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For a week they trekked the sands, to keep watch over the salvage operations on neighboring Moonstone Beach, where the tug Scandia and the oil barge North Cape had run hard aground on Rhode Island's psyche.

A bombsight could not have picked a more vulnerable target: a barrier beach chain that runs from Matunuck to Westerly. But a winter gale had whipped the abandoned and burning tug and its tow of 4 million gallons of home heating oil to a desperately unwanted rendezvous.

A high tide at the new moon, a gale hurling breakers against the beach, a generous assortment of boulders, and a bountiful supply of "product," as one state official kept calling it -- all combined to invade the braid of brackish ponds behind the beach, the nursery for so much sea life.

As workers planted booms and sopped up visible oil, scientists watched, and Rhode Island brooded for a week.

Were the tons of twitching, cast-up marine animals the final act, or would lethal tendrils of petroleum chemistry slide down the water column to commit further atrocity?

As the drained North Cape finally edged away on Friday, scientists were announcing that much of the oil had not evaporated, but unexpectedly had formed a huge undersea pocket of toxin that might persist for weeks.

The state early on closed off a wide swath of Block Island Sound to fishing. Lobster boats could not lift their pots through the contaminated water. Offshore lobstermen, whose catch remained untainted, could not bring it to port because seawater is pumped constantly through their tanks to keep the catch alive.

Entering the prohibited area would have prompted fisheries officials to impound their harvest.

Insurance agents are busy sorting out claims for damages or for lost wages, but no number has yet been set on the cost.

By late in the week, on the beach in front of the derelicts, there was no trace of oil. Windrows of carnage showed that the petroleum had come and gone, leaving only a whiff on the shifting breeze.

Trudging back from the taped-off lookout spot, Jennifer Daunton of Bridgewater, N.J., a junior at URI, turned her back to the wind and buried her hands inside her sleeves. "It thought it would be a bit worse," she said. "I'm sure other beaches are worse than this."

THE FOCUS now is on the future.

"Sure, there are going to be some populations of marine creatures affected by this. Sure, some are going to be killed. But by the time the tourist season comes in the spring, when the schools begin to let out, essentially this thing will be gone and most people will have forgotten it," said Lou Stringer, a retired marine biologist who lives in Narragansett.

Stringer handled six oil spills in his 30 years with National Marine Fisheries.

"It's the type of accident that occurs," he said. And, governed by the same laws of chance that create winners and losers on a roll of the dice, he said, it's likely to happen again.

Shallow draft tugs and tows have replaced ocean-going tankers in Narragansett Bay for a number of reasons, the primary ones being economics and the silting up of the shipping channel.

Such realities contributed to a growing sense of public outrage as the week played out.

Pitching in to help clean Charlestown Pond, fisherman and boater Vincent Lanna summed up the feelings of many Rhode Islanders who love the South County shore and were wrenched by the spill:

"There's so much that's enjoyable in that pond. All you have to do is sit down there and watch the sunsets and it's better than any Valium that you can prescribe. To think that oil may kill all of that, that's just disturbing."

Newport hotel executive Jon Cohen said in a commentary on Thursday that government at all levels must stiffen regulations governing oil transport, including the use of double-hulled vessels, although he conceded that "the risk will always be there."

"I'll bet he'll be the first guy to scream when his fuel costs go up at his hotel, and that's the kind of thing you're facing," said Stringer, the retired marine biologist.

What lies ahead for summer bathers?

Stringer, who lives "20 steps" from the beach at Sand Hill Cove is not worried.

"Don't expect that every time the kids want to dig a sand fort they will bring up a great gob of oil. The sea is going to beat the oil into very tiny particles, and bacteria are going to eat it up. Very little will be left."

A COUNTER-GALE of opinion erupted after the grounding. Answers clashed with ideas almost as soon as the ideas emerged:

--Some said the tugboat should never have set out in that kind of weather. The weather didn't cause the fire in the engine room, came the reply.

--The Coast Guard should have been more energetic in trying to halt the landward drift of the derelict tug and tow. The storm was at its height, retorted Governor Almond; too dangerous to do anything more.

Stringer believes the tugboat crew and the Coast Guard did the right thing.

Still miles from the coastline, after leaping into the sea and being rescued by the Coast Guard, two tugboat crewmen boarded the heaving barge in a bid to drop its anchor. They found the anchor shackled down and secured to the deck with rope and wire. The last of them was rescued by helicopter.

"I know what it's like to be out at sea," Stringer said. "And I know what it's like to work that first day or two in this kind of a situation. And it's more important to protect the people working out there than worry about what it's going to do to the Rhode Island beaches.

"I'm glad nobody was lost or seriously injured, because that would have been tragic."

OVER ON Browning Beach, as salvors grappled with the North Cape, Kate Kavanagh of Providence and Rehoboth spoke with her son, Ron Tremper, 11, a solemn fifth-grader at the Beckwith School in Rehoboth.

To Kavanaugh, this virtually is home. Her mother owns a beach cottage just a mile or so from the grounding.

The family group had just straggled in across the sand from watching the floodlit operation to refloat the barge, and their car was warming up.

A cold steel of a wind had turned them away from the beach vantage point. Spray was beginning to freeze where it landed.

The planet Venus, an evening star this month, blazed brilliantly below the crescent moon just after sunset, with the western sky dark as a wine stain on a linen napkin.

"This was a great place to grow up," Kavanaugh said. "I spent every summer here since I was born. It's so sad.

"We brought the kids because it's something my son should see. Casey (her 4-year-old daughter) is too young to understand."

Ron clutched a starfish, and when he spoke he did so quietly but firmly.

"I think it's sad that all these animals are dying, suffering from the poison in the oil," he said.

He said he would take the starfish to school.

Off to the west, out of sight behind a dune, a marine diesel roared and metal clanked as the salvage crew got ready for the high tide.

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