Lifeboat! Read Online Free PDF Page B

slung his knapsack over his shoulder and turned his back on his boyhood.
    The sea was now his home.
    But on one lonely leave, Macready, now a strong rugged twenty-year-old, went back to Saltershaven to visit the people who had shown him such kindness. Hearing of his orphaned state, the coxswain and his wife would hear of nothing else but that he should spend all his leaves with them. Iain Macready became involved with the lifeboat, becoming a willing crew member when Coxswain Randall found himself short of a hand. After the war, because there was no reason to return to Scotland, Saltershaven became his home. He married Mary Randall and when her father retired from active service on the lifeboat, Macready left the Royal Navy, but not the sea for he became the Saltershaven lifeboat’s first full-time Coxswain/ mechanic.
    Mary had been an ideal wife for a seaman. She was shy and reserved but bred to the ways of the sea and possessed a quiet courage. Their life together had been a good one and Macready still missed her acutely for she had died of cancer after twenty-five years of marriage.
    Now at fifty-eight, Macready was within two years of his own retirement from the lifeboat service, but for the moment the sea and the lifeboat—and his daughter—were his life.
    The sea had always been Macready’s life. He loved it, respected it, was exhilarated by it but, strangely, he had rarely been afraid of it. His trust in it had never been tested.
    Macready could not believe that the sea that he loved so much could ever betray him.

Chapter Four
    The Milner boys were enjoying their game of pretence. Backwards and forwards they had pushed the dinghy, jumping in and out of it, falling into the surf but laughing at the soaking, their tee-shirts soon wet and clinging.
    â€˜Now, come on, our Martin, I’m coxswain.’ Nigel pursed his lips and tried to whistle like he had heard Macready at the launch.
    â€˜Aw, Nigel, you’ve bin coxswain all the time. It’s my turn now.’
    â€˜No, it ain’t. You’re head launcher—and crew,’ he added as an afterthought.
    â€˜ ’Tain’t fair,’ Martin grumbled but knew if he wanted to continue playing he would have to give way as always to his elder brother.
    â€˜We’ve got a long trip this time. There’s a fishin’-boat struck an iceberg.’ Nigel was at least imaginative if highly inaccurate, and Martin did as he was told.
    â€˜Full ahead,’ Nigel shouted, facing out to sea, and made a guttural, engine-like noise in his throat.
    â€˜What am I supposed to do?’ Martin asked.
    â€˜You be the radio man. Call up—call up somebody and tell ’em.’
    â€˜Tell ’em what?’
    â€˜Where we’re goin’ ’n that. Then you come and tell me what they say an’ I say “Roger”.’
    â€˜Right.’ Martin twiddled imaginary knobs and spoke into his invisible radio/mike. ‘Hello, hello, lifeboat calling beach. We’re going to rescue a fishing-boat that’s struck an iceberg. Yes—yes.’ He turned to Nigel. ‘ He says …’
    The engine noise stopped momentarily. ‘ You salute me and call me “ Coxswain” or “ sir”. Brrrm, brrrm.’ The engine noise began again.
    â€˜Coxswain, he says it’s about five miles out to sea.’
    â€˜Give me a direction.’
    â€˜Eh?’
    â€˜A direction, stupid! You know, say “north by northwest”, or something.’
    â€˜Oh.’ Martin gaped around him as if expecting the sea to give him inspiration, a compass to appear out of the sky. He glanced to right and left and then behind him. Then slowly he turned right round and faced the beach—at least where the beach ought to be.
    â€˜Nigel!’
    â€˜Brrrm— Coxswain —brrrm, brrrm.’
    â€˜Nigel—where’s t’beach? I can’t see the beach.’
    â€˜Wha …?’ All