e been a three-master. All up with
her now."

"Look along the shore!" shouted Dab. "Some of 'em saved, anyhow. The
coast-men are there, life-boats and all."

So they were, and Ham was right about the vessel, though not a mast was
left standing in her now. If there had been, indeed, she might have been
kept off the breakers, as they afterward learned. She had been dismasted
in the storm, but had not struck until after daylight that morning, and
help had been close at hand and promptly given. No such thing as saving
that unfortunate hull. She would beat to pieces just where she lay,
sooner or later, according to the kind of weather and the waves it
should bring with it.

The work done by the life-boat men had been a good one, and had not been
very easy either, for they had brought the crew and passengers from the
wreck safely to the sandy beach. They had even saved some items of
baggage. In a few hours, the "coast wrecking tugs" would be on hand to
look out for the cargo. No chance whatever for the 'longshoremen, good
or bad, to turn an honest penny without working hard for it. Work and
wages enough, to be sure, helping to unload, when the sea, now so very
heavy, should go down a little; but "wages" were not what some of them
were most hungry for.

Two of them, at all events--one a tall, weather-beaten,
stoop-shouldered, grizzled old man, in tattered raiment, and the other,
even more battered, but with no "look of the sea" about him--stood on a
sand-drift gloomily gazing at the group of shipwrecked people on the
shore, and the helpless mass of timber and spars out there among the
beatings of the surf.

"Not more 'n three hunder yards out. She'd break up soon 'f there was no
one to hender. Wot a show we'd hev."

"I reckon," growled the shorter man. "Is your name Peter?"

"Aye. I belong yer. Allers lived about high-water mark. Whar'd ye come
from?"

The only answer was a sharp and excited exclamation. Neither of them had
been paying any attention to the bay side of the bar and, while they
were gazing at the wreck, a very pretty little yacht had cast anchor,
close in shore, and then, with the help of a row-boat, quite a party of
ladies and gentlemen--the latter somewhat young-looking--had made their
way to the land, and were now hurrying forward. They did not pay the
slightest attention to Peter and his companion, but, in a few minutes
more, they were trying to talk to those poor people on the sea-beach.
Trying, b