once changed course and ran out of danger. If the surfman observes a vessel that is stationary, he must determine whether she is at anchor or in distress, and if the latter proves to be the case, he displays his Coston signal, to assure the shipwrecked that aid is close at hand, and then hastens to the station to give the alarm to the keeper. The work of the patrolmen involves frequent danger and almost constant hardship. Imagine, if you can, and that is impossible, the lot of a surfman on the Jersey coast during one of the great storms sure to occur once or twice in every winter. A fearful night has followed a stormy and lowering day. Inky darkness shrouds sea and land, and the wind, blowing at the rate of fifty miles an hour, pipes and roars defiance to the patrolmen as they struggle along their lonely beats. The driving snow freezes on their cheeks and chins; wet sand is flung into their faces and cuts with the keenness of a razor, while great masses of icy foam beat fiercely on the head and face and body at every dozen steps. Huge waves break at the foot of the sand dunes along which they painfully labor, and drench them again and again, often felling them to the ground. Every twenty or thirty yards they pause, and, baring their faces to the pelting snow and foam, search the ocean for lights. In this way hours pass before the prescribed beat is traversed, and the surfmen, wet, half-frozen, bruised and exhausted, seek for a brief season the warmth and shelter of the station-house. Sometimes weakness overcomes them and they are unable to reach this refuge.