To Carroll's delight, Orde returned unexpectedly from the woods late
that night. He was so busy these days that she welcomed any chance to
see him. Much to his disappointment, Bobby had been taken duck-hunting
by his old friend, Mr. Kincaid. Next morning, however, Orde told Carroll
his stay would be short and that his day would be occupied.
“I'd take old Prince and get some air,” he advised. “You're too much
indoors. Get some friend and drive around. It's fine and blowy out, and
you'll get some colour in your cheeks.”
After breakfast Carroll accompanied her husband to the front door. When
they opened it a blast of air rushed in, whirling some dead leaves with
it.
“I guess the fine weather's over,” said Orde, looking up at the sky.
A dull lead colour had succeeded the soft gray of the preceding balmy
days. The heavens seemed to have settled down closer to the earth.
A rising wind whistled through the branches of the big maple trees,
snatching the remaining leaves in handfuls and tossing them into the
air. The tops swayed like whips. Whirlwinds scurried among the piles of
dead leaves on the lawns, scattering them, chasing them madly around and
around in circles.
“B-r-r-r!” shivered Carroll. “Winter's coming.”
She kept herself busy about the house all the morning; ate her lunch in
solitude. Outside, the fierce wind, rising in a crescendo shriek, howled
around the eaves. The day darkened, but no rain fell. At last Carroll
resolved to take her husband's advice. She stopped for Mina Heinzman,
and the two walked around to the stable, where the men harnessed old
Prince into the phaeton.
They drove, the wind at their backs, across the drawbridge, past the
ship-yards, and out beyond the mills to the Marsh Road. There, on either
side the causeway, miles and miles of cat-tails and reeds bent and
recovered under the snatches of the wind. Here and there showed glimpses
of ponds or little inlets, the surface of the water ruffled and dark
blue. Occasionally one of these bayous swung in across the road. Then
the two girls could see plainly the fan-like cat's-paws skittering here
and there as though panic-stricken by the swooping, invisible monster
that pursued them.
Carroll and Mina Heinzman had a good time. They liked each other very
much, and always saw a great deal to laugh at in the things about them
and in the subjects about which they talked. When, however, they turned
toward home, they were forced silent by the mighty power of the wind
against them. The tears ran from their eyes as though they were crying;
they had to lower their heads. Hardly could Carroll command vision clear
enough to see the road along which she was driving. This was really
unnecessary, for Prince was buffeted to a walk. Thus they crawled along
until they reached the turn-bridge, where the right-angled change
in direction gave them relief. The river was full of choppy waves,
considerable in size. As they crossed, the SPRITE darted beneath them,
lowering her smokestack as she went under the bridge.
They entered Main Street, where was a great banging and clanging of
swinging signs and a few loose shutters. All the sidewalk displays of
vegetables and other goods had been taken in, and the doors, customarily
wide open, were now shut fast. This alone lent to the street quite a
deserted air, which was emphasised by the fact that actually not a rig
of any sort stood at the curbs. Up the empty roadway whirled one after
the other clouds of dust hurried by the wind.
“I wonder where all the farmers' wagons are?” marvelled the practical
Mina. “Surely they would not stay home Saturday afternoon just for this
wind!”
Opposite Randall's hardware store her curiosity quite mastered her.
“Do stop!” she urged Carroll. “I want to run in and see what's the
matter.”
She was gone but a moment, and returned, her eyes shining with
excitement.
“Oh, Carroll!” she cried, “there are three vessels gone ashore off the
piers. Everybody's gone to see.”
“Jump in!” said Carroll. “We'll drive out. Perhaps they'll get out the
life-saving crew.”
They drove up the plank road over the sand-hill, through the beech
woods, to the bluff above the shore. In the woods they were somewhat
sheltered from the wind, although even there the crash of falling
branches and the whirl of twigs and dead leaves advertised that the
powers of the air were abroad; but when they topped the last rise, the
unobstructed blast from the open Lake hit them square between the eyes.
Probably a hundred vehicles of all descriptions were hitched to trees
just within the fringe of woods. Carroll, however, drove straight ahead
until Prince stood at the top of the plank road that led down to the
bath houses. Here she pulled up.
Carroll saw the lake, slate blue and angry, with white-capped billows
to the limit of vision. Along the shore were rows and rows of breakers,
leaping, breaking, and gathering again, until they were lost in a tumble
of white foam that rushed and receded on the sands. These did not look
to be very large until she noticed the twin piers reaching out from the
river's mouth. Each billow, as it came in, rose sullenly above them,
broke tempestuously to overwhelm the entire structure of their ends, and
ripped inshore along their lengths, the crest submerging as it ran every
foot of the massive structures. The piers and the light-houses at their
ends looked like little toys, and the compact black crowd of people on
the shore below were as small as Bobby's tin soldiers.
“Look there--out farther!” pointed Mina.
Carroll looked, and rose to her feet in excitement.
Three little toy ships--or so they seemed compared to the mountains of
water--lay broadside-to, just inside the farthest line of breakers. Two
were sailing schooners. These had been thrown on their beam ends, their
masts pointing at an angle toward the beach. Each wave, as it reached,
stirred them a trifle, then broke in a deluge of water that for a moment
covered their hulls completely from sight. With a mighty suction the
billow drained away, carrying with it wreckage. The third vessel was a
steam barge. She, too, was broadside to the seas, but had caught in some
hole in the bar so that she lay far down by the head. The shoreward side
of her upper works had, for some freakish reason, given away first, so
now the interior of her staterooms and saloons was exposed to view as in
the cross-section of a model ship. Over her, too, the great waves
hurled themselves, each carrying away its spoil. To Carroll it seemed
fantastically as though the barge were made of sugar, and that each sea
melted her precisely as Bobby loved to melt the lump in his chocolate by
raising and lowering it in a spoon.
And the queer part of it all was that these waves, so mighty in their
effects, appeared to the woman no different from those she had often
watched in the light summer blows that for a few hours raise the “white
caps” on the lake. They came in from the open in the same swift yet
deliberate ranks; they gathered with the same leisurely pauses; they
broke with the same rush and roar. They seemed no larger, but everything
else had been struck small--the tiny ships, the toy piers, the ant-like
swarm of people on the shore. She looked on it as a spectacle. It had as
yet no human significance.
“Poor fellows!” cried Mina.
“What?” asked Carroll.
“Don't you see them?” queried the other.
Carroll looked, and in the rigging of the schooner she made out a number
of black objects.
“Are those men?--up the masts?” she cried.
She set Prince in motion toward the beach.
At the foot of the bluff the plank road ran out into the deep sand.
Through this the phaeton made its way heavily. The fine particles were
blown in the air like a spray, mingling with the spume from the lake,
stinging Carroll's face like so many needles. Already the beach was
strewn with pieces of wreckage, some of it cast high above the wash,
others still thrown up and sucked back by each wave, others again rising
and falling in the billows. This wreckage constituted a miscellaneous
jumble, although most of it was lumber from the deck-loads of the
vessels. Intermingled with the split and broken yellow boards were bits
of carving and of painted wood. Carroll saw one piece half buried in the
sand which bore in gilt two huge letters, A R. A little farther, bent
and twisted, projected the ornamental spear which had pointed the way
before the steamer's bow. Portions of the usual miscellaneous freight
cargo carried on every voyage were scattered along the shore--boxes,
barrels, and crates. Five or six men had rolled a whisky barrel beyond
the reach of the water, had broached it, and now were drinking in turn
from a broken and dingy fragment of a beer-schooner. They were very
dirty; their hair had fallen over their eyes, which were bloodshot;
the expression of their faces was imbecile. As the phaeton passed, they
hailed its occupants in thick voices, shouting against the wind maudlin
invitations to drink.
The crowd gathered at the pier comprised fully half the population of
Monrovia. It centred about the life saving crew, whose mortar was
being loaded. A stove-in lifeboat mutely attested the failure of other
efforts. The men worked busily, ramming home the powder sack, placing
the projectile with the light line attached, attending that the reel ran
freely. Their chief watched the seas and winds through his glasses. When
the preparations were finished, he adjusted the mortar, and pulled
the string. Carroll had seen this done in practice. Now, with the
recollection of that experience in mind, she was astonished at the
feeble report of the piece, and its freedom from the dense white clouds
of smoke that should have enveloped it. The wind snatched both noise and
vapour away almost as soon as they were born. The dart with its trailer
of line rose on a long graceful curve. The reel sang. Every member of
the crowd unconsciously leaned forward in attention. But the resistance
of the wind and the line early made itself felt. Slower and slower
hummed the reel. There came a time when the missile seemed to hesitate,
then fairly to stand in equilibrium. Finally, in an increasingly abrupt
curve, it descended into the sea. By a good three hundred yards the shot
had failed to carry the line over the vessels.
“There's Mr. Bradford,” said Carroll, waving her hand. “I wish he'd come
and tell us something about it.”
The banjo-playing village Brummell saw the signal and came, his face
grave.
“Couldn't they get the lifeboats out to them?” asked Carroll as he
approached.
“You see that one,” said Bradford, pointing. “Well, the other's in
kindling wood farther up the beach.”
“Anybody drowned?” asked Mina quickly.
“No, we got 'em out. Mr. Cam's shoulder is broken.” He glanced down at
himself comically, and the girls for the first time noticed that beneath
the heavy overcoat his garments were dripping.
“But surely they'll never get a line over with the mortar!” said
Carroll. “That last shot fell so far short!”
“They know it. They've shot a dozen times. Might as well do something.”
“I should think,” said Mina, “that they'd shoot from the end of the
pier. They'd be ever so much nearer.”
“Tried it,” replied Bradford succinctly. “Nearly lost the whole
business.”
Nobody said anything for some time, but all looked helplessly to where
the vessels--from this elevation insignificant among the tumbling
waters--were pounding to pieces.
At this moment from the river a trail of black smoke became visible over
the point of sand-hill that ran down to the pier. A smokestack darted
into view, slowed down, and came to rest well inside the river-channel.
There it rose and fell regularly under the influence of the swell that
swung in from the lake. The crowd uttered a cheer, and streamed in the
direction of the smokestack.
“Come and see what's up,” suggested Bradford.
He hitched Prince to a log sticking up at an angle from the sand, and
led the way to the pier.
There they had difficulty in getting close enough to see; but Bradford,
preceding the two women, succeeded by patience and diplomacy in forcing
a way. The SPRITE was lying close under the pier, the top of her
pilot-house just about level with the feet of the people watching
her. She rose and fell with the restless waters. Fat rope-yarn bumpers
interposed between her sides and the piling. The pilot-house was empty,
but Harvey, the negro engineer, leaned, elbows crossed against the sill
of his little square door, smoking his pipe.
“I wouldn't go out there for a million dollars!” cried a man excitedly
to Carroll and Bradford. “Nothing on earth could live in that sea!
Nothing! I've run a tug myself in my time, and I know what I'm talking
about!”
“What are they going to do?” asked Carroll.
“Haven't you heard!” cried the other, turning to her. “Where you been?
This is one of Orde's tugs, and she's going to try to get a line to them
vessels. But I wouldn't--”
Bradford did not wait for him to finish. He turned abruptly, and with an
air of authority brushed toward the tug, followed closely by Carroll and
Mina. At the edge of the pier was the tug's captain, Marsh, listening
to earnest expostulation by a half-dozen of the leading men of the town,
among whom were both Newmark and Orde.
As the three came within earshot Captain Marsh spit forth the stump of
cigar he had been chewing.
“Gentlemen,” said he crisply, “that isn't the question. I think I can
do it; and I'm entirely willing to take all personal risks. The thing is
hazardous and it's Mr. Orde's tug. It's for him to say whether he wants
to risk her.”
“Good Lord, man, what's the tug in a case like this!” cried Orde,
who was standing near. Carroll looked at him proudly, but she did not
attempt to make her presence known.
“I thought so,” replied Captain Marsh. “So it's settled. I'll take her
out, if I can get a crew. Harvey, step up here!”
The engineer slowly hoisted his long figure through the breast-high
doorway, dragged his legs under him, then with extraordinary agility
swung to the pier, his teeth shining like ivory in his black face.
“Yas, suh!” said he.
“Harvey,” said Captain Marsh briskly, “we're going to try to get a line
aboard those vessels out there. It's dangerous. You don't have to go if
you don't want to. Will you go?”
Harvey removed his cap and scratched his wool. The grin faded from his
good-natured countenance.
“You-all goin', suh?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“I reckon I'll done haif to go, too,” said Harvey simply. Without
further word he swung lightly back to the uneasy craft below him, and
began to toss the slabs from the deck into the hold.
“I want a man with me at the wheel, two to handle the lines, and one to
fire for Harvey,” said Captain Marsh to the crowd in general.
“That's our job,” announced the life-saving captain.
“Well, come on then. No use in delay,” said Captain Marsh.
The four men from the life-saving service dropped aboard. The five then
went over the tug from stem to stern, tossing aside all movables,
and lashing tight all essentials. From the pilot-house Captain Marsh
distributed life preservers. Harvey declined his.
“Whaf-for I want dat?” he inquired. “Lots of good he gwine do me down
here!”
Then all hatches were battened down. Captain Marsh reached up to shake
the hand which Orde, stooping, offered him.
“I'll try to bring her back all right, sir,” said he.
“To hell with the tug!” cried Orde, impatient at this insistence on the
mere property aspect. “Bring yourself back.”
Captain Marsh deliberately lit another cigar and entered the pilot-house
with the other men.
“Cast off!” he cried; and the silent crowd heard clearly the single
sharp bell ringing for attention, and then the “jangler” that called for
full speed ahead. Awed, they watched the tiny sturdy craft move out into
the stream and point to the fury of the open lake.
“Brave chaps! Brave chaps!” said Dr. McMullen to Carroll as they turned
away. The physician drew his tall slender figure to its height. “Brave
chaps, every one of them. But, do you know, to my mind, the bravest of
them all are that nigger--and his fireman--nailed down in the hold where
they can't see nor know what's going on, and if--if--” the good doctor
blew his nose vigorously five or six times--“well, it's just like a rat
in a hole.” He shook his head vigorously and looked out to sea. “I read
last evening, sir,” said he to Bradford, “in a blasted fool medical
journal I take, that the race is degenerating. Good God!”
The tug had rounded the end of the pier. The first of her thousand
enemies, sweeping in from the open, had struck her fair. A great sheet
of white water, slanting back and up, shot with terrific impact against
the house and beyond. For an instant the little craft seemed buried;
but almost immediately the gleam of her black hull showed her plunging
forward dauntlessly.
“That's nothin'!” said the tug captain who had first spoken. “Wait 'til
she gets outside!” The watchers streamed down from the pier for a better
view. Carroll and Miss Heinzman followed. They saw the staunch little
craft drive into three big seas, each of which appeared to bury her
completely, save for her upper works. She managed, however, to keep her
headway.
“She can stand that, all right,” said one of the life-saving crew who
had been watching her critically. “The trouble will come when she drops
down to the vessels.”
In spite of the heavy smashing of head-on seas the SPRITE held her
course straight out.
“Where's she going, anyway?” marvelled little Mr. Smith, the stationer.
“She's away beyond the wrecks already.”
“Probably Marsh has found the seas heavier than he thought and is afraid
to turn her broadside,” guessed his companion.
“Afraid, hell!” snorted a riverman who overheard.
Nevertheless the SPRITE was now so distant that the loom of the great
seas on the horizon swallowed her from view, save when she rose on the
crest of some mighty billow.
“Well, what is he doing 'way out there then?” challenged Mr. Smith's
friend with some asperity.
“Do'no,” replied the riverman, “but whatever it is, it's all right as
long as Buck Marsh is at the wheel.”
“There, she's turned now,” Mr. Smith interposed.
Beneath the trail of black smoke she had shifted direction. And then
with startling swiftness the SPRITE darted out of the horizon into full
view. For the first time the spectators realised the size and weight of
the seas. Not even the sullen pounding to pieces of the vessels on the
bar had so impressed them as the sight of the tug coasting with railroad
speed down the rush of a comber like a child's toy-boat in the surf. One
moment the whole of her deck was visible as she was borne with the wave;
the next her bow alone showed high as the back suction caught her and
dragged her from the crest into the hollow. A sea rose behind. Nothing
of the tug was to be seen. It seemed that no power or skill could
prevent her feeling overwhelmed. Yet somehow always she staggered out
of the gulf until she caught the force of the billow and was again cast
forward like a chip.
“Maybe they ain't catchin' p'ticular hell at that wheel to hold her from
yawing!” muttered the tug captain to his neighbour, who happened to be
Mr. Duncan, the minister.
Almost before Carroll had time to see that the little craft was coming
in, she had arrived at the outer line of breakers. Here the combers,
dragged by the bar underneath, crested, curled over, and fell with a
roar, just as in milder weather the surf breaks on the beach. When the
SPRITE rushed at this outer line of white-water, a woman in the crowd
screamed.
But at the edge of destruction the SPRITE came to a shuddering stop. Her
powerful propellers had been set to the reverse. They could not hold
her against the forward fling of the water, but what she lost thus she
regained on the seaward slopes of the waves and in their hollows. Thus
she hovered on the edge of the breakers, awaiting her chance.
As long as the seas rolled in steadily, and nothing broke, she was safe.
But if one of the waves should happen to crest and break, as many of
them did, the weight of water catching the tug on her flat, broad stern
deck would indubitably bury her. The situation was awful in its extreme
simplicity. Would Captain Marsh see his opportunity before the law of
chances would bring along the wave that would overwhelm him?
A realisation of the crisis came to the crowd on the beach. At once
the terrible strain of suspense tugged at their souls. Each conducted
himself according to his nature. The hardy men of the river and
the woods set their teeth until the cheek muscles turned white, and
blasphemed softly and steadily. Two or three of the townsmen walked up
and down the space of a dozen feet. One, the woman who had screamed,
prayed aloud in short hysterical sentences.
“O God! Save them, O Lord! O Lord!”
Orde stood on top of a half-buried log, his hat in his hand, his
entire being concentrated on the manoeuvre being executed. Only Newmark
apparently remained as calm as ever, leaning against an upright timber,
his arms folded, and an unlighted cigar as usual between his lips.
Methodically every few moments he removed his eyeglasses and wiped the
lenses free of spray.
Suddenly, without warning, occurred one of those inexplicable lulls that
interpose often amid the wildest uproars. For the briefest instant other
sounds than the roar of the wind and surf were permitted the multitude
on the beach. They heard the grinding of timbers from the stricken
ships, and the draining away of waters. And distinctly they heard the
faint, far tinkle of the jangler calling again for “full speed ahead.”
Between two waves the SPRITE darted forward directly for the nearest of
the wrecks. Straight as an arrow's flight she held until from the crowd
went up a groan.
“She'll collide!” some one put it into words.
But at the latest moment the tug swerved, raced past, and turned on a
long diagonal across the end of the bar toward the piers.
Captain Marsh had chosen his moment with exactitude. To the utmost he
had taken advantage of the brief lull of jumbled seas after the “three
largest waves” had swept by. Yet in shallow water and with the strong
inshore set, even that lull was all too short. The SPRITE was staggered
by the buffets of the smaller breakers; her speed was checked, her stern
was dragged around. For an instant it seemed that the back suction would
hold her in its grip. She tore herself from the grasp of the current.
Enveloped in a blinding hail of spray she struggled desperately to
extricate herself from the maelstrom in which she was involved before
the resumption of the larger seas should roll her over and over to
destruction.
Already these larger seas were racing in from the open. To Carroll,
watching breathless and wide-eyed in that strange passive and receptive
state peculiar to imaginative natures, they seemed alive. And the
SPRITE, too, appeared to be, not a fabric and a mechanism controlled by
men, but a sentient creature struggling gallantly on her own volition.
Far out in the lake against the tumbling horizon she saw heave up for
a second the shoulder of a mighty wave. And instinctively she perceived
this wave as a deadly enemy of the little tug, and saw it bending all
its great energies to hurrying in on time to catch the victim before it
could escape. To this wave she gave all her attention, watching for
it after it had sunk momentarily below its fellows, recognising it
instantly as it rose again. The spasms of dismay and relief among the
crowd about her she did not share at all. The crises they indicated did
not exist for her. Until the wave came in, Carroll knew, the SPRITE,
no matter how battered and tossed, would be safe. Her whole being was
concentrated in a continually shifting calculation of the respective
distances between the tug and the piers, the tug and the relentlessly
advancing wave.
“Oh, go!” she exhorted the SPRITE under her breath.
Then the crowd, too, caught with its slower perceptions the import
of the wave. Carroll felt the electric thrill of apprehension shiver
through it. Huge and towering, green and flecked with foam the wave came
on now calmly and deliberately as though sure. The SPRITE was off the
end of the pier when the wave lifted her, just in the position her enemy
would have selected to crush her life out against the cribs. Slowly the
tug rose against its shoulder, was lifted onward, poised; and then
with a swift forward thrust the wave broke, smothering the pier and
lighthouse beneath tons of water.
A low, agonised wail broke from the crowd. And then--and then--over
beyond the pier down which the wave, broken and spent but formidable
still, was ripping its way, they saw gliding a battered black stack from
which still poured defiantly clouds of gray smoke.
For ten seconds the spectators could not believe their eyes. They had
distinctly seen the SPRITE caught between a resistless wall of water
and the pier; where she should have been crushed like the proverbial
egg-shell. Yet there she was--or her ghost.
Then a great cheer rose up against the wind. The crowd went crazy. Mere
acquaintances hugged each other and danced around and around through
the heavy sands. Several women had hysterics. The riverman next to Mr.
Duncan opened his mouth and swore so picturesquely that, as he afterward
told his chum, “I must've been plumb inspired for the occasion.” Yet it
never entered Mr. Duncan's ministerial head to reprove the blasphemy.
Orde jumped down from his half-buried log and clapped his hat on his
head. Newmark did not alter his attitude nor his expression.
The SPRITE was safe. For the few moments before she glided the length of
the long pier to stiller water this fact sufficed.
“I wonder if she got the line aboard,” speculated the tug-boat captain
at last.
The crowd surged over to the piers again. Below them rose and fell the
SPRITE. All the fancy scroll-work of her upper works, the cornice of her
deck house, the light rigging of her cabin had disappeared, leaving raw
and splintered wood to mark their attachments. The tall smokestack
was bent awry, but its supports had held, which was fortunate since
otherwise the fires would have been drowned out. At the moment, Captain
Marsh was bending over examining a bad break in the overhang--the only
material damage the tug had sustained.
At sight of him the crowd set up a yell. He paid no attention. One of
the life-saving men tossed a mooring line ashore. It was seized by a
dozen men. Then for the first time somebody noticed that although the
tug had come to a standstill, her screw was still turning slowly over
and over, holding her against the erratic strong jerking of a slender
rope that ran through her stern chocks and into the water.
“He got it aboard!” yelled the man, pointing.
Another cheer broke out. The life-saving crew leaped to the deck.
They were immediately followed by a crowd of enthusiasts eager to
congratulate and question. But Captain Marsh would have none of them.
“Get off my tug!” he shouted. “Do you want to swamp her? What do you
suppose we put that line aboard for? Fun? Get busy and use it! Rescue
that crew now!”
Abashed, the enthusiasts scrambled back. The life-saving crew took
charge. It was necessary to pass the line around the end of the pier
and back to the beach. This was a dangerous job, and one requiring
considerable power and ingenuity, for the strain on the line imposed
by the waters was terrific; and the breaking seas rendered work on the
piers extremely hazardous. However, the life-saving captain took charge
confidently enough. His crew began to struggle out the pier, while
volunteers, under his personal direction, manipulated the reel.
A number of the curious lingered about the SPRITE. Marsh and Orde were
in consultation over the smashed stern, and did not look as though they
cared to be disturbed. Harvey leaned out his little square door.
“Don' know nuffin 'bout it,” said he, “'ceptin' she done rolled 'way
over 'bout foh times. Yass she did, suh! I know. I felt her doin' it.”
“No,” he answered a query. “I wasn't what you-all would call scairt,
that is, not really SCAIRT--jess a little ne'vous. All I had to do was
to feed her slabs and listen foh my bell. You see, Cap'n Ma'sh, he was
in cha'ge.”
“No, sir,” Captain Marsh was saying emphatically to his employer.
“I can't figure it out except on one thing. You see it's stove from
UNDERNEATH. A sea would have smashed it from above.”
“Perhaps you grounded in between seas out there,” suggested Orde.
Marsh smiled grimly.
“I reckon I'd have known it,” said he. “No, sir! It sounds wild, but
it's the only possible guess. That last sea must've lifted us bodily
right over the corner of the pier.”
“Well--maybe,” assented Orde doubtfully.
“Sure thing,” repeated Marsh with conviction.
“Well, you'd better not tell 'em so unless you want to rank in with Old
Man Ananias,” ended Orde. “It was a good job. Pretty dusty out there,
wasn't it?”
“Pretty dusty,” grinned Marsh.
They turned away together and were at once pounced on by Leopold Lincoln
Bunn, the local reporter, a callow youth aflame with the chance for a
big story of more than local interest.
“Oh, Captain Marsh!” he cried. “How did you get around the pier? It
looked as though the wave had you caught.”
Orde glanced at his companion in curiosity.
“On roller skates,” replied Marsh.
Leopold tittered nervously.
“Could you tell me how you felt when you were out there in the worst of
it?” he inquired.
“Oh, hell!” said Marsh grumpily, stalking away.
“Don't interview for a cent, does he?” grinned Orde.
“Oh, Mr. Orde! Perhaps you--”
“Don't you think we'd better lend a hand below?” suggested Orde,
pointing to the beach.
The wild and picturesque work of rescue was under way. The line had
been successfully brought to the left of the lighthouse. To it had been
attached the rope, and to that the heavy cable. These the crew of the
schooner had dragged out and made fast to a mast. The shore end passed
over a tall scissors. When the cable was tightened the breeches buoy was
put into commission, and before long the first member of the crew was
hauled ashore, plunging in and out of the waves as the rope tightened or
slackened. He was a flaxen-haired Norwegian, who stamped his feet, shook
his body and grinned comically at those about him. He accepted with
equanimity a dozen drinks of whisky thrust at him from all sides,
swigged a mug of the coffee a few practical women were making over
an open fire, and opposed to Leopold Lincoln Bunn's frantic efforts a
stolid and baffling density. Of none of these attentions did he seem to
stand in especial need.
The crew and its volunteers worked quickly. When the last man had come
ashore, the captain of the life-saving service entered the breeches buoy
and caused himself to be hauled through the smother to the wreck. After
an interval, a signal jerked back. The buoy was pulled in empty and the
surf car substituted. In it were piled various utensils of equipment.
One man went with it, and several more on its next trip, until nearly
the whole crew were aboard the wreck.
Carroll and Mina stayed until dusk and after, watching the long heavy
labour of rescue. Lines had to be rocketed from the schooner to the
other vessels. Then by their means cable communication had to be
established with the shore. After this it was really a matter of routine
to run the crew to the beach, though cruel, hard work, and dangerous.
The wrecks were continually swept by the great seas; and at any moment
the tortured fabrics might give way, might dissolve completely in the
elements that so battered them. The women making the hot coffee found
their services becoming valuable. Big fires of driftwood were ignited.
They were useful for light as well as warmth.
By their illumination finally Orde discovered the two girls standing,
and paused long enough in his own heavy labour of assistance to draw
Carroll one side.
“You'd better go home now, sweetheart,” said he. “Bobby'll be waiting
for you, and the girls may be here in the crowd somewhere. There'll be
nobody to take care of him.”
“I suppose so,” she assented. “But hasn't it been exciting? Whose
vessels were they; do you know?”
Orde glanced at her strangely.
“They were ours,” said he.
She looked up at him, catching quickly the wrinkles of his brow and the
harassed anxiety in his eyes. Impulsively she pulled him down to her and
kissed him.
“Never mind, dear,” said she. “I care only if you do.”
She patted his great shoulders lightly and smiled up at him.
“Run, help!” she cried. “And come home as soon as you can. I'll have
something nice and hot all ready for you.”
She turned away, the smile still on her lips; but as soon as she was out
of sight, her face fell grave.
“Come, Mina!” she said to the younger girl. “Time to go.”
They toiled through the heavy sand to where, hours ago, they had left
Prince. That faithful animal dozed in his tracks and awoke reluctantly.
Carroll looked back. The fires leaped red and yellow. Against them
were the silhouettes of people, and in the farther circle of their
illumination were more people cast in bronze that flickered red. In
contrast to their glow the night was very dark. Only from the lake there
disengaged a faint gray light where the waters broke. The strength of
the failing wind still lifted the finer particles of sand. The organ of
the pounding surf filled the night with the grandeur of its music.