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“Baxter says he’s comin’ on, sir,” said Billy, when he reached the captain’s side, the grin on his sunburnt face widening until its two ends hooked over his ears. Billy had heard nothing so funny for weeks.

“Comin’ on?”

“That’s what he hollered. Wants you to git ready to take his stuff, sir.”

I was out of the shanty now. I came in two jumps. With that squall rushing from the eastward and the tide making flood, any man who would leave the protection of the spar buoy for the purpose of unloading was fit for a lunatic asylum.

Captain Joe had straightened up and was screening his eyes with his hand when I reached his side, his gaze rivetted on the loosened sloop, which had now hauled in her tether line and was drifting clear of the buoy. The captain was still incredulous.

“No, he ain’t comin’,” he said to me. “He’s all right,–he’ll port his helm in a minute,–but he’d better send up his jib”–and he swept his eye around,–“and that quick, too.”

At this instant the sloop wavered and lurched heavily. The outer edge of the insuck had caught her bow.

Men’s minds work quickly in times of great danger,–minds like Captain Joe’s. In a flash he had taken in the fast-approaching roller, froth-capped by the sudden squall; the surging vessel and the scared face of Baxter, who, having realized his mistake was now clutching wildly at the tiller and shouting orders to his men, none of which could be carried out. Captain Joe knew what would happen,–what had happened before, and what would happen again with fools like Baxter,–now,–in a minute,–before he could reach the edge of the stone pile, hampered as he was in a rubber suit that bound his arms and tied his great legs together. And he understood too the sea’s game, and that the only way to outwit it would be to use the beast’s own tactics. When it gathered itself for the thrust and started in to hurl the doomed vessel the full length of its mighty arms, the sloop’s only safety lay in widening the space. A cushion of backwater would then receive the sloop’s forefoot in place of the snarling teeth of low crunching rocks.

He had kicked off both shoes by this time and was shouting out directions to Baxter, who was slowly and surely being sucked into the swirl:–

“Up with your jib! No,–NO! Let that mainsail alone! UP! Do ye want to git her on the stone pile, you? Port your helm! PORT! O GOD!–Look at him!!”

Captain Joe had slid from the platform now and was flopping his great body over the slimy, slippery rocks like a seal, falling into water holes every other step, crawling out on his belly, rolling from one slanting stone to another, shouting to his men, every time he had the breath:–

“Man that yawl and run a line as quick as God’ll let ye–out to the buoy! Do ye hear? Pull that fall off the drum of the h’ister and git the end of a line on it! She’ll be on top of us in a minute and the mast out of her! QUICK!”

Jimmy sprang for a coil of rope; Billy and the others threw themselves after him; while half a dozen men working around the small eddy in the lee of the diminutive island caught up the oars and made a dash for the yawl.

All this time the sloop, under the uplift of the first big Montauk roller,–the skirmish line of the attack,–surged, bow on, to destruction. Baxter, although shaking with fear, had sense enough left to keep her nose pointed to the stone pile. The mast might come out of her, but that was better than being gashed amidships and sunk in thirty feet of water.

Captain Joe, his rubber suit wet and glistening as a shiny porpoise, his hair matted to his head, had now reached the outermost rock opposite the doomed craft, and stood near enough to catch every expression that crossed Baxter’s face, who, white as chalk, was holding the tiller with all his strength, cap off, his blousy hair flying in the increasing gale, his mouth tight shut. Go ashore she must. It would be every man for himself then. No help would come,–no help COULD come. Captain Joe and his men would run for shelter as soon as the blow fell, and leave them to their fate. Men like Baxter are built to think this way.