[Picture: The Life-savers] The hands of the clock in the life-saving station pointed to a quarter of nine, on a wild March night along the New England coast. A bitter north-easter raged outside, driving the rising tide higher and higher upon the beach. It was almost at the flood, and only a narrow ridge of stones lay between the sea and the station. The surf thundered in like a solid wall—great combers that nothing could resist, flung themselves upon the beach with a sullen roar, and broke into a seething flood of foam. This foam was not the sparkling white substance into which the waves resolve themselves in time of peace, but a turbid yellowish froth, which, by the time it reached the shore, was nearly of the consistency of white of egg, beaten stiff. Great patches of it were caught up by the fierce wind and blown far inland, while others lodged against the walls of the life-saving station, where they mingled with the pelting snow that thickly covered the weather-side of the building. The water’s edge was piled with a tangled mass of sea-weed, drift-wood, bottles, dead crabs, and a hundred different objects which the ocean had cast up. The undertow dragged out myriads of pebbles, which gave forth a peculiar musical roar as they were swept from the beach where they had lain through weeks of pleasant weather, now to be again swallowed up in the deep. The blackness out to sea was almost tangible—the force of the wind and the driving snow nearly blinded the patrolmen, struggling along their beats with every sense on the alert, and with only their beach lanterns for company. In a word, it was one of those awful nights when the government life-savers are often called upon to work like Spartan heroes, and suffer incredible hardships and dangers that imperilled lives may be saved. One such night far out-balances the long term of inactivity (broken only by daily drill) that may have preceded it. Captain Litchfield, the keeper of the station, was in the observatory, whose windows commanded a view of the ocean and beach for a long distance in either direction. Occasionally he caught a glimpse of the lighthouse two miles to the north, but the cheerful beacon was rendered dim by the snow which filled the air, and was invisible much of the time. As a violent gust beat against the frosty panes and shook the stout building, the keeper thought of the _Peruvian_, and other good ships that had met their fate on the Massachusetts coast during just such nights as this. He had doubled the beach patrol and now strained his eyes in momentary expectation of seeing the signal to all that coast that a disaster had occurred. It is a thrilling time—waiting and watching to hear the news of a wreck that is certain to take place; striving to locate the doomed craft in the profound darkness out at sea; hoping against hope that some miracle may avert the impending catastrophe!