it is bad enough to move coast guard apparatus along the level ocean shore, dragging it through the sand, but to move it back from the ocean, up and down over the uneven line of the sand dunes, is more difficult still. when the ocean is up to the foot of the dunes and is biting angrily at their bases this difficult portage has to be made.
the vanton house was not more than a half mile east of the lone cove station, so the coast guardsmen’s task was not as bad as it might have been in this respect. sometimes it is necessary to drag life boats mounted on trucks, and all the other paraphernalia, for several miles.
to be able to work with such a base as this big house right at hand was an immense advantage, and to be able to work in the lee of it, more or less huddled under its eastern wall, seemed a piece of fortune hardly less great.
everything else was about the worst it could have been in the circumstances. the darkness was absolute. the gale was of hurricane force, blowing at more than 60 miles an hour. it was early in the evening, not yet ten o’clock, and there was all the night to fight through. the barometer, as keeper tom lupton well knew, was still falling, and the height of the storm had probably not been reached and would not be reached until toward morning. the chance of the sky lightening,[275] until daybreak compelled a recession of the darkness, was almost nil. the chance of the wind abating was no better. and even should the night become a little lighter and the wind lessen, the tremendous seas which were assaulting the sand dunes and breaking over the stranded ship would not go down. it takes hours after a heavy gale for the sea it has kicked up to lessen perceptibly.
the wind, against which a man could sometimes hardly stand or keep upon his feet, was not the worst thing for those who had to make the fight to save life from the shore. it was hailing intermittently and the ice particles were fairly driven into the skin of men’s faces like a peppering of fine shot. there was little snow on the ground, which was a thing to be thankful for. more, however, would come later when the wind began to abate.
keeper tom marshalled his men and his machinery as close as possible to the vanton house. within forty minutes from the time he himself finished speaking with richard hand, his men and his apparatus were posted and he was ready to begin operations. in the meantime, dick hand had bumped against him in the blackness and shouted indistinctly:
“tommy!... dick! anything you want ... help you....”
“thanks!” the keeper had bawled back with his hands on his old friend’s shoulders.
[276]the little cannon began booming and a thin line began whipping seaward.
nothing was visible. what those ashore would have seen, if there had been light, was a three-masted ship which had struck the outer bar and had been driven past that until she lay on the inner bar, so far inshore that it might have been possible to wade to her at low tide in peaceful weather. the stress of her blow on the outer bar and the pounding to which she had been subjected in being driven past it, as well as the continuous assault she was now under, had battered her very badly. she had not opened up at her seams but would, and at almost any instant. her foremast had been carried away completely—snapped off a few feet above her deck. some of her yards—the spars carrying her sails—were gone; two of these dangled loosely, menacing the lives of any one on her decks. but there was no one on her decks. all hands had, of necessity, taken to the rigging.
they could just be glimpsed by the flare of her rocketing distress signals—little dark figures in the maintop, in the topgallant crosstrees, in the mizzen shrouds. they appeared not at all human. they seemed to be nothing but slight lumps or warts on the fine tracery of the rigging, the slender filaments of masts and yards and stays, wood, wire and rope, limned against the formidable blackness in which sky and sea met each other and were indistinguishable.
[277]no boat, of course, could live for a moment in the sea that was raging. the only chance was in getting a line to the vessel. and in doing that every instant counted.
the first shots with the line were useless, as was to have been expected. it was necessary to determine direction and drift, and to make a heavy and exact allowance for windage. the ship lay directly south, the gale was from the southwest. the line had to be shot almost straight against the wind, which then carried it to the south. but so shot, it became evident that it was falling short. a heavier charge was used and still the line fell short.
“we can’t stay here,” bellowed keeper tom who, when he wanted to give an order, was under the practical necessity of bawling it separately in each man’s ear. “we’ll have to leave the lee of the house and go to windward, well to windward.”
this was that they might not have to shoot the line squarely in the teeth of the gale when the wind, getting under it, lifted it high in the air and seriously shortened the horizontal distance it travelled—like a “pop” fly in a baseball game or a golf ball driven straight into the wind.
leaving the lee of the vanton house was just another hardship added to those they were already enduring. all the apparatus was moved and a post was taken on a dune well to the west. from this site better[278] results were got almost immediately. the gale still carried the line to the eastward but this could be allowed for and the lateral journey of the line was not materially lessened. after a few shots to get the wind allowance the line was dropped squarely over the wreck.
