WHEN THE STRONG TIDES LIFT
It was the tag-end of the season for the summer colony at The Beaches.
Mrs. Conroth expected to leave the Perritons that evening--was leaving
lingeringly, for she had desired to bear her niece off to New York with
her. But on that point Louise had been firm.
"No, Aunt Euphemia," she had said. "I shall wait for daddy-prof and
the _Curlew_ to arrive at Boston. Then I shall either go there to meet
him, or he will come here. I want him to meet Lawford just as quickly
as possible, for we are not going to wait all our lives to be married."
"Louise!" gasped Mrs. Conroth with horror. "How can you say such a
thing!"
"I mean it," said the girl, nodding with pursed lips.
"You are behaving in a most selfish way," the Lady from Poughkeepsie
declared. "Everybody here has remarked how you have neglected me for
those Tapps. They have taken full advantage of your patronage to push
themselves into the society of their betters."
"Perhaps," sighed Louise. "But consider, auntie. This is a free and
more or less independent republic. After all, money is the only
recognized mark of aristocracy."
"Money!"
"Yes. How far would the Perritons' blue blood get them--or the
Standishes'--or the Graylings'--without money? And consider our own
small beginnings. Your great, great, great grandfather was a knight of
the yardstick and sold molasses by the quart."
"You are incorrigible, Louise," cried Aunt Euphemia, her fingers in her
ears. "I will not listen to you. It is sacrilegious."
"It's not a far cry," her niece pursued, "from molasses to taffy. And
it seems to me one is quite as aristocratic as the other."
So she left Mrs. Conroth in a horrified state of mind and stepped out
to face the gale. Seeing others streaming down upon the sands, Louise,
too, sought the nearest flight of steps and descended to the foot of
the bluff.
This was Saturday and she hoped that Lawford would come for the
week-end. It was not Lawford, however, but his father into whose arms
she almost stumbled as she came out from under the shelter of the bank
into the full sweep of the gale.
"Oh, Mr. Tapp! Why is everybody running so? What has happened?"
The Taffy King had a most puzzling expression upon his face. He glared
at her as though he did not hear what she said. In his hand he
clutched an envelope.
"Ha! That you, Miss Grayling?" he growled. "Seen Ford?"
"No. Is he at home?"
"He's here fast enough," was I. Tapp's ungracious rejoinder. "I
supposed he'd come over to see you."
"Perhaps he has," she returned wickedly. "He is a very faithful
knight."
"He's a perfect ninny, if _that's_ what you mean," snapped the Taffy
King. "He's made a fool of me, too. I shouldn't wonder if he knew
this all along," and he shook the letter in his hand and scowled.
"You arouse my curiosity," Louise said. "I hope Lawford has done
nothing more to cause you vexation."
"I don't know whether he has or not. The young upstart! I feel like
punching him one minute, and then the next I've got to take off my hat
to him, Miss Grayling. D'you know what he's done?"
"Something really fine, I hope. I do not think you wholly appreciate
Lawford, Mr. Tapp," the girl told him firmly.
"Ha! No. I s'pose he's got to go outside his immediate family to be
appreciated," he snarled.
But at that Louise merely laughed. "You don't tell me what he has
done," she urged.
"Why, the young rascal's solved a problem in mechanics that has puzzled
us candy makers for years. I'm having a new cutting machine built
after his suggestions."
"I hope Lawford will be properly reimbursed for his idea," she
interrupted. "You know, he and I are going to need the money."
"Ha!" snorted I. Tapp again. "Ford's no fool, it seems, when it comes
to a contract. He's got me tied hard and fast to a royalty agreement
and a lump sum down if the machine works the way he says it will."
"I'm so glad!" cried Louise.
"You are, eh? What for?"
"Because we need not wait so long to be married," she frankly told him.
I. Tapp stood squarely in the path and looked at her.
"So you are going to marry him, whether I agree or not?"
"Yes, sir."
"Right in my very teeth?"
"I--I hope you won't be _very_ angry, Mr. Tapp," Louise said softly.
"You see--we love each other."
"Love!" began I. Tapp. Then he stopped, turning the thick letter over
and over in his hand. "Well!" and he actually blew a sigh. "Perhaps
there is something in that. Seems to be. I set my heart on having my
fortune and my partner's joined by Ford and Dot Johnson--and see what's
come of it."
He suddenly thrust the missive into Louise's hand.
"Look at that!"
With a growing suspicion of what it meant she opened the outer envelope
and then the inner one, drawing out the engraved inclosure. Before she
could speak a commotion along the beach drew their attention.
"What can it be?" Louise cried. "The lifesavers!"
"And their gear--lifeboat and all," Mr. Tapp agreed. "Must be a
wreck----"
His gaze swept the sea and he seized Louise's arm. "There! Don't you
see her? A vessel in distress sure enough. She's drifting in upon
Gull Rocks. Bad business, Miss Grayling."
"Oh, there is Lawford!" murmured Louise. "He's with the surfmen!"
Two teams of heavy farm horses were dragging the boat and the surfmen's
two-wheeled cart along the hard sand at the edge of the surf. The
bursting waves wetted all the crew as they helped push the wagons, and
the snorting horses were sometimes body deep in the water.
Lawford, in his fishermen's garments, waved his hand to Louise and his
father. The girl smiled upon him proudly and the Taffy King, seeing
the expression on her face, suddenly seized the missive from her hand.
"I give up! I give up!" he exclaimed. "I said I'd disown him if he
refused to marry Dorothy Johnson, my partner's daughter. But 'tain't
really Lawford's fault, I s'pose, if Dot won't marry him. It seems she
had other ideas along that line, too, and I never knew it till we got
this invitation to her wedding."
Louise smiled on the little man with tolerance. "Of course, I knew you
would see it in the right light in time. But it really has been the
making of Lawford," she said calmly.
"You think so, do you?" returned the Taffy King. "I wonder what good
it would have done him if you hadn't been the prize he wanted? I'm not
sure I shouldn't pay you out, Louise Grayling, by making the two of you
live for a year on his eighteen dollars a week."
"Are you sure that would be such a great punishment?" she asked him
softly.
They moved on with the crowd about the gear and boat. The patrol had
come in good season. It was not probable that the schooner would hold
together long after she struck the reef.
Not until this moment, when she saw the stern faces of the men and the
wan countenances of the women, did Louise understand what the incident
really meant. A few children, clinging to their mother's skirts,
whimpered. The men talked in low voices, the women not at all.
Her heart suddenly shorn of its happiness, Louise Grayling stared out
at the distant, laboring craft. Death rode on the gale, and lurked
where the billows roared and burst over Gull Rocks. The schooner was
doomed.
That might be the _Curlew_ out there--the schooner her father was
aboard--instead of this imperiled vessel. Only the night before she
and her uncle had figured out the _Curlew's_ course homeward-bound from
her last port of call. She might pass in sight of Cardhaven Head and
the lighthouse any day now.
The thought sobered Louise. Clinging to I. Tapp's arm she went nearer
to the spot where the surfmen had brought their gear and boat.
The sea beyond the line of surf--between the strand and the reef--was
foam-streaked and broken, a veritable cauldron of boiling water. The
captain of the life-saving crew shrank from launching the boat into
that wild waste.
If the line could be shot as far as the reef the moment the schooner
struck, a breeches buoy could be rigged with less danger and, perhaps,
with a better chance of bringing the ship's company safely ashore.
"'Tis a woeful pickle of water," Washy Gallup shrieked in Louise's ear.
"And the wind a-risin'. 'Tis only allowed by law to shoot a sartain
charge o' powder in the pottery little gun. Beyond that, is like to
burst her. But mebbe they can make it. Cap'n Jim Trainor knows his
work; and 'tis cut out for him this day."
Gradually the seriousness of the situation began to affect all the
lighter-minded spectators. Louise saw the group of moving picture
actors at one side. The men dropped their cigarettes and strained
forward as they watched the schooner drive in to certain destruction.
It was like a play. The schooner, rearing on each succeeding wave,
drew nearer and nearer. A hawser parted and they saw her bows swing
viciously shoreward, the jib-boom thrusting itself seemingly into the
very sky as she topped a huge breaker.
The crew had to slip the cable of the second anchor. The foremast came
crashing down before she struck. Then, with a grinding thud those on
the shore could not hear, but could keenly sense, the fated craft
rebounded on the reef.
A gasping cry--the intake of a chorused breath--arose from the throng
of spectators. The fishermen and sailors recoiled from the cart and
left an open space in which the life-saving crew could handle their
gear.
Cap'n Trainor, the grizzled veteran of the crew, had already loaded the
gun and now aimed it. The shot to which was attached the line was
slipped into the muzzle.
"Back!" the old man ordered, and waved his hand. Then he pulled the
lanyard.
The line fled out of the box with a speed that made it smoke. But the
shot fell short.
"'Tis too much wind, skipper," squealed Washy Gallup. "You be
a-shootin' into the wind's eye. An' she's risin' ev'ry minute."
His only answer was a black look from Cap'n Trainor. The latter loaded
the gun again, and yet again. The last time he waited for every one to
get well back before he fired the cannon. When she went off she did
not burst as they half expected--she turned a double back somersault.
"'Tis no use, boys!" the captain roared at them, smiting his hands
together. "We must try the boat. But that's a hell's broth out there,
and no two ways about it."
The stranded schooner, all but hidden at times in the smother of flying
spume and jumping waves, hung halfway across the reef. They could see
men, like black specks, lashed to her after rigging. Louise, between
bursting waves, counted twenty of these figures.
"It may be the _Curlew_!" she cried to the Taffy King. "Father told me
in his letter there were twenty people aboard her afore and abaft. He
may be out there!" and the girl shuddered.
"No, no," said I. Tapp. "Not possible. Don't think of such a thing,
my girl. But whoever they are, they are to be pitied."
There rose a shout at the edge of the surf. The fringe of fishermen
had rushed in to aid in launching the boat. Anscomb and his camera man
had taken up a good position with the machine. The director was going
to get some "real stuff."
Louise saw that Lawford was foremost among the volunteers. The
lifeboat crew, their belts strapped under their arms, had taken their
places in the boat. Captain Trainor stood in the stern with his
steering oar. On its truck the lifeboat was run into the surf.
"Now!" shrieked the excited moving picture director. "Action! Camera!
Go!"
There was something unreal about it--it was like a play. And yet out
there on that schooner her crew faced bitter death, while the men of
the Coast Patrol took their lives in their hands as the lifeboat was
run through the bursting surf.
The volunteers ran in till those ahead were neck deep in the sea. Then
the boat floated clear and, with a mighty shove from behind the surfmen
pulled out.
Lawford and his mates staggered back with the gear. The lifeboat
lifted to meet the onrolling breakers. The men tugged at the oars.
Somebody screamed. Those ashore saw the white gash of a split oar.
The man in the bow went overboard, not being strapped to the seat. His
mate reached for him and the banging broken oar handle hit him on the
head.
The boat swung broadside and the next instant was rolling over and over
in the surf, the crew half smothered.
The spectators ran together in a crowd. But Lawford and some of the
men who had helped to launch the boat rushed into the surf and dragged
the overturned craft and her crew out upon the beach.
"One of the crew with a broken arm; another knocked out complete with
that crack on the head," sputtered Cap'n Jim Trainor. "Two of my very
best men. Come on, boys! Who'll take their places?"
Lawford was already putting on the belt he had unbuckled from about one
of the injured surfmen. The Taffy King, seeing what his son was about,
shouted:
"Ford! Ford! Don't dare do that! I forbid you!"
Lawford turned a grim face upon his father. "I earn eighteen a week,
dad. I am my own boss."
A soft palm was placed upon I. Tapp's lips before he could reply.
Louise was weeping frankly, but she urged:
"Don't stop him, Mr. Tapp. Don't say another word to him. My--my
heart is breaking; but I am glad--oh, I am so glad!--that he is a real
man."
Cap'n Trainor's hard gaze swept the circle of strained faces about him.
After all, the men here were mostly "second raters"--weaklings like
Milt Baker and Amiel Perdue, or cripples like Cap'n Joab and Washy
Gallup.
Suddenly the captain's gaze descried a figure well back in the
crowd--one who had not pushed forward during these exciting moments,
but who had been chained to the spot by the fascination of what was
happening.
"Ain't that Cap'n Am'zon Silt back there?" demanded the skipper of the
lifeboat crew. "You pull a strong oar, I know, Cap'n Am'zon. We need
you."