If you should happen to look in his locker, away back out of sight, you would perhaps find a small paper box, and in it a gold medal—the highest his government can give him—inscribed with his name and a record of some particular act of heroism. When he is confronted with the tell-tale evidence, he will say:
"Oh, yes—they did give me that! I'm keepin' it for my grandson."
If you, failing to corkscrew any of the details out of him, should examine the Department's reports, you will find out all he "forgets"—among them the fact that in his thirty-one years of service he and the crew under him have saved the lives of one hundred and thirty-one men and women out of a possible one hundred and thirty-two. He explains the loss of this unlucky man by saying apologetically that "the fellow got dizzy somehow and locked himself in the cabin, and we didn't know he was there until she broke up and he got washed ashore."
This was the man who, when I arrived at the railroad station, held out a hand in hearty welcome, his own closing over mine with the grip of a cant-hook.
"Well, by Jiminy! Superintendent said you was comin', but I kind o' thought you wouldn't 'til the weather cleared. Gimme yer bag—Yes, the boys are all well and will be glad to see ye. Colder than blue blazes, ain't it? Snow ain't over yet. Well, well, kind o' natural to see ye!"
The bag was passed up; the Captain caught the reins in his crab-like fingers, and the bunch of wind-blown fur, gathering its stiffened legs together, wheeled sharply to the left and started in to make pencil-markings in double lines over the white snow seaward toward the Naukashon Life-Saving Station.
Over the white snow seaward.
The perspective shortened: first the smooth, unbroken stretch; then the belt of pines; then a flat marsh diked by dunes; then a cluster of black dots, big and little—the big one being the Station house, and the smaller ones its outbuildings and fishermen's shanties; and then the hard, straight line of the pitiless sea.