The enterprise. [volume] (Harlem, Mont.) 1899-1926, 1912-08-01

grasp on the gunwale several times, disappeared
in the maelstrom of water. That left Ellis and
Rogers big and very strong man.
In this desperate moment Rogers threw his
arms around the other surfmans 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 it seemed that both must drown, Rogers
strength left him. His relaxed; his eyes
glazed I'm gong!" he gasped and sank.
moment later the boat drifted nshore of the
outer breakers and for a brief space in
smoother water. Ellis more crawled out on
the bottom and succeeded in pulling the center
board out SO that he could hold on to 1t and bet
ter maintain his position.
Now, you will remember that at the time of
the stranding of the Wadena, the John c. Fitz-
patrick her sister barge had also gone aground.
She had gone the outer bar and was lying
between it and the inner breakers. On board her
was Capt. Elmer T. Mayo, of Chatham, who was
in charge of Tightening her. The Fitzpatrick
so far away from the Wadena that Captain Mayo,
and two other men who were with him, did not
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 saw an overturned llfe-boat with single
man clinging to It,
The capsjzed boat was some distance from the
barge, but Mayo did not hesitate. I'll get that
fellow" he announced coolly
On the deck of the Fitzpatrick lay small
twelve-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, ran the dory oversize.
How the captain of the wrecking crew 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
life-boat to which Ellis chung now with the last
of his ebbing strength
The lifesaver said afterward that he saw
dory thrown over the side of the Fitzpatrick
he drifted her, but that moment later the
scud and the spndrft driven so thick and
ceaseessly before his eyes that he nothing
until suddenly out Of the mist a tiny, bobbing
boat loomed 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 halfconscous lifesaver lying
limp In the bottom of the dory, had kept his word
to his mates the Fitzpatrick.
Necessarily, the most thrilling stories of the
coastwatchers are those in which loss of life is
entailed and therefore, In measure, they are
accounts OF the failures Of the men of the serv-
Ice. But they are stories of noble failures and
behind 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, un-
til November 80, 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 a 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 Peaked Hill Bar. terrific sea-
coupled with an onshore hurricane and tempera-
&,,,~ L. kl>~A
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
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