+Radway’s Rocket
by Robert H. Rohde
Radway Could Walk Home from the Ride — but It Was a Boat Ride, and He’d Have an Anchor Around His Neck
I
The man coming up the lonely beach behind Radway evidently preferred to stay behind. He had been walking swiftly along the hard sand close to the sluggish surf when Radway first glimpsed him, but at sight of the stranger his pace had lagged. A moment later, changing direction, he vanished among the dunes.
Radway was curious about him — professionally curious about everybody on that beach. A hundred yards above the point where he had come to the shore after his long, hot hike from the village five miles inland, he stopped to gather a handful of pebbles and shells and shy them over the dispirited breakers. A little further along, he stopped again for a long stare at the schooner that lay becalmed in the far northeast.
Then the rusty, listing shell of a wrecked freighter left high and dry by the retreating tide gave him another excuse to loiter. He unlimbered the kodak hanging from his shoulder and took his time getting a focus on the wreck. The camera took no picture when he clicked the shutter. It was unloaded — like the flannels he had changed into a couple of hours ago, just “scenery.”
The delay at the wreck accomplished his purpose. The man who had been playing hide-and-seek with him among the dunes came into view again, close by. He rounded a sandy rise and cut back to the beach. Passing Radway, he eyed him hard.
“Hot enough for you?” hailed Radway.
The man in the flapping ducks halted and turned. The question appeared to call for consideration. The beach walker’s sullen black eyes traveled slowly upward from Radway’s white canvas shoes to his jaunty panama. When the answer finally came it was a clipped monosyllable.
“Yep!”
The tone didn’t invite a further exchange, but Radway was not to be discouraged.
“Isn’t there a life-saving station somewhere along here?” he asked.
“Yep.”
“You belong there?”
“Yep. Ought to be there now.”
That had been meant to close the conversation, but as the beach patrolman started off, Radway fell into step with him.
“No objection to visitors, I hope,” he said diffidently. “At that, I bet you don’t get many. It’s certainly a tough drill over from Norport.”
“Stopping in Norport, are you, mister?” asked the other with a veiled side glance that found only blank innocence on Radway’s bronzed face. “Nope, we don’t see many summer people over on that part of the beach. They let us alone and we let them alone.”
Radway was cheerfully unconscious of the hint.
“Kind of funny, isn’t it? I should think you’d be overrun with company. A Coast Guard station ought to be a pretty interesting place. I’ve always wanted to have a look at one.”
“Yeah?” queried the Coast Guard without enthusiasm. He pointed with a tattooed hand toward a bank of leaden clouds massing behind the motionless schooner. “Well, you picked a bad day for the trip, mister. See that sky? That’s a rain squall making up. You’d better start back for Norport, if you don’t want them ice cream clothes spoiled for you.”
Radway thoughtfully inspected the muggy horizon.
“Guess you’re right.” he said. “But could I get to the village ahead of the rain? That white building up the beach — that’s your station, isn’t it? Maybe I’d better stick around there until the storm’s over.”
The beach patrolman shrugged a heavy shoulder and quickened his stride.
“It’s public property,” he grunted, his eyes fixed stonily before him. “Suit yourself.”
II
On the veranda of the Coast Guard station, an elderly man with a spare wiry figure and a square-cut spade of graying beard was looking seaward through binoculars. He lowered the glasses as Radway parted company with his taciturn companion and plowed through the broiling sand toward him.
“I’ll be dinged!” he ejaculated. “A visitor! Glad to see you. New faces are sights for sore eyes around Sandy Point nowadays. Come up and have a chair. Came all the way from Norport, did you?”
“Farther than that,” said Radway, mounting the veranda. “You’re Captain Docksee?”
“That’s my name.”
“Mine’s Radway, captain.” The visitor’s hand opened to reveal a small gold shield hidden in the palm. “I’m in the Government service, too — but mine’s another branch. May I have a private word with you? Suppose you go through the motions of showing me the apparatus. If your men get the impression that I’m just summer folks, that will be fine.”
Docksee tugged at his beard and stared.
“You’re here — official?”
Radway nodded.
“But keep it to yourself, please. I’d like to spend the night as your guest. Do you suppose that could be arranged without arousing too much curiosity?”
Before he replied, Docksee raised his binoculars again and trained them on the little schooner offshore.
“I reckon,” he said slowly. “There’s a storm cooking out there. It’ll probably blow great guns for a while by and by, and then rain all night. If I was to ask you to stay to dinner, it’d be my own business; and it would be natural enough for you to bunk in here if the rain was to catch you.”
Docksee caught a look of warning from Radway, who lifted his voice to a higher pitch and asked a question about the station’s life-saving equipment. The man with the tattooed hand had just appeared at the end of the veranda. Puzzled for an instant, the Sandy Point skipper took Radway’s cue.
“No, mister,” he said, “we don’t use the beach-gun once in a blue moon. Ain’t had it in action since that old tramp down yonder came ashore two winters ago. But I’ll show it to you — sure!”
He hopped spryly over the railing and marched off toward an outbuilding a couple of hundred yards below the main house.
“Don’t look back,” Radway whispered, catching up with him. “But I’m sort of wondering about that fellow back there. What do you know about him?”
“The man you walked to the station with — Lazzaro? How do you mean?”
“Do you trust him?”
Docksee debated as he flung open a wide door to reveal a cradled lifeboat and the wheeled beach-gun with its caisson of coiled rope.
“Dunno as I do, dunno as I don’t,” he said judicially. “He ain’t been here long enough for me to form any special opinion of him. What makes you ask?”
Postponing answer, Radway asked another question.
“How many men have you got here all told?”
“There’s eight in the regular crew. But this is a slack season and four of them is off on leave. With Lazzaro and another summer fill-in, Karger, I’ve got six now.” He glanced back toward the big house. “Looks like that’s Karger that just came out on the porch — that big man talking to Lazzaro. They kind of chum together, being both new in the service.”
“How about the rest?”
“All old-timers. Been with me ten years and up — and I’ve been here going on twenty-four years myself.”
“Men you’d swear by, eh?”
“I’d stake everything I’ve got on them.”