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Neural Network Programming
with Java

Unleash the power of neural networks by implementing

professional Java code

Fábio M. Soares
Alan M.F. Souza

BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
Neural Network Programming with Java

Copyright © 2016 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written
permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in
critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy
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However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: January 2016

Production reference: 1060116

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

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ISBN 978-1-78588-090-2

www.packtpub.com
 Credits

Authors Project Coordinator

Fábio M. Soares Kinjal Bari
Alan M.F. Souza
Proofreader
Reviewer Safis Editing
Saeed Afzal
Indexer
Commissioning Editor Hemangini Bari
Amarabha Banerjee
Graphics
Acquisition Editor Disha Haria
Rahul Nair
Production Coordinator
Content Development Editor Nilesh Mohite
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Cover Work
Technical Editor Nilesh Mohite
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Copy Editor
Tani Kothari
 About the Authors

Fábio M. Soares holds a master's degree in applied computing from UFPA and
is currently a PhD candidate at the same university. He has been designing neural
network solutions since 2004 and has developed applications with this technique in
several fields, ranging from telecommunications to chemistry process modeling, and
his research topics cover supervised learning for data-driven modeling.
He is also self-employed, offering services such as IT infrastructure management as
well as database administration to a number of small- and medium-sized companies
in northern Brazil. In the past, he has worked for big companies such as Albras, one
of the most important aluminium smelters in the world, and Eletronorte, a great
power supplier in Brazil. He also has experience as a lecturer, having worked at the
Federal Rural University of Amazon and as a Faculty of Castanhal, both in the state
of Pará, teaching subjects involving programming and artificial intelligence.
He has published a number of works, many of them available in English, all
including the topics of artificial intelligence applied to some problem. His
publications include conference proceedings, such as the TMS (The Minerals Metals
and Materials Society), Light Metals and the Intelligent Data Engineering and
Automated Learning. He has also has published two book chapters for Intech.

I would like to give a special acknowledgement to God for having

given me the opportunity to get access to rich knowledge on this
theme, which I simply love doing research on. Special thanks to my
family, my father, Josafá, and mother, Maria Alice (in memoriam),
who would be very proud of me for this book, and also my brother,
Flávio, my aunt, Maria Irenice, as well as all my relatives who always
supported me in some way during my studies. I would also like to
thank the support of my advisor, Prof. Roberto Limão. I am very
grateful to him for having invited me to work with him on many
projects regarding artificial intelligence and neural networks. Also,
special thanks to my partners and former partners from Exodus
Sistemas, who have helped me in my challenges in programming and
IT infrastructure. Finally, I'd like to thank my friend Alan Souza, who
wrote this book with me, for having extended to me this authorship.
Alan M.F. Souza is computer engineer from Instituto de Estudos Superiores
da Amazônia (IESAM). He holds a post-graduate degree in project management
software and a master's degree in industrial processes (applied computing)
from Universidade Federal do Pará (UFPA). He has been working with neural
networks since 2009 and has worked with IT Brazilian companies developing in
Java, PHP, SQL, and other programming languages since 2006. He is passionate
about programming and computational intelligence. Currently, he is a professor at
Universidade da Amazônia (UNAMA) and a PhD candidate at UFPA.

Since I was a kid, I thought about writing a book. So, this book is a
dream come true and the result of hard work. I'd like to thank God
for giving me this opportunity. I'd also like to thank my father, Célio,
my mother, Socorro, my sister, Alyne, and my amazing wife, Tayná,
for understanding my absences and worries at various moments. I
am grateful to all the members of my family and friends for always
supporting me in difficult times and wishing for my success. I'd like
to thank all the professors who passed through my life, especially
Prof. Roberto Limão for introducing me the very first neural network
concept. I must register my gratitude to Fábio Soares for this great
partnership and friendship. Finally, I must appreciate the tireless
team at Packt Publishing for the invitation and for helping us in the
production process as a whole.
 About the Reviewer

Saeed Afzal, also known as Smac Afzal, is a professional software engineer and
technology enthusiast based in Pakistan. He specializes in solution architecture and
the implementation of scalable high-performance applications.

He is passionate about providing automation solutions for different business needs

on the Web. His current research and work includes the futuristic implementation of
a next-generation web development framework, which reduces development time
and cost and delivers productive websites with many necessary and killer features by
default. He is hopeful of launching his upcoming technology in 2016.

He has also worked on the book Cloud Bees Development by Packt Publishing.

You can found out more about his skills and experience at http://sirsmac.com.
He can be contacted at [email protected].

I would like to thank the Allah Almighty, my parents, and my wife,

Dr. H. Zara Saeed, for all their encouragement.
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 Table of Contents
Preface vii
Chapter 1: Getting Started with Neural Networks 1
Discovering neural networks 2
Why artificial neural network? 2
How neural networks are arranged 4
The very basic element – artificial neuron 5
Giving life to neurons – activation function 5
The fundamental values – weights 6
An important parameter – bias 7
The parts forming the whole – layers 7
Learning about neural network architectures 8
Monolayer networks 8
Multilayer networks 9
Feedforward networks 9
Feedback networks 10
From ignorance to knowledge – learning process 10
Let the implementations begin! Neural networks in practice 11
Summary 18
Chapter 2: How Neural Networks Learn 19
Learning ability in neural networks 19
How learning helps to solve problems 20
Learning paradigms 20
Supervised learning 20
Unsupervised learning 21
Systematic structuring – learning algorithm 22
Two stages of learning – training and testing 23
The details – learning parameters 24
Error measurement and cost function 25

[i]
Table of Contents

Examples of learning algorithms 26

Perceptron 26
Delta rule 27
Coding of the neural network learning 27
Learning parameter implementation 27
Learning procedure 29
Class definitions 30
Two practical examples 37
Perceptron (warning system) 37
ADALINE (traffic forecast) 41
Summary 46
Chapter 3: Handling Perceptrons 47
Studying the perceptron neural network 48
Applications and limitations of perceptrons 48
Linear separation 48
Classical XOR case 50
Popular multilayer perceptrons (MLPs) 52
MLP properties 52
MLP weights 53
Recurrent MLP 54
MLP structure in an OOP paradigm 55
Interesting MLP applications 56
Classification in MLPs 56
Regression in MLPs 58
Learning process in MLPs 60
Simple and very powerful learning algorithm – Backpropagation 61
Elaborate and potent learning algorithm – Levenberg–Marquardt 63
Hands-on MLP implementation! 65
Backpropagation in action 68
Exploring the code 68
Levenberg–Marquardt implementation 72
Practical application – types of university enrolments 75
Summary 78
Chapter 4: Self-Organizing Maps 79
Neural networks' unsupervised way of learning 80
Some unsupervised learning algorithms 80
Competitive learning or winner takes all 82

[ ii ]
 Table of Contents

Kohonen self-organizing maps (SOMs) 84

One-Dimensional SOM 85
Two-Dimensional SOM 86
Step-by-step of SOM learning 88
How to use SOMs 89
Coding of the Kohonen algorithm 90
Exploring the Kohonen class 92
Kohonen implementation (clustering animals) 95
Summary 98
Chapter 5: Forecasting Weather 99
Neural networks for prediction problems 100
No data, no neural net – selecting data 101
Knowing the problem – weather variables 102
Choosing input and output variables 103
Removing insignificant behaviors – Data filtering 103
Adjusting values – data preprocessing 104
Equalizing data – normalization 105
Java implementation for weather prediction 107
Plotting charts 107
Handling data files 108
Building a neural network for weather prediction 109
Empirical design of neural networks 112
Choosing training and test datasets 112
Designing experiments 113
Results and simulations 113
Summary 116
Chapter 6: Classifying Disease Diagnosis 117
What are classification problems, and how can neural networks
be applied to them? 118
A special type of activation function – Logistic regression 119
Multiple classes versus binary classes 120
Comparing the expected versus produced results – the
confusion matrix 121
Classification measures – sensitivity and specificity 122
Applying neural networks for classification 123
Disease diagnosis with neural networks 126
Using ANN to diagnose breast cancer 126
Applying NN for an early diagnosis of diabetes 131
Summary 134

[ iii ]
Table of Contents

Chapter 7: Clustering Customer Profiles 135

Clustering task 136
Cluster analysis 137
Cluster evaluation and validation 138
External validation 138
Applied unsupervised learning 139
Neural network of radial basis functions 139
Kohonen neural network 140
Types of data 141
Customer profiling 142
Preprocessing data 142
Implementation in Java 143
Card credit analysis for customer profiling 143
Summary 149
Chapter 8: Pattern Recognition (OCR Case) 151
What is pattern recognition all about? 152
Definition of classes among tons of data 152
What if the undefined classes are undefined? 153
External validation 154
How to apply neural networks in pattern recognition 154
Preprocessing the data 155
The OCR problem 156
Simplifying the task – digit recognition 156
Approach to digit representation 157
Let the coding begin! 157
Generating data 158
Building the neural network 160
Testing and redesigning – trial and error 161
Results 163
Summary 166
Chapter 9: Neural Network Optimization and Adaptation 167
Common issues in neural network implementations 168
Input selection 168
Data correlation 169
Dimensionality reduction 170
Data filtering 171
Structure selection 171

[ iv ]
 Table of Contents

Online retraining 172

Stochastic online learning 174
Implementation 174
Application 176
Adaptive neural networks 179
Adaptive resonance theory 179
Implementation 180
Summary 182
Appendix A: Setting up the NetBeans Environment 183
Download and install NetBeans 183
Setting up the NetBeans environment 188
Importing a project 191
Programming and running code with NetBeans 194
Debugging with NetBeans 195
Appendix B: Setting Up the Eclipse Environment 199
Download and install Eclipse 199
Setting up the Eclipse environment 204
Importing a project 205
Programming and running code with the Eclipse IDE 210
Debugging with the Eclipse IDE 211
Appendix C: References 213
Chapter 1 – Getting Started with Neural Networks 213
Chapter 2 – How Neural Networks Learn 213
Chapter 3 – Working with Perceptrons 213
Chapter 4 – Self-Organizing Maps 214
Chapter 5 – Forecasting the Weather 214
Chapter 6 – Disease Diagnosis 214
Chapter 7 – Clustering Customer Profiles 215
Chapter 8 – Pattern Recognition (the OCR Case) 215
Chapter 9 – Neural Network Optimization and Adaptation 215
Index 217

[v]
 Preface
The life of a programmer can be described as a continual never-ending learning
pathway. A programmer always faces challenges regarding new technology or new
approaches. Generally, during our lives, although we become used to repeated
things, we are always subjected to learn something new. The process of learning is
one of the most interesting topics in science, and there are a number of attempts to
describe or reproduce the human learning process.

The writing of this book was guided by the challenge of facing new content and
then mastering it. While the name neural networks may appear strange or even give
an idea that this book is about neurology, we strived to simplify these nuances by
focusing on your reasons for deciding to purchase this book. We intended to build
a framework that shows you that neural networks are actually simple and easy to
understand, and absolutely no prior knowledge on this topic is required to fully
understand the concepts we present here.

So, we encourage you to explore the content of this book to the fullest, beholding
the power of neural networks when confronting big problems but always with the
point of view of a beginner. Every concept addressed in this book is explained in easy
language, and also with a technical background. Our mission in this book is to give
you an insight into intelligent applications that can be written using a simple language.

Finally, we would like to thank all those who directly or indirectly have contributed
to this book and supported us from the very beginning, right from the Federal
University of Pará, which is the university that we graduated from, to the data and
component providers INMET (Brazilian Institute of Meteorology), Proben1, and
JFreeCharts. We want to give special thanks to our advisor Prof. Roberto Limão, who
introduced us to the subject of neural networks and coauthored many papers with
us in this field. We also acknowledge the work performed by several authors cited
in the references, which gave us a broader vision on neural networks and insights on
how to adapt them to the Java language in a didactic way.

[ vii ]
Preface

We welcome you to have a very pleasurable reading experience and you are
encouraged to download the source code and follow the examples presented
in this book.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Getting Started with Neural Networks, is an introductory foundation on
the neural networks and what they are designed for. You will be presented with
the basic concepts involved in this book. A brief review of the Java programming
language is provided. As in all subsequent chapters, an implementation of a neural
network in Java code is also provided.

Chapter 2, How Neural Networks Learn, covers the learning process of neural networks
and shows how data is used to that end. The complete structure and design of a
learning algorithm is presented here.

Chapter 3, Handling Perceptrons, covers the use of perceptrons, which are one of the
most commonly used neural network architectures. We present a neural network
structure containing layers of neurons and show how they can learn by data in
basic problems.

Chapter 4, Self-Organizing Maps, shows an unsupervised neural network architecture

(the Self-Organising Map), which is applied to finding patterns or clusters in records.

Chapter 5, Forecasting Weather, is the first practical chapter showing an interesting

application of neural networks in forecasting values, namely weather data.

Chapter 6, Classifying Disease Diagnostics, covers another useful task neural networks
are very good at—classification. In this chapter, you will be presented with a very
didactic but interesting application for disease diagnosis.

Chapter 7, Clustering Customer Profiles, talks about how neural networks are able to
find patterns in data, and a common application is to group customers that share the
same properties of buying.

Chapter 8, Pattern Recognition (OCR Case), talks about a very interesting and amazing
capability of recognizing patterns, including optical character recognition, and this
chapter explores how this can be done with neural networks in the Java language.

Chapter 9, Neural Network Optimization and Adaptation, shows advancements

regarding how to optimize and add adaptability to neural networks, thereby
strengthening their power.

[ viii ]
 Preface

What you need for this book

You'll need Netbeans (www.netbeans.org) or Eclipse (www.eclipse.org). Both are free
and available for download at the previously mentioned websites.

Who this book is for

This book is targeted at both developers and enthusiasts who have a basic or even no
Java programming knowledge. No previous knowledge of neural networks is required,
this book will teach from scratch. Even if you are familiar with neural networks and/or
other machine learning techniques but have little or no experience with Java, this book
will take you to the level at which you will be able to develop useful applications. Of
course, if you know basic programming concepts, you will benefit most from this book,
but no prior experience is required.

Conventions
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different
kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of
their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file
extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown
as follows: "In Java projects, the calculation of these values is done through the
Classification class."

A block of code is set as follows:

Data cardDataInput = new Data("data", "card_inputs_training.csv");
Data cardDataInputTestRNA = new Data("data", "card_inputs_test.
csv");
Data cardDataOutputTestRNA = new Data("data", "card_output_test.
csv");

New terms and important words are shown in bold.

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tips and tricks appear like this.

[ ix ]
Preface

Reader feedback
Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about
this book—what you liked or disliked. Reader feedback is important for us as it helps
us develop titles that you will really get the most out of.

To send us general feedback, simply e-mail [email protected], and mention

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[x]
 Preface

Piracy
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If you come across any illegal copies of our works in any form on the Internet, please
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Questions
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[email protected], and we will do our best to address the problem.

[ xi ]
 Getting Started with
Neural Networks
In this chapter, we will introduce neural networks and what they are designed for.
This chapter serves as a foundation layer for the subsequent chapters, while
it presents the basic concepts for neural networks. In this chapter, we will cover
the following:

• Artificial Neurons
• Weights and Biases
• Activation Functions
• Layers of Neurons
• Neural Network Implementation in Java

[1]
Getting Started with Neural Networks

Discovering neural networks

First, the term "neural networks" may create a snapshot of a brain in our minds,
particularly for those who have just been introduced to it. In fact, that's right, we
consider the brain to be a big and natural neural network. However, what if we talk
about artificial neural networks (ANNs)? Well, here comes an opposite word to
natural, and the first thing now that comes into our head is an image of an artificial
brain or a robot, given the term "artificial." In this case, we also deal with creating
a structure similar to and inspired by the human brain; therefore, this can be called
artificial intelligence. So, the reader who doesn't have any previous experience with
ANN now may be thinking that this book teaches how to build intelligent systems,
including an artificial brain, capable of emulating the human mind using Java codes,
isn't it? Of course, we will not cover the creation of artificial thinking machines such
as those from the Matrix trilogy movies; however, this book will discuss several
incredible capabilities that these structures can do. We will provide the reader
with Java codes for defining and creating basic neural network structures, taking
advantage of the entire Java programming language framework.

Why artificial neural network?

We cannot begin talking about neural networks without understanding their origins,
including the term as well. We use the terms neural networks (NN) and ANN
interchangeably in this book, although NNs are more general, covering the natural
neural networks as well. So, what actually is an ANN? Let's explore a little of the
history of this term.

In the 1940s, the neurophysiologist Warren McCulloch and the mathematician

Walter Pits designed the first mathematical implementation of an artificial neuron
combining the neuroscience foundations with mathematical operations. At that
time, many studies were being carried out on understanding the human brain and
how and if it could be simulated, but within the field of neuroscience. The idea
of McCulloch and Pits was a real novelty because it added the math component.
Further, considering that the brain is composed of billions of neurons, each one
interconnected with another million, resulting in some trillions of connections, we
are talking about a giant network structure. However, each neuron unit is very
simple, acting as a mere processor capable to sum and propagate signals.

[2]
 Chapter 1

On the basis of this fact, McCulloch and Pits designed a simple model for a
single neuron, initially to simulate the human vision. The available calculators or
computers at that time were very rare but capable of dealing with mathematical
operations quite well; on the other hand, even today tasks such as vision and sound
recognition are not easily programmed without the use of special frameworks, as
opposed to the mathematical operations and functions. Nevertheless, the human
brain can perform these latter tasks more efficiently than the first ones, and this fact
really instigates scientists and researchers.

So, an ANN is supposed to be a structure to perform tasks such as pattern

recognition, learning from data, and forecasting trends, just like an expert can do on
the basis of knowledge, as opposed to the conventional algorithmic approach that
requires a set of steps to be performed to achieve a defined goal. An ANN instead
has the capability to learn how to solve some task by itself, because of its highly
interconnected network structure.

Tasks Quickly Solvable by Humans Tasks Quickly Solvable by Computers

Classification of images Complex calculation
Voice recognition Grammatical error correction
Face identification Signal processing
Forecast events on the basis of Operating system management
experience

[3]
Getting Started with Neural Networks

How neural networks are arranged

It can be said that the ANN is a nature-inspired structure, so it does have similarities
with the human brain. As shown in the following figure, a natural neuron is
composed of a nucleus, dendrites, and axon. The axon extends itself into several
branches to form synapses with other neurons' dendrites.

So, the artificial neuron has a similar structure. It contains a nucleus (processing
unit), several dendrites (analogous to inputs), and one axon (analogous to output), as
shown in the following figure:

The links between neurons form the so-called neural network, analogous to the
synapses in the natural structure.

[4]
 Chapter 1

The very basic element – artificial neuron

Natural neurons have proven to be signal processors since they receive micro signals
in the dendrites that can trigger a signal in the axon depending on their strength or
magnitude. We can then think of a neuron as having a signal collector in the inputs
and an activation unit in the output that can trigger a signal that will be forwarded
to other neurons. So, we can define the artificial neuron structure as shown in the
following figure:

In natural neurons, there is a threshold potential that

when reached, fires the axon and propagates the signal to
the other neurons. This firing behavior is emulated with
activation functions, which have proven to be useful in
representing nonlinear behaviors in the neurons.

Giving life to neurons – activation function

The neuron's output is given by an activation function. This component adds
nonlinearity to neural network processing, which is needed because the natural
neuron has nonlinear behaviors. An activation function is usually bounded between
two values at the output, therefore being a nonlinear function, but in some special
cases, it can be a linear function.

The four most used activation functions are as follows:

• Sigmoid
• Hyperbolic tangent
• Hard limiting threshold
• Purely linear

[5]
Getting Started with Neural Networks

The equations and charts associated with these functions are shown in the
following table:

Function Equation Chart

Sigmoid

Hyperbolic
tangent

Hard
limiting
threshold

Linear

The fundamental values – weights

In neural networks, weights represent the connections between neurons and have the
capability to amplify or attenuate neuron signals, for example, multiply the signals,
thus modifying them. So, by modifying the neural network signals, neural weights
have the power to influence a neuron's output, therefore a neuron's activation will
be dependent on the inputs and on the weights. Provided that the inputs come from
other neurons or from the external world, the weights are considered to be a neural
network's established connections between its neurons. Thus, since the weights are
internal to the neural network and influence its outputs, we can consider them as
neural network knowledge, provided that changing the weights will change the
neural network's capabilities and therefore actions.

[6]
 Chapter 1

An important parameter – bias

The artificial neuron can have an independent component that adds an extra signal
to the activation function. This component is called bias.

Just like the inputs, biases also have an associated weight. This feature helps in the
neural network knowledge representation as a more purely nonlinear system.

The parts forming the whole – layers

Natural neurons are organized in layers, each one providing a specific level of
processing; for example, the input layer receives direct stimuli from the outside
world, and the output layers fire actions that will have a direct influence on the
outside world. Between these layers, there are a number of hidden layers, in the
sense that they do not interact directly with the outside world. In the artificial neural
networks, all neurons in a layer share the same inputs and activation function, as
shown in the following figure:

Neural networks can be composed of several linked layers, forming the so-called
multilayer networks. The neural layers can be basically divided into three classes:

• Input layer
• Hidden layer
• Output layer

In practice, an additional neural layer adds another level of abstraction of the

outside stimuli, thereby enhancing the neural network's capacity to represent more
complex knowledge.

[7]
Getting Started with Neural Networks

Every neural network has at least an input/output layer

irrespective of the number of layers. In the case of a
multilayer network, the layers between the input and the
output are called hidden.

Learning about neural network

architectures
Basically, a neural network can have different layouts, depending on how the
neurons or neuron layers are connected to each other. Every neural network
architecture is designed for a specific end. Neural networks can be applied to a
number of problems, and depending on the nature of the problem, the neural
network should be designed in order to address this problem more efficiently.

Basically, there are two modalities of architectures for neural networks:

• Neuron connections
°° Monolayer networks
°° Multilayer networks

• Signal flow
°° Feedforward networks
°° Feedback networks

Monolayer networks
In this architecture, all neurons are laid out in the same level, forming one single
layer, as shown in the following figure:

[8]
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It was like an Old Home Week, Mary Vanton declared, when the
three of them were all together on the ocean shore in front of the
beach house. Dick had come down with the promise to stay a week
and was living at the Coast Guard Station with Tommy. At least he
was sleeping there and so, formally, Tommy’s guest. Actually he was
Mary’s guest and all his hours were spent at her house or on the bay
with her and the children, or in the surf with the children. Except for
breakfast, which he and Tommy got for themselves, he ate at the
Vantons’. Tommy, too, contrived to spend a good deal of time at the
Vantons’ and to take rather better than half his meals there that
week. Although as Keeper he remained technically on duty at the
Coast Guard Station through the summer months, there was actually
little for him to do.
“It’s rather hard on the visitors,” he explained to Mary about his
absences, “who come over in droves, mornings and afternoons, but
even if I were there I couldn’t demonstrate the use of the apparatus
myself without the aid of any of my crew.”
The three sat regarding the ocean in which the four children were
frolicking. The two boys could both swim, but were wisely not
attempting to do more than duck in and out of the breakers.
“I think I shall stay here all winter,” Mary Vanton said, suddenly.
The men looked at her, but neither spoke.
“I have always loved the beach,” she went on, after a little
hesitation. “I have always thought I should like to live here. We shall
be comfortable and I think it will be good for the children.”
She spoke in a matter-of-fact way. Tommy Lupton wondered if she
was setting herself a vigil of watching and waiting against the
possibility and improbability of her husband’s return. Richard Hand
also thought of this, but decided—he could hardly have said why—
that there was something she wanted to think out, some plan she
wanted to arrive at respecting herself and the children. Here, in a
comparative isolation, she could work it out for herself. It seemed
more in her character, somehow.
 VII
When he left, Guy Vanton had in his pocket the sum of $350. With
part of this he bought a railway ticket to San Francisco. He boarded
the train, and as it was evening, dined, retreated to the club car,
smoked and read for a couple of hours, and then went to his
compartment.
The main thing was plainly to hit upon something to do that would
make a little money, enough for his necessities, while he made
acquaintance with the world, the real world, the world outside
himself, outside Blue Port, outside his peculiar past.
It had taken him a long time to realize that what he needed, what
he must have if life were to become worth living, was a touchstone
in the shape of some direct experience, real and rough—something
that would not be eaten away by the acid of his thoughts nor carven
into gargoyles and grotesques, the chisellings of memory.
Guy Vanton was a poet. It was natural that he should recall the lives
and adventures of other poets, and in the performance of Vachel
Lindsay he found an example of what he sought. Lindsay had gone
about the country with scrip and wallet preaching a gospel, the
gospel of beauty, exchanging his poems, printed on slips of paper,
for food and lodging. In the Colorado ranges, along Southern roads
to the doors of mountaineers’ cabins, by Kansas wheatfields, and
over stretches of prairie, from farmhouse to farmhouse Lindsay had
travelled—chanting, reading, conversing, discoursing—and these
adventures he had afterward chronicled. Guy had no armful of
poems to read in exchange for food and a bed; he was certainly not
the possessor of a gospel that people would stop to hear. He could
not emulate Lindsay and the idea of doing it, to give him credit,
never entered his head. What struck him was the fact that in
America, at any rate, there was still room for a pioneer. Americans
find something zestful and admirable in the spectacle of a man
breaking a new path.
 VIII
He was a long time turning the matter over in his mind. And after it
all, he could make up his mind to one thing only. He would go
through with what he had begun. This journey to San Francisco, for
instance. Once there he would look about.... He could, at any rate,
go to the Federal Employment Bureau, and see what he could get in
the way of work. A job. Something to do. Something to worry about.
Something two-fisted, hard ... but not hopeless.

IX
He got it. Lying in San Francisco Bay was the British ship Sea
Wanderer, of Liverpool, a vessel of 2,000 tons, old and rather
disreputable in appearance, ready to carry such cargo as she could
get and make a precarious profit for her owners. Soon she would be
scrapped. That is, if she did not go to pieces first.
And yet despite the clumsiness of her outline, with all her sail set,
she was a beauty, a perfect swan of a ship; a swan with a streaked
and dark and dirty breast and body. She had loaded with grain at
Port Costa and now lay anchored in midstream waiting to get a crew.
The skipper, a Welshman of Cardiff, had a charter to fulfil and was
rapidly growing frantic. He was shipping anything and anybody who
offered. He took a sharp look at Guy Vanton, noted the fact that
here was a man no longer young, noted the further fact that this
man no longer young was a person of intelligence and education,
found out that Guy had had no sea experience, cursed a little,
computed wages, remembered that Guy would be so many added
pounds of beef on a rope and took him.
The passage was from San Francisco to Leith in Scotland. In the
course of it Guy put on fifteen pounds and came to a clear
understanding with himself and at least one man of the crew.
They fought, he and this other man, in the waist, surrounded by a
ring of seamen whose sympathy was entirely against Guy and with
the Scotchman, named Macpherson. Macpherson was about ten
pounds heavier than Guy but made the mistake of clinching.
Whereupon Guy turned the fight into a wrestling match and threw
his opponent. Macpherson’s head striking on an iron butt, there was
no more battle in him that day. Nor did he challenge Guy in the rest
of the passage.
Guy’s understanding with himself was as forcible and as fortuitous. It
was gained, as such comprehensions are, in loneliness and in
struggle. He got some of it on the ship’s yards, striving with half-
frozen fingers to clutch the wet and stiffened sail. He got some more
of it as he lay at night in the tropics on the hatch, looking up at a
star-sprinkled and gently rocking sky. He got most of it in the
spectacle of his fellows, a race of men dedicated to the achievement
of a common purpose for no real or visible reward. Certainly they did
not sail the seas for the sake of the few dollars it put in their
pockets. They could live more comfortably ashore in the easeful jails
for vagrants—“with running water and everything,” as one of them
put it. They were where they were for the sake of doing something
together. They would sail that ship from port to port. They would sail
her along a trackless path across the eternal frontier of the ocean in
a voyage without precedent. Every ship, it came home to Guy
Vanton, is a Santa Maria; every sailor a Columbus. If they failed,
they failed gallantly; if they succeeded, they succeeded in an
enterprise bigger than themselves.
And they did succeed. At night, under the glare of the arc-lights,
alongside a stone quay at Leith they stood, a patient little group up
forward, and heard the mate, standing on the fo’c’s’le head, address
them with the immemorial benediction of the sea, four words:
“That’ll do ye, men.”
A straggling cheer went up and they turned to the shore.
 X
Guy Vanton saw now what he had never seen before, what he had
come more than 15,000 miles to see: that the world of men and
women is a fellowship into which all are admitted in such degree as
they care to enter and on such terms as they make for themselves.
Without any subtleties he perceived that the past could bind him
only in so far as he allowed it to do so. It was not his father who
proposed him for fellowship in the community of men and women,
nor could his father withhold that fellowship from him.
Nor his mother, nor anything that they had done or left undone.
With the birth of every mortal a new and clean page is turned in
human history.
Every man writes his own page. What had he written? And he was
getting out of middle age. There was not so much more time left to
write. Not so much space.
He would go home to her whom he should never have left; to her
whose page opened facing his; to her, the mother of his children,
whom he had left to teach them, unaided by him, how to write on
the clean, white page.
Together they would work out something better than themselves.
What is written, lives on. What they wrote would stand as a record,
for better or worse, after they were through inscribing it. The thing
was—it must be done together.
He wandered about Edinburgh for a week and then shipped for New
York from Liverpool. This was in early winter.

XI
Before Richard Hand said good-bye to Mary Vanton that September
he told her frankly of his love for her.
“I am not doing a dishonourable thing,” he insisted. “If I tell you
this, now, it is my right to speak and your right to hear.”
Mary Vanton sat looking directly at him, the brilliance gone from her
blue eyes, the depths in them showing, the depths in her showing,
too, in the way she listened, and the words she uttered. Her
wonderful hair, darkly red, lay framed against the white linen of a
chair covering, a chair with a tall back that seemed to shield and
protect her and bring out in relief the milky whiteness of her fine
skin, unchanged by the sun and salt air, like a pure and unspotted
marble.
“No,” she said, slowly, “it is not dishonourable. For it is not myself,
Mary Vanton, that you love, but the girl Mermaid. I am not she. I am
much altered.”
“You are Mermaid,” he said, simply, and in his voice there was
reverence.
She shook her head at this and seemed to fall to pondering the
questions his confession raised.
“Your husband,” he went on, “has deliberately turned his back. It is
necessary that you should have some material assistance. It will be
necessary—from time to time. I don’t mean money, but I do mean
counsel, advice, someone to talk things over with, help with the
children, particularly with the boys. Young John, for example. He’s
fourteen and you are sending him away to school. You’re letting me
take him and you don’t know what it means to me!” Like most
people, Dick Hand was not ashamed to show feeling, though he
hesitated, embarrassed, before a revelation of the depth of it. And
this went deep. He lifted his head abruptly and his glance pierced
the blue surface of the woman’s eyes and sank silently to
unfathomable soundings.
In those strange regions they met. It was like the embodiment of a
fancy as old as Kingsley’s “Water-Babies.” But it was not a meeting
of sprites, not a meeting in play. She was Mermaid; he was Merman.
She was the incarnation of youth for him; he was the incarnation of
dreams for her. Each saw in the other something lost or denied.
“You are what I would most wish to be, were I not Mary Vanton,”
she was saying, evenly, and he found it hard to believe that she was
uttering the words, so magically did they echo his silent thought.
“Remember that I, too, was a girl. I also studied—chemistry. Call it
alchemy—wonderworking—the miracle of facts invested with the
romance of their exploration and discovery. In my simplicity and
eagerness I dreamed for myself a career.... You have had the
career.... In your simplicity and hopefulness you dreamed for
yourself the perpetuation of youth in an ideal love and the renewal
of youth in your children.... That—has been mine. I have had the
greater satisfaction. I have it now.
“But mine is the basic satisfaction. I have had, I still have, an ideal
love. I have my children. The rest I can forego. The other dream I
can have as a vicarious satisfaction in the splendid work you have
done and are doing. You, on the other hand, have not had the
underlying satisfaction that has been mine.... These things cannot
be undone. We have to deal with them as they are. We have to
make the most of them, exploit them bravely, gallantly. It is the feat
of living which, I suppose, everyone is called upon to perform.”
“You are right,” he said, affirmatively. “But you are also partly wrong.
I was your lover and am now your friend; I love your children, and it
is at least permitted me to love them as if they were my own.”
“They are that part of me which it is still permitted you to love,” she
said, gravely. “And as a friend, as an old friend, as my one-time
lover, as the realizer of that part of my dream which I in my own
person never can realize—as such you are near and dear to me.
Between us there exists a strong tie. I do not think that anything will
ever break it.”
“It is unbreakable and it exists. It can be no different, it need be no
stronger,” he avowed.
A few moments later she heard him on the veranda, talking with her
oldest boy.
“I’ll swim you a hundred yards in the bay and beat you,” he was
saying to John in a youthfully challenging voice.
“You’re on,” replied the fourteen-year-old, concisely. “Say, you can’t
do it, though!”
They moved away and their voices dwindled. Mary Vanton listened
to the attenuating sound of their movements and chatter. A great
thankfulness filled her heart, and when she rose from the chair
where she had been sitting, motionless, tears were in her eyes.

XII
But Tom Lupton was not articulate. He walked beside Mary Vanton,
sat at her table, declined cigars and apologetically lit his pipe
instead, looked at his hostess and old friend with something kindling
in his countenance, talked—the casual talk that there was to
exchange in cheerful barter—and said nothing of what was in his
heart. Yet Mary Vanton knew what was there.
The same thing was there that had been in the heart of the
youngster, the boy, Tommy Lupton, she had known. It would be
there always. But his attitude was different from Richard Hand’s. In
spite of an existence that gave him plenty of opportunity for thinking
things out there were things that Tommy never would think out. He
would only dumbly feel.
If he couldn’t think them out he certainly couldn’t utter them in
words. Without doubt he thought it wrong to feel them. All his life
he had loved Mary Vanton just as, in a boyish way, he had loved the
girl Mermaid. But he did not realize it; would have thought it a
wicked thing in him if he had realized it.
His attitude was simple. Mary developed it one day and defined it for
her own satisfaction—developed and defined it for his unconscious
satisfaction, too. He would feel the better for it, she knew, though
he would not know why.
“What,” she asked him as they were walking along the ocean shore
together, “are you going to do—eventually?”
Tom Lupton considered.
“Oh, I suppose I shall just stick along here,” he confessed. “It isn’t
much. It’s all I have to look forward to.
“Other men,” he said, a moment later, “haven’t any special thing to
look forward to, either. Take the fellows at the station. All the older
ones are married and expect to retire on their pensions some day
and take it easy. They’ve children. They can watch them grow up.
I’m not married. I’ll probably stay in the harness as long as I’m able
and then I’ll have to quit, I suppose, whether I want to or not. I can
watch other people’s children growing up. I can occupy myself some
way. That’s what it comes to mostly—occupying yourself some way—
doesn’t it?”
“Why don’t you marry?” If it was a cruelty he was mercifully
unconscious of it.
He looked straight at her and replied: “I’ve never thought of
marrying.”
It was literal truth. Mary Vanton understood that instantly. He had,
from boyhood, always put her clean above him. He had fought for
her, a boyish battle, and been defeated; and after that, while he
continued to feel the same way about her, while he continued to love
her, the fancy of adolescence maturing into the devotion of the
grown man, he had never figured himself in the running. She had
stepped outside of the circle of his life, and when she reëntered it, it
was as the wife of another man—which was the whole story.
“Of course,” he was saying, with his admirable simplicity and
acceptance of the facts—so far as he recognized them. “Of course I
wish I might have married. It would have been pleasanter. I should
either have been much happier or very much unhappier.”
Again he looked at her with his smile in which the boy he had been
was so clearly visible. When he smiled the little wrinkles at the
comers of his eyes, got from much seaward gazing, made him look
younger.
“I’m worried about you,” he told her, with the directness that was to
be expected of him. “Do you think you ought to stay here this
winter?”
“I think I must,” she answered. “It’s not from any idea of shunning
people but because I have got to arrive at some way of living. If Guy
were dead I could make an unalterable decision. With Guy alive I
have to consider the possibility of his return, the probability of it.”
“You feel sure he will return?”
“Quite sure. If I thought he were never to return I would reconcile
myself to it as best I could, make my plans, and go ahead. Even
then I should have to provide for the fact that he might come back.
But believing as I do that he is sure to come back, and feeling as I
do utterly uncertain how long he will be away, I am very badly
perplexed.”
“Why do anything?” he asked, wonderingly. “It is not as if you had to
earn your bread.”
“It is more difficult,” she explained. “When you have to earn your
bread, and your children’s bread, you are spared the necessity of
any decision. You just set about earning it the best way you can, and
puzzle over nothing except how more advantageously to earn it. Or
how to earn more.
“Those are not my problems and I have everything to be thankful
for, no doubt, that they aren’t. And yet—I wonder if it isn’t easier to
deal with difficulties under the pressure of necessity? Do you realize
that I have no necessity, immediate or remote, pressing upon me to
compel me to address myself to my problem, to solve it?”
This was not so subtle but that Tom Lupton saw it and said so.
“You’d be better off, in a way, if you had to make up your mind to
something,” he agreed. “But what I can’t see is what you need to
make up your mind to.”
Mary Vanton permitted herself a slight gesture of spreading hands.
“If Guy were to be gone but a short time, if I knew that, could feel
certain of it, I would simply stay here and keep things as they are,”
she declared. “The children come first in any calculation I may make.
But if I knew he were to be gone for a period of years I’d do quite
differently. I’d go into something, something where I could have
them with me and where we’d all be pretty constantly at work
together. A big farm, I think. I don’t know anything about farming,
but I dare say I could learn something about it, and surely a boy like
John could learn it from the ground up—or perhaps farming is
learned from the ground down,” she finished, smilingly.
“What I am getting at is this,” she went on. “I feel the need of
productive labour. I am not a theorist and I have no set of
passionate political or economic interests. But I count it a real
misfortune that at this crisis in my life I do not have to work for my
living and my children’s living. It would be better for me if I had to,
and it will be better for them if they are trained to. Under the trust
left by Guy I can’t impoverish myself and the children if I wished to;
and certainly I don’t wish to. Money is an obligation, just as much as
any other form of property, and more than most. The obligation is to
use it as rightly as you know how, as productively as you can. And
that obligation certainly isn’t discharged by filling our five mouths
with food and putting clothes on the five of us. It is rather more fitly
discharged by educating ourselves, but it can only be fully
discharged in the end by productive labour. That’s the conscientious
and dutiful view I take of it; from the purely selfish view there is a
good deal also to be said for a big farm. We need a new set of
interests and healthful occupation. It needn’t be a farm, except that
I can’t think of any other productive occupation where the children
could healthfully bear their share. I couldn’t,” she added,
humorously, “organize a factory for the five of us nor set up a
factory in which we would be much use to the world or to
ourselves.”
“You could carry out this idea, anyway,” Tom Lupton meditated
aloud.
“I shouldn’t feel that I could embark on anything of the sort if I felt
certain of Guy’s return within a comparatively short time,” she
corrected. “If he comes back and approves of my idea we ought to
execute it together. That would be as it should be. If I knew he were
not going to return for five or ten years I would go ahead. Because
five or ten years would change all of us so much that an absolutely
new adjustment would be necessary, anyway. And it would be as
easily made in an entirely different setting as in the old one but a
little altered—more easily, I have no doubt. You must remember,
Tommy, that after years of any absence we always return to make
rediscoveries. The delight is in finding something essential and
unchanged in what is superficial and very much changed. If things
are outwardly the same we are disappointed and stop there with our
disappointment—we never do get beneath the surface again.”
Big Tom Lupton, with his simple way of viewing everything about
him, felt himself beyond his depth.
“How will you decide what to do?” he asked, finally.
“This winter will tell me,” Mary Vanton asserted. “I can do nothing
about it before spring—I won’t, at least. If by spring I have received
no word, if there is then no indication, nothing to guide me, I shall
have to go ahead in my own fashion, take all our lives in my own
hands, run my own risks, make my own mistakes, stand or fall by
what I do and the way I do it.”

XIII
Richard Hand had taken John Vanton to a school in New Jersey and
had seen him settled there before going back to New York to
prepare for a job in Arizona. The Western enterprise necessitated a
long absence from his office in lower Broadway, and made it
improbable that he would be able to see the Vantons for nearly a
year. But late in October Mary Vanton got a letter from him in which
he said:

Things are in such shape here that I think I shall be able to run
away for a couple of weeks at Christmas time, and if you like I
will go to the school and pick up John, who will be coming home
about then for the holidays. I am going to invite myself to come
and stay with you part of the time I am East—the first part of it.
After Christmas I shall have to get back to the New York office
and clean up some work there. May I come?
I do not suppose you have heard from Guy, though I sincerely
hope you may have. I made some inquiries in New York and did
a little investigation by wire. Through a friend in Washington I
had a search made of records of the Federal Employment
Bureaus in some of the cities and we found that under his own
name he had been shipped on a British vessel, the Sea
Wanderer, of Liverpool, sailing from San Francisco to Leith,
Scotland. That was months ago.
The Sea Wanderer is an old ship, a squarerigger, and she went
around Cape Horn. Of course I inquired right away about her
and learned that she arrived safely at Leith after a passage of
five months—not very swift, you see. I wasn’t able to find out
what became of Guy after that, but he reached Scotland all
right, for there was no trouble on the passage and no one was
lost or died. He was paid off at the Board of Trade office in Leith
along with the rest of the crew.
He appears to have gone straight to San Francisco from New
York and to have shipped there on this passage before doing
anything else. The time interval is too short to have allowed him
to do anything else. It was not more than ten days, apparently,
from the time he left New York to the day the Sea Wanderer
sailed. The people at the Federal Employment Bureau in San
Francisco have no recollection of him. They don’t recall anything
he said nor what he looked like. He was just one of hundreds of
others they deal with every day. The only actual identification,
of course, lies in the name, and it is highly improbable that the
man who was shipped on the Sea Wanderer was some other
Guy Vanton. I think that, in a way, you will be glad to know that
he kept his own name. It makes him seem more like a fellow
going about his proper business and not trying to hide or run
away from something.
He wasn’t doing that, I feel sure. He was just going after
something he hadn’t got. Let’s hope he gets it and comes back
safely with it.
John is a trump. I like that older boy of yours and suspect he’s
got great stuff in him—not that it surprises me. As your boy I
should be surprised if he hadn’t. I rather expected, though, that
he would say something about his father, talk to me about him
in some way, try to get my opinion or something of that sort.
But he never opened his mouth on the subject. He’s self-
contained without being conceited. He’ll get on well at school.
And whatever befalls, when he gets a little older you are going
to be able to have real reliance on him. He writes me regularly
and seems to like the place and the fellows. I think he inherits
your taste for chemistry, and as I’m a chemical engineer he
thinks something of me on that account. In fact, when we’re
alone together it’s pretty much a case of “talk shop” for me all
the time. Not that I mind that! I never knew before how
interesting shop talk can be. And if I give him my confidence he
won’t withhold his. I wonder, anyway, if a certain relation of
friendliness and exchanged confidence and shared confidence
doesn’t come rather easier between two people who aren’t
joined by ties of blood. It has sometimes struck me, from what
I’ve seen of other men and their sons, that the very fact that a
man is a boy’s father somehow makes it more difficult for him to
come into a real confidential relation with the boy—at times,
anyway. For even nowadays the father is more or less an
 embodiment of Authority, more or less the sovereign, and
intimacy with the sovereign is not particularly easy. Since I have
no real authority over John he is rather more inclined to listen to
my advice and heed it. “If I were you” gets farther, lots of
times, than “You must.” Well, I won’t theorize about it; the fact
is what matters, and the fact is what gives me immense
pleasure and a sort of general gratitude that belongs to you and
John and things in general.
I wish there were some way of finding out what Guy did after
reaching Leith, but from the day when he left the Sailors’ Home
there no trace of him appears. I have had the people at the
Sailors’ Home questioned but he did not talk about his plans.
They remember him there rather distinctly—not his personal
appearance but the fact that he seemed to be a man of
education and breeding. When he left he took his dunnage with
him, which would make it seem probable that he intended to go
to sea again. If so he may be on his way home now. I sincerely
hope so. I not only hope he’ll come back, but I hope he’ll come
back as speedily as possible and in his best estate, physically
and mentally and spiritually.
Tell me what the girls would most like for Christmas presents.
And if there is anything I can get for you on my way East let me
know. John and I are planning to spend a day in New York
buying some gifts. What would you like? I shall bring along a
toy wireless outfit for Guy, Jr.

Mary Vanton read this letter with attention. The news it contained of
her husband stirred her profoundly. At first she wondered if the
career of Captain Vanton had had anything to do with Guy Vanton
going to sea; but after some reflection she concluded it had not. Guy
had always loved the sea, which was one of the reasons they had
built the beach house she was living in. The sea had been a mutual
bond between them—the sea and the beach. Fully half of the verse
he had from time to time written dealt with the ocean, and he and
she had shared a certain interpretation of it, that the sea was the
last, the irremovable, the perpetual frontier on which the race of
men could renew themselves, renew their hardihood, exhibit their
courage, their daring, their resourcefulness, their faith.
“The sea,” Guy had once avowed, “is the only frontier that never
vanishes and never recedes. Men triumph over it: ‘A thousand fleets
roll over thee in vain,’ and the same victory has to be won anew
each time a ship sets sail. Steam and wireless and all sorts of other
inventions make sea travel safer and easier and swifter only in the
long run, and in the case of the ‘thousand fleets’—in the case of any
single voyage or any single ship the actual risks, the possible
hardships, the prerequisite of latent courage and absolute devotion
on the part of the men who sail her, remain exactly the same as
when the Phoenicians went forth in trading vessels and shuddered to
go beyond the pillars of Hercules, into the dark, unknown ocean that
rolled away to the end of the world.”
This, he had argued, and Mary Vanton agreed with him, constituted
the real immortality of the sea and the undying freshness of its
adventure. They both felt that there was something in their attitude
that wasn’t a part of the ordinary landsman’s attitude toward deep
water. Both had been brought up in the tradition of tall ships and
men who manned them. It showed in their outlook on life and their
tastes in reading. Joseph Conrad was the passion of both. Although
they agreed in thinking his greatest novel to be not a sea tale at all
—“Nostromo”—they were of one mind respecting his finest story.
Together they picked “Youth,” despite the apparent preponderance
of critical opinion in favour of “Heart of Darkness.” Perhaps this was
because in their own lives they had their heart of darkness; and in
Guy’s case there must have been, in respect of “Youth,” an
inextinguishable yearning for something he could hardly be said ever
to have enjoyed in his own strange and sad experience.
Much of all this passed through Mary Vanton’s mind as she stood on
the wide veranda of the beach house, alone. The water was now far
too cold for bathing and the children had scattered to their own
devices. It was a chilly, sunshiny, October day. Hull down on the
restless horizon Mary could see a steamship moving almost
imperceptibly westward. By nightfall she would be at anchor off
Quarantine. That same night or the next morning her passengers
would troop ashore and add themselves to New York’s millions. And
even as she watched this liner creep along, not more rapidly than
the minute hand of a watch, a thin plume of smoke on the eastern
horizon announced the presence of another vessel. So they followed
each other, day in and day out, going west, going east, seldom
missing from the scene for an hour. More rarely you saw a great ship
under full sail come up over the rim of the world, move past with
curved white beauty, and then sink over the world’s rim again.

XIV
The vessel struck with the greatest suddenness and with such force
that even above the roar of the wind and the thunder of the surf
pounding at the foot of the dunes the people gathered in the Vanton
house heard the dull crash and jumped to their feet.
Dick Hand exclaimed: “What’s that!”
Mary Vanton answered with the thought that was in all their minds:
“A ship!”
Her mind ran instantly to the children, absurdly, as if they were in
danger.
Seven-year-old Mermaid, the youngest, was in bed and was not
likely to be awakened by sounds outside. Keturah and the two boys
were with Richard Hand and herself.
She spoke to the three of them with stern distinctness:
“Children, whatever happens, you mustn’t leave the house. You
mustn’t step off the veranda. The sea is up to the foot of the dunes.”
She called the servant and governess and ordered them to keep to
the house and to help her.
Richard Hand was already at the telephone and calling the Lone
Cove Station.
“Hello, Tommy!” they heard him say. “A ship has struck just opposite
the house. Wait a moment.” He lifted his head from the transmitter
and asked: “Can you see anything?”
“They’re sending up rockets,” replied Mary Vanton. She was at the
window, the two boys crowding close to her to look out.
“It’s certain,” Richard Hand said into the telephone. “We can see her
distress signals.... All right.”
He hung up the receiver with a crash and went to the window to see
for himself.
The utter darkness of the angry night was broken, at a distance of
perhaps 400 yards from where these onlookers were clustered, by a
stream of rockets, which lit the blackness faintly for an instant and
then expired, making the night seem darker than before. The
illumination was not sufficient to disclose much of the vessel but she
seemed to be a schooner or ship with three masts. Not a large craft;
something of about 2,500 tons and something more than 200 feet
long, Richard Hand surmised.
There was no sail on her that they could see. What little she had
been carrying must have been blown from the bolt-ropes before she
struck, and this, indeed, had probably caused the disaster to her,
forcing her on a lee shore. The gale was from the southwest. It had
been blowing all day, with hail and snow flurries, and it was bitterly
cold.
Mary Vanton left the window and taking the servant went into the
kitchen. She dragged out a washboiler, took from a cupboard a fresh
can of coffee, emptied the coffee in the washboiler, but not without
measuring and estimating, put the boiler on the stove and began
pouring in water.
She ransacked the pantry and sent her older boy to the cellar. From
that region John emerged bringing a side of bacon.
“Bread!” exclaimed Mary, and for a moment she stopped in complete
perplexity. Then a recollection relieved her.
“John,” she told the boy, “go down cellar again and bring up all the
hardtack there is there. Bring it up a little at a time. Don’t try to
bring it all at once. There’s plenty of that, anyway.”
Her attention was caught by certain preparations that Dick Hand was
making.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to join the United States Coast Guard on a temporary
assignment to active duty,” he responded, grinning as he struggled
to get into a pair of hipboots belonging to her husband. Mary’s face
showed a moment’s dismay but cleared instantly.
“Tommy will appreciate it.”
“He’d better,” Dick asserted. “Pretty way to celebrate the holiday
season, this!” But he changed his tone a second later. “I ought to be
kicked for jesting about it,” he said. “Think of the poor devils on that
boat!”
He had got into the boots and was wrapping an oilskin coat about
him.
John and Guy, holding the lookout at the window, shouted: “The
man on patrol is out here sending up answering rockets.”
Keturah, dissatisfied, came to her mother’s side in the kitchen.
“Can’t I help here?” she asked.
“Break out some of the ship’s biscuit,” replied her mother, perhaps
unconsciously falling into sea speech. Keturah began opening a box
of the hardtack.
Having got under way the work of preparing food and a hot drink for
those who would soon be needing both, Mary Vanton allowed herself
a moment at the window with the boys.
Above the steady diapason of wind and ocean came sounds of men
shouting faintly. This was the crew of the Lone Cove Station,
dragging apparatus to the dunes close by the Vanton house. A
moment later Keeper Tom Lupton came in, banging the door; that
being, indeed, the only way to close it against the force of the gale.
Mary Vanton hastened toward him.
“We shall go around the house,” he said, without wasting time in
greeting her. “We can work better in the lee of the house. It will be a
wonderful protection to us and if the line falls short it will be less
likely to be fouled.”
“The whole house is yours,” Mary Vanton told him, quietly. “Use it.
Come and go as you like. I am making gallons of hot coffee; there
will be bacon and bread or hardtack.”
He thanked her and praised her with a single glance. “I must be
getting outside,” he said, and left.
The boys had deserted the south window for one looking east where
they could see the life savers bringing up their apparatus on the
crest of a dune close by the house. Their mother spoke to them:
“John and Guy, bring in wood and get some dry wood up from the
cellar and start fires in the fireplaces.”
They obeyed willingly enough. Mary went into the kitchen and sped
the servant and her daughter in the task of victualling.

XV
It is bad enough to move Coast Guard apparatus along the level
ocean shore, dragging it through the sand, but to move it back from
the ocean, up and down over the uneven line of the sand dunes, is
more difficult still. When the ocean is up to the foot of the dunes
and is biting angrily at their bases this difficult portage has to be
made.
The Vanton house was not more than a half mile east of the Lone
Cove Station, so the Coast Guardsmen’s task was not as bad as it
might have been in this respect. Sometimes it is necessary to drag
life boats mounted on trucks, and all the other paraphernalia, for
several miles.
To be able to work with such a base as this big house right at hand
was an immense advantage, and to be able to work in the lee of it,
more or less huddled under its eastern wall, seemed a piece of
fortune hardly less great.
Everything else was about the worst it could have been in the
circumstances. The darkness was absolute. The gale was of
hurricane force, blowing at more than 60 miles an hour. It was early
in the evening, not yet ten o’clock, and there was all the night to
fight through. The barometer, as Keeper Tom Lupton well knew, was
still falling, and the height of the storm had probably not been
reached and would not be reached until toward morning. The
chance of the sky lightening, until daybreak compelled a recession of
the darkness, was almost nil. The chance of the wind abating was no
better. And even should the night become a little lighter and the
wind lessen, the tremendous seas which were assaulting the sand
dunes and breaking over the stranded ship would not go down. It
takes hours after a heavy gale for the sea it has kicked up to lessen
perceptibly.
The wind, against which a man could sometimes hardly stand or
keep upon his feet, was not the worst thing for those who had to
make the fight to save life from the shore. It was hailing
intermittently and the ice particles were fairly driven into the skin of
men’s faces like a peppering of fine shot. There was little snow on
the ground, which was a thing to be thankful for. More, however,
would come later when the wind began to abate.
Keeper Tom marshalled his men and his machinery as close as
possible to the Vanton house. Within forty minutes from the time he
himself finished speaking with Richard Hand, his men and his
apparatus were posted and he was ready to begin operations. In the
meantime, Dick Hand had bumped against him in the blackness and
shouted indistinctly:
“Tommy!... Dick! Anything you want ... help you....”
“Thanks!” the keeper had bawled back with his hands on his old
friend’s shoulders.
The little cannon began booming and a thin line began whipping
seaward.
Nothing was visible. What those ashore would have seen, if there
had been light, was a three-masted ship which had struck the outer
bar and had been driven past that until she lay on the inner bar, so
far inshore that it might have been possible to wade to her at low
tide in peaceful weather. The stress of her blow on the outer bar and
the pounding to which she had been subjected in being driven past
it, as well as the continuous assault she was now under, had
battered her very badly. She had not opened up at her seams but
would, and at almost any instant. Her foremast had been carried
away completely—snapped off a few feet above her deck. Some of
her yards—the spars carrying her sails—were gone; two of these
dangled loosely, menacing the lives of any one on her decks. But
there was no one on her decks. All hands had, of necessity, taken to
the rigging.
They could just be glimpsed by the flare of her rocketing distress
signals—little dark figures in the maintop, in the topgallant
crosstrees, in the mizzen shrouds. They appeared not at all human.
They seemed to be nothing but slight lumps or warts on the fine
tracery of the rigging, the slender filaments of masts and yards and
stays, wood, wire and rope, limned against the formidable blackness
in which sky and sea met each other and were indistinguishable.
No boat, of course, could live for a moment in the sea that was
raging. The only chance was in getting a line to the vessel. And in
doing that every instant counted.
The first shots with the line were useless, as was to have been
expected. It was necessary to determine direction and drift, and to
make a heavy and exact allowance for windage. The ship lay directly
south, the gale was from the southwest. The line had to be shot
almost straight against the wind, which then carried it to the south.
But so shot, it became evident that it was falling short. A heavier
charge was used and still the line fell short.
“We can’t stay here,” bellowed Keeper Tom who, when he wanted to
give an order, was under the practical necessity of bawling it
separately in each man’s ear. “We’ll have to leave the lee of the
house and go to windward, well to windward.”
This was that they might not have to shoot the line squarely in the
teeth of the gale when the wind, getting under it, lifted it high in the
air and seriously shortened the horizontal distance it travelled—like a
“pop” fly in a baseball game or a golf ball driven straight into the
wind.
Leaving the lee of the Vanton house was just another hardship
added to those they were already enduring. All the apparatus was
moved and a post was taken on a dune well to the west. From this
site better results were got almost immediately. The gale still carried
the line to the eastward but this could be allowed for and the lateral
journey of the line was not materially lessened. After a few shots to
get the wind allowance the line was dropped squarely over the
wreck.

XVI
Inside the house Mary Vanton, having assured herself that there
would be plenty to eat and drink when it was wanted, having
approved the work of her sons in building roaring wood fires in the
fireplaces, went upstairs and began to overhaul bedding. In this she
had the help of the governess while Keturah and the servant
remained active in the kitchen. There was a great deal of bedding in
the house and Mary got it all out. Some of it she carried down to
one of the living rooms, requisitioning John and Guy to struggle with
the mattresses.
Then she went to her medicine closet and looked that over. Most of
the rough-and-ready remedies were there in reasonable quantities.
Alcohol, peroxide of hydrogen, iodine, camphor, and so on. There
was some prepared bandaging and, of course, linen could be torn up
in strips. She bethought herself of stimulants and was relieved to
recall a half-dozen bottles of brandy in the cellar.
Was there plenty of hot water?
What next?
Something new occurred to her always before she completed the
task in hand. At length she went through the house, upstairs and
down. Everything, she decided, was as nearly ready for the
emergency as it could be. The fires burned brightly in the living
rooms and the smell of coffee filled the place. In one of the living
rooms four mattresses were ranged on the floor and had been made
up with sheets, pillows, and coverlets. In the other the large table
had been cleared of books and papers. A cloth covered it and it was
heaped high with piles of plates, with hardtack, with some cold
meat, with what bread there was, with cups. In the centre stood
several pots of coffee. In the kitchen the servant was frying bacon,
Keturah slicing it for her. The governess had run upstairs to assure
herself that Mermaid, the youngest, had not been wakened by all
the bustle, or to quiet her if she had. The two boys were
replenishing the fires and between times darting to the windows,
now the south and now the west windows. But they could see little
or nothing from either.
Mary completed her inspection and stepped to the south window. It
was at that instant that the lifeline reached the wreck.

XVII
The line passed close to the mainmast and a stiffened arm reached
out and caught it, drew it inboard at the maintop, some thirty feet or
so above the wave-washed deck. There followed an interval of
minutes—they did not seem like hours but they seemed tragically
long—in which the two or three men gathered in the maintop, which
is a small semi-circular platform with barely standing room for three,
made various movements making fast the line; and having guarded
against losing it they began slowly to pull its length in toward them.
The light line for firing carried to them a stouter rope, bent to the
end of it, and a block and tackle. Eventually the block reached them
and the people on shore prepared for the running out of the
breeches buoy.
And all this dark and sightless while the distress of the motionless
figures lashed in the mizzen rigging was something palpable, acute,
and sensed without the need of a single gesture, a single sign, a
moment’s glimpse. How were these unfortunates to avail themselves
of the breeches buoy even when it reached the ship? To get to it
they would have to unlash themselves, descend, and cross the deck
between the mizzenmast and the mainmast and ascend to the
maintop. To cross the deck would be impossible. As well try to walk
fifty feet on the surface of the Atlantic.
It was not certain, furthermore, that those in the mizzen retained
any power of physical movement. They did not shift their positions.
Although they had lashed themselves in pairs close together they did
not strike each other about the head, shoulders, and body, as they
should be doing if they had any vigour left, in the imperative effort
to keep from freezing.
Slowly, with a painful slowness, the line was got ready for the
running of the breeches buoy. And then it was that Keeper Tom
Lupton manifested his intention of being hauled out in the buoy to
the vessel.
There was emphatic dissent. The men pleaded with him in shouts,
shrieking arguments that the wind tore from their lips and the great
thunder of the ocean drowned. These were not circumstances under
which he should feel impelled to go aboard; the risk of travel either
way was too serious for a single unnecessary journey in the buoy to
be undertaken; the line might not have been made fast properly, in
which event he would be the first man lost; in the conditions that
existed he could do nothing when he got aboard, and he would
become merely one more man to be hauled ashore.
These pleas were without avail. Keeper Tom admitted that he “didn’t
know what he could do till he got there. The thing,” he added, “is to
get there.”
“Dick,” he shouted in Richard Hand’s ear, “in any case, I can’t do
much alone. I can’t ask any of my men to risk their lives by coming
out on the next trip out of the buoy. I’m not asking you to. But men
——”
The racket of the storm made the end of the sentence inaudible.
Dick Hand did not need it. He flung his arm about Tom Lupton and
bellowed: “I’ll be there. Next trip out.”
Keeper Tom communicated the order to his men. It was not until
Tom Lupton was in the buoy and moving over the boiling surf at the
foot of the sand dunes that Richard Hand thought, with a shock, of
Mary Vanton. Three men in the world were charged, in varying
degrees, with some responsibility to stand by her and aid her. One
had disappeared and the other two were about to jeopard their lives.

XVIII
He felt he must see Mary for a moment and speak to her. He left the
cluster of men on the dune and hurried to the house.
He found her on the rug in the east living room. One or two of the
crew were warming their hands and swallowing hot coffee in the
other large room. The men came over, not more than two at a time,
at intervals, to get thawed out.
“Tom,” he said, “has gone off in the buoy.”
“I know,” she answered. “I saw someone being hauled out and I
knew it must be he.”
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