"It's everybody's business," declared Mr. Gilbert. "And it's a disgrace to Maxham to have no lifeboat. I don't care who hears me say it. A disgrace to Maxham!" The speaker's fair boyish face flushed, while his deep tones rolled down the street. "See now, if, instead of talking, you had all clubbed together and bought a boat, those poor fellows who are coming to their death upon the rocks might have been saved, one and all of them. Do you think the people of Maxham won't be reckoned accountable for the untimely death of those poor men? I tell you it's everybody's business, and everybody has a share in the responsibility."
Mokes could have been offended; but he remembered that it was the Vicar who spoke, and also that the Vicar was young.
"At all events, that reproach shall not lie upon Maxham much longer. I'll start a subscription for the boat next Sunday." Mr. Gilbert came from a large town, and, as everybody knows, a subscription list in a town is the panacea for all evils. "Why it hasn't been done before passes my comprehension. Well, but look here—what's to be done now? We can't leave those poor fellows to rush on their death without an effort to save them. Women on board, too, you say."
"Adams was sure he see'd one, sir, through his glass. But he doubted no boat could live in this sea, without it was a lifeboat."
"We can try; always possible to try. Better to die doing our duty than to live with the duty left undone!" The "our" came naturally enough here. "Out of the question that the lifeboat should arrive in time. She'll be on the rocks in less than an hour, and it will be short work then. Whose is the best boat? And who can row?"
Mokes gently rubbed the side of his head, surveying the speaker with dubious eyes.
"Come! Whose boat shall it be? And who will man it? I'm the first volunteer."
"Then I'm the second," added Robins. "I'll never be the one to hold back, though I doubt it'll be no good. They're doomed, poor chaps."
"No man is doomed while life remains—at all events, so far as our knowledge is concerned. Here are two of us ready, and we may count upon Adams. He is old, but he knows every inch of the rocks, and he must steer. Adams will be the third, I don't doubt. Who's fourth?"
"Here's your fourth, sir," a voice said behind; and at the sound Jessie clasped her hands under the shawl which she wore. A lithe well-built young fellow stood outside the gate. At sight of him Mokes' face fell, and on the younger Mokes' brow might be noted an unpleasant scowl.