Here, a schooner, having been dismasted, was thrown up on the hidden reef which makes out some distance from the land, and, during a furious storm when the sleet and hail cut into the flesh like needles, the life savers were forced to drag their apparatus through the snowdrifts from two to four feet deep, after which, by aid of the gun and the breeches-buoy, every man was saved. There, three boys, whose yacht had been capsized by a sudden squall, would have drowned but for the vigilance of the patrol and the activity of the men who manned the life-boat, for the crew arrived at the scene only barely in time to save them from being dashed against the rocky cliffs. It was as if every headland and cove had its own particular story concerning the perils of the sea, and the two surfmen, bent on so occupying the attention of their companion that he should not note the passage of time, gave to each incident such details as could not fail of arresting the lad’s attention, until to his surprise Sam Hardy said: “I reckon, Joe, it’s time for you to take the lad back. It won’t do to give him too much of a tramp the first night. There’s no need of spinning all our yarns, for he’s like to be with us on many a tour of duty.” “I’m neither tired nor cold,” Benny said, for this cutting short a most agreeable excursion was not to his liking, although he made no protest. “It ain’t just the thing to drag you along here when there’s no real need of it, and I reckon you’d best turn back, my son. Joe will take you in behind the pines, where you can give Fluff C. Foster a chance to run, and by that time the frost will have a good firm hold on your nose.” Then with a cheery “good-night” Sam continued on his lonely, difficult way. Joe fulfilled the promise made for him by his comrade, and when, at nearly eight o’clock, they arrived within sight of the station, the surfman began shouting, much to the surprise of his companion. “It’s all right; you can come in,” Keeper Downey replied at length, and Joe Cushing knew that those silent forms which had been lying in the boat-room were no longer at the station. CHAPTER V. FROM THE “AMAZONIA.” Benny was astir very early next morning, eager to show the crew of the station that he appreciated to the utmost their generosity in thus giving him a home, and when the men came down to breakfast the cook declared that the boy had performed considerably more than half the work of preparing the meal. “He’s a handy lad around a kitchen, an’ I’m thinkin’ we’ll be gettin’ the best of the bargain in adoptin’ him, providin’ he holds out as he’s begun,” the cook said confidentially to Sam Hardy, and the latter replied emphatically: “You mark my words, cookee; he ain’t the kind of a lad who wears out quickly. I’m countin’ on his growin’ better every day, an’ before next winter we’ll make a surfman of him.”