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The tide was still full as Al Kurtz brought his boat carefully down the sound. The wind, now gusting over 30 mph, felt like the breath off a glacier, and the bay was covered with whitecaps.Waves rocked the hull of the boat and knocked Sterling and Jameson off their perch repeatedly. They would climb back on and Jameson would take hold of Scagline's hand. He urged him to "Stay alive," but as time passed, he thought he was holding the hand of a dead man. Still he held on.
Sterling took a short tally of his life. He had no regrets. No enemies. No resentments. He felt sad to leave his friends, but he had lived the life he wanted. It was a stark, beautiful winter day. He looked out over the choppy bay and the salt marshes he loved. He was ready.
And then he spotted a small form moving in the water.
"Bob," he shouted, "I see your dog!"
Jameson looked up. Was it possible? Max had been gone so long. He swam directly to the boat. They pulled him aboard and Jameson wrapped his arms around the Lab. Where had he been? Why did he come back? It was impossible to know, but his reappearance lifted their hopes. They all huddled together against the cold.
At about 10 a.m., Kurtz set up his hunters in a new blind, and then scanned the bay to the east. A green, shiny dot was blinking regularly on the horizon like a beacon.
He looked through his binoculars. Something green against the brown swath of winter grass. Something out of place. It's an unwritten law among baymen that anything unusual on the water should be investigated immediately. It might be someone in trouble.
Kurtz motored over a mile before he identified the object as an empty canoe caught in the grass. Where had it come from?
He was within 100 yards of the overturned garvey before he saw it and the men.
Sterling heard the motor first, and saw the boat approaching. "We're saved!" he cried.
Jameson's senses were fading. He turned but didn't see or hear anything until Kurtz pulled up beside them.
It was 10:45 a.m. Kurtz radioed "Mayday," pulled the men aboard and headed for the nearest Coast Guard station.
The friends had been in the water three hours. They had gone the limit. They had stayed together. And they had survived.
On the shore, ambulances were waiting to rush the men to Atlantic City Medical Center.
Sterling could barely walk; Jameson and Scagline could not. Scagline's core temperature was 78 degrees. His body was rigid, his eyes yellow, his liver shutting down.
But all they needed was to get warm, and astonishingly, all of them recovered quickly. Even Scagline, his insulin pump checked and working, was released the next day.
A remarkable series of events had led to their rescue. The heavy clothing weighed them down but provided insulation. The tide that took their canoe away carried it into the grass where it became a flickering beacon. If the sun had not been at just the right angle when Kurtz passed by, he might never have seen the reflection from the canoe. If Max had not come back to give them encouragement, or if the three had not stuck together, they might have died separately. But instead, their effort -- spent willingly for each other -- saved them.
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