But the life-savers were in conference about their captain. He was a short, sturdy old man with a squarely trimmed “paint-brush” beard. The girls drew nearer to the group and heard one of the surfmen say:
“We’ll smash her, Cap, sure as you’re born! Those planks are charging in like battering-rams.”
“We’ll try it, Mason,” returned Cap’n Abinadab. “I don’t believe we can shoot a line to her against this gale. Ready!”
The captain got in at the stern and the others took their places in the boat. Each man had a cork belt strapped around his body under his arms. There were a dozen other men to launch the lifeboat into the surf when the captain gave the word.
He stood up and watched the breakers rolling in. As a huge one curved over and broke in a smother of foam and spray he shouted some command which the helpers understood. The boat started, truck and all, and immediately the men launching her were waist deep in the surging, hissing sea.
The returning billow carried the boat off the truck, and the lifeboatmen plunged in their oars and pulled. Their short sharp strokes were in such unison that the men seemed moved by the same mind. The long boat shot away from the beach and mounted the incoming wave like a cork.
The men ashore drew back the boat-truck out of the way. The lifeboat seemed to hang on that wave as though hesitating to take the plunge. Ruth thought that it would be cast back–a wreck itself–upon the beach.
But suddenly it again sprang forward, and the curling surf hid boat and men for a full minute from the gaze of those on shore. The girls clung together and gazed eagerly out into the shifting shadows that overspread the riotous sea.
“They’ve sunk!” gasped Helen.
“No, no!” cried Heavy. “There! see them?”