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 passed, and they got off somehow in a whaleboat. They thought every instant that they would certainly be hurled back against the schooner and smashed to bits. The lighthouse was much nearer than the Coast Guard Station, so for the light they pulled. They had a ship's lantern in the bow, and the keeper could see it swinging across the dark. The crew of the schooner rowed like mad, and they were about fifty yards away from the vessel when she broke clean in two just abaft the beam. Her stern plunged one way and her bows the other. Meanwhile, the keeper was watching the lantern in the whaleboat. Sometimes he could see it, and sometimes it was hidden from him when the boat slid into the trough of a big sea. Then one time it did not emerge, and the keeper heard a five-fold shout carried down the wind.

"If this were a real story—the sort in a book, I mean—he would have reflected nobly that his duties included the rescuing of drowning mariners; he would have gone up to gaze at his sleeping child before dashing into the night; he would have wept to see the stocking hanging at the chimney-piece. But, not being a story-book person (I told you he wasn't like Roger), he merely jumped into his oilers and out at the