sight now, but on the outer beach, and
that was separated from them by a two-hundred-yard stretch of water.

"Well," observed Captain Eri, "here's where we take Adam's bridge."

"Adam's bridge?" queried Elsie, puzzled.

"Yes; the only kind he had, I cal'late. Git dap, Daniel! What are you
waitin' for? Left your bathin' suit to home?"

Then, as Daniel stepped rather gingerly into the clear water, he
explained that, at a time ranging from three hours before low tide
to three hours after, one may reach the outer beach at this point
by driving over in an ordinary vehicle. The life-savers add to this
time-limit by using a specially built wagon, with large wheels and a
body considerably elevated.

"Well, there now!" exclaimed the lady from Nantucket, as Daniel
splashingly emerged on the other side. "I thought I'd done about
everything a body could do with salt water, but I never went ridin' in
it afore."

The remainder of the way to the station was covered by Daniel at a walk,
for the wheels of the heavy carryall sank two inches or more in the
coarse sand as they turned. The road wound between sand dunes, riven and
heaped in all sorts of queer shapes by the wind, and with clumps of the
persevering beach grass clinging to their tops like the last treasured
tufts of hair on partially bald heads. Here and there, half buried,
sand-scoured planks and fragments of spars showed, relics of wrecks that
had come ashore in past winters.

"Five years ago," remarked Captain Eri, "there was six foot of water
where we are now. This beach changes every winter. One good no'theaster
jest rips things loose over here; tears out a big chunk of beach and
makes a cut-through one season, and fills in a deep hole and builds
a new shoal the next. I've heard my father tell 'bout pickin'
huckleberries when he was a boy off where them breakers are now. Good
dry land it was then. Hey! there's Luther. Ship ahoy, Lute!"

The little brown life-saving station was huddled between two sand-hills.
There was a small stable and a henhouse and yard just behind it. Captain
Davis, rawboned and brown-faced, waved a welcome to them from the side
door.

"Spied you comin', Eri," he said in a curiously mild voice, that sounded
odd coming from such a deep chest. "I'm mighty glad to see you, too?
Jump down and come right in. Pashy 'll be out in a minute. Here she is
now."

Miss Patience Davis was as plump as her brother was tall. She impressed
one as a comfort