Rick and Ruddy: The Story of a Boy and His Dog

by Howard Roger Garis

"Mighty hard to see a wreck, even if there is one," the coast guard murmured. He did not open his mouth to speak aloud, as he sometimes did other nights, on his lonely patrol. If he had opened his mouth this night it would have been filled at once with rain and salty spray and his breath might have been blown down his throat by the wind. So he kept his lips closed and merely murmured.

"Worst storm for early September I ever see!" was his thought. "Hope none of the vessels come too close in shore. It'd be a hard job getting a crew together now for the boat, or breeches buoy."

In July, August, and early in September, on our Eastern coasts, the life saving force is on vacation, save for a captain and one man at each station to patrol the beach. The summer months are seldom marked by storms and wrecks, and there is not often need of the services of the life-savers. When such occasion arises the station captain, or his one helper, calls for volunteers.

Stronger blew the wind, and the rain came down harder, mingling with the salty spume and spray from the ocean. The place where Rick Dalton had sat on the beach that afternoon, and wished for a dog, was now a seething caldron of white foam, and the sand dunes were under water.

"High tide and a north-easter!" mused the coast guard. "Shouldn't wonder but what a lot of bulkheads would be torn loose to-night. Bluefish and moss bunkers! That was a fierce one!"

A stronger force of the gusty wind fairly stopped him in his tracks, and he actually had to lean forward to keep his balance. It was hard walking on the sand. Part of the shore of Belemere was marked by a board walk, for the place was visited by a small summer population of "city folks," and on this walk the going was better. But it did not extend more than half a mile. Belemere was not well enough known as yet to have a fashionable board walk, that would be thronged in the evenings.

And now there was not a soul on it, even at the early hour of ten o'clock. For the wind and spray swept over it, and, in places, the waves actually washed under it, and partly across the road it bordered.

Trudging along, now and then bringing up to take a view out over the heaving billows, which showed dimly white in the black night, the coast guard kept on his beat. He was well protected against the storm, for there had been ample warning of its coming. But so strongly did the wind whip the rain along that the drops sought out every opening in his oilskins and the guard felt the chill of the water.

"It sure is a rip-snorter!" he murmured.

He must walk to the end of his particular section, or beat—almost to Bay Head—the next station, there to meet the guard from the adjoining section of coast.