"I don't see how you can say so," the young man said. "It's Cap'n Amazon who is wonderful. There were other men down on the beach better able to handle an oar than he. But he took the empty seat in the lifeboat when he was called without saying 'yes or no'! And he pulled with the best of us."
"He is no coward, of that I am sure," said Professor Grayling. "He gave me his place in the boat. We can but pray that the lifeboat will get to him in the morning."
That hope was universal. All night driftwood fires burned on the sands and the people watched and waited for the dawn and another sight of the schooner on the reef.
The tide brought in much wreckage; but it was mostly smashed top gear and deck lumber. Therefore they had reason to hope that the hull of the wreck held together.
It was just at daybreak that the wind subsided and the tide was so that the lifeboat could be launched again. Wellriver station owned no motor-driven craft at this time, or Cap'n Jim Trainor and his men would have been able to reach the wreck at the height of the gale.
It was no easy matter even now to bring the lifeboat under the lee of the battered schooner. Her masts and shrouds were overside, anchoring her to the reef. Not a sign of life appeared anywhere upon her.
One of the crew of the lifeboat leaped for the rail and clambered aboard. Down in the scuppers, in the wash of each wave that climbed aboard the wreck, he spied a huddled bundle.
"Here's one of 'em, sure 'nough!" he sang out.
Making his way precariously down the slanting deck, he reached in a minute the spot where the unfortunate lay. The man had washed back and forth in the sea water so long that he was all but parboiled. The rescuer seized him by the shoulders and drew him out of this wash.
He was a very bald man with gray hair, a stubble of beard on his cheeks, and a straggling gray mustache.