THE PATROL.
Walter was sitting in the living–room of the station. It was almost
eight o’clock. Two men came stumbling downstairs, and with a sleepy air
entered the room. Seating themselves, they began to put on their huge
rubber boots. One of the men was Tom Walker.
“How are ye?” he said, nodding to Walter in a friendly way. “Goin’?”
“That’s what I am here for.”
A footstep in the entry was now heard. A man entered, wearing a stout,
heavy black coat, and black trousers, and he carried a lantern in his
hand. It was the patrol from the easterly end of the beach.
“Cold!” was his one word of greeting, as he set his lantern on the
table. He also deposited there a leather pouch attached to a long
leather strap.
Another step was heard in the entry, and a man appeared who wore a
thick blue blouse and blue trousers, and had a very much padded look.
He was the patrol from the westerly end of the beach. He expressed his
opinion that it was cold by silently going to the stove; and there
he stood rubbing his hands in the warm atmosphere. He had already
deposited a leather pouch on the table. Tom Walker and the other
arrival from upstairs, were dressing for their duty as patrolmen in the
place of the two whose chilling wintry beat had just been accomplished.
Tom put on a Guernsey jacket, and then drew over it a short, thick sack
coat. He pulled a cap of shaggy cloth down over his hair, drew close
the ear–laps, and then took up a pair of thick, warm mittens lying
under the stove.
“Here,” said the keeper to Walter. “Before you start, let me show you
what the men take with them.”
As he spoke, he lifted a leather pouch that had been deposited on
the table. It was a circular case of leather, about four inches in
diameter, containing a “time–detector”; its works resembling those of
a chronometer. Taking out a key and opening the detector, the keeper
said, “I thought you might like to see this. There, I have put this
round card in the detector. You see it is marked off into hours, and
ten minutes, and five minutes, and is called the dial. The patrol takes
it with him, and at the end of his beat he puts a key in that hole you
see, and gives the key a turn. A kind of punch, stamped like a die, is
forced down on the dial. In the morning, I open the detector, and there
is the dial that tells if he has done his duty. These dials I forward
once a week to Washington.”
“Supposing the man don’t want to go his beat, and turns the key
somewhere this side of the end of the route?” asked Walter.
“Ah,” said the keeper, “the feller can’t play ’possum that way. He must
go to the end of his beat to get his key. It is at a house there. He
must go that far, you see, anyway.”
“As any feller of honor would, key or no key,” growled Tom Walker.
“Oh, sartin, sartin, Tom,” replied the keeper. “They didn’t get it up
for you, but for the fellers in some—some—other station.”
And Tom’s growl changed to a pleasant laugh. “Where’s my Coston
signal?” he asked.
“Here it is,” replied the keeper.
“What’s that?” asked Walter.
“It is for signaling to anybody on the water in the night, and this
burns a red light.”
The Coston signal was a few inches long, marked on the bottom with the
word, “Patrol.”
“This,” said the keeper, “fits into a socket on one end of this wooden
handle which you see I have. At the other end is that brass knob. When
I want to use my signal, I strike that knob, and it forces a rod up
into a little hole in the end of the signal. That strikes a percussion
cap, and ignites a fusee, and out flashes a red light. That is my
explanation of it.”
Out into the cold, shadowy night, they went. Tom led off, slouching
along heavily, carelessly yet doggedly; as if he had a duty before him
which he did not wholly relish, but meant to put it through, like a
horse in a treadmill, whose greatest concern is to put one foot before
the other, and to keep putting until lunch time. There was a bright
glitter of stars in the sky, and the land was white with the pure snow;
but where the sea stretched toward the east, was one vast mass of
blackness. Out of this blackness, came a voice, that shouted all along
the shore, “Ho—ho—ho—ho!” The sea was very smooth, and the sound of
the surf was not heavy enough to interrupt the conversation between
Tom and Walter.
“I suppose,” began Walter, “these stations are scattered all along the
coast.”
“They are all over the country in spots. I ’magine in some places
they are few as muskeeters in December. Then again they are pretty
thick, say on the Jersey coast. Government takes care of ’em all. So
many stations—more or less—makin’ a deestrict, under the care of a
superintendent. Then all these deestricts are under Gen. Sumner I.
Kimball at Washington. Every deestrict, too, has its inspector.”
“How many men do you have to have at this station?”
“There is the keeper, Keeper Barney—we Cap’n him jest among
ourselves—and there are seven surfmen here. We have a cook also. I am
a surfman and then I am called a patrolman too. I’m a patrolman now,
but just let a vessel show itself off there, and I should be a surfman
in less than no time.”
“You don’t stay here all the time?”
“Through the year? No, we come on the first of September, and we go off
the first of May. They don’t have the same dates in all the stations.
The idea is to be here when there’s the most danger. Our keeper,
though, has to be lookin’ arter things, comin’ here now and then,
through the year. He’s keeper, summer and winter.”
“How do you like your work?”
“Well, I like the pay, fifty dollars a month, but it’s hard, resky
work.”
“How long have you been on?”
“Nine years.”
“What is your worst kind of weather?”
“Well, it’s tough when there’s a light snow, and a stiff nor’–west
wind keeps it a blowin’, or a nor’–east storm, when it hails and comes
slashin’ into your face. It’s bad most any time when the lantern goes
out. You see we have to pick our way; good enough on the sand when it’s
hard, but among the rocks, it’s hobbly; and it may be pretty snowy if
you can’t foller the beach.”
“Does your lantern go out?”
“Sometimes. You have to grope your way the best you can, then.”
“You must have seen some tough times.”
“I’ve been an hour and a half goin’ a mile,” exclaimed Tom with the
air of a veteran who has fought his hundred battles, and won at least
ninety–nine. “Poky work, I tell ye!”
“How do you divide your watches?”
“We have four watches, and two men go out at a time. I go to this end
of the beach, and t’other man goes to t’other end. Where two station
deestricts join, the patrolmen from the stations meet, and exchange
what they call ‘checks,’ that they give to their keepers.”
“How is it your watches run?”
“Oh, the hours? From sunset till eight, is the first watch, and from
eight to twelve is the second, and from twelve till four is the third;
and then there’s from four till sunrise. Then by day, we have to watch.
If it’s thick weather, fog, or rain, or snow, if we can’t see two miles
each way from the station, we have to go out agin. If it is clear
weather, we just watch from the lookout, on the buildin’. One man has
to be on the lookout, and he reports all vessels goin’ by. You saw the
lookout?”
“Oh, yes. Do you ever use that Coston signal?”
“Yes, though not much this winter thus far. I have only used mine twice
thus far. A fishin’ vessel was the last one. She got in too near shore,
and I burned my light, so that she might take the hint and haul off.”
“The ice must be piled up bad on the beach, sometimes.”
“Yes; I’ve seen it twenty feet high. The wind drives the snow down on
the beach, and the sea washes over it, and it freezes; and then more
snow may come to be washed and to freeze over, and so on.”
“Out in a cold rain or hail, don’t it bother you?”
“Yes; take hail, and it’s tough. Why, I’ve seen a man come into the
station, and his clothes would be so stiff and frozen, he—he—couldn’t
get ’em off hisself.”
By this time, Tom had reached the end of his beat. He slouched along
in the rear of a barn, turned its corner, and then stopped before an
object that shone in the light of the lantern. It was a key attached
by a chain to the wall. Tom took the key, put it into a hole in his
detector, turned it till a sharp click was heard; and then Walter knew
this faithful recorder had made its mark on the dial. The patrolman
turned, and began the journey back to the station. Crossing a field of
snow, they struck the shore rocks once more, and then moved out upon
the wet, sloping sands. A short walk brought them again to the upper
rim of the beach, strewn with snow.
The lantern flashed its light down upon a footprint.
“Whose is that?” asked Walter.
“T’other patrol’s; one afore me. He’s got a foot big enough to cover up
a pumpkin hill.”
Slowly, Tom and Walter returned to the station.
“I suppose I must say good night, and go to my aunt’s now.”
“Wish _I_ had an aunt’s to go to, now. My beat is short, and I must go
over it twice more, afore I turn in at twelve. If you are down at the
station in the morning, you’ll see on my detector the proof that I’ve
been faithful; but I would be, without the thing,” said the sensitive
knight of the beach. Walter watched Tom as he turned his face again
toward the dark sea and the lonely beach. The light of the lantern
steadily dwindled till it seemed like that of a star about to dip
beneath the waters of the ocean and disappear; and dip and disappear it
did, as Tom stumbled over the shore rocks down upon the beach. Walter
went slowly along the lane to Uncle Boardman’s.
In the morning, he was at the station again.
“Do you want to see me open the detectors?” said the keeper to Walter.
“Come here then.”
Walter watched the keeper as he opened one of the detectors.
“There,” he said, removing a card or dial. “Do you see those marks?”
[Illustration: “_And we might have had to run out the boat_” (p. 47).]
Walter could detect little stamps in the form of a cross.
“There is Tom Walker’s record,” said the keeper. “One stamp was fifteen
minutes of nine, when you went down; another at ten minutes of ten, and
the third at eleven. That shows that Tom Walker did his duty.”
“And he would have done it anyway,” growled the sensitive Tom. “I don’t
like to have that thing nag me round. I do my duty.”
“Oh yes, yes, sartin,” replied the keeper in a mollifying tone.
“Did you burn your light after I left you?” inquired Walter. “I mean
your signal.”
“No, nothin’ turned up.”
“What would you have done if it had?” inquired Walter. “Say, if you had
seen a wreck, what then?”
“What would he have done?” said the keeper, answering for the surfman,
and answering in an oratorical fashion. “What would he have done?
My! Wouldn’t he have flown round! He’d have out with that signal and
burnt it in less than no time. Then he would have run to the station,
big rubber boots and all, roused the crew, and we might have had to
run out the boat and get a line to the wreck,” and the keeper, as he
proceeded, seeing the effect his earnestness had on his young auditor,
grew quite dramatic in his gestures.
“Wish I could see it!” thought Walter. But that was not possible. His
return home must be effected that very afternoon.
“I am leaving so many things behind,” he reasoned, “that I really ought
not to go. There are so many things about the station I would like to
understand; and what a funny store Uncle Boardman has! And there is
that man, ‘Belzebub’ Baggs; I wonder if he will get Uncle Boardman to
sell him that land!”
There was no alternative; Walter must go. He left behind, Uncle
Boardman, and Aunt Lydia, the store, “Belzebub” Baggs, the station, Tom
Walker, Capt. Barney, the crew, the wide, blue ocean so full of unrest
and storm.
“Get up, Katy!” shouted Mr. Plympton. “Now, home with ye!”