Page:Ralph Paine--The praying skipper.djvu/306

280 Why had not the first note of the storm called him home?

He waved a wild gesture of farewell to his friend, and tore down the boardwalk promenade, past the great hotel whose hundreds of windows were ablaze with light. Inside he glimpsed many dancers, and an eddying gust picked up the strains of the orchestra and brought faintly to him the taunting sweetness of a waltz song, "Love Comes Like a Summer Sigh."

It was Surfman Brainard of the Tarpon Inlet Station that plunged off the end of the walk into clogging sand, for the tide had covered all the beach, and he must toil up as far even as the gullied dunes. He kicked off his hampering patent-leather ties, threw his coat after them, and limped over driftwood and gnarled palmetto roots, falling, scrambling, swearing in a frenzy of eagerness to join his comrades. The sand whirled in blinding drifts, and he rubbed his eyes to look for the laboring schooner which vanished in a little while as if she were blotted out.