“He is no coward, of that I am sure,” said Professor Grayling.  “He gave me his place in the boat.  We can but pray that the lifeboat will get to him in the morning.”

That hope was universal.  All night driftwood fires burned on the sands and the people watched and waited for the dawn and another sight of the schooner on the reef.

The tide brought in much wreckage; but it was mostly smashed top gear and deck lumber.  Therefore they had reason to hope that the hull of the wreck held together.

It was just at daybreak that the wind subsided and the tide was so that the lifeboat could be launched again.  Wellriver station owned no motor-driven craft at this time, or Cap’n Jim Trainor and his men would have been able to reach the wreck at the height of the gale.

It was no easy matter even now to bring the lifeboat under the lee of the battered schooner.  Her masts and shrouds were overside, anchoring her to the reef.  Not a sign of life appeared anywhere upon her.

One of the crew of the lifeboat leaped for the rail and clambered aboard.  Down in the scuppers, in the wash of each wave that climbed aboard the wreck, he spied a huddled bundle.

“Here’s one of ’em, sure ’nough!” he sang out.

Making his way precariously down the slanting deck, he reached in a minute the spot where the unfortunate lay.  The man had washed back and forth in the sea water so long that he was all but parboiled.  The rescuer seized him by the shoulders and drew him out of this wash.

He was a very bald man with gray hair, a stubble of beard on his cheeks, and a straggling gray mustache.

“Why, by golly!” yelled the surfman.  “This here’s Cap’n Abe Silt!”

“Ain’t his brother Am’zon there?”

“No, I don’t see his brother nowhere.”

“Take a good look.”

“Trust me to do that,” answered the surfman.

But the search was useless.  Nobody ever saw Cap’n Amazon again.  He had gone, as he had come—­suddenly and in a way to shock the placid thoughts of Cardhaven people.  A stone in the First Church graveyard is all the visible reminder there remains of Cap’n Amazon Silt, who for one summer amazed the frequenters of the store on the Shell Road.

The life-savers brought Cap’n Abe, the storekeeper, back from the wreck, the last survivor of the Curlew’s crew.  He was in rather bad shape, for his night’s experience on the wreck had been serious indeed.

They put him to bed, and Louise and Betty Gallup took turns in nursing him, while Cap’n Joab Beecher puttered about the store, trying to wait on customers and keep things straight.

At first, as he lay in his “cabin,” Cap’n Abe did not have much to say—­not even to Louise.  But after a couple of days, on an occasion when she was feeding him broth, he suddenly sputtered and put away the spoon with a vexed gesture.

“What’s the matter, Uncle Abram?” she asked him.  “Isn’t it good?”