THE LIFE SAVING STATION.

“Here we are,” exclaimed Mr. Plympton, entering with Walter the life saving station. “Jotham, how are you?”

“Ezra, I am really glad to see you,” replied Jotham Barney, the keeper of the station, with much heartiness. “Take off your riggin’, and make yourself at home.”

“Cap’n Barney,” as he was often labeled, was a person about forty–five years old. He was a sandy haired, sandy whiskered man, with a light complexion, sharp, prominent nose, and blue eyes that had a way of letting out flashes when he spoke. “Cap’n Barney” was a very social, talkative man, who had been “about considerable,” though not always in first class conveyances, and was ready to talk on almost any subject. What he had not seen, what he did not know, was not worth the seeing or knowing. He thought very much of his own opinion, and liked to brag; but he was a kindly natured man, and people bore with his conceit, because he was so chatty and pleasant. The station to which “Uncle Sam” had appointed him as the “keeper,” was a yellow building about forty–five feet long, and perhaps eighteen wide; and how tall was it? The roof supported in its center a little railed platform called the “lookout,” and this was between twenty and twenty–five feet from the ground. In the rear of the station was the living–room, through whose preface of a little entry, Mr. Plympton and Walter passed; then, entering the apartment which was not only a kitchen, but a dining–room; and not only a dining–room but a sitting–room, a parlor, and everything, except an apartment for sleeping. This living–room was a little, unambitious place, lighted by two windows toward the east. Between the windows, was a cook–stove; and over this was a wooden rack, from which hung a row of towels. A clock stamped “U. S. L. S. S.” was ticking steadfastly on one wall, and near it was a barometer. In one corner, was a case marked “U. S. L. S. S. Library, No.—.” Two patrol lanterns were suspended below, and there were also two sockets for Coston signals. Around the walls in different places, were the overcoats, hats, jackets, comforters, the station crew had shed. Upon the entrance door, that served as a kind of handy bulletin–board, were tacked various circulars: “Merriman’s Patent Waterproof Dress and Life–Preservers,” “Watchman’s Improved Time–Detector”; circulars from the Treasury Department about care of “Marine Glasses,” upon “Leaves of absence,” and other matters. The only other interesting objects in the room were human, and these were members of the station crew. They were all young men. One was weaving a net. Two were playing checkers. A fourth was officiating as cook; and he was now cutting up salt fish.

Walter noticed everything with eager curiosity. His father and the keeper had once been schoolboys together, and as they were very busily talking, Walter’s eyes could without interruption travel from one object to another.

“Three doors in this room,” thought Walter; “and one goes outdoors; and I wonder where the other two go.”

He was relieved when the keeper said, “Ezra, come upstairs, and see how we bunk for the night. Then I will show you the boat–room.”

“That disposes of those two doors, I guess,” reflected Walter.

One of these, approached from the kitchen floor by a single step, the keeper was now opening.

“Tumble up, Ezra, and see where we stay nights,” was the keeper’s ready invitation. Up the brown, unpainted stairs, they passed into a little room, which seemed to be also an entry, connecting the keeper’s room, at the left over the kitchen, and the men’s quarters, at the right.

“Here is my den,” said the keeper, turning to the left. “Plain, you see everything is, but at night when a feller is asleep, he doesn’t know whether a Brussels carpet is on the floor, or whether it is unpainted, like this. That is my bed in the corner, and there you see I have two windows toward the east, so I know when it is sunrise. There’s my writin’ desk, they allow me a chair or two, and so on.”

“Who rooms with you?” asked Mr. Plympton.

“The clock up there! That is my chum; always makin’ a noise, yet never in the way.”

“Oh! Then this is your room wholly, Jotham?”

“Of course,” said Jotham, turning away with as much dignity as a sovereign leaving a bed–chamber hung with royal purple.

“Now we will come back into the little entry again at the head of the stairs.” It was an entry that was also a narrow room.

“Here’s a bed, you see, in the corner; and I have had the stove that was in my room set here. It throws the heat into the men’s quarters. We have a store–room on this floor,” said the keeper, opening a door in a wooden partition; “and we chuck various things in there. Step into the men’s room.”

They passed into a long, low room in the western end of the building. Here were six wooden cot–beds ranged along two sides of the room; and under the thick army blankets that covered them, it seemed as if any tired surfman would be comfortable. Near each bed was either a blue chest or a trunk. At the two ends of the room, were various articles suspended from rows of hooks. Here were trousers, and coats, and shirts; and one man, who could not have believed in the beard movement, had here hung his shaving–mug and razor–strop. Near the windows in the western gable of the sloping roof, was a row of paper signal–flags.

“What are those?” asked Walter.

“They are only pictures of signals that one of the men cut out of the signal–book. The real signals, the cloth ones, we keep under the lookout.”

“Could I see them?”

“Sartin. Come up this way,” and the obliging keeper turned to climb a wooden stairway running up from this room to the “lookout” on the roof. Before they reached the lookout, Walter saw in a little recess under the roof, a box.

“There,” said the keeper, pulling the box forward. “This is all full of little flags, or signals, by which we can communicate with any craft on the water. We keep ’em here, because it is handy to have the signals where they can be taken out to the lookout, and run up on the flag–staff quick as possible.”

Walter looked up through the open scuttle, and saw the lookout with its railing, and above all rose the tapering flag–staff.

“We have one more room,” said the keeper.

“What’s that, Jotham?” inquired Mr. Plympton.

“The boat–room. Come downstairs.”

They passed from the living–room directly into a treasure house, whose contents made Walter’s eyes sparkle with eager interest.

“That the boat!” exclaimed Walter.

“Yes, she’s a beauty,” replied the keeper, fondly stroking its gunwale as if it were a thing of life, and would feel every touch of his caressing hand. “That’s our surf–boat.”

The surf–boat had the place of honor in the room, occupying all its center, and reaching almost from the wall of the living–room to the big door in the western wall.

“It must be over twenty feet long,” thought Walter, who began to fill up with questions, until his brain seemed charged as fully as a loaded mitrailleuse. How many articles there were in that boat–room, adapted to the life–saving work, and in such readiness, that a wreck near shore might be sure of a visit and of rescue, if there were any possible chance for such relief! There were guns for throwing lines, and there were the lines to be thrown. There was a life–car, that could be swung along a line to a wreck; and there was a breeches–buoy, and there were—Oh how many articles! The desire for information was swelling to an intolerable size within Walter’s soul, and he was about to gratify the longing, when to his great disappointment, a door opened, and a face with a bushy beard was thrust into the boat–room from the living–room.

“Cap’n!” called out Bush–beard.

“What say?”

“Could I see you ’bout my patrollin’ to–night, one minute?”

“Why, father,” said Walter, in a low voice to Mr. Plympton, “that is the man that fixed the vane on the steeple!”

The man of the steeple had recognized them, and was now saying, “How d’ye do?” at the same time he advanced, and held out a broad, brown hand to the visiting party.

“Glad to see you,” said Mr. Plympton.

“You know Tom Walker?” asked the station–keeper.

“Guess I do,” replied Walter, readily gripping Tom Walker’s brown hand.

“I s’pose, Tom, you want to see me about your beat. Let me see. You are on watch from eight till twelve?”

“That’s it, Cap’n. All right, if you understand it. That is what I wanted.”

“I—I wish—” Walter stopped.

“What is it?” asked Mr. Plympton.

“Why, I was thinking I would like to go with Tom Walker, a while you know, just to see what it is like.”

“You can, if you wish and your father is willing. Tom would like ’mazin’ well to have company,” said the keeper.

“Sartin!” cried Tom eagerly.

“I’m willing, Walter,” said Mr. Plympton. “Only don’t be gone too long, as your Aunt Lydia would like, I guess, to have the house shut up before twelve. We will go over there now. Thank you, Jotham, for showing us round.”

“You’re welcome. I will expect your boy to–night. He’d better be here before eight.”

“I’ll give him a welcome,” added Tom. “I haven’t forgotten a kindness he did me.”

“I will be on hand,” declared the happy Walter.

Mr. Plympton and Walter turned away from the station, and took a narrow lane running from the beach up to Boardman Blake’s; and there the lane was promoted, and became a highway. As if to acknowledge that promotion, and wave the road a graceful, stately wish for success on its travels, a single elm had been planted where the way widened. The Blake home had been standing there about fifty years; having been built by Boardman Blake’s father. It was a two–story house; its green front door piercing the wall exactly in the middle. On one side of the front door was the parlor, open only on great occasions, like funerals, or “comp’ny.” Behind this was the kitchen. On the other side of the front door, the right, was the store; and in its rear, the sitting–room.

“I like to have things handy,” said Uncle Boardman to Walter’s father; “and I can jest slip from our sittin’–room to the store and ’tend to customers, and then slip back.”

It was in the sitting–room, that Uncle Boardman, Aunt Lydia, and the Plymptons were gathered before the large, open–mouthed fire–place. Supper had been spread at an early hour on the round dining–table in the kitchen, and the light had not wholly faded from the west, when the Blakes and their guests withdrew to the sitting–room. One could look from the fire on the hearth, to those flames the sun had kindled on a rival hearth, about the western hills; but the glow of the latter went out, leaving only ashy clouds behind; while Boardman’s fire continued to flare and crackle into the night.

“You did have courage to start to–day to come down here,” said Aunt Lydia to Walter’s father, having adjusted herself in her easy rocking–chair, and having adjusted also in her waist the corn–cob that held and steadied her knitting.

“Yes, but it was our last chance before Walter went away. Then when I started, I did not know it was so bad. I thought when I struck the main road after leaving our house, we could get along easily enough. I think, too, over this way, you have had more snow than we. I didn’t know these facts; and when one has begun, you know he don’t like to give it up.”

“There, if that isn’t Boardman!” exclaimed Aunt Lydia, throwing down her knitting–work in her lap as if to emphasize her point. “There has been a man round, Bezaleel Baggs (I call him Belzebub), and he wants to buy up a lot of Boardman’s woodland. Boardman has got the idea he’d better sell, and he does hate to give it up! I don’t like that Beza—no, Belzebub. I don’t like his looks or—”

“Tinkle, tinkle,” went a little bell in the direction of the store.

“Store, store!” now shrieked Aunt Lydia in the ears of her spouse, and there was need of the shriek. Uncle Boardman had contentedly folded his hands in his ample lap, and his head was rising and falling with as much regularity as the tides out in the adjacent ocean; but of course much oftener. “Store,” though, was the magic word that could bring Boardman any time out of the depths of the most profound evening nap. Rising promptly, he made his way to the sitting–room door, and then into the store lighted by its one kerosene lamp on the scarred wooden counter. Aunt Lydia followed him softly to the door, and thrust forward her sharply featured face. She came back with a pair of flashing dark eyes, flashing all the brighter behind her spectacles; and holding up one hand significantly, said in a half–whisper, “I took a peek! It’s he! I knowed as much.”

“Who?” inquired Walter’s father.

“Belzebub—there, Boardman says I ought not to call him that! Well, it’s the same old fox, that Baggs.”

“You don’t like him?”

“No, not one bit!” and in her intensity of feeling she sat down forcibly on the corn–cob, that ally in Aunt Lydia’s knitting–work, and carelessly left in her chair.

“There!” said she jumping up. “I’ve broken that ’ere cob. I wish it had been Bel—there, I s’pose I ought not to say that.”

Walter felt that the situation at Uncle Boardman’s had suddenly become very interesting; but he remembered his appointment at the station. He rose and began to put on his overcoat.