Men, Women, and Boats | Page 8

last there came a wave more gentle than the others, and
when at the crest of it he swiftly scoured the western horizon.
"See it?" said the captain.
"No," said the correspondent slowly, "I didn't see anything."
"Look again," said the captain. He pointed. "It's exactly in that
direction."
At the top of another wave, the correspondent did as he was bid, and
this time his eyes chanced on a small still thing on the edge of the
swaying horizon. It was precisely like the point of a pin. It took an
anxious eye to find a light house so tiny.
"Think we'll make it, captain?"
"If this wind holds and the boat don't swamp, we can't do much else,"
said the captain.
The little boat, lifted by each towering sea, and splashed viciously by
the crests, made progress that in the absence of seaweed was not
apparent to those in her. She seemed just a wee thing wallowing,
miraculously top-up, at the mercy of five oceans. Occasionally, a great
spread of water, like white flames, swarmed into her.
"Bail her, cook," said the captain serenely.

"All right, captain," said the cheerful cook.
III
It would be difficult to describe the subtle brotherhood of men that was
here established on the seas. No one said that it was so. No one
mentioned it. But it dwelt in the boat, and each man felt it warm him.
They were a captain, an oiler, a cook, and a correspondent, and they
were friends, friends in a more curiously iron-bound degree than may
be common. The hurt captain, lying against the water-jar in the bow,
spoke always in a low voice and calmly, but he could never command a
more ready and swiftly obedient crew than the motley three of the
dingey. It was more than a mere recognition of what was best for the
common safety. There was surely in it a quality that was personal and
heartfelt. And after this devotion to the commander of the boat there
was this comradeship that the correspondent, for instance, who had
been taught to be cynical of men, knew even at the time was the best
experience of his life. But no one said that it was so. No one mentioned
it.
"I wish we had a sail," remarked the captain. "We might try my
overcoat on the end of an oar and give you two boys a chance to rest."
So the cook and the correspondent held the mast and spread wide the
overcoat. The oiler steered, and the little boat made good way with her
new rig. Sometimes the oiler had to scull sharply to keep a sea from
breaking into the boat, but otherwise sailing was a success.
Meanwhile the lighthouse had been growing slowly larger. It had now
almost assumed color, and appeared like a little grey shadow on the sky.
The man at the oars could not be prevented from turning his head rather
often to try for a glimpse of this little grey shadow.
At last, from the top of each wave the men in the tossing boat could see
land. Even as the lighthouse was an upright shadow on the sky, this
land seemed but a long black shadow on the sea. It certainly was
thinner than paper. "We must be about opposite New Smyrna," said the
cook, who had coasted this shore often in schooners. "Captain, by the
way, I believe they abandoned that life-saving station there about a year

ago."
"Did they?" said the captain.
The wind slowly died away. The cook and the correspondent were not
now obliged to slave in order to hold high the oar. But the waves
continued their old impetuous swooping at the dingey, and the little
craft, no longer under way, struggled woundily over them. The oiler or
the correspondent took the oars again.
Shipwrecks are _à propos_ of nothing. If men could only train for them
and have them occur when the men had reached pink condition, there
would be less drowning at sea. Of the four in the dingey none had slept
any time worth mentioning for two days and two nights previous to
embarking in the dingey, and in the excitement of clambering about the
deck of a foundering ship they had also forgotten to eat heartily.
For these reasons, and for others, neither the oiler nor the correspondent
was fond of rowing at this time. The correspondent wondered
ingenuously how in the name of all that was sane could there be people
who thought it amusing to row a boat. It was not an amusement; it was
a diabolical punishment, and even a genius of mental aberrations could
never conclude that it was anything but a horror to the muscles and a
crime against the back. He