Page:The Wireless Operator with the U.S. Coast Guard.djvu/175

 ming unaided. The sea was full of boats and floating men. Impotent, heartsick, torn with anguish, the men remaining on the Iroquois stood watching the awful sight. They had done their best. They had done all that human beings could possibly do, but it was not enough. There was nothing else they could do but pray, and many an agonized seaman, rough as a barnacle, stood with tears streaming down his rugged face and prayed for his comrades struggling for their lives in that awful sea.

Perhaps those prayers were heard. With every minute the incoming tide ran stronger, washing the struggling men toward shore, where now were burning the welcome beacons of the crews from landward Coast Guard stations. Again and again they tried to launch their surfboats, and as often were beaten back. Now they stood at the edge of the waves, waiting to assist their comrades from the ship.

Ceaselessly the searchlight of the Iroquois played upon the breakers, and on her bridge officers stood with glasses and watched the awful fight. Miraculously the struggling men drove steadily toward the shore. Soon they were in shallow water. They touched bottom. And now, fighting their way upward on the sand, they struggled through the breakers. Again and again inward-rushing waves beat them down, but