“You’re a gritty little chap,” Sam said admiringly, “almost too much so for one of your years an’ build; but don’t worry about me. I’ve been in worse places than this, an’ never come to any great harm. If it wasn’t that all the work might have been done readily an’ without risk, I shouldn’t feel like grumblin’; but when a man realizes that the situation has all come about through a pig-headed captain who wouldn’t allow we knew anything of the coast, then it seems tough. Howsomever, we’re in a box, an’ have not only got to get out of it ourselves, but pull others with us,--an’ we’ll do it, No. 8, we’ll do it.” Then Sam resumed the exercise, Benny copying his every movement, and thus alternately running and halting to regain breath, the two passed the time until they could see in the distance the crew, dragging the beach-wagon over the rocks. “Now that the apparatus is here it can’t be used while the steamer lays so far off,” Hardy said half to himself, and at that instant a cry of dismay caused him to gaze seaward. When the waves began to run high the master of the vessel had gotten out anchors fore and aft to prevent her from being driven shoreward. The parting of the stern cables had caused the cry of dismay from Benny, and as Sam looked in that direction the ships stern was swung violently around until she lay broadside to the waves, in such position as proved that she would soon be driven inshore virtually a wreck. “I reckon we’ll be able to put a line aboard of her mighty soon,” Sam said grimly, waving his arms to attract the attention of the crew that they might hasten their movements, and Benny, seeing an opportunity to be of some slight assistance, ran at full speed to meet the wagon. “What has happened?” Keeper Downey asked, as the lad joined him at the rear of the cart, the cook holding Sam Hardy’s station at the handle-bar. “The stern cable has parted, sir.” “Shove her along, boys! Shove her along! We’ll be able to get a line out now,” and as the men strained yet more energetically at the ropes and the handle-bar, Benny put all his little strength into the effort, performing, as Joe Cushing afterward said, “considerably more than half a man’s work.” Sam Hardy also joined the crew, and the wagon had no more than been hauled down to the strip of pebbly beach, the only point from which the work could be carried on, when the life savers had yet further evidence of the captain’s “pig-headedness.” When he laid alongside the steamer, while urging that the passengers at least be taken ashore, Tom Downey had said all a man might to prevent the master from holding to the plan of launching his own boats; and yet despite such advice, which should have been considered well worthy of being followed, that very manœuvre was now about to be attempted.