After a hurried consultation, Septimus Marvin was deputed to follow the injured man and take him home, seeing that he had as yet but half recovered his senses. This good Samaritan had scarcely disappeared when a shout from the beach drew the attention of all in another direction.
One of the outposts was running toward the fire, waving his lantern and shouting incoherently. It was a coast-guard.
“Comin’ ashore in their own boat,” he cried. “They’re coming in in their own boat!”
“There she rides—there she rides!” added Sea Andrew, almost immediately, and he pointed to the south.
Quite close in, just outside the line of breakers, a black shadow was rising and falling on the water. It seemed to make scarcely any way at all, and each sea that curled underneath the boat and roared toward the beach was a new danger.
“They’re going to run her in here,” said Sea Andrew. “There’s more left on board; that’s what that means, and they’re goin’ back for ‘em. If ‘twasn’t so they’d run in anywheres and let her break.”
For one sailor will always tell what another is about, however great the distance intervening.
Slowly the boat came on, rolling tremendously on the curve of the breakers, between the broken water of the tideway and the spume of the surf.
“That’s Loo at the hellum,” said Sea Andrew—the keenest eyes in Farlingford.
And suddenly Miriam swayed sideways against John Turner, who was perhaps watching her, for he gripped her arm and stood firm. No one spoke. The watchers on the beach stared open-mouthed, making unconscious grimaces as the boat rose and fell. All had been ready for some minutes; every preparation made according to the time-honoured use of these coasts: four men with life-lines round them standing knee-deep waiting to dash in deeper, others behind them grouped in two files, some holding the slack of the life-lines, forming a double rank from the shore to the fire, giving the steersman his course. There was no need to wave a torch or shout an order. They were Farlingford men on the shore and Farlingford men in the boat.