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Title: Rugged Water (1924)
Author: Joseph C. Lincoln
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eBook No.: eBook No.:  0200621.txt
Language:  English
Date first posted: September 2002
Date most recently updated: September 2002

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Title:      Rugged Water
Author:     Joseph C. Lincoln






CHAPTER I


A dark night, but a clear one.  No clouds, no fog, and the wind but
a light southwesterly breeze.  Warm, too, for November.  The little
room in the tower of the Setuckit Life-Saving Station was chilly,
of course--a landsman might have considered it decidedly cold--but
to Seleucus Gammon, the member of the Setuckit crew on watch in the
tower, it was warm, noticeably and surprisingly so.  Seleucus, who
had come on duty dressed for the ordinary November temperature, had
unbuttoned the heavy jacket which he wore over his sweater and had
hung his cap on the hook on the wall, beside the round, brass
ship's clock.  The brass of the clock was polished to a mirror-like
glisten.  So, too, was the metal of the telescope on its stand in
the middle of the room.  So, also, was every particle of brass or
nickel in that room.  There was no light to render these things
visible, and no stove or other heating apparatus.  Heat within and
cold without meant frost-covered window panes and consequent
difficulty in looking through and from those windows, in keeping
watch up and down the beaches and over the stretches of sea and
shoal.  In many stations at this period it was not customary to
keep a man on watch in the tower at night; the regulations did not
require it and the matter was left to the discretion of the keeper.
At Setuckit, however, night watch in the tower was a part of the
regular routine; at least, since Captain Oswald Myrick had been in
charge there.

Seleucus strolled slowly about the glass-inclosed room, stopping to
peer from each window in turn.  He was a huge, bulky man, with a
salt sea roll in his walk, and as he lumbered from window to window
in the darkness, a seeker for comparisons might have been reminded
of a walrus wallowing about in an undersized tank.  A bald head and
a tremendous sweep of shaggy mustache were distinct aids to the
walrus suggestion.

The views from each window were made up solely of blackness,
spotted with fiery points.  To Seleucus, however, the blackness was
underlaid with the familiarity of long acquaintance, and every pin
prick of fire a punctuation on a page he knew by heart.  For
example, to the east, ten miles away, the steady white spark was
the Orham lighthouse shining out from the high sand bluffs fronting
the Atlantic.  Far out, and more to the south, another brilliant
point marked the position of the lightship at Sand Hill Shoal, and
still farther to the southeast and fainter, because of distance,
were the lanterns of the Broad Rip lightship.  Swinging to the
south he noted two more lightships, those marking respectively the
edges of the Tarpaulin and Hog's Back, smaller shoals but quite as
dangerous as their bigger brothers.  To the west was still another,
that moored by Midchannel Shoal, and, eight miles beyond, and
flashing at minute intervals, was the lighthouse on Crow Ledge,
unique because, like the house in the Scriptural story, it was
founded upon a rock, and rocks are distinct novelties along the
Cape Cod coast.

On this night--or morning, for it was almost that--and visible
because of the unwonted clearness of the atmosphere, one more spark
pricked the southern horizon, the light at Long Point, on
Nonscusset Island.  Between these were scattered others, much less
brilliant, and these the watcher knew to be the lights of vessels--
schooners for the most part--taking advantage of the fair weather
to make safe passage between ports south of "Down East."  From the
tower of the Setuckit Life-Saving Station in the later years of the
nineteenth century--the years before the United States Life-Saving
Service was taken over by the Naval Department and rechristened the
Coast Guard, before the era of wireless stations and the Cape Cod
Canal--on a clear night from Setuckit tower one might count no less
than six lighthouses and six lightships, not including that of
Setuckit lighthouse itself, which reared its blazing head two miles
up the beach, and was, therefore, a next-door neighbor.

A beautiful coast in summer; in winter a wicked, cruel coast,
where, so the records show, there were more wrecks during a period
of fifty years than at any other spot, except one, from Key West to
Eastport, Maine.

These matters, statistical and picturesque, were not, of course, in
the thoughts of Mr. Gammon as he stood, hands in pockets, gazing
through the tower window facing west.  His mental speculations were
engaged with matters much more personal and intimate.  The little
ship's clock on the wall had just struck twice, so he knew that the
time was two bells, or five o'clock, therefore it would soon be
daybreak, and, later, sunrise, when his watch would end.  He knew
also that, down below, in the kitchen of the station, Ellis Badger,
who happened to be cook that week, was preparing breakfast.
Breakfast, the first meal of the four in the station routine of
those days, was served before daylight.  Dinner was at eleven,
supper at four, and there was an extra meal about eight in the
evening.

Seleucus thought of breakfast and his always present and enthusiastic
appetite hailed the thought joyfully.  Then he remembered the sort
of cook Badger was, and the joy was chilled with a dash of
foreboding.  It was Ellis Badger who had accidentally dropped the
kitchen cake of soap into the bean pot on a Saturday of the previous
winter.  The comments of his comrade were expressed with feeling.

"You ain't mad, be you, Seleucus?" queried Mr. Badger solicitously.
Gammon's reply was noncommittal.

"I don't know's I'm so mad that they'll have to shoot me, Ellis,"
he observed.  "I ain't bit nobody yet.  But I am beginnin' to show
signs--I'm frothin' at the mouth."

It was he, also, who suggested that the soap be put into the Badger
coffee.  "So's it'll be strong enough to wash with," he explained,
referring to the coffee.

His anticipations concerning breakfast were not, therefore,
entirely free from misgiving, but forty-nine years of a life spent
amid storms--meteorological always and matrimonial for the latter
half--had endowed Seleucus with a sort of amphibious philosophy,
and made him more or less weatherproof.  The most savage
northeaster blew itself out eventually, and Mrs. Gammon--her
Christian name was Jemima--stopped talking if one had sufficient
fortitude to endure to the end.  The sane procedure during both
trials was patiently to wait for that end, and think of something
else while waiting.

So, true to his code, and reflecting that, after all, a poor
breakfast was better than no breakfast, Mr. Gammon shifted his
thought, also his position, and, walking to the eastern window,
looked out from that.  As he stood there the eastern horizon turned
from black to gray, the low-hanging stars above it began to dim;
and below him the sand dunes and the cluster of shanties and fish
houses of the little settlement at Setuckit Point slowly emerged
from the gloom, separated, and assumed individual shape and
proportions.

A step sounded on the stair leading to the tower, the door opened
and Calvin Homer entered the little room.  Homer was Number One man
at the Setuckit Station; that is, his was, next to Captain Oswald
Myrick's, the position of greatest responsibility and command.  On
board a ship, he would have ranked as mate and his associates would
have added a "sir" to their remarks when addressing him.  On the
station records he was "Surfman Number One," but his comrades
called him Calvin or "Cal," just as they called their commander
"Cap'n Oz" or "Ozzie."  The keeper of a Cape Cod Life-Saving
Station, at that time, had absolute and autocratic control of his
crew while the latter were on duty, and the crew recognized and
obeyed that authority.  But, being independent Yankees, they
remained democrats so far as verbal homage to rank and title was
concerned.

Homer came into the tower room, closing the door behind him.  He
was twenty-six, lean, square shouldered, smooth faced, gray eyed,
and sunburned to a deep brick red.  He had just come up from his
cot in the sleeping quarters on the second floor, and was wearing
his blue uniform suit, with "NO. 1" in white upon the coat sleeves.
Gammon noticed the uniform immediately.

"Hello, Cal," he drawled.  "Up airly, ain't you?  And all togged
out, too.  Practicin' up to show off afore the girls next summer?"

Homer smiled.  "Next summer is a long way off, Seleucus," he said.

"Huh!  Maybe 'tis when a feller is as young as you be.  I'll be
fifty next June, and I can smell Mayflowers already.  How's Cap'n
Ozzie this mornin'?"

"I don't know.  His door is shut, so I hope he's asleep, and his
wife, too.  I didn't hear anybody moving as I came by.  It was a
quiet night, so maybe they both slept.  I hope so.  The cap'n needs
all the rest he can get.  He starts for home this morning."

"Um-hum.  I know he does.  Peleg Myrick's goin' to take him over,
they tell me.  Good thing there's a smooth sea.  That old craft of
Peleg's is as sloppy as a dish pan if there's more'n a hatful of
water stirrin'.  I went up to Orham along of Peleg my last liberty
day but one, and--crimustee!--I give you my word I thought I'd be
drownded afore we made Baker's beach.  I told Peleg so.  'What's
the matter with ye?' says Peleg.  'This boat of mine 'll weather
anything!' he says; 'and this ain't nothin' but a moderate blow.
You won't get overboard this trip.'  'I know it,' I told him, 'and
that's the trouble.  When I'm overboard I can cal'late to make out
to swim, but aboard here all I can do is set still and wait for the
tide to go over my head.  That last sea we shipped filled my
ileskins full to the waist.  Let me take your hand pump so I can
see how bad my boots leak.'  He, he!  Crimus!  Peleg named that
boat of his The Wild Duck.  I told him he'd ought to named her The
Loon.  'A loon spends half his time under water,' I says.  He, he!
. . .  Humph!  Wonder to me Ozzie didn't have a hoss 'n' team to
come down over the beach to fetch him and his wife.  Don't see why
he didn't, do you?"

Homer shook his head.  "It's a rough road and a long one," he said.
"I guess his wife thought it would be easier for a sick man to
travel to West Harniss by water.  And it's almost a flat calm just
now."

"Just now?  Do you mean 'tain't likely to last?"

"I'm afraid not--all day.  The glass has fallen a good deal since
ten o'clock and it's still going down. . . .  Well, has anything
happened since you came on watch?"

"Nothin' but watchin', and plenty of that.  But you ain't told me
why you've got your dress-up clothes on?  Don't expect no summer
boarders down to watch beach drill this time of year, do you?"

"Hardly.  I put the uniform on to please the skipper.  He told me
he wished I would.  Said it would make him feel a little more as if
he was leaving somebody in command here when he quit.  He's pretty
blue at going, but I tell him he'll be back here as well as ever in
a fortnight or so."

Mr. Gammon shook his head, sighed, and reached into his pocket for
his chewing tobacco.

"That's what you told him, was it?" he observed.  "Humph!  Ain't
you ever been to prayer meetin'?"

"I guess I have.  What's that got to do with it?"

Seleucus inserted the plug of tobacco between his teeth and bit and
tugged until he separated a section, which he tucked into his
cheek.

"I used to go to Methodist vestry meetin' myself about thirty year
ago or such a matter," he observed.  "Used to go consider'ble in
them days, I did, when I was home from fishin'.  I was young and my
morals wan't settled in the straight and narrer channel, same as
they be now. . . .  Eh?  What did you say?"

"I didn't say anything."

"Didn't you?  Then it must have been what you looked that I heard.
I went to meetin' Friday nights pretty reg'lar.  I was always the
churchy kind. . . .  Didn't you say nothin' THEN?"

"No."

"Humph!  You're missin' chances.  I did go, for a fact.  You see,
there was a girl that--well, never mind that part.  But at them
meetin's, time and again, I've heard your great-uncle, Zebedee
Ryder, him that kept grocery store, rant and rave about the sin of
lyin'.  He wouldn't tell a lie for nothin', your Uncle Zeb
wouldn't.  Used to make his brags about it right out loud."

"Well, it was something to brag about--if it was true."

"Oh, I guess likely 'twas true enough.  Nigh as I ever heard Zeb
Ryder WOULDN'T tell a lie--for nothin'.  If there was five cents to
be got a holt of then things might be different. . . .  But,
anyhow, what I'm tryin' to say is that I can't understand how you,
one of Uncle Zeb's own--er--ancestors, can sit in the skipper's
room down below there and tell Ozzie that he'll be back here in a
fortni't.  You know plaguy well he'll never come back."

The younger man did not answer immediately.  When he did he said,
"I surely hope he will."

"So do I--in one way.  In another I don't.  Oz Myrick has been
life-savin' for twenty-odd year.  He was one of the first surfmen
on one of the fust reg'lar crews ever set patrollin' a Cape Cod
beach.  Afore that he was fishin' on the Banks, and swabbin' decks
aboard a square rigger when he wan't more'n a kid.  He's pretty
nigh as much of a veteran as Superintendent Kellogg, down to
Provincetown.  It's time he give up and took a rest.  Yes, and his
check is about ready to be handed in for keeps.  He's sick and it's
the kind of sickness folks his age don't get over."

Homer nodded.  "He knows it," he said, briefly.

"Course he knows it.  Cap'n Oz ain't anybody's fool.  Told you he
was cal'latin' to try and have you appointed keeper in his place,
didn't he?"

Homer looked at him sharply.  "What makes you say that?" he
demanded.

"'Cause he told me he was cal'latin' to.  Good notion, too."

His companion shook his head.  "I'm not so sure that the notion is
good," he said.  "There are at least five men here, and one of 'em
is yourself, who have been in the service longer than I have."

"Humph!  I cal'late you could find plenty of fellers up to
Charlestown jail that have been in there long enough, but
'twouldn't be one of them that would be picked out for warden.  It
takes more'n a kag of salt mackerel on legs to handle this job down
here.  It takes a man--with brains.  We've got a good crew, there's
no doubt about that."

"You bet there isn't!"

"I shouldn't take no such bet.  They're all right, for this
Setuckit crew.  But what are they?  Why, the heft of 'em are
fellers like me, that have been in and on and around salt water so
long the pickle drips off 'em when they walk.  They ain't scared of
nothin'.  I give in to that, but that ain't because they don't know
enough to be.  They're too stubborn to let anything scare 'em,
that's why.  But they're as independent and cranky as a parcel of
washtubs afloat.  A man they know and have confidence in, he can
handle 'em.  But you let somebody try it that ain't that kind and
then see.  Would I take the job of keeper down here?  I, nor Hez
Rogers, nor Ed Bloomer, nor Sam Bearse, nor any of 'em?  You bet we
wouldn't!"

"Why not?"

"'Cause we've got sense enough to realize the kind of sense we
ain't got.  A good fo'mast hand don't necessary make a good
skipper.  Takes more'n rubber muscles and codline hair, that does.
Takes brains, I tell you.  You've got brains, Cal, along with nerve
and the rest of it.  You can handle a schooner in a shoal, or a
surfman that's been on liberty, and has come back full of pepper
tea, and do it judgmatically.  When you get through the wreck's
afloat, if she's floatable, and the man's ready and willin' to go
to work again.  And all hands are satisfied the right thing's been
done.  This crew here--the heft of 'em--would row you to hell over
bilin' water if you give the word to launch.  They've seen you go
there and back again more'n once since Cap'n Oz was took sick.
They'd be glad to have you for skipper.  And Ozzie wants you to be,
and so does District Superintendent Kellogg, for the matter of
that.  There's only one man I know that hadn't ought to want it."

"Who is that?"

"You yourself.  You ain't a Scrabbletown lobscouser, like the most
of us.  Your old man was a square-rig cap'n, in his day, and your
mother was a Baker and time was when her folks was counted high
toned and worth money, so I've heard tell.  You're smart.  You've
been to high school.  You could get a job up to Boston, and have
vessels of your own runnin' ashore afore you died, if you'd mind to
set out for it.  What in the nation you want to waste your time
chasin' other folks's wrecks is more'n I can make out.  If you want
to be keeper of Setuckit Life-Savin' Station I cal'late you can.
But WHY you want to, that I don't know.  Why do you, Cal?  What
makes you stay here?"

The young man shook his head.  "I don't know," he replied.  "I
guess it's because--because--well, you could have had a good job
ashore last winter, Seleucus.  I know of at least one that was
offered you.  Why do YOU stay here?"

Gammon grinned.  "'Cause I was born a darn fool, and ain't growed
out of the habit, I cal'late," he said.  "I swear off every fall
and vow I'm through life-savin'.  Then I turn to and swear on
again.  There's somethin' about this--this crazy job that gets a
feller, same as rum.  I like it."

Homer nodded.  "I know," he said.  "And it's the same way with me.
I like it--and I can't give it up--yet.  I went into the service
just as a time-filler four years ago.  I had been at home up in the
village for three months with mother; she was sick, and I had to be
there.  Then she died and--well, there was nothing else in the way
of work in sight, and here was sixty-five a month, and a good deal
of fun.  I meant to stay six months, perhaps.  I'm here yet."

"Yes, so you be.  But you don't have to stay here, twelve mile from
nowhere, do you?"

"No-o.  But--well, I seem to be married to the job."

Seleucus shivered.  "Boy," he said solemnly, "don't talk that way
at your age.  If you was married you'd have an excuse for the
twelve mile--yes, or fifty. . . .  There, there!  Let's talk about
somethin' cheerful.  There was a Swede drownded off a schooner down
along Race Point last week, so Wallie Oaks was tellin' me.  He see
it in the Boston paper day afore yesterday when he was over to
Harniss."

The clock struck three bells and, later, four.  The gray streak
along the eastern horizon broadened, turned to rose and then
crimson.  Over the edge of the Atlantic, seen beyond the distant
roofs of Orham, rolled the winter sun.  Seleucus yawned, stretched
and took his cap from the hook.

"And that's over," he observed thankfully, referring to his term on
watch.  "One more night nigher the graveyard, as my grandmother
used to say, by way of brightenin' up breakfast.  Well, I don't
need no brightenin' up for my breakfast.  And you ain't had yours
neither, have you?  Here's Sam.  Cal, let's you and me go down and
mug up."

Sam Bearse, raw boned, tanned and mustached, had entered the room
while his fellow surfman was speaking.  He grunted a "How be you,
Seleucus?  Hello, Cal," and, hanging his cap up on the hook,
prepared to take over the tower watch.  Homer and Gammon descended
to the kitchen.  Then they "mugged up," that is, they ate breakfast
together.  The other men, having already breakfasted and washed the
dishes--each washing his own--were now smoking and skylarking
outside the station in the sunshine.  It being clear weather, no
one was on beach patrol that morning.

Homer finished first, and, leaving his comrade still busy with
coffee and doughnuts, rose from the table and prepared to go out.

"I'll attend to my dishes when I come in, Seleucus," he said.  "I'm
going to look around a minute or two."

Seleucus nodded.  "Heave ahead," he observed, his mouth full.
"I'll be done after a spell.  Cal'latin' to have another cup of
Ellis's coffee."

"That'll be the fourth, won't it?"

"Um-hum.  But it takes about five of this slumgullion to make one
of reg'lar coffee.  If I didn't have no more body to me than this
coffee's got, I'd have to hire help to find myself on a dark night.
Like drinkin' fog, 'tis.  Every doughnut I eat sinks right down
through to the bottom."

There was a chill in the air in spite of the sunshine, but to
Calvin Homer and his associates the morning was astonishingly mild
and balmy.  A little breeze had sprung up, and had shifted more
toward the north; the beach grass in the hollows between the dunes
and on their crests was waving, the water of the bay was blue and
sparkling.  Over all, as always at Setuckit, sounded the surge and
hiss and thunder of the surf along the beach on the ocean side.

Hezekiah Rogers, surfman Number Four, hailed Homer as the latter
passed.

"Wind's breezin' on a little mite, Cal," he said.  "And cantin'
round more to the no'th.  Have you noticed the glass?  Fallin',
ain't it?"

"Yes.  It has been falling all night."

"I bet you!  Never see a day like this, this time of year, but it
turned out to be a weather breeder.  We'll have one old bird of a
no'theaster by nighttime, see if we don't.  And I have to turn out
on patrol at twelve.  Godfreys!  Who wouldn't sell the farm and go
to sea?"

Homer smiled, but did not answer, and, turning the corner of the
station, walked toward the buildings at its rear.  Two cats and a
weather-beaten terrier, the latter a survivor from a wrecked
schooner, came trotting to meet him.  In a lath inclosure adjoining
the barn, a half dozen hens and a rooster with most of his tail
feathers blown or pecked away were scratching--presumably for
exercise--at the sand.  In the barn itself, the station horses--a
pair of sturdy animals, named respectively, "Port" and "Starboard"--
were standing in their stalls.  The horses were almost as valuable
members of the Setuckit life-saving outfit as the humans.  They
pulled the boat wagons to the shore, hauled the heavy car bearing
the beach apparatus--the latter comprising the Lyle gun, the
breeches buoy, the life car, and all their paraphernalia--on the
rare occasions when the apparatus was used, and were respected,
pampered and better fed than their two-legged comrades.  Homer
patted their heads, made sure that they had been given their
morning rations, and turned to go out.  Hez Rogers met him at the
barn door.

"Olive's lookin' for you, Cal," he announced.  "She says Ozzie's up
and rigged and ready to leave, and wants to see you."

Olive Myrick was the captain's wife.  Her home was at West Harniss,
nine miles distant across the bay, but she had come down to the
station when her husband was taken ill, and had been living there
for three weeks.  The keeper was permitted, under the regulations,
to have his wife with him.  In some stations she acted as cook and
general housekeeper, receiving a small allowance for the work.

Homer found her waiting for him in the kitchen.  She looked tired
and worn and anxious, as she had reason to be.

"Oswald wants to see you, Calvin," she said.  "We're goin' over to
the main just as soon as the boat's ready and he's set on talkin'
with you afore he leaves.  Go right in."

The skipper's room at Setuckit was on the first floor, leading from
the mess room.  Entering, Homer found Captain Myrick, dressed and
sitting in a rocking chair.  The skipper was pale and haggard and
his clothes hung loosely on his body.  He had lost weight during
his illness.  Calvin hailed him cheerfully.

"Good morning, Cap'n," he said.  "Well, well! you look fit as a
fiddle.  All taut and rigged and ready to put to sea, eh?  We're
going to miss you, but we'll be all the more glad when you come
back.  And you couldn't have better weather for the trip."

Myrick ignored the reference to his appearance, and the weather.
He motioned to the only other chair in the room.

"Sit down, Cal," he ordered.  "I've got a word or so to say to
you."

Homer took the other chair.  Captain Myrick drew a long breath.

"Calvin," he went on, "I'm startin' on my last cruise, and I know
it."

His subordinate hastened to protest.  "No, no!" he exclaimed.  "You
shouldn't talk that way.  What you need is rest.  You'll be all
right in--"

"Sshh!  We ain't young ones, you and I, and there's no sense in
makin' believe.  I'm never comin' back.  I've got my orders and I'm
bound in.  I know it--although I try to let Olive think I don't.
But I do, and so does she, and so do you and all hands.  I'm
through."

"But, Cap'n--"

"Sshh!  You're wastin' time, and I ain't got much more to waste,
down here.  There'll be a new skipper at the Setuckit Station
inside of a month--inside of a week, if my say-so counts--and
you're the man that'll have the job, if you want it.  What I want
to make sure of is that you do want it.  Do you?"

Homer hesitated.  He did want the appointment, wanted it more than
he had ever wanted anything in his life, but he liked and admired
the man before him, and his sense of loyalty was strong.

"I don't see any use in talking about that," he declared
stubbornly.  "You're the keeper here, and there never was a better
one.  I've enjoyed working under you and I'd like nothing better
than to keep on doing it, as long as I stay in the service."

"Um-hum.  Well, what I'm asking you is if you're figgerin' on
stayin' in the service.  Are you?"

"Yes.  I guess so.  For the present, anyway."

"You guess so?  Ain't you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure.  But--"

"Never mind the buts.  What do you want to stay for?  It ain't the
pay.  I've been chasin' wrecks for twenty-odd year, and all I'm
gettin' is seventy-five a month.  You could earn more'n that--a
smart young feller like you--at almost anything ashore.  What are
you wastin' your time life-savin' for?"

It was the same question Seleucus Gammon had asked that very
morning.  And Homer had asked himself that question many times
during the past months.  And the answer, however unsatisfactory,
was always the same.

"I like the work, Cap'n," he replied.  "I realize the pay amounts
to nothing.  It isn't that.  It is just--well, there is something
about it that--that--"

"I know.  And I know what 'tis, too.  It's the same thing that
makes a feller go out codfishin' right along, winter and summer,
when he could earn more money sawin' wood at home."

"Yes.  But, you see--well, it's a man's job."

"So's sawin' wood.  But I know what you mean.  This life-savin'
game IS a man's job--for a boy's wages.  And it's more'n that;
there's the gamble in it.  You kind of gamble against all outdoors
for your life and the other man's.  I know--Lord, don't I!  It's
that, and the salt in your blood and mine, that makes us stick to
it.  And there's a kind of pride, too.  Cal, the average man would
call me a fool, and I guess I am, but I've took more pride in
keepin' this station the way it ought to be than I would bein'
President of the United States."

"I understand.  And you've kept it well, too."

"Yes, I cal'late I can say I have.  And that's another thing I
wanted to say to you.  If you're sure you want to be keeper here,
I'm goin' to recommend you and my word ought to carry some heft
with the superintendent.  But, if you ARE skipper of this station,
I want you to promise me you'll keep up the Setuckit record.  Since
I've been here we've handled I don't know how many wrecks, some of
'em we got afloat again and lots of 'em we didn't, but we never
lost one life.  I'm kind of proud of that."

"You ought to be."

"Maybe so; I am, anyhow.  And there's another thing I've took pride
in.  There's never been a call come to this station yet that we
ain't answered.  There never was a vessel in distress off our
section--and some that weren't ours--that we ain't gone out to her,
no matter how much of a gale of wind was blowin' nor what kind of a
sea was runnin'.  And we never started and then give up and turned
back.  There ain't so many stations can say that."

"There aren't any others 'round here that I know of."

"Um-um-hum.  Well, I've took some pride in that, too.  And I want
you to promise me you'll try to keep up that record."

"I'll promise you that I'll do my best."

"That ain't quite enough, not at Setuckit, 'tain't.  You've got to
do a little mite more than your best.  You'll have to do things
that ain't possible, if you understand what I mean.  That's what
makes it worth while, this gamblin' game of ours.  A feller has to
look off to wind'ard and sort of grin and say, 'Well, by thunder,
we'll see!'  And then GO and see--and see it through.  Do you get
my meanin'?"

Calvin nodded.  "I ought to, I've watched you," he said, grimly.
"Look here, Cap'n Oz: I don't want to brag, but I think--I THINK
you can count on me.  I like the--the gamble, as you call it."

"All right, boy!  All right.  I ain't afraid of you, and I haven't
been.  Just wanted to tell you how the old man was feelin' when he
got his clearance papers, that's all.  I'm backin' you and I'm
bettin' on you, too. . . .  Now one thing more.  You know this crew
pretty well."

"There's none better."

"No, there ain't.  They'll go anywheres and do anything, with the
right man to lead 'em.  But with the wrong man. . . .  You know, a
crew like ours is made up of kind of rough stuff.  That's why
they're here.  There's some hellions amongst 'em--bound to be.
You've got to handle 'em easy.  They'll get drunk, some of 'em, if
they have a chance, and they'll come back from liberty ready to
take charge and run things--some of 'em, as I say.  Well, you've
got to use judgment.  You've got to see some things and put your
foot down on 'em hard.  And you've got to forget to see some other
things.  A parcel of husky men all alone down here on the beach,
with not so much to do a good deal of the time, is like a school
full of young ones.  If a new teacher comes on deck, the first
thing the young ones do is to find out whether he's boss or they
are.  If he is they're for him; he can handle 'em like a breeze.
But if they find he ain't sure whether he's boss or not--then look
out.  You know this crew of ours well as I do.  Give 'em a pretty
free helm, but don't let 'em come up into the wind on you.  See?"

"I see."

"Well, I cal'late that's about all.  Good luck to you, Cal.  Don't
forget your old skipper altogether, and, if you can find a chance
to run over to Harniss and see me, do it. . . .  Only don't put it
off too long or I may not be there."

"Now, Cap'n, what makes you talk like that?  You know--"

"Yes, I do.  So do you, boy. . . .  Whew!  I wouldn't believe
talkin' would make me so tuckered.  I've rowed five mile through a
head wind and sea, and had more breath left than I've got now. . . .
Well, Olive, what is it?"

His wife had entered the room.  "You must get your things on,
Oswald," she said.  "Peleg is here, and the boat's ready."

"So?  Then I cal'late I'll be ready in a couple of shakes.  So
long, Cal.  See you outside.  Tell the boys to stand by so's I can
say good-by to 'em."

That good-by was a short ceremony.  Peleg Myrick's catboat, the
Wild Duck, was anchored in the little cove on the bay side, near
the station.  Peleg's dory was hauled up on the beach, and its
owner was standing beside it, ready for his passengers.  Mr.
Myrick--he was not related to Captain Oz--was a stubby specimen of
marine architecture, the skin of his hands and face tanned to the
color of mahogany and looking more like leather than a human
cuticle.  The skin of his feet and his legs from the knees down was
of similar shade and consistency, a fact perfectly obvious during
spring, summer and fall, when he was accustomed to "go barefoot."
Now, as it was winter, he wore a mammoth pair of high rubber boots.
The remainder of his attire was a hit or miss jumble of black
shirt, sou'wester, faded sweater and patched trousers.  His eyes
were small and blue, his nose big and red, and his mouth and most
of his chin hidden beneath a tousled heap of mustache, which, as
Seleucus Gammon described it, looked like "a mess of dry seaweed
that had blowed up under the lee of his face and stuck fast."  He
lived alone in a shanty four miles up the beach, and the summer
visitors called him the "hermit."  In his youth he had played the
fiddle at the Orham dances.  He had that fiddle yet and lonely
surfmen on evening beach patrol heard it wailing as they passed his
shanty.  He earned the few dollars he needed by clamming and
fishing.  Between times he prophesied concerning the weather.

He stood by his dory's bow, and about him stood the off-duty
members of the Setuckit life-saving crew, Calvin Homer and Seleucus
among them.  Captain Oswald, leaning on his wife's arm, walked
slowly from the station to the shore.  Peleg got the dory afloat
and stood, knee deep in the water, waiting.  Captain Myrick turned
to his crew.

"Well, boys," he said, with a one-sided attempt at a grin, "I'm
goin' ashore on a little mite of a spree.  First liberty I've had
for quite a spell.  I leave you and Cal to run things.  Take care
of yourselves."

"We will. . . ."  "Sure thing. . . ."  "Keep sober as you can,
skipper. . . ."  "See you back again pretty soon. . . ."  "Give my
regards to the girls."

These were some of the responses.  Peleg helped his passengers into
the dory.  Then, giving the boat a final shove, he swung over the
side and took up the oars.  Gammon hailed him.

"Say, Peleg," he drawled, "what's the matter with your prophesyin'
factory?  Broke down, has it?  This is about as good a day as we've
had for a month, and, last time you and me talked, you was
cal'latin' on one of them East Injy typhoons.  Said 'twas goin' to
blow the lighthouse out to sea, or somethin' like that."

Peleg's retort was a repetition of the soothsayer's reply to
Caesar.

"Day ain't done yit," he snorted.  "You'd have to tie your hair on
afore to-morrer mornin'--if you had any to tie."

He swung forward and back with the oars.

"So long, boys," called Captain Oz.  "Good luck, Calvin."

The dory moved off, drew abreast of the stubby broad-beamed
catboat, and, a few minutes later, the Wild Duck stood out into the
bay.  The life-savers watched her go.  Then they turned back to the
station.  Seleucus made the only remark.

"There goes a good man, Cal," he observed, sententiously.

Homer did not answer.

All that forenoon the breeze continued to freshen and to pull more
and more from the north to the dreaded northeast.  Beach drill that
afternoon was held beneath a lowering sky, and in the face of what
was already a young gale.  The car containing the Lyle gun and
accompanying apparatus was dragged out by the horses, and the men
went through the maneuvers of shooting the line over the drill mast
set in the sand, rigging the breeches buoy and pulling one of their
comrades from the crosstrees to the dune which represented dry land
and safety.  Ordinarily the drill was a matter of routine, but to-
day there was a sort of grim prophecy in its details.  The glass
was still falling and the thermometer was falling also.  From a
morning phenomenally warm for the time of year the temperature had
changed until, at three o'clock, it was so cold that every gust was
a broadside of icy needles penetrating oilskins and sweaters and
causing the life-savers to slap their mittened hands and kick the
heels of their rubber boots together to stir reluctant circulation.

As they put the car back in its house again Gammon turned to Homer
with a shrug.

"I'm goin' to bow down and make reverence to Peleg next time I see
him," he declared.  "The old skate knew what he was talkin' about
when he give out his proclamations about dirty weather comin'.
It's mean enough now, but it'll be a snorter afore mornin', or I
miss my guess.  Feels like snow, too.  Figgerin' to give the new
skipper a reg'lar break in, ain't they, eh?"

Homer nodded.  He did not feel like talking.  The responsibility of
absolute command was heavy upon him.  If mistakes were made now,
they would be his; if blame came he must take it all.  And the
Setuckit Station had never lost a life.

He was not afraid, in the ordinary sense.  Gales and seas, and the
dangers that come with them, he had experienced often enough.  But
always before he had been under the command of another man.  During
Captain Myrick's illness he had led the crew in many rescues, but
upon the return to the station he had made his report to his
superior, and there his responsibility ended.  Now, as temporary
skipper, it was different; he was not there to obey orders, but to
give them.  And he knew the crew would be watching to see how he
bore himself on trial.

They were watching him already.  He caught sly glances and was
conscious of whispers behind his back.  Those that he heard were
not unkindly in tone--the men liked him--but they were noncommittal.
They were waiting for him to prove himself, and, if he did, well and
good.  If he did not--if he faltered or hesitated, or for one moment
showed that he doubted or was not certain--then, like the school
children with the new teacher, his rule was forever ended.  He might
as well resign at once, for they would force him out of the service
sooner or later.

Walter Oaks, the newest member of the crew, and the one that Homer
liked least, drew alongside as they walked to the station.

"Well, Cap'n Cal," he observed, in a tone loud enough for the
others to hear, "how does it seem to be boss of the ship?  Ain't
goin' to be too stuck-up in your new job to speak to common folks,
are you?"

Calvin smiled.  "I haven't got any new job yet, Wallie," he
replied.

"That's so; so you ain't.  Only just a try-out, as you might say.
Well, it looks as if you'd have somethin' to try you pretty soon.
It's goin' to blow a little mite afore mornin', they tell me.
Don't get scared, Cal.  If we have to go out and you upset the boat
we'll all hang on to Seleucus and drift ashore.  Fat'll always keep
afloat, so they say, and Seleucus has got enough of that.  Ha, ha!"

Gammon himself made answer.

"Hot air's what they fill balloons with," he observed.  "You're
consider'ble of a gas bag, Wallie.  If we capsize I'm cal'latin' to
grab aholt of you and rise right up out of the water."

By supper time snow had begun to fall and when, at ten o'clock, the
order was given for those not on watch to turn in, the station was
trembling in the grip of a northeast blizzard such as seldom
visited even that storm-whipped locality.  The hurricane shrieked
and howled, the snow and flying sand thrashed against the windows,
and above the swish and clatter and scream sounded the eternal
bellowing boom of the great rollers beating the outer beach.

Calvin Homer went to his room, the keeper's room just vacated by
Captain Myrick.  He went there, but he did not undress or go to
bed.  He left the room at frequent intervals to visit the watchman
in the tower, to speak with the returning beach patrols, to attempt
to peer through the windows at the chaos outside.  This last
procedure was wholly useless, the flying snow and sand were jumping
back from the panes like fine shot, and more than once he
momentarily expected those panes to be beaten in.

At four in the morning he was in the kitchen when Joshua Phinney
came in from patrol.  The man was muffled to the eyes, but the
lashes of those eyes were fringed with icicles and his frozen
oilskins cracked and split as Homer helped him to remove them.
Phinney's first move, after being taken out of his shell, was to
seize the huge coffee pot, kept hot and full always at the back of
the range, and pour and drink three cups of its scalding contents.

"Nothing in sight, Josh?" queried Calvin, anxiously.

Phinney was picking the ice from his brows.

"In sight?" he growled.  "Lord A'mighty! there ain't any sight.
You can't see three feet ahead of your jib boom.  All you can do is
feel--if you ain't too numb even to do that."

"The telephone's gone, so Hez tells me."

"Gone!  I fell over two poles myself on the way up.  I don't know's
the halfway house ain't blowed flat by this time."

The halfway house was the little hut on the beach two and a half
miles below the station.  It contained a stove--the fire in which
the patrolmen were supposed to keep alight and replenished--a
telephone instrument, and the keys to the time clocks carried by
those on patrol.  At the halfway house the patrolman from Setuckit
met the patrolman from the Orham Station, the latter building
another two and a half miles further on.

"Did you meet the fellow from Orham?" inquired Homer.

"Yep.  He fell in just as I was tryin' to pick up spunk enough to
crawl out."

"Did he say anything?  Was there any news?"

"NEWS!  No.  He was so froze he couldn't say nothin' at first, and
when he thawed out all he did was swear at the weather.  'Twas Ezry
Cooper, so you can know that the swearin' was done proper, nothin'
left out."

"Sea is over the beach, I suppose?"

"You suppose right.  Down abreast that pint where the Sarah
Matthews come ashore it was runnin' five foot deep and a hundred
foot wide.  I had to go half a mile out of my way to get around
it."

"You didn't hear anything from outside?  No guns, or anything?"

"Hear!  I had to grit my teeth afore I could hear myself think.  If
the whole United States Navy was off the Sand Hill and every ship
blowed up to once you couldn't hear it to-night, I tell you. . . .
Well, anything else, Cal?  If there ain't I'm goin' aloft to turn
in.  Got to roust out Sam first, of course," with a grin.  "He'll
be real thankful to me, won't he, when he finds what he's got to go
out into?"

He went up the stairs to the sleeping quarters.  Three minutes
later Sam Bearse, muffled, booted, sou'westered and oilskinned, his
Coston signal at his belt, came stumbling sleepily down.

"Dirty morning, Sam," was Homer's greeting.  "There'll be something
doing as soon as it is light enough to see, I shouldn't wonder.
Keep a sharp lookout.  Use your Coston, of course; the telephone is
down."

Bearse was filling himself with hot coffee and merely grunted.
Then, pulling on his mittens and buttoning his sou'wester beneath
his chin, he pushed open the door and went out into the churning
blackness.  It took all of Homer's strength to pull that door shut.

At half-past five the call came.  Calvin was on his way up to the
tower when he met Oaks, the man on watch, coming down.

"Sam's burnin' his Coston, Cal," Oaks blurted, excitedly, "He must
see somethin'!  Lord! it's an awful mess to go off in, ain't it?
Cal, do you think you'd better--"

Homer did not stop to hear the rest.  He hurried to the tower room.
The window toward the southeast was open and banging in the gale.
Leaning out, he peered down the beach.  The wind was as strong as
ever and the cold intense, but it had stopped snowing.  A mile or
more away a brilliant glow of red light with an intensely blazing
core spotted the black background.

Homer sprang to the stairs, ran down the first flight and into the
room where the crew, each on his cot, were sleeping the sleep of
the entirely healthy.

"Turn out, boys!" he called, briskly.



CHAPTER II


They were ready in three minutes.  Beside each cot stood its
occupant's rubber boots, their tops folded down, and socks,
underclothes and trousers stuffed inside, ready for instant
donning.  Before Homer turned from the door, the men were on their
feet and dressing.  He went down to the skipper's room--his own
now--and hurriedly scrambled into woolen jacket, oilskins and
sou'wester.  Pulling on a pair of mammoth mittens and taking the
lantern from its hook and lighting it, he pushed open the door and
went out.

The gale struck him as he turned the corner on his way to the barn.
Its force was tremendous.  Like a giant's hand it pushed against
him and the blown sand cut his face as he leaned forward and fought
on.  The door of the stable was closed, but not locked, and the
horses, awakened by the lantern light, turned to look at him as he
entered.  He backed them out of their stalls and began harnessing.
In a few moments others of the crew joined him.  In less than ten
minutes from the time of his leaving the tower room the cart,
bearing the lifeboat, was on its way down the beach.

It was a fight all the way.  The sand was deep and the wheels cut
into it.  The horses did their best, but they, unaided, could never
have made the trip that morning.  The men helped, each tugging at
the ropes attached to the sides of the cart.  No one spoke.  Breath
was a necessity not to be wasted, and conversation in the midst of
that screeching whirlwind would have been unheard.  Each head was
bent, each foot planted doggedly in the sand, and every muscle
strained.  The panting horses pulled like the humans.  Animals and
men had been through it all many times before and each knew what
was expected of him.

In clear weather, under ordinary conditions, they would have
covered the distance in a short time.  As it was, almost half an
hour had elapsed before they reached the foot of the high dune from
which the spot where Bearse's signal burned was visible.  There
Bearse himself met them.

He plowed close to Calvin and bellowed in the latter's ear.

"'Tain't any use to try to get down any further," he panted.
"Surf's runnin' clean over the beach just below here.  I got in
pretty nigh to my waist comin' up.  Might's well launch her right
abreast here, Cal. . . .  Whew!  Did you ever see such a blow in
your life!  And cold!  My Godfreys!"

Homer did not reply.  Instead he asked a question.

"Where is she?" he shouted.

"On the south end of the Sand Hill.  Pretty well out.  Two master,
looks like.  She was sendin' up rockets a while ago, but not now.
Come up yonder; I cal'late it's light enough to make her out--a
little of her, anyhow."

He led the way to the top of the dune and Homer followed.  At this
elevation the extreme force of the hurricane was most evident and
for the moment Calvin was conscious of nothing else.  Then, after
he had caught his breath and mopped the sand and spray from his
eyes, he looked seaward.  It was a gray-and-white upheaval over
which he looked.  In the dim light of early morning he saw the huge
breakers running, in creaming ridges, out, out, out, one behind the
other.  Immediately before him they fell in frothing, leaping
tumult, to surge up the shelving shore to the very base of the
dune.  The middle distance was obscured by driving scud.  He turned
to his companion.  Bearse pointed a mittened hand.

"There she is," he roared, and above the thunder of the sea his
words came only as a faint whisper.  "Off yonder.  You can sight
her once in a while between squalls. . . .  There!  Look!"

Homer looked--and saw.  A mass of crazy wave, a huddle of jumping
froth, and, at one spot above it, two black masts slanted against a
slaty background.  He nodded and turned back.

As they stumbled down the sheltered side of the dune Bearse laid a
hand on his own.

"Goin' to try it?" he queried. . . .  "Oh, all right!" with a one-
sided grin.  "Just as you say.  I always did like exercise."

Back at the cart Calvin shouted brief orders.  Once more the men
and horses bent to the tugs and the cart and its burden emerged
from between the dunes and came out at the top of the sloping
beach.

"Man the surf boat!" shouted Homer.

Each man took his position.  The cart was turned broadside to the
sea.

"Unload. . . .  Take out bolts. . . ."

The bolts which held the vehicle were removed, and the rear and
forward wheels of the boat carriage separated.

"Set."

The boat was lowered to the sand.

"Haul out wheels."

The wheels were pulled out of the way.  With the lifting bar under
her the boat was skidded bow on to the surf.

"Take life belts."

Each man took a life belt from the racks inside the boat and
strapped it over his shoulders and about his waist.  The only one
who did not do this was Badger, the cook, who, according to rule,
would be left ashore in charge of the station during his
commander's absence.

"Ship rowlocks. . . .  Take oars."

Each man at his place--a place fixed by regulation and confirmed by
constant drill--put his rowlock in position, and laid his oar
crosswise on the boat.  Homer gave the outfit a hurried glance of
inspection.

"Shove her down," he ordered.

With a rush they slid the boat down the slope and into the surge.
The men at the bow were knee-deep in water.  Seleucus Gammon found
time to shout a comment.

"Crimus! that feels nice and cool," he bellowed.  "Come in, boys,
the water's fine.  What's the matter, Wallie; tired?  This'll
freshen you up."

Oaks, the comparatively new member of the crew, did not answer.  He
was looking at the walls of white water just ahead.

"In bow," ordered Calvin.

Seleucus and his opposite surfman sprang over the gunwale and
seized their oars.

"Down with her."

As she moved out the other men scrambled in.

"Start rowing. . . .  GO!"

The boat leaped forward into the breakers.  As she did so Homer,
the last man to leave shore, swung over the stern and took up the
heavy steering oar.  A long stroke, another, a moment's wait as a
wave broke just before them, and swept beneath.  Then another
mighty pull, and a rise that lifted them up and up.  Flying foam, a
deluge of icy water, a series of strokes, and then a coast.  They
were over the first breaker.  The men settled to their long pull.
Homer, again swabbing his dripping face with a drenched mitten,
peered ahead and bent his strength to the steering oar.  A good
launch and a lucky one, conditions considered.  They were off.  So
far, so good.

But the launch was only the beginning, a fact which every man
realized--the new skipper most of all.  There remained a row of at
least three miles, through a sea which was establishing a record
even for that coast, and with weather conditions about as bad as
they could be.  Even as exacting a disciplinarian as Superintendent
Kellogg, the hardy veteran in charge of the district, would have
excused a keeper for not risking the lives of his crew that day.
Homer knew this and knew that the men knew it.  Surely, as Oaks had
intimated, his first "try-out" as temporary head of the Setuckit
Station was a tough one.

He was not afraid--for himself.  The excitement of the battle was
too keen for that.  There was a fierce joy in it.  But the sense of
responsibility was always there, when he permitted himself to think
of it.  Responsibility, not only for those lives aboard the
stranded schooner, but for the safety of his comrades, and the
clean record to which Myrick had referred.  He set his teeth, and
when Gammon, tugging at the bow oar, caught his eyes and grimly
grinned, he smiled in return.

The seas were enormous.  Only from their crests could he see ahead.
Each time the boat swung up to the top of one of those hills of
water he peered apprehensively out, fearing that the two black
marks, the masts of the wrecked craft, might no longer be in sight.
But they were there--they still stood.

He looked into the faces under the sou'westers.  Every face was
set, and every man was pulling with all his might.  No one spoke,
they were too busy for that.  Even Seleucus, the loquacious, was
silent, and no ordinary combination of wind and wave could have
prevented him from shouting a profane joke occasionally.  The boat
moved on, slowly, but doggedly; the spray shot over it in sheets,
and froze when it struck.  Men, oars, and rigging were covered with
ice.

The cold, that was the worst of all.  Oilskins glistened like suits
of armor.  Mittens cracked at the knuckles.  Eyebrows and mustaches
hung with icicles.  But they were gaining; with every stroke they
drew nearer to Sand Hill Shoal and the wreck at its southern
extremity.

Suddenly Oaks, at Number Six, stopped rowing.  Homer, watching the
expressions of his men, had of late watched his in particular.  He
had seen it change.  And so he was, in a measure, prepared.

"Go on, Wallie," he shouted.  "Row.  What's the matter with you?"

Oaks tried to rise from the thwart, would have risen, had not Sam
Bearse, at Number Seven, freed one hand and jerked him down again.

"Row, you fool!" growled Sam.

But Oaks did not obey.  His chin was quivering, and, in spite of
the cold, there were beads of perspiration on his cheeks.

"Put me ashore, Cal Homer," he shrieked.  "I--I--Put me ashore!
I can't stand this.  For God's sake, Cap'n, put me ashore!"

The other men kept on rowing--it was mechanical with them--but
their looks expressed the wildest astonishment.  This was something
new in their experience, brand new.

Calvin was as astonished as the rest.

"Put you ASHORE!" he gasped.

"Yes--yes.  Put me ashore.  My God, we--we can't make it!  We'll be
drownded.  I--I've got a--a wife to home.  She--she--Turn round,
Cal Homer, you're crazy!  We can't make it.  We'll drown, I tell
you!  You put me ashore."

The man's nerve was completely gone.  He let go of his oar entirely
and shook both fists in the air.  Bearse pulled the oar into the
boat.

Oaks's threats changed to pleadings.

"Oh, Cap'n, please!" he begged.  "I'll pay you for it.  My pay
check's comin' due next week.  I'll give you half of it--I swear I
will!  I'll give you all.  I--I can't stand it, I tell you.  Turn
around and put me ashore."

There was silence in the boat for an instant, silence broken by a
tremendous "Haw! haw!" from Seleucus Gammon.  The other men, still
rowing as hard as ever, looked at each other, then at Oaks, and
then at their skipper pro tem.  Homer, catching that look, knew
they were waiting to see how he would meet this entirely
unprecedented emergency.  It was another test--a test of his
capacity as "boss."

"I'll pay you," shrieked Oaks again.  "I'll give you--"

But Homer interrupted.

"Sit down," he ordered, savagely.  "Sit down and row."

"But, Cal, please--"

Calvin lifted the big steering oar from the water.

"Down!" he roared.  "Down, or I'll cave your head in with this. . . .
Down!  Now row--or I'll brain you first and drown you afterwards."

At that moment he would have done it.  The men knew it and, what
was more important, Oaks himself seemed to realize it.  Sobbing and
hysterical he sank back upon the thwart, took up the oar which
Bearse pushed into his hands, and began rowing once more.  Homer
glared at him, swallowed hard--and then laughed aloud.  A bellow of
laughter came from the boat.  What might have been a calamity was
now a joke, a joke to be remembered and talked about--when the time
for talking came.

"Almost there, boys," shouted Calvin, cheerfully.  "Keep her
going."

The wreck was in plain sight now, only a quarter of a mile away.  A
little fore and aft schooner, hard and fast aground, at least every
third sea breaking over her from stem to stern.  Men were in the
rigging, five of them.  Calvin waved to them and a hand was waved
in return.

The sea was more wicked than ever there at the tail of the shoal.
It required judgment and experience and skill to bring the lifeboat
up under the lee of the wreck.  But this--with the exception of
Oaks--was a veteran crew, even if their leader was comparatively
new to his job, and, after several trials, it was done.  The
schooner's deck was aslant, and formed a partial shelter.  The
grapnels were made fast.

"Come down!" shouted Calvin, addressing the men in the rigging.
"We'll look out for you.  Hurry!"

One of the men--the captain--shouted a reply.  Above the tumult of
wind and water only a few words were audible in the boat below,
something like "half froze."

"We'll have to go after 'em," called Calvin.  "Come on, one of you.
You, Seleucus, come with me.  The rest of you stay in the boat."

Watching his chance he climbed over the tilted rail, Gammon at his
heels.  The slant of the deck, and the coating of ice upon it, made
each step an effort and a risk.  The schooner's crew were in the
rigging of the foremast.  Their captain, when he realized the
danger his craft was in, had ordered the anchors thrown over.  They
had held, but the wind and tide had not only swung the vessel
around until she grounded, but their force had ripped the windlass
bodily from the deck and jammed it tight in the bow "in the eyes of
her," as a sailor would describe it.  And over that bow the
breakers poured in icy cascades.

The men in the rigging had managed to cast off the lines with which
they had secured themselves there, and, stiffly and slowly, were
climbing down to the lee rail.  Theirs was now, more than ever, a
precarious position.  Again and again the flying water poured over
them.  Plainly the schooner was being beaten to pieces, and the
masts, the foremast especially, might go by the board at any
second.

Homer and Gammon slipped and stumbled forward.  Each time a wave
went over they were obliged to cling with hands and feet.  After
one tremendous sea Calvin, brushing the water from his eyes, looked
anxiously for his companion.

"All right, are you, Seleucus?" he gasped.

Seleucus's voice, punctuated with coughs, made answer.

"All here, so fur," it panted.  "Crimustee! have to do some hangin'
on, don't ye?  Monkey up a tree ain't got nothin' on us.  Yes, he
has, too.  He's got a tail and that ought to help consider'ble.
Wish to the Lord I had one. . . .  Here you go--you!  Give me your
fist."

The first man, a foremast hand, was at the foot of the shrouds.
Between them, and aided by the other life-savers, he was lifted
over the side into the boat.  The other four followed, the captain
last of all.  He had reached the rail, and was about to jump to the
boat when a huge breaker, timed exactly right--or wrong--reared its
head above the schooner's bow.

"Look out!" bellowed Gammon, and from the boat came an echoing yell
of warning.  Homer made a flying leap and a clutch at the oilskin
collar of the man at the rail.  Then the wave broke and he and the
owner of that oilskin were thrown headlong to the slanting deck and
over and over--"like a couple of punkins," as Seleucus described it
afterwards--until they struck the foot of the lee rail with
terrific force.

It was Homer who struck first and for an instant he was stunned.
His head had hit a stanchion of the bulwark and, if it had not been
for his sou'wester, the latter buttoned tightly under his chin, he
would almost certainly have been killed.  As it was, his head was
cut, and when Gammon dragged him out of the surge of water the
blood was running down his face.  But he still clutched the collar
of the schooner's skipper and the pair scrambled dazedly to their
feet.  Seleucus, who had saved himself from similar disaster by
seizing and holding fast to a rope's end, was clear headed and
adequate.

"Over with you," he shouted, pushing the skipper to the rail.
"Come, wake up!" with a shake.  "Into that boat now.  Look out for
him, you fellers."

The rescued man was bundled over the side into three pairs of
outstretched arms.

"Now, Cal," ordered Gammon.

But Homer was capable of taking care of himself by this time.

"You first," he commanded.

"Why . . . why, you durn fool, this ain't no time to. . . .  A-a-ll
right, just as you say, Cap'n."

He jumped into the boat.  Homer cast a comprehensive glance over
the abandoned schooner.  She was doomed; there was absolutely no
hope of saving her or anything aboard her.  He, too, climbed over
the side.

"All right, Cal, are you?" asked Bearse, anxiously, as Calvin took
his place in the stern.

"Yes.  Cast off.  Lively now."

The boat swung away from the wreck.

"All set?  Row."

He braced himself at the steering oar.  The crew began rowing.  The
men from the schooner crouched between the thwarts.

The row home was longer than the outward trip had been, and,
although not quite so hard, was hard enough.  Homer's head was
throbbing wickedly, and he wiped the blood from his face with his
frozen mitten from time to time.  He had determined not to attempt,
with such a load aboard, a landing in the surf upon the outer
beach, but to go around the end of the point to the sheltered
waters of the bay side.

On the "rips" at the end of the point the seas were higher than any
they had yet encountered.  The boat climbed and climbed, and then
dipped and slid.  The cook of the schooner, a half-breed
Portuguese, crouching near the bow directly in front of Gammon,
began to pray aloud.  Seleucus lost patience.

"Shut up!" he roared.  "You can hold meetin' when you get ashore.
Sing hymns then and take up collection, if you want to. . . .  But
now you shut up.  Shut up, or I'll step on you!  Look at Wallie;
see how nice he's behavin'."

Oaks had remained quiet since his outbreak on the way to the wreck.
He was white and shaking, but he had not spoken, and he was rowing,
after a fashion.  The other men laughed.  Homer smiled, but he
shook his head.

"That'll do, Seleucus," he ordered.  "Don't talk--row.  We want to
get home--where it's warm."

The boat soared and coasted over the huge waves.  Midway of the
rips, at the crest of a billow, Calvin looked back in the direction
of the Sand Hill.  The two black marks no longer slanted against
the sky.  The sea had swallowed its prey, the schooner had gone.

Landing in the cove at the back of the point was an easy matter.
They beached the boat, and the rescued men--the cook's prayers now
turned to profane thanksgivings--staggered through the sand to the
station.  Homer drew a long breath.

"Leave her where she is," he commanded, referring to the lifeboat.
"We'll attend to her later.  I don't know how you boys feel, but I
want a cup of coffee."

Gammon, as usual, was the first to answer.

"Coffee!" he repeated.  "I'm so fur gone I want about another
hogshead of that stuff Ellis CALLS coffee.  That shows the state
I'M in."

As they walked up the beach he came close to his commanding
officer.

"How's your head, Cal?" he asked

"Oh, it's achin' a little, but it's all right.  A bump, that's
all."

"Bump!  Crimus!  If that's a bump then a man with his head cut off
has been scratched. . . .  Cal," he added, under his breath, "you
done a good job this mornin'.  You'll make out as skipper at
Setuckit.  I said you would, and now I know it."

A moment later he was inquiring solicitously concerning Oaks.

"That wife of yours ashore, Wallie," he observed, "she ain't lost
you yet, I'm afraid.  Don't have no luck, does she?"

Oaks, sullen and downcast, made no reply.  He was the first to
enter the station and, after swallowing a cup of red-hot coffee,
went up to the sleeping room to change his clothes.  His immediate
future was destined to be unpleasant, and he knew it.

Calvin, too, drank coffee--or Badger's substitute for it--and ate a
few mouthfuls.  But there was too much to be done--and done at
once--to permit of rest.  Dry clothes and warmth were restorers in
themselves, and water and a bandage helped his cut head.  He
treated himself to these luxuries and then set about the duties to
follow.  The men from the schooner had been fed and warmed and
dried, and were now stretched on the cots in the room provided for
such waifs.  There were cases of frostbite among them, and the
skipper--his name was Leary--had a badly bruised knee.  All this
had to be seen to and the regulation entries concerning the wreck
made in the log of the station.

Badger reported that nothing of importance had happened during his
comrades' absence.  Telephone poles and wires were down and there
was no communication with other stations or with the main.  The
glass was still very low, the gale had abated but little, and it
was beginning to snow once more.  Homer went down to the mess room
where the men were sprawled about the stove, smoking and joking.
Wallie Oaks was not among them and Calvin asked concerning him.  A
general grin was his only answer at first, and then Seleucus spoke.

"Wallie's gone out to the barn," he explained.  "He ain't
comf'table, Wallie ain't.  Don't seem to be satisfied nowhere.
When he was off yonder he wanted to be put ashore and now he is
ashore he acts kind of as if he wished he was to sea again.  I
cal'late he's tellin' the horses about his havin' a wife to home.
Seems to me I heard old Port laughin' a minute or two ago."

The men chuckled.  Josh Phinney winked at his companions.

"The heft of us have got wives, fur's that's concerned," he
observed.  "You've got one, ain't you, Seleucus?"

Mr. Gammon regarded him gravely.  "I've got a number eleven boot,
too," he announced; "but I ain't makin' any brags about it.  I'm
just keepin' it to use on folks that get too smart and fresh in
their talk."

Phinney swung round in his chair.

"I wouldn't keep it too long," he said, cheerfully.  "It might
spile.  If you ain't had enough exercise this mornin', and want
more, I cal'late maybe I can accommodate you."

Homer raised a hand.  "I can give you all the exercise you need,"
he said.  "It's snowing again and as thick as mud outside.
Seleucus, you'd better go up to the tower and relieve Ellis on
watch for a while.  He's been there, off and on, all the forenoon.
Ed, you can get ready to go out on patrol."

Ed Bloomer's freckled face lengthened.

"Lord A'mighty!" he groaned.  "Ain't you got NO heart, Cal?  I'm so
stiffened up now that my jints snap like a bunch of firecrackers.
I've got a wife up to Orham myself."

"Well, when you get to the halfway house you'll be two miles nearer
to her.  Think of that, and be happy.  I'm sorry, boys, but it's
the dirtiest weather I've seen since I came here.  Make the most of
what rest you can get.  We're likely to have another job before
this storm is over."

Leaving Bloomer to lament and don his spare suit of oilskins,
Calvin went out to the barn.  In that chilly, gloomy shed he found
Oaks seated on an empty mackerel keg, his elbows on his knees and
his head in his hands.  He looked up, recognized his skipper, and
sank back again.

"What's the matter, Wallie?" queried Homer.  "What are you doing
out here?"

Oaks did not answer, and the question was repeated.

"What are you doing out here alone?" asked Calvin.

"Nothin'.  I want to be alone.  Let me be.  I wish I was dead.  I'd
be better off if I was."

"Oh, I guess not."

"Yes, I would, too.  I'm goin' to quit.  I'm goin' to quit right
now.  Them fellers'll never give me any peace.  I--I wish I'd
drownded.  Yes," savagely, "and I wish they'd drownded first--so's
I could see 'em doin' it."

"Look here, Wallie--"

"Aw, shut up.  I've quit this job.  I'm through.  You haven't got
any more say over me, Cal Homer."

"Yes, I have.  So long as you're here I've got a lot to say.  You
lost your nerve out there this morning, and you made a fool of
yourself, but that's nothing."

"Nothin'!  If you heard all that gang guyin' me you'd think 'twas
somethin'.  I'll kill that Josh Phinney, I swear to God I will!
I'll quit here but I'll kill him and Seleucus Gammon first."

"No, no, you won't.  Stop!  The boys will guy you for a while, but
they'll get over it if you behave like a man and not like a kid.
That mess off there scared you--well, it scared all of us.  But the
rest have been at the work longer than you have, and they didn't
let it get the best of 'em.  Get up off that keg, and stop playing
cry-baby.  Go ahead and do your work and behave like a man and
they'll forget it by and by."

"Forget it!  They'll tell it from one end of Cape Cod to the other.
I'll never--"

"If you behave yourself they won't.  _I_ shan't tell and I'll ask
them not to.  When they tease you--grin, and keep on grinning.
There's no fun in guying a man that laughs.  Square yourself with
'em.  See here, I'll tell you how you can begin the squaring.  Ed
Bloomer is pretty well used up, but it's his turn to go on patrol.
Go in and offer to go in his place."

"His place!  Why, it's his turn, ain't it?  'Tain't mine.  I took
mine last--"

Homer swung about in disgust.  "It looks as if you were getting
about what is coming to you," he said.

Nevertheless, when, a little later, he went up to the tower he
found Gammon chuckling to himself.

"Crimus!" announced Seleucus gleefully.  "What do you suppose has
happened, Cal?  Josh was up here just now and he says that Ed
Bloomer was all rigged and ready to go down the beach when Wallie
comes tearin' in and gives out that he's just dyin' to go instead.
Ed was so surprised he commenced to holler for a doctor, but Wallie
kept sayin' he meant it, and, by crimus, he went, too!  What do you
think of that?"

Homer nodded.  "See here, Seleucus," he said, "I want you fellows
to let up on Wallie.  He isn't very heavy in the upper story, and
he made a fool of himself this morning, but we ought to give him
another chance, seems to me.  He's new at this game--"

"Ain't much newer than you, is he?"

"Why, yes, a little.  And--Well, never mind, I want you and the
rest to stop plaguing him about it.  Give him his chance.  He may
make good next time."

Gammon was skeptical.

"Wanted to quit, didn't he?" he asked.

"He hasn't quit."

"Cal, I know them Oakses, knew old man Oaks, and old Caleb Oaks--
his uncle--and all the rest of 'em from way back.  They're yeller,
I tell you.  Got a streak of it in 'em and they'd have to be biled
afore 'twould come out.  Why, old Caleb, one time he--"

"Never mind.  You get the crew to let up on Wallie.  And I want you
and the rest of the boys to keep quiet on this whole business--
outside of our own crew.  You understand?"

Seleucus turned and looked him over.

"All right, Cap'n," he said, grimly.  "They will, I cal'late, if I
tell 'em you want 'em to.  After the way you handled things this
mornin' they'll do 'most anything you ask.  But, so fur's Wallie's
concerned, 'twon't do much good.  He'll go out patrollin' to make
up along with Ed, and he'll suck around and run errands and wash
dishes and all that, to keep the gang from raggin' him.  But he'd
do as much for anybody else, if he could get somethin' for himself
by doin' it.  He's yeller, like all them Oakses, and he don't
belong in a Setuckit crew.  Up to Crooked Hill, or to North End"--
with the contemptuous scorn of one station for a rival--"he might
get on well enough, but not down here to Setuckit--no, sir!  You
see if I ain't right."

All that day and the following night the storm raged.  There were
no more wrecks, however, and for so much Setuckit was thankful.  By
morning, the wind had gone down and the sun was shining over an
icebound coast, with a tumbling sea visible to the horizon.  The
mainland of the Cape was white with snow and, even at wind-swept
Setuckit, there was snow in the hollows between the dunes.  The
mercury was climbing in the barometer and there was every prospect
of fair weather for the immediate future.

It was Saturday, house-cleaning day at the station.  The men were
washing their clothes, sweeping and scrubbing.  The members of the
crew of the David Cowes were, most of them, up and about and
helping wherever help was permitted.  Captain Leary, his bruised
knee bandaged, and limping with an improvised cane, was nervous and
anxious.  He was, of course, eager to get away and to get word of
the loss of his schooner to his owners, and to send to his family,
at Rockland, tidings of his own safety and that of his crew.
Toward Homer and the men of the station the feelings of himself and
his shipmates were of sincere gratitude and admiration.  He
expressed these feelings in his talks with Calvin.

"Oh, I know you don't want to talk about it, Cap'n," he said, "but
you can't blame us for sayin' 'thank you'!  I had about given up
hope when you fellows hove in sight.  And even after we sighted
your boat I didn't think there was one chance in a thousand of your
gettin' alongside in time.  'Twas a good job you did, and if
anything I can say will help you or your crew at headquarters, it's
going to be said."

Calvin nodded.  "Much obliged, Cap'n Leary," he said, "but don't
trouble yourself.  It's what we're here for, and what we're paid
for.  We have got a good crew at this station and they've never
laid down yet.  I'm sorry about the telephone, and a little
anxious, too.  That was about the wickedest gale I've ever been
through and Gammon and the other men who have been in the service
for years say they never saw a worse one.  When we do get news it
will be pretty serious, I'm afraid.  There must have been more
wrecks than yours, and we'll hear about 'em in a little while."

"How do you expect to hear?"

"Oh, somebody will be coming down from Orham before long.  Some of
the fellows up there have shanties and fishing gear down here and
they'll be anxious to find out what damage has been done.
Superintendent Kellogg will be worried, too, and he'll want to get
in touch with us.  Maybe they've got some news at the Orham Station
by this time.  If they have they'll get it to us as soon as they
can."

"How soon do you figure I and my men can get off?  I don't want to
hurry you, but I'm mighty anxious to get word to my owners and
home."

"Of course.  Well, we'll get you off some time this afternoon if
this weather holds.  If nobody comes down from Orham we'll get sail
on the spare boat and have somebody get you up that way."

By noon, however, word came from the watchman in the tower that a
sailboat was in sight, coming from the direction of Harniss.  Homer
went up to investigate.

"Who is it, Hez?" he asked, of Rogers, then on duty.

"Looks like Peleg," replied Rogers.  "That's who I make it out to
be."

It was the hermit, sure enough, and he arrived, wet and chilled,
but garrulous.  The Cape had been storm swept from Race Point to
Buzzard's Bay.  Telephone and telegraph poles were down all along
the line and no trains had been through since Thursday night.  Some
one had driven over from Bayport in a sleigh just before he left
and brought rumors of a wreck at Crooked Hill Shoal.

"Didn't have no particulars, he didn't," declared Peleg.  "But from
what he heard there was a consider'ble of lives lost.  They'd just
got a wire through from Trumet to Bayport and that's how he heard
about it, so they say.  Look here, Cal, how about my weather
prophesyin'?  Didn't I tell Seleucus Gammon he'd have to tie his
hair on afore mornin'?  Didn't I, eh?  Where is that Gammon
critter?  I want to preach to him."

He had, so he said, landed Oswald Myrick and wife safely before the
storm broke, and they had been driven from the landing place to
their home at West Harniss.  Peleg departed to crow over Seleucus,
leaving Homer more anxious than ever to hear from the mainland.

The next item of news came by way of the beach.  One of the crew at
the Orham Station had tramped as far as the halfway house to bring
it, and Sam Bearse had, on his own initiative, walked down there on
the chance of hearing something.  What he heard was sufficiently
sensational to pay, in Sam's estimation, for the exertion of the
trip.  The wreck at Crooked Hill Shoal had been that of a three-
masted schooner, from New York to Portland, loaded with coal.  She
had struck on Thursday night and the Crooked Hill Station crew had
gone out to her early the next morning.  They made the outward trip
safely and took off all but two of the schooner's crew, those two
having been washed overboard before they reached the vessel.

But the real sensation of Bearse's news was to follow.  On the way
back to the beach the crowded lifeboat had, somehow or other, been
permitted to swing broadside with the trough of the sea.  She was
overturned and every man, life crew and all, had been drowned.
Only one was dragged from the surf with the breath of life in him.

The group of listeners in the kitchen of the Setuckit Station
looked at each other aghast.  Accidents, and even occasional
deaths, were more or less to be expected, they were risks of their
trade--but this wholesale killing was staggering.

"Only one saved, you say, Sam?" queried Homer incredulously.

"So they say," declared Sam.  "That's the yarn."

"Who was the one?" demanded Phinney.

"Crooked Hill feller name of Bartlett.  Number Two man he was, I
understand.  Anybody here know him?"

Seleucus Gammon nodded.  "I do, I cal'late," he said.  "If it's the
feller I think 'tis it's Benoni Bartlett.  He's been in the service
for a long spell, 'most as long as I have.  'Bout my age he must
be, too. . . .  Humph!  Benoni, eh?  And he's the only one got
ashore!  Sho!  Well, if it's Benoni he'll figger 'twas the A'mighty
himself picked him to be hauled out of the wet.  Crimus! yes, he'll
think that sure."

"Why?" asked Rogers.

"'Cause he's kind of cracked on such things.  Reg'lar Bible crank,
so some of the Trumet fellers tell me. . . .  Sho!  Benoni the
only one saved out of all that crowd.  Some good men gone on that
load. . . .  Boys, the newspapers 'll make talk about this, won't
they? Remember what a fuss there was when the Orham crew was lost?
Bartlett 'll be what they call a hero, if he don't look out. . . .
Tut, tut, tut!  Sho!  Crimustee!"



CHAPTER III


The news of the Crooked Hill disaster reached the Boston papers the
moment that telegraphic communication was reopened.  It was but one
fatal incident of the great storm, but, coming so closely on the
heels of a somewhat similar happening at Orham a few years before,
it attracted wide notice.  The editors, sensing its dramatic
qualities, sent their reporters down to investigate.  The reporters
interviewed the townspeople at Trumet, the fishermen at the little
settlement near Crooked Hill, and any one else who seemed likely to
furnish details and help to fill space.  Bartlett, the sole
survivor, was besieged.  He was in a state of complete nervous
collapse and the doctors permitted him to see no one, but the
newspaper men saw the doctors, the longshoremen and the townspeople
generally, and made the most of everything they were told.

The first batch of papers brought to Setuckit displayed photographs
of the Crooked Hill Station, of the crew--a snapshot taken two
years before--of the beach opposite the shoal, of the men who
helped Bartlett ashore, of the house where he was being taken care
of, of Bartlett himself--another ancient snapshot--and one
enterprising sheet exhibited a smudgy and libelous likeness of Miss
Norma Bartlett, his daughter.  This last was a vague cross-hatching
of inky lines, through which one caught glimpses of a young woman
apparently not more than sixteen, and as a recognizable likeness
was of about as much value as a portrait of a rooster taken through
the wires of his coop at twilight on a foggy afternoon.

The life-savers at Setuckit found the papers immensely interesting.
The long stories of the reporters were read silently and aloud.
The pictures were scrutinized with care.  Seleucus, the only
Setuckitite who had known Bartlett, was cross-questioned and
catechized.  Mr. Gammon obligingly remembered everything he could
and, when his memory failed, called upon his inventive faculties.
Their own exploit, the rescue of the crew of the David Cowes, was
completely overshadowed and practically ignored, so far as public
notice was concerned.  There were brief paragraphs mentioning it,
but they were but items in a long list of maritime casualties.

Captain Leary and his men had shown no symptoms of forgetting,
however.  They were taken to Orham the afternoon of the day
following the rescue.  At the beach, as they were about to leave,
Leary again expressed their gratitude and admiration.

"It was the finest job I've ever seen done on salt water, Cap'n
Homer," he declared.  "I'm going to tell my owners so, and
everybody else that asks me.  We wouldn't, one of us, be here now
if it wasn't for you fellows, and if we can ever get even you bet
we'll do it.  I'll make it my business to write to headquarters and
tell 'em what I think of it.  It'll be the first letter I write
after I get home, and my whole crew will sign it.  They'll be
tickled to death at the chance."

Homer thanked him, but urged him not to trouble.

"To tell you the truth, Cap'n," he said, "it was only by mighty
good luck that we got to you in time.  What happened over at
Crooked Hill might just as well have happened here, and we can be
thankful our pictures aren't in the papers instead of those poor
fellows'."

Gammon and some of the other men were not so magnanimous.

"Humph!" grunted Seleucus, tossing his copy of the Boston Star
aside; "all this kind of makes you tired, don't it?  After all, by
crimus, a life-savin' crew's job is to save lives.  If the Crooked
Hill gang had got their boat to shore with all hands safe and sound
'twould have been somethin' to hurrah about.  They didn't, they got
upset and drownded, which wa'n't their job at all.  Somebody
bungled somethin' and all hands paid for it.  It's too bad and I'm
sorry for 'em, the Lord knows, but just the same the bunglin' was a
fact.  Did you read that piece about Sup'rintendent Kellogg
preachin' what a wonderful critter Bartlett is?  Why is he
wonderful?  'Cause he was lucky enough to be hove up on the beach
and was snaked out of the wet by the scruff of his neck.  He's a
hero, Bartlett is--says so in the paper.  Well, why ain't I a hero?
_I_ got ashore and nobody else hauled me there neither.  I AM a
hero--I'll bet you on it!  Smoke up a piece of glass and look at me
through it.  No, no, don't risk your eyesight without the glass;
I'm liable to dazzle you."

Josh Phinney grinned.

"We're all heroes, Seleucus," he declared.  "Pretty ones.  Trouble
is nobody else believes it and we can't prove it."

"Kellogg knows it," declared Seleucus.  "He talks that way about
Bartlett 'cause he has to.  He'd 'a' been swimmin' against the tide
if he didn't.  But suppose them Crooked Hillers had lost their boat
and all got ashore themselves; do you cal'late the sup'rintendent
would have called 'em heroes then?  Humph! he'd have given 'em blue
Tophet for smashin' up the boat.  He ain't any old maid cryin' over
yarns in a newspaper, Kellogg ain't.  He's been life-savin' or
bossin' life-savers for twenty-odd year.  He knows what's what."

Ed Bloomer leaned over and scratched a match on Gammon's trouser
leg.

"What ails you, Seleucus," he observed, "is that you're jealous,
that's all.  If they printed YOUR picture you'd be all set up.  I'd
like to see your picture in the paper.  'Seleucus Gammon, the noble
sea--er--sea--'"

"Sea lion," put in Phinney.  "I see some of them sea lions up to
Boston at a show one time.  One of 'em stuck his head up out of the
water and hollered, and I swear I thought 'twas Seleucus in
swimmin'.  Yes, I did.  I was just goin' to answer him."

Seleucus rose.  "Wa'n't goin' to tell him dinner was ready, was
you, Josh?" he queried.  "If you was I bet he was glad to hear it.
You're cook this week, I've heard tell, but I should be glad to
have a little mite of proof of it."

"Proof 'll be on the table in about ten minutes now.  Keep your
patience bilin', hero."

"Huh!  Takes a hero to keep patient when you're cook, Josh. . . .
Hello! speakin' of heroes, here comes Wallie.  I understand
Wallie's favorite hymn up to prayer meetin' is 'Pull for the shore,
sailor.'  Let's sing it for him.  What d'ye say?"

They sang a verse with gravity and gusto.  Oaks pretended not to
notice.  Generally speaking, he had been tormented less than he
expected, a fact due entirely to Homer's request that the crew "let
up on him."

If the papers and the public paid little attention to the Setuckit
exploit, Calvin and his men received gratifying acknowledgment from
other sources.  Oswald Myrick wrote expressing congratulations in
no stinted phrase.  Superintendent Kellogg sent a commendatory
letter and notified Homer that he was coming down to see him as
soon as he could get away.  "Partly on business and partly on
pleasure," the letter ended, "although I am hoping the business may
be pleasant for us both."

From this hint Calvin inferred that his appointment as keeper at
Setuckit was assured.  The crew seemed to take it for granted and
to be thoroughly satisfied at the prospect.  In a dozen ways they
made it quite plain that their commander's handling of the David
Cowes affair had proved his case, so far as they were concerned.

But the Crooked Hill sensation was destined to be more than a nine
days' wonder.  The stories in the Boston dailies were copied
elsewhere.  In New York, in Philadelphia--even as far away as
Chicago--the tale of the loss of the life crew was given columns of
space and editorials were written praising "the gallant fellows who
had died in the performance of their duty."  Benoni Bartlett, the
only one who had not died, was invariably given more space than any
one else.  Even in the halls of Congress he was talked about, for
the newest representative from Massachusetts used his name and the
loss of his fellow surfmen as texts for his maiden speech, a speech
in which he attacked the administration for shameful neglect of the
public service and general misbehavior.  The speech--the small
portion of it which was reported--was gleefully read in the mess
room at Setuckit.

"Seleucus, we're getting talked about," declared Phinney.  "Listen
to this:  'And I say to you, gentlemen, that the neglect which
causes men like these to die on the storm-eaten'--no--'beaten--
shores of the old Bay State is but another instance of the
disregard of the common people, a disregard of the worker and a
panderin' to the interests which is makin' the name of the party in
power a stench in the nostrils of decent men and women.'  Hear
that, do you?  Now, will you keep on votin' the Republican ticket?"

Seleucus, whose political adherence had remained fixed since the
candidacy of Rutherford B. Hayes, snorted defiance.

"Bah!" he exclaimed.  "Didn't say nothin' about raisin' no wages
down in this section, did he?  I presume likely not.  Who was it
saved this country in '61 and has been savin' it ever since?
'Twan't no copperhead Democrat, I'll tell you that."

"Ho, ho!  You're a stench, Seleucus.  Says so right here in the
paper.  Burn some sugar, somebody."

In Boston they were raising a fund to present Bartlett with a watch
and a chain, a gold medal, or a house and lot; the exact nature of
the reward was not yet determined, and there seemed to be marked
differences of opinion on that point, but they were bound to give
him something.

The good weather continued and the days and nights at Setuckit were
singularly free from incident.  Jupiter Pluvius, or old Boreas, or
whoever was responsible, seemed to have exhausted all his efforts
in the record-breaking storm, and to be willing to rest for the
time being.

On a Thursday, about a fortnight after the Cowes wreck, District
Superintendent Kellogg made his promised visit.  He was a square-
shouldered, burly man, whose sixty years and gray hairs had not
diminished his vigor to any appreciable extent and who knew the
life-saving game from the first deal to the final bet.  The men in
the service respected and liked him.  He was strict, but just.  He
did not overpraise and he was prompt to punish, but his punishments
were always deserved, and the culprit usually grinned in public,
even if he swore in private.  He called each one of his men by his
first name and knew all about them and their records.

Calvin Homer was very fond of him, and felt sure that the liking
was reciprocated.  Remembering the hint in the superintendent's
letter he could not help feeling a bit excited when his superior
officer's boat was sighted coming down the bay.

But the excitement proved to be unjustified.  Nothing whatever was
said about the appointment of a keeper.  Kellogg inspected the
station, watched the drill, expressed himself as satisfied, and
offered almost no suggestions.  He was not as talkative as usual,
and seemed to have something on his mind, something not altogether
pleasant, which was troubling him a good deal.

Only during the last few minutes, as he was about to sail away
again, did he even remotely hint at the appointment.

"You're doing first rate, Calvin," he said.  "I knew you would.
The men are all back of you and are contented and satisfied.  If I
had my way--"

He paused, and then repeated the last words.

"If I had my way--" he said again, and again paused.

Calvin thought he must be waiting for him to speak.

"Well, don't you have it, sir?" he suggested.  "It always seemed to
me that if anybody did about as he liked it was you, Cap'n
Kellogg."

Kellogg sniffed.

"I generally cal'late to, that's a fact," he replied.  "I generally
figure that I know my business and expect to be left alone to mind
it.  Sometimes, though, other folks try to mind it for me.  There's
a lot of interfering damn fools in this world; did you know it?"

Homer did not know exactly how he was expected to reply to this
statement.

"Why--yes--so I've heard," he agreed.

"You've heard right.  And most of 'em have been elected somethin'
or other.  Politics are all right in town meeting or up to the
State House, but, by holy, they don't belong on the beach.  Cal,
if--if things don't turn out exactly as--as you and I know they
ought to--why . . . but, there, maybe they will.  I'll see you
again pretty soon.  You'll hear from me before long, anyhow.  Good-
by."

He went away, leaving Homer disappointed and apprehensive.
Apparently his appointment was by no means a certainty.  Something
had interfered--politics presumably--but what politician would care
to bother with a seventy-five-dollar-a-month job in the life-saving
service?  Politics made men postmasters, of course, but so far it
had let the life-savers alone.

He worried about the matter for a time and then determined to put
it from his mind.  He had not taken a day from the beach for nearly
six weeks and, the good weather continuing, decided to go up to
Orham for an afternoon and perhaps part of an evening.  There were
some errands to be done in the village and--well, there were other
reasons which tempted him.

Peleg Myrick took him up in the Wild Duck.  Peleg was still
boastful concerning the accuracy of his prophecy in the matter of
the big gale.

"What did them Weather Bureau folks at Washington give out the day
afore she landed on us?" he wanted to know.  "Did THEY say 'twas
goin' to blow hard enough to lift the scales off a mackerel?  No,
siree, they never!  'Twas old Peleg said that.  THEY said,
'No'therly winds and cloudy,' that's what THEY said.  All right as
fur as it went, I give in; but 'twas like sayin' a young one was
freckled when he had smallpox.  _I_ said, 'It's goin' to tear loose
and let her rip and you want to stand from under.'  Folks laughed.
Seleucus Gammon, he laughed; but thinks I, 'Them that laughs last
laughs later on.'  Well, I was right, wa'n't I?  I cal'late I was.
I don't make out to call myself a weather bureau--no, nor a weather
washstand neither--but when I--"

And so on, most of the way up the bay.  Calvin paid little
attention; he had heard Mr. Myrick before.  The sole question he
asked was the usual one asked by all acquainted with the hermit,
the question asked by every summer boarder, and the answer to which
was a byword in Orham and its vicinity.  Homer knew that answer by
heart, but he asked the question merely because answering it
pleased Peleg.

"Let's see," he observed, "how is it you get your points on the
weather?  Something in your bones, isn't it?"

"That's it, that's it.  It's a gift, way I look at it.  My
grandmother she had some of it, too, but not so strong as I have.
Her bones used to ache consid'rable 'cordin' to the way the wind
was, but she never studied of it out, she never systemated it, the
way I have.  I get a--a--snitch in my starboard elbow, we'll say.
That means, gener'lly speakin', sou'west wind, more or less of it
'cordin' to the ache.  If she keeps on a-runnin' till she gets fur
as the wrist, then says I, 'Look out!  It's goin' blow hard.  Smoky
sou'wester, maybe.'  Now, when my knee gets tunin' up--"

His passenger interrupted.  "Say, Peleg," he broke in, "you must
have been a sort of all-over jumping toothache week before last."

Peleg groaned at the recollection.

"Man alive!" he declared.  "I was just one twistin' titter 'from
jibboom to rudder."

Safely landed at the Orham wharf, Homer strolled up to the village,
did his few errands at the stores, exchanged casual comments with
acquaintances and then walked briskly away.  The acquaintances
would have been glad to talk longer, had he given them the
opportunity.  The wreck and the stories in the papers were, so to
speak, dispensations of Providence to the gossips.  This was the
dull season for them and topics were scarce.  All sorts of rumors
were flying about, rumors intimately connected with the life-saving
service and the Setuckit crew in particular.  Calvin Homer might
have confirmed or denied some of these rumors had he been persuaded
to talk, but, apparently, he could not be so persuaded.  They
tried, they threw out hints, they asked leading questions, but
received no satisfaction.  He was pleasant and willing to chat on
subjects of no particular importance, but when the one absorbing
topic was broached, he, as one of them described it, "shut up like
a quahaug."

The gossips at the post office watched him as he walked out, and
one or two of them followed him as far as the door and peered after
him, as long as he was in sight.

"Headed to the south'ard, ain't he?" queried Obed Halleck, who,
occupying the most comfortable seat by the stove, had prudently
resisted temptation and remained where he was.  Seth Burgess, one
of the pair who had gone out to the platform, nodded significantly.
"South'ard it is," he answered.  "Course it ain't none of my
business, but if anybody offered to bet he was bound down in the
latitude of the Neck Road _I_ wouldn't take 'em up."

Gaius Cahoon, his comrade on the platform committee, grinned.

"Cal don't tell much more'n he figgers to, does he?" he observed.

Mr. Halleck winked.  "Not to us, he don't," he admitted.  "If you
was better lookin', Gaius, and had red hair, you might be talked to
more, I shouldn't wonder."

"If his name was Myra he would, sartin," observed Seth.  "He'll
tell Myra all there is to tell--she'll make him.  Myra generally
makes out to get what she sets out after."

"And she's set out to get him," concurred Gaius.  "Well, she's some
girl, Myra is, and smart, too.  I don't know's I blame him for
hangin' round down there.  If I was younger I might be cruisin'
down the Neck Road myself.  I was some cruiser in my day," he
added, complacently.

Burgess chuckled.  "Yes, you was, Gaius," he declared.  "And so was
I.  He, he!  You and me was a team in them times.  Do you remember
that night when we went over to the Thanksgivin' ball at Denboro?
There was a couple of girls over there that--"

The reminiscence was lengthy and given in detail.  Whenever the
narrator omitted a remark or incident Mr. Cahoon broke in to supply
it.

Meanwhile Calvin Homer was walking down the Neck Road.  It was
nearly six o'clock, Orham's supper time.  Windows in the rear of
the houses were alight and smoke was rising from the kitchen
chimneys.  It was a crisp, fine winter evening, a snap in the air
and the early stars like electrically lighted pin holes in the
blue-black canopy of a cloudless sky.  There was almost no wind.
Calvin's conscience was as clear as the weather, so far as absence
from his post was concerned.  He had, while at the post office,
telephoned Setuckit, and learned from Gammon, who had been left in
charge, that all was well at the station.

"Stay as long as you want to, Cal," Seleucus had said over the
phone.  "Cal'late we can manage to keep house while you're
gone. . . .  Eh?  Wait a minute. . . .  Well, never mind.  Thought
maybe Wallie'd want you to see his wife and find out if she was
still ashore, but seems he ain't partic'lar.  So long."

The Neck Road was not in those days--nor is it even yet--a populous
thoroughfare.  The dwellings along it are scattered and placed well
back from the street.  The house occupied by Mrs. Serepta Fuller
and her daughter was one of the largest, of a type of architecture
inflicted upon this country in the early 'fifties, and displaying
much jig-saw ornamentation.

Calvin turned in at the gate and walked up the path to the side
door.  Before he could knock, the door was opened by Mrs. Fuller
herself, who had heard his step.  She resembled the house in some
respects, being rather large, and, for her age, still ornamental.
She welcomed the visitor warmly.

"We're so glad to see you, Cap'n Homer," she declared.  "We've been
counting on it ever since we got your letter.  Myra is as excited
as can be.  I declare you'd think it was a year since you were
here.  And it IS a long time; and we see so few people--of the
right kind, I mean.  Come right in.  Take off your things.  Supper
will be ready in just a few minutes.  Shan't I get you a cup of hot
tea or something?  It's real wintry out, isn't it?"

Homer declined the tea.  While he was removing his hat and coat
Myra Fuller came hurrying to greet him.  She was a striking-looking
young woman, her hair that "certain shade of red" which so many
like and each one describes differently, a pair of large and most
expressive blue eyes, red lips and a determined chin.  Her figure
was what her mother's had been twenty years before--in fact, Mrs.
Fuller often said that Myra was the image of herself when she was a
girl.  Those who remembered the lady when she was Sarepta Townsend
were satisfied to agree with this statement, just as they had been
satisfied with Sarepta in her day.  A great many young fellows--and
older ones, too--found Myra perfectly satisfactory.  She herself
seemed less easy to suit.

She was, owing to what her mother often referred to as their
"reduced circumstances," teaching in the Orham high school.  She
was a satisfactory teacher and a remarkably good disciplinarian.
She sang a little and played a little more and danced very well
indeed.  Why she was, at twenty-five, still single, was one of
Orham's mysteries.  The men, most of them, were certain it was not
because of the lack of opportunities; the women, practically all of
them, seemed less sure, although they expressed little discontent
with the fact itself.

Calvin Homer had, of course, known the Fullers all his life.  He
had known Myra when a schoolgirl.  Then she went away to study at
Bridgewater and he had not seen her for a long time.  After her
return he met her infrequently at dances and parties.  Rumors of
her engagement to this fellow or that had been spread about the
town, but they were always denied.  Of late he had seen her more
frequently, had called--when on liberty--and was always asked to
call again.  People wondered why Myra Fuller--an ambitious young
woman with aspirations, inherited and cultivated--should care to
bother with one as humble as a member of the life-saving service.
Captain Ziba Snow, one of Orham's influential citizens, who lived
in the big house at the corner of the Neck Road and the West Main
Road, expressed that wonder one evening at the supper table.

"I noticed Calvin Homer up street this afternoon," said the
captain.  "He's ashore on liberty--I presume likely.  And, later
on, I noticed him and Myra Fuller walking along together, sweet and
sociable as a couple of rats in a sugar hogshead.  I don't blame
him--she's a mighty good-lookin' girl; but why Sarepta Fuller's
child should be wasting time with an ordinary young chap life-
saving along shore I can't make out."

Nellie Snow, his seventeen-year-old daughter, answered his remark.

"Because he isn't a bit ordinary," she declared, with conviction.
"He is one of the handsomest and nicest fellows in Orham, all the
girls say so--and smart, too, even if he is a life-saver.  If Myra
Fuller gets him she'll be lucky.  I hope she doesn't."

Her father turned to regard her with sudden and significant
scrutiny.

"Humph!" he said, after a moment.  That was all, but a "humph" may
express much.

Miss Fuller's welcome was as cordial as her mother's.  The supper
was a distinctly pleasant meal.  Since his own mother's death
Calvin had learned to appreciate and look forward to the
comparatively few home meals which came his way.  Life at the
station was interesting--tremendously interesting to him, or he
would not have remained there--but there was a flavor of rest and
homely comfort and domesticity about a supper like this one which
awakened memories and gratified senses which, at other times, he
was scarcely aware he possessed.  The shaded light, the table
linen, the polished knives and forks and spoons, the quiet ease of
it all--he found himself contrasting these with the bare mess room
at Setuckit, the glare of the bracket lamps and their reflectors,
the hit or miss service and the noisy jokes.  He liked his work, he
was tremendously fond of his crew, enjoyed being with them and was
proud to consider himself one of them--but this, this was different
and he liked this, too.  This supper was like the old-time suppers
at home.  It was good to hear feminine voices once more, a pleasant
change from Seleucus Gammon's gruff sallies and Josh Phinney's
strident rejoinders.

The Fullers did their best to make him feel at home.  The supper
was a good one--Sarepta and her daughter were competent cooks--and
the food was a cheerful contrast to that prepared by Ellis Badger.
Mrs. Fuller and Myra kept up a steady flow of conversation,
dealing, for the most part, of course, with the wrecks at Setuckit
and at Crooked Hill Shoal.

"We're all awfully proud of you, Calvin," declared Sarepta, beaming
above the teapot.  "We know what you did down there and everybody
has been talking about it.  I declare, it makes us proud just to
know you are such a friend of ours, doesn't it, Myra?"

Myra nodded.  "Indeed it does," she agreed.

"Everybody says that if it hadn't been for you the folks on that
schooner would have been lost, just as sure as could be.  And they
all say you are the best cap'n in the service.  Don't they, Myra?"

Miss Fuller again agreed.  Calvin thought it time to protest.

"But I'm not a cap'n," he put in.

"Yes, you are--or what amounts to the same thing.  And you're going
to be one, really, just as soon as the appointment is made."

Their guest shook his head.  "That isn't sure, by any means," he
said.  "There are plenty of others who deserve it as much as I do."

Myra's eyes flashed and her color deepened.

"Nonsense!" she explained.  "There isn't anybody like you in the
service."

Calvin laughed aloud.  "I guess you don't know the rest of the
boys," he suggested.

"Of course I do.  I know them as well as you do--or better.  You
are head and shoulders over them all.  Look at the rest of them!
Who are they?  Just ignorant, common fishermen and lobstermen and
people like that.  They don't know anything except how to row a
dory and walk up and down the beach."

"Well, that's about all a life-saver needs to know, isn't it?"

"Perhaps so, but it isn't all YOU know, Calvin Homer.  Everybody
says you're too good for the work--everybody.  But they ARE going
to make you keeper there at Setuckit; they have got brains enough
for that."

"Well, I don't know about the brains, and I'm not so sure about--"

"Oh, don't!  It makes me cross to hear you run yourself down.  Of
course you'll be captain.  You know you will."

Mrs. Fuller put in a word.  "Myra has been SO put out about all
these things in the papers lately," she observed.  "All this
praising up of those Crooked Hill people.  It makes her provoked,
and I don't wonder.  It does me, too."

Myra's eyes snapped; they were handsome eyes and the sparkle was
becoming.

"Provoked!" she repeated.  "I should think I was.  Who wouldn't be?
It is all so ridiculous.  Those people at Crooked Hill--that
Bartlett and the rest--what did they do?  Nothing--except blunder
and get themselves and every one else drowned."

"Bartlett wasn't drowned."

"Well, he deserved to be.  It was only luck that saved him.  And
yet they are printing his picture in the paper, and calling him a
hero, and goodness knows what.  It is outrageous.  YOU didn't get
yourself drowned, or your men either.  YOU ought to be in the
papers.  YOU ought to be talked about in Washington.  Oh, if I were
a man, if I wouldn't say things!"

Calvin, looking at her, was conscious of a feeling that for her to
be a man would be a pity--yes, a great pity.  He was glad that she
was not.  And, in spite of himself, he found her indignation
flattering.

"Oh, now," he said, "that doesn't amount to anything, all that
newspaper stuff."

"It does, too.  It amounts to a lot, and you ought to have it.  I
wish I could see that Kellogg man.  I'd tell him what I think.  Why
doesn't HE come out and tell those newspapers the truth?  He knows
well enough.  Why don't you make him?"

Homer laughed at the idea.  "I should have a good time making Cap'n
Kellogg do anything," he said.

Miss Fuller tossed her head.

"_I_ could make him," she declared.  "I only wish I had the
chance."

"How?  What do you mean?"

Another toss of the head, a droop of the eyelids, and a little
smile.

"Oh, I could," repeated the young lady.

Her mother smiled indulgently.  "Myra's got a real convincing way
with her," she said.  "And she is so cross when she talks about
what she calls your wrongs, Calvin.  I never saw her so put out
before.  She has talked about nobody but you ever since those
newspaper stories began.  I don't know what does ail her."

Miss Fuller was prettily confused.  "Oh, mother, stop!" she
commanded.  "Don't be so silly. . . .  Now, let's forget the old
papers and talk about something else."

So they did, to their guest's relief.  Mrs. Fuller spoke feelingly
concerning bygone days, when her husband was alive and they were
"able to have things."  This led, by tortuous paths, to the
present, its inconveniences, and her daughter's capabilities as a
teacher and household manager.  After a time Myra again felt called
upon to protest.

"Oh, mother, do stop talking about me," she begged.

Sarepta bridled.

"Why shouldn't I talk about you?" she wished to know.  "You're
all the child I've got and nobody ever had a smarter or better
one. . . .  Do have another cup of tea, Cap'n Calvin."

When they rose from the table Mrs. Fuller insisted upon doing the
clearing away unassisted.

"Myra," she said, "you and the cap'n go right into the sitting room
and talk.  He'll be having to go back to the station pretty soon
and goodness knows when he'll be able to come again.  There are
only a few dishes--we never have anything but an everyday supper
when YOU come, Calvin; treat you just like one of the family, you
see--and I'd just as soon do them as not."

So Calvin and Myra went into the sitting room, the big square room
with the square piano and the black walnut set, and on the walls
the oil portraits of Sarepta's father and mother, portraits painted
by an unknown artist who should have been an undertaker.  The
hanging lamp in that sitting room gave but a dim light--Myra
declared she did not know what was the matter with the old thing--
and so, when they sat together upon the haircloth sofa to look over
the scrap-book which Miss Fuller had kept since she was a girl,
they were obliged to bend low in order to see.

The scrapbook she had brought down from her own room at Calvin's
request.  How he came to make the request he could scarcely have
told.  Miss Fuller had, for some reason, happened to mention it,
had casually spoken of her possession of such a book, soon after
they came into the sitting room.  Then they had talked about it,
just why he was not sure, for he had not at first been greatly
interested.  But the young lady said it was her chief treasure.
There were things in it she would not show to any one--oh, not for
worlds and worlds!  That is, to hardly any one.  Didn't he wish HE
might see it?  Being thus challenged, he, of course, declared he
wanted to see it.  Miss Fuller at first laughed, was provokingly
obdurate, and then flutteringly hesitant.  Would he promise not to
tell if she showed it to him?  He would.  And promise not to read
anything in it unless she gave permission?  Yes, he would promise
that.  So, after more hesitation--becoming and pretty hesitation--
the scrapbook was brought and they bent over it, sitting close
together upon the old sofa.

And, as they bent, strands of her hair brushed his cheek, he could
hear her soft breathing.  He was conscious--increasingly and
peculiarly conscious--of her nearness to him and of the perfume she
had used, of the full curve of her neck and the touch of her hands
as they turned the pages together.

There were many of these pages, some with schoolgirl pictures and
clippings from normal-school magazines and invitations to parties
and the like.  All these Miss Fuller passed by quickly, some of
them very quickly, but over the pages in the latter portion of the
book she seemed to linger just a little.  And suddenly Calvin,
bending beside her, became aware that these recent pages were
filled with clippings dealing with the exploits of the Setuckit
crew, his own crew.

There was a picture of the crew, with himself as Number One man,
prominent in the foreground.  There were long stories of wrecks
and, in each--he could not help noting--his own name was mentioned.
In two or three instances, the name was underscored in pencil.  He
felt an odd thrill.  She must be very much interested in him, this
attractive young woman beside him, to keep and treasure all these.
And why had she penciled his name more than those of his comrades?
It was flattering--yes; but to him it was more than that.  A
sophisticated person might have felt it a trifle obvious, but
Calvin was anything but sophisticated, so far as the opposite sex
was concerned.  He had been a shy boy, and he was now a man's man.
Women were scarce at Setuckit, even in the summer months, and when
they visited the station he had made it a rule to keep out of their
way.  He turned again to look at the rich gold of the head beside
him and the thrill returned--and lingered.  The rustle of the pages
ceased, the book remained open.  There was silence in the room, a
significant, dangerous silence.

It was Calvin who broke that silence, and his voice trembled a
little as he spoke.

"Why have you kept all those, Myra?" he asked, in a low tone.

She did not answer immediately, and when she did her tone, too, was
almost a whisper.

"Oh, I--I don't know," she faltered.  "I--I wanted to keep them."

"Have you read them all?"

"Yes, I--I think I know them about by heart."

"But--why?"

"I don't know. . . .  Please don't ask me!"

So of course he did ask her.  His hand moved toward hers, clasped
it.  She did not withdraw her own.

"Why have you kept all these?" he repeated.

"I don't know, Calvin."

"But you say you know them by heart.  Do you, really?"

"Yes."

"Myra--I--was it because you--you liked to read about--about me?"

The golden head turned, the big blue eyes looked up into his.  As
has already been said, they were expressive eyes.

"Oh--oh, Calvin!" she breathed.

The inevitable followed as, time, place and personalities
considered, it was bound to follow.  He kissed her.  A few minutes--
or more than a few--later he came out of a giddy sort of daze to
find himself seated there upon the haircloth sofa, holding a
handsome young woman in his arms, and stammering various things--
he was not quite sure what.

But the young woman seemed to be sure.  If she also had been in a
daze there was little trace of it remaining.  She snuggled
comfortably in his arms and looked up at him again.

"Oh, Calvin," she murmured, "isn't it wonderful?"

It was wonderful, certainly, so far as he was concerned, so
wonderful that he scarcely realized what it was all about, least of
all what it really meant.  And then, at that psychological moment,
the door from the dining room opened and Mrs. Fuller entered.  If
she had been listening at the other side of that door the moment
could not have been more psychological.

She uttered a little scream.  So did Myra.  Calvin said nothing--
words were not among his possessions just then.

"WELL!  Why, I never!" gasped Sarepta.  Her daughter gently
disengaged her waist from the partially paralyzed arms encircling
it, and rose.

"Mother," she said, "Calvin and I are engaged to be married.  Isn't
it WONDERFUL? . . .  Calvin dear, it is only mother.  Can't you
speak to her?"

He could not, of course, but it really made little difference, for
Mrs. Fuller did sufficient speaking for the two.  At first she
declared she believed she should faint right straight away; but it
was an erroneous belief--she did not faint.  She exclaimed, and
choked, and wept a little, and then kissed Myra over and over
again, after which she threw her arms about Mr. Homer's neck and
kissed him.  Calvin, whose kissing experiences, outside of his own
family, had been pretty closely limited to games at boy-and-girl
parties and a few casual flirtations on straw rides or returns from
dances, was overwhelmed with guilty embarrassment.  There was no
reason why he should feel guilty, but somehow he did.  And even yet
he could scarcely comprehend the situation; the after effects of
the daze were still with him.

Mrs. Fuller wept and hugged him, and she and Myra hugged each
other, and then the former declared she was so glad she did not
know what to do.

"If I had had the picking of a son-in-law," she vowed, "I couldn't
have found a better one.  And, oh, Calvin, I don't believe even you
realize what a dear, lovely, smart wife you're going to have.  She
is a blessing.  We'll all be so happy together, won't we?"

And so on, for a time.  Then Sarepta turned to the door.  "I must
run back to my dishes," she said, and added archly, "I guess likely
you can spare me.  Engaged folks aren't very particular about
having other company around.  At least, I know _I_ wasn't when _I_
was engaged.  Of course I'll see you again, Calvin dear, before you
go.  Oh, I'm SO glad, for all our sakes!"

She went away, carefully closing the door after her.  Myra sat down
again upon the sofa and Calvin, still giddy, sat down beside her.
It was nearly ten when he rose to go.  He had told Peleg that he
would meet him at the wharf at nine, and his odd sense of guilt was
not lessened by this knowledge.  He and Myra had said many things
since her mother left them; Miss Fuller said most of them.

She had spoken of the future--their future together--but she had
spoken of his own even more.  She was very ambitious for him, she
declared.  He was going to get that appointment as keeper, that was
sure already, but that was to be only the beginning.

"You are going right on," she said with confidence, "right on up
and up.  My husband isn't going to be just a life-saver, he is
going to be more than that.  Superintendent Kellogg is getting
pretty old for such a place as he has.  He won't be there very much
longer; he'll make some mistake or other, and then some one else
will be appointed district superintendent."

Calvin protested.  "Oh, no," he said.  "Cap'n Kellogg is a fine man
and--"

She put her fingers on his lips.  "He's an old man," she insisted.
"And he's an old fool, too."

"Now, Myra--"

"He is, or he would have appointed you keeper two weeks ago.  And
he wouldn't have allowed those idiots of newspaper men to print all
those lies about that Bartlett and the rest.  I hate that
Bartlett."

"Why?  You don't know him, do you?"

"No, but I know his daughter, or I did know her over at Bridgewater.
She was there for a little while, a freshy when I was in my senior
year.  I met her three or four times and I didn't like her a bit.
She is a silly, goody-goody thing, pretending to be too honorable to
have any fun, or--Oh, I hate hypocrites, don't you? . . .  But
there, dearest, we won't talk about her, will we?  We'll talk about
you.  I want you to promise you'll do everything you can after you
are keeper to push yourself forward.  I'll help you--oh, I can!
There are ways.  I know lots of people, and some of them--the men
especially--like me pretty well.  We'll make you superintendent some
day.  But we won't stop there.  You're not going to stay in the
life-saving service, you know."

"Well, I don't suppose I shall, always.  There isn't much future in
it.  But I shall hate to give it up.  I do like it.  The fellows in
it are--"

"They aren't your kind and you don't belong with them.  You're
going to be a rich man some day.  I always said I should marry a
rich man, and I'll make you one before I'm forty.  You just promise
me to push yourself forward all you can, and we'll show some of
those narrow, self-satisfied Orham ninnies a few things. . . .
Now, don't look so frightened, dear. . . .  Kiss me, Calvin."

They said good night at the side door, an affectionate, lingering
farewell it was, on Miss Fuller's part especially.  He was to write
her every day and she would write him.  And he must not forget his
promise.

"Keep yourself in the front of things all the time," she urged.
"If the reporters come down there don't let them talk to any one
but you.  And I shall be helping and contriving here.  You'll be
surprised at what I can do to help.  A girl that--well, that isn't
TOO homely and that knows a thing or two can help a lot.  Good
night, you dear boy.  Remember the promise."

Homer, walking briskly along the deserted sidewalks on his way to
the wharf, was in a curious state of mind.  If there was one thing
certain it was that, when he came to the Fuller home that evening,
he had no intention of leaving it an engaged man.  He had given
little thought to marriage.  His plans for the future had been
indefinite enough; they had centered about his work and the new
responsibilities of command which seemed likely to be his, and
women had no part in them.  And now--why, now one woman had taken
charge of them, would--and ought to--monopolize them.  Myra Fuller
was a pretty girl, an attractive and very clever girl, but--

There should be no "buts," he realized that keenly, and his
conscience smote him.  It was wonderful to think that such a girl
loved him; he did not understand it.  And yet she did love him; she
had said so and he must believe it.  He should be very proud.  She
was one of the most popular girls in Orham.  When other girls had
been neglected by masculine followers Myra had always had at least
one hanging about.  He remembered rumors of her engagement--or
rumors that she was "just as good as engaged"--to this fellow or
that.  And now, of all the list, she had chosen him.  As his wife--
the word smote him almost like a chill.  He was to take a wife.  He
was engaged to be married.  HE was!

She herself had suggested that the engagement be kept a secret for
the present.  He had agreed to this--had, in fact, felt a sort of
relief in agreeing.  He did not quite understand why she wished to
delay the announcement; the delay, apparently, had something to do
with those ambitious plans for his future which she talked so much
about.  It was fine of her to be so interested in him.  She had
said he was to become a rich man; she was to make him one.  He had
never dreamed of riches; the acquiring of money had never attracted
him greatly.  But it attracted her; she meant to make him rich in
spite of himself.  And she would do it--yes, when a girl like that
set out to do a thing, she would and could achieve her object.  He
felt perfectly certain of that, and with the certainty came a sense
of helplessness, almost as if he were in a trap with no way out.

His walk to the landing was not the path of glory which a
triumphant lover is supposed to tread.  The loom of the sail of
Peleg's boat at the end of the wharf brought him out of his mental
maze and Mr. Myrick's voice impatiently hailing him awoke him from
the future to the immediate reality.

"Well, so here you be at last," vouchsafed the skipper of the Wild
Duck.  "I began to think you'd got lost in the dark somewhere.
Been roostin' here over an hour, I have.  I don't know's you
realize it, but it's beginnin' to breeze on and I've got a couple
of aches in my port knee jint that means blow, if they don't mean
more'n that.  Where you been cruisin' to, anyhow?  I'm pretty nigh
froze to a crisp.  This ain't no Fourth of July night; didn't you
know it?  Good thing I had comp'ny or I'd a lost my grip on to
myself and swore a few.  Climb aboard!  Lively!  My fingers are so
numb I don't know's I can unlimber 'em enough to cast off."

To most of this tirade Homer paid no attention.  He swung over the
stringpiece of the wharf and dropped into the cockpit of the
catboat.  Then he became aware that he and Myrick were not the only
persons aboard the Wild Duck.  Some one else was seated there in
the stern near the tiller.  This individual rose to his feet.  A
heavy, bulky man he was and, against the background of starlit sky
and water, Calvin caught sight of the fringes of a thick beard
stirring in the wind.

He did not recognize the man, but he took it for granted that the
latter must be some one he knew.

"Why, hello!" he said.

The man held out a mittened hand.  His voice, when he spoke, was
deep and his method of speech what Cape Codders describe as
"moderate."

"How are you, Mr. Homer?" he said.  "Glad to know you."

Calvin shook the proffered hand, but he was puzzled.  The man was a
stranger.  Myrick grinned the grin of superior knowledge.

"Don't know who 'tis, do ye, Cal?" he observed.  "Well, it's
somebody that we've all heard consider'ble tell of lately.  Cal,
let me make you acquainted to Mr. Benoni Bartlett.  Crooked Hill
Shoals--you know, Cal.  He's cal'latin' to sail down to the pint
along with us, Mr. Bartlett is.  Ain't ye, Mr. Bartlett?"

Bartlett bowed, gravely and deliberately, as he seemed to do
everything.

"Goin' to ask you to take care of me at the station for a little
while, Homer," he said.  "I'm goin' down there to--well, to kind of
look things over, the Lord willin'."

Calvin stared at him.  Why was Bartlett going to Setuckit Station
to look things over?  What on earth did it mean?  What MIGHT it
mean?

The catboat swung away from the wharf.  Myrick came aft to the
tiller.

"All set, be ye?" inquired Peleg.  "Um-hum.  And time enough, too,
I'd say.  Let 'er go."



CHAPTER IV


During the sail down to Setuckit Peleg did most of the talking.
Bartlett seemed disinclined to converse, and his answers to
Myrick's questions were monosyllabic.  These questions dealt with
almost every conceivable topic, but centered, naturally enough,
about the great storm, and the disaster at Crooked Hill Shoal, the
tragic happening of which the Wild Duck's unexpected passenger was
the sole survivor.  And of this particular subject it was
increasingly plain that Bartlett was determined not to speak.

"You've had a turrible time, ain't you, Mr. Bartlett?" observed
Peleg, hopefully.

Silence.  Myrick tried again.

"I say, you and the Crooked Hill crew had a turrible time," he
repeated.  Still no acknowledgment.

"Eh?" persisted the hermit, by no means discouraged.  "What did you
say, Mr. Bartlett?"

"When?"

"Why, just now."

"I didn't say anything."

"No, I don't know's you did, come to think of it.  I was sayin'
that you Crooked Hill fellers had a turrible time in that wreck
scrape of yours. . . .  I guess likely you didn't hear me."

"I heard you."

"Oh!  Oh, I want to know! . . .  Well--er--well--?"

"What?"

"Why--why, I thought you was just goin' to say somethin' about it."

"I wasn't."

Mr. Myrick swallowed hard, opened his mouth, closed it, and then
attempted another attack, strategical this time and addressed by
way of his other passenger.

"Me and Calvin and all the boys down to Setuckit, we've been
talkin' about you Crooked Hill folks a lot lately," he observed.
"Been readin' the papers every chance we could get, ain't we,
Calvin?"

But this move, too, was a failure.  Homer was as sparing of speech
as Bartlett.  He had no wish to talk.  He was doing a vast amount
of thinking and his thoughts were speculative and distrusting.
Benoni Bartlett, the newspaper sensation, was on his way to the
Setuckit station to "look things over."  Why?  Again he remembered
his recent talk with Superintendent Kellogg and the latter's
evident ill humor and his hint at interference in high places.  The
hint had made him uneasy at the time, but he had tried to forget
it.  Now it came back to him, with all its possible implications,
including one of which he had never dreamed as a possibility.  Even
the mental disturbance following realization of the fact that he
was engaged to be married was crowded out of his mind.  So he, too,
snubbed the garrulous Myrick.

Peleg, however, was not the type to accept a snub.  If the others
refused to talk to him, he, at least, could talk to them, and he
continued to do so.  The wind was so far but a mild and steady
breeze, and the weather, in spite of the prognostications of his
various "joints," as fine as could be wished.  His task as skipper
and pilot was, therefore, an easy one and his mind and tongue were
free.  He used the latter unsparingly.  It was not every night--or
day, for that matter--that the Wild Duck carried a real live hero,
one whose name and photograph were published abroad.  Once, years
before, he had acted as cook for a party a member of which was an
ex-governor of the state.  Peleg had talked of that happy week ever
since.  The subject was, except with strangers, utterly worn out;
his Setuckit acquaintances hailed the least reference to it with
derisive jeers.  Now, by good luck, he was thrown in contact with
another celebrity, some one else to furnish floods of embellished
reminiscence in the months to come.  So Mr. Myrick's exultant
tongue wagged alone.

Neither of his passengers paid the least attention to him.  They
sat, one on each side of the cockpit each engrossed in his own
musings.  Bartlett, his heavy beard blown by the wind and his cap
pulled down over his eyes, was a bulky shadow, mysterious, silent
and, in Homer's eyes, increasingly ominous.  Calvin, his knees
crossed and one arm resting upon the rail, stared ahead over the
water.  He lit his pipe and then, remembering that he had bought
some cigars at the store in the village, offered them to his fellow
voyagers.  Peleg seized his with enthusiasm.  Bartlett refused.

"I don't smoke," he said gravely.  "Much obliged."

Myrick thought he saw a possible crack in the social ice and jumped
at it.

"Don't care about terbacker, Mr. Bartlett?" he asked.  "Don't like
it, eh?"

"Yes."

"Eh?  What?  Oh, you do?  But you don't smoke?  Hum. . . .  Well,
some folks had ruther chew,