ck again, and this time Chester,
buttoning his oilskins about him closely, was ordered ashore.

In a brief time Hugh, and then Billy, Alec, and Norton had followed
the others.

Meanwhile, Captain Vinton, with Dave's help, had made everything
shipshape on board the _Arrow_. Then, sending Dave shoreward in
the breeches buoy, the captain himself, true to tradition, waited to
be the last to leave his ship.

Although they had not encountered a moment of real danger, the boys
had been given an experience of actual rescue. When Captain Vinton
joined them on shore, they greeted him enthusiastically and then
stood back to watch his meeting with Keeper Anderson.

The latter grasped the captain's hand in a hearty grip.

"Good for you, Lem, you old sea-dog!" cried the keeper. "You didn't
scare us any and it was great fun for my boy and his friends. Mark
has gone in to see his mother---she'll be some surprised---and to
tell her to fix up some hot coffee and things for you 'survivors.'"

"Haw! haw! haw!" laughed the old captain. "This was the easiest
shipwreck I ever managed to survive! He! he! he!"

In great good nature the two men walked toward the keeper's house,
while the boys followed, eagerly renewing their acquaintance with
the stalwart men of the life-saving crew.

Roy Norton was an interested observer, and when he, too, had met Mrs.
Anderson and Ruth, and heard the story of their first exciting
encounter, he no longer wondered at the boys' enthusiasm.

That night the crowd slept, as four of them had before, in hastily
arranged shakedowns; and when morning dawned, they looked out upon a
sea so blue and sparkling they could scarcely realize that it was
the gray, angry, heaving expanse of the night before.

The _Arrow_ dipped and rose jauntily on the sapphire water, giving
no sign that she, too, had spent a restless night pulling and tugging
at her deeply embedded anchor.

After an early breakfast, the four boys said their farewells to Mark
and Ruth and their parents, and, with the captain and Norton, went
out to the _Arrow_ in boats manned by members of the life-saving crew.

Not many hours later, they reached Alec's home in Santario, and
there they found Mr. Sands, waiting a little anxiously for their
safe return. He had learned from the morning papers that the
previous night's storm had been severe at sea, and he had not
known how or where the _Arrow_ might have weathered the gale.

When he had been to