glected for many hours, while the others set sail or cranked engines
for the voyage home.

Captain Ichabod and his friends from the life-saving station decided
that they would run over to Shackleford's Banks, and thence sail along
shore to approximately the point where Ichabod had seen the rockets of a
ship that doubtless went to pieces in the surf during the night of the
gale. Their particular destination was a place where the strip of sand
was so narrow that they could easily cross it on foot in the expectation
of locating the wreck of the unfortunate vessel. Very soon after the
party had set out, Captain Ichabod's spirits lightened. The congenial
company of the coast-guard crew, now that he was away from the gruesome
association of the Coroner's Court, induced a reaction in his mood, and
he was almost cheerful. His companions were anxious to remove the old
man's depression and made kindly effort to divert his thoughts into
pleasant channels by droll stories and rough banter. When, finally, the
party went ashore at Core Banks and walked up the beach along the edge
of the breaking surf in search for signs of the wrecked ship, it was
Ichabod that walked in the lead with brisk steps and animated face. It
seemed scarcely possible in view of his agility and vigor that the old
fisherman was indeed living on borrowed time.

It was not long before they began to see huge timbers that had been
twisted and rent asunder, which now strewed the beach. They saw, too,
others to which were attached sections of the deck and the deck-house,
which were lazily riding back and forth to the rhythm of the sea. Now, a
wave would drop its bit of flotsam upon the hard sand; then, a moment
later, one of greater magnitude would envelop the stranded spar or plank
or piece of cargo, and with its backward flow bear away the wreckage, to
be again tossed hither and yon, until perhaps finally the tide at its
full would leave it on the shore, to become the spoil of
beach-combers--those ghouls ever ready to take advantage of the hapless
mariner's mischance.

It was a fact that the whole shore line for over a mile was littered
with parts torn away from the foundered schooner. Amid the mass were
many barrels of rum and of molasses out of the cargo. As the little
squad of men from the station, together with Captain Ichabod, drew near
the strip of beach, they saw two fellows working with feverish haste to
roll a barrel of molasses over the top of a sand du