ging the three men.

Another ringing order now rose above the roar of the waters, and a
chain of rescuing surfmen--the last resort--with Captain Nat at the
head dashed into the turmoil.

It was a hand-to-hand fight now with death. At the first onslaught of
the battery of wreckage Polhemus was knocked breathless by a blow in
the stomach and rescued by the bystanders just as a log was curling
over him. Green was hit by a surging crate, and Mulligan only saved
from the crush of the cord-wood by the quickness of a fisherman.
Morgan, watching his chance, sprang clear of a tangle of barrels and
cord-wood, dashed into the narrow gap of open water, and grappling Tod
as he whirled past, twisted his fingers in Archie's waistband. The
three were then pounced upon by a relay of fishermen led by Tod's
father and dragged from under the crunch and surge of the smother. Both
Tod and Morgan were unhurt and scrambled to their feet as soon as they
gained the hard sand, but Archie lay insensible where the men had
dropped him, his body limp, his feet crumpled under him.

All this time the man in the slouch hat was being swirled in the hell
of wreckage, the captain meanwhile holding to the human chain with one
hand and fighting with the other until he reached the half-drowned man
whose grip had now slipped from the crate to which he clung. As the two
were shot in toward the beach, Green, who had recovered his breath,
dodged the recoil, sprang straight for them, threw the captain a line,
which he caught, dashed back and dragged the two high up on the beach,
the captain's arm still tightly locked about the rescued man.

A dozen hands were held out to relieve the captain of his burden, but
he only waved them away.

"I'll take care of him!" he gasped in a voice almost gone from
buffeting the waves, as the body slipped from his arms to the wet sand.
"Git out of the way, all of you!"

Once on his feet, he stood for an instant to catch his breath, wrung
the grime from his ears with his stiff fingers, and then shaking the
water from his shoulders as a dog would after a plunge, he passed his
great arms once more under the bedraggled body of the unconscious man
and started up the dune toward the House of Refuge, the water dripping
from both their wet bodies. Only once did he pause, and then to shout:

"Green,--Mulligan! Go back, some o' ye, and git Archie. He's hurt bad.
Quick, now! And one o' ye bust in them doors. And-- Polhemus, pull some
c