Now had come the moment when the lad could appreciate the value of the drilling which the men were forced to undergo day after day.
Every member of the crew knew exactly what he should do, and did it as methodically and quickly as if on the drill-ground back of the station.
While the captain slung the haversack containing the ammunition over his shoulders, Sam threw the buoy off the cart. Henderson, Jones, and Brown unloaded the shovel, pick, and sand-anchor, and proceeded at once to fasten the latter at a point already decided upon by Mr. Downey. Cushing and Robbins took out the shot-line box. The captain and Hardy placed the cannon a short distance to the windward of the wagon, and the box was set down on a line with the muzzle of the gun.
The keeper loaded with cartridges, Hardy brought the shot, which he held for the captain to wipe, and then inserted it into the bore of the gun, forcing it down firmly on the charge. Joe Cushing wet a fathom of the shot-line and bent it into the shank of the shot with three half-hitches, without disturbing the fakes, and without leaving any slack line between the gun and the shot-line box.
Hardy and Cushing, kneeling either side of the cannon, trained the muzzle to the right or the left as Downey commanded. While this was being done Sawyer unloaded and carried the crotch (two pieces of wood formed after the fashion of the letter X) to a point near the shore, in a line between the sand anchor and the wreck.
Even Benny, who knew nothing of such labor, understood that many seconds of valuable time must have been saved by the crew being so familiar with all the details of the work, and accustomed to performing each portion of it in like manner every time.
A description of the men at work is given at this moment in order that one may know exactly how a life-saving crew goes to work, and it must not be supposed that Keeper Downey’s men, or even Benny Foster, directed their gaze all the time toward these operations, without glancing seaward where was the noble vessel grinding her life out upon the cruel rocks, as her crew looked down into the face of what would have been certain death but for the presence of those brave fellows on the bluff.
When the men halted with the wagon, and even while they were removing the implements, every one could see the schooner as she lay not more than a hundred and fifty yards from the shore, heading directly toward them.
So large was she, and with her sails holding back, as it were, much of the snow, even Benny could distinguish her quite distinctly, and while his comrades labored as do men who work in defence of their lives, he saw portions of rail and deck torn off piece-meal by the waves which were striking sledge-hammer blows against the side of the doomed craft, each one sounding, even above the howling of the blasts, like the booming of a cannon.
Seven men could be made out now and then when the snow wreaths were less dense, in various places of refuge about the wreck; three were aloft in the port mizzen-rigging, one in the port fore-rigging, and three about the forecastle, or in the bowsprit. In these positions they remained apparently immovable. It was to Benny as if they were frozen beyond the power of movement, as indeed might have been the case, for the night was bitterly cold.