Meade County news. [volume] (Meade, Kan.) 1900-1918, 1912-08-08

grasp on the gunwa.s several times, disappeared
In the maelstrom of water. That left Ellis and
Rogers, big ard very strong man.
In this desperate moment Rogers threw his
arms around the other surfman's neck in death
grip.> For moments, while the battered and
the foam strangled them, they fought the last
grim fight for life, Ellis to break the grip of his
frenzied comrade Rogers to retain it. Suddenly,
when 1t seemed that both must drown, Rogers
strength left him. His arms relaxed; his eyes
glazed I'm going!" he gasped and sank
A moment later the boat drfted inshore Of the
outer breakers and for a brief space was in
smoother wster. Ellis more crawed out on
the bottom and succeeded in pulling the center
board out that he could hold on to it and bet
ter maintain his position.
Now, you will remember that at the time OF
the stranding Of the Wadena, the John G. Fitz-
patrick, her sister barge had also gone aground.
She had gone the outer bar and was lying
between 1t and the inner breakers. On board her
was Capt Elmer F. Mayo, of Chatham, who was
in charge of tightening her. The Fitzpatrick was
so far away from the Wadena that Captain Mayo,
and two other men who with him, did not
see the life-saving boat go out, nor did they have
any knowledge of the grim tragedy that was being
enacted, until, glancing the rail, Captain
Mayo an overturned lifeboat with a single
man clingng to 1t.
The capszed boat was some distance from the
barge but Mayo did not hesitate. "Ill get that
fellow" he announced coolly.
On the deck of the Fitzpatrick lay a small
tweve-foot dory, the only boat aboard totally
unfit craft for the furious that laundering
across the shoals. Kicking off his boots Mayo
and the other men, who begged him not to go as
1t would be certain death, the dory oversize.
How the captain Of the wrecking kept his :
fragile craft afoat, those who watched him from
the Fitzpatrick could mover understand. But he
did keep her afoat, and the set of the tide and
the gale carried him down toward the capsized
lifeboat to which Ellis chung now with the last
Of his ebbing strength
The life-saver said afterward that he saw
dory thrown over the side of the Fitzpatrick as
he drlfted near her. but that moment later the
scud and the spindrift driven 80 thick and
ceaseessly before his eyes that he nothing,
until suddenly out of the mist a tiny, bobbng
boat doomed dozen feet away. Then the occu-
pant of this boat shot her skilfully alongside the
swamped life-boat and the exhausted surfman top
pied into her.
Mayo, with the half-conscious life-saver lying
limp In the bottom Of the dory had kept his word
to his mates on the Fitzpatrick
Necessarily the most thrilling stories of the
coast-watchers are those In which loss Of life Is
entailed and therefore, in a measure they are
accounts Of the failures of the men of the serv.
ice. But they stories of noble failures and
behind some Of them lie tragedies other than
those Of death.
Perhaps one Of the greatest of these is woven
about the career Of Captain David H. Atkins, I'M
til November 3d. 1880, keeper of the Peaked Hill
Bar station, Cape Cod
This man had followed the sea from boy-hood
whaling, fishing and coasting. In 1872 he became
keeper Of the Peaked Hill Bar station
Then came wild day in April, 1879 and as
1t appears in the chronicles of the department
at Washington, "a blot fell across the record OF
Keeper Atkins"
On this April day the Schooner Sarah J. Fort
stranded near Peaked Hill Bar. terrific sea-
coupled with an onshore hurricane and tempera-
ture very lev for the time of the year, faced At
kins and his crew as they discovered the schooner
and took their apparatus to the beach
Without hesitation the keeper ordered the surf
boat launched, but the sea was SO heavy that It
was thrown back on the beach. Time and again
IN the twenty hours of watching and battling with
the storm that followed the keeper led his. men
into the breakers with the boat but each time
they were beaten back. drenched with the winter