Ocean City -- They are just No. 18 and No. 19 at 10:30 a.m., as Lt. Skip Lee assigns each Beach Patrol applicant a number, writing it on their right biceps in black Magic Marker.

"I want to hire eight people today," Mr. Lee tells the 24 applicants sitting on benches at Dorchester Street and the Boardwalk, filling out forms. "That is my goal. I'll be your biggest cheerleader. I'll be in your face. I will do all in my power to get in your face, to help you win."

But as it turns out, Mr. Lee has only two faces to get into on this Saturday in early June.

No. 19 is Frank Sullivan, a 27-year-old bartender living in Ocean Pines and one of the fastest competitors in the ocean swim, a tough quarter-mile in the ocean, the last part through a ripcurrent, and around the pier. Visibly winded, he clocks in at a little over seven minutes, well under the 10-minute requirement.

He is followed by several of the others, many falling to their knees, coughing up part of the Atlantic, as they finish. About a third of those trying out give up during the swim.

No. 18, Jerome "Jordy" Fuchs, comes out of the ocean about two minutes after Mr. Sullivan. Mr. Fuchs, a 19-year-old college student from Reisterstown, has a time of eight minutes, 58 seconds.

"Baywatch" it isn't. They're the only two who make it, and their grueling day is just beginning.

At 11:25, the two applicants begin buoy runs. The untimed test of endurance calls for running out into the ocean while carrying the orange safety device, about the size of a boogie board, then running back with it and resetting it in the sand so it will stand, ready for next time.

Both 18 and 19 make it through the required seven round trips, although both are clearly fatigued by the fifth run.

Mr. Lee is as good as his earlier word to get in their faces.

"Come on, 19, move! Move! All the way up, get the buoy, set it up!" he shouts at a flagging Mr. Sullivan.

"Come on, 18, come on," he coaxes in a softer tone, as Mr. Fuchs slows during the sixth trip. "Come on, you can do this."

A taste of the job

In this test, as in the others, there's not much distance between the test and the job. On busy days, say Mr. Lee and other Beach Patrol members, there can be many such trips with a buoy to fish out a swimmer in trouble. The anecdotal record for a single day is 28 rescues, which works out to about four an hour. For that, they'll need the endurance Mr. Lee is coaching out of them as he runs beside them, up and back, up and back, up and back. Plant the buoy. Pick it up. Run, wade, turn, wade, run.

Buoy runs over, they get a brief respite while Mr. Lee shows them a cross-chest carry. They take turns "rescuing" each other in the surf. They're still tired from the buoy runs, and their fatigue is visible.

"No help, no help," Mr. Lee shouts at Mr. Fuchs, whom Mr. Sullivan is dragging out of the surf and onto the beach. "Come on, 19, come on. Keep pulling! Don't give up on me."

They don't give up, flopping exhausted onto the sand only when they're through. Mr. Lee tells them to rest -- the only instruction all day he doesn't have to repeat.

"Nice job," he tells both. This man is a teacher and a coach in Anne Arundel County when he isn't spending his summers in Beach Patrol training, and it shows. His mix of drill instructor and coach, shouting and cajoling, is working. No. 18 and No. 19 are halfway through the day, and both look determined to conquer whatever challenges Mr. Lee has left.

He has plenty.

"Last thing we're going to do before a rest is the medley," says Mr. Lee, who's getting hoarse. For this, they must climb a lifeguard stand, and on command, climb down ("I do not want my employees jumping off the stand! You break your ankle and there's still someone out in the surf who needs help," Mr. Lee says with authority), run down to the pier, swim out about 100 meters to a floating pink buoy and back, run back to the stand. No time limit here -- they just have to finish.

They do, with Mr. Lee running the last lap of the medley beside them, shouting, pushing, coaching all the way.

So far, so good. Both candidates have earned the right to a 20-minute rest, and then a run in the sand.

Mr. Fuchs goes over to his knapsack and sits alone in the sand, drinking Gatorade. Mr. Sullivan joins two friends who have watched the trials and drinks bottled water while they tell him how well he's done so far.

Exactly 20 minutes later, 18 and 19 are running again -- hard. This is the sand sprint, and they've got to run 300 meters in soft sand, the kind that kicks up around your ankles and puts a torch to your hamstrings in a hurry. They must finish in 65 seconds.

Mr. Sullivan, who participates regularly in triathlons, crosses the finish line first. Mr. Fuchs isn't far behind, and both are a few seconds earlier than the requirement.

Mr. Lee tells both to meet him at the Castle in the Sand motel an hour and a half hence at 2 p.m. for the controlled-water portion of the test.

Mr. Fuchs and Mr. Sullivan are there before 2 p.m., looking rested but wary. The wariness disappears quickly, however. It's clear by now that Mr. Lee has become more advocate than adversary, and he intends to get them through this last hour or so successfully. It's a subtle shift, signaled also by the attitude of the two Beach Patrol members who will help him.

"How you feeling?" crew chief Brent Weingard asks Mr. Fuchs, who's awaiting instructions and resting in a pool lounge chair. Mr. Fuchs answers that he feels OK.

'Suck, tuck and duck'

Using Mr. Weingard and crew chief Craig Ashworth, Mr. Lee shows the two applicants, whom he's still calling by number, four basic ways to rescue a drowning person. Three of them begin with freeing themselves from the clutch of a victim, the first step in a successful rescue.

"Suck, tuck and duck," he tells them. "Suck in a big gulp of air. Tuck your chin. Duck under the water." A drowning person wants only to get above water, he explains -- they won't hold on to someone who's going under.

Next he shows them how to break free from a front head hold, a rear head hold and a wrist grab. Last, he shows them how to hold and rescue an unconscious person. All four segue into a cross-chest carry and a "rescue" to the side of the pool.

The two crew chiefs jump into the deep end, and the two applicants follow -- "It's colder than the ocean!" says Mr. Fuchs.

After 20 minutes of teaching and practice with the crew chiefs -- Mr. Fuchs has trouble with the cross-chest carry -- they're ready for the test. Mr. Lee takes the two crew chiefs aside and tells them to take advantage of any errors the candidates make.

"If he goes under your arm, I want you to spin him into a front headlock," he tells the one assigned to Mr. Fuchs, whose hesitation with the cross-chest carry has not gone unnoticed. "He has to learn, and he will learn."

Both candidates breeze through this -- Mr. Fuchs gets caught in one front head hold before his hesitation disappears -- and efficiently bring their "victims" to the side of the pool four times.

The will to win

One last hurdle: an interview.

The two candidates fill out a form asking them about the test, their commitment to the job and when they can start. Then Mr. Lee, Mr. Ashworth and Mr. Weingard tell Mr. Sullivan to rest out of earshot, and the trio begins probing for any possible areas of difficulty in Mr. Fuchs' attitude.

"Ever seen a dead body?" No.

"Would it bother you? Would you panic?" No, he doesn't think so.

"We have a lot of women. Would it bother you to take orders from a woman?" Not at all.

And Mr. Fuchs, who is quiet to the point of taciturnity, who has had obvious trouble framing his written answers to the short form Mr. Lee is now looking over, displays a sudden and surprising acuity when asked what the hardest part of the day has been.

"The tough part was mental," says the 19-year-old, who didn't train for the test, just walked up to try out. "The tough part was wanting to quit."

What made him keep going?

"I wanted to."

Mr. Lee is suddenly very serious. This is important, and he wants Mr. Fuchs to understand something central to the job. Although the whole day has been a measure of this, it hasn't been discussed until now.

He leans forward.

"There will be times when you will want to quit. But from now on, you are not allowed to. You have to keep going," he says with intensity.

And his words bring into focus why it matters, why Beach Patrol members must run 300 meters in 65 seconds, swim 150 meters in rough water in less than 10 minutes, why they must be able to get past their fatigue. Someone's life could swing in the balance, poised against the will to keep going, to keep running, to keep swimming.

And Mr. Fuchs understands. He nods.

Mr. Lee leans back, satisfied. He offers Mr. Fuchs a position on the Beach Patrol, tells him rookie school begins next week, shakes his hand.

Mr. Sullivan, the more verbal of the two candidates, gets the same grilling, the same explanation of why he can't quit and the responsibility he will bear. Like Mr. Fuchs, he is called by his Christian name for the first time all day and offered a job.

The two candidates depart, weary but victorious. Mr. Lee and the two crew chiefs gather up the gear, the radios, the clipboards, their towels.

Two more lifeguards have just joined the Beach Patrol, where "they scream for help and you play God," as Beach Patrol Capt. George Schoepf has described the job.

Mr. Lee has not met his goal of eight hires on this day. He'll be back tomorrow, shouting and cajoling and quizzing more candidates in the search for strength and stamina.

But No. 18 and No. 19, a bartending triathlete and a casual college student, have met their goals.