The debarkation from the wreck was not so simple a matter. Already the crew of the schooner had each a lifebelt strapped upon his body. Now a sling was arranged with a whipline attached thereto, and this last flung to willing hands in the lifeboat.
With her propeller holding her steady against the force of the inrolling waves, the lifeboat was backed as near the wreck as was judged safe. One after another the wrecked crew entered the sling and the life savers drew them over to the motor craft while their mates aboard the wreck payed out the line.
More than one of the passengers in this rude contrivance was submerged in the leaping, hungry waves; but there were no serious casualties until the end. Ralph Endicott was one of the last to go, and Captain Pritchett himself aided the young man. The captain insisted upon remaining till the last. There was nobody to aid him in leaving the wreck. With a line about his waist Captain Pritchett leaped into a receding wave and was hauled into the lifeboat unconscious and with a broken arm.
Fourteen men, including the skipper and the cook, were thus rescued. It was an event of greater peril than can easily be imagined. Nor was all danger over when the full tally of the schooner's company was in the motor-boat.
It was still so dark that the crowd ashore could not see that the crew of the wrecked vessel had taken their departure. It was lighter out here at sea than it was inshore. The lifeboat was speeded for the mouth of Clinkerport Bay.
Chilled and almost water-logged, Ralph Endicott crouched with the other members of the rescued fishing boat's crew in the surf boat. The dash through the breakers at the entrance to the bay did not excite the party, for they were merely wretched and exhausted. It was one of the crew from the life saving station that hailed another motor-boat sputtering toward the cove between Clay Head and the Twin Rocks Light.
"Cap, there's that plucky girl and Tobe Bassett, I do believe. They are just getting back from across the bay."
"Who is she?" asked one of his mates. "One of the summer visitors, did you say? Bassett was plum' winded, and she ran all the way to the station and told us that the schooner was on the rocks. Some girl, that!"
"She's Mr. John Nicholet's daughter," shouted the captain of the life saving station. "Lives in that big house up yonder on the Clay Head."
On hearing this Ralph roused himself. These men spoke of Lorna Nicholet. In the increasing dawn he saw and recognized his own Fenique.