. Irresistibly
compelled, I rushed out of doors again, and appealed (with feminine
instinct, I suppose) to the only man, within reach. Scud responded
quickly enough.

"Yes; that's them!" He pitched his orotund voice upon me as if he were
giving a command in a gale at sea.

Men now began to gesticulate wildly at the ill-fated boat from the
rocks, as if that could help the matter.

"Drop that mains'l, you ---- fools, or you'll go to ----!" The voices
struck me like a volley of bullets, but they could not have penetrated
ten feet to windward.

"Scud!" I cried. "Help! Save them, Scud!"

"I can't do nothing," he howled in my ear. "No one can't. You can't row
in them breakers."

By this time the wind had increased its force. The sail-boat was near
enough for one to see the desperate attempts the boyish skipper made to
lower the sail. One of the halyards had become caught. The boy made wild
rushes to the mast. Then the boat would rock and fly around. To save her
the lad darted back to the helm just in time. This sickening struggle
against a knot was repeated several times. On the bottom the three
passengers lay inert with terror. A twenty-foot boat with full sail,
when hundred-ton schooners trembled under bare poles! Even my
inexperience grasped the situation.

"He's doing all-fired well, but he can't last no longer if that--He'll
be druv on the rocks! They'll be druv to----!"

The rocks were now lined with men commenting in an apathetic way upon
the tragedy enacting before their eyes.

"Why don't they _do_ something?" In my ignorance of the curious
stolidity which falls upon the shore in face of danger upon the sea, I
stood shrieking: "Why doesn't somebody go? Why don't you men do
_something_?"

The fishermen and the summer people looked into each other's eyes, but
no man answered a word.

"Can't _you_ help them?" I pleaded with another weather-beaten
fisherman.

"Can't be done, or I'd do it."

"I came down to see them capsize, an' I guess they'll go," said a gruff
voice.

But Scud gave me a long look. He stood quite silent. An expression of
rare gravity was on his joyous face. He glanced apprehensively from the
boat to the house.

"_She_ can't, Scud; she's fainted. There isn't anybody but me. I've
_got_ to do something. The children have _got_ to be saved, Scud!" The
Western girl shook him by the arm. Her very ignorance gave a force to
her appeal that intelligence could not have supplied. Had I understo