Ah! Bob Massey, it was not the cold tea, but the saving of that little girl that sent the life’s blood careering so warmly through your veins! However, there’s no harm done in putting it down to the credit of the cold tea. Had the tea been hot, there might have been some truth in your fancy.
“What’s the time?” asked Bob, with a sudden look of anxiety.
“Just gone ten,” said Slag, consulting a chronometer that bore some resemblance to an antique warming-pan.
The look of anxiety on the coxswain’s countenance deepened.
“Ease off the sheet a bit,” he said, looking sternly over the weather quarter, and whistling for a fresher breeze, though most men would have thought the breeze fresh enough already.
As if to accommodate him, and confirm the crew in the whistling superstition, the breeze did increase at the moment, and sent the lifeboat, as one of the men said, “snorin’” over the wild sea towards the harbour of Greyton.
It was a grand sight to behold the pier of the little port on that stormy morning. Of course, it had soon become known that the lifeboat was out. Although at starting it had been seen by only a few of the old salts—whose delight it was to recall the memory of grand stormy times long past, by facing the gales at all hours in oiled coats and sou’-westers—the greater part of the fishing village only became aware of the fact on turning out to work in the morning. We have said that the gale had moderated, and the sun had come out, so that the pier was crowded, not only with fisher-folk, but with visitors to the port, and other landsmen.
Great was the hope, and sanguine the expectation of the crowd, when, after long and anxious waiting, the lifeboat was at last descried far out at sea, making straight for the harbour.
“All right, Bill,” exclaimed an old fisherman, who had been for some time past sweeping the horizon with his glass, “the flag’s a-flyin’.”
“What does that mean?” asked a smart young lady, who had braved the blast and run the risk of a salt-wash from the sprays at the pier-end in her eager desire to see the boat arrive.