THE PATROL.

Walter was sitting in the living–room of the station. It was almost eight o’clock. Two men came stumbling downstairs, and with a sleepy air entered the room. Seating themselves, they began to put on their huge rubber boots. One of the men was Tom Walker.

“How are ye?” he said, nodding to Walter in a friendly way. “Goin’?”

“That’s what I am here for.”

A footstep in the entry was now heard. A man entered, wearing a stout, heavy black coat, and black trousers, and he carried a lantern in his hand. It was the patrol from the easterly end of the beach.

“Cold!” was his one word of greeting, as he set his lantern on the table. He also deposited there a leather pouch attached to a long leather strap.

Another step was heard in the entry, and a man appeared who wore a thick blue blouse and blue trousers, and had a very much padded look. He was the patrol from the westerly end of the beach. He expressed his opinion that it was cold by silently going to the stove; and there he stood rubbing his hands in the warm atmosphere. He had already deposited a leather pouch on the table. Tom Walker and the other arrival from upstairs, were dressing for their duty as patrolmen in the place of the two whose chilling wintry beat had just been accomplished. Tom put on a Guernsey jacket, and then drew over it a short, thick sack coat. He pulled a cap of shaggy cloth down over his hair, drew close the ear–laps, and then took up a pair of thick, warm mittens lying under the stove.

“Here,” said the keeper to Walter. “Before you start, let me show you what the men take with them.”

As he spoke, he lifted a leather pouch that had been deposited on the table. It was a circular case of leather, about four inches in diameter, containing a “time–detector”; its works resembling those of a chronometer. Taking out a key and opening the detector, the keeper said, “I thought you might like to see this. There, I have put this round card in the detector. You see it is marked off into hours, and ten minutes, and five minutes, and is called the dial. The patrol takes it with him, and at the end of his beat he puts a key in that hole you see, and gives the key a turn. A kind of punch, stamped like a die, is forced down on the dial. In the morning, I open the detector, and there is the dial that tells if he has done his duty. These dials I forward once a week to Washington.”

“Supposing the man don’t want to go his beat, and turns the key somewhere this side of the end of the route?” asked Walter.

“Ah,” said the keeper, “the feller can’t play ’possum that way. He must go to the end of his beat to get his key. It is at a house there. He must go that far, you see, anyway.”

“As any feller of honor would, key or no key,” growled Tom Walker.

“Oh, sartin, sartin, Tom,” replied the keeper. “They didn’t get it up for you, but for the fellers in some—some—other station.”

And Tom’s growl changed to a pleasant laugh. “Where’s my Coston signal?” he asked.

“Here it is,” replied the keeper.

“What’s that?” asked Walter.

“It is for signaling to anybody on the water in the night, and this burns a red light.”

The Coston signal was a few inches long, marked on the bottom with the word, “Patrol.”

“This,” said the keeper, “fits into a socket on one end of this wooden handle which you see I have. At the other end is that brass knob. When I want to use my signal, I strike that knob, and it forces a rod up into a little hole in the end of the signal. That strikes a percussion cap, and ignites a fusee, and out flashes a red light. That is my explanation of it.”

Out into the cold, shadowy night, they went. Tom led off, slouching along heavily, carelessly yet doggedly; as if he had a duty before him which he did not wholly relish, but meant to put it through, like a horse in a treadmill, whose greatest concern is to put one foot before the other, and to keep putting until lunch time. There was a bright glitter of stars in the sky, and the land was white with the pure snow; but where the sea stretched toward the east, was one vast mass of blackness. Out of this blackness, came a voice, that shouted all along the shore, “Ho—ho—ho—ho!” The sea was very smooth, and the sound of the surf was not heavy enough to interrupt the conversation between Tom and Walter.

“I suppose,” began Walter, “these stations are scattered all along the coast.”

“They are all over the country in spots. I ’magine in some places they are few as muskeeters in December. Then again they are pretty thick, say on the Jersey coast. Government takes care of ’em all. So many stations—more or less—makin’ a deestrict, under the care of a superintendent. Then all these deestricts are under Gen. Sumner I. Kimball at Washington. Every deestrict, too, has its inspector.”

“How many men do you have to have at this station?”

“There is the keeper, Keeper Barney—we Cap’n him jest among ourselves—and there are seven surfmen here. We have a cook also. I am a surfman and then I am called a patrolman too. I’m a patrolman now, but just let a vessel show itself off there, and I should be a surfman in less than no time.”

“You don’t stay here all the time?”

“Through the year? No, we come on the first of September, and we go off the first of May. They don’t have the same dates in all the stations. The idea is to be here when there’s the most danger. Our keeper, though, has to be lookin’ arter things, comin’ here now and then, through the year. He’s keeper, summer and winter.”

“How do you like your work?”

“Well, I like the pay, fifty dollars a month, but it’s hard, resky work.”

“How long have you been on?”

“Nine years.”

“What is your worst kind of weather?”

“Well, it’s tough when there’s a light snow, and a stiff nor’–west wind keeps it a blowin’, or a nor’–east storm, when it hails and comes slashin’ into your face. It’s bad most any time when the lantern goes out. You see we have to pick our way; good enough on the sand when it’s hard, but among the rocks, it’s hobbly; and it may be pretty snowy if you can’t foller the beach.”

“Does your lantern go out?”

“Sometimes. You have to grope your way the best you can, then.”

“You must have seen some tough times.”

“I’ve been an hour and a half goin’ a mile,” exclaimed Tom with the air of a veteran who has fought his hundred battles, and won at least ninety–nine. “Poky work, I tell ye!”

“How do you divide your watches?”

“We have four watches, and two men go out at a time. I go to this end of the beach, and t’other man goes to t’other end. Where two station deestricts join, the patrolmen from the stations meet, and exchange what they call ‘checks,’ that they give to their keepers.”

“How is it your watches run?”

“Oh, the hours? From sunset till eight, is the first watch, and from eight to twelve is the second, and from twelve till four is the third; and then there’s from four till sunrise. Then by day, we have to watch. If it’s thick weather, fog, or rain, or snow, if we can’t see two miles each way from the station, we have to go out agin. If it is clear weather, we just watch from the lookout, on the buildin’. One man has to be on the lookout, and he reports all vessels goin’ by. You saw the lookout?”

“Oh, yes. Do you ever use that Coston signal?”

“Yes, though not much this winter thus far. I have only used mine twice thus far. A fishin’ vessel was the last one. She got in too near shore, and I burned my light, so that she might take the hint and haul off.”

“The ice must be piled up bad on the beach, sometimes.”

“Yes; I’ve seen it twenty feet high. The wind drives the snow down on the beach, and the sea washes over it, and it freezes; and then more snow may come to be washed and to freeze over, and so on.”

“Out in a cold rain or hail, don’t it bother you?”

“Yes; take hail, and it’s tough. Why, I’ve seen a man come into the station, and his clothes would be so stiff and frozen, he—he—couldn’t get ’em off hisself.”

By this time, Tom had reached the end of his beat. He slouched along in the rear of a barn, turned its corner, and then stopped before an object that shone in the light of the lantern. It was a key attached by a chain to the wall. Tom took the key, put it into a hole in his detector, turned it till a sharp click was heard; and then Walter knew this faithful recorder had made its mark on the dial. The patrolman turned, and began the journey back to the station. Crossing a field of snow, they struck the shore rocks once more, and then moved out upon the wet, sloping sands. A short walk brought them again to the upper rim of the beach, strewn with snow.

The lantern flashed its light down upon a footprint.

“Whose is that?” asked Walter.

“T’other patrol’s; one afore me. He’s got a foot big enough to cover up a pumpkin hill.”

Slowly, Tom and Walter returned to the station.

“I suppose I must say good night, and go to my aunt’s now.”

“Wish I had an aunt’s to go to, now. My beat is short, and I must go over it twice more, afore I turn in at twelve. If you are down at the station in the morning, you’ll see on my detector the proof that I’ve been faithful; but I would be, without the thing,” said the sensitive knight of the beach. Walter watched Tom as he turned his face again toward the dark sea and the lonely beach. The light of the lantern steadily dwindled till it seemed like that of a star about to dip beneath the waters of the ocean and disappear; and dip and disappear it did, as Tom stumbled over the shore rocks down upon the beach. Walter went slowly along the lane to Uncle Boardman’s.

In the morning, he was at the station again.

“Do you want to see me open the detectors?” said the keeper to Walter. “Come here then.”

Walter watched the keeper as he opened one of the detectors.

“There,” he said, removing a card or dial. “Do you see those marks?”

Walter could detect little stamps in the form of a cross.

“There is Tom Walker’s record,” said the keeper. “One stamp was fifteen minutes of nine, when you went down; another at ten minutes of ten, and the third at eleven. That shows that Tom Walker did his duty.”

“And he would have done it anyway,” growled the sensitive Tom. “I don’t like to have that thing nag me round. I do my duty.”

“Oh yes, yes, sartin,” replied the keeper in a mollifying tone.

“Did you burn your light after I left you?” inquired Walter. “I mean your signal.”

“No, nothin’ turned up.”

“What would you have done if it had?” inquired Walter. “Say, if you had seen a wreck, what then?”

“What would he have done?” said the keeper, answering for the surfman, and answering in an oratorical fashion. “What would he have done? My! Wouldn’t he have flown round! He’d have out with that signal and burnt it in less than no time. Then he would have run to the station, big rubber boots and all, roused the crew, and we might have had to run out the boat and get a line to the wreck,” and the keeper, as he proceeded, seeing the effect his earnestness had on his young auditor, grew quite dramatic in his gestures.

“Wish I could see it!” thought Walter. But that was not possible. His return home must be effected that very afternoon.

“I am leaving so many things behind,” he reasoned, “that I really ought not to go. There are so many things about the station I would like to understand; and what a funny store Uncle Boardman has! And there is that man, ‘Belzebub’ Baggs; I wonder if he will get Uncle Boardman to sell him that land!”

There was no alternative; Walter must go. He left behind, Uncle Boardman, and Aunt Lydia, the store, “Belzebub” Baggs, the station, Tom Walker, Capt. Barney, the crew, the wide, blue ocean so full of unrest and storm.

“Get up, Katy!” shouted Mr. Plympton. “Now, home with ye!”