While he sat there in the cabin, smoking and meditating, letting us into his thoughts every now and then, the voices of some of our crew were heard on deck.

We all went up and got the word that was being passed around. A coast steamer had just come to anchor in the harbor with the report that just outside––about ten miles to the west’ard––was a vessel, dismasted and clean-swept, and dragging toward the rocks. They could not help her themselves––too rough––a hurricane outside––to launch a boat was out of the question. They didn’t mind taking a chance, they said, but to attempt her rescue would be suicide.

It looked like a pretty hard chance going out in that gale, but Clancy didn’t wait. “Nobody else seems to be hurrying to get out, and we being the able-est looking craft in the harbor, I callate it’s up to us to go.” He got the exact location of the distressed vessel from the coaster, and then it was up anchor, make sail, and out we went.

There were people who called Clancy a fool for ordering out his vessel and risking his crew that day––men in that very harbor––and maybe he was. But for myself, I want that kind of a fool for my skipper. The man that will take a chance for a stranger will take a bigger chance for his own by and by.

300

We saw her while we were yet miles away, down to the west’ard––near Whitehead and with the cruel stretch of rocks under her lee quarter. Even with plenty of sea-room she could not have lasted long, and here with these ledges to catch her she looked to be in for a short shrift. We had a good chance to get a look at her as we bore down. Everything was gone from her deck, even the house and rail. There was not as much loose wood on deck as would make a tooth-pick. Afterwards we learned that two seas hove her down so that they had to cut the spars away to right her, and then just as she was coming up another monster had caught her and swept her clean––not only swept clean, but stove in her planks and started some of her beams so that she began to leak in a fashion that four men to the pumps could just manage to keep up with.

We could just see them––the men to the pumps working desperately––with the others lashed to the stumps of the masts and the stanchions which were left when the rail went. Her big hawser had parted and her chain was only serving to slightly check her way toward the rocks.

With spars and deck gear gone and her hull deep in the water, a vessel is not so easily distinguished. But there was something familiar in this one. We had seen her before. All at once it 301 flashed on half a dozen of us––“the Flamingo!” we said. “God! that’s luck!” said Clancy.

She lay in a sort of inlet that was wide open to the gale, rocks on the better part of three sides of her, north, south and west. She was then within all but striking distance of the rocks, and the seas, high and wicked, were sweeping over her. It looked like a bad place to work out of if we should get close in, but Clancy held on.

“Not much lee-room, but plenty of water under her keel anyway,” and himself to the wheel, sailed the Johnnie around the Flamingo. He hailed Maurice as he went by, waved his hand to the others, and hove a line aboard. They took the line, hauled in the hawser at the end of it, made that fast to the windlass, and then we started off with her in tow.