Page:Moving Picture Boys on the Coast.djvu/198

188 "Boom!" came a dull report over the waste of tumultuous waters.

"What's that?" asked Blake.

"The signal gun!" cried Abe. "She must be sinking and they want us to hurry help. But she's too far out yet for a line to reach her."

Again the signal gun sounded, and hearing it, the life savers hastened their pace, but it was hard work dragging their apparatus through the sand.

"Let's help 'em!" cried Joe. "The ship is drifting up this way. If we make pictures it will have to be from about here. Let's help drag the wagon!"

That's right!" echoed Blake, and the boys, leaving their cameras in charge of Mr. Hadley, hastened to relieve the fagged-out life savers. The fishermen and some of the theatrical men joined in also.

"Right about here," directed the captain of the life saving crew, when the cart containing the gun, "shears" and other parts of the breeches buoy had been dragged farther along. "She'll strike about here, I fancy."

The doomed vessel was now much nearer shore, and on her wave-washed decks could be seen the sailors, some of them lashed to the stumps of masts, others to whatever of the stand-