So they worked through the surf with never a thought of failure, with
never a thought that the white waves might beat them back; and they
shook the water out of their eyes and watched Number Two, who was
pulling stroke to-night, and went in to win. And all the while the young
man standing erect in the stern, swinging the twenty-foot steering-oar,
was swearing, letting out a flow of language that would, as Number Two
said afterward, have made a crab go forwards. It was plain that he was
enjoying it, too.

The fire was sinking; the drizzle was cold and penetrating. The little
groups down on the hard sand near the water were tired of straining
their eyes into the blackness. The moment of enthusiasm was past. The
surf-boat had slipped away like a dream--a moment of tossing against the
sky, a glimpse of set faces, a shout or two over the pounding surf, then
the lead-black lake with its white flecks, the lead-black sky, and the
spot of deeper black where the steamer lay. A shivering fellow brought
an armful of driftwood from a dry nook and threw it on the fire. The
idea was good and the others took it up. Soon the flames were leaping up
again.And now what more natural than a song! The bleached-out bones of a forty-ton lumber schooner lay curving up from the sand; here mounted a student, he of the white sweater and long legs, and the others crowded around.

“All right, Apples; let her go!”

And they sang out merrily there, with the glare of the fire in their wet faces and the wildness of the lake in their throats:

“Oh, my name is Captain Hall, Captain Hall!”

A rush of wind carried the next words down the beach; but the last lines came out strong:

“Hope to------you go to Hell! Hope to------ you're roasted well! Damn your eyes!”

“Hi-yi!” -- it is the small boy again. “There she is! There she is!”

“Where, boy?”

“Out there -- off the breakwater! There -- see!”

Again the straining eyes, again the lead-black of the sky and water. Is that the boat, that speck of white away out, or is it a whitecap? Now it is gone. Has the boat dropped into a hollow of the sea? Who knows! A white speck here, another there, white specks everywhere! “Boy, you're 

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