Dozens of stories flashed into my mind--the kind I would tell at a club dinner, or with the coffee and cigarettes--and were as instantly dropped. Such open-air, breezy giants, full of muscle and ozone, would find no interest in the adventures of any of my characters; the cheap wit of the cafés, the homely humor of the farm, the chatter of the opera-box, or whisperings behind the palms of the conservatory--nothing of this could possibly interest these men. I would have been ashamed to offer it. Tom's simple, straightforward story of his baby and his brother Bill had made it impossible for me to attempt to match it with any cheap pathos of my own; just as the graphic treatment of the fitting out of the negro cook by the Captain, and of the rescue of the "lady" by Saul, had ended all hopes of my entertaining the men around me with any worm-eaten, hollow-shelled chestnuts of my own. What was wanted was some big, simple, genuine yarn: strong meat for strong men, not milk for babes: something they would know all about and believe in and were part of. The storming of a fort; the flagging of a train within three feet of an abyss; the rescue of a child along a burning ledge five stories above the sidewalk: all these themes bubbled up and sank again in my mind. Some of them I only knew parts of; some had but little point; all of them were hazy in my mind. I remembered, with regret, that I could only repeat the first verse of the "Charge of the Light Brigade," and but two lines of "Horatius," correctly. Suddenly a great light broke in upon me. What they wanted was something about their own life: some account of the deeds of other life-savers up and down the coast, graphically put with proper dramatic effect, beginning slowly and culminating in the third act with a blaze of heroism. These big, brawny heroes about me would then get a clearer idea of the estimation in which they were held by their countrymen; a clearer idea, too, of true heroism--of the genuine article, examples of which were almost nightly shown in their own lives. This would encourage them to still greater efforts, and the world thereby be the better for my telling. That gallant rescue of the man off Quogue was just the thing! The papers of the week before had been full of the bravery of these brother surfmen on the Long Island coast. This, and some additional information given me by a reporter who visited the scene of the disaster after the rescue, could not fail to make an impression, I thought. Yes, the rescue was the very thing. "Oh! men," I began, "did you hear about that four-master that came ashore off Shinnecock last week?" and I looked around into their faces. "No," remarked Jerry, pulling his pipe from his mouth. "What about it?" "Why, yes, ye did," grunted Tom; "Number 17 got two of 'em." "Yes, and the others were drowned," interrupted Saul.