Men, Women, and Boats | Page 6

suddenly to keep clear of water that swirled in over the
stern. It was a thin little oar and it seemed often ready to snap.
The correspondent, pulling at the other oar, watched the waves and

wondered why he was there.
The injured captain, lying in the bow, was at this time buried in that
profound dejection and indifference which comes, temporarily at least,
to even the bravest and most enduring when, willy nilly, the firm fails,
the army loses, the ship goes down. The mind of the master of a vessel
is rooted deep in the timbers of her, though he commanded for a day or
a decade, and this captain had on him the stern impression of a scene in
the greys of dawn of seven turned faces, and later a stump of a top-mast
with a white ball on it that slashed to and fro at the waves, went low
and lower, and down. Thereafter there was something strange in his
voice. Although steady, it was, deep with mourning, and of a quality
beyond oration or tears.
"Keep 'er a little more south, Billie," said he.
"'A little more south,' sir," said the oiler in the stern.
A seat in this boat was not unlike a seat upon a bucking broncho, and
by the same token, a broncho is not much smaller. The craft pranced
and reared, and plunged like an animal. As each wave came, and she
rose for it, she seemed like a horse making at a fence outrageously high.
The manner of her scramble over these walls of water is a mystic thing,
and, moreover, at the top of them were ordinarily these problems in
white water, the foam racing down from the summit of each wave,
requiring a new leap, and a leap from the air. Then, after scornfully
bumping a crest, she would slide, and race, and splash down a long
incline, and arrive bobbing and nodding in front of the next menace.
A singular disadvantage of the sea lies in the fact that after successfully
surmounting one wave you discover that there is another behind it just
as important and just as nervously anxious to do something effective in
the way of swamping boats. In a ten-foot dingey one can get an idea of
the resources of the sea in the line of waves that is not probable to the
average experience which is never at sea in a dingey. As each slatey
wall of water approached, it shut all else from the view of the men in
the boat, and it was not difficult to imagine that this particular wave
was the final outburst of the ocean, the last effort of the grim water.

There was a terrible grace in the move of the waves, and they came in
silence, save for the snarling of the crests.
In the wan light, the faces of the men must have been grey. Their eyes
must have glinted in strange ways as they gazed steadily astern.
Viewed from a balcony, the whole thing would doubtless have been
weirdly picturesque. But the men in the boat had no time to see it, and
if they had had leisure there were other things to occupy their minds.
The sun swung steadily up the sky, and they knew it was broad day
because the color of the sea changed from slate to emerald-green,
streaked with amber lights, and the foam was like tumbling snow. The
process of the breaking day was unknown to them. They were aware
only of this effect upon the color of the waves that rolled toward them.
In disjointed sentences the cook and the correspondent argued as to the
difference between a life-saving station and a house of refuge. The
cook had said: "There's a house of refuge just north of the Mosquito
Inlet Light, and as soon as they see us, they'll come off in their boat and
pick us up."
"As soon as who see us?" said the correspondent.
"The crew," said the cook.
"Houses of refuge don't have crews," said the correspondent. "As I
understand them, they are only places where clothes and grub are
stored for the benefit of shipwrecked people. They don't carry crews."
"Oh, yes, they do," said the cook.
"No, they don't," said the correspondent.
"Well, we're not there yet, anyhow," said the oiler, in the stern.
"Well," said the cook, "perhaps it's not a house of refuge that I'm
thinking of as being near Mosquito Inlet Light. Perhaps it's a life-
saving station."

"We're not there yet," said the oiler, in the stern.
II
As the boat bounced from the top of each wave, the wind tore through
the hair of the hatless men, and as the craft plopped her stern down
again the spray splashed past