"Strength, man! I'm as able to lift and carry as Lieutenant Keith, if I'm not greatly mistaken," Charlie said with pretended wrath, "and to prove it I speak for the carrying of Mrs. Perkins and Miss Neff, who must be a trifle heavier than any of the other ladies."
"All right; but fortunately there isn't one in the party heavy enough to be any great burden to either of us."
So amid a good deal of mirth and laughter and some timidity and shrinking on the part of the younger girls, the short journey was made, and that without mishap or loss.
Then a short, though toilsome walk through the soft yielding sand brought them to the life-saving station, a small two-story frame building standing high on the sandy beach, the restless billows of old ocean tossing and tumbling not many rods away.
They were courteously treated by the brave fellows who make this their abode during eight months of the year, were shown the room on the lower floor where they cook and eat, the two above where they sleep, and also all the apparatus for saving the shipwrecked and any others who may be in danger of drowning within reach of their aid.
Our friends were all greatly interested in looking at these things—the colored lamps and flags for signalling, the life-boat, the breeches-buoy and the life-car—this last especially: it was of metal, shaped like a row-boat, but covered in over the top, except a square opening large enough to admit one passenger at a time, and having a sliding door, the closing of which, after the passengers are in, makes the car completely water-tight.
"How many will it hold?" asked Edward.
"Six or seven grown folks, if they are not very large sized."
"Oh, I should think they would smother!" cried Violet.
"It is only about three or four minutes they'd have to stay in it," said the exhibitor.