There was only one other man within sight along that sunny stretch of
sand--a small, dark man with a shaggy, speckled beard and quick,
twinkling eyes. He was at work upon a tangled length of tarred rope,
pulling and twisting with much energy and deftness to straighten out the
coil, so that it leaped and writhed in his hands like a living thing.

He whistled over the job cheerily and tunelessly, glancing now and again
with a keen, birdlike intelligence towards the motionless figure twenty
yards away that sat with bent head broiling in the sun. His task seemed
a hopeless one, but he tackled it as if he enjoyed it. His brown hands
worked with a will. He was plainly one to make the best of things, and
not to be lightly discouraged--a man of resolution, as the coxswain of
the Spear Point lifeboat needed to be.

After ten minutes of unremitting toil he very suddenly ceased to whistle
and sent a brisk hail across the stretch of sand that intervened between
himself and the solitary fisherman on the edge of the boat.

"Hi--Rufus--Rufus--ahoy!"

The fiery red head turned in his direction without either alacrity or
interest. The fixed eyes came out of their trance-like study and took in
the blue-jerseyed, energetic figure that worked so actively at the
knotted hemp. There was something rather wonderful about those eyes.
They were of the deep, intense blue of a spirit-fed flame--the blue of
the ocean when a storm broods below the horizon.

He made no verbal answer to the hail; only after a moment or two he got
slowly to his feet and began leisurely to cross the sand.