"Eighteen minutes is the longest I've ever seen," answered Johnson, the veteran of the corps, "but, of course, there's the Mooney case."
The boy listened a moment, but no sound came from the station. It was less nerve-racking to talk than to listen, so he went on,
"What was the Mooney case?"
"That was a Coast Guard job, in the days when the United States Life-Saving Service was a separate bureau. It was quite a queer case in a good many ways."
"How long was Mooney under water? Half an hour, wasn't it?" questioned another of the men.
"Thirty-one minutes, according to general reports," Johnson replied, "but to make sure that they weren't stretching it, the official report made it 'twenty minutes or over.' One of my pals worked on the man."
"How was it?" queried Eric. "In a storm?"
"Beautiful sunny Fourth of July," was the reply. "And, what's more, it was in shallow water, near shore, and the man could swim!"
"But how in the world—"
"That's exactly what I'm telling," Johnson continued, resenting the interruption. "It was during a boat race on Point Judith Pond in Rhode Island. My pal, who was a surfman, had been assigned to duty there. Naturally, he was watching the races. On the other side of the pond a small flat-bottomed skiff, carrying one sail, capsized. There were three men in her. Streeter, that's the fellow I know, saw the boat capsize, but he knew that the water was shallow and noted that it was near shore. Just the same, he kept an eye on the boat. As soon as he saw two men clinging to the sides of the skiff, he started for the scene of the accident. He was about a third of a mile away.