Flood Tide

by Sara Ware Bassett

Then as he sped out of sight, he added as an afterthought:

"By the way, Bart an' Minnie Coffin have come to a split at last over that 'ere dress. After gettin' it fixed, an' promisin' him 'twas fur the last time, she's ripped it all up again 'cause she's seen some picter in a book she liked better. Bart's that mad he's took his sea chest in the wheelbarrow an' set out for his mother's. I met him goin' just now."

"Bless my soul!" gasped Willie in consternation. "How far had he got?"

"He was about quarter way to the Junction," was the response. "He sung out he was headed where he'd be sure of gettin' three meals a day, an' where somebody'd pay some attention to him."

"H—m!" Willie reflected, scratching his thin locks. "Sorter looks as if it was time I took a hand, don't it?"

"I figger if anybody's goin' to interfere, now's the minute. Bart's got his sails set an' is clearin' port fur good an' all this time, no mistake. 'Twas sure to come sooner or later."

Their roads parted and Willie turned toward the town, while Jack Nickerson, with rolling gait, pursued his way to the beach where at the tip of a slender bar of sand jutting out into the ocean the low roofs of the life-saving station lay outlined against a somber sky. Great banks of leaden clouds sagging over the horizon had dulled the water to blackness, and a stiff gale was whistling inshore. Already the billows were mounting angrily into caps of snarling foam and dashing themselves on the sands with threatening echo. It promised to be a nasty night, and Jack remembered as he looked that he was on patrol duty. Yet although the muscles of his jaw tightened into grimness, it was not the prospective tramp along a lonely beach in the darkness and wind that caused the stern tensity of his countenance. Storms and their perils were all in the day's work, and he faced their possible catastrophes without a tremor. It would have been hard to find anywhere along the Massachusetts coast a braver man than Jack Nickerson. Not only was he ready to lead a crew of rescuers to succor the perishing, fearlessly directing the surfboat in its plunge through a seething tide, but many a time he had dashed bodily into the breakers, despite the hazard of a powerful undertow, and dragged some drowning creature to a place of safety. The fame of his many deeds of heroism had spread from one end of the Cape to the other, and as he was native-born the community never tired of relating his feats to any sojourner who strayed into the locality.

Yet courageous as was Jack Nickerson, there was one thing he was afraid of and that was a woman. Not that he trembled in the presence of all women—no, indeed! He had brought far too many of them to land for that. Women as a class did not appall him in the least. He had seen them in the agony of terror, in the throes of despair, and undismayed had offered them sympathy and cheer. It was one woman only who disconcerted him, the woman who for years had routed him out of his habitual poise and left him as discomfited as a guilty schoolboy caught in raiding the jam-pot.

Yes, he who inspired his associates with both respect and admiration was forced to acknowledge to himself that when face to face with Sarah Libbie Lewis he was nothing better than a faltering ten-year-old whose collar is too tight for him, and whose hands and feet are sizes too large. The paradox was too humiliating to be endured! Nevertheless, he had endured the ignominy of it for five-and-twenty years, and there seemed to be every prospect that he would continue to endure it. Periodically, it is true, he would rise in his wrath, resolving that another sun should not go down on his vacillation and timidity; nay, more, he would even stride forth to Sarah Libbie's home, vowing as he went that before he slept he would speak the decisive words that had for so long trembled on his tongue.

Confronted by the lady of his choice, however, his courage, like that of the immortal Bob Acres, would ooze away, and after basking for a wretched interval in the glory of her smile, he would retrace his steps with the declaration still unuttered. As far back as Jack could remember, this woman had tyrannized over him and humbled his self-esteem. In childhood she had leveled with a blow the sand castles he built on the beach for her delight, and ever since she had contrived to raze to the ground his less tangible castles,—dream-castles where he saw her the mistress of his lonely fireside. Yet despite her exasperating capriciousness, Jack had never wavered in his allegiance, not a whit. Long ago he had made up his mind that Sarah Libbie was the one woman in the world for him, and he had never seen cause to alter that verdict. Nor did he entertain any doubt that Sarah Libbie's sentiments coincided with his own, even though she did cloak her preference beneath so many intricate and misleading devices of femininity. It was not fear of the thundering No that hindered Jack from proclaiming his affection; it was merely the physical impossibility of putting his heart into intelligible and coherent phraseology when Sarah Libbie's bewitching gaze was upon him. He could meet all comers in a political argument, could hold his own against the banter of the village gossips; he could even defy Willie and his counsel; but to address Sarah Libbie on a matter so tender and of such vital import was an ordeal so overwhelming that it caused his tongue to cleave to the roof of his mouth, and his pulse almost to cease to beat. Unlucky Jack!