tation, the red
flare of a Coston signal.

With the quickness of a cat Captain Holt sprang to the stairs shouting:

"A wreck, men, a wreck!" The next instant he had thrown aside the door
of the men's room. "Out every one of ye! Who's on the beach?" And he
looked over the cots to find the empty ones.

The men were on their feet before he had ceased speaking, Archie before
the captain's hand had left the knob of the door.

"Who's on the beach, I say?" he shouted again.

"Fogarty and Uncle Ike," someone answered.

"Polhemus! Good! All hands on the cart, men; boat can't live in that
surf. She lies to the north of us!" And he swung himself out of the
door and down the stairs.

"God help 'em, if they've got to come through that surf!" Parks said,
slinging on his coat. "The tide's just beginnin' to make flood, and all
that cord-wood'll come a-waltzin' back. Never see nothin' like it!"

The front door now burst in and another shout went ringing through the
house:

"Schooner in the breakers!"

It was Tod. He had rejoined Polhemus the moment before he flared his
light and had made a dash to rouse the men.

"I seen her, Fogarty, from the lookout," cried the captain, in answer,
grabbing his sou'wester; he was already in his hip-boots and tarpaulin.
"What is she?"

"Schooner, I guess, sir."

"Two or three masts?" asked the captain hurriedly, tightening the strap
of his sou'wester and slipping the leather thong under his gray
whiskers.

"Can't make out, sir; she come bow on. Uncle Ike see her fust." And he
sprang out after the men.

A double door thrown wide; a tangle of wild cats springing straight at
a broad-tired cart; a grappling of track-lines and handle-bars; a whirl
down the wooden incline, Tod following with the quickly lighted
lanterns; a dash along the runway, the sand cutting their cheeks like
grit from a whirling stone; over the dune, the men bracing the cart on
either side, and down the beach the crew swept in a rush to where
Polhemus stood waving his last Coston.

Here the cart stopped.

"Don't unload nothin'," shouted Polhemus. "She ain't fast; looks to me
as if she was draggin' her anchors."

Captain Holt canted the brim of his sou'wester, held his bent elbow
against his face to protect it from the cut of the wind, and looked in
the direction of the surfman's fingers. The vessel lay about a quarter
of a mile from the shore and nearer the House of Refuge than when the
captain had first seen her