AN ANCHOR TO THE SOUL

The storekeeper had stretched no point when he told his niece that the thought of setting foot in a boat made him well-nigh swoon.  His only ventures aboard any craft were in quiet waters.

He could pull as strong an oar, despite his years, as any man along the Cape, but never had he gripped the ash save in the haven or in similar land-locked water.

His heart was wrung by the sight of those men clinging to the shrouds of the wrecked schooner.  And he rejoiced that the members of the Coast Patrol crew displayed their manhood in so noble an attempt to reach the wreck.

But his very soul was shaken by the spectacle of the storm-fretted sea, and terror gnawed at his vitals when the lifeboat was thrust out into that awful maelstrom of tumbling water.

Relating imaginary events of this character or repeating what mariners had told or written about wreck and storm at sea in the safe harbor of the old store on the Shell Road was different from being an eyewitness of this present catastrophe.

Trembling, the salt tears stinging his eyes more sharply than the salt spray stung his cheeks, the storekeeper had ventured into the crowd of spectators on the sands.  So enthralled were his neighbors by what was going forward that they did not notice his appearance.

And well they did not.  This character of the bluff and ready master mariner that Cap’n Abe had builded—­a new order of Frankenstein—­and with which he had deceived the community for these many weeks, came near to being wrecked right here and now.

He all but screamed aloud in fear when the lifeboat was overturned.  Pallid, shaking, panting for every breath he drew, he was slipping out of the unnoticing crowd when Cap’n Jim Trainor of the lifeboat crew called to him.

“You pull a strong oar, I know, Cap’n Am’zon.  We need you.”

For the space of a breath the storekeeper “hung in the wind.”  He had been poised for flight and the shock of the lifeboat captain’s call almost startled him into running full speed up the beach.

Then the thought smote upon his harassed mind that Cap’n Trainor was not speaking to Cap’n Abe, storekeeper.  The call for aid was addressed to Cap’n Amazon Silt.

It was to Cap’n Amazon, the man who had been through all manner of perils by sea and land, who had suffered stress of storm and shipwreck himself, whose reputation for courage the Shell Road storekeeper had builded so long.

Should all this fall in a moment?  Should he show the coward’s side of the shield after all his effort toward vicarious heroism?  Another moment of hesitancy and as Cap’n Amazon Silt he would never be able to hold up his head in the company of Cardhaven folk again.

Cursed by the horror his mother had felt for the cruel sea that had taken her husband before her very eyes, Cap’n Abe had ever shrunk from any actual venture upon deep water.  But Cap’n Amazon must be true to his manhood—­must uphold by his actions the character the storekeeper had builded for him.