“We burned that barque,” proceeded the storekeeper dreamily, “after we looted her of everything wuth while.  Then——­”

The door was flung open with a gust of wind behind it.  A lanky, half-grown lad stuck his head in at the opening to shrill: 

“Hi! ain’t ye heard ’bout it?”

“Bout what?” demanded Milt Baker.

“There’s a schooner drivin’ in on to the Gull Rocks,” cried the news vender.  “Something gone wrong with her rudder, they say.  She’s goin’ spang onto the reef.  Ev’rybody’s down there, an’ the life-savers are comin’ around from Wellriver with their gear.”

“Gale out o’ the no’theast, too!” exclaimed Cap’n Joab, starting for the door.

The story-teller saw his audience melt away in a minute.  He went out on the porch.  Fluttering across the fields and sand lots from all directions were the neighbors—­both men and women.  The possibility of a wreck—­the great tragedy of long-shore existence—­would bring everybody not bed-ridden to the sands.

He saw Betty Gallup in high boots, her pea-coat buttoned tightly across her flat bosom, her man’s hat pulled down over her ears, already halfway to the shore.  From the cottage on the bluffs above The Beaches the summer visitors were trailing down.  Below Bozewell’s bungalow the motion picture company were running excitedly about.

“Like sandpipers,” muttered the storekeeper.  “Crazy critters.  Wonder where that schooner is.”

He hesitated to leave the premises.  Cap’n Abe had never been known to follow the crowd to the beach when an endangered craft was in the offing.  Indeed, he never looked in the direction of the sea if he could help it when a storm lashed its surface and piled the breakers high upon the strand.

But suddenly the man remembered that he was not Cap’n Abe!  He stood here in an entirely different character.  Cap’n Amazon, the rough and ready mariner, had little in common with the timid creature who had tamely kept store on the Shell Road for twenty-odd years.

What would the neighbors think of Cap’n Amazon if he remained away from the scene of excitement at such a time?  He turned back into the store for his hat and coat and later came out and closed the door.  Then he shuffled down the road.

At first he closed his eyes—­squeezing the lids tight so as not to see the gale-ridden sea.  But finally, stumbling, he opened them.  Far away where the pale tower of the lighthouse lifted staunchly against the greenish gray sky, the surf was rolling in from the open sea, the waves charging up the strand one after the other like huge white horses, their manes of spume tossed high by the breath of the gale.  Black was the sea, and streaked angrily with foam.

Thunderously did it roar and break over the Gull Rocks.  A curtain of spoondrift hung above that awful reef and almost shut from the view of those ashore the open sea and what swam on it.