Isaac Polhemus came first: Sixty years of age,
silent, gray, thick-set; face scarred and seamed by
many weathers, but fresh as a baby's; two china-blue
eyes--peep-holes through which you looked into his
open heart; shoulders hard and tough as cordwood
hands a bunch of knots; legs like snubbing-posts,
body quick-moving; brain quick-thinking; alert as
a dog when on duty, calm as a sleepy cat beside a
stove when his time was his own. Sixty only in
years, this man; forty in strength and in skill, twenty
in suppleness, and a one-year-old toddling infant in
all that made for guile. "Uncle Ike" some of the
younger men once called him, wondering behind
their hands whether he was not too old and believing
all the time that he was. "Uncle Ike" they still
called him, but it was a title of affection and pride;
affection for the man underneath the blue woollen
shirt, and pride because they were deemed worthy
to pull an oar beside him.
The change took place the winter before when he
was serving at Manasquan and when he pulled four
men single-handed from out of a surf that would have
staggered the bravest. There was no life-boat within
reach and no hand to help. It was at night--a
snowstorm raging and the sea a corral of hungry
beasts fighting the length of the beach.
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