "No, sir," answered Eric, "I don't think I ever did. Is it because of the shape of it, or because the sea breaking over it is like the fangs of a wolf or something like that? There generally isn't an awful lot of reason for the names of rocks and reefs." "There is for this one," said his friend. "It isn't because it looks like a wolf, but because it howls like a wolf." "You mean the fog-horn does?" "No, I mean the rock does, or did," was the reply. "How?" "You've heard of blow-holes?" "Yes, sir," said Eric, "there's one at the Farallones Islands. You mean those holes that make a noise when the tide comes in and out?" "That's the idea. The Wolf Rock was a most famous case of that. It had a large cavern inside and a very small hole through the rock at the ceiling of the cavern. Then there was a cleft or fissure through the rock right down to this little hole. You can see for yourself that when the tide started to come in, it closed the sea entrance to the cavern, imprisoning a lot of air. Then, as the tide rose steadily, the pressure of the water drove the air out of the cavern through this little hole, continually making an intermittent blowing sound. The great cleft in the rock acted like the horn of an immense megaphone. This gave rise to a roar, high-pitched--owing to the smallness of the hole--like a wolf's howl. Night and day, but more especially when the tide was coming in, the howl of the Wolf Rock sounded over the sea to warn mariners of the perilous crag." "Handy," remarked Eric; "it would save the Lighthouse Service a good bit of money if every rock could be fixed like that." "It didn't do the English Lighthouse Service much good," said his friend. "What do you suppose the good people of Devonshire did? They set to work and hunted for weeks to try to find the hole, but it was so small that they failed. At last, having made up their minds that the Wolf Rock should cease to give its warning, they combined together and carted boulders from the beach to the top of the rock, with incredible labor, and after a month's hard work filled up the entire lower part of the chasm and then shoveled small stones on top." "And thus silenced the wolf's howl?" "Very nearly. If you stand on Wolf Rock now, you can still hear a low moaning sound as the tide comes in, but it's very faint. So far as a warning is concerned, the wolf is chained forever." "And did the people profit by it, sir?" "Within three months from the time of the silencing of the wolf, over thirty vessels crashed to pieces on the rocks around, and the people of the villages were made rich by the wreckage of the cargoes that came floating in, or by the plunder they took from the vessels which held together after the storm had passed." "And those who were drowned?" "They were drowned, that was all," the other said. "Of course if any survivors were washed ashore, the coast folk treated them very kindly." "I don't suppose," Eric remarked, "that they ever told these survivors that they had done their best to make them the victims of the hungry sea?" "Hardly! You've got to remember that people often have queer local ways. There are superstitions you can't defend on any ground. You know, at one time, it was considered bad luck to try to save any one who had been partly drowned. There are plenty of people, even nowadays, who won't cut down a would-be suicide who has hanged himself because they think it's bad luck. "So far as the sea and sailors are concerned, I believe there's more humanity than on land. It's very rarely that you ever hear of a vessel that has refused to go to another's assistance. I think, too, the whole work of the Coast Guard is a standing example of the modern idea that nothing is more important than the saving of life." "It often takes some big disaster to start it, though," said Eric. "After all, this Ice Patrol that the _Miami_ is going on next month, was only begun as a result of the sinking of the _Titanic_, wasn't it?" "That's all. But wasn't that reason enough?" "It surely was," agreed the boy. "I think the summer ice patrol is a mighty useful thing. If the _Seneca_ keeps the lane of ocean travel free of derelicts and we cover the Ice Patrol of that same steamship lane, it ought to make a difference in the safety of ships at sea. Ever see a big iceberg, Mr. Swift?" "Heaps of them, sir," answered the lad. "I was on the Bering Sea patrol last year." "That's right. But you'll find the Atlantic bergs are different. There's a lot of ice in the North Pacific but it's mostly in small pans. No big stuff comes through Bering Strait. It would strand. And then the Aleutian and Kuril Islands make a sort of breakwater to head off big bergs. But in the North Atlantic there's nothing to keep the big Greenland glacier breaks from floating south right into the very path of the steamers. In fact that's what they do. You'll see some real ones this summer." As the lieutenant had pointed out to him, the whole ice question assumed great importance, viewed in the light of the Atlantic Ice Patrol. The _Miami_, on orders from the department, steamed north and relieved the _Seneca_ on duty. She picked up the bergs which the _Seneca_ had found and plotted their positions on the chart. Every day at eight bells of the middle watch (4 A.M.) the wireless operator on the _Miami_ sent to the Hydrographic office a statement as to the exact position of all bergs that had been sighted and the amount of their probable daily drift. This information was sent out again as a daily ice warning to merchant vessels by the Hydrographic Bureau. [Illustration: ICEBERG WITH _MIAMI_ IN THE BACKGROUND. Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.] [Illustration: THE GHOSTLY ALLY OF DISASTER. Berg in the lane of Atlantic travel, continuously watched by Coast Guard Cutter, safeguarding thousands of human lives. Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.] The experiment of trying to demolish the larger bergs by gunnery was tried, and a six-pound shot was fired full at close range at one of the bergs. But it had no other result than to shake down a barrelful of snow-like dust. Following up the various bergs kept the _Miami_ busy. At the same time she sent and received messages from passing steamers along the line of travel. Only one large berg really got into a dangerous position, and this one was as carefully plotted and its position as thoroughly made known to vessels navigating the Atlantic as though it were a fixture. The course of the large Atlantic greyhound _La France_ lay directly in the path of the berg and, had it not been for the warnings of the _Miami_, there might have been another ocean disaster to record. As the summer months approached, the cruising was delightful but not particularly interesting, and Eric, who craved excitement, was glad when, at the end of June, the _Miami_ was ordered to resume her old station at Key West. Two months passed before an emergency arose, but when it did come, it proved to be one to tax the Coast Guard cutter to the full. Toward the end of September a storm warning of a hurricane was issued, and the _Miami_, which was searching for a derelict reported two hundred miles west of Daytona, Florida, decided to run for Matanzas Inlet. About daylight the next morning, the first actual warning of the hurricane, aside from the notice sent out by the Weather Bureau, began to show itself in short gusty puffs. The barometer fell low, finally touching 28°, lower than Eric had ever seen before. The sky clouded gradually, and by breakfast time, the wind was freshening from the southeast. By ten o'clock, the wind had risen to half a gale, and before noon it was blowing not less than forty to fifty miles an hour. The _Miami_ made good weather, but in the afternoon the hurricane reached such a pitch of violence that it was decided to run before the storm and try for the lee of Cape Fear, possibly finding a safe anchorage in Masonboro Inlet. As evening drew on the seas became appalling. The _Miami_ pitched her nose down in the water, shipping it green with almost every dive, while her propeller raced ten feet clear of water; next instant her stern would settle as though she would never rise, while the bow climbed up and up as the trough rolled underneath her. Eric, who was absolutely free of any fear of the sea, enjoyed the storm extremely. It was tiring, however, for, every second of the time, one had to hang on to something for fear either of being washed overboard, or hurled around like a catapult from a sling. When, therefore, the gaunt figure of Cape Fear light was passed and the _Miami_ slipped in behind the lee of Smith Island, every one felt a relief from the mad tossing. They had not known this relief for more than about four minutes when the spluttering of the wireless began. "I'll bet that's some one in trouble," said Eric. "Probably," his friend, the second lieutenant said, overhearing him. "Haven't you been expecting it?" "Hadn't thought of it, sir," said the boy. "We'd plenty to do to get in here ourselves. Yes, there goes Mr. Keelson down to the captain. Could we find out what's up, sir?" The two young officers sauntered to the wireless operator's cabin. "Somebody in trouble, I suppose, Wilson," the lieutenant said. "Yes, sir," the operator answered, "two-masted steamer _Union_ reported in distress, partly dismasted and with her engines disabled, anchored in deep water off the Lookout Shoal." "Probably dragging, sir?" queried Eric, knowing that his companion knew the coast well. "Most likely," the lieutenant answered. "If she's off Lookout, and the wind veers round to the south'ard--which it's doing--that'll send her to Cape Hatteras and Davy Jones' locker in a hurry. We may get there in time, but there's not much we can do while this weather lasts." "Hatteras is called the 'graveyard of ships,' isn't it?" "There are a good many places in the world thus honored," said the lieutenant, "and, so far as America is concerned, there are two, Cape Cod and Cape Hatteras. There are five times as many wrecks between Barnegat Point and Seguin Island as there are in all the other coasts of the United States put together, but in proportion to the amount of shipping that passes, Hatteras is the worst point in the world." "Worse than the Horn?" "A great deal," was the reply. "Shipmasters know the dangers of Cape Horn and give it a wide berth--though steamers nowadays generally use the Straits of Magellan--but Cape Hatteras is different. It juts right out in the path of vessels running down the coast so that a ship makes almost a right angle at that point." "It's a wonder they don't build a lighthouse out on the shoals." "It can't be done," said the other, shaking his head. "The contract was awarded once, but the project fell through. The builder found it impossible to carry it out. There's a New York firm that has been after the Lighthouse Department for a long time to get a contract for the building of a lighthouse on the shoals of Hatteras, but it wants four million dollars, and the government thinks that a bit steep. A first-class lightship can be kept in commission on the station for a fraction of that sum." "But is a lightship just as good?" "N-no," the other answered dubiously, "a lightship, as such, is not as good as a lighthouse, supposing both were at the same point. But a lightship can always be placed in a more advantageous position than a lighthouse, and in places where a lighthouse is impossible, a lightship is invaluable. I should be inclined to say that the Diamond Shoals Lightship off Cape Hatteras, the Frying Pan Shoals Lightship off Cape Fear and the Nantucket Shoals Lightship off Montauk Point would take rank as three of the most important lightships in the world." "But I should think they would get blown off their stations every once in a while," suggested Eric. "They do," said the other; "not very often, but they do." "Then what happens?" "They steam back to their station and lie to as near it as possible. At one time lightships used to be without any kind of propelling machinery, and sometimes they were driven ashore. That happened to a German lightship at the mouth of the Elbe, not so long ago, and all the crew were lost." "The Columbia River lightship went adrift, too, I remember," said the boy; "they had to haul her back through the woods in order to get her floated again and taken to her station." "Exactly," said his friend, "that was another case of a lightship not having her own steam. It's not only to enable a lightship keeping to her station, or running to safety in the event of being blown off her moorings, but you can see that in a severe storm, if a lightship can steam ahead into the eye of the wind, she can take a lot of the strain off her anchors. To tell you the truth, it's my private opinion that the Diamond Shoals Lightship will need to-night every pound of steam she can get. Look for'ard!" The lieutenant pointed with his finger. The _Miami_, starting off to help the disabled steamer in trouble, had turned her stern to the easy anchorage and safe haven not more than two miles away, and was headed for the open sea. Still under the lee of Cape Fear, the force of the wind was greatly moderated and the sea was not more than ordinarily rough. But where the lieutenant pointed, it was easy to see that the storm was raging in its full fury. The waves were running high, their crests whipped into spray by the gusts. "You're right, sir," Eric agreed, "we're in for it! And, what's more, here it comes now!" Almost with the word the _Miami_ got into the full reach of the storm, halted, gave a convulsive stagger, than plunged into the smother. For a minute or two no one on deck could have told what had happened. The shriek of the hurricane through her cordage, the harsh roaring of the tempest-whipped sea, and the vengeful boom of the waves as they threw their tons of water on the deck of the sturdy vessel made the senses reel. But the engines of the _Miami_ throbbed on steadily in defiance of the tempest's fury. The Coast Guard cutter, like every member of her crew, was picked for service, for stern and exalted service. Hurricanes might hurl their monstrous strength upon her, eager billows might snatch at her with their crushing gripe, shoals and reefs might hunger greedily with foam-flecked fangs, still the _Miami_ plowed on through the storm. From realms unknown where the elements hold council of discord, the forces of destruction launched themselves upon her, but the white ship of rescue steadily steamed on, with her lights quietly burning and her officers and crew going about their duties in calm and perfect confidence. Morning broke with that blue-gray veiling of the world in a covering of storm that sailors know so well. It was one of those mornings when the best of ships looks worn and drazzled. The _Miami_ showed scars from her night's battle with the tempest. One of the starboard boats had been stove in, and the davits twisted with the force of a wave that had come aboard. Even the most rigid discipline and the most perfect order failed to make the little vessel trim. There was an "out all night" appearance to the cutter which told--more than great actual damage could have done--the dogged endurance of the vessel against the fury of wind and sea. But, down in the engine-room, the unceasing metal fingers that are the children of men's brains throbbed steadily, and the screw of the little vessel drove her on to her work of rescue. On deck, the Coast Guard men, clear-eyed and determined, handled their day's routine with a sublime disregard of the dangers of the sea. Other vessels might scurry to safe harbors, but the _Miami_, flying the colors of Uncle Sam, set out on her mission to save, with never a moment's halting. On the _Miami_ drove. Presently, the crow's-nest lookout reported a steamer. She was one of the big West Indian liners, and she came reeling towards the cutter with lurchings that were alarming to behold. Only a certain quick jauntiness of recovery told the tale that she, too, was confident of her powers to weather the storm. She called by wireless that she had passed the disabled steamer _Union_ two hours before, that the vessel was dragging her anchors and was in too shoal water for the liner to attempt a rescue. "She's going to strike, sure," said Eric to his friend Homer, as the news of the message was received. "And going right over the Diamond Shoals. How would you like to have charge of the _Miami_ now, Eric?" The boy looked thoughtful. "A year or two ago," he answered, "when I was in the Academy, I'd have been tickled to death at the chance. Right now, when I think I know a bit more, I'm quite satisfied to have Keelson on the bridge. I notice the captain's been around a good bit, too." "Our chief has been on the job below nearly all night, as well," Homer replied. "I'm thinking, Eric, that this is about as bad weather as any vessel can live through!" On through the storm the _Miami_ sped, her engine driving at its fullest speed despite the terrific strain put upon it when the vessel heaved her stern out of water and the screw raced madly with nothing to catch. On she sped, though her bow was pointed straight for the most treacherous shoals on the Atlantic coast, bars of avid quicksand, on which thousands of vessels had gone to swift and awful destruction. On toward the Diamond Shoals the cutter pierced her way, though the gray veil of driving spray hid everything a score of fathom before the vessel's bow. [Illustration: A RESCUE ON THE DIAMOND SHOALS. The Coast Guard Cutter in utmost peril, saving the lives of the crew of the wrecked steamer, _Union_. Courtesy of Scientific American.] "By the deep four!" called out the leadsman, as the water shallowed. Eric felt an uncomfortable sensation at the pit of his stomach. Four fathoms! This was within a few feet of the bottom of the vessel. If she should strike! But the first lieutenant, unperturbed, peered out into the grayness. The boy felt an overwhelming admiration of a man who could dare to take a ship over the worst piece of coast in all the broad Atlantic, in a driving hurricane, with never a landmark or a light to guide him, and hold his nerve cool and self-assured. The captain was on the bridge, but Eric noted that he never spoke to the first lieutenant. This, the boy thought, told even more the spirit of the Coast Guard. Each man had faith in the knowledge and skill of the other. Into the very jaws of the breakers the little cutter sped, and, even while the boy was looking fearfully on every side of him to see the curling waves breaking on shoals not a hundred feet away, there appeared before them the wrecked and disabled steamer. Over the bars the vessel had pounded, her foretopmast had gone by the board, and she seemed in hopeless case. So powerful was the gale that it had plucked the hapless steamer out of the jaws of the sucking sand, and flung her, like a plaything, into the breakers beyond. The _Miami_ slowed down, her first pause in that awful race, which was ending in the maze of the Diamond Shoals, with waves breaking on every side and a hurricane whistling overhead. It seemed even the most reckless foolhardiness to go on a fathom further, but the first lieutenant seemed to know the bottom as though it were a peaceful lane in a New England countryside, and after the _Union_, the Coast Guard cutter crept warily. Even the boatswain muttered under his breath, "We'll never get out o' this!" But, foot by foot, almost, the boy thought, step by step, the _Miami_ overhauled the wrecked vessel. Then from the long silence that had reigned on the bridge, suddenly issued a torrent of orders. The decks of the cutter seemed to bristle with men, as when Jason sowed the dragon's teeth. Eric, though quick and keen, had all he could do to fulfil the part of the work that was given him and set the crew at the lines of the breeches-buoy. Every man was on deck and every man was working with frantic haste. In a fraction of time that seemed but a few seconds, a line was shot to the _Union_, made fast by her crew on board, the breeches-buoy was hauled out and the first of the men from the wreck was on the way to the _Miami_. All this had been done in the few minutes that passed while the cutter held herself within fifteen fathom of the schooner. Then the _Miami_ dropped her anchor, to hold her place for the breeches-buoy. Amid the scream of the gale in the rigging, and the pounding of the breakers on the shoals, the men worked like fiends. Never did ropes slip more quickly through their hands, never did sailors work more feverishly. But, in spite of this wild and furious striving, it was evident that the _Miami_ dare not hold her place. The _Union_ evidently had lost one of her anchors, and the other was not holding in the sand. Every few seconds she dragged, and, in order to prevent the breeches-buoy tackle from being suddenly broken, the _Miami_ had to pay out cable to keep in bearing. Each fathom of chain slipped brought her that much nearer to the shoal. There were thirty men in the _Union's_ crew and every man had been brought aboard but the captain, when the Coast Guard cutter reached the edge of the shoal. One minute more would mean success. At that instant, a savage gust came hurtling in from sea, as though the hurricane was bound to claim at least one victim. The captain of the steamer had just thrust one leg through the breeches-buoy and the _Miami's_ men, with a cheer, had started to haul him inboard, when that gust struck the wrecked vessel. It keeled her over, snapping the line of the breeches-buoy like a whip, and the captain of the steamer was jerked out into the sea. Absolutely without thinking of what he did, reverting for the instant back to the old volunteer life-saving work, when every man went on his own initiative, Eric tore off coat, trousers, and shoes, snatched a life-belt, and plunged into the boiling breakers. At the same second, before even his plunge was noted, the _Miami_ slipped her cable entirely, leaving chain and anchor as booty to the Diamond Shoals and clawed away from the sandbar, not more than twenty feet from her bow. Eric, keyed to a wild and excited perception, saw the captain of the steamer in the water, a few feet away, and swam to him. He found him conscious but unable to swim, the jerk from the breeches-buoy having twisted a sinew in his thigh. It was a half a mile to land, and the breakers rose all round them. With a blind intuition the boy struck out for shore. He knew it was no use trying to reach the ship. How long he struggled he scarcely knew, but the _Union's_ captain, though in pain and crippled, was able to use his arms in swimming and, for a few minutes, from time to time, relieved the boy. It seemed that hours passed. The chill of failure began to creep into Eric's spirits. No longer he swam with energy, but with desperation. The hand of the steamer's captain on his shoulder grew heavier and heavier. Spots danced before his eyes. Suddenly his comrade spoke. "A little further, lad," he said, "a little further. They've seen us!" And, like a great white angel on the water, the power surf-boat of the Cape Hatteras Coast Guard station came flying through the surf upon them. The two branches of the Coast Guard had combined to snatch from the graveyard of the deep its full-expected prey. THE END U. S. SERVICE SERIES By FRANCIS ROLT-WHEELER Illustrations from photographs taken in work for U. S. Government Large 12mo Cloth $1.50 per volume "There are no better books for boys than Francis Rolt-Wheeler's 'U. S. Service Series.'"--_Chicago Record-Herald._ THE BOY WITH THE U. S. SURVEY [Illustration] This story describes the thrilling adventures of members of the U. S. Geological Survey, graphically woven into a stirring narrative that both pleases and instructs. The author enjoys an intimate acquaintance with the chiefs of the various bureaus in Washington, and is able to obtain at first hand the material for his books. "There is abundant charm and vigor in the narrative which is sure to please the boy readers and will do much toward stimulating their patriotism by making them alive to the needs of conservation of the vast resources of their country."--_Chicago News._ THE BOY WITH THE U. S. FORESTERS The life of a typical boy is followed in all its adventurous detail--the mighty representative of our country's government, though young in years--a youthful monarch in a vast domain of forest. Replete with information, alive with adventure, and inciting patriotism at every step, this handsome book is one to be instantly appreciated. "It is a fascinating romance of real life in our country, and will prove a great pleasure and inspiration to the boys who read it."--_The Continent, Chicago._ THE BOY WITH THE U. S. CENSUS Through the experiences of a bright American boy, the author shows how the necessary information is gathered. The securing of this often involves hardship and peril, requiring journeys by dog-team in the frozen North and by launch in the alligator-filled Everglades of Florida, while the enumerator whose work lies among the dangerous criminal classes of the greater cities must take his life in his own hands. "Every young man should read this story from cover to cover, thereby getting a clear conception of conditions as they exist to-day, for such knowledge will have a clean, invigorating and healthy influence on the young growing and thinking mind."--_Boston Globe._ THE BOY WITH THE U. S. FISHERIES [Illustration] With a bright, active American youth as a hero, is told the story of the Fisheries, which in their actual importance dwarf every other human industry. The book does not lack thrilling scenes. The far Aleutian Islands have witnessed more desperate sea-fighting than has occurred elsewhere since the days of the Spanish buccaneers, and pirate craft, which the U. S. Fisheries must watch, rifle in hand, are prowling in the Behring Sea to-day. The fish-farms of the United States are as interesting as they are immense in their scope. "One of the best books for boys of all ages, so attractively written and illustrated as to fascinate the reader into staying up until all hours to finish it."--_Philadelphia Despatch._ THE BOY WITH THE U. S. INDIANS [Illustration] This book tells all about the Indian as he really was and is; the Menominee in his birch-bark canoe; the Iroquois in his wigwam in the forest; the Sioux of the plains upon his war-pony; the Apache, cruel and unyielding as his arid desert; the Pueblo Indians, with remains of ancient Spanish civilization lurking in the fastnesses of their massed communal dwellings; the Tlingit of the Pacific Coast, with his totem-poles. With a typical bright American youth as a central figure, a good idea of a great field of national activity is given, and made thrilling in its human side by the heroism demanded by the little-known adventures of those who do the work of "Uncle Sam." "An exceedingly interesting Indian story, because it is true, and not merely a dramatic and picturesque incident of Indian life."--_N. Y. Times._ "It tells the Indian's story in a way that will fascinate the youngster."--_Rochester Herald._ _For sale by all booksellers or sent postpaid on receipt of price by the publishers_ LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO., BOSTON The Book of Athletics Edited by PAUL WITHINGTON With many reproductions of photographs, and with diagrams _8vo_ _Net, $1.50_ _Postpaid, $1.70_ [Illustration] Nearly thirty college stars and champions, men like Dr. Kraenzlein, Thorpe, Ketcham, "Sammy" White, "Eddie" Hart, Ralph Craig, "Hurry Up" Yost, Jay Camp, Horner, Jackson, F. D. Huntington, R. Norris Williams, "Eddie" Mahan, and many more tell the best there is to tell about every form of athletic contest of consequence. In charge of the whole work is Paul Withington, of Harvard, famous as football player, oarsman, wrestler and swimmer. "Here is a book that will serve a purpose and satisfy a need. Every important phase of sport in school and college is discussed within its covers by men who have achieved eminent success in their line. Methods of training, styles of play, and directions for attaining success are expounded in a clear, forceful, attractive manner." _Harvard Monthly._ "The book is made up under the direction of the best qualified editor to be found, Paul Withington, who is one of America's greatest amateur athletes, and who has the intellectual ability and high character requisite for presenting such a book properly. The emphasis placed upon clean living, fair play and moderation in all things makes this book as desirable educationally as it is in every other way." _Outdoor Life._ "That Mr. Withington's book will be popular we do not doubt. For it contains a series of expert treatises on all important branches of outdoor sports. A very readable, practical, well-illustrated book." _Boston Herald._ _For sale by all booksellers or sent on receipt of postpaid price by the publishers_ LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO., BOSTON THE BOY ELECTRICIAN Practical Plans for Electrical Toys and Apparatus, with an Explanation of the Principles of Every-Day Electricity By ALFRED P. MORGAN _Author of "Wireless Telegraphy Construction for Amateurs" and "Wireless Telegraphy and Telephony"_ _300 illustrations and working drawings by the author_ _Net, $2.00_ _Postpaid, $2.25_ [Illustration] This is the age of electricity. The most fascinating of all books for a boy must, therefore, be one dealing with the mystery of this ancient force and modern wonder. The best qualified of experts to instruct boys has in a book far superior to any other of its kind told not only how to MAKE all kinds of motors, telegraphs, telephones, batteries, etc., but how these appliances are used in the great industrial world. "Of all books recently published on practical electricity for the youthful electricians, it is doubtful if there is even one among them that is more suited to this field. This work is recommended to every one interested in electricity and the making of electrical appliances." _Popular Electricity and Modern Mechanics._ "This is an admirably complete and explicit handbook for boys who fall under the spell of experimenting and "tinkering" with electrical apparatus. Simple explanations of the principles involved make the operation readily understandable." _Boston Transcript._ "Any boy who studies this book, and applies himself to the making and operating of the simple apparatus therein depicted, will be usefully and happily employed. He will, furthermore, be developing into a useful citizen. For this reason we recommend it as an excellent gift for all boys with energy, application, and ambition." _Electrical Record, N. Y. City._ "A book to delight the hearts of ten thousand--perhaps fifty thousand--American boys who are interested in wireless telegraphy and that sort of thing. Any boy who has even a slight interest in things electrical, will kindle with enthusiasm at sight of this book." _Chicago News._ _For sale by all booksellers or sent postpaid on receipt of price by the publishers_ LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO., BOSTON HANDICRAFT FOR HANDY BOYS Practical Plans for Work and Play with Many Ideas for Earning Money By A. NEELY HALL Author of "The Boy Craftsman" With Nearly 600 Illustrations and Working-drawings by the Author and Norman P. Hall 8vo. Cloth Net, $2.00 Postpaid, $2.25 [Illustration] This book is intended for boys who want the latest ideas for making things, practical plans for earning money, up-to-date suggestions for games and sports, and novelties for home and school entertainments. The author has planned the suggestions on an economical basis, providing for the use of the things at hand, and many of the things which can be bought cheaply. Mr. Hall's books have won the confidence of parents, who realize that in giving them to their boys they are providing wholesome occupations which will encourage self-reliance and resourcefulness, and discourage tendencies to be extravagant. Outdoor and indoor pastimes have been given equal attention, and much of the work is closely allied to the studies of the modern grammar and high schools, as will be seen by a glance at the following list of subjects, which are only a few among those discussed in the 500 pages of text: MANUAL TRAINING; EASILY-MADE FURNITURE; FITTING UP A BOY'S ROOM; HOME-MADE GYMNASIUM APPARATUS; A BOY'S WIRELESS TELEGRAPH OUTFIT; COASTERS AND BOB-SLEDS; MODEL AEROPLANES; PUSHMOBILES AND OTHER HOME-MADE WAGONS; A CASTLE CLUBHOUSE AND HOME-MADE ARMOR. Modern ingenious work such as the above cannot fail to develop mechanical ability in a boy, and this book will get right next to his heart. "The book is a treasure house for boys who like to work with tools and have a purpose in their working."--_Springfield Union._ "It is a capital book for boys since it encourages them in wholesome, useful occupation, encourages self-reliance and resourcefulness and at the same time discourages extravagance."--_Brooklyn Times._ "It is all in this book, and if anything has got away from the author we do not know what it is."--_Buffalo News._ _For sale by all booksellers, or sent on receipt of postpaid price by the publishers_ LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO., Boston ON THE TRAIL OF THE SIOUX The Adventures of Two Boy Scouts on the Minnesota Frontier By D. LANGE Illustrated 12mo Cloth Price, Net, $1.00 Postpaid, $1.10 [Illustration] This story was written by a prominent educator to satisfy the insistent demand of active boys for an "Indian Story," as well as to help them to understand what even the young endured in the making of our country. The story is based on the last desperate stand of the brave and warlike Sioux tribes against the resistless tide of white men's civilization, the thrilling scenes of which were enacted on the Minnesota frontier in the early days of the Civil War. "It is a book which will appeal to young and old alike, as the incidents are historically correct and related in a wide-awake manner."--_Philadelphia Press._ "It seems like a strange, true story more than fiction. It is well written and in good taste, and it can be commended to all boy readers and to many of their elders."--_Hartford Times._ THE SILVER ISLAND OF THE CHIPPEWA By D. LANGE Illustrated 12mo Cloth Price, Net, $1.00 Postpaid, $1.10 [Illustration] Here is a boys' book that tells of the famous Silver Island in Lake Superior from which it is a fact that ore to the value of $3,089,000 was taken, and represents a youth of nineteen and his active small brother aged eleven as locating it after eight months of wild life, during which they wintered on Isle Royale. Their success and escape from a murderous half-breed are due to the friendship of a noble Chippewa Indian, and much is told of Indian nature and ways by one who thoroughly knows the subject. "There is no call to buy cheap, impossible stuff for boys' reading while there is such a book as this available."--_Philadelphia Inquirer._ _For sale by all booksellers or sent postpaid on receipt of price by the publishers_ LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO., BOSTON PHILLIPS EXETER SERIES By A. T. DUDLEY Cloth, 12mo Illustrated by Charles Copeland Price per volume, $1.25 FOLLOWING THE BALL Here is an up-to-date story presenting American boarding-school life and modern athletics. Football is an important feature, but it is a story of character formation in which athletics play an important part. "Mingled with the story of football is another and higher endeavor, giving the book the best of moral tone."--_Chicago Record-Herald._ MAKING THE NINE The life presented is that of a real school, interesting, diversified, and full of striking incidents, while the characters are true and consistent types of American boyhood and youth. The athletics are technically correct, abounding in helpfull suggestions, and the moral tone is high and set by action rather than preaching. "The story is healthful, for, while it exalts athletics, it does not overlook the fact that studious habits and noble character are imperative needs for those who would win success in life."--_Herald and Presbyter, Cincinnati._ IN THE LINE Tells how a stalwart young student won his position as guard, and at the same time made equally marked progress in the formation of character. Plenty of jolly companions contribute a strong, humorous element, and the book has every essential of a favorite. "The book gives boys an interesting story, much football information, and many lessons in true manliness."--_Watchman, Boston._ With Mask and Mitt [Illustration] While baseball plays an important part in this story, it is not the only element of attraction. While appealing to the natural normal tastes of boys for fun and interest in the national game, the book, without preaching, lays emphasis on the building up of character. "No normal boy who is interested in our great national game can fail to find interest and profit, too, in this lively boarding school story."--_Interior, Chicago._ THE GREAT YEAR Three fine, manly comrades, respectively captains of the football, baseball, and track and field athletic teams, make a compact to support each other so that they may achieve a "great year" of triple victory over their traditional rival, "Hillbury." THE YALE CUP The "Cup" is an annual prize given by a club of Yale alumni to the member of the Senior class of each of several preparatory schools "who best combines proficiency in athletics with good standing in his studies." A FULL-BACK AFLOAT At the close of his first year in college Dick Melvin is induced to earn a passage to Europe by helping on a cattle steamer. The work is not so bad, but Dick finds ample use for the vigor, self control, and quick wit in emergency which he has gained from football. THE PECKS IN CAMP The Pecks are twin brothers so resembling each other that it was almost impossible to tell them apart, a fact which the roguish lads made the most of in a typical summer camp for boys. THE HALF-MILER [Illustration] This is the story of a young man of positive character facing the stern problem of earning his way in a big school. The hero is not an imaginary compound of superlatives, but a plain person of flesh and blood, aglow with the hopeful idealism of youth, who succeeds and is not spoiled by success. He can run, and he does run--through the story. "It is a good, wholesome, and true-to-life story, with plenty of happenings such as normal boys enjoy reading about."--_Brooklyn Daily Times._ _For sale by all booksellers or sent postpaid on receipt of price by the publishers_ LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO., BOSTON _ST. DUNSTAN SERIES_ By WARREN L. ELDRED Illustrated Large 12mo Cloth $1.50 each THE CRIMSON RAMBLERS Five close friends in the freshman class at St. Dunstan's school, and a teacher of the best sort, plan for a summer vacation in camp in Maine. They adopt the name which gives the title to the book, and having gone to Boston by water, complete their journey on foot, with plenty of adventures along the way. CAMP ST. DUNSTAN A typical summer camp for boys, with all its interesting routine, is described in connection with the story. Interesting new characters are introduced, a mystery develops, and every element of a good boy's story is present. CLASSROOM AND CAMPUS A group of likely lads entering upon the second year at "St. Dunstan's" are led to believe that things might be much better at their school if there were a higher standard of student honor and obligation, and these active, vigorous boys work wonders in school sentiment. ST. DUNSTAN BOY SCOUTS [Illustration] There are no better stories for boys than the really clean tales of school life, and the boys of the school called "St. Dunstan" in this series are types of the best sort of American youth, good fellows and good students, in most cases, but not _too_ good. They become interested in the "Boy Scout" movement and organize a company at the school. There is work for them of a mysterious and puzzling nature, and they acquit themselves well. In conclusion, they have a very enjoyable week's "hike." "Here is a thoroughly wholesome book for boys, filled with boy life from cover to cover." --_Baltimore Sun._ _For sale by all booksellers or sent postpaid on receipt of price by the publishers_ LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO., BOSTON FOUR GORDONS By EDNA A. BROWN Illustrated Large 12mo Decorated Cover $1.50 [Illustration] Louise and her three brothers are the "Four Gordons," and the story relates their experiences at home and school during the absence of their parents for a winter in Italy. There is plenty of fun and frolic, with skating, coasting, dancing, and a jolly Christmas visit. The conversation is bright and natural, the book presents no improbable situations, its atmosphere is one of refinement, and it has the merit of depicting simple and wholesome comradeship between boys and girls. "The story and its telling are worthy of Miss Alcott. Young folks of both sexes will enjoy it."--_N. Y. Sun._ "It is a hearty, wholesome story of youthful life in which the morals are never explained but simply illustrated by logical results."--_Christian Register._ UNCLE DAVID'S BOYS By EDNA A. BROWN Illustrated by John Goss 12mo Cloth Price, Net, $1.00 Postpaid, $1.10 [Illustration] This tells how some young people whom circumstances brought together in a little mountain village spent a summer vacation, full of good times, but with some unexpected and rather mysterious occurrences. In the end, more than one head was required to find out exactly what was going on. The story is a wholesome one with a pleasant, well-bred atmosphere, and though it holds the interest, it never approaches the sensational nor passes the bounds of the probable. "A story which will hold the attention of youthful readers from cover to cover and prove not without its interest for older readers."--_Evening Wisconsin._ "For those young people who like a lively story with some unmistakably old fashioned characteristics, 'Uncle David's Boys,' will have a strong appeal."--_Churchman._ _For sale by all booksellers or sent postpaid on receipt of price by the publishers_ LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO., BOSTON Transcriber's Note: The following typographical errors present in the original text have been corrected for this electronic edition. On the copyright page, "Norwood Perss" has been changed to "Norwood Press". In Chapter II, a missing period was added after "I don't claim to be amphibious, exactly". In the illustration captioned "Sliding Down to Work", "Lighthhouse-builders" was changed to "Lighthouse-builders". In Chapter III, "holdin on to him" was changed to "holdin' on to him", and "sixteeen per cent" was changed to "sixteen per cent". In Chapter IV, a comma was changed to a period following "rousted out the crew". In Chapter V, "come to live" was changed to "come to life". In Chapter VIII, "overwhemed by an avalanche" was changed to "overwhelmed by an avalanche". In Chapter X, "As the _Miama_ neared her" was changed to "As the _Miami_ neared her". In Chapter XI, "were sent abroad" was changed to "were sent aboard".