The Tides of Barnegat Part 41

"What do you say she is?" he shouted, as he flung himself to the edge of the roaring surf and strained his eyes toward the wreck.

"The Polly--the Polly Walters!"

"My G.o.d! How do ye know? She ain't left Amboy, I tell ye!"

"She has! That's her--see them kerds! They come off that stuff behind ye. Tod got one and I got t'other!" he held the bits of cardboard under the rim of the captain's sou'wester.

Captain Holt s.n.a.t.c.hed the cards from Parks's hand, read them at a glance, and a dazed, horror-stricken expression crossed his face. Then his eye fell upon Parks knotting the shot-line about his waist.

"Take that off! Parks, stay where ye are; don't ye move, I tell ye."

As the words dropped from the captain's lips a horrified shout went up from the bystanders. The wreck, with a crunching sound, was being lifted from the sand. She rose steadily, staggered for an instant and dropped out of sight. She had broken amidships. With the recoil two ragged bunches showed above the white wash of the water. On one fragment--a splintered mast--crouched the man with the slouch hat; to the other clung the two sailors. The next instant a great roller, gathering strength as it came, threw itself full length on both fragments and swept on. Only wreckage was left and one head.

With a cry to the men to stand by and catch the slack, the captain ripped a line from the drum of the cart, dragged off his high boots, knotted the bight around his waist, and started on a run for the surf.

Before his stockinged feet could reach the edge of the foam, Archie seized him around the waist and held him with a grip of steel.

"You sha'n't do it, captain!" he cried, his eyes blazing. "Hold him, men--I'll get him!" With the bound of a cat he landed in the middle of the floatage, dived under the logs, rose on the boiling surf, worked himself clear of the insh.o.r.e wreckage, and struck out in the direction of the man clinging to the shattered mast, and who was now nearing the beach, whirled on by the inrushing seas.

Strong men held their breath, tears br.i.m.m.i.n.g their eyes. Captain Holt stood irresolute, dazed for the moment by Archie's danger. The beach women--Mrs. Fogarty among them--were wringing their hands. They knew the risk better than the others.

Jane, at Archie's plunge, had run down to the edge of the surf and stood with tight-clenched fingers, her gaze fixed on the lad's head as he breasted the breakers--her face white as death, the tears streaming down her cheeks. Fear for the boy she loved, pride in his pluck and courage, agony over the result of the rescue, all swept through her as she strained her eyes seaward.

Lucy, Max, and Mrs. Coates were huddled together under the lee of the dune. Lucy's eyes were staring straight ahead of her; her teeth chattering with fear and cold. She had heard the shouts of Parks and the captain, and knew now whose life was at stake. There was no hope left; Archie would win and pull him out alive, and her end would come.

The crowd watched the lad until his hand touched the mast, saw him pull himself hand over hand along its slippery surface and reach out his arms. Then a cheer went up from a hundred throats, and as instantly died away in a moan of terror. Behind, towering over them like a huge wall, came a wave of black water, solemn, merciless, uncrested, as if bent on deadly revenge. Under its impact the shattered end of the mast rose clear of the water, tossed about as if in agony, veered suddenly with the movement of a derrick-boom, and with its living freight dashed headlong into the swirl of cord-wood.

As it ploughed through the outer drift and reached the inner line of wreckage, Tod, whose eyes had never left Archie since his leap into the surf, made a running jump from the sand, landed on a tangle of drift, and sprang straight at the section of the mast to which Archie clung.

The next instant the surf rolled clear, submerging the three men.

Another ringing order now rose above the roar of the waters, and a chain of rescuing surfmen--the last resort--with Captain Nat at the head dashed into the turmoil.

It was a hand-to-hand fight now with death. At the first onslaught of the battery of wreckage Polhemus was knocked breathless by a blow in the stomach and rescued by the bystanders just as a log was curling over him. Green was. .h.i.t by a surging crate, and Mulligan only saved from the crush of the cord-wood by the quickness of a fisherman.

Morgan, watching his chance, sprang clear of a tangle of barrels and cord-wood, dashed into the narrow gap of open water, and grappling Tod as he whirled past, twisted his fingers in Archie's waistband. The three were then pounced upon by a relay of fishermen led by Tod's father and dragged from under the crunch and surge of the smother. Both Tod and Morgan were unhurt and scrambled to their feet as soon as they gained the hard sand, but Archie lay insensible where the men had dropped him, his body limp, his feet crumpled under him.

All this time the man in the slouch hat was being swirled in the h.e.l.l of wreckage, the captain meanwhile holding to the human chain with one hand and fighting with the other until he reached the half-drowned man whose grip had now slipped from the crate to which he clung. As the two were shot in toward the beach, Green, who had recovered his breath, dodged the recoil, sprang straight for them, threw the captain a line, which he caught, dashed back and dragged the two high up on the beach, the captain's arm still tightly locked about the rescued man.

A dozen hands were held out to relieve the captain of his burden, but he only waved them away.

"I'll take care of him!" he gasped in a voice almost gone from buffeting the waves, as the body slipped from his arms to the wet sand.

"Git out of the way, all of you!"

Once on his feet, he stood for an instant to catch his breath, wrung the grime from his ears with his stiff fingers, and then shaking the water from his shoulders as a dog would after a plunge, he pa.s.sed his great arms once more under the bedraggled body of the unconscious man and started up the dune toward the House of Refuge, the water dripping from both their wet bodies. Only once did he pause, and then to shout:

"Green,--Mulligan! Go back, some o' ye, and git Archie. He's hurt bad.

Quick, now! And one o' ye bust in them doors. And-- Polhemus, pull some coats off that crowd and a shawl or two from them women if they can spare 'em, and find Doctor John, some o' ye! D'ye hear! DOCTOR JOHN!"

A dozen coats were stripped from as many backs, a shawl of Mrs.

Fogarty's handed to Polhemus, the doors burst in and Uncle Isaac lunging in tumbled the garments on the floor. On these the captain laid the body of the rescued man, the slouch hat still clinging to his head.

While this was being done another procession was approaching the house.

Tod and Parks were carrying Archie's unconscious form, the water dripping from his clothing. Tod had his hands under the boy's armpits and Parks carried his feet. Behind the three walked Jane, half supported by the doctor.

"Dead!" she moaned. "Oh, no--no--no, John; it cannot be! Not my Archie!

my brave Archie!"

The captain heard the tramp of the men's feet on the board floor of the runway outside and rose to his feet. He had been kneeling beside the form of the rescued man. His face was knotted with the agony he had pa.s.sed through, his voice still thick and hoa.r.s.e from battling with the sea.

"What's that she says?" he cried, straining his ears to catch Jane's words. "What's that! Archie dead! No! 'Tain't so, is it, doctor?"

Doctor John, his arm still supporting Jane, shook his head gravely and pointed to his own forehead.

"It's all over, captain," he said in a broken voice. "Skull fractured."

"Hit with them logs! Archie! Oh, my G.o.d! And this man ain't much better off--he ain't hardly breathin'. See for yerself, doctor. Here, Tod, lay Archie on these coats. Move back that boat, men, to give 'em room, and push them stools out of the way. Oh, Miss Jane, maybe it ain't true, maybe he'll come round! I've seen 'em this way more'n a dozen times.

Here, doctor let's get these wet clo'es off 'em." He dropped between the two limp, soggy bodies and began tearing open the shirt from the man's chest. Jane, who had thrown herself in a pa.s.sion of grief on the water-soaked floor beside Archie, commenced wiping the dead boy's face with her handkerchief, smoothing the short wet curls from his forehead as she wept.

The man's shirt and collar loosened, Captain Holt pulled the slouch hat from his head, wrenched the wet shoes loose, wrapped the cold feet in the dry shawl, and began tucking the pile of coats closer about the man's shoulders that he might rest the easier. For a moment he looked intently at the pallid face smeared with ooze and grime, and limp body that the doctor was working over, and then stepped to where Tod now crouched beside his friend, the one he had loved all his life. The young surfman's strong body was shaking with the sobs he could no longer restrain.

"It's rough, Tod," said the captain, in a choking voice, which grew clearer as he talked on. "Almighty rough on ye and on all of us. You did what you could--ye risked yer life for him, and there ain't n.o.body kin do more. I wouldn't send ye out again, but there's work to do. Them two men of Cap'n Ambrose's is drowned, and they'll come ash.o.r.e some'er's near the inlet, and you and Parks better hunt 'em up. They live up to Barnegat, ye know, and their folks'll be wantin' 'em." It was strange how calm he was. His sense of duty was now controlling him.

Tod had raised himself to his feet when the captain had begun to speak and stood with his wet sou'wester in his hand.

"Been like a brother to me," was all he said, as he brushed the tears from his eyes and went to join Parks.

The captain watched Tod's retreating figure for a moment, and bending again over Archie's corpse, stood gazing at the dead face, his hands folded across his girth--as one does when watching a body being slowly lowered into a grave.

"I loved ye, boy," Jane heard him say between her sobs. "I loved ye!

You knowed it, boy. I hoped to tell ye so out loud so everybody could hear. Now they'll never know."

Straightening himself up, he walked firmly to the open door about which the people pressed, held back by the line of surfmen headed by Polhemus, and calmly surveyed the crowd. Close to the opening, trying to press her way in to Jane, his eyes fell on Lucy. Behind her stood Max Feilding.

"Friends," said the captain, in a low, restrained voice, every trace of his grief and excitement gone, "I've got to ask ye to git considerable way back and keep still. We got Doctor John here and Miss Jane, and there ain't nothin' ye kin do. When there is I'll call ye. Polhemus, you and Green see this order is obeyed."

Again he hesitated, then raising his eyes over the group nearest the door, he beckoned to Lucy, pushed her in ahead of him, caught the swinging doors in his hands, and shut them tight. This done, he again dropped on his knees beside the doctor and the now breathing man.

CHAPTER XXII

THE CLAW OF THE SEA-PUSS

With the closing of the doors the murmur of the crowd, the dull glare of the gray sky, and the thrash of the wind were shut out. The only light in the House of Refuge now came from the two small windows, one above the form of the suffering man and the other behind the dead body of Archie. Jane's head was close to the boy's chest, her sobs coming from between her hands, held before her face. The shock of Archie's death had robbed her of all her strength. Lucy knelt beside her, her shoulder resting against a pile of cordage. Every now and then she would steal a furtive glance around the room--at the boat, at the rafters overhead, at the stove with its pile of kindling--and a slight shudder would pa.s.s through her. She had forgotten nothing of the past, nor of the room in which she crouched. Every scar and stain stood out as clear and naked as those on some long-buried wreck dug from shifting sands by a change of tide.

A few feet away the doctor was stripping the wet clothes from the rescued man and piling the dry coats over him to warm him back to life.

His emergency bag, handed in by Polhemus through the crack of the closed doors, had been opened, a bottle selected, and some spoonfuls of brandy forced down the sufferer's throat. He saw that the sea-water had not harmed him; it was the cordwood and wreckage that had crushed the breath out of him. In confirmation he pointed to a thin streak of blood oozing from one ear. The captain nodded, and continued chafing the man's hands--working with the skill of a surfman over the water-soaked body. Once he remarked in a half-whisper--so low that Jane could not hear him: