Fighting the Sea; Or, Winter at the Life-Saving Station

by Unknown

“Can you see him now?” eagerly asked the men of Keeper Barney, who was skillfully managing his steering oar amid the heavy swash of the current.

The keeper nodded his head in assent.

The boat cleared the last house in the village, and from this point the Chair could be more distinctly seen.

“See him now, Cap’n?”

The keeper nodded his head. The boat tossed more uneasily now, for the harbor here began to open into the sea, and the full strength of the wind from the stormy north–east smote it. The upper end of the Crescent was very near, and its first ledges, black and stubborn, rose out of the white, angry tumult. Any one seeking refuge here would not have found broad standing room, while at the Chair the exposure was far greater. The man, though, still maintained his hold.

“He’s there, is he?” some one would shout through the noise of the storm, and Keeper Barney would silently nod assent.

I wonder what the man in the Chair was thinking of, as he grasped that rocky projection, that little low fence between him and death! He was one of the two men who had trusted their chances to that life–preserver. God alone knew where the second man was in this hellish tumult of wind and sea. The man in the Chair had been flung into it by a violent wave and he had gripped it with all the energy he could possibly rally. He did not want to die. The sea looked cold and deep, and the white foam beating upon him, to his imagination had teeth that threatened to fasten into him and tear him. He could sometimes, when his back was half turned to the sea, catch the outlines of the big billows as they rolled up and rolled toward him, and they came on with such fury that he shrank closer to this rock, and he clung more tenaciously even when some of them failed to reach him. Occasionally a huge billow would strike him and drench him, and then he would shiver and throw off the foam as if trying to recover from some murderous blow given by an animal. It would have been easy to have yielded to one of those waves and allowed it to sweep him away into a swift death, but who does not cling to life? A wild sky, a pitiless rain, and only a black rock in a maelstrom—better this than a grave in that maelstrom. So the man felt. As he held on, his thoughts would go back in spite of him. Not that he cared to think. He would gladly have given the subject a grave in that sea from which he shrank, but if he had tried to throw it off and drop it there, it would have had a resurrection and come up. He thought of the time when he was a little boy in this very neighborhood, visiting here, one far off summer. His younger sister was with him. He could easily recall her blue eyes that framed a constant smile. He heard the happy ring of her laugh, even out there in the noisy waters. He did not want to hear it, but hear it he did. There had been a quarrel with her one day, and he resolved in a mood of anger that was almost insane, to punish her. The quarrel had occurred at the Chair which he knew sometimes was a bad place to be in, the older people had told him. When the tide was high, and behind it was a storm pushing violently the waters landward, that lonely piece of rock, the Chair, was a dangerous position to occupy. There was a gray, misty sky that day, when the boy led his sister, at low tide, across the sands to the Crescent ledges. He pleasantly told her to stay at the Chair and he would come for her in a little while. “The waves were pretty,” he said, “and she could watch them till he came back.” Then he left her. In half an hour he knew the tide would flood the sands and isolate the Chair. He would be absent, he said to himself, perhaps two hours. That would give her a good fright and would be enough to satisfy him. But he did not get back to the shore so soon as two hours. Something had detained him. In the meantime, the fog came on. The rain began to beat down. The men were almost all of them away on fishing cruises. Only a few decrepit fishermen were at home, and they did not like to venture off into the uneasy waters now enclosing the Crescent ledges unless it was some special reason urging them, and as the boy was ashamed to confess that he had left his sister at the Chair, no rough but friendly hand of any seaman was reached out to grasp her. In the morning though, his conscience frightened him into an explanation of his urgency, and a relief party of old men went at once. The Chair however was empty. That morning, there came ashore a sweet little face with closed eyes, and it confirmed the story told by that vacant Chair. So many, many years ago, did this all happen, and now it was coming back as a sad thing of yesterday.

“She’s a–lookin’ at me!” said the man in the Chair. “I can see her eyes!”

Yes, through the veil of the storm they seemed to penetrate and reproachfully search his heart.

“I will look another way,” he thought, but they seemed to follow him. Tender and full of sorrow, they looked at him on every side. He saw the waves rushing at him and he shrank from them only to meet the eyes that he little cared to behold. He avoided these, but there were the billows rushing at him again. So he was pursued. It seemed to him as if he must lose his mind, and then would he not lose his hold on the rock? That tormented him anew.