right on t'
the sand? She'll be kindlin' wood in a minute."

"But they're inside the reef! They can come to anchor!" she shrieked in
reply. He answered her with a despairing grin and a shake of the head.
"They can't. What has your boat gone out for, then?"

"To pick 'em up out the sea. But they'll never git 'em alive. Look how
she slaps her boom int' the water! Well! He DOES know how to handle a
boat!"

It was Libby at the helm, as she could dimly see, but what it was in
his management that moved Barlow's praise she could not divine. The boat
seemed to be aimed for the shore, and to be rushing, head on, upon the
beach; her broad sail was blown straight out over her bow, and flapped
there like a banner, while the heavy boom hammered the water as she
rose and fell. A jagged line of red seamed the breast of the dark wall
behind; a rending crash came, and as if fired upon, the boat flung up
her sail, as a wild fowl flings up its wing when shot, and lay tossing
keel up, on the top of the waves. It all looked scarcely a stone's cast
away, though it was vastly farther. A figure was seen to drag itself up
out of the sea, and fall over into the boat, hovering and pitching
in the surrounding welter, and struggling to get at two other figures
clinging to the wreck. Suddenly the men in the boat pulled away, and
Grace uttered a cry of despair and reproach: "Why, they're leaving it,
they're leaving it!"

"Don't expect 'em to tow the wreck ashore in this weather, do ye?"
shouted Barlow. "They've got the folks all safe enough. I tell ye I see
'em!" he cried, at a wild look of doubt in her eyes. "Run to the house,
there, and get everything in apple-pie order. There's goin' to be a
chance for some of your doctor'n' now, if ye know how to fetch folks
to."

It was the little house on the beach, which the children were always
prying and peering into, trying the lock, and wondering what the boat
was like, which Grace had seen launched. Now the door yielded to her,
and within she found a fire kindled in the stove, blankets laid in
order, and flasks of brandy in readiness in the cupboard. She put
the blankets to heat for instant use, and prepared for the work of
resuscitation. When she could turn from them to the door, she met there
a procession that approached with difficulty, heads down and hustled by
the furious blast through which the rain now hissed and shot. Barlow and
one of the boat's crew were carrying Mrs. Maynard, and bringing