The mainsail hung idly down from the gaff, that had been held just below the break in the mast by the jamming of the hoops. The main sheet trailed overboard in long, tangled loops, the shrouds and halyards drooped in picturesque confusion. Jib and mainsail were gray with the night dew and the reflected light.
The little waves rolled up and broke along her sides and spent their tiny force upon the beach. So they were doing yesterday, when Young Dan was living; so they were doing to-day, when the boy was lying stretched out in the berth, a ghastly, solitary tenant.
As the two tugs came nearer and nearer to her, the Lockport boat gradually drew ahead of the health officer’s tug. They could see Cap’n Dan go aft with one of his best men and stand by the painter of the skiff that was towing astern. Humphrey noticed a couple of men standing on the beach, near the wrecked sloop, and through the glasses he made them out to be patrols from the life-saving station.
He could also see a big power boat coming down from the village that lay inside the point, still farther to the eastward, and he wondered if her business lay with the Agnes T. The leading tug slowed down as she reached a point in the channel, off the wreck. Cap’n Dan and the man near him dropped over into the skiff and pulled like madmen for the sloop.
Just as they came alongside of her, the power boat swung up by the wreck, and a man standing up in the bow called to the captain:
“Keep off that boat! There’s a dead man aboard of her, and I’m the coroner. I warn you——” His words trailed off into silence as he caught sight of Cap’n Dan’s face.
Even the crass spirit of a jack-in-office could not resist the mute protest he saw in every line of it. Stern, rigid, a very mask of immobility, given a dignity that made it noble by its grief and suffering, the father’s face awed everything into silence.
Moving as in a trance, Cap’n Dan climbed over the rail of the sloop and stepped down into the cabin.
As he disappeared from sight, the spell of silence laid on the coroner was broken, and he began to mutter protests against “violations of the law,” and declaring “he’d stop this thing right now, before it went any further.”
Presently Cap’n Dan emerged from the cabin, carrying the limp body of his son in his arms. As he stepped into the cockpit, the coroner’s voice was hushed.