‘Take her easy, now, boys,’ said the captain. ‘Don’t spend yourselves. If we have to run a surf you’ll need all your strength, because we’ll sure have to swim for it. Take your time.’

Slowly the land arose from the sea. From a black line it became a line of black and a line of white, trees and sand. Finally, the captain said that he could make out a house on the shore. ‘That’s the house of refuge, sure,’ said the cook. ‘They’ll see us before long, and come out after us.’

The distant lighthouse reared high. ‘The keeper ought to be able to make us out now, if he’s looking through a glass,’ said the captain. ‘He’ll notify the life-saving people.’

‘None of those other boats could have got ashore to give word of the wreck,’ said the oiler, in a low voice. ‘Else the lifeboat would be out hunting us.’

Slowly and beautifully the land loomed out of the sea. The wind came again. It had veered from the north-east to the south-east. Finally, a new sound struck the ears of the men in the boat. It was the low thunder of the surf on the shore. ‘We’ll never be able to make the lighthouse now,’ said the captain. ‘Swing her head a little more north, Billie,’ said he.

“‘A little more north,” sir,’ said the oiler.

Whereupon the little boat turned her nose once more down the wind, and all but the oarsman watched the shore grow. Under the influence of this expansion doubt and direful apprehension was leaving the minds of the men. The management of the boat was still most absorbing, but it could not prevent a quiet cheerfulness. In an hour, perhaps, they would be ashore.

Their backbones had become thoroughly used to balancing in the boat, and they now rode this wild colt of a dinghy like circus men. The correspondent thought that he had been drenched to the skin, but happening to feel in the top pocket of his coat, he found therein eight cigars. Four of them were soaked with sea-water; four were perfectly scatheless. After a search, somebody produced three dry matches, and thereupon the four waifs rode impudently in their little boat, and with an assurance of an impending rescue shining in their eyes, puffed at the big cigars and judged well and ill of all men. Everybody took a drink of water.

IV

‘Cook,’ remarked the captain, ‘there don’t seem to be any signs of life about your house of refuge.’

‘No,’ replied the cook. ‘Funny they don’t see us!’

A broad stretch of lowly coast lay before the eyes of the men. It was of dunes topped with dark vegetation. The roar of the surf was plain, and sometimes they could see the white lip of a wave as it spun up the beach. A tiny house was blocked out black upon the sky. Southward, the slim lighthouse lifted its little grey length.

Tide, wind, and waves were swinging the dinghy northward. ‘Funny they don’t see us,’ said the men.

The surf’s roar was here dulled, but its tone was, nevertheless, thunderous and mighty. As the boat swam over the great rollers, the men sat listening to this roar. ‘We’ll swamp sure,’ said everybody.

It is fair to say here that there was not a life-saving station within twenty miles in either direction, but the men did not know this fact, and in consequence they made dark and opprobrious remarks concerning the eyesight of the nation’s life-saves. Four scowling men sat in the dinghy and surpassed records in the invention of epithets.

‘Funny they don’t see us.’