He waved a wild gesture of farewell to his friend, and tore down the boardwalk promenade, past the great hotel whose hundreds of windows were ablaze with light. Inside he glimpsed many dancers, and an eddying gust picked up the strains of the orchestra and brought faintly to him the taunting sweetness of a waltz song, "Love Comes Like a Summer Sigh."
It was Surfman Brainard of the Tarpon Inlet Station that plunged off the end of the walk into clogging sand, for the tide had covered all the beach, and he must toil up as far even as the gullied dunes. He kicked off his hampering patent-leather ties, threw his coat after them, and limped over driftwood and gnarled palmetto roots, falling, scrambling, swearing in a frenzy of eagerness to join his comrades. The sand whirled in blinding drifts, and he rubbed his eyes to look for the laboring schooner which vanished in a little while as if she were blotted out.
He remembered that somewhere a road led back into the tangled live-oak and palmetto hammock beyond the sand-hills. With a shout of joy he dove through a gash in the tufted hillocks, and his bare feet found a wagon track in firmer ground. Now the storm wailed overhead, but in darkness that was almost rayless it twisted limbs from the tortured trees and tossed them in Brainard's path; it flung the meshed creepers across his way to trip him headlong.
"She's bound to fetch up a long way this side the station," he grunted, "and the patrol may be at the other end of his beat. And those poor devils can't live long in the sea that's smashing over the Point."
Then he thanked God for the fitness of wind and limb which had come of long months of hardy drill and plain living, for the Inlet was just ahead as he came out on the roaring beach. He looked seaward for a rocket, and shoreward for a signal from the patrol. No light showed anywhere in the gray night.
He splashed across the tide-swept bar, and when the bones of an ancient wreck loomed close by, he knew he was within a mile of home. A dark smudge moved against the white sand-hills, and he fell into the arms of Jim Conklin on patrol.
"Schooner's coming ashore," gasped Brainard. "She passed the head pier, heading straight down and helpless. She was in distress for fair. If she hasn't come this far, she's piled up on the Point. I'll go to the station while you find her and signal us."
Conklin said not a word, but made a bull-like lunge against the storm. When Brainard had roused out the crew, Fritz Wagenhals shouted:
"Our boat is no good for us on the Point. Get out mit the gun."