“Come on in,” called Polly, splashing her with water. “You mustn’t sit up on that rock and play you’re a nixie or a mermaid while we have to work so hard. Come on in, and swim.”
“Oh, Polly, I don’t think I want to,” said Isabel, anxiously. “I can’t keep the water out of my eyes.”
“Fiddlesticks,” cried the Commodore; “come and splash her, girls,” and they drove Isabel back to work like the rest.
“Now then, now then,” shouted the Captain in his rolling bass. “Keep at it lively, keep at it lively. Tom’s coming with the boats at noon if the wind holds fair, and you must learn how to keep your heads out of the bay.”
So they kept at it diligently, and when it was over they went up on the beach. While they lay around in the warn sand, the Captain took Nancy and gave a regular life-saving drill to show them what to do in case of danger.
“First aid to the injured class,” Polly called it, and it was a good name.
“Don’t scream and get excited. That’s the first and last rule I want to give you,” he told them, emphatically. “What would you think of a boat crew of life-savers whooping at the top of their lungs when they were going out at a call? If you do happen to fall overboard, or you see one of the others in trouble, don’t run and call for help. Keep cool, and get right down to business.”
“Don’t people who are in danger of drowning try to catch hold of any one who goes to rescue them, and they both are lost?” asked Isabel, doubtfully. “I should think it would be better to throw them a buoy or a life preserver or something.”
“That’s something you don’t worry about,” the Captain told her, comfortably. “I guess if people had always been thinking of that sort of thing, there would never have been any life saving apparatus at all. I sorter feel that we must leave a whole lot to Him who holdeth the sea in the hollow of His hand. Now, remember what I did just now, and how I did it. I’ll drill you on it next week. You never can tell when it will come in handy. Don’t start giving a drowned person strong black coffee or clam chowder the first thing to brace them up, do you mind me? ’Tain’t done by real life savers.” The Captain’s eyes twinkled. “Just roll them over a barrel, or your knee, and get the water out of them; then take hold of their tongue, using a piece of clean cloth, and get somebody else to work their arms up and down, and if there’s any beat left in their heart it’s going to start up again. And when you do start them going, then it’s time enough to give them coffee, or hot ginger tea, or anything. Mother’s great on hot ginger tea, and I don’t know but what prayer and ginger ought to be counted in with the first aid to the injured. I use them both myself in strong doses.”
Promptly at eleven they all straggled up the beach, a happy, dripping lot, running in to dress and get luncheon over before Tom came with the boats.