and now she stood tense against it. She could almost see the two figures, Fred so tall and Jo a little shorter, as they ventured out into the wind that threatened to blow them into the water. How the cutting sleet must have hurt, and how cold they must have been as they stamped their feet on the ice-covered rocks and beat their hands to keep from freezing!

35 “Nothing else to do but try to save the men as they washed ashore, now was there?” Fred asked gently, and Ann shook her head. She knew that if she had been there she would have gone with them and borne the cold as best she could.

35

“We waited and watched,” Fred continued. “And all that time the narrow path stayed in the storm, swept clear of the driving snow. And the boat came nearer with no sails set and on even keel. When she struck she cried like a living thing.

“We couldn’t see a man aboard. We waited all day and when night closed in I sent Jo down to the village for help, and I listened alone all night for the cry of some one washed to the beach; but no one came.

“When dawn broke Jo came back with ten or twelve men. They hadn’t known a thing about the wreck in the village nor we shouldn’t, either, if it hadn’t been for that path in the storm; the snow was falling too thick for any one to see through it. Well, that morning the storm was over and the sun burst out. And there she lay, almost as you see her now, but farther out. The water was boiling all about her. The waves were crashing in pretty high but we thought we could get one of the boats launched at the mouth of the river and work it round to the ship. So we left Jo to watch the bluff here and picked my dory to make the trip as she shipped less water and rode the waves easier. We got her down the river and around the point and after a couple36 of attempts we pulled in under the schooner’s stern and three of us swung aboard while Les Perkins and Pete Simonds held the dory.

36

“When we got on the schooner’s deck we found that the sea had swept her clean of anything that might have identified her. The name plates looked as if a mighty hand had wrenched them loose and great cuts showed in the bow and stern where they had been. There wasn’t a sound but the pounding of the waves along her side. It made a queer sussh-sussh that didn’t seem to come from where the water touched her. We broke open the hatches and went down in her—two by two. Wasn’t a man of us who dast go down there alone, for you never can tell what you’re going to find in a wrecked 

 Prev. P 22/102 next