"Scud!" I cried. "Help! Save them, Scud!"
"I can't do nothing," he howled in my ear. "No one can't. You can't row in them breakers."
By this time the wind had increased its force. The sail-boat was near enough for one to see the desperate attempts the boyish skipper made to lower the sail. One of the halyards had become caught. The boy made wild rushes to the mast. Then the boat would rock and fly around. To save her the lad darted back to the helm just in time. This sickening struggle against a knot was repeated several times. On the bottom the three passengers lay inert with terror. A twenty-foot boat with full sail, when hundred-ton schooners trembled under bare poles! Even my inexperience grasped the situation.
"He's doing all-fired well, but he can't last no longer if that—He'll be druv on the rocks! They'll be druv to——!"
The rocks were now lined with men commenting in an apathetic way upon the tragedy enacting before their eyes.
"Why don't they do something?" In my ignorance of the curious stolidity which falls upon the shore in face of danger upon the sea, I stood shrieking: "Why doesn't somebody go? Why don't you men do something?"
The fishermen and the summer people looked into each other's eyes, but no man answered a word.
"Can't you help them?" I pleaded with another weather-beaten fisherman.
"Can't be done, or I'd do it."
"I came down to see them capsize, an' I guess they'll go," said a gruff voice.