A WILD STORM.
At a life saving station, there are various drills in which the surfmen
are exercised. There is the beach apparatus drill. “Open boat–room
doors! Man the beach wagon!” shouts the keeper. Every man knows his
place, the doors are opened, and the cart is rushed out. “Forward!”
cries the keeper, and each man knows just where to station himself and
pull. Then come the other orders. “Halt! Action!” A pole representing
a wreck, the men proceed as if attempting a rescue, sending a line to
the wreck. Then come other orders. “Man weather whip! Haul out! Man lee
whip!”
“Haul ashore!” and the buoy for conveying the crew supposed to be
wrecked, travels backward and forward as often as desired. Then there
is the boat practice, and the boat must be launched through the surf,
and the men drilled in the management of the oars. The crew must also
practice with signals. Stations may be near enough to communicate with
one another, and this is done in the day time with flags and in the
night with star rockets and Coston lights. An example would be the
showing of a red flag by day and the burning of a red Coston light and
firing of a red rocket by night. It is the danger signal, and means
that a wreck has been seen, or a vessel is discovered to be in need
of help. By means of the box of flags that every station keeps under
its roof, the crew can talk with any vessel off shore and needing
assistance. The crew must also be practiced in methods of restoring
the apparently drowned. It was one dreary, rainy day that Keeper
Barney was drilling the crew in these last methods. Cook Charlie had
offered himself as a subject on whom the crew might practice. The
keeper commenced a list of questions, asking: “What first is to be
done to the patient?” Cook Charlie stretched upon the floor submitted
patiently to the pressing and pounding and other parts of the process
of resuscitation.
It was not a practice that on a dreary winter day when the sea was
wrathfully roaring, could be classified as pleasantly suggestive.
While they were resuscitating Cook Charlie, Walter glanced occasionally
out of the window. The sea rapidly roughened, and huge waves were
launching on the sands broken and angry masses of surf. A ragged
curtain of fog was drawn across the rim of the sea, but it was only
ragged near the shore. Farther out, its denseness was without a seam.
The day ended with many jokes about Cook Charlie, the resuscitated
mariner, but mingled with the laughter were dismal cries of the
storm. The rain could be heard splashing against the window panes,
and occasionally the whole window shook as if a violent hand had been
laid upon it. All the while, there was the wrathful thunder of the sea
as if over some invisible bridge just above the station, the heavy
squadrons of the storm were gloomily marching. Still, around the old
cook stove whose fire burnt jollily, echoed the laughter of the surfmen
as they cracked their jokes and told humorous stories of the sea. So
the evening wore away. The storm yet raged. As the different patrolmen
arrived, they came with dripping hats, with faces wet by the storm,
with clothes that hung stiffly about them.
“It’s a howlin’ night,” reported Tom Walker, slamming his lantern on
the table.
“Just so at my end of the beach,” said Woodbury Elliott, who
immediately followed Tom. “Whew—w—w! An old–fashioned nor’easter!”
“You saw nothin?” inquired Capt. Barney. And each patrol said, “Not a
thing.”
“I hope it will stay so, for I think it’s goin’ to be the wust of the
season. Come, boys, all pile upstairs early. There’s some hard trampin’
to be done ’fore daybreak.”
“Wall, we can say we have resuscitated one man to–day,” said Slim
Tarleton.
“Ah, but we may have some real cases to–morrow. God forbid!”
It was Walter’s watch in the morning, from four till sunrise. He slept
uneasily till his watch, vexed by dreams of wreck and rescue, of dead
men’s faces and living wives’ sorrow. Rising, he dressed himself
hurriedly a little before four. How the building shook in the wind,
while the sea without was furious in its uproar!
“I’d like to stay in that warm bed. Booh! That cold walk makes me
shiver! No help for it,” thought Walter, as he moved reluctantly toward
the stairway and then descended it.
In the kitchen, dripping like a fish just pulled out of the water, was
Slim Tarleton. He had finished his watch and Walter was his successor.
“I’d like to go for you, Walter, but it’s four now, and morning’s not
such a terrible way off.”
“All quiet?”
“Everything except the sea, and that acts as bad as it can. Oh, I don’t
imagine there will be any trouble.”
“Here is your Coston light, time–detector and so on,” said Keeper
Barney. “Dress snug, for it blows; and dress thick, for it is cold. If
anything happens, let us know.”
“Aye, aye, Cap’n!” and out into the dark and the cold and the rain,
strode our young knight, looking in his storm gear more like an Eskimo
than a representative of any knightly age. The north–east wind blew at
him as if it wanted to push this meddler back into the station; but
with one arm around his lantern as if it were a baby that he wished to
shield, he struggled over the rocks down to the strip of sand not yet
covered by the tide. He saw nothing ten feet away, but he heard—no pen
can describe the bellowing of this monster plunging and frothing at his
feet. The lantern shot little gleams of light on the confused masses of
foam along the edge of the shore, and he knew that there was a tumbling
wall of ghastly white just beyond.
“What if my lantern should go out!” he exclaimed nervously. He turned
from the wind and unbuttoning his outside coat, folded it around his
lantern, letting out only enough light to show him where to plant his
feet. Then he struggled on. It was a hard walk in a storm that had
no mercy. He was pushing ahead, when, lifting his face to the wild
rain and attempting to look through it, he saw—a jagged line of fire
curving up into the air! The next moment, he trembled with excitement.
“A wreck!” was the thought flashing through his mind. That one glance
at the rocket above the sea seemed to change into an antelope the
slowly plodding surfman. He sprang over the rocks that lined the
beach. There was an ice wall that had bothered him a minute ago, but
he now mastered it and climbed to high ground. Drawing out his signal,
he fired it, and then waving madly this crimson answer of hope to
a mariner’s prayer of fire, he ran to the station. Over fragments
of ice, into pools of water, along sharp ledges, he flew as if some
kindly power had withdrawn his cowhide boots and furnished him with
wings instead; but how much faster he did want to go! If he were only
electricity, or light itself, and could shoot to the station at once!
He reached it though, finally. Keeper Barney was sitting by the stove
trying to read, when Walter threw open the kitchen door, and burst in,
waving his lantern and crying, “A wreck! Quick!”
“Heavens, boy! In this storm! All hands turn out!” he screamed, even
before he reached the foot of the stairs leading up to the crew’s
room. He must have repeated it half a dozen times, on his way to their
beds. The next moment there were several bounces upon the floor. After
a hurried dressing, there was a confused rushing for the stairs. Men
appeared wearing one boot and lugging the other, or with half their
clothes in their arms, while Tucker Jones, the man who took Joe
Cardridge’s place, was trying to work his arms through the legs of his
pants, thinking he was handling his jacket. Seavey Lowd, the other
patrol, now arrived, or rather came rushing in, shouting and confirming
the news. The little living–room was confused with excitement, the men
hurrying here and there, trying to find hat or jacket or coat; and
several were trying hard to find their senses. Keeper Barney had his,
now, and he spoke coolly to the men.
“Now listen, boys! Steady! It will be useless to take the boat. We must
go out with the beach apparatus. Do as well as you can. You all know
your places. Hit as high a mark as you can.” As he spoke, he lead the
way into the boat–room, and then he issued the familiar order: “Open
boat–room doors! Man the beach wagon!”
How those young Titans worked! The outer doors flew open, and a strong,
cold draft of wintry air rushed in. Every man knew his place in
hauling. Two gripped the shafts, four laid hold of the drag ropes.
“Forward!” rang out the word of command from the keeper, who followed
with his lantern.
Through the thick slush or over masses of ice, the cart was dragged to
the sands which the tide had not flooded.
“There’s the wreck!” some one shouted, or tried to shout amid the roar
of the surf. An arrow of fire shooting up into the night shadows still
lingering on the sea, showed the crew that they must go farther down
the beach. What a wearisome journey with the cart it was!
“Cheer ’em up with a Coston light, boys!” the keeper would occasionally
shout. At last, when he judged they were about opposite the wreck,
he cried, “Halt!” There was a waiting for the light, that the exact
location of the wreck might be declared, and in the meantime all
possible preparations for the rescue were made.
The surf men knew what to do, as there had been many drills in the
handling of the apparatus. Each man, according to his number, had his
particular piece of work. It was the place of No. 4, Seavey Lowd, to
throw the breeches buoy off the cart, and Seavey did it. Walter, as No.
6, was one of those that removed the sand anchor, pick and shovel. The
keeper, and No. 1, Tom Walker, took the gun down. Nos. 2 and 3, Slim
Tarleton and Woodbury Elliott, removed the shot–line box.
“Bury the sand anchor up here!” called out the keeper. The sand anchor
consisted of two stout pieces of hard wood, each six feet long, two
inches thick and eight wide. These were crossed at their centers and
securely fastened together. A stout iron ring projected from the center
of the sand anchor. How rapidly pick and shovel were worked, and a deep
trench dug in which the anchor was laid and there firmly imbedded! This
buried anchor was designed to secure the shore end of the hawser to be
sent out to the wreck. The hawser terminated in a double pulley–block,
by which it could be tightened, and a short rope gripped the block and
the anchor, binding them together. The “crotch” was made of two stout
pieces of wood ten feet long. Near the top, these were crossed and
when set up suggested an X. It was No. 4, Seavey Lowd, who looked after
the crotch, and at the proper time he was to set it up on the beach. It
was Seavey’s duty also to carry the end of the hawser to the foot of
the crotch over which it was to be stretched to the sand anchor.
In the meantime the captain and Tom Walker were supposed to look after
the gun, while Slim Tarleton and Woodbury Elliott were expected to
deposit the shot–line box about three feet from the gun. The line had
been coiled about pins in a frame, and the latter was so arranged
that it could be removed, leaving the line wound in diagonal loops,
and at liberty to fly after the shot to which it was to be attached.
During the interim of waiting, the life–car was also brought from the
station. That dismal wreck could at last be plainly seen, about three
hundred feet from the shore. The spray boiled about the dark hull as if
it had been set in the crater of a volcano. The excitement among the
surfmen increased. The keeper had loaded the gun, and the shot had been
inserted and the line tied to an eye in the shank protruding from the
shot. The keeper stood in the rear of the gun, and was sighting over
it, shouting to Nos. 1 and 2, “Right!” or “Left!” And they trained the
muzzle accordingly.
“Well!” he cried, and the gun came to a rest.
It was pointing at the wreck. The necessary elevation was then given
to the gun, and the primer inserted. When everything was arranged, the
keeper shouted, “Ready!”
Whizz—z—bang—g—g!
Away went the shot, the line faithfully following. How its flight was
watched! Would it fall short of the wreck and uselessly drop into the
water? No! it had fallen across the vessel and the crew quickly seized
it. A shout went up from the surfmen: “Hur—rah—h! Hurrah—h—h!”
To the shot–line, was now tied the “whip.” This was reeved through
a single pulley–block, making what is termed an endless line. To it
was attached a tally board carrying printed directions in English and
French, telling those on board how to properly secure this “whip” or
endless line. Keeper Barney was now signaling to the wreck.
“He means to have them haul the whip on board,” thought Walter.
Quickly the whip line was going out to the vessel, and was there made
fast.
“They are signaling to us to go ahead, and do the next thing,” thought
Walter. All the surfmen knew what that next thing was. The whip had
been secured to the sand anchor, and now Nos. 1 and 2, Tom Walker and
Slim Tarleton were handling the hawser, a still stouter line, and they
attached it to the whip. As the keeper paid out the hawser, others
manned the whip and hauled off to the wreck the new sturdy friend
coming to the rescue. The men on the vessel guided by a tally board
attached to the hawser, secured it to the mast a foot and a half higher
than the hauling line or whip. On shore, the hawser had been stretched
across the crotch and connected with the sand anchor. There now swung
above the frothing breakers, reaching from shore to ship, this stout
hawser four inches in circumference, and below it was the endless line
or whip. The breeches buoy was now brought forward. This buoy consisted
of a cork life–preserver, circular, from which hung canvas breeches
with very short legs. Four ropes that gripped the circle of cork, met
above in a ring of iron, and this was connected with a block called a
“traveler.” This block was “snapped on to the hawser,” and the ends of
the whip were also bent into the block–strap and secured. Then the buoy
began its travels to the wreck, the men hauling on the whip. “Somebody
has jumped into that buoy,” cried Tom Walker as he watched the wreck.
Strong hands were laid on the whip, and above the breakers danced the
breeches buoy, a man’s head and body now rising above it while his legs
dangled below.
[Illustration: “_Strong hands were laid on the whip_” (p. 320).]
“Here she comes!” sung out Slim Tarleton.
“Here _he_ comes, I guess,” suggested Woodbury Elliott.
Come, he did, nearer, nearer, the surfmen steadily hauling on the line;
and at last the breeches buoy was in the midst of the brave circle of
rescuers.
“How are ye?” called out the occupant of the buoy, a sharp–nosed,
red–headed man. “Much obleeged.”
“Oh, you’re welcome!” said Keeper Barney.
“How are all the folks at sea?” inquired Tom Walker.
“Does it look nat’ral round here?” asked Seavey Lowd.
“Altogether too nat’ral for me,” replied the arrival by this ocean
air–line. “Ef we didn’t have a tough night!”
The man had now disembarked from this canvas–and–cork ship, and stood
on the sands.
The keeper was hurriedly giving the order to “haul out,” when the
stranger asked, “Haven’t ye suthin’ bigger and snugger ye could send
out? Some of the folks there are awful weak.”
“Passengers?” inquired the keeper.
“Jest so.”
“All right. We will put on the life–car soon as we get some of the crew
ashore. People can ride snug in that life–car. How long will your craft
hold together?”
“She’s a good deal smashed, Cap’n, but she can stand it a while longer.”
“Man the weather–whip! Haul out!” the keeper was shouting. Out to the
wreck, the breeches buoy traveled, and then returned with its freight
of a second man.
“Haul the hawser taut there!” cried the keeper to Walter and Woodbury,
who stood near the sand anchor and handled the tackle for tightening
the hawser. Each rescued man proved a rescuer, going to work at once.
There were three more brought ashore by the buoy, and then the keeper
ordered the life–car forward. The buoy was quickly removed, and in its
place above the roaring surf hung the life–car, riding along the hawser
on its way to the wreck. The life–car was shaped like a boat, made of
galvanized sheet iron. It was about eleven feet long, three deep, and
over four wide, and would carry a load of six or seven persons. It
was roofed over, and its cargo was received through a hatch which was
securely covered, but little openings in the top admitted the air. The
car had now gone to the wreck, had received its load, and in response
to the keeper’s “haul ashore!” was traveling landward along the hawser.
It was a feeble, shivering lot of mortals who crawled through the hatch
at the end of the trip.
[Illustration: “_Come he did, nearer, nearer!_” (p. 321).]
“Any more?” asked the keeper. “Two and the captain,” said an old man.
Once more the life–car was hauled out to the wreck, while Walter was
sent to the station with the chilled passengers and a sailor whom the
storm had overcome. As Walter walked along the sands, he watched the
terrible agitation of the water near him.
The sea would swell into long folds of angry green, and these would
rush toward the shore, swelling, threatening, more and more angry,
greener, perhaps tipped with a scanty wreath of foam, only to roll
over menacingly, tumbling, crashing in furious uproar, breaking into a
million bits of foam. As an opposing rock was struck by a wave, this
would be thrown up into a huge mound of froth that broke all along
its summit into a delicate, misty veil of lace. This wave was only
the front rank of an army whose name was legion, rolling, rushing in
wrath toward the land, breaking and foaming, clambering up the high
shore–ledges to vainly tear at them, smothering and drowning what
could not be rooted up and borne away. In what faultless curves they
turned over, these gigantic billows when they struck the shore, rings
of emerald, wheels of porphyry, arcs of spheres of crystal! Down,
down, down, then plunged the water, and these cataracts met their doom
in a hopeless swirl of surf. All along the beach was the frothing
tumble of these cascades of the ocean. Beyond the shore–waves it was
one confusing mass of ghostly water, of white hands lifted and white
faces raised,—in pity and prayer? No, in an anger where all color
disappears, where is only the aspect, of a wrath, ghastly and awful.
Occasionally some log would come out of this wild whirlpool of the
demons, some fragment of a ship torn by the storm as if an animal, limb
from limb, and flung in scorn upon the shore. What a tale each fragment
could have told! Perhaps it was a handful of moss plucked from a rock,
or a starfish, or the tiniest mussels gathered up from the bottom of
the sea and then shot landward.
How the sea roared! It seemed as if into that wild chorus all the notes
of angry winds and mad torrents, and the crash of thunder, and the
voices of men in their human wrath, and the shouts of demons in their
satanic fury had been gathered, and now were let loose with all the
confusion of the fiercest hurricane. Now and then, Walter thought he
caught the dismal groan of a fog–horn attached to a buoy at the mouth
of the river, and intended to warn mariners of the nearness of sand bar
and rockledge. It was an illusion though, for who in the storm could
hear any such agency piping out its feeble little note of warning?
In the meantime, the car had brought from the wreck its last load. The
captain was a part of it, a stout, heavy, dark–bearded man.
“You all here?” asked Keeper Barney.
“All that started,” replied the captain. “Two men—they were
passengers—left on a life–savin’ mattress. We told ’em to wait any way
till daylight, but they said the tide was right and would drift ’em
ashore and they’d risk it. They was fearful skittish lest the vessel
might break up. Massy! The sea gobbled ’em up less than no time, is my
’pinion. They left some time ago.”
“Well, boys, I’ll have the beach patrolled, of course, and something
may be seen of the men. Those whose watch it is are off already, and
the rest of you pack up what things are here, and go back to the
station, and Cook Charlie will have a hot breakfast ready for the men
from the wreck, and for the rest too, soon as possible.”
While hot coffee and dry clothes were making every one comfortable at
the station, it was Tom Walker, one of the surfmen out patrolling,
that hurried into the living–room, startling the station crew with the
announcement, “There’s a man in the Chair!”
If a rocket from some wreck at sea had come up through the floor of the
station and made its hideous, fiery racket in the very midst of the
station crew, a greater excitement could not have followed. Clinging to
the jagged rocks at the Crescent, was some poor soul thrown up by the
sea, piteously looking in helpless appeal to the houses not so very far
away and yet separated from him by a channel of foaming wrath! Every
surfman could seem to make out in his thoughts a pale face frantically
appealing to him through the wild storm, and they began to dress again
for their perilous work.
“Cap’n Barney,” said Tom Walker to the keeper, “if I may suggest it, I
think we might get somewhere near him with our surf–boat. We couldn’t
have touched the wreck, and can’t now, out there on Split Ledge, but we
might get our boat up to the village and then launch her in the river,
and so work her down toward the Chair. The tide has turned, and every
moment, there is less water ’tween the Crescent and the shore, and that
will help us.”
“Good idea, Tom,” replied the keeper. “And instead of getting horses,
as it will take so much time, there are so many of us here and all will
take hold, we can make better time to haul the boat–carriage ourselves.
What say? It is a man’s life at stake.”
“Aye, aye!” was the deep, hearty chorus in response from all.
As the boat made its appearance in the village volunteers appeared
also, who dragged heartily on the ropes of the carriage. It was
a strange sight in the little village, that stormy morning, the
lengthening file of rough, strong–handed men pulling on the rope of the
carriage while the boys shouted away and thrust in their small hands
wherever any chance for grasping the rope showed itself, and some of
the women that came out hurriedly from their homes, their shawls pinned
over their heads, also joined the procession. The water was reached and
the boat launched.
When, manned by a stalwart crew,—volunteers from The Harbor taking the
place of the absent patrols,—the boat moved off into the river, cheers
arose from those on shore. But what about the man all this time in the
Chair? Did he see the boat coming, and did he cheer also?
“Can you see him now?” eagerly asked the men of Keeper Barney, who
was skillfully managing his steering oar amid the heavy swash of the
current.
The keeper nodded his head in assent.
The boat cleared the last house in the village, and from this point the
Chair could be more distinctly seen.
“See him now, Cap’n?”
The keeper nodded his head. The boat tossed more uneasily now, for the
harbor here began to open into the sea, and the full strength of the
wind from the stormy north–east smote it. The upper end of the Crescent
was very near, and its first ledges, black and stubborn, rose out of
the white, angry tumult. Any one seeking refuge here would not have
found broad standing room, while at the Chair the exposure was far
greater. The man, though, still maintained his hold.
“He’s there, is he?” some one would shout through the noise of the
storm, and Keeper Barney would silently nod assent.
I wonder what the man in the Chair was thinking of, as he grasped
that rocky projection, that little low fence between him and death!
He was one of the two men who had trusted their chances to that
life–preserver. God alone knew where the second man was in this hellish
tumult of wind and sea. The man in the Chair had been flung into it
by a violent wave and he had gripped it with all the energy he could
possibly rally. He did not want to die. The sea looked cold and deep,
and the white foam beating upon him, to his imagination had teeth
that threatened to fasten into him and tear him. He could sometimes,
when his back was half turned to the sea, catch the outlines of the
big billows as they rolled up and rolled toward him, and they came on
with such fury that he shrank closer to this rock, and he clung more
tenaciously even when some of them failed to reach him. Occasionally a
huge billow would strike him and drench him, and then he would shiver
and throw off the foam as if trying to recover from some murderous blow
given by an animal. It would have been easy to have yielded to one of
those waves and allowed it to sweep him away into a swift death, but
who does not cling to life? A wild sky, a pitiless rain, and only a
black rock in a maelstrom—better this than a grave in that maelstrom.
So the man felt. As he held on, his thoughts would go back in spite
of him. Not that he cared to think. He would gladly have given the
subject a grave in that sea from which he shrank, but if he had tried
to throw it off and drop it there, it would have had a resurrection and
come up. He thought of the time when he was a little boy in this very
neighborhood, visiting here, one far off summer. His younger sister was
with him. He could easily recall her blue eyes that framed a constant
smile. He heard the happy ring of her laugh, even out there in the
noisy waters. He did not want to hear it, but hear it he did. There had
been a quarrel with her one day, and he resolved in a mood of anger
that was almost insane, to punish her. The quarrel had occurred at
the Chair which he knew sometimes was a bad place to be in, the older
people had told him. When the tide was high, and behind it was a storm
pushing violently the waters landward, that lonely piece of rock, the
Chair, was a dangerous position to occupy. There was a gray, misty sky
that day, when the boy led his sister, at low tide, across the sands to
the Crescent ledges. He pleasantly told her to stay at the Chair and
he would come for her in a little while. “The waves were pretty,” he
said, “and she could watch them till he came back.” Then he left her.
In half an hour he knew the tide would flood the sands and isolate the
Chair. He would be absent, he said to himself, perhaps two hours. That
would give her a good fright and would be enough to satisfy him. But
he did not get back to the shore so soon as two hours. Something had
detained him. In the meantime, the fog came on. The rain began to beat
down. The men were almost all of them away on fishing cruises. Only a
few decrepit fishermen were at home, and they did not like to venture
off into the uneasy waters now enclosing the Crescent ledges unless
it was some special reason urging them, and as the boy was ashamed to
confess that he had left his sister at the Chair, no rough but friendly
hand of any seaman was reached out to grasp her. In the morning though,
his conscience frightened him into an explanation of his urgency, and a
relief party of old men went at once. The Chair however was empty. That
morning, there came ashore a sweet little face with closed eyes, and
it confirmed the story told by that vacant Chair. So many, many years
ago, did this all happen, and now it was coming back as a sad thing of
yesterday.
“She’s a–lookin’ at me!” said the man in the Chair. “I can see her
eyes!”
Yes, through the veil of the storm they seemed to penetrate and
reproachfully search his heart.
“I will look another way,” he thought, but they seemed to follow him.
Tender and full of sorrow, they looked at him on every side. He saw the
waves rushing at him and he shrank from them only to meet the eyes that
he little cared to behold. He avoided these, but there were the billows
rushing at him again. So he was pursued. It seemed to him as if he must
lose his mind, and then would he not lose his hold on the rock? That
tormented him anew.
But—but—look! Amid the ragged mass of flying foam jutting above the
walls of the angrily rising waves, he saw a boat! Yes, he could make
out the heads of the men that were rowing! They were coming to rescue
him! He had enemies on shore who would seize him and put him behind
stone walls, and these men in the boat might hand him over to those
enemies, but no matter, he would be rescued from the place of torment
he was in. Anything to be saved from that, and those men would save
him! The rush of exultant feeling was so great that it affected him
even as a wave threatening to carry him away, but he tightened his
loosened grasp and looked up again. Yes, they were coming nearer. He
could see them, count them,—one, two, three, four, five, six, besides
the man steering. And they saw him! Yes, they all saw him. To reach
him, the boat slightly changed its course, and now all the crew looking
sidewise could see this castaway. It was Walter who recognized him.
Raising his head, straining his vision to catch a fuller view of the
man bending over and half veiled by the misty spray thrown up above the
Chair there came before Walter once more the form that he had seen that
morning in his uncle’s store when the note so mysteriously disappeared,
that form which he had seen again when patrolling the beach off the
Crescent, one wild November day.
“Baggs!” he now shouted to the crew in the surf–boat. “It is Baggs!” As
by a common impulse, every man ceased rowing and rested on his oar, the
keeper holding the boat with his long steering–oar.
“Yes, yes!” “That is the man!” “It’s Baggs!” were the various
exclamations that broke from the crew’s lips.
“He’s waving a hand to us!” said Walter.
“Let him wave and die!” some one exclaimed.
“No, I’d save a dog off in that place!” said the keeper.
“That’s so!” replied Walter.
“That’s so!” said several.
It was not so much an expression of opinion by one man or several, as
the voice rather of that noble spirit which has its embodiment in our
entire Life Saving Service and proves it by its yearly record.
“Row away, men!” shouted the keeper. “He’s there! I see him.”
But Baggs changed his position. He knew that it would be difficult to
rescue him even with that boat, such a raging sea broke all about the
rock to which he clung. The boat must be held off at a little distance
from the ledge and then a rope thrown to him. He must stand his chances
of grasping this only hope of safety. The tide had begun to subside,
and another part of the ledge was now jutting above the surf. Whether
he thought he could be rescued better from this second position and
so tried to reach it, or whether in the increasing nearness of the
rescue–party he grew careless, and accidentally slipped out of the
Chair and was quickly, eagerly, seized by a wave and hurried away, who
could say? It was Slim Tarleton who just before had said to the keeper,
“He’s holdin’ on, Cap’n, ain’t he?” And the keeper nodded yes with his
head.
“Is he there now, Cap’n?” asked Seavey Lowd the next minute. The
keeper’s head did not move—he only fastened his eyes steadily
on the ledge fringed by the surf, as if trying to determine a
fact with certainty, and then rising in his seat, said solemnly,
“I—b’lieve—he’s—gone! Yes, gone!”
Gone, and he left no more trace behind than a leaf falling through the
air. Gone into that whirling, eddying sea, into that deep, dark grave
so long clutching at him, and which now buried him under its waves
forever! The boat could not possibly reach him. Gone, gone!
“Well, men,” said the keeper to the crew, who resting on their oars
looked with sober faces at the empty Chair into which the waves now
mockingly flung their spray as its only occupant, “we might take a turn
round and then go home, but that hunt is all up. Don’t see a sign of
him.”
The bow of the surf–boat was headed for The Harbor, after a season of
waiting. And strong arms steadily pulled it home.
That afternoon, the captain of the wrecked vessel walking on the sands
at low tide, reported at the station that a body had come ashore. “It’s
t’other passenger,” he said, “who came ashore as I told you. You know
two started on a life–savin’ thing. It’s ’bout two hundred feet from
here.”
Keeper Barney and Walter followed him to the designated spot, and there
lying on the beach, his long dark hair hanging in a tangle over his
face as if trying to veil from the world some dishonored object, was
Joe Cardridge. The body was removed to a shed in a field that skirted
the shore–rocks. Various articles were found upon the body, and they
were removed by the keeper for preservation. “What is this?” asked the
keeper, as he took from an inner pocket of the blouse that Joe had
worn, an envelope. “A letter inside this,” said the keeper, “and it is
directed to me!”
The address was worn and the water had affected it, and yet the
superscription could be made out.
“A letter for me, brought by a strange mail–carrier,” said the keeper.
“I will see what it is.”
“Why,” he exclaimed, “that is a letter from our district
superintendent! Yes, it is the missin’ one that Walter couldn’t find!
There is the date. That clears Walter.”
“I guess he was cleared afore,” declared Tom Walker, who was present.
Another mystery was solved that day. Many people were attracted to the
beach by the tragedy of the wreck, and among them came Miss P. Green,
Aunt Lydia, and other women. Some of Joe Cardridge’s family were at the
station. The blouse that he had worn, was drying before the stove.
“What’s that?” queried Aunt Lydia, who had come to the station. Her
sharp bright eyes were fastened on a sleeve of the blouse, turned back
at the wrist. “If there ain’t that blue W that I tucked away in the
white linin’ of Walter’s blouse!”
“Where?” asked Tom Walker.
“There!” replied Aunt Lydia. “That is Walter’s coat, I know.”
“Walter’s coat?” asked Keeper Barney, who had joined the circle of
inspection.
“Yes,” replied Aunt Lydia, “I sewed a blue W on to the white linin’ of
Walter’s sleeve, and here it is.”
“Humph!” said the keeper. “Joe Cardridge exchanged blouses with Walter,
that is what he did, and carried off the missin’ letter.”
“But—but—” said little Charlie Cardridge who was present, and
overhearing the conversation wished to show that some of the property
in the room did belong to his father, “that’s father’s. Looks like
his, anyway.” He was pointing at the flask found in Walter’s pocket
and now standing on the sill of a window in the station. The flask was
handed to Charlie. Turning it over, he exclaimed, “There’s a C! That is
father’s.”
In the bottom of the flask the letter C had been blown, and it now
proved who the real owner of that mysterious property had been.
“No doubt about it!” declared Tom Walker, who with others of the crew
had come into the kitchen. “No doubt about it! There was an exchange of
blouses by the owner of the flask, and the latter was left by Joe as a
witness agin Walter. A pretty deep game! Walter, give us your hand. I
knew before though that you were all right.”
Tom gripped Walter’s hand as if it were a pump–handle on a dry, hot,
thirsty day. Others congratulated Walter, and none more readily than
the keeper.
There was no investigation by the district superintendent when he
arrived, and the news of the wreck brought him the next day.