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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77810 ***
+
+[Epigraph: “I aint begun to fight!” declared the man who was to become
+Number One surfman. And then he started in!]
+
+[Illustration: “That feller run like a deer when we surrounded him ... I
+put a bullet in that smuggler’s leg--an’ down he went!”]
+
+
+
+
+                        THE COAST GUARDSMAN
+
+                         By W. E. Carleton
+                     Illustrated by William Molt
+
+
+“Hell’s bells! You--thutty year old, an’ five of it in the service, an’
+you aint discovered yit that the coast guard aint a substitute for the
+old ladies’ home! Devil of a prospec’ _I’ve_ got--Jansen transferred to
+Sandy Holler station, an’ you in line to step into his shoes. _You_ to
+be Number One surfman!”
+
+“But, Cap’n Cole--” protested the fair-haired, sun-bronzed young Number
+Two surfman, squaring his sturdy shoulders.
+
+“If the rum-runners o’ Cape Cod hear you’ve replaced Jansen,” the
+commander of Santuck station cut in, “they’ll declare a half holiday to
+celebrate. The story o’ the latest _Seabright_ affair night ’fore last
+will likely go the length an’ breadth o’ the Cape, if it don’t go
+further.”
+
+“You don’t need to remind me o’ _that_.” Aubrey Sears, Number Two
+surfman, diligently polished the brasswork of the beachcart, and the
+keen black eyes of Cap Cole roved through the apparatus shed--looking
+for something else to find fault with, Aubrey presumed. “But sometimes,
+Cap’n, things aint always what they seem--’specially on a dark night on
+Salt Marsh.”
+
+“Aint what they seem? What d’yuh mean by that?”
+
+“Jist that. All I’ve got to say is it’s a pity you didn’t see with yer
+own eyes what really happened, an’ not have to take Jansen’s word for
+it.”
+
+Cap Cole’s heavy black mustache and shaggy eyebrows were scarcely darker
+than the thundercloud which passed over his square face. Menacingly he
+hunched his massive shoulders forward.
+
+“You tryin’ to make me out a liar?” he roared.
+
+“No--if I was, I’d tell you point-blank, Cap’n,” Sears clarified his
+position in the matter. “But I _do_ accuse Jansen o’ lyin’, though I
+know it wont do me no good. When that smuggler from the _Seabright_ run
+acrost the marsh towards me--”
+
+“You let him keep on runnin’--an’ he’d be runnin’ yit if Jansen hadn’t
+put a bullet in his leg,” finished the Captain. “An’ I don’t want for
+you to call my Number One surfman a liar in my presence, Sears. He’s
+rankin’ above you, an’ I’ll take his word as final until I’m shown proof
+that’ll change my opinion. When you git through with that job on the
+beachcart,” he shifted the subject, “go up in the tower an’ touch up
+the brasswork there.” The Santuck commander turned on his heel and
+stalked out of the apparatus shed.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sears sighed resignedly, and energetically applied a soft strip of
+flannel to the shining metal of the beachcart. Cap’s April-morning
+tirade was only a repetition of the mild abuse to which he had subjected
+the young surfman of late. It was beginning to keep the conscientious
+Aubrey awake nights, preying on his mind during precious hours when he
+should be resting for patrol duty on desolate Santuck beach, or getting
+in a wink of sleep after such a patrol in preparation for the next day’s
+work. And the duties of a member of the Santuck crew were strenuous the
+year round, for that strip of coast had come to be the rendezvous of the
+various specialists in smuggling who were operating extensively on Cape
+Cod.
+
+The independent Yankee blood of Aubrey Sears had reached the boiling
+point, but it hadn’t boiled over--yet. Before he met Mamie Weston two
+years ago, he would have kicked over the traces, told Cap Cole where he
+could get off, and consigned Santuck and its highly efficient crew to
+Davy Jones. He was able-bodied, big-boned, hard as nails, and although
+the coast-guard job was the only line of work he was familiar with, he
+could find employment inland--something less to his liking, but
+productive of sufficient funds to support him. Time and again he was
+tempted to inform Cap that he was through.
+
+But his reward at Santuck for taking Cap’s abuse unwhimperingly would
+quite probably be the Number One surfman’s job. He was in direct line
+for promotion, and under his skin Cap wasn’t half so savage as he
+appeared to be on the surface, for he had always recommended his crew
+for promotion without fear or favor according to seniority in the
+service. The trouble in the _Seabright_ affair was that Cap believed
+Jansen because of the latter’s rating above Aubrey. Cap’s discipline was
+maintained by his backing the Number One surfman in all matters.
+
+On the assumption that he would be thus promoted, Aubrey and Mamie had
+planned to marry. She was a pretty, lightbrown-haired and blue-eyed beam
+of irresponsible human sunshine who lived with her widowed mother in
+Howesport village.
+
+On one side of the mantel of the cottage parlor where Aubrey and she
+could usually be found when he was off duty, hung a portrait of George
+Washington; balancing it on the opposite side was suspended one of
+Aubrey in his uniform.
+
+Members of the Santuck crew were always welcome at the Widow Weston’s,
+for her husband had been keeper of Santuck station in the days when it
+was a unit of the life-saving service. He had died a hero at the wreck
+of the _David Rothwell_--one of the unsung martyrs of the grand old
+crews of Cape Cod life-savers who have died in vain attempts to rescue
+their shipwrecked fellow-men.
+
+But during the past few weeks Jansen had rather overstepped the
+conventions of that hospitality by spending the greater part of his time
+off duty at the widow’s. Well enough Aubrey knew the nature of the
+attraction. But Mamie had declared to Aubrey that she detested the
+surfman Jansen. And Aubrey, putting his trust in that honest-eyed,
+straightforward new convert to flapperism who had promised to marry him,
+banished his jealousy. After one of Jansen’s calls at the widow’s,
+however, Aubrey always glanced at his portrait on the parlor wall to
+make sure it was still there. He had a suspicion that Jansen had a way
+with women.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+That night Aubrey donned his best clothes, slipped his automatic pistol
+into his hip pocket--a precaution Santuck men always took because of
+numerous threats they received anonymously from the smuggling
+gentry--and trudged over the sandy road to Howesport village, two miles
+away. He had swapped his day off with surf man Paty--but not the night,
+for Mamie would be expecting him.
+
+She was. She ushered him into the parlor as usual, and took a seat
+beside him on the sofa. But she didn’t seem like her ordinarily gay and
+unburdened self. Aubrey couldn’t remember ever having noticed that she
+was worried before.
+
+“What’s the matter, Mamie?” he asked.
+
+Mamie did not answer immediately. Then: “Did you see today’s Boston
+paper, Aubrey?”
+
+“No! What’s in it?” But he already suspected.
+
+And his suspicions were correct. Mamie showed it to him--the account of
+how the outlaw schooner _Seabright_ had slipped past the cordon of
+coast-guard cutters off the back side of Cape Cod again--how the Santuck
+crew had been called out by Surfman Hubbard, who sighted the vessel on
+his patrol to the halfway house between Santuck and Sandy Hollow
+stations. How the crew had pounced on the landing-party from the
+schooner and captured the smuggled cargo of whisky brought ashore in the
+speedboat from the _Seabright_, scared off a shore party that had come
+from an automobile evidently to receive the contraband beverage, and cut
+off one of the landing-party before he could escape with his shipmates
+in the speedboat.
+
+But after finishing that part of the narrative, Aubrey’s gray eyes
+fairly shot sparks, his coppery complexion darkened, and the newspaper
+shook in his strong calloused fingers.
+
+[Illustration: Aubrey’s gray eyes fairly shot sparks. “All the rest of
+that’s a lie!” he declared in a husky voice.]
+
+“All the rest o’ that’s a lie!” he declared in a husky voice. “That
+feller run like a deer when we surrounded him--run straight for me. I
+run to meet him, an’ he up an’ veered off the other direction. Jansen
+was standin’ plumb in front o’ him. But when Jansen seen him bearin’
+down on him, he let out a screech an’ turned an’ run. Run away from
+him--I swear to God! An’ when I seen that, I put a bullet in the
+smuggler’s leg--an’ down he went, moanin’.”
+
+“But where was Cap Cole an’ the other Santuck boys all that time?”
+queried Mamie.
+
+“Comin’ up from the shore--closin’ in on the smuggler. We was in a wide
+circle--”
+
+“But didn’t Cap see it--see who done the shootin’?”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Aubrey sniffed contemptuously. “See it? Huh--if Jansen hadn’t knowed
+Cap couldn’t see it, he wouldn’t ’a’ lied like he did. ’Twas dark as a
+pocket on Salt Marsh. If Jansen hadn’t been so close to me, I wouldn’t
+’a’ reco’nized _him_ until he let out that screech when the smuggler
+put for him. But when that smuggler went down with my bullet in his
+leg! Lord, _then_ Jansen was Johnny-on-the-spot. He was bendin’ over
+that smuggler an’ holdin’ down his arms before the rest o’ the crew
+come up. An’ ’twas then he told Cap his story--jist like it’s printed
+in that damn’ newspaper--taken, likely, from the report Cap sent to the
+superintendent.”
+
+He crushed the paper in his powerful hands and hurled it to the floor.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mamie laid a soothing little hand on his cheek and looked pityingly
+into his angry eyes.
+
+“I know how you must feel, Aubrey dear,” she sympathized. “An’ I believe
+you--ev’ry word. Jansen _is_ mean--I can see that in his eyes when he
+comes here. The worst of it is, it makes you out to be a coward. An’ I
+know you’d never be a coward, Aubrey.”
+
+“Jansen’ll pay for this!” stormed Aubrey. “I wish I hadn’t been so meek
+for discipline’s sake when he told that lie to Cap. I should ’a’ made
+him swaller it right there on Salt Marsh. But I’ll do it
+tonight--discipline be damned! He’ll take back ev’ry word, even if I’m
+kicked out o’ the service for bearin’ him up!”
+
+“And then when would we be married?” plaintively asked Mamie. “What
+would become of your record in the service? Thrown away! Even if Cap
+should be mean enough to hold you back from promotion now, another
+opportunity’ll come up where you can make a better name for yourself,
+one that Jansen can’t damage with his lies. An’ accordin’ to all
+accounts, they’s an opportunity here right now.”
+
+Aubrey looked at her inquiringly. “What d’yuh mean, opportunity?” he
+asked.
+
+“Amos Swift was in yesterday afternoon. He claims they’s smugglin’ goin’
+on in Howesport harbor, right in front o’ his house.”
+
+“Pshaw! I don’t b’lieve it!” Aubrey ridiculed the idea. “It aint likely
+smugglers’d be so bold. Amos an’ Cap Cole have been at swords’-points
+for years. I wouldn’t put it past Amos to start a story like that to
+make out that Cap’s asleep on his job.”
+
+“Cap _is_!” declared Mamie. “None of the Santuck men ever patrol
+Howesport harbor now’days. When Father was in command at the station, he
+had it patrolled just like the main beach.”
+
+“Yeah--but times have changed since then,” Aubrey defended his superior.
+“That Howesport harbor patrol took us two miles out o’ the reg’lar
+patrol--we hated it. That’s _one_ service Jansen done at the station. He
+convinced Cap ’twas a waste o’ time, an’ Cap agreed with him. The result
+was we got orders from the superintendent not to include Howesport
+harbor in our post.”
+
+“Then no wonder the smugglers are takin’ advantage of it!” retorted
+Mamie. “Amos says you can see ’em there any foggy night like tonight. He
+thinks they’re from the _Seabright_.”
+
+“Why doesn’t Amos report it, then?” Aubrey asked indignantly. “If not to
+Cap, to one o’ the rest of us.”
+
+“Aubrey, do you s’pose Amos wants trouble? Those smugglers might murder
+him an’ Emma, livin’ apart from the village like they do. You mustn’t
+even mention that I told you this, Aubrey, because Amos has left it with
+you to do somethin’ about it yourself without lettin’ Cap into it. He
+knows how Cap holds you down. It’s a chance for you, Aubrey, to capture
+those smugglers an’ get full credit for it yourself without Cap
+dictatin’ to you. Don’t you see?”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Aubrey saw. But not a chance to make a hero of himself. If those men
+Amos had reported were real smugglers, there was a possibility that Cap
+had a special reason for urging the discontinuance of the Howesport
+harbor patrol. Though Cap appeared to be the soul of honor, one never
+could tell.
+
+If Aubrey should interfere with such an enterprise in which Cap was
+directly concerned, a fine chance he would have of winning promotion,
+dependingly largely, as he was, on Cap’s recommendation! Then too, he
+knew the crew of the _Seabright_ were about as hard a bunch of
+cutthroats as the Lord ever put breath into. Jansen’s flight on Salt
+Marsh from one of them had been discreet if not valiant.
+
+“It’s foggy tonight,” Mamie reminded him. “There couldn’t be a better
+night to jump on them. An’ after that piece in the Boston paper,
+Aubrey--”
+
+“Amos an’ Emma are nervous,” he protested. “Livin’ alone like they do
+apart from the village, they prob’ly imagine--”
+
+“They _don’t_ imagine!” Mamie vigorously stamped her small foot. “The
+least you can do is to investigate. Are you--afraid, Aubrey?”
+
+“Afraid? Course I aint afraid! If old Amos wants me to soothe his nerves
+by goin’ down there an’ lookin’ the ground over, I can do _that_ much to
+pacify him. I’ll walk back to the station that way after I leave here,
+an’--”
+
+“Let’s not wait till then. Aubrey,” Mamie pleaded. “Let’s go _now_!”
+
+Aubrey looked at her through narrowed eyes. “You aint in on this,
+Mamie,” he declared. “You’ll stay right here. If Amos _shouldn’t_ be
+misrepresentin’ it, an’ they turned out to be real smugglers from the
+_Seabright_, it’d be no place for you when they ketch me spyin’ on ’em.”
+
+“I _am_ goin’! I’ll go to Amos’ an’ call on Emma. You can escort me
+there, then go down to the landin’ below the house. We’ll watch from the
+upstairs window an’ telephone the station if you need help. Only I hope
+you wont need it, Aubrey. I hope you can do it all yourself so’s Cap an’
+Jansen wont come into it.”
+
+“A lot you’ll see from the upstairs winder, a thick night like this,”
+scoffed Aubrey. “But if you’d rather go prowlin’ round Howesport harbor
+than entertain me my night off--”
+
+“Aubrey, you know better’n that!” she rebuked him. “I’m doin’ all this
+because--well, I’m sort of ashamed of that piece in the paper. An’ I
+want you to show ev’ryone in Howesport that you aint a coward an’ never
+was one.”
+
+“Well, then come on!” Aubrey consented. Mamie ran upstairs, told her
+mother she was going to Emma’s, put on her wraps, and with Aubrey went
+out into the night.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Through the fog they walked down the sandy road to the harbor, talking
+in half-whispers, Mamie hurrying three steps to his one to keep up with
+him. The village clock dolefully tolled eight, its distant tones
+sounding more funereal than ever in the leaden atmosphere.
+
+They branched off at the side road to the two-story Swift homestead set
+on a wooded hill overlooking Swift’s Landing on the sheltered little
+beach below. A light burned downstairs in the parlor.
+
+“Wait here till I’m inside,” whispered Mamie, reassuringly squeezing his
+hand. “Then go to the landin’. If you need help, Aubrey, shout. We’ll be
+listenin’, an’ we’ll telephone the station if you holler. Amos’ll come
+down to help you while the crew’s gittin’ here.”
+
+Aubrey laughed under his breath. Amos! A lot of help that timid old man
+would be! Aubrey waited until the door of the ark on the hill opened and
+closed, then descended the path to the landing.
+
+Tiny waves lapped the fog-shrouded beach. Across the narrow strip of
+water--not much wider than Salt Marsh Creek at high tide--two unoccupied
+summer cottages bulked in the fog. To their right twinkled the kitchen
+light of Reuben Nickerson’s farmhouse, and a restless cow mooed in the
+stable behind it. A fine place for smugglers to operate! Why, they’d be
+just as likely to run their contraband ashore directly in front of
+Santuck station under the very noses of the crack crew of Cape Cod!
+
+Lord--if the boys at the station ever learned that he’d snooped around
+looking for smugglers at Swift’s Landing, he’d never hear the last of
+it! It would be a standing joke at the station.
+
+Aubrey withdrew from the beach to the stunted pines of the upland, and
+seated himself on an overturned dory. Far down the harbor mouth the fog
+whistle of Narrow Point lighthouse groaned intermittently. There was a
+chill in the air--a damper, clammier cold than he experienced in his
+patrols on the wider, more exposed stretches of Santuck beach.
+
+The drone of the fog whistle and the continual _lap-lap_ of the waves
+lulled him until he was half asleep. The village clock struck ten.
+Somewhere out on the Atlantic outside Howesport harbor a motorboat
+chugged. One of the coast-guard flotilla, most likely, combing the
+waters inside the three-mile limit for the elusive _Seabright_.
+
+Suddenly he arose from his seat and strained his eyes at the landing.
+Out of the thickness loomed the bow of a dory. And astern of that dory
+rode another. Two men in each, one rowing, the other standing in the
+stern. And the oars of those dories were muffled!
+
+Aubrey withdrew deeper into the stunted pines--just in time, for a
+flashlight from the leading dory played on the beach, and a deep voice,
+slightly hushed, sang out: “All right--straight ahead!”
+
+The prow of the first dory scraped on the shore; then the second dory
+came to rest on the sand beside it. The occupants of both boats stepped
+into the water, and their sea-boots splashed as the dories were drawn up
+higher.
+
+“Hand us a crate, thar, Russ!” the deep voice called out. “We’ve got a
+few more lobsters here ’n you have, I cal’late.”
+
+A big arm shot up from a huge lumbering body, and with a thud a hand
+proportionately large snatched a flying crate out of the air. Carefully
+he and his smaller companion filled it with lobsters from the bottom of
+the dory, while the smaller men of the other dory lugged several
+lobster-laden crates ashore.
+
+[Illustration: The watching Aubrey grumbled to himself. Amos’ “smugglers”
+were harmless lobstermen!]
+
+“I might ’a’ known ’twould turn out like this!” the watching Aubrey
+grumbled to himself. For Amos’ “smugglers” were old Nathan Holway and
+his three sons, harmless, industrious lobstermen who minded their own
+business--which was more than Amos could say of himself. And to put
+Aubrey in an even more ludicrous light if his presence there were
+detected, they were cousins of Jansen.
+
+The young surfman took a step back, to put more pines between himself
+and the beach. But in doing so he stepped on an empty bottle, and it
+burst with a loud tinkle under his boots.
+
+“What the hell was that?” exclaimed Nathan, and the flashlight’s ray
+penetrated the pines in which Aubrey was concealed.
+
+“Thar he is--some one hidin’ in them pines!” the nasal tenor of Russ
+Holway rang out. “Come out o’ that thicket, you! We see yuh!”
+
+“I’ll be damned!” shouted his brother Enoch. “It’s Aubrey Sears!”
+
+Recognized, Aubrey stepped out of his hiding-place and walked boldly
+down to the landing. “Good ev’nin’,” he saluted the lobstermen. “Kinder
+thick, aint it?”
+
+“What’re ye doin’, snoopin’ round an’ spyin’ on us?” belligerently
+roared old Nathan. “Can’t honest folks ’arn a livin’ ’thout some damned
+coast-guard comin’ two miles off’n his post to peek at us?”
+
+“P’raps he’s lookin’ for that feller he run away from on Salt Marsh,”
+suggested Enoch, and his two brothers snickered.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+That made Aubrey’s fighting blood heat up. “No matter why I’m here,” he
+defied them, resolved to maintain his dignity even though he felt like a
+fool. And he seized upon the salient feature of their landing: “You
+might tell me why you was rowin’ with muffled oars.”
+
+“Hear the brave bully boy o’ Santuck!” derided Russ. “He’s puttin’ us
+under cross-examination. I don’t know as it’s any o’ his business why--”
+
+“Shut up!” Nathan silenced his smart-aleck son. “This spotter’s a
+low-down, cowardly whelp, but he’s a officer o’ the Fed’ral Gover’mint,
+an’ must be treated with respec’ for the uniform he wears if nawthin’
+else, even if he aint wearin’ it now,” he added suggestively. “The
+reason we muffled our oars, Mr. Coast Guard,” he explained with mock
+courtesy, “is that we didn’t want to distarb Amos Swift an’ Emma, bein’s
+how we was kep’ out later’n usual by a strong tide after we’d hauled our
+lobster pots.”
+
+“Does that satisfy ye?” asked Fred, the youngest brother, nastily. “If
+it don’t--”
+
+“Close yer damned trap!” bellowed Nathan. And he turned again to Aubrey.
+“Some day ye’ll git yer fool head busted, nosin’ round whar ye’ve no
+call to be prowlin’,” he warned. “I’m goin’ to see Cap Cole ’bout this!”
+
+“An’ seein’s how you’re wearin’ no uniform,” invited Russ, “I’d like to
+take ye on for a little go right here, now, bare knuckles. I’d like
+nawthin’ better’ll to fix ye up so’s ye wouldn’t have no ambition to
+bother any more honest fishermen or runaway smugglers.”
+
+Aubrey slipped out of his overcoat and the jacket of his best gray suit,
+and threw them on the beach. “I’ll accommodate ye, Russ Holway!” he
+shouted, assuming a defensive fighting attitude in which he had acquired
+a little skill by boxing with Surfman Paty for recreation during leisure
+moments at the station. “Come on!” he accepted the fisherman’s
+challenge.
+
+But Nathan stepped between them. “They’ll be no fist-fightin’ here!” he
+declared. “Not but what you can lick him, Russ, but I don’t trust
+skulkin’ coast guards that are licensed to carry firearms, specially if
+they’re gittin’ the wust of it. Now, little coast-guard boy,” he taunted
+Aubrey, “run along back to the station. It’s late, an’ me an’ my boys
+want to git a night’s rest ’fore termorrer.”
+
+“To hell with you an’ your rest!” retorted Aubrey. “You may be
+law-abidin’, but you seem to forgit that it’s a coast-guard man you’re
+makin’ fun of. An’ now that you’ve showed the service so little respec’,
+I’m goin’ to assert my authority jist to show you who’s boss here. You
+can postpone goin’ to bed until I’ve had a look at your lobsters--an’ a
+good long look, too, by Godfrey!”
+
+“Damned if ye will!” roared Nathan. “You aint in uniform. Here--git back
+from that crate!”--as Aubrey bent and began to paw through the lobsters
+in it.
+
+Nathan rushed at Aubrey, but the surfman jumped nimbly to one side.
+
+“I’ll warn ye--it’s the United States Gover’mint you’re foolin’
+with--not me personal!” Aubrey cautioned the big fisherman.
+
+Nathan stepped back. “Thar’s my dory,” he stood his ground, pointing to
+the nearest boat, his face black with fury. “Now, young feller, I’ll
+invite ye to tech my lobsters. I’ll see whether a young sprout who aint
+in uniform’ll s’arch my property or not. If ye tech that dory, ye’ll do
+it over my dead body!”
+
+For a few seconds Aubrey hesitated. He knew he was nominally within his
+authority, uniform or no uniform. Nor did the colossal strength and
+fighting reputation of Nathan deter him. But he fully realized that no
+matter what course of action he pursued now, he would emerge the loser.
+Public sentiment would favor the Holways if they administered a sound
+thrashing to him. And Cap would be sure to reprimand him for such
+interference with law-abiding citizens, if not to take steps to have him
+dropped from the service altogether.
+
+But on the other hand, if he refused to search the dory, the Holways
+would advertise their triumph, and he would be branded an even greater
+coward than Jansen’s lie made him out to be.
+
+In the midst of his reflections, while Nathan and his sons stood tense
+and silent eagerly waiting for his next move, a twig snapped in the
+upland. Nathan looked in that direction, and so did Aubrey. The gleam of
+the flashlight disclosed Mamie, Amos and Emma hiding there, partly
+shielded by the scrawny pines.
+
+“Mamie--go back to the house!” shouted Aubrey.
+
+But Mamie stepped out of her partial shelter, Emma following her on to
+the beach, while Amos scrambled up the steep path in precipitate retreat
+to the house.
+
+“What are you waitin’ for, Aubrey?” asked Mamie, her eyes flashing, her
+voice shrill with excitement. “Aint you goin’ to search that dory?”
+
+Nathan laughed clownishly. “I cal’late your hero’s thinkin’ better of
+it, Miss Weston,” he chuckled. “He knows tormented well that if he gits
+hurt doin’ it, Cap Cole’ll back me an’ my boys up.”
+
+“Then you’re goin’ to let Cap Cole scare you out o’ doin’ your duty,
+Aubrey?” Mamie’s tone was ironically sweet. “Oh, if my father was only
+here! I know what _he’d_ do!”
+
+Aubrey clenched his fists, took a step forward--and another. He knew
+what doughty old Cap Weston would do if he were alive and placed in such
+a predicament. The hero of the wreck of the _David Rothwell_ would do
+what he had set out to do, or die in the attempt!
+
+Straight for the dory Aubrey marched determinedly. He heard Nathan’s
+bellow as he and his sons rushed to the attack.
+
+Aubrey jumped back in time to avoid the headlong charge of Nathan, but
+in doing so he collided with Russ. The eldest son had not recovered from
+the impact when he received a terrific punch just above his waistline,
+and he doubled up gasping for breath. Aubrey whirled on Fred and planted
+a wicked wallop on that bewildered youth’s jaw. Like an infuriated bull
+goaded by its tormentors in the ring, Aubrey faced Enoch, and after a
+short exchange of blows, put a damper on the second son’s ardor by
+delivering a haymaker to his nose.
+
+Panting from his exertion, he turned to Nathan, who bore down on him
+with lowered head and flying fists. The surfman sidestepped--but not
+soon enough, for one of the fisherman’s blows found its mark on Aubrey’s
+chin. Half dazed though he was, Aubrey countered with a right to the
+giant’s jaw, which caused no more perceptible damage than birdshot to
+the hide of a rhinoceros.
+
+From that instant on, the fight was a rough-and-tumble, free-for-all,
+and general rough-house. No chance for Aubrey to display any of the
+science he had acquired boxing with Paty. He struck out blindly, saved
+himself from his attackers by quick footwork, oppressed from all sides
+at once. Blows light and heavy landed on his cheeks, chin, and jaws,
+while he danced and dodged in the center of the melee, confused by the
+odds against him, but keeping his antagonists on the jump by avoiding
+dirty tactics on their part like tripping or kicking.
+
+Then as they edged in closer, he broke through the ring surrounding him
+and ran a few yards up the beach, where he faced them again. He launched
+a right at Enoch which staggered that aggressive little bunch of wiry
+sinews. But at the same time the coast-guard received a crushing punch
+on the cheek from Russ. He managed, however, to dodge past Enoch and
+escape from the circle which was forming around him again. And there,
+his back to the harbor, some fifty yards upshore from the dories, once
+more he defied the four oncoming fishermen.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Aubrey was breathing hard, his nose bleeding, cheeks and lips cut,
+one eye closed, and his shirt flapping in shreds. Time and again he
+broke clear; and the scene of battle shifted frequently up and down the
+beach.
+
+After one of Aubrey’s eel-like escapes, Nathan shoved his sons back and
+faced the surfman alone. “Got--enough?” the huge lobsterman panted, his
+leathery face daubed with blood, his thick lips split.
+
+“Hell--no! I aint begun to fight yit!” Aubrey defied him. “Try it ag’in!
+Come on, I’m askin’ ye!”
+
+Russ and Enoch, battle-grimed and rent as to raiment, started for the
+cornered surfman. But Nathan snatched Russ by the arm and flung him
+back, and stepped between Enoch and Aubrey.
+
+“You stay out o’ this!” he commanded his offspring. “This Sears--he
+needs a dose o’ the medicine such as only one o’ my generation can hand
+him. I’ll take care o’ him in the good old-fashioned way. You three go
+back to the dories an’ see ’at no one swipes our lobsters.”
+
+With a rush, the big fisherman resumed the conflict. Nathan was
+fighting, now, with knees as well as fists--the kind of fighting the
+old-time Yankee skippers resorted to when all other methods of subduing
+refractory members of their crews failed. In his younger days Nathan
+Holway had earned the nickname of “Bloody Nathan” from his proficiency
+in this style of fighting. Aubrey had seen Cap Cole fight that way once
+when he half killed a crazy-drunk sailor, so he knew what to expect.
+
+He avoided Bloody Nathan by sidestepping, smashing left and right
+uppercuts to the fisherman’s lowered face. But the endurance of that
+hulk of bone and muscle was nothing short of marvelous, and he seemed to
+be wholly unaffected.
+
+Now and then Aubrey felt the impact of Bloody Nathan’s huge fist as it
+smashed through his defense. Once Nathan’s knee caught the coast-guard
+in the abdomen, and he doubled up, seeing black. But he pulled himself
+together, and came back at his antagonist with a left to the jaw and a
+right uppercut to the chin, and again avoided the rush of the
+foul-fighting fisherman by sidestepping and smashing in with another
+left and right.
+
+The pace was beginning to tell on Nathan. Aubrey’s wind was less
+expended, severely sapped though it was, for he didn’t waste energy in
+headlong rushes. One of Bloody Nathan’s eyes was closed, and his
+bleeding mouth lolled open. His lungs were wheezy and his knees shaky.
+
+Then Aubrey rushed. He delivered a quick, swinging blow with his left
+that smashed through the fisherman’s awkward defense and crashed upon
+his bulbous nose. He groaned, and sank to the sand like a pole-axed
+steer.
+
+The fall of their parent seemed to fire the three sons with fresh zeal.
+They pounced on Aubrey from all quarters, and he, his energy sapped by
+his vigorous fray with their father, went down on the sand under them,
+while they started to pummel him unmercifully.
+
+But Aubrey twisted and squirmed clear of the three, leaving his
+undershirt in their clutches, and upsetting Fred, recovered his footing.
+He knew he was licked; the fight with Nathan had taken too much out of
+him to go through it all over again with them. But no matter how badly
+he was mauled, his was the satisfaction of making Bloody Nathan take the
+count. Mamie, wherever she was, couldn’t accuse him of being a coward
+now. Neither could Cap, whatever Cap would think of his judgment in
+starting the affair.
+
+He didn’t care about the Number One surfman’s job now. Nor did Mamie
+seem a vital factor in his life. She had got him into this mess. It
+would be interesting to find out whether she would stick to him or not
+if the Number One job went to some one else.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+He was standing again with his back to the harbor, the three sons of
+Bloody Nathan facing him but not carrying the fight to him. Near by he
+could make out Mamie trying to reach him, but Amos and Emma were holding
+her back.
+
+“Come on, yuh damned coward!” Aubrey taunted Russ.
+
+“Come on yerself!” retorted Russ.
+
+“Start somethin’!” squealed Enoch.
+
+And Aubrey accepted the invitation by charging Russ, head down, blindly,
+adopting Bloody Nathan’s method of attack--a method which had vindicated
+itself in free-for-all fighting. Again and again he flailed his fists at
+the fisherman’s eldest son, who gave no ground, but stood resigned to
+his punishment, if punishment it really were which Aubrey, in his
+exhausted state, was administering.
+
+He was gripped by the shoulder and drawn firmly back, his fists fanning
+the air.
+
+“Sears--behave! You’ve gone fur enough with this!”
+
+Aubrey weakly raised his head--and his one open eye took in Cap Cole,
+holding his shoulder with one strong hand gripping what appeared to be
+the cylindrical metal case of a beach-torch in the other.
+
+“I aint--gone fur--enough!” Aubrey defied his commander, struggling
+feebly and unsuccessfully to wrench himself loose. “I aint--_begun_--to
+fight!”
+
+“It’s all his doin’, Cap!” groaned Bloody Nathan, staggering out of the
+fog to the Santuck commander, while his three sons retreated to the two
+dories. “Sears interfered with us, Cap--in the name o’ the
+coast-guard--out o’ spite to keep us from gittin’ a decent night’s
+rest--him in plain clothes--with no authority--”
+
+“Why are you makin’ such a spectacle o’ yerself ag’inst a law-abidin’
+citizen like Nathan?” Cole severely questioned the young surfman. “It’s
+a good thing Amos Swift called me up an’ told me you was in hot water at
+the landin’, judgin’ by the loud talk he heard. If you had your pistol
+here, I cal’late they’d ’a’ been murder committed--with you in your
+present frame o’ mind. If Jansen wa’n’t on patrol an’ he’d come here
+with me--”
+
+“Yeah,” Aubrey flung back. “It’s always Jansen. ’Twas him that lied
+about me that night on Salt Marsh. An’ you’re no better’n he is, to
+b’lieve him, an’ send that lyin’ report to the superintendent!” He
+reached into his hip pocket, drew an automatic pistol, and handed it to
+Cap, holding it by the barrel. “Here’s my gun, Cap,” he said. “It’s been
+in my pants pocket all durin’ the scrap.”
+
+Cap accepted the weapon without comment, relinquishing his grip on
+Aubrey’s shoulder.
+
+“I’m through with the damn’ coast-guard an’ Santuck!” Aubrey thus kicked
+over the traces and stove in the dashboard. “Through with you, an’
+Jansen, an’ your lies ’bout me. I’m going to sea--inland--_anywhere_ to
+git away from you two. I told you the truth that night on Salt Marsh.
+An’ what did _you_ do? You believed what Jansen told yuh, an’ worse’n
+that--you put it in the report to headquarters, an’ it got in the paper.
+I done tonight what I set out to do--I’ve got _that_ much satisfaction
+out of it, no matter how big a fool you an’ the Howesport folks call
+me!”
+
+A small hand tenderly dabbed at his empurpled eye with a tiny
+handkerchief.
+
+“Good for you, Aubrey!” Mamie applauded. “We wont change our plans a
+mite, Aubrey, you ’n’ me. We’ll git along somehow--I’ll go through
+anything to make you happy.” She turned savagely on Cap. “The idea o’
+you belittlin’ my Aubrey after he’s been--so brave--” A sob choked her.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+But Cap laughed, and again laid his hand on Aubrey’s shoulder. “You’re
+_not_ goin’ to leave the coast-guard, Sears!” he declared. “You’re goin’
+to be the nex’ Number One surfman at Santuck station, if I have anything
+to say about it--an’ I cal’late I will! You don’t s’pose for a minute
+that I believed Jansen after he put that piece in the Boston paper, do
+ye? That wa’n’t what I reported to the superintendent. I didn’t mention
+your name in that report. An’ when I seen that newspaper, I telephoned
+it to find out where they got the information, an’ they said ‘From
+Jansen.’ He didn’t have no authority to put that in without gittin’ me
+to endorse it. It’s an open vi’lation o’ discipline, an’ it’s proof to
+me that he aint to be trusted. An’ he wont command Sandy Holler if _I_
+c’n help it, by golly!”
+
+“Then why didn’t you tell Aubrey that today?” indignantly asked Mamie.
+
+“Because,” Cap replied, “I wanted to have somethin’ better to report to
+the superintendent ’bout Sears before I recommended him for Jansen’s
+place. An’ I cal’lated the best way to stir him up so’s I could do that
+would be to make him think he’s wuth less’n a healthy damn, an’ git his
+fightin’ dander up.”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+“I can’t see whar he _is_ wuth more’n that,” spoke up Nathan, who had
+recovered sufficiently from his mauling to listen interestedly to the
+conversation of Mamie and Cap. The glare of a flashlight down the beach
+revealed through the thinning fog the fisherman’s three sons and four
+uniformed men of the Santuck crew grouped near the dories. “D’you
+coast-guard folks promote brave surfmen who pick on harmless fishermen
+an’ damn’ nigh beat the tar out of ’em?” he sneered.
+
+“No--not for beatin’ up _harmless_ fishermen,” countered Cap. “But for
+molestin’ them engaged in _this_ kind o’ fishin’.” He held up the metal
+cylinder.
+
+Nathan swayed drunkenly when he looked at it, “Oh, hell!” he moaned. “I
+was dependin’ on Russ an’ the boys to take care o’ that!”
+
+“You was too busy fightin’--you an’ your boys, Nathan--to notice my
+Santuck boys searchin’ your lobsters,” explained Cap. “This tube is full
+of opium. I’m familiar with it--it’s the same kind the _Seabright’s_
+been runnin’ ashore. Now I cal’late I know why Jansen advanced such good
+argymints to me to discontinue the Howesport harbor patrol. I cal’late
+his examination in court--an’ yourn, too, Nathan--will be real
+interestin’!”
+
+“Hereafter, Sears,”--he turned to Aubrey,--“what you say at Santuck
+station _goes_! That’s final!”
+
+
+[Transcriber’s note: This story appeared in the February, 1930 issue
+of _The Blue Book_ magazine.]
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77810 ***
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+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77810 ***</div>
+<div style='margin: 0.5em 15%; font-style: italic'>
+“I aint begun to fight!” declared the man who was to become
+Number One surfman. And then he started in!
+</div>
+<figure class="center70">
+  <img src="images/illus-fpc.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>“That feller run like a deer when we surrounded him ... I
+put a bullet in that smuggler’s leg--an’ down he went!”</figcaption>
+</figure>
+<div class='titlepage'>
+<h1>THE COAST GUARDSMAN</h1>
+<div class='tac'>By W. E. Carleton</div>
+<div class='tac'>Illustrated by William Molt</div>
+</div>
+<p>“Hell’s bells! You—thutty year old, an’ five of it in the service, an’
+you aint discovered yit that the coast guard aint a substitute for the
+old ladies’ home! Devil of a prospec’ <em>I’ve</em> got—Jansen transferred to
+Sandy Holler station, an’ you in line to step into his shoes. <em>You</em> to
+be Number One surfman!”</p>
+<p>“But, Cap’n Cole—” protested the fair-haired, sun-bronzed young Number
+Two surfman, squaring his sturdy shoulders.</p>
+<p>“If the rum-runners o’ Cape Cod hear you’ve replaced Jansen,” the
+commander of Santuck station cut in, “they’ll declare a half holiday to
+celebrate. The story o’ the latest <i>Seabright</i> affair night ’fore last
+will likely go the length an’ breadth o’ the Cape, if it don’t go
+further.”</p>
+<p>“You don’t need to remind me o’ <em>that</em>.” Aubrey Sears, Number Two
+surfman, diligently polished the brasswork of the beachcart, and the
+keen black eyes of Cap Cole roved through the apparatus shed—looking
+for something else to find fault with, Aubrey presumed. “But sometimes,
+Cap’n, things aint always what they seem—’specially on a dark night on
+Salt Marsh.”</p>
+<p>“Aint what they seem? What d’yuh mean by that?”</p>
+<p>“Jist that. All I’ve got to say is it’s a pity you didn’t see with yer
+own eyes what really happened, an’ not have to take Jansen’s word for
+it.”</p>
+<p>Cap Cole’s heavy black mustache and shaggy eyebrows were scarcely darker
+than the thundercloud which passed over his square face. Menacingly he
+hunched his massive shoulders forward.</p>
+<p>“You tryin’ to make me out a liar?” he roared.</p>
+<p>“No—if I was, I’d tell you point-blank, Cap’n,” Sears clarified his
+position in the matter. “But I <em>do</em> accuse Jansen o’ lyin’, though I
+know it wont do me no good. When that smuggler from the <i>Seabright</i> run
+acrost the marsh towards me—”</p>
+<p>“You let him keep on runnin’—an’ he’d be runnin’ yit if Jansen hadn’t
+put a bullet in his leg,” finished the Captain. “An’ I don’t want for
+you to call my Number One surfman a liar in my presence, Sears. He’s
+rankin’ above you, an’ I’ll take his word as final until I’m shown proof
+that’ll change my opinion. When you git through with that job on the
+beachcart,” he shifted the subject, “go up in the tower an’ touch up
+the brasswork there.” The Santuck commander turned on his heel and
+stalked out of the apparatus shed.</p>
+<hr class='tb'>
+<p>Sears sighed resignedly, and energetically applied a soft strip of
+flannel to the shining metal of the beachcart. Cap’s April-morning
+tirade was only a repetition of the mild abuse to which he had subjected
+the young surfman of late. It was beginning to keep the conscientious
+Aubrey awake nights, preying on his mind during precious hours when he
+should be resting for patrol duty on desolate Santuck beach, or getting
+in a wink of sleep after such a patrol in preparation for the next day’s
+work. And the duties of a member of the Santuck crew were strenuous the
+year round, for that strip of coast had come to be the rendezvous of the
+various specialists in smuggling who were operating extensively on Cape
+Cod.</p>
+<p>The independent Yankee blood of Aubrey Sears had reached the boiling
+point, but it hadn’t boiled over—yet. Before he met Mamie Weston two
+years ago, he would have kicked over the traces, told Cap Cole where he
+could get off, and consigned Santuck and its highly efficient crew to
+Davy Jones. He was able-bodied, big-boned, hard as nails, and although
+the coast-guard job was the only line of work he was familiar with, he
+could find employment inland—something less to his liking, but
+productive of sufficient funds to support him. Time and again he was
+tempted to inform Cap that he was through.</p>
+<p>But his reward at Santuck for taking Cap’s abuse unwhimperingly would
+quite probably be the Number One surfman’s job. He was in direct line
+for promotion, and under his skin Cap wasn’t half so savage as he
+appeared to be on the surface, for he had always recommended his crew
+for promotion without fear or favor according to seniority in the
+service. The trouble in the <i>Seabright</i> affair was that Cap believed
+Jansen because of the latter’s rating above Aubrey. Cap’s discipline was
+maintained by his backing the Number One surfman in all matters.</p>
+<p>On the assumption that he would be thus promoted, Aubrey and Mamie had
+planned to marry. She was a pretty, lightbrown-haired and blue-eyed beam
+of irresponsible human sunshine who lived with her widowed mother in
+Howesport village.</p>
+<p>On one side of the mantel of the cottage parlor where Aubrey and she
+could usually be found when he was off duty, hung a portrait of George
+Washington; balancing it on the opposite side was suspended one of
+Aubrey in his uniform.</p>
+<p>Members of the Santuck crew were always welcome at the Widow Weston’s,
+for her husband had been keeper of Santuck station in the days when it
+was a unit of the life-saving service. He had died a hero at the wreck
+of the <i>David Rothwell</i>—one of the unsung martyrs of the grand old
+crews of Cape Cod life-savers who have died in vain attempts to rescue
+their shipwrecked fellow-men.</p>
+<p>But during the past few weeks Jansen had rather overstepped the
+conventions of that hospitality by spending the greater part of his time
+off duty at the widow’s. Well enough Aubrey knew the nature of the
+attraction. But Mamie had declared to Aubrey that she detested the
+surfman Jansen. And Aubrey, putting his trust in that honest-eyed,
+straightforward new convert to flapperism who had promised to marry him,
+banished his jealousy. After one of Jansen’s calls at the widow’s,
+however, Aubrey always glanced at his portrait on the parlor wall to
+make sure it was still there. He had a suspicion that Jansen had a way
+with women.</p>
+<hr class='tb'>
+<p>That night Aubrey donned his best clothes, slipped his automatic pistol
+into his hip pocket—a precaution Santuck men always took because of
+numerous threats they received anonymously from the smuggling
+gentry—and trudged over the sandy road to Howesport village, two miles
+away. He had swapped his day off with surf man Paty—but not the night,
+for Mamie would be expecting him.</p>
+<p>She was. She ushered him into the parlor as usual, and took a seat
+beside him on the sofa. But she didn’t seem like her ordinarily gay and
+unburdened self. Aubrey couldn’t remember ever having noticed that she
+was worried before.</p>
+<p>“What’s the matter, Mamie?” he asked.</p>
+<p>Mamie did not answer immediately. Then: “Did you see today’s Boston
+paper, Aubrey?”</p>
+<p>“No! What’s in it?” But he already suspected.</p>
+<p>And his suspicions were correct. Mamie showed it to him—the account of
+how the outlaw schooner <i>Seabright</i> had slipped past the cordon of
+coast-guard cutters off the back side of Cape Cod again—how the Santuck
+crew had been called out by Surfman Hubbard, who sighted the vessel on
+his patrol to the halfway house between Santuck and Sandy Hollow
+stations. How the crew had pounced on the landing-party from the
+schooner and captured the smuggled cargo of whisky brought ashore in the
+speedboat from the <i>Seabright</i>, scared off a shore party that had come
+from an automobile evidently to receive the contraband beverage, and cut
+off one of the landing-party before he could escape with his shipmates
+in the speedboat.</p>
+<p>But after finishing that part of the narrative, Aubrey’s gray eyes
+fairly shot sparks, his coppery complexion darkened, and the newspaper
+shook in his strong calloused fingers.</p>
+<figure class="center70">
+  <img src="images/illus-001.jpg" alt="Aubrey reading the paper">
+  <figcaption>Aubrey’s gray eyes fairly shot sparks. “All the rest of
+that’s a lie!” he declared in a husky voice.</figcaption>
+</figure>
+<p>“All the rest o’ that’s a lie!” he declared in a husky voice. “That
+feller run like a deer when we surrounded him—run straight for me. I
+run to meet him, an’ he up an’ veered off the other direction. Jansen
+was standin’ plumb in front o’ him. But when Jansen seen him bearin’
+down on him, he let out a screech an’ turned an’ run. Run away from
+him—I swear to God! An’ when I seen that, I put a bullet in the
+smuggler’s leg—an’ down he went, moanin’.”</p>
+<p>“But where was Cap Cole an’ the other Santuck boys all that time?”
+queried Mamie.</p>
+<p>“Comin’ up from the shore—closin’ in on the smuggler. We was in a wide
+circle—”</p>
+<p>“But didn’t Cap see it—see who done the shootin’?”</p>
+<hr class='tb'>
+<p>Aubrey sniffed contemptuously. “See it? Huh—if Jansen hadn’t knowed
+Cap couldn’t see it, he wouldn’t ’a’ lied like he did. ’Twas dark as a
+pocket on Salt Marsh. If Jansen hadn’t been so close to me, I wouldn’t
+’a’ reco’nized <em>him</em> until he let out that screech when the smuggler
+put for him. But when that smuggler went down with my bullet in his
+leg! Lord, <em>then</em> Jansen was Johnny-on-the-spot. He was bendin’ over
+that smuggler an’ holdin’ down his arms before the rest o’ the crew
+come up. An’ ’twas then he told Cap his story—jist like it’s printed
+in that damn’ newspaper—taken, likely, from the report Cap sent to the
+superintendent.”</p>
+<p>He crushed the paper in his powerful hands and hurled it to the floor.</p>
+<hr class='tb'>
+<p>Mamie laid a soothing little hand on his cheek and looked pityingly
+into his angry eyes.</p>
+<p>“I know how you must feel, Aubrey dear,” she sympathized. “An’ I believe
+you—ev’ry word. Jansen <em>is</em> mean—I can see that in his eyes when he
+comes here. The worst of it is, it makes you out to be a coward. An’ I
+know you’d never be a coward, Aubrey.”</p>
+<p>“Jansen’ll pay for this!” stormed Aubrey. “I wish I hadn’t been so meek
+for discipline’s sake when he told that lie to Cap. I should ’a’ made
+him swaller it right there on Salt Marsh. But I’ll do it
+tonight—discipline be damned! He’ll take back ev’ry word, even if I’m
+kicked out o’ the service for bearin’ him up!”</p>
+<p>“And then when would we be married?” plaintively asked Mamie. “What
+would become of your record in the service? Thrown away! Even if Cap
+should be mean enough to hold you back from promotion now, another
+opportunity’ll come up where you can make a better name for yourself,
+one that Jansen can’t damage with his lies. An’ accordin’ to all
+accounts, they’s an opportunity here right now.”</p>
+<p>Aubrey looked at her inquiringly. “What d’yuh mean, opportunity?” he
+asked.</p>
+<p>“Amos Swift was in yesterday afternoon. He claims they’s smugglin’ goin’
+on in Howesport harbor, right in front o’ his house.”</p>
+<p>“Pshaw! I don’t b’lieve it!” Aubrey ridiculed the idea. “It aint likely
+smugglers’d be so bold. Amos an’ Cap Cole have been at swords’-points
+for years. I wouldn’t put it past Amos to start a story like that to
+make out that Cap’s asleep on his job.”</p>
+<p>“Cap <em>is</em>!” declared Mamie. “None of the Santuck men ever patrol
+Howesport harbor now’days. When Father was in command at the station, he
+had it patrolled just like the main beach.”</p>
+<p>“Yeah—but times have changed since then,” Aubrey defended his superior.
+“That Howesport harbor patrol took us two miles out o’ the reg’lar
+patrol—we hated it. That’s <em>one</em> service Jansen done at the station. He
+convinced Cap ’twas a waste o’ time, an’ Cap agreed with him. The result
+was we got orders from the superintendent not to include Howesport
+harbor in our post.”</p>
+<p>“Then no wonder the smugglers are takin’ advantage of it!” retorted
+Mamie. “Amos says you can see ’em there any foggy night like tonight. He
+thinks they’re from the <i>Seabright</i>.”</p>
+<p>“Why doesn’t Amos report it, then?” Aubrey asked indignantly. “If not to
+Cap, to one o’ the rest of us.”</p>
+<p>“Aubrey, do you s’pose Amos wants trouble? Those smugglers might murder
+him an’ Emma, livin’ apart from the village like they do. You mustn’t
+even mention that I told you this, Aubrey, because Amos has left it with
+you to do somethin’ about it yourself without lettin’ Cap into it. He
+knows how Cap holds you down. It’s a chance for you, Aubrey, to capture
+those smugglers an’ get full credit for it yourself without Cap
+dictatin’ to you. Don’t you see?”</p>
+<hr class='tb'>
+<p>Aubrey saw. But not a chance to make a hero of himself. If those men
+Amos had reported were real smugglers, there was a possibility that Cap
+had a special reason for urging the discontinuance of the Howesport
+harbor patrol. Though Cap appeared to be the soul of honor, one never
+could tell.</p>
+<p>If Aubrey should interfere with such an enterprise in which Cap was
+directly concerned, a fine chance he would have of winning promotion,
+dependingly largely, as he was, on Cap’s recommendation! Then too, he
+knew the crew of the <i>Seabright</i> were about as hard a bunch of
+cutthroats as the Lord ever put breath into. Jansen’s flight on Salt
+Marsh from one of them had been discreet if not valiant.</p>
+<p>“It’s foggy tonight,” Mamie reminded him. “There couldn’t be a better
+night to jump on them. An’ after that piece in the Boston paper,
+Aubrey—”</p>
+<p>“Amos an’ Emma are nervous,” he protested. “Livin’ alone like they do
+apart from the village, they prob’ly imagine—”</p>
+<p>“They <em>don’t</em> imagine!” Mamie vigorously stamped her small foot. “The
+least you can do is to investigate. Are you—afraid, Aubrey?”</p>
+<p>“Afraid? Course I aint afraid! If old Amos wants me to soothe his nerves
+by goin’ down there an’ lookin’ the ground over, I can do <em>that</em> much to
+pacify him. I’ll walk back to the station that way after I leave here,
+an’—”</p>
+<p>“Let’s not wait till then. Aubrey,” Mamie pleaded. “Let’s go <em>now</em>!”</p>
+<p>Aubrey looked at her through narrowed eyes. “You aint in on this,
+Mamie,” he declared. “You’ll stay right here. If Amos <em>shouldn’t</em> be
+misrepresentin’ it, an’ they turned out to be real smugglers from the
+<i>Seabright</i>, it’d be no place for you when they ketch me spyin’ on ’em.”</p>
+<p>“I <em>am</em> goin’! I’ll go to Amos’ an’ call on Emma. You can escort me
+there, then go down to the landin’ below the house. We’ll watch from the
+upstairs window an’ telephone the station if you need help. Only I hope
+you wont need it, Aubrey. I hope you can do it all yourself so’s Cap an’
+Jansen wont come into it.”</p>
+<p>“A lot you’ll see from the upstairs winder, a thick night like this,”
+scoffed Aubrey. “But if you’d rather go prowlin’ round Howesport harbor
+than entertain me my night off—”</p>
+<p>“Aubrey, you know better’n that!” she rebuked him. “I’m doin’ all this
+because—well, I’m sort of ashamed of that piece in the paper. An’ I
+want you to show ev’ryone in Howesport that you aint a coward an’ never
+was one.”</p>
+<p>“Well, then come on!” Aubrey consented. Mamie ran upstairs, told her
+mother she was going to Emma’s, put on her wraps, and with Aubrey went
+out into the night.</p>
+<hr class='tb'>
+<p>Through the fog they walked down the sandy road to the harbor, talking
+in half-whispers, Mamie hurrying three steps to his one to keep up with
+him. The village clock dolefully tolled eight, its distant tones
+sounding more funereal than ever in the leaden atmosphere.</p>
+<p>They branched off at the side road to the two-story Swift homestead set
+on a wooded hill overlooking Swift’s Landing on the sheltered little
+beach below. A light burned downstairs in the parlor.</p>
+<p>“Wait here till I’m inside,” whispered Mamie, reassuringly squeezing his
+hand. “Then go to the landin’. If you need help, Aubrey, shout. We’ll be
+listenin’, an’ we’ll telephone the station if you holler. Amos’ll come
+down to help you while the crew’s gittin’ here.”</p>
+<p>Aubrey laughed under his breath. Amos! A lot of help that timid old man
+would be! Aubrey waited until the door of the ark on the hill opened and
+closed, then descended the path to the landing.</p>
+<p>Tiny waves lapped the fog-shrouded beach. Across the narrow strip of
+water—not much wider than Salt Marsh Creek at high tide—two unoccupied
+summer cottages bulked in the fog. To their right twinkled the kitchen
+light of Reuben Nickerson’s farmhouse, and a restless cow mooed in the
+stable behind it. A fine place for smugglers to operate! Why, they’d be
+just as likely to run their contraband ashore directly in front of
+Santuck station under the very noses of the crack crew of Cape Cod!</p>
+<p>Lord—if the boys at the station ever learned that he’d snooped around
+looking for smugglers at Swift’s Landing, he’d never hear the last of
+it! It would be a standing joke at the station.</p>
+<p>Aubrey withdrew from the beach to the stunted pines of the upland, and
+seated himself on an overturned dory. Far down the harbor mouth the fog
+whistle of Narrow Point lighthouse groaned intermittently. There was a
+chill in the air—a damper, clammier cold than he experienced in his
+patrols on the wider, more exposed stretches of Santuck beach.</p>
+<p>The drone of the fog whistle and the continual <i>lap-lap</i> of the waves
+lulled him until he was half asleep. The village clock struck ten.
+Somewhere out on the Atlantic outside Howesport harbor a motorboat
+chugged. One of the coast-guard flotilla, most likely, combing the
+waters inside the three-mile limit for the elusive <i>Seabright</i>.</p>
+<p>Suddenly he arose from his seat and strained his eyes at the landing.
+Out of the thickness loomed the bow of a dory. And astern of that dory
+rode another. Two men in each, one rowing, the other standing in the
+stern. And the oars of those dories were muffled!</p>
+<p>Aubrey withdrew deeper into the stunted pines—just in time, for a
+flashlight from the leading dory played on the beach, and a deep voice,
+slightly hushed, sang out: “All right—straight ahead!”</p>
+<p>The prow of the first dory scraped on the shore; then the second dory
+came to rest on the sand beside it. The occupants of both boats stepped
+into the water, and their sea-boots splashed as the dories were drawn up
+higher.</p>
+<p>“Hand us a crate, thar, Russ!” the deep voice called out. “We’ve got a
+few more lobsters here ’n you have, I cal’late.”</p>
+<p>A big arm shot up from a huge lumbering body, and with a thud a hand
+proportionately large snatched a flying crate out of the air. Carefully
+he and his smaller companion filled it with lobsters from the bottom of
+the dory, while the smaller men of the other dory lugged several
+lobster-laden crates ashore.</p>
+<figure class="center70">
+  <img src="images/illus-002.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>The watching Aubrey grumbled to himself. Amos’ “smugglers”
+were harmless lobstermen!</figcaption>
+</figure>
+<p>“I might ’a’ known ’twould turn out like this!” the watching Aubrey
+grumbled to himself. For Amos’ “smugglers” were old Nathan Holway and
+his three sons, harmless, industrious lobstermen who minded their own
+business—which was more than Amos could say of himself. And to put
+Aubrey in an even more ludicrous light if his presence there were
+detected, they were cousins of Jansen.</p>
+<p>The young surfman took a step back, to put more pines between himself
+and the beach. But in doing so he stepped on an empty bottle, and it
+burst with a loud tinkle under his boots.</p>
+<p>“What the hell was that?” exclaimed Nathan, and the flashlight’s ray
+penetrated the pines in which Aubrey was concealed.</p>
+<p>“Thar he is—some one hidin’ in them pines!” the nasal tenor of Russ
+Holway rang out. “Come out o’ that thicket, you! We see yuh!”</p>
+<p>“I’ll be damned!” shouted his brother Enoch. “It’s Aubrey Sears!”</p>
+<p>Recognized, Aubrey stepped out of his hiding-place and walked boldly
+down to the landing. “Good ev’nin’,” he saluted the lobstermen. “Kinder
+thick, aint it?”</p>
+<p>“What’re ye doin’, snoopin’ round an’ spyin’ on us?” belligerently
+roared old Nathan. “Can’t honest folks ’arn a livin’ ’thout some damned
+coast-guard comin’ two miles off’n his post to peek at us?”</p>
+<p>“P’raps he’s lookin’ for that feller he run away from on Salt Marsh,”
+suggested Enoch, and his two brothers snickered.</p>
+<hr class='tb'>
+<p>That made Aubrey’s fighting blood heat up. “No matter why I’m here,” he
+defied them, resolved to maintain his dignity even though he felt like a
+fool. And he seized upon the salient feature of their landing: “You
+might tell me why you was rowin’ with muffled oars.”</p>
+<p>“Hear the brave bully boy o’ Santuck!” derided Russ. “He’s puttin’ us
+under cross-examination. I don’t know as it’s any o’ his business why—”</p>
+<p>“Shut up!” Nathan silenced his smart-aleck son. “This spotter’s a
+low-down, cowardly whelp, but he’s a officer o’ the Fed’ral Gover’mint,
+an’ must be treated with respec’ for the uniform he wears if nawthin’
+else, even if he aint wearin’ it now,” he added suggestively. “The
+reason we muffled our oars, Mr. Coast Guard,” he explained with mock
+courtesy, “is that we didn’t want to distarb Amos Swift an’ Emma, bein’s
+how we was kep’ out later’n usual by a strong tide after we’d hauled our
+lobster pots.”</p>
+<p>“Does that satisfy ye?” asked Fred, the youngest brother, nastily. “If
+it don’t—”</p>
+<p>“Close yer damned trap!” bellowed Nathan. And he turned again to Aubrey.
+“Some day ye’ll git yer fool head busted, nosin’ round whar ye’ve no
+call to be prowlin’,” he warned. “I’m goin’ to see Cap Cole ’bout this!”</p>
+<p>“An’ seein’s how you’re wearin’ no uniform,” invited Russ, “I’d like to
+take ye on for a little go right here, now, bare knuckles. I’d like
+nawthin’ better’ll to fix ye up so’s ye wouldn’t have no ambition to
+bother any more honest fishermen or runaway smugglers.”</p>
+<p>Aubrey slipped out of his overcoat and the jacket of his best gray suit,
+and threw them on the beach. “I’ll accommodate ye, Russ Holway!” he
+shouted, assuming a defensive fighting attitude in which he had acquired
+a little skill by boxing with Surfman Paty for recreation during leisure
+moments at the station. “Come on!” he accepted the fisherman’s
+challenge.</p>
+<p>But Nathan stepped between them. “They’ll be no fist-fightin’ here!” he
+declared. “Not but what you can lick him, Russ, but I don’t trust
+skulkin’ coast guards that are licensed to carry firearms, specially if
+they’re gittin’ the wust of it. Now, little coast-guard boy,” he taunted
+Aubrey, “run along back to the station. It’s late, an’ me an’ my boys
+want to git a night’s rest ’fore termorrer.”</p>
+<p>“To hell with you an’ your rest!” retorted Aubrey. “You may be
+law-abidin’, but you seem to forgit that it’s a coast-guard man you’re
+makin’ fun of. An’ now that you’ve showed the service so little respec’,
+I’m goin’ to assert my authority jist to show you who’s boss here. You
+can postpone goin’ to bed until I’ve had a look at your lobsters—an’ a
+good long look, too, by Godfrey!”</p>
+<p>“Damned if ye will!” roared Nathan. “You aint in uniform. Here—git back
+from that crate!”—as Aubrey bent and began to paw through the lobsters
+in it.</p>
+<p>Nathan rushed at Aubrey, but the surfman jumped nimbly to one side.</p>
+<p>“I’ll warn ye—it’s the United States Gover’mint you’re foolin’
+with—not me personal!” Aubrey cautioned the big fisherman.</p>
+<p>Nathan stepped back. “Thar’s my dory,” he stood his ground, pointing to
+the nearest boat, his face black with fury. “Now, young feller, I’ll
+invite ye to tech my lobsters. I’ll see whether a young sprout who aint
+in uniform’ll s’arch my property or not. If ye tech that dory, ye’ll do
+it over my dead body!”</p>
+<p>For a few seconds Aubrey hesitated. He knew he was nominally within his
+authority, uniform or no uniform. Nor did the colossal strength and
+fighting reputation of Nathan deter him. But he fully realized that no
+matter what course of action he pursued now, he would emerge the loser.
+Public sentiment would favor the Holways if they administered a sound
+thrashing to him. And Cap would be sure to reprimand him for such
+interference with law-abiding citizens, if not to take steps to have him
+dropped from the service altogether.</p>
+<p>But on the other hand, if he refused to search the dory, the Holways
+would advertise their triumph, and he would be branded an even greater
+coward than Jansen’s lie made him out to be.</p>
+<p>In the midst of his reflections, while Nathan and his sons stood tense
+and silent eagerly waiting for his next move, a twig snapped in the
+upland. Nathan looked in that direction, and so did Aubrey. The gleam of
+the flashlight disclosed Mamie, Amos and Emma hiding there, partly
+shielded by the scrawny pines.</p>
+<p>“Mamie—go back to the house!” shouted Aubrey.</p>
+<p>But Mamie stepped out of her partial shelter, Emma following her on to
+the beach, while Amos scrambled up the steep path in precipitate retreat
+to the house.</p>
+<p>“What are you waitin’ for, Aubrey?” asked Mamie, her eyes flashing, her
+voice shrill with excitement. “Aint you goin’ to search that dory?”</p>
+<p>Nathan laughed clownishly. “I cal’late your hero’s thinkin’ better of
+it, Miss Weston,” he chuckled. “He knows tormented well that if he gits
+hurt doin’ it, Cap Cole’ll back me an’ my boys up.”</p>
+<p>“Then you’re goin’ to let Cap Cole scare you out o’ doin’ your duty,
+Aubrey?” Mamie’s tone was ironically sweet. “Oh, if my father was only
+here! I know what <em>he’d</em> do!”</p>
+<p>Aubrey clenched his fists, took a step forward—and another. He knew
+what doughty old Cap Weston would do if he were alive and placed in such
+a predicament. The hero of the wreck of the <i>David Rothwell</i> would do
+what he had set out to do, or die in the attempt!</p>
+<p>Straight for the dory Aubrey marched determinedly. He heard Nathan’s
+bellow as he and his sons rushed to the attack.</p>
+<p>Aubrey jumped back in time to avoid the headlong charge of Nathan, but
+in doing so he collided with Russ. The eldest son had not recovered from
+the impact when he received a terrific punch just above his waistline,
+and he doubled up gasping for breath. Aubrey whirled on Fred and planted
+a wicked wallop on that bewildered youth’s jaw. Like an infuriated bull
+goaded by its tormentors in the ring, Aubrey faced Enoch, and after a
+short exchange of blows, put a damper on the second son’s ardor by
+delivering a haymaker to his nose.</p>
+<p>Panting from his exertion, he turned to Nathan, who bore down on him
+with lowered head and flying fists. The surfman sidestepped—but not
+soon enough, for one of the fisherman’s blows found its mark on Aubrey’s
+chin. Half dazed though he was, Aubrey countered with a right to the
+giant’s jaw, which caused no more perceptible damage than birdshot to
+the hide of a rhinoceros.</p>
+<p>From that instant on, the fight was a rough-and-tumble, free-for-all,
+and general rough-house. No chance for Aubrey to display any of the
+science he had acquired boxing with Paty. He struck out blindly, saved
+himself from his attackers by quick footwork, oppressed from all sides
+at once. Blows light and heavy landed on his cheeks, chin, and jaws,
+while he danced and dodged in the center of the melee, confused by the
+odds against him, but keeping his antagonists on the jump by avoiding
+dirty tactics on their part like tripping or kicking.</p>
+<p>Then as they edged in closer, he broke through the ring surrounding him
+and ran a few yards up the beach, where he faced them again. He launched
+a right at Enoch which staggered that aggressive little bunch of wiry
+sinews. But at the same time the coast-guard received a crushing punch
+on the cheek from Russ. He managed, however, to dodge past Enoch and
+escape from the circle which was forming around him again. And there,
+his back to the harbor, some fifty yards upshore from the dories, once
+more he defied the four oncoming fishermen.</p>
+<hr class='tb'>
+<p>Aubrey was breathing hard, his nose bleeding, cheeks and lips cut,
+one eye closed, and his shirt flapping in shreds. Time and again he
+broke clear; and the scene of battle shifted frequently up and down the
+beach.</p>
+<p>After one of Aubrey’s eel-like escapes, Nathan shoved his sons back and
+faced the surfman alone. “Got—enough?” the huge lobsterman panted, his
+leathery face daubed with blood, his thick lips split.</p>
+<p>“Hell—no! I aint begun to fight yit!” Aubrey defied him. “Try it ag’in!
+Come on, I’m askin’ ye!”</p>
+<p>Russ and Enoch, battle-grimed and rent as to raiment, started for the
+cornered surfman. But Nathan snatched Russ by the arm and flung him
+back, and stepped between Enoch and Aubrey.</p>
+<p>“You stay out o’ this!” he commanded his offspring. “This Sears—he
+needs a dose o’ the medicine such as only one o’ my generation can hand
+him. I’ll take care o’ him in the good old-fashioned way. You three go
+back to the dories an’ see ’at no one swipes our lobsters.”</p>
+<p>With a rush, the big fisherman resumed the conflict. Nathan was
+fighting, now, with knees as well as fists—the kind of fighting the
+old-time Yankee skippers resorted to when all other methods of subduing
+refractory members of their crews failed. In his younger days Nathan
+Holway had earned the nickname of “Bloody Nathan” from his proficiency
+in this style of fighting. Aubrey had seen Cap Cole fight that way once
+when he half killed a crazy-drunk sailor, so he knew what to expect.</p>
+<p>He avoided Bloody Nathan by sidestepping, smashing left and right
+uppercuts to the fisherman’s lowered face. But the endurance of that
+hulk of bone and muscle was nothing short of marvelous, and he seemed to
+be wholly unaffected.</p>
+<p>Now and then Aubrey felt the impact of Bloody Nathan’s huge fist as it
+smashed through his defense. Once Nathan’s knee caught the coast-guard
+in the abdomen, and he doubled up, seeing black. But he pulled himself
+together, and came back at his antagonist with a left to the jaw and a
+right uppercut to the chin, and again avoided the rush of the
+foul-fighting fisherman by sidestepping and smashing in with another
+left and right.</p>
+<p>The pace was beginning to tell on Nathan. Aubrey’s wind was less
+expended, severely sapped though it was, for he didn’t waste energy in
+headlong rushes. One of Bloody Nathan’s eyes was closed, and his
+bleeding mouth lolled open. His lungs were wheezy and his knees shaky.</p>
+<p>Then Aubrey rushed. He delivered a quick, swinging blow with his left
+that smashed through the fisherman’s awkward defense and crashed upon
+his bulbous nose. He groaned, and sank to the sand like a pole-axed
+steer.</p>
+<p>The fall of their parent seemed to fire the three sons with fresh zeal.
+They pounced on Aubrey from all quarters, and he, his energy sapped by
+his vigorous fray with their father, went down on the sand under them,
+while they started to pummel him unmercifully.</p>
+<p>But Aubrey twisted and squirmed clear of the three, leaving his
+undershirt in their clutches, and upsetting Fred, recovered his footing.
+He knew he was licked; the fight with Nathan had taken too much out of
+him to go through it all over again with them. But no matter how badly
+he was mauled, his was the satisfaction of making Bloody Nathan take the
+count. Mamie, wherever she was, couldn’t accuse him of being a coward
+now. Neither could Cap, whatever Cap would think of his judgment in
+starting the affair.</p>
+<p>He didn’t care about the Number One surfman’s job now. Nor did Mamie
+seem a vital factor in his life. She had got him into this mess. It
+would be interesting to find out whether she would stick to him or not
+if the Number One job went to some one else.</p>
+<hr class='tb'>
+<p>He was standing again with his back to the harbor, the three sons of
+Bloody Nathan facing him but not carrying the fight to him. Near by he
+could make out Mamie trying to reach him, but Amos and Emma were holding
+her back.</p>
+<p>“Come on, yuh damned coward!” Aubrey taunted Russ.</p>
+<p>“Come on yerself!” retorted Russ.</p>
+<p>“Start somethin’!” squealed Enoch.</p>
+<p>And Aubrey accepted the invitation by charging Russ, head down, blindly,
+adopting Bloody Nathan’s method of attack—a method which had vindicated
+itself in free-for-all fighting. Again and again he flailed his fists at
+the fisherman’s eldest son, who gave no ground, but stood resigned to
+his punishment, if punishment it really were which Aubrey, in his
+exhausted state, was administering.</p>
+<p>He was gripped by the shoulder and drawn firmly back, his fists fanning
+the air.</p>
+<p>“Sears—behave! You’ve gone fur enough with this!”</p>
+<p>Aubrey weakly raised his head—and his one open eye took in Cap Cole,
+holding his shoulder with one strong hand gripping what appeared to be
+the cylindrical metal case of a beach-torch in the other.</p>
+<p>“I aint—gone fur—enough!” Aubrey defied his commander, struggling
+feebly and unsuccessfully to wrench himself loose. “I aint—<em>begun</em>—to
+fight!”</p>
+<p>“It’s all his doin’, Cap!” groaned Bloody Nathan, staggering out of the
+fog to the Santuck commander, while his three sons retreated to the two
+dories. “Sears interfered with us, Cap—in the name o’ the
+coast-guard—out o’ spite to keep us from gittin’ a decent night’s
+rest—him in plain clothes—with no authority—”</p>
+<p>“Why are you makin’ such a spectacle o’ yerself ag’inst a law-abidin’
+citizen like Nathan?” Cole severely questioned the young surfman. “It’s
+a good thing Amos Swift called me up an’ told me you was in hot water at
+the landin’, judgin’ by the loud talk he heard. If you had your pistol
+here, I cal’late they’d ’a’ been murder committed—with you in your
+present frame o’ mind. If Jansen wa’n’t on patrol an’ he’d come here
+with me—”</p>
+<p>“Yeah,” Aubrey flung back. “It’s always Jansen. ’Twas him that lied
+about me that night on Salt Marsh. An’ you’re no better’n he is, to
+b’lieve him, an’ send that lyin’ report to the superintendent!” He
+reached into his hip pocket, drew an automatic pistol, and handed it to
+Cap, holding it by the barrel. “Here’s my gun, Cap,” he said. “It’s been
+in my pants pocket all durin’ the scrap.”</p>
+<p>Cap accepted the weapon without comment, relinquishing his grip on
+Aubrey’s shoulder.</p>
+<p>“I’m through with the damn’ coast-guard an’ Santuck!” Aubrey thus kicked
+over the traces and stove in the dashboard. “Through with you, an’
+Jansen, an’ your lies ’bout me. I’m going to sea—inland—<em>anywhere</em> to
+git away from you two. I told you the truth that night on Salt Marsh.
+An’ what did <em>you</em> do? You believed what Jansen told yuh, an’ worse’n
+that—you put it in the report to headquarters, an’ it got in the paper.
+I done tonight what I set out to do—I’ve got <em>that</em> much satisfaction
+out of it, no matter how big a fool you an’ the Howesport folks call
+me!”</p>
+<p>A small hand tenderly dabbed at his empurpled eye with a tiny
+handkerchief.</p>
+<p>“Good for you, Aubrey!” Mamie applauded. “We wont change our plans a
+mite, Aubrey, you ’n’ me. We’ll git along somehow—I’ll go through
+anything to make you happy.” She turned savagely on Cap. “The idea o’
+you belittlin’ my Aubrey after he’s been—so brave—” A sob choked her.</p>
+<hr class='tb'>
+<p>But Cap laughed, and again laid his hand on Aubrey’s shoulder. “You’re
+<em>not</em> goin’ to leave the coast-guard, Sears!” he declared. “You’re goin’
+to be the nex’ Number One surfman at Santuck station, if I have anything
+to say about it—an’ I cal’late I will! You don’t s’pose for a minute
+that I believed Jansen after he put that piece in the Boston paper, do
+ye? That wa’n’t what I reported to the superintendent. I didn’t mention
+your name in that report. An’ when I seen that newspaper, I telephoned
+it to find out where they got the information, an’ they said ‘From
+Jansen.’ He didn’t have no authority to put that in without gittin’ me
+to endorse it. It’s an open vi’lation o’ discipline, an’ it’s proof to
+me that he aint to be trusted. An’ he wont command Sandy Holler if <em>I</em>
+c’n help it, by golly!”</p>
+<p>“Then why didn’t you tell Aubrey that today?” indignantly asked Mamie.</p>
+<p>“Because,” Cap replied, “I wanted to have somethin’ better to report to
+the superintendent ’bout Sears before I recommended him for Jansen’s
+place. An’ I cal’lated the best way to stir him up so’s I could do that
+would be to make him think he’s wuth less’n a healthy damn, an’ git his
+fightin’ dander up.”</p>
+<hr class='tb'>
+<p>“I can’t see whar he <em>is</em> wuth more’n that,” spoke up Nathan, who had
+recovered sufficiently from his mauling to listen interestedly to the
+conversation of Mamie and Cap. The glare of a flashlight down the beach
+revealed through the thinning fog the fisherman’s three sons and four
+uniformed men of the Santuck crew grouped near the dories. “D’you
+coast-guard folks promote brave surfmen who pick on harmless fishermen
+an’ damn’ nigh beat the tar out of ’em?” he sneered.</p>
+<p>“No—not for beatin’ up <em>harmless</em> fishermen,” countered Cap. “But for
+molestin’ them engaged in <em>this</em> kind o’ fishin’.” He held up the metal
+cylinder.</p>
+<p>Nathan swayed drunkenly when he looked at it, “Oh, hell!” he moaned. “I
+was dependin’ on Russ an’ the boys to take care o’ that!”</p>
+<p>“You was too busy fightin’—you an’ your boys, Nathan—to notice my
+Santuck boys searchin’ your lobsters,” explained Cap. “This tube is full
+of opium. I’m familiar with it—it’s the same kind the <i>Seabright’s</i>
+been runnin’ ashore. Now I cal’late I know why Jansen advanced such good
+argymints to me to discontinue the Howesport harbor patrol. I cal’late
+his examination in court—an’ yourn, too, Nathan—will be real
+interestin’!”</p>
+<p>“Hereafter, Sears,”—he turned to Aubrey,—“what you say at Santuck
+station <em>goes</em>! That’s final!”</p>
+<div class="tn">Transcriber’s note: This story appeared in the
+February, 1930 issue of <i>The Blue Book</i> magazine.</div>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77810 ***</div>
+</body>
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