He splashed across the tide-swept bar, and when the bones of an ancient wreck loomed close by, he knew he was within a mile of home. A dark smudge moved against the white sand-hills, and he fell into the arms of Jim Conklin on patrol.
"Schooner's coming ashore," gasped Brainard. "She passed the head pier, heading straight down and helpless. She was in distress for fair. If she hasn't come this far, she's piled up on the Point. I'll go to the station while you find her and signal us."
Conklin said not a word, but made a bull-like lunge against the storm. When Brainard had roused out the crew, Fritz Wagenhals shouted:
"Our boat is no good for us on the Point. Get out mit the gun."
Six men and the cook stormed up the beach with the life-gun and tackle, and as they toiled through the heavy sand in the teeth of the wind, Brainard was near collapse. But he rallied when they crept out toward the Point, and a red Coston light sputtered and flared ahead. Then Jim Conklin ran back to them waving his torch and crying:
"She's in the breakers on the weather side of the Point. The Boy guessed right. Breaking up fast, she is. Hustle up the gun."
When they sighted the stranded schooner even Brainard, who had foreseen her plight, was amazed at the quick fury of her destruction. The black lump of her hulk lay in a surf which broke sheer over it, and the stump of her mainmast rolled in appealing gestures to the sky. The first shot was fired dead against the wind, and the line fell short. A second and a third failed, and they did not even know whether life was aboard the wreck. At last a quartering shot sent the line across the schooner, and there came feeble twitches, electric pulsations that sent their message to the men ashore as if hands had been clasped across the boiling inferno of white water.
The wreck was breaking up fast. Her timbers strewed the beach, and drifted menacingly in the surf. But with slow, halting effort, the whip-line followed the slender cord of the projectile, and after that the heavy hawser trailed out into the night until the jerky signal came ashore that all was made fast. The surfmen tailed on and the breeches-buoy was dragged shoreward. At length a sodden shape, coughing and groaning, was pulled up on the sand by the men who rushed among the combers. Four more trips the breeches-buoy made, and three more sailors were fetched ashore alive. The last of these was asked how many were left aboard and he gasped: