Page:Ralph Paine--The praying skipper.djvu/311

Rh To young Brainard this suspense was more killing than all the stress through which he had furiously toiled. No light, no sign of life, nothing to tell whether or not death had won in the home stretch!

A rescued seaman, battered and spent, cried out from where he lay on the sand:

"Matt Martin his name is. The Lucy B. was the vessel's. Coal to Havana. Mate washed overboard last night. He's a good skipper, is Martin; looks like that youngster in the white shirt there."

"We'll find him at high-water mark in a day or so," bellowed Fritz Wagenhals. "My Gott, I wish—no, the boat is no good here."

The young man shot his fist seaward.

"I'll try to swim out with a line if you'll let me."

"No, you don't, you tamn fool Boy!" the keeper shouted back.

Brainard doubled along the edge of the beach like a hound baffled by a lost trail. He was almost beside himself with bitter anger at the storm that it should have wrought this cruel climax. It had come as a tremendous revelation to him that he