The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers

by Francis Rolt-Wheeler

The boy took another look at Tillamook Rock, frowning above the surf.

"I'm not hankering after a swim there," he said; "I don't claim to be amphibious, exactly. As you say, it's calm enough on the open water, but I don't think anything except a seal or a walrus or something of that kind could land on that rock. Not for me, thank you. I'll take the crane, and gladly."

The ropes rattled through the davit blocks, and, as the Manzanita heeled over a little, the boat took water, the blocks were unhooked, her bows given a sharp shove and she was off.

Down at water level, the slight swell seemed considerably larger. Indeed, it actually was increasing. And, as they pulled in toward the entrance of the reef, the boat met a rip in the current that seemed to try to twist the oars from the hands of the boat-pullers. But lighthouse-tender sailors are picked men, and though the little boat was thrown about like a cork, she fairly clawed her way through the rip. As they neared the entrance in the reef, the surf rushed between the rocks, throwing up spume and spray as though a storm were raging. Eric had to look back out to sea to convince himself that the ocean was still as calm as it had seemed a moment or two before. In among the crags to which the boat was driving, there was a turmoil of seething waters, which came thundering in and which shrank away with a sucking sound, as though disappointed of a long hoped-for vengeance.

"It's like a witches' pot!" shouted Eric to his father.

"This is about as calm as it ever gets," was the inspector's unmoved reply. "You ought to see Tillamook when it's rough weather! I've seen it with a real gale blowing, when it seemed impossible that the rock could stand up five minutes against the terrific battering. Yet it just stands there and defies the Pacific at its worst, as it has, I suppose, for a hundred thousand years or more, and the light shines on serenely."

With consummate steering and a finer handling of the oars than Eric had ever seen before—and he was something of an oarsman himself—the boat from the lighthouse-tender neared the Rock. It was held immediately under the crane and a rope was lowered with a loop on the end of it. The inspector swung himself into this and went shooting up in the air, like some oilskin-covered sea-gull. He took it as a matter of course, all a part of the day's work, but, just the same, it gave Eric a queer sensation. It was his turn next.

In a moment the loop was down again for him. The rest of the boat's crew were busy getting ready the mail bag, the provisions and the other supplies that they had brought with them, so the boy stepped unhesitatingly into the loop.

Swish! He was on his upward flight almost before he knew it. The back curl of a breaker, baffled in its attack on the rock, drenched him to the skin. He laughed, for this was just what he had bargained for. Beneath him, already but a small spot on the sea, was the boat he had left; above him the grim nakedness of the barren rock, and below, snarling with impotent fury, was the defeated surf.

The crane above him creaked as it swung inboard. Drenched, cold, but thoroughly happy, Eric stood on Tillamook Rock. For the moment, at least, he was one with that little band of men which is Uncle Sam's farthest outpost against the tempest-armies of the western seas.