SAVED BY THE BREECHES-BUOY
The last words of the old keeper, "Goodness don't lay in tryin' to be a
hero, but jest in plain bein' a man," rang through Eric's mind, many and
many a day after, when, on his own Coast Guard station, he had to face
some difficulty. His post chanced to be in a somewhat sheltered spot,
and thus gave him an opportunity to become a good oarsman. His work with
the volunteer corps had made him a first-class swimmer and a fair
boatman. The government service, however, he found to be a very
different matter. There, efficiency had to be carried to the highest
degree.
He snatched every opportunity, too, to get ahead with his studies, and
luck came his way in a most unexpected shape. It happened that quite
near the Coast Guard station was the hut of a queer old hermit sort of
fellow, called "Dan." He had been a life-saver many years before, but in
a daring rescue had injured his back, and could never enter a boat
again. In those days there were no pensions, so for forty years and
more he had made a living by inventing riddles and puzzles, tricks of
various kinds, and clever Christmas toys. His especial hobby was
mathematical puzzles. He used to drop into the station quite frequently,
for he was very popular with the men.
"Dan," said Eric to him one day, "I don't see how you can be so
interested in that stuff. It's the bane of my life. I'm nailing as hard
as I can to try and get in shape for a Coast Guard exam., and I simply
can't get hold of the mathematics end of it."
"Why for not?"
"Don't know enough, I guess," the boy answered. "I'm right up on
everything but mathematics, but that gets me every time. I know there's
some sense in it, but I can't see it. Everything else I've got to study
I can find some interest in, but mathematics is as dull as ditch-water.
How you can find any fun in it, I can't see!"
This was like telling a painter that color had no emotion, or a
scientist that science had no reasonableness. The old puzzle-maker
gasped.
"No fun!" he exclaimed. "It is the mos' fun in the world. I show you!"
Pulling from his pocket a pencil and an old envelope he drew a baseball
diamond, and marked the positions of the players. Eric's interest arose
at once, for he was a keen baseball fan. As the sketch grew the old man
talked, describing a queer entanglement of play.
"Now!" said the old man, "what shall he do?"
The boy, judging from his knowledge of the game, made a suggestion,
which the other negatived. As soon as the boy made a guess, the other
showed him to be wrong. Eric, really interested in the baseball problem,
cudgelled his brains, but could find no way out.
"I show you!" the old man repeated.
Using a very simple rule of algebra, which the boy knew quite well, but
giving an application he never would have thought of, Dan brought the
solution in a second. Hardly believing that mere mathematics could be of
any service in a baseball game, Eric tested the result. It was exactly
as the old man had said.
"Gee," he said, "that's great!"
The puzzle-maker smiled, and showed him how mass-play in football was a
matter of science, not strength, and how lacrosse was a question of
trajectory.
"Not only in games," he said. "'Rithmetic, geometry--in everything. You
know Muldoon."
"Sure I know Muldoon," the boy said.
"Have you seen him shoot?"
"With the Lyle gun, you mean? Isn't he a dandy at it?"
"That is what I would say," the old man continued. "How does he fire
him?"
"Why, he just fires it! No," he corrected himself, "he doesn't either. I
see what you're driving at. That's right, I did see him doing some
figuring the other day."
"I teach Muldoon," said the old man. "I show him how to tell how much
wind, how to tell how far away a ship, how to tell when a line is heavy
or light. He figure everything, then fire. Bang! And the line to bring
the drowning men home falls right over the ship. It is?"
"It is, all right," the boy agreed. "Muldoon gets there every time. I
always thought he just aimed the gun, sort of naturally."
"It is all mathematics," said the old man. "You have guns in the Coast
Guard?"
"Rapid-fire six-pounders," the boy answered. "At least I know that's
what the _Itasca's_ got. She's the practice-ship at New London, you
know."
"Do you have to learn gunnery?"
"Rather," said the lad. "Every breed of gunnery that there is. You know
a Coast Guard cutter becomes a part of the navy in time of war, so an
officer has got to know just as much about big guns as an officer in the
navy. He might have to take his rank on a big battleship if the United
States was at war. You bet I'll have to learn gunnery. That ought to be
heaps of fun."
"But gunnery is ballistics," the old man said. "And ballistics is
trigonometry. Big gun is fired by figuring, not by looking."
"I'm only afraid," the lad replied, "that I'll never have a chance at
the big gun. Everywhere I go, it's nothing but figuring. And I simply
can't get figures into my head."
"You really want to learn?"
"You bet I do," said Eric. "I'm working like a tinker at the stuff every
chance I get, but I don't seem to get the hang of it somehow."
"If you come to me, I teach you."
"Teach me all I want to know?" said the boy in amazement.
The old man shook his head.
"Teach you to want to know all you have to know. Teach you to like
figures."
Eric looked at him a minute.
"All right, Dan," he said, "I'll go you. I've still got some of the
money I saved up from my work this summer and I was going to spend part
of it on tutoring this winter, anyway. I'll tutor under you, whenever
I'm off duty, and if you can teach me to like figures, you're a good
one. Any way, your cottage is so near that I can get right on the job if
the station calls."
True to his word, a few days later Eric appeared at the tiny little
cottage--it was scarcely more than a hut--which was the home of the
eccentric old puzzle-maker. The top part of it was a home-made
observatory, and the whole building looked a good deal like a large
beehive.
"String in the corner," said the old man, after welcoming him. "Get
him."
"It's all knotted, Dan," the boy replied, holding up a piece of rope
with a couple of dozen strings hanging from it, of various colors, all
intertwined.
"Of course he is," the old man replied. "Read him."
"What?" asked the boy.
"Read him," repeated the old man.
"What does it mean?"
"He's what Incas used to count treasure with," the old man said. "He's
quipu, a copy of one Cortez found in City of Sun. You like to read what
he says?"
"You bet I would."
"Bring him here."
Wondering a good deal at the odd puzzle-maker's manner, for the lad had
gone to the cottage in good faith with his books, expecting to work on
the problems that were disturbing him, he brought over the knotted
quipu.
"Green string means corn," said the puzzle-maker, "because he's the
color of growing corn. What you suppose white is?"
"Silver," guessed the boy.
"Right. And yellow?"
"Gold."
"Right, too. And red?"
"Copper?" hazarded the boy.
"Not bad guess," the old man said. "Not copper color, red."
"Red stands for war," said Eric meditatively, then, with an inspiration,
"in those days a country was rich if it had soldiers. Does the red mean
soldiers, Dan?"
"Soldiers, right," the old man answered. "The Quipucamayocuna--"
"The what, Dan?"
"Knot officers," explained the other, "kept track of him all. They
counted tens, single knot meant ten; double knot, hundred. Now read him.
Cross-knotting is for groups."
Eric worked for a quarter of an hour and then looked up.
"I've got it," he said.
"What is he?"
"In this town," said the boy, "there were seven regiments of soldiers,
I've got down the exact number of men in each regiment. Some had plenty
of food in the regimental storehouse, some had only a little. But--if I
get it right--there was money belonging to each regiment in a
treasure-house, somewhere, like a bank. I suppose they could exchange
this for food. And, if I've read it right, there was one regiment which
had money but no men. I suppose they were wiped out in battle."
"Very good," answered the puzzle-maker, looking pleased. "You keep
accounts, your own money?"
"Of course," answered the boy, pulling out a little diary from his
pocket.
"Here, string," said the old man. "Write your week's accounts in quipu."
Thoroughly interested, Eric took up a pile of colored strings, from the
corner and started to convert his week's accounting into quipu. He
worked for half an hour, but couldn't make it come out right. It proved
an exasperating puzzle, because it seemed impossible and yet conveyed
the suggestion that there ought to be some way of doing it. Already Eric
had so keen a sense of the old man's comments that he hated to say that
he couldn't do it. But, after a while, red in the face and quite
ashamed, he said,
"I can't do it, Dan."
"No, he is not possible," said the puzzle-maker cheerfully. "That's what
I wanted you to find. The quipu is wonderful but he's not wonderful
enough, eh?"
"We'd have trouble trying to handle a big modern banking business by it,
all right," the boy agreed. "But, Dan, how about this studying I'm
supposed to do?"
"You know Latin numerals?" the old man replied.
"Of course!" Eric answered indignantly. "I couldn't even tell the time
if I didn't!"
"Write 'Four,'" came the order.
Promptly the boy wrote "IV."
"Now look at watch."
"It's got four ones there," Eric said ruefully.
"The 'IV' form is late," said the puzzle-maker. "I show you something.
Copy column of pocket cash-book in Roman numerals, then, without
thinking in figures, add up column."
Not in the least understanding what were the old man's ideas the boy did
as he was told. It was easy enough to write down the numbers, but when
he came to add them up, he found himself thinking of Arabic figures in
spite of himself.
"I'm cheating," said Eric suddenly, "I can't help adding up in the old
way."
"Good boy," said the puzzle-maker. "I knew that. I show you some more.
Simple addition. Write in Roman numerals one billion, seven hundred and
forty-two million, nine hundred and eighty-three thousand, four hundred
and twenty-seven and eleven-sixteenths."
Although pretty well posted, Eric had a hard time writing down the
number and had to ask a lot of questions before he could even write it
correctly. Then the puzzle-maker gave him half a dozen figures of the
same kind. It looked weird on paper.
"Now add him up," the old man charged him.
The boy started bravely. But he hadn't gone very far before he got
absolutely stuck. He wrestled with that sum of simple addition for
nearly an hour. At last he got a result which seemed right.
"Put him down in ordinary figures," came the order. "Add him up."
Eric did so, having his own difficulties in re-transcribing from the
Roman numerals.
"Are they the same?"
"No," the boy said, "I got the other wrong somewhere."
"S'posin' you had him right," the puzzle-maker said, "it took you hour.
Ordinary figures you did him in thirty-two seconds."
"I see," said Eric, "it's another case of wonderful but not wonderful
enough, isn't it?"
"Exactly. Here," the other continued, reaching down a manuscript
portfolio, "is every kind of numbers ever made. You find that the
Hindu--or wrongly called Arabic--numerals are the only ones wonderful
enough for modern uses."
Thoroughly interested, the boy sat down with this big manuscript book.
Weird schemes of numeration rioted over the pages, from the Zuni finger
and the Chinese knuckle systems to the latest groups of symbols, used in
modern higher mathematics, of which the boy had not even heard. It was
noon before he realized with a start that the morning was gone.
"Oh, Dan!" he said reproachfully, "we haven't done anything to-day."
"Never mind," said the old man, "we get a start after a while."
That afternoon, when the boy settled down to do some work on his own
account, he felt a much greater friendliness to the mere look of
figures. They seemed like old friends. Before, a figure had only been
something in a "sum," but now he felt that each one had a long history
of its own. Little did he realize that the biggest step of his
mathematics was accomplished. Never again would he be able to look at a
page of figures with revulsion. They had come to life for him.
The next morning, Eric found the old puzzle-maker busy with a
chess-board.
"Aren't we going to do any work to-day, either?" he asked,
disappointedly.
"Soon as I finish," the old man answered. "Get pencil and paper. As I
move knight from square to square, you draw."
Shrugging his shoulders slightly, but not so noticeably that the
puzzle-maker could see, Eric obeyed. It seemed very silly to him. But as
the knight went from square to square in the peculiar move which belongs
to that piece in chess, the boy was amazed to find a wonderful and
fascinating geometrical design growing under his hand.
"Another way, too," said the old man thoughtfully, the instant the
figure was finished, not giving the boy a chance to make any comment.
And, without further preface he started again. This time an even
stranger but equally perfect design was formed.
"But that's great!" said Eric, "how do you know it's going to come out
like that! I wonder if I could do it?"
"Try him," the puzzle-maker answered, getting up from the board. For
half an hour Eric moved the knight about, but never got as perfect an
example as the old man.
"Are there only those two ways?" said the boy at last.
"Over thirty-one million ways of moving the knight so that he occupies
each square once," was the reply. "Every one makes a different design."
"I'll try some this evening," said the boy. "But it's funny, too. Why
does it always make a regular design?"
"You want to know? Very well." And the puzzle-maker quietly explained
some of the most famous mathematical problems of all time, working them
out with the chessmen and the board.
"You know what they call him, magic?" queried the old man.
"Magic! No!" exclaimed Eric pricking up his ears at the word. "Tell me
about it, Dan."
"Numbers all friends, live together, work together," the puzzle-maker
answered. "I show you." And, taking pencil and paper, he dotted down in
forms of squares and cubes rows and rows of figures. "Add him up," he
said, "up and down, cross-wise, any way. He all make same number."
"They do, sure enough," said Eric, after testing half a dozen magic
squares, "but how do you do it? Do you have to remember all those
figures and just where they go?"
"Don't remember any of him," the other answered. "He has to go so."
"But I can't make them come that way," exclaimed the boy, after trying
for a few minutes. "What's the trick?"
"All friends," repeated the old man, and in his curiously jolting speech
he told Eric the startling links that are found in the powers of
numbers. As soon as he had the principle clearly in mind, the boy found
that there was no great difficulty in making up the most astonishing
magic squares.
As the winter drew on, and calls for help on the stormy waters
increased, the opportunities for sessions with the shrewd old
mathematician grew fewer, but Eric stuck fast to his promise to spend
all the time he could afford with his instructor. He was keenly
disappointed that the puzzle-maker showed such an absolute disregard of
the actual things the boy wanted to prepare for in his examinations. But
Eric had been rigidly trained by his father in the sportsmanlike
attitude of never complaining about any arrangement he had made
himself, and he paid for his coaching out of his small earnings without
a word. In order to make up for what he inwardly felt was lost time, he
worked by himself at his books in such few minutes as he was able to
snatch from his life-saving duties. And, although he was tired almost to
exhaustion, many and many a day, he found that even in that work he was
getting along quite well.
Eric could never get his eccentric teacher to look at the books required
in his preparatory work. What was more, he had a feeling that he
couldn't really be getting much good from his hours spent with Dan,
because he enjoyed them so much. Early schooldays had made him associate
progress with discomfort.
For example, one day Dan showed him tricks with cards--and then
explained the mathematics of it, making the most puzzling mysteries seem
only unusual applications of very simple principles. Another day, the
puzzle-maker told him of curious problems of chance, by dice, by
lotteries, and so forth, and almost before Eric realized what the old
man was driving at, the essential ideas of insurance and actuary work
were firmly fixed in his mind.
It was not until a couple of weeks before the expected close of
navigation that the puzzle-maker said,
"Let me see book!"
Astonished at the now unexpected request, Eric handed him the much
bethumbed volume over which he had struggled so hard. The old man
skimmed through its pages, nodding his head from time to time and
mumbling in a satisfied way. Then, like a man driving in a nail, he
pounded Eric with question after question. He seemed to be asking them
from the book, but Eric knew that none of the problems had their origin
in it, for they dealt with the work he had been doing in the little
cottage by the sea. Yet to almost every one the boy returned a correct
answer, or at least, one which was correct in its approach. For two long
hours the puzzle-maker questioned him, without ever a minute's let up.
At the end of it, Eric was as limp as a rag. At last the old man laid
down the book.
"When your examination is?" he asked.
"Next June," the boy replied.
"You can pass him now."
Eric stared at the old man with wild surprise in his gaze and with a
down-dropped jaw.
"But I haven't even started on the second half of the book," he said.
"And I've got to do it all!"
"You pass him now," was the quiet answer. "The second part--you have
done him, too. Learn rules, if you like. No matter. You know him. See!"
He showed the very last set of examples in the book and Eric recognized
problems of the kind he had been doing, all unwitting to himself.
"Mathematics not to learn," he said, "he is to think. You now can think.
To know a rule, to do sum--bah! he is nothing! To know why a rule and
because a sum--he is much. You do him."
In the few remaining visits that Eric paid the puzzle-maker, he found
the old man's words to be quite true. Having learned the inside of
mathematics, its actual workings seemed reasonable. The clew gave Eric
the sense of exploring a new world of thought instead of being lost in a
tangled wilderness.
Meantime, he had become absolutely expert in every detail of the
station. His particular delight was the capsize drill. The keeper had
got the crew trained down to complete the whole performance within fifty
seconds from the time he gave the order. The boat had to be capsized,
every man underneath the boat. Then they had to clamber on the upturned
boat, right it again, and be seated on the thwarts with oars ready to
pull before the fiftieth second was past. It was quick work, and
although only a drill, was as exciting as the lad could wish. Two or
three times, one of the men, who wasn't quite as quick as the rest, got
"waterlogged" and the crew had to help him up. When that occurred, there
was an awful howl.
Once, only once, Eric delayed the drill about two seconds and it was
weeks before he overcame his sense of shame at the occurrence. But,
before the winter finally closed down, Eric was as able a
coast-guardsman as any on the Great Lakes. It was well that he was, for
a day was coming which would test his fortitude to the full.
Navigation had been lessening rapidly, and the boy was beginning to
think about Thanksgiving Day. They were just sitting down to supper,
when one of the men came in with haste.
"Heard anything of a wreck round Au Sable way?" he asked breathlessly.
"No," said the keeper, "what did you hear?"
"Nothin' definite," said the other, "but as I was comin' along a chap
stopped me and asked me if I were goin' out to the wreck off Au Sable.
He said he really didn't know anything about it, except there was a
report that the _City of Nipigon_ was on the rocks near Grand Point."
[Illustration: Fifth Second.]
[Illustration: Twelfth Second.]
[Illustration: Twenty-third Second]
[Illustration: Fiftieth Second.
LIFE-BOAT CAPSIZE-DRILL.
Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.]
The keeper jumped up and went to the telephone.
"Anything doing?" he asked, when the Au Sable operator got on the wire.
The chat in the station stopped to hear what the reply might be. Au
Sable was the most exposed point on the coast and there was a gale
beating in from the northwest.
"You'll let us know, then," said the keeper, and hung up the receiver.
"Says he's heard something about a wreck, but nothin' definite," he
added, turning to the crew. "Says a boy ran in with the news, but the
kid was too excited to give much information."
"Think there's anything in it?" queried one of the men.
"Hope not," said another, "I was out that way day before yesterday an'
there's an ice wall there about twenty feet high. I don't know how we'd
ever get a boat over it."
"We'd get it over, all right."
"How?" asked Eric interestedly.
"Aeroplane, if necessary," said the keeper laughing.
"No, but really," the boy protested.
"Brute strength and luck, I guess," the other said, "but I'm hopin' that
we don't have to go out to-night."
"Me too," added the boy. "I've got some 'trig'"--
The telephone bell rang.
"That's it, likely enough," said one of the men, getting up resignedly
and going over to the locker for his oilskins.
"Well," said the keeper, as he took off the receiver. Then, a minute
later turning to the men, he repeated to the crew, "'Steamer, _City of
Nipigon_, seven men aboard, burnin' distress signals, on rocks north and
by west of Au Sable light, quarter of a mile from land.' Right you are,
boys, we're off!"
There was a transformation scene. When the keeper began the sentence,
the Coast Guard station had been a scene of peace and comfort with a
group of men lounging around a hot fire, some reading, some playing
dominoes and others plying needle and thread. But, before the sentence
was over, almost every man was in his oilskins, some were just pulling
on their long boots, while others, even more nimble, had reached the
boat and the apparatus-cart. They were standing by for orders when the
keeper joined them.
"She's less'n a quarter of a mile out, boys," he said. "I reckon we'd
better try an' get her with the gun. After, if that doesn't work, we can
get the boat. But if we can put a line across her right away, it'll be
safer an' quicker. I don't fancy handling the boat down any such ice as
Jefferson talked about."
The apparatus-cart was out of the shed and started almost before the
keeper had finished his orders. Eric, who was no mean athlete, was glad
of every ounce of strength he possessed before he had gone a hundred
yards. The cart, fully loaded, weighed 1120 pounds and there were seven
men to drag it, a fairly good load on decent ground. But the ground was
all of eight inches deep in new-fallen snow into which the wheels sank.
The on-shore wind was dead against them, swirling like a blizzard. The
temperature was only about five degrees below zero, but there was an icy
tang that cut like a jagged knife.
In spite of the intense cold, so laborious was the dragging of that cart
through the snow, that Eric broke out in a violent perspiration. What
troubled him still more was the realization that he was already tiring,
although the party was still on the beaten road. In a very short while,
he knew, they would have to strike off from the track, across wild and
unbroken country to the beach.
To his surprise, the keeper kept right on, leaving the light on the left
hand. The boy, forgetting discipline in his eagerness and excitement,
spoke out,
"I thought they said 'west' of the light!"
The keeper turned and looked. He spoke not a word. There was no need.
Eric colored to the roots of his hair. He felt the rebuke.
Finally when they had passed the light by nearly half a mile, the road
went up a slight hill, and the keeper led the way at right angles along
a ridge of rock. It was rough almost beyond believing, but its very
barrenness had made it useful. As the keeper had shrewdly hoped, the
swirling blizzard had left its rough length bare, when all the lower
ground was deep in snow. For the hundredth time since he had been on the
station, Eric had to admit the wise foreknowledge of his chief.
As they swung on to the ridge the keeper turned and looked at Eric
again. He caught the boy's apologetic glance and smiled back. No word
was passed, but both understood.
The ridge helped them gallantly, though the wind whistled over it as
though it were the roof-pole of the world. More than once it seemed to
Eric as though the apparatus-cart would be turned upside down by some of
the terrific gusts, and the boy had a mental picture of the crew
floundering in the snow-drifts beneath.
Near the lighthouse, the ridge that had so befriended them merged into
the level, and the crew forced its way on through ever deepening drifts.
For about fifty yards the snow was above the hubs of the wheels, and
more than once it seemed that the apparatus cart was so deeply stuck as
to be immovable. The men left the shafts, and crowding round the cart
like ants they forced it free, and half carried and half pushed it
through the snow.
"Is there any shnow left at all?" queried Muldoon, when the worst of
this was overpassed.
"What do you mean?" one of the men asked.
"I thought we'd waded through all the shnow in the worrld," the Irishman
replied.
For a little space it was easy going until they came to the dunes above
the beach. There the crew halted. As Jefferson had said, sloping upwards
at an angle of forty degrees, was a steep sheet of glare ice, almost as
smooth as though it had been planed. It would have taken a fly to walk
on that surface, yet on the farther side of it was the only road to the
wreck. The light was on the end of a little spit and the vessel in
distress could be seen only from this spit. Without going on that neck
of land she could not be reached by the gun, and this passage was grimly
guarded by that sloping embattlement of ice.
"Up it, lads!" said the keeper.
The crew, gathered around the apparatus-cart, started up the slope. Six
feet was as far as they could get. Even without added weight no one
could stand on that glistening surface, and with the drag of the cart it
was impossible. Several times the men tried it, only to come sprawling
in a heap at the bottom of the hill.
"Two of you get up to the top!" ordered the keeper.
Two of the lightest men started. One of them, picking his steps with
great care, managed to get half-way up; the other, going back for a run,
tried to take the hill with a tremendous spurt. His impetus took him
almost up to the top, but he was a few feet short and slipped back. He
returned for another attempt.
In the meantime Eric had an idea. Instead of attacking the cliff at the
point the others were trying, and where it was shallowest, he went
twenty yards farther west, where the cliff was steeper, but rougher.
Taking an ax he started to cut niches for steps up the cliff. He knew it
would take a long time, but if the others did not succeed before him, he
would at least get there. If the others succeeded, the loss of his time
did not matter.
So, steadily, inch by inch, foot by foot, he made his way up the cliff,
taking the time to make the notches deep enough for surety. The ice was
not extremely hard, and Eric soon won his way to the top. He found the
edge exceedingly difficult to walk on and very dangerous, for it fell in
an almost sheer precipice on the water side, with the mush-ice beating
up against it. The top, too, was soft and honeycombed. Using as much
care in going along the edge as he had in scaling it, the boy soon found
himself on the cliff immediately above the cart.
"Here, you fellows," he called, "heave me up a line!"
There was a second's surprise when the other members of the crew saw
Eric on the crest of the ice-barrier which so far had defied them all.
"Good work!" called the keeper. "Jefferson, toss up the line."
Eric caught it.
"Have you a spike or anything?" he called, "I'll haul it up!"
The keeper yanked out one of the spikes of the frame on which the line
was faked and the boy carefully hauled it up, then drove it into the ice
as hard as he could, using his heavy boot for a hammer. He next took the
line, and wound it around the spike to help him in holding it.
"Now," he yelled through the storm, "some one can come up the rope."
"Muldoon," said the keeper to the Irishman, "you're about the lightest,
you go up first."
"'Tis meself will do it," was the reply, "an' it's blitherin' idjits we
were not to think o' the way the kid did it."
Then he shinned up the rope like a monkey on a stick.
With both Muldoon and Eric hanging to the rope, it was not long until
five men got to the top. The keeper, seeing how successful Eric's plan
had proved, ordered every man to cut for himself a good foothold in the
ice, and then, tailing on to the rope, they got the apparatus-cart up
the slope, two men behind trying to guide it from below. It was a
difficult haul, but at last they got the cart to the summit, and, in
order to keep it from sliding down, straddled the wheels atop.
[Illustration: RUSHING THE APPARATUS-CART.
Coast Guard Crew with life-gun, line-box, shots, hawser, breeches-buoy
and signal-lights, ploughing through heavy sand to wreck on beach a mile
away.
Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.]
The cart rocked unsteadily. Suddenly, as a particularly vicious blast
came whistling by, it canted as though it were going to fall. Eric, who
was a few feet away from the cart, jumped forward to save it, but missed
his footing and fell into the mush-ice twenty feet below, going clear
through.
There was no time for orders. Muldoon, quick as a wink, almost before
any one else had grasped the accident, knotted a line around the cart
and taking the other end in his hand jumped into the mush-ice after the
boy. So true was his eye that he struck almost the same point and a few
seconds later appeared above the surface with Eric. Neither was hurt,
but both were wet through, handicapping them for work on so cold a
night.
Eric's ruse in getting the apparatus-cart to the top of the cliff,
however, had solved the biggest part of the difficulty. By carefully
sliding the cart along the face of the cliff for ten yards or a little
more, they found themselves above the road leading out to the spit. It
was then merely a matter of lowering the cart to the other side.
Meantime Muldoon had raced the boy to the lighthouse for a chance to
change their clothes before they froze on them. No sooner did he knock
on the door than the lighthouse-keeper came out, and the open door
showed his daughter behind. Edith Abend was only seventeen years old,
but she had already saved two lives.
"You got here at last, then," said the lighthouse-keeper gruffly.
Edith, with a readier sense that help was needed, said quickly,
"What has happened? Is there anything wrong?"
"Nothin' wrong at all, darlint," said the Irishman, with his national
readiness to say nice things to a pretty girl, "only we've had a trifle
of a duckin' an' if there's annything like dhry clothes in this house it
would help us to our work. The lad here's quite wet."
"I don't see that I'm any wetter than you are!" protested Eric.
The light-keeper looked them over.
"Yon's the crew?" he asked.
"Yes," said Eric, "we've had a hard time getting here."
"I was wonderin' how ye were goin' to get over the ice-wall."
"We got over, all right," the boy replied.
"I see ye did. Well, I reckon I've some old things ye can have," the
keeper said grouchily.
The girl disappeared and a moment later came back into the room.
"They're all in there," she said simply, pointing to the next room.
"'Tis yourself that's the jewel," Muldoon said, leading the way in with
alacrity. There was nothing the matter with the Irishman's movements.
When he wanted to be quick he could move like a streak of extra-greased
lightning. He was out of his wet clothes and into a complete set of the
keeper's in a hurry. Eric was not many seconds behind. They put on their
own slickers, which had been dripping at the fireside, and were ready
for work again.
Great was the boy's surprise, as he tied on his sou'wester, to see a
small figure covered from head to foot in oilskins waiting for them.
Still greater was his amazement when he saw that this was the girl.
"Is it comin' out to watch us ye are, Miss?" said Muldoon. "Sure the
wind will blow ye away entirely. It's admiring the pluck of ye I am, but
ye'd better stay indoors. 'Tis no night to be watchin'."
"I'm not going to watch, I'm going to work," the girl said calmly. "And
I don't think you ought to waste time talking, either."
So saying, she walked out of the door to avoid further argument. The
light-keeper looked longingly after the three as though he would like to
join them, and help in the rescue, but his duty was with his light and
he could not leave it.
So quickly had all this passed that Muldoon, Eric and the girl got to
the edge of the spit just as the five members of the Coast Guard crew
had unshipped the gun, placed it in position and loaded it.
"That you, Muldoon?" said the keeper.
"Yis, sorr, it's me."
"You'd better take the gun. You're the best shot. That is, if you're
all right after your ducking."
"I'm in warrm, dhry clothes," the Irishman answered, "an' I'll do as you
say. But you're just as good a shot yourself," he added.
"Don't blatherskite," the keeper said. "Grab hold an' lay her straight."
The Lyle gun, being so short, gives little real opportunity for aim, and
the best man is one who has an intuition. This, Muldoon had. Besides,
the old puzzle-maker had taught him how to allow for the drop of the
line and how to estimate the force of the wind.
He fussed around for a minute or two, saw that the line was free on the
pins and that the case was free, and waited for the gusts of wind to die
down to a steadier gait. Then he fired. The red flare of the short
cannon showed clear against the ice and the line went sailing out
gracefully.
"Too far for'ard," said Eric disappointedly, as he saw it start. Muldoon
only shook his head.
"'Tis not far off," he said.
Sure enough, as the missile was about half-way out to the wreck, the
wind took the line and drove it sideways till it fell right abaft the
funnel. A flare from the steamer showed that the line had been
received.
"Nice shooting, Muldoon," the keeper said. "We'll have to give the
credit to that well-fittin' coat you've got on." The lighthouse-keeper
was at least twice the Irishman's size.
Muldoon looked particularly proud, because he had wanted to distinguish
himself before the girl. It was of vital urgency, moreover, for if
Muldoon had not been able to land the line, it would have meant a trip
back to the Coast Guard station to get out the surf-boat, with very
little likelihood of being able to force her up against the gale.
The men on the steamer started to haul in and the life-savers bent on a
larger rope with a block and tackle. Again the steamer burned a flare to
show that the block had been hauled on board and securely fastened, and
then the coastguardsmen began to haul on the line, pulling out to the
ship a heavy hawser on which ran the carriage for the breeches-buoy.
Everything worked without a hitch, the hawser was got on board and the
breeches-buoy hauled out.
Then the trouble began. The steamer lay partly submerged. She was a
small boat and her only mast had gone by the board. The bridge was a
tangle of wreckage. The breeches-buoy, therefore, could only be made
fast to the stump of the mast a few feet above the deck. Ashore, the
same difficulty prevailed. There was no high land, the tripod being down
almost on water-line. As soon as the hawser got wet and heavy with snow
and the ice from the blowing spray, it began to sag so that it nearly
touched the water.
With the weight of a man on it, the breeches-buoy line sank below the
surface of the water, or rather the mush-ice. It was bad enough for the
rescued men, already nearly perishing with exhaustion, to have to get a
ducking, but there was still a greater danger. This was that the tackle
might not stand the strain of dragging the breeches-buoy, with a man in
it, through the mush-ice. The increased resistance might break the line
and risk anew the perishing of every life on board.
The keeper saw the difficulty and decided promptly.
"Jefferson and Harris," he shouted, "you're the tallest. Get out into
that mush-ice and see how deep it is. Wade out as far as you can go.
Follow the line and stand ready to catch the breeches-buoy."
The two men chosen waded out, battling almost for their lives with big
pieces of ice. Fortunately the bottom sloped gradually and they were
able to walk out a considerable distance. Shouting to them through his
trumpet to wait there, the keeper ordered the rest of the crew to haul
in the first man. As the keeper had expected, the rope sagged terribly,
but, by drawing up his legs, the rescued man did not actually sink into
the mush-ice until nearly up to the spot where Jefferson and Harris
stood. The two men grasped the buoy and started pulling it ashore, one
man holding the survivor's head above the water and ice, while the other
made a path in the ice by forcing his way ahead of the buoy.
Half-way in, Harris collapsed. It afterwards developed that he had been
quite badly hurt on the ice-barrier but had not said a word about it. As
four men were needed on shore and there should be three to help in the
ice, the crew was a man short.
"I wish we had a third man!" said the keeper irritably. "Confoundedly
annoying that Harris should have got hurt now."
"You have a third," said a quiet voice, and Edith Abend stepped
forward.
"But, Miss!"
"Your orders, keeper?" the girl put in quietly.
The keeper looked at her sharply. He was a man of judgment and
accustomed to read faces. Without another word, and in the tone he would
have used in speaking to another man he said,
"Get right out there and hold the man's head above water as he comes in.
Jefferson and you, Eric, will break the way for the buoy."
And so it was, that with a light-keeper's daughter, a girl seventeen
years old, as the seventh in the crew, the life-savers of Point Au Sable
saved from the _City of Nipigon_ every soul on board.