“Be a good dog, Fluff, and wait just a little bit till I get dry clothes for the men. I’m just as glad to see you as you are to see me, but while there’s work to be done we mustn’t spend time telling each other about it.”
The dog danced and capered and barked at Benny’s heels as he went back and forth from the store-room to where the sailors were gathered around the glowing fire, and it was much as if he fancied himself assisting in the labor—as if Fluff also counted on being a surfman.
The cook, who had retired before the crew set out, now came down to perform his regular share of the work in such cases, which was to make a fresh supply of coffee and prepare a meal for the exhausted men.
Benny had faithfully carried out the instructions given him by the keeper, and there was nothing more he could do until the crew should return, when he knew full well his services would be welcomed gladly by the weary, half-frozen life savers.
The mate was disposed to indulge in conversation, and after having drank a bowl of hot coffee, he told the lad that the schooner which was being torn to pieces on Skinner’s Point was the Three Brothers, coal-laden, from Philadelphia to Portland. At noon on that day, so low did the temperature fall that ice had formed about the craft until she was unmanageable, and during five hours had been driven at the mercy of wind and waves.
“Knowing the schooner was bound to go ashore, we hoped it might be in the vicinity of where she did strike.”
“But why did you want her wrecked there? It seems to me a worse place couldn’t be found.”
“We knew there was a life-saving station near, and when the red glare of the Coston signal flashed out through the snow, all hands understood that a crew of good men and true stood ready to do whatsoever lay in their power to give us aid. I answered that signal, and then ran over in my mind the instructions which the service sends out to every ship-master and mate.”
“What kind of instructions?” Benny asked, showing by the expression on his face that this information was something entirely new to him.
“If you care to find out, you will find a small, black, water-proofed book, something like a note-case, in the pocket of the coat I took off, and there everything is set down so plainly any sailor can understand what should be done when the life-saving crew appears. But you here in the station should know all about it.”