TH THE U. S. LIFE-SAVERS

CHAPTER I

A RESCUE BY MOONLIGHT

"Help! Help!"

The cry rang out despairingly over the almost-deserted beach at Golden
Gate Park.

Jumping up so suddenly that the checker-board went in one direction, the
table in another, while the checkers rolled to every corner of the
little volunteer life-saving station house, Eric Swift made a leap for
the door. Quick as he was to reach the boat, he was none too soon, for
the coxswain and two other men were tumbling over the gunwale at the
same time.

Before the echoes of the cry had ceased, the boat was through the surf
and was heading out to sea like an arrow shot from a Sioux war-bow.

Although this was the second summer that Eric had been with the
Volunteers, it had never chanced to him before to be called out on a
rescue at night. The sensation was eerie in the extreme. The night was
still, with a tang of approaching autumn in the air to set the nerves
a-tingle. Straight in the golden path of moonlight the boat sped. The
snap that comes from exerting every muscle to the full quickened the
boy's eagerness and the tense excitement made everything seem unreal.

The coxswain, with an intuition which was his peculiar gift, steered an
undeviating course. Some of the life-savers used to joke with him and
declare that he could smell a drowning man a mile away, for his instinct
was almost always right.

For once, Eric thought, the coxswain must have been at fault, for
nothing was visible, when, after a burst of speed which seemed to last
minutes--though in reality it was but seconds--the coxswain held up his
hand. The men stopped rowing.

The boy had slipped off his shoes while still at his oar, working off
first one shoe and then the other with his foot. It was so late in the
evening that not a single man in the crew was in the regulation
bathing-suit, all were more or less dressed. Eric's chum, a chap
nicknamed the "Eel" because of his curious way of swimming, with one
motion slipped off all his clothing and passed from his thwart to the
bow of the boat.

A ripple showed on the surface of the water. Eric could not have told it
from the roughness of a breaking wave, but before ever the outlines of a
rising head were seen, the Eel sprang into the sea. Two of those long,
sinuous strokes of his brought him almost within reach of the drowning
man. Blindly the half-strangled sufferer threw up his arms, the action
sending him under water again, a g