The chief
officer judged his second beautifully, and the line fell clean across
the vessel and all but amidships. A figure started up from the lee
of the deckhouse, and springing into the main shrouds, grasped it and
made it fast. The beach being too low for them to work the cradle
clear above the breakers, the coast-guardsmen carried the shore end
of the line up the shelving cliff and fixed it. Within ten minutes
the cradle was run out, and within twenty the first man came swinging
shoreward.
Four men were brought ashore alive, the captain last. The rest of
the crew of six lay on the sands with Mr. Raymond kneeling beside
them. He had covered their faces, and now gave the order to lift
them into the carriage. Taffy noticed that he was obeyed without
demur or question. And there flashed on his memory a grey morning,
not unlike this one, when he had missed his father at breakfast:
"He had been called away suddenly," Humility explained, "and there
would be no lessons that day," and she kept the boy indoors all the
morning and busy with a netting-stitch he had been bothering her to
teach him.
"Father," he asked as they followed the cart, "does this often
happen?"
"Your mother hasn't thought it well for you to see these sights."
"Then it _has_ happened, often?"
"I have buried seventeen," said Mr. Raymond.
That afternoon he showed Taffy their graves.
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