Cap'n Trainor's hard gaze swept the circle of strained faces about him.
After all, the men here were mostly "second raters"—weaklings like
Milt Baker and Amiel Perdue, or cripples like Cap'n Joab and Washy
Gallup.
Suddenly the captain's gaze descried a figure well back in the crowd—one who had not pushed forward during these exciting moments, but who had been chained to the spot by the fascination of what was happening.
"Ain't that Cap'n Am'zon Silt back there?" demanded the skipper of the lifeboat crew. "You pull a strong oar, I know, Cap'n Am'zon. We need you."
CHAPTER XXXI
AN ANCHOR TO THE SOUL
The storekeeper had stretched no point when he told his niece that the thought of setting foot in a boat made him well-nigh swoon. His only ventures aboard any craft were in quiet waters.
He could pull as strong an oar, despite his years, as any man along the Cape, but never had he gripped the ash save in the haven or in similar land-locked water.
His heart was wrung by the sight of those men clinging to the shrouds of the wrecked schooner. And he rejoiced that the members of the Coast Patrol crew displayed their manhood in so noble an attempt to reach the wreck.
But his very soul was shaken by the spectacle of the storm-fretted sea, and terror gnawed at his vitals when the lifeboat was thrust out into that awful maelstrom of tumbling water.
Relating imaginary events of this character or repeating what mariners had told or written about wreck and storm at sea in the safe harbor of the old store on the Shell Road was different from being an eyewitness of this present catastrophe.