Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-12-16
SOLDIERS Of THE SURF
Men Who Pluck the Gray Old
Sea by the Beard.
iROBBING The w AYES
STORY OF A JANUARY SHIP
WRECK ON SANDS OF QUOGUE.
Heroic Rescues by the Life Savers IN
Winter Weather-Modest Reports
Made to the Government.
R0BBING The WAVES
written for The Star

Written for The Star
January, pm. A forty-mile wind blow
ing dead on shore. Waves that become
breakers even before they strike the drown
ed bars. Breakers that become spray.
Spray that strikes scalding cold and he
comes ice in the moment of its striking.
Thirty miles off the beach of Quogie.
Long Island, 10 pm. A ffty-mile wind
blowing dead on shore, and four-masier
wrestling in the thick of 1t.
Spray turning to ice, drop after drop,
second after second; sails SO stiff that The
frozen fingers that tear at them might as
well tear, bleeding, at sheet iron. Thirty
hours since she sighted Northeast End lis ut
ship off New Jersey; not bearing taken
since then, the rudder so sheathed In Ice
that it has to crunch the bearded crystals
away before 1t can turn--so the schooner
Augustus Hunt drives straight toward the
sand trap of Quocue w'-N every one of the
ten sailors aboard imagining that she is
heading IN for Sandy Hook.
a sea that rave, "-.~i that runs not
in rollers, but in casctdes-cascades that
drive green over the Augustus Hunt and
add a thousand tons of water to her two
thousand tons of coal cargo, Ice that has
glazed her from tow to stern and from
maintop TO jtbboom.
Weather and wave as If the world were
washing and blowing away IN storm; roar of
waters ahead, astern and over side. Eleven
. m. and the outer bar of deadly Quogue
almost under foot
The Light Ahead.
Light ahead" Inc han, whipped away
by the wind comes family from the numb
ed lookout at the bow 70 the ears Of the
numbed mate.
Go forward and see what it is" says the
Hrst mate 20 the second. 1t must be a
steamer"
The second mate wades and founders to-
ward the diving bow hanging to cabin
coamings. ropes and deck fittings for his
life
Ahead is a faint faint, phantom white
blur OF light in the fOs and the snow. Now
it Is visible. now it is gone, now It shows
again.
Il can't make out what It is, SIR" says
the frozen lookout, with chattering teeth,
wiping the salt W. Ter from his crusted eyes.
God help him! 1t is the last light that he
will see on earth That white blur Is Shin
necock light, burning to say Death! Death!
DEATH" TO ali who come SO close TO it this
night.
The next instant the schooner hits the
sand eighteen feet under her The Atlantic
ocean mounts In a green hill over her stern
and shears along Ter deck. Again a sea
sweeps her. and '~ - again.
With teeth and feet and hands every man
rnatches bundly ior grip at anything.
and clmbs-three out to the end of the
great jibboom, FIVE into the forerigging, the
captain and the cook into the starboard
spauker rigging.
Smash Smash! Smash. Up and down.
beating herself to pieces on the sunken
sands works the Hunt In the dark and the
cold. The first shock has put out all her
lights. Her hull s like a reef, bestt by
white water. There is no way TO make
signal. TO shout for help in that he'll is
as II u fly were 10 try to make Itself heard
in II battle.
On TIE Beach.
Midnight or tho beach of Quogue. wealth
er so thick that the very surf cannot be
seen unless one st ,nds where it breaks
and spews Its porridge ice Two men strug-
along tho strand; two men in high rubber
skins. now wading through the sea. now
founderiug through the shifting sand, and
ever beset and buffeted by the wind and
bitten by the cold
The man struggling westward is the pa
troll from the Qucgue lfe-savtng station.
moving to meet TIE ward patrol from
the Potunk station md exchange brass
his lonely round. according 10 the regula-
dions OF the United States OF America.
Suddenly this man-it is Surfmau- Crasper
stops. His keen sea-eyes, that have been
fight against the weather. have sighted
something. Even to those sharp eyes the
something is only 4 dark spot in the fog
But he wades into he surf as far as man
may dare this night and looks with all
his power.
Surfman Bishop of the Potunk station. To-
gether they race back and wade into the
laundering sea. Yesl Something is there.