Mr. Raymond frowned. "No," he said; "the time is past for that."
A fist hammered on the door. Mr. Raymond threw it open.
"Brigantine--on the sands--half a mile this side of the lighthouse!" Taffy saw across his father's shoulder a gleam of yellow oilskins and a flapping sou-wester' hat. The panting voice belonged to Sam Udy--son of old Bill Udy--a laborer at Tresedder.
"I'll go at once," said Mr. Raymond. "Run you for the coast-guard."
The oilskins went by the window; the side gate clashed to.
"Is it a wreck?" cried Taffy. "May I go with you?"
"Yes, there may be a message to run with."
From the edge of the towans, where the ground dipped steeply to the long beach, they saw the wreck, about a mile up the coast and, as well as they could judge, a hundred or a hundred-and-fifty yards out. She lay almost on her beam-ends, with the waves sweeping high across her starboard quarter, and never less than six ranks of ugly breakers between her and dry land. A score of watchers--in the distance they looked like emmets--were gathered by the edge of the surf. But the coast-guard had not arrived yet.
"The tide is ebbing, and the rocket will reach. Can you see anyone aboard?"
Taffy spied through his hands, but could see no one. His father set off running and he followed, half-blinded by the rain, at every fourth step foundering knee-deep in loose sand or tripping in a rabbit hole. They had covered three-fourths of the distance when Mr. Raymond pulled up and waved his hat as the coast-guard carriage swept into view over a ridge to the right and came plunging across the main valley of the towans. It passed them close--the horses fetlock-deep in sand, with heads down and heaving, smoking shoulders; the coast-guardsmen with keen strong faces like heroes'--and the boy longed to copy his father and send a cheer after them as they went galloping by. But something rose in his throat.
He ran after the carriage, and reached the shore just as the first rocket shot singing out toward the wreck. By this time at least a hundred miners had gathered, and between their legs he caught a glimpse of two figures stretched at length on the wet sand. He had never looked on a dead body before. The faces of these were hidden by the crowd; and he hung about the fringe of it, dreading and yet courting a sight of them.