Part 13

The wreck was breaking up fast. Her timbers strewed the beach, and drifted menacingly in the surf. But with slow, halting effort, the whip-line followed the slender cord of the projectile, and after that the heavy hawser trailed out into the night until the jerky signal came ashore that all was made fast. The surfmen tailed on and the breeches-buoy was dragged shoreward. At length a sodden shape, coughing and groaning, was pulled up on the sand by the men who rushed among the combers. Four more trips the breeches-buoy made, and three more sailors were fetched ashore alive. The last of these was asked how many were left aboard and he gasped:

"Nobody but the skipper, an' he's hangin' on by his toenails."

On shore they waited in vain for a signal, and none came. It was more ominous when the hawser slackened. It was read as a death-warrant when the hawser yielded to the tautening heave of the surfmen, yielded with sickening ease and came washing and writhing in to them, hand over hand, broken adrift from the wreck. The little group on the thundering beach stared across the ghastly water at the dissolving lump of the schooner, knowing by instinct that it would be foolishly futile to shoot another line seaward. They waited, and it was all that they could do.

To young Brainard this suspense was more killing than all the stress through which he had furiously toiled. No light, no sign of life, nothing to tell whether or not death had won in the home stretch!

A rescued seaman, battered and spent, cried out from where he lay on the sand:

"Matt Martin his name is. The _Lucy B._ was the vessel's. Coal to Havana. Mate washed overboard last night. He's a good skipper, is Martin; looks like that youngster in the white shirt there."

"We'll find him at high-water mark in a day or so," bellowed Fritz Wagenhals. "My Gott, I wish--no, the boat is no good here."

The young man shot his fist seaward.

"I'll try to swim out with a line if you'll let me."

"No, you don't, you tamn fool Boy!" the keeper shouted back.

Brainard doubled along the edge of the beach like a hound baffled by a lost trail. He was almost beside himself with bitter anger at the storm that it should have wrought this cruel climax. It had come as a tremendous revelation to him that he could help to win this great fight against wind and sea. His splendid strength had some place in the world of deeds after all. Fierce joy and thanksgiving had thrilled his every fiber that in this hour he was permitted to be one of the Tarpon Inlet crew. Now to be robbed of the life of the captain of the vessel, to stand like wooden men and let him die who had stayed by his ship for duty's sake--this was more than profoundly sad, it was maddening.

Blindly scouting a little way up the beach, Brainard glimpsed a bit of wreckage rearing shoreward, carried beyond the other watchers by some freak of the undertow. It looked like all the other sorry fragments of the schooner, but a second glance showed him a white patch gleaming against the black timber. It might be the tattered foam, but a wild hope halted him in his tracks, and he stood staring at the tumbling mass. The white patch did not vanish, it seemed to move as if writhing against its background, and now he was sure he saw it move. To wait an instant longer was to see the bit of wreckage pounded in the surf as by Titan sledge-hammers. He tore into the first line of foam, head down, arms extended. A few tripping strides, and a wall of water crashed down upon him, solid and resistless. Stunned as he was he dove by instinct, and caught breath beyond the breaker. The fragment of wreckage to which something was clinging rode a few yards beyond him. Again he was flung down and tossed shoreward, and again he dove with fast weakening effort, nor could he see that behind him the other surfmen were struggling to reach him in a hard-gripped human chain.

As he rose, the jagged timber was hurled straight at him like a projectile. He tried to dodge it, flinging out an arm to clutch at something white half wrapped round it. A broken nail or bolt caught his clothing, and dragged him headlong. While he threw his arms about the timber he felt the rags of his trousers tear loose, and he shook himself free of the deadly hold. He was no more than conscious that something stirred as if alive beneath his shifting grip. Presently the surfmen cheered as they hauled ashore the broken beam from which they had to pry loose two half-naked, water-logged, but living men.

Day was breaking when the crew of the schooner, a full muster roll, were helped into the station. The weary surfmen gave their bunks to the rescued, and the black cook made strong coffee and corned-beef hash with incredible speed. Brainard fell on the floor like a dead man. But he could not sleep, for the night had been too crowded with racking events. His hurts and exhaustion were forgotten as the evening at the Coquina Beach Hotel came back to him, dimly at first, then focusing more sharply, as if he were recalling things far distant in time and place.

Amid this welter of impressions loomed the fact that magically the means had been provided for him to go back to his own, and more than this, to see her whose message had come as from the dead awakened. As if in a dream, he fumbled for his trousers pockets. Then it came to him that he had been forced to put on Jim Conklin's oilskin breeches while that comrade was half dragging him home from the wreck. He dully wondered why, until beneath the oil-skins he found a waistband and a few sodden rags, all that was left of his evening clothes. Pockets were gone, and with them----

"Five thousand dollars," he muttered in dazed, stupid fashion.

Just then a babbling chatter broke from the nearest cot. Brainard raised his head and saw a young man, no older than himself, sitting up and feebly swaying, his wits awry for the moment because of what he had suffered. The captain of the lost schooner wrung his hands and cried, while the tears were on his bruised face:

"No, no, I tell you, the _Lucy B._ was not insured.... I named her after you and she was a lucky vessel.... Cut away the rags o' that forestays'l, and we'll bend on somethin' that 'll hold.... We've got to heave her to, I tell you.... Five thousand dollars clean gone, all I've got and.... If we can fetch Tarpon Inlet before we founder, we can get inside.... The _Lucy B._ gone to pieces.... You're a liar.... Why, I just bought out old man Holter's share last voyage.... Five thousand dollars, all in the _Lucy B._... All I've got and----"

Brainard was moved to pity, then amazement, that in this fashion he should be brought face to face with a tragedy so very like his own. But he glimpsed the fact, and was ashamed of it, that he would be stirred to deeper sympathy for the young skipper if there were no womanish wailing over his loss. And then, guilty and remorseful, Brainard realized that his own heart was full of sullen repining, bitter discontent with the fate that had robbed him of his treasure and his hopes, futile outcry against his forced return to the life of the station. He, then, was wholly lacking in that very fortitude which he wished to see displayed by this broken, fevered sailor in the cot, whose misfortune was, by far, the more crushing.

Brainard crawled stiffly outside to be alone. For some time he painfully overhauled his surging thoughts, and slowly there faded from his tired young face the clouding trouble that he had seen mirrored in the face of the boyish captain. Then he said aloud as if it were a verdict:

"A man who can't take his medicine is a pretty tough spectacle, isn't he? And it was all a dream, yes, all a dream--of money I didn't earn, and--and of a girl I can't marry."

He looked through the doorway, saw Jim Conklin slip over to the captain's cot and stroke the hot forehead, and heard him say:

"I know what it is, old man. I've been there myself."

The touch of Conklin's hand seemed to bring the skipper to himself. His slackened mouth closed with the snap of a steel trap, and into his face came the alert and aggressive look of an unbeaten man. He smiled up at Conklin and said weakly:

"I must have been a little upset in my top story. Was I talkin' foolishness? Thank God, we're still alive an' kickin' strong. I'm all right. How are my men? No use crying over spilt milk, is there, shipmate? How's the kid that yanked me ashore?"

Brainard went to his side, repeating as if he were thinking aloud:

"There's no use crying over spilt milk. I dreamed I lost five thousand dollars last night."

"Well, I'll be jiggered, so did I," cheerfully responded the skipper. "But it wasn't no dream for me. It won't make a bit of difference a hundred years from now, will it? Vessel a total loss, but I'm no total loss, not for a minute. You fished me out, and thanks for a neat job, for I'm pretty fond of just livin'."

Brainard gripped the outstretched hand, and the two young men smiled into each other's eyes. Ashley Brainard was glad that he had found a man, but gladder was he that he had found himself. For in that moment the life-saver routed all his regrets, as he turned to Jim Conklin, with vibrant earnestness and shining face:

"I'm mighty glad of the chance to stay here for a while among you men. For I'm pretty fond of just living, Jim, even if my dreams can't all come true."