His only answer was a black look from Cap'n Trainor. The latter loaded the gun again, and yet again. The last time he waited for every one to get well back before he fired the cannon. When she went off she did not burst as they half expected—she turned a double back somersault.
"'Tis no use, boys!" the captain roared at them, smiting his hands together. "We must try the boat. But that's a hell's broth out there, and no two ways about it."
The stranded schooner, all but hidden at times in the smother of flying spume and jumping waves, hung halfway across the reef. They could see men, like black specks, lashed to her after rigging. Louise, between bursting waves, counted twenty of these figures.
"It may be the Curlew!" she cried to the Taffy King. "Father told me in his letter there were twenty people aboard her afore and abaft. He may be out there!" and the girl shuddered.
"No, no," said I. Tapp. "Not possible. Don't think of such a thing, my girl. But whoever they are, they are to be pitied."
There rose a shout at the edge of the surf. The fringe of fishermen had rushed in to aid in launching the boat. Anscomb and his camera man had taken up a good position with the machine. The director was going to get some "real stuff."
Louise saw that Lawford was foremost among the volunteers. The lifeboat crew, their belts strapped under their arms, had taken their places in the boat. Captain Trainor stood in the stern with his steering oar. On its truck the lifeboat was run into the surf.
"Now!" shrieked the excited moving picture director. "Action! Camera!
Go!"
There was something unreal about it—it was like a play. And yet out there on that schooner her crew faced bitter death, while the men of the Coast Patrol took their lives in their hands as the lifeboat was run through the bursting surf.
The volunteers ran in till those ahead were neck deep in the sea. Then the boat floated clear and, with a mighty shove from behind the surfmen pulled out.