We need
you."
CHAPTER XXXI
AN ANCHOR TO THE SOUL
The storekeeper had stretched no point when he told his niece that the
thought of setting foot in a boat made him well-nigh swoon. His only
ventures aboard any craft were in quiet waters.
He could pull as strong an oar, despite his years, as any man along the
Cape, but never had he gripped the ash save in the haven or in similar
land-locked water.
His heart was wrung by the sight of those men clinging to the shrouds
of the wrecked schooner. And he rejoiced that the members of the Coast
Patrol crew displayed their manhood in so noble an attempt to reach the
wreck.
But his very soul was shaken by the spectacle of the storm-fretted sea,
and terror gnawed at his vitals when the lifeboat was thrust out into
that awful maelstrom of tumbling water.
Relating imaginary events of this character or repeating what mariners
had told or written about wreck and storm at sea in the safe harbor of
the old store on the Shell Road was different from being an eyewitness
of this present catastrophe.
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