“Well—­hardly,” said the captain with a dry smile.  “Folks that know the water don’t go exactly that way to work.  There was regular wracking-boats, built for the surf, and crews for each, you see:  best man in the starn.  The man in the starn, he generally owned the boat and chose his crew.  Picked men.  He kept them year after year.  Then the wracking-masters hired him, his boat and his crew.  Best crew chosen first, of course.  Two dollars a day each was reckoned good pay.  They got famous names, some of them surfboat crews,” reflectively.  “There was William Chadwick—­Bill Shattuck he goes by—­his crew was known from Sandy Hook to Hatteras.  There’s one of them now:  he can tell you about it better than me.—­Hello, Jake!”

We looked out of the window and saw the fisherman whom we had met in the afternoon lazily drawing his slow length along the beach, two or three blue mackerel dangling from his hand:  he had not enough of energy, apparently, to hold them up.  This was the fellow whom, an hour before, we had pitied as a dull soul to whom the wreck was “timber” and the life-saving station a “shed.”  We all had a vague ideal before us of a gallant sailor, with eyes of fire and nerves of steel, plunging into the cruel surf to rescue the sinking ship.  We accepted the slouching Jacob instead with disrelish.  He was not the stuff of which heroes in books are made.

“Jake,” said the captain, “where is Shattuck’s boat now?  I was speaking of it to the gentlemen here.”

“Take a cigar,” interpolated one of the party.

Jacob took a cigar, bit off the end and dropped easily into a seat:  “Bill’s boat?  Well, it’s drawed up ashore at the head of Barnegat—­down there.  You kin see it out of the window ef you like.”

“There is very seldom any call for the surf-boats and crews in summer,” explained the captain.  “The men follow fishing usually.  But in winter they’re always ready if a ship comes on the bar.”

“Your crew has done good service in saving life, I hear, Jacob?” said one of the strangers.

“Well, I dunno.  We’re generally the first called on by the wracking-master.  Sure of the best pay.  There’s Shattuck and Curtis and Van Note and George Johnson, and Fleming in the starn,” checking them off with his fingers—­“all good men to bring off trade in a heavy pull.”

“You don’t mean that these surf boat crews are paid to save the cargo, and that human life is left to the care of the government?” cried a listener indignantly.

“The government undertakes the life-saving service, and we’re paid by the wracking-master, certainly,” said Jacob calmly.  “To save the cargo.  But the human bein’s is took out first.  Of course.  As you say.  It’s not likely any man’s a-goin’ to bring trade out of a wrack’s long’s there’s a live critter aboard.”

“There’s not one of these men,” said the captain with a little heat in his tone, “who has not saved many a life at the risk of his own.  Isn’t that true, Jacob?”