“It’s rough, Tod,” said the captain, in a choking voice, which grew clearer as he talked on.  “Almighty rough on ye and on all of us.  You did what you could—­ye risked yer life for him, and there ain’t nobody kin do more.  I wouldn’t send ye out again, but there’s work to do.  Them two men of Cap’n Ambrose’s is drowned, and they’ll come ashore some’er’s near the inlet, and you and Parks better hunt ’em up.  They live up to Barnegat, ye know, and their folks’ll be wantin’ ’em.”  It was strange how calm he was.  His sense of duty was now controlling him.

Tod had raised himself to his feet when the captain had begun to speak and stood with his wet sou’wester in his hand.

“Been like a brother to me,” was all he said, as he brushed the tears from his eyes and went to join Parks.

The captain watched Tod’s retreating figure for a moment, and bending again over Archie’s corpse, stood gazing at the dead face, his hands folded across his girth—­as one does when watching a body being slowly lowered into a grave.

“I loved ye, boy,” Jane heard him say between her sobs.  “I loved ye!  You knowed it, boy.  I hoped to tell ye so out loud so everybody could hear.  Now they’ll never know.”

Straightening himself up, he walked firmly to the open door about which the people pressed, held back by the line of surfmen headed by Polhemus, and calmly surveyed the crowd.  Close to the opening, trying to press her way in to Jane, his eyes fell on Lucy.  Behind her stood Max Feilding.

“Friends,” said the captain, in a low, restrained voice, every trace of his grief and excitement gone, “I’ve got to ask ye to git considerable way back and keep still.  We got Doctor John here and Miss Jane, and there ain’t nothin’ ye kin do.  When there is I’ll call ye.  Polhemus, you and Green see this order is obeyed.”

Again he hesitated, then raising his eyes over the group nearest the door, he beckoned to Lucy, pushed her in ahead of him, caught the swinging doors in his hands, and shut them tight.  This done, he again dropped on his knees beside the doctor and the now breathing man.

CHAPTER XXII

THE CLAW OF THE SEA-PUSS

With the closing of the doors the murmur of the crowd, the dull glare of the gray sky, and the thrash of the wind were shut out.  The only light in the House of Refuge now came from the two small windows, one above the form of the suffering man and the other behind the dead body of Archie.  Jane’s head was close to the boy’s chest, her sobs coming from between her hands, held before her face.  The shock of Archie’s death had robbed her of all her strength.  Lucy knelt beside her, her shoulder resting against a pile of cordage.  Every now and then she would steal a furtive glance around the room—­at the boat, at the rafters overhead, at the stove with its pile of kindling—­and a slight shudder would pass through her.  She had forgotten nothing of the past, nor of the room in which she crouched.  Every scar and stain stood out as clear and naked as those on some long-buried wreck dug from shifting sands by a change of tide.