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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!"