“Are you going out just for a walk?” Benny asked, finding it difficult to make his way against the strong, chilling wind which came in over the ocean.
“Yes, we’re out for a walk,” Joe Cushing replied with a hearty laugh; “but it ain’t for pleasure, my son. No matter what the weather is, we’re bound to be on the move from sunset until sunrise, watching for any craft that may be in distress.”
“A vessel couldn’t get into trouble on the coast to-night,” Benny said, with the air of one who is familiar with the subject.
“Very likely not; but yet it is our business to be on the watch day and night, because there’s never any telling when, or how, we may be needed, an’ saving life in a storm ain’t the only part of our work by a long ways, as you’ll come to know. I reckon we’re far enough from the station now, so there’s no fear of old Maje, an’ you can give Fluff C. Foster a little run.”
Benny brought the dog out from under his coat, and instantly he was on the ground Fluff set off, barking joyously because of being free; but before he had been left to his own devices twenty seconds he began to howl as if in alarm.
The wind was literally blowing the little fellow along, and, despite all his efforts, he was unable to make headway against it.
“Can’t hold his course,” Sam said with a laugh, “and the worst of it is that there’s no taking in sail with him. That long hair gives the wind a good hold, an’ I reckon young Foster will be glad to get under your coat again, Benny.”
Not until the dog had been blown landward over the slope of the bluff which bordered the sea, was his young master able to come up with him, and once more beneath the lad’s coat the little fellow manifested his pleasure at having been rescued from what probably seemed to him a dangerous position, by half growling, half whining, which Benny explained was “the way Fluff talked.”
“I counted on seeing heaps and heaps of snow,” the new member of the crew said in a tone of disappointment as he trudged on between his companions. “Of course the winter in Calcutta isn’t like what it is here, and I don’t remember much about the drifts of which mother often spoke.”
“There’s snow and to spare, just back of the timbered land,” Sam Hardy replied with a laugh, “an’ when you’re needin’ a sight of it mighty bad you can go over the hill beyond the lighthouses. Down here on the point, where the wind has full sweep, it’s mostly blown away. Now, for instance, lookin’ up from the station, I reckon you won’t see so much as would make a snowball of respectable size.”