“This way, boys! Everybody this way!”
The horses were taken out in a hurry and led off to the nearest barn. Long ropes were rigged to the back axle, “everybody” laid hold, and then, with the crew men still hanging to the spokes and the young driver leaning back on the tongue to guide the forward wheels, the surf-boat went bumping and lurching down the road. With a rush and a cheer she went, as if the fever of the waiting crowd had got into the wheels, as if the desperate hands of the half-drowned men out yonder were hauling them on—impatiently, madly, courageously hauling them on.
On down the beach, the broad wheels plowing through the sand; on toward the breakers that came running to meet them: into the water with a splash and a plunge, until ankles were wet and knees were wet—then a halt. The eight young men in oilskins bustled about the boat, their yellow coats and hats glistening in the firelight; and the crowd stood silent at the water's edge, looking first at them and then at the black-and-white sea out yonder—and an ugly sea it was. But in a moment the confusion resolved into harmony. The eight men fell into place around the boat, lashed on their cork jackets, laid hold of the gunwales, ran her out into the surf, tumbled aboard—and the fight was on.
It was a fight that made those young fellows set their teeth hard as their backs bent over the oars. They did not know that this storm had strewn the coast with wrecks; they did not know that the veteran crew at Chicago had refused to venture out in their big English life-boat. And they did not care. Too young to be prudent, too strong to be afraid, these youngsters fought for the sake of the fighting; and they loved it. So they worked through the surf with never a thought of failure, with never a thought that the white waves might beat them back; and they shook the water out of their eyes and watched Number Two, who was pulling stroke to-night, and went in to win. And all the while the young man standing erect in the stern, swinging the twenty-foot steering-oar, was swearing, letting out a flow of language that would, as Number Two said afterward, have made a crab go forwards. It was plain that he was enjoying it, too.
The fire was sinking; the drizzle was cold and penetrating. The little groups down on the hard sand near the water were tired of straining their eyes into the blackness. The moment of enthusiasm was past. The surf-boat had slipped away like a dream—a moment of tossing against the sky, a glimpse of set faces, a shout or two over the pounding surf, then the lead-black lake with its white flecks, the lead-black sky, and the spot of deeper black where the steamer lay. A shivering fellow brought an armful of driftwood from a dry nook and threw it on the fire. The idea was good and the others took it up. Soon the flames were leaping up again.
And now what more natural than a song! The bleached-out bones of a forty-ton lumber schooner lay curving up from the sand; here mounted a student, he of the white sweater and long legs, and the others crowded around.
“All right, Apples; let her go!”
And they sang out merrily there, with the glare of the fire in their wet faces and the wildness of the lake in their throats:
“Oh, my name is Captain Hall, Captain Hall!”
A rush of wind carried the next words down the beach; but the last lines came out strong: