I was walking at a goodly pace along the Boulevard—for I love the lake in all its moods—when two men with anxious faces overtook, and hurried past me.
“There’s been a wreck, miss,” one of them—a man I knew—called back.
I quickened my pace, trying to peer through the sullen fog, as I ran. The occasional dull boom of a gun called “Help,” from out the grayness, with pathetic persistency. Soon another sound caught my ear, or rather vibrated through my frame, for the ground beneath me seemed to tremble, and I turned to see the swift oncoming of the life-saving crew from a station below us.
I had barely time to jump one side, before the huge wagon, bearing the boat and its men, swept past me, every one of those splendid horses with his head lowered, and his fine muscles set for the race.
It was all done with the celerity and ease with which things are accomplished in dreams. The sudden halting of the big wagon; the swinging of the boat to the ground; the swift donning of the yellow oilskin suits by the crew; the launch, and before one had time to wink, the strong strokes in perfect time, that bore the boat up and down, and up again, on those tumultuous waves.
There were other spectators beside myself, standing with strained sight and hearing, and throbbing hearts, upon the strip of beach. And there were other workers beside the crew. I had thought we were a small community out there in the little suburb, and I gazed with wonder that morning at the crowd which seemed to have dropped from the sky, or come up from below.
The men were chiefly from the middle and laboring classes, for the others go in on early trains, but Randolph Chance was there, his newspaper work giving him his mornings. We spoke to one another, but entered into no conversation. My thought was with the doomed ship, and so was his.
“Will any of you boys join me in taking off some of those people?” he asked the men at hand.
“It’s a rough sea, Mr. Chance.”
“I know it, but I understand boating; I guess we can manage it.”