It was very characteristic of him, that effusion of calm sagacity in a supreme emergency.

IV

Beyond getting his feet wet Denry accomplished but little in the dark basement of the pier.  In spite of his success in hauling in the thrown rope, he seemed to be classed at once down there by the experts assembled as an eager and useless person who had no right to the space which he occupied.  However, he witnessed the heaving arrival of the lifeboat and the disembarking of the rescued crew of the Norwegian barque, and he was more than ever decided to compose a descriptive article for the Staffordshire Signal. The rescued and the rescuing crews disappeared in single file to the upper floor of the pier, with the exception of the coxswain, a man with a spreading red beard, who stayed behind to inspect the lifeboat, of which indeed he was the absolute owner.  As a journalist Denry did the correct thing and engaged him in conversation.  Meanwhile, cheering could be heard above.  The coxswain, who stated that his name was Cregeen, and that he was a Manxman, seemed to regret the entire expedition.  He seemed to be unaware that it was his duty now to play the part of the modest hero to Denry’s interviewing.  At every loose end of the chat he would say gloomily: 

“And look at her now, I’m telling ye!” Meaning the battered craft, which rose and fell on the black waves.

Denry ran upstairs again, in search of more amenable material.  Some twenty men in various sou’-westers and other headgear were eating thick slices of bread and butter and drinking hot coffee, which with foresight had been prepared for them in the pier buffet.  A few had preferred whisky.  The whole crowd was now under the lee of the pavilion, and it constituted a spectacle which Denry said to himself he should refer to in his article as “Rembrandtesque.”  For a few moments he could not descry Ruth and Nellie in the gloom.  Then he saw the indubitable form of his betrothed at a penny-in-the-slot machine, and the indubitable form of Nellie at another penny-in-the-slot machine.  And then he could hear the click-click-click of the machines, working rapidly.  And his thoughts took a new direction.

Presently Ruth ran with blithe gracefulness from her machine and commenced a generous distribution of packets to the members of the crews.  There was neither calculation nor exact justice in her generosity.  She dropped packets on to heroic knees with a splendid gesture of largesse.  Some packets even fell on the floor.  But she did not mind.

Denry could hear her saying: 

“You must eat it.  Chocolate is so sustaining.  There’s nothing like it.”

She ran back to the machines, and snatched more packets from Nellie, who under her orders had been industrious; and then began a second distribution.