“Yes; the only kind he had, I cal'late. Git dap, Daniel! What are you waitin' for? Left your bathin' suit to home?”
Then, as Daniel stepped rather gingerly into the clear water, he explained that, at a time ranging from three hours before low tide to three hours after, one may reach the outer beach at this point by driving over in an ordinary vehicle. The life-savers add to this time-limit by using a specially built wagon, with large wheels and a body considerably elevated.
“Well, there now!” exclaimed the lady from Nantucket, as Daniel splashingly emerged on the other side. “I thought I'd done about everything a body could do with salt water, but I never went ridin' in it afore.”
The remainder of the way to the station was covered by Daniel at a walk, for the wheels of the heavy carryall sank two inches or more in the coarse sand as they turned. The road wound between sand dunes, riven and heaped in all sorts of queer shapes by the wind, and with clumps of the persevering beach grass clinging to their tops like the last treasured tufts of hair on partially bald heads. Here and there, half buried, sand-scoured planks and fragments of spars showed, relics of wrecks that had come ashore in past winters.
“Five years ago,” remarked Captain Eri, “there was six foot of water where we are now. This beach changes every winter. One good no'theaster jest rips things loose over here; tears out a big chunk of beach and makes a cut-through one season, and fills in a deep hole and builds a new shoal the next. I've heard my father tell 'bout pickin' huckleberries when he was a boy off where them breakers are now. Good dry land it was then. Hey! there's Luther. Ship ahoy, Lute!”
The little brown life-saving station was huddled between two sand-hills. There was a small stable and a henhouse and yard just behind it. Captain Davis, rawboned and brown-faced, waved a welcome to them from the side door.
“Spied you comin', Eri,” he said in a curiously mild voice, that sounded odd coming from such a deep chest. “I'm mighty glad to see you, too? Jump down and come right in. Pashy 'll be out in a minute. Here she is now.”
Miss Patience Davis was as plump as her brother was tall. She impressed one as a comfortable sort of person. Captain Eri did the honors and everyone shook hands. Then they went into the living room of the station.
What particularly struck Mrs. Snow was the neatness of everything. The brass on the pump in the sink shone like fire as the sunlight from the window struck it. The floor was white from scouring. There were shelves on the walls and on these, arranged in orderly piles, were canned goods of all descriptions. The table was covered with a figured oilcloth.
Two or three men, members of the crew, were seated in the wooden chairs along the wall, but rose as the party came in. Captain Davis introduced them, one after the other. Perhaps the most striking characteristic of these men was the quiet, almost bashful, way in which they spoke; they seemed like big boys, as much as anything, and yet the oldest was nearly fifty.