I had come up to Southstrand well provided with warm, rough clothing, and I dressed as rapidly and suitably as I could to go out in the storm. Bridget, in spite of a sharp tongue, had the kind-heartedness of her nation, and needed no second bidding to make up the kitchen fire and unpack the blankets.
“Sure they’ll need something to warm their drownded bodies if they come ashore,” she declared. “So have the whisky handy, Miss Kate, for belike they’ll want it.”
I had pushed my curly mane into a tam, and buttoned a waterproof coat over my short skirts, and I now opened the back door and went out before Bridget realized what I meant to do. She came roaring after me, horrified at my venturing alone into the night, but I was beyond recall, halfway over to the life-saving station.
Trust our coast crews for good service. Except for one solitary Triton in his sou’wester, every man of the crew was already on the beach, and this one was only making the place snug before rushing after them. He started when I addressed him, for I came upon him softly.
“So you knew about the vessel!” I exclaimed, standing in the doorway of the great barn of a place where the apparatus for rescue is kept—the boat and the life car and mortar, the breeches buoy and the life belts—most of which was now on the beach.
The man looked at me with ill-disguised impatience.
“I want to shut that door, lady,” he said.
Evidently I had to make my choice between being squeezed flat or getting out of the way.
In a moment he emerged through a smaller door, and began striding toward the beach, and I, nothing daunted by his surliness, ran beside him. We passed through a cleft between the sand dunes and over the heavy sands of the upper beach, and as we ran my indifference to the storm seemed to win me a reluctant esteem, for he condescended to answer some of my questions.
He said they judged the vessel to be a small one, that she would probably drift over the bar with the tide that had just turned to come in, and would go to pieces near shore; that they would try to launch the lifeboat, but he didn’t believe they would succeed in such a surf, and he guessed they would have to shoot a line over her and use the breeches.