THE BOY WITH THE
U. S. LIFE-SAVERS
| BOOKS BY FRANCIS ROLT-WHEELER |
| U. S. Service Series |
| Illustrations from Photographs taken for U. S. Government. Large 12mo. Cloth. Price $1.50 each. |
| THE BOY WITH THE U. S. SURVEY THE BOY WITH THE U. S. FORESTERS THE BOY WITH THE U. S. CENSUS THE BOY WITH THE U. S. FISHERIES THE BOY WITH THE U. S. INDIANS THE BOY WITH THE U. S. EXPLORERS |
| LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO., BOSTON |
Courtesy of Outing Magazine.
The Gleam that Brings Hope.
Coast Guard patrol burning the Coston Light as signal to wrecked vessel that help is at hand.
U. S. SERVICE SERIES.
THE BOY WITH
THE U. S. LIFE-SAVERS
BY
FRANCIS ROLT-WHEELER
With Forty-eight Illustrations, nearly all from Photographs Loaned by Bureaus of the U. S. Government
BOSTON
LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.
Published, August, 1915
Copyright, 1915, By Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co.
All rights reserved
THE BOY WITH THE U. S. LIFE-SAVERS
Norwood Press
BERWICK & SMITH CO.
NORWOOD, MASS.
U. S. A.
PREFACE
Upon the hungry rock-bound shores of Maine, and over the treacherous quicksands of Cape Hatteras, the billows of the Atlantic roll; the tropical storms of the Gulf of Mexico whip a high surf over the coral reefs of Florida; upon the Pacific coast, six thousand miles of sea fling all their fury on the land; yet no one fears. Serene in the knowledge that the United States Coast Guard and the Lighthouse Bureau never sleep, vessels from every corner of the world converge to the great seaports of America.
The towers that stand sentinel all day, or flame their unceasing vigilance all night, hold out their message of welcome or of warning to every ship that nears the coast, and not a point of danger is unprotected. Should an unreckoned-with disaster cast a vessel on the breakers, there is not a mile of beach that the Coast Guard does not watch.
Far in the northern Bering Sea, a Coast Guard cutter blazes the hidden trail through Polar ice for the oncoming fleet of whalers, and carries American justice to where, as yet, no court has been; out in the mid-Atlantic, when the Greenland icebergs follow their silent path of ghostly menace, a Coast Guard cutter watches and warns the great ocean liners of their peril; and when, in spite of all that skill and watchfulness can do, the sea claims its toll of wreck, it is the Coast Guard cutter that is first upon the scene of rescue. To show the stern work done by the U. S. Coast Guard, to depict the indomitable men who overcome dangers greater than are known to any others who traffic on the sea, to point to the manly boyhood of America this arm of our country's national defense, whose history is one long record of splendid heroism, is the aim and purpose of
The Author.
CONTENTS
| CHAPTER I | |
| A Rescue by Moonlight | [1] |
| CHAPTER II | |
| The Lights that Never Sleep | [28] |
| CHAPTER III | |
| Heroes of the Underground | [61] |
| CHAPTER IV | |
| Snatched from a Frozen Death | [96] |
| CHAPTER V | |
| Saved by the Breeches-Buoy | [120] |
| CHAPTER VI | |
| A Blazon of Flame at Sea | [156] |
| CHAPTER VII | |
| Reindeer to the Rescue | [187] |
| CHAPTER VIII | |
| The Belching Death of a Volcano | [222] |
| CHAPTER IX | |
| Defying the Tempest's Violence | [246] |
| CHAPTER X | |
| Adrift on a Derelict | [274] |
| CHAPTER XI | |
| The Wreckers of the Spanish Main | [294] |
| CHAPTER XII | |
| The Graveyard of the Deep | [322] |