Half-past six on a July morning! The Mariposa Belle is at the wharf,
decked in flags, with steam up ready to start.
Excursion day!
Half past six on a July morning, and Lake Wissanotti lying in the sun as
calm as glass. The opal colours of the morning light are shot from the
surface of the water.
Out on the lake the last thin threads of the mist are clearing away like
flecks of cotton wool.
The long call of the loon echoes over the lake. The air is cool and
fresh. There is in it all the new life of the land of the silent pine
and the moving waters. Lake Wissanotti in the morning sunlight! Don't
talk to me of the Italian lakes, or the Tyrol or the Swiss Alps. Take
them away. Move them somewhere else. I don't want them.
Excursion Day, at half past six of a summer morning! With the boat all
decked in flags and all the people in Mariposa on the wharf, and the
band in peaked caps with big cornets tied to their bodies ready to play
at any minute! I say! Don't tell me about the Carnival of Venice and
the Delhi Durbar. Don't! I wouldn't look at them. I'd shut my eyes! For
light and colour give me every time an excursion out of Mariposa down
the lake to the Indian's Island out of sight in the morning mist. Talk
of your Papal Zouaves and your Buckingham Palace Guard! I want to see
the Mariposa band in uniform and the Mariposa Knights of Pythias with
their aprons and their insignia and their picnic baskets and their
five-cent cigars!
Half past six in the morning, and all the crowd on the wharf and the
boat due to leave in half an hour. Notice it!--in half an hour. Already
she's whistled twice (at six, and at six fifteen), and at any minute
now, Christie Johnson will step into the pilot house and pull the string
for the warning whistle that the boat will leave in half an hour.
So keep ready. Don't think of running back to Smith's Hotel for the
sandwiches. Don't be fool enough to try to go up to the Greek Store,
next to Netley's, and buy fruit. You'll be left behind for sure if you
do. Never mind the sandwiches and the fruit! Anyway, here comes Mr.
Smith himself with a huge basket of provender that would feed a factory.
There must be sandwiches in that. I think I can hear them clinking.
And behind Mr. Smith is the German waiter from the caff with another
basket--indubitably lager beer; and behind him, the bar-tender of the
hotel, carrying nothing, as far as one can see. But of course if you
know Mariposa you will understand that why he looks so nonchalant and
empty-handed is because he has two bottles of rye whiskey under his
linen duster. You know, I think, the peculiar walk of a man with two
bottles of whiskey in the inside pockets of a linen coat. In Mariposa,
you see, to bring beer to an excursion is quite in keeping with public
opinion. But, whiskey,--well, one has to be a little careful.
Do I say that Mr. Smith is here? Why, everybody's here. There's Hussell
the editor of the Newspacket, wearing a blue ribbon on his coat, for
the Mariposa Knights of Pythias are, by their constitution, dedicated to
temperance; and there's Henry Mullins, the manager of the Exchange Bank,
also a Knight of Pythias, with a small flask of Pogram's Special in his
hip pocket as a sort of amendment to the constitution. And there's Dean
Drone, the Chaplain of the Order, with a fishing-rod (you never saw
such green bass as lie among the rocks at Indian's Island), and with
a trolling line in case of maskinonge, and a landing net in case of
pickerel, and with his eldest daughter, Lilian Drone, in case of young
men. There never was such a fisherman as the Rev. Rupert Drone.
Perhaps I ought to explain that when I speak of the excursion as being
of the Knights of Pythias, the thing must not be understood in any
narrow sense. In Mariposa practically everybody belongs to the Knights
of Pythias just as they do to everything else. That's the great thing
about the town and that's what makes it so different from the city.
Everybody is in everything.
You should see them on the seventeenth of March, for example, when
everybody wears a green ribbon and they're all laughing and glad,--you
know what the Celtic nature is,--and talking about Home Rule.
On St. Andrew's Day every man in town wears a thistle and shakes hands
with everybody else, and you see the fine old Scotch honesty beaming out
of their eyes.
And on St. George's Day!--well, there's no heartiness like the good old
English spirit, after all; why shouldn't a man feel glad that he's an
Englishman?
Then on the Fourth of July there are stars and stripes flying over half
the stores in town, and suddenly all the men are seen to smoke cigars,
and to know all about Roosevelt and Bryan and the Philippine Islands.
Then you learn for the first time that Jeff Thorpe's people came from
Massachusetts and that his uncle fought at Bunker Hill (it must have
been Bunker Hill,--anyway Jefferson will swear it was in Dakota all
right enough); and you find that George Duff has a married sister in
Rochester and that her husband is all right; in fact, George was down
there as recently as eight years ago. Oh, it's the most American town
imaginable is Mariposa,--on the fourth of July.
But wait, just wait, if you feel anxious about the solidity of the
British connection, till the twelfth of the month, when everybody is
wearing an orange streamer in his coat and the Orangemen (every man in
town) walk in the big procession. Allegiance! Well, perhaps you remember
the address they gave to the Prince of Wales on the platform of the
Mariposa station as he went through on his tour to the west. I think
that pretty well settled that question. So you will easily understand
that of course everybody belongs to the Knights of Pythias and the
Masons and Oddfellows, just as they all belong to the Snow Shoe Club and
the Girls' Friendly Society.
And meanwhile the whistle of the steamer has blown again for a quarter
to seven:--loud and long this time, for any one not here now is late
for certain; unless he should happen to come down in the last fifteen
minutes.
What a crowd upon the wharf and how they pile on to the steamer! It's a
wonder that the boat can hold them all. But that's just the marvellous
thing about the Mariposa Belle.
I don't know,--I have never known,--where the steamers like the Mariposa
Belle come from. Whether they are built by Harland and Wolff of Belfast,
or whether, on the other hand, they are not built by Harland and Wolff
of Belfast, is more than one would like to say offhand.
The Mariposa Belle always seems to me to have some of those strange
properties that distinguish Mariposa itself. I mean, her size seems to
vary so. If you see her there in the winter, frozen in the ice beside
the wharf with a snowdrift against the windows of the pilot house, she
looks a pathetic little thing the size of a butternut. But in the summer
time, especially after you've been in Mariposa for a month or two, and
have paddled alongside of her in a canoe, she gets larger and taller,
and with a great sweep of black sides, till you see no difference
between the Mariposa Belle and the Lusitania. Each one is a big steamer
and that's all you can say.
Nor do her measurements help you much. She draws about eighteen inches
forward, and more than that,--at least half an inch more, astern, and
when she's loaded down with an excursion crowd she draws a good two
inches more. And above the water,--why, look at all the decks on her!
There's the deck you walk on to, from the wharf, all shut in, with
windows along it, and the after cabin with the long table, and above
that the deck with all the chairs piled upon it, and the deck in front
where the band stand round in a circle, and the pilot house is higher
than that, and above the pilot house is the board with the gold name and
the flag pole and the steel ropes and the flags; and fixed in somewhere
on the different levels is the lunch counter where they sell the
sandwiches, and the engine room, and down below the deck level, beneath
the water line, is the place where the crew sleep. What with steps and
stairs and passages and piles of cordwood for the engine,--oh no, I
guess Harland and Wolff didn't build her. They couldn't have.
Yet even with a huge boat like the Mariposa Belle, it would be
impossible for her to carry all of the crowd that you see in the boat
and on the wharf. In reality, the crowd is made up of two classes,--all
of the people in Mariposa who are going on the excursion and all those
who are not. Some come for the one reason and some for the other.
The two tellers of the Exchange Bank are both there standing side by
side. But one of them,--the one with the cameo pin and the long face
like a horse,--is going, and the other,--with the other cameo pin and
the face like another horse,--is not. In the same way, Hussell of the
Newspacket is going, but his brother, beside him, isn't. Lilian Drone is
going, but her sister can't; and so on all through the crowd.
And to think that things should look like that on the morning of a
steamboat accident.
How strange life is!
To think of all these people so eager and anxious to catch the steamer,
and some of them running to catch it, and so fearful that they might
miss it,--the morning of a steamboat accident. And the captain blowing
his whistle, and warning them so severely that he would leave them
behind,--leave them out of the accident! And everybody crowding so
eagerly to be in the accident.
Perhaps life is like that all through.
Strangest of all to think, in a case like this, of the people who were
left behind, or in some way or other prevented from going, and always
afterwards told of how they had escaped being on board the Mariposa
Belle that day!
Some of the instances were certainly extraordinary. Nivens, the lawyer,
escaped from being there merely by the fact that he was away in the
city.
Towers, the tailor, only escaped owing to the fact that, not intending
to go on the excursion he had stayed in bed till eight o'clock and so
had not gone. He narrated afterwards that waking up that morning
at half-past five, he had thought of the excursion and for some
unaccountable reason had felt glad that he was not going.
The case of Yodel, the auctioneer, was even more inscrutable. He had
been to the Oddfellows' excursion on the train the week before and to
the Conservative picnic the week before that, and had decided not to
go on this trip. In fact, he had not the least intention of going. He
narrated afterwards how the night before someone had stopped him on the
corner of Nippewa and Tecumseh Streets (he indicated the very spot) and
asked: "Are you going to take in the excursion to-morrow?" and he had
said, just as simply as he was talking when narrating it: "No." And ten
minutes after that, at the corner of Dalhousie and Brock Streets (he
offered to lead a party of verification to the precise place) somebody
else had stopped him and asked: "Well, are you going on the steamer trip
to-morrow?" Again he had answered: "No," apparently almost in the same
tone as before.
He said afterwards that when he heard the rumour of the accident
it seemed like the finger of Providence, and fell on his knees in
thankfulness.
There was the similar case of Morison (I mean the one in Glover's
hardware store that married one of the Thompsons). He said afterwards
that he had read so much in the papers about accidents lately,--mining
accidents, and aeroplanes and gasoline,--that he had grown nervous. The
night before his wife had asked him at supper: "Are you going on the
excursion?" He had answered: "No, I don't think I feel like it," and had
added: "Perhaps your mother might like to go." And the next evening just
at dusk, when the news ran through the town, he said the first thought
that flashed through his head was: "Mrs. Thompson's on that boat."
He told this right as I say it--without the least doubt or confusion. He
never for a moment imagined she was on the Lusitania or the Olympic
or any other boat. He knew she was on this one. He said you could have
knocked him down where he stood. But no one had. Not even when he got
halfway down,--on his knees, and it would have been easier still to
knock him down or kick him. People do miss a lot of chances.
Still, as I say, neither Yodel nor Morison nor anyone thought about
there being an accident until just after sundown when they--
Well, have you ever heard the long booming whistle of a steamboat two
miles out on the lake in the dusk, and while you listen and count and
wonder, seen the crimson rockets going up against the sky and then heard
the fire bell ringing right there beside you in the town, and seen the
people running to the town wharf?
That's what the people of Mariposa saw and felt that summer evening as
they watched the Mackinaw life-boat go plunging out into the lake
with seven sweeps to a side and the foam clear to the gunwale with the
lifting stroke of fourteen men!
But, dear me, I am afraid that this is no way to tell a story. I suppose
the true art would have been to have said nothing about the accident
till it happened. But when you write about Mariposa, or hear of it, if
you know the place, it's all so vivid and real that a thing like the
contrast between the excursion crowd in the morning and the scene at
night leaps into your mind and you must think of it.
But never mind about the accident,--let us turn back again to the
morning.
The boat was due to leave at seven. There was no doubt about the
hour,--not only seven, but seven sharp. The notice in the Newspacket
said: "The boat will leave sharp at seven;" and the advertising posters
on the telegraph poles on Missinaba Street that began "Ho, for Indian's
Island!" ended up with the words: "Boat leaves at seven sharp." There
was a big notice on the wharf that said: "Boat leaves sharp on time."
So at seven, right on the hour, the whistle blew loud and long, and then
at seven fifteen three short peremptory blasts, and at seven thirty one
quick angry call,--just one,--and very soon after that they cast off
the last of the ropes and the Mariposa Belle sailed off in her cloud of
flags, and the band of the Knights of Pythias, timing it to a nicety,
broke into the "Maple Leaf for Ever!"
I suppose that all excursions when they start are much the same. Anyway,
on the Mariposa Belle everybody went running up and down all over the
boat with deck chairs and camp stools and baskets, and found places,
splendid places to sit, and then got scared that there might be better
ones and chased off again. People hunted for places out of the sun and
when they got them swore that they weren't going to freeze to please
anybody; and the people in the sun said that they hadn't paid fifty
cents to be roasted. Others said that they hadn't paid fifty cents to
get covered with cinders, and there were still others who hadn't paid
fifty cents to get shaken to death with the propeller.
Still, it was all right presently. The people seemed to get sorted out
into the places on the boat where they belonged. The women, the older
ones, all gravitated into the cabin on the lower deck and by getting
round the table with needlework, and with all the windows shut, they
soon had it, as they said themselves, just like being at home.
All the young boys and the toughs and the men in the band got down on
the lower deck forward, where the boat was dirtiest and where the anchor
was and the coils of rope.
And upstairs on the after deck there were Lilian Drone and Miss Lawson,
the high school teacher, with a book of German poetry,--Gothey I think
it was,--and the bank teller and the younger men.
In the centre, standing beside the rail, were Dean Drone and Dr.
Gallagher, looking through binocular glasses at the shore.
Up in front on the little deck forward of the pilot house was a group
of the older men, Mullins and Duff and Mr. Smith in a deck chair, and
beside him Mr. Golgotha Gingham, the undertaker of Mariposa, on a stool.
It was part of Mr. Gingham's principles to take in an outing of this
sort, a business matter, more or less,--for you never know what may
happen at these water parties. At any rate, he was there in a neat suit
of black, not, of course, his heavier or professional suit, but a soft
clinging effect as of burnt paper that combined gaiety and decorum to a
nicety.
"Yes," said Mr. Gingham, waving his black glove in a general way towards
the shore, "I know the lake well, very well. I've been pretty much all
over it in my time."
"Canoeing?" asked somebody.
"No," said Mr. Gingham, "not in a canoe." There seemed a peculiar and
quiet meaning in his tone.
"Sailing, I suppose," said somebody else.
"No," said Mr. Gingham. "I don't understand it."
"I never knowed that you went on to the water at all, Gol," said Mr.
Smith, breaking in.
"Ah, not now," explained Mr. Gingham; "it was years ago, the first
summer I came to Mariposa. I was on the water practically all day.
Nothing like it to give a man an appetite and keep him in shape."
"Was you camping?" asked Mr. Smith.
"We camped at night," assented the undertaker, "but we put in
practically the whole day on the water. You see we were after a party
that had come up here from the city on his vacation and gone out in a
sailing canoe. We were dragging. We were up every morning at sunrise,
lit a fire on the beach and cooked breakfast, and then we'd light our
pipes and be off with the net for a whole day. It's a great life,"
concluded Mr. Gingham wistfully.
"Did you get him?" asked two or three together.
There was a pause before Mr. Gingham answered.
"We did," he said,--"down in the reeds past Horseshoe Point. But it was
no use. He turned blue on me right away."
After which Mr. Gingham fell into such a deep reverie that the boat had
steamed another half mile down the lake before anybody broke the silence
again.
Talk of this sort,--and after all what more suitable for a day on the
water?--beguiled the way.
Down the lake, mile by mile over the calm water, steamed the Mariposa
Belle. They passed Poplar Point where the high sand-banks are with all
the swallows' nests in them, and Dean Drone and Dr. Gallagher looked at
them alternately through the binocular glasses, and it was wonderful how
plainly one could see the swallows and the banks and the shrubs,--just
as plainly as with the naked eye.
And a little further down they passed the Shingle Beach, and Dr.
Gallagher, who knew Canadian history, said to Dean Drone that it
was strange to think that Champlain had landed there with his French
explorers three hundred years ago; and Dean Drone, who didn't know
Canadian history, said it was stranger still to think that the hand of
the Almighty had piled up the hills and rocks long before that; and
Dr. Gallagher said it was wonderful how the French had found their way
through such a pathless wilderness; and Dean Drone said that it was
wonderful also to think that the Almighty had placed even the smallest
shrub in its appointed place. Dr. Gallagher said it filled him with
admiration. Dean Drone said it filled him with awe. Dr. Gallagher said
he'd been full of it ever since he was a boy; and Dean Drone said so had
he.
Then a little further, as the Mariposa Belle steamed on down the lake,
they passed the Old Indian Portage where the great grey rocks are; and
Dr. Gallagher drew Dean Drone's attention to the place where the narrow
canoe track wound up from the shore to the woods, and Dean Drone said he
could see it perfectly well without the glasses.
Dr. Gallagher said that it was just here that a party of five hundred
French had made their way with all their baggage and accoutrements
across the rocks of the divide and down to the Great Bay. And Dean Drone
said that it reminded him of Xenophon leading his ten thousand Greeks
over the hill passes of Armenia down to the sea. Dr. Gallagher said the
he had often wished he could have seen and spoken to Champlain, and Dean
Drone said how much he regretted to have never known Xenophon.
And then after that they fell to talking of relics and traces of the
past, and Dr. Gallagher said that if Dean Drone would come round to his
house some night he would show him some Indian arrow heads that he had
dug up in his garden. And Dean Drone said that if Dr. Gallagher would
come round to the rectory any afternoon he would show him a map of
Xerxes' invasion of Greece. Only he must come some time between the
Infant Class and the Mothers' Auxiliary.
So presently they both knew that they were blocked out of one another's
houses for some time to come, and Dr. Gallagher walked forward and told
Mr. Smith, who had never studied Greek, about Champlain crossing the
rock divide.
Mr. Smith turned his head and looked at the divide for half a second and
then said he had crossed a worse one up north back of the Wahnipitae
and that the flies were Hades,--and then went on playing freezeout poker
with the two juniors in Duff's bank.
So Dr. Gallagher realized that that's always the way when you try to
tell people things, and that as far as gratitude and appreciation goes
one might as well never read books or travel anywhere or do anything.
In fact, it was at this very moment that he made up his mind to give the
arrows to the Mariposa Mechanics' Institute,--they afterwards became, as
you know, the Gallagher Collection. But, for the time being, the doctor
was sick of them and wandered off round the boat and watched Henry
Mullins showing George Duff how to make a John Collins without lemons,
and finally went and sat down among the Mariposa band and wished that he
hadn't come.
So the boat steamed on and the sun rose higher and higher, and the
freshness of the morning changed into the full glare of noon, and they
went on to where the lake began to narrow in at its foot, just where
the Indian's Island is, all grass and trees and with a log wharf running
into the water: Below it the Lower Ossawippi runs out of the lake, and
quite near are the rapids, and you can see down among the trees the red
brick of the power house and hear the roar of the leaping water.
The Indian's Island itself is all covered with trees and tangled vines,
and the water about it is so still that it's all reflected double and
looks the same either way up. Then when the steamer's whistle blows as
it comes into the wharf, you hear it echo among the trees of the island,
and reverberate back from the shores of the lake.
The scene is all so quiet and still and unbroken, that Miss
Cleghorn,--the sallow girl in the telephone exchange, that I spoke
of--said she'd like to be buried there. But all the people were so busy
getting their baskets and gathering up their things that no one had time
to attend to it.
I mustn't even try to describe the landing and the boat crunching
against the wooden wharf and all the people running to the same side of
the deck and Christie Johnson calling out to the crowd to keep to the
starboard and nobody being able to find it. Everyone who has been on a
Mariposa excursion knows all about that.
Nor can I describe the day itself and the picnic under the trees. 'There
were speeches afterwards, and Judge Pepperleigh gave such offence
by bringing in Conservative politics that a man called Patriotus
Canadiensis wrote and asked for some of the invaluable space of the
Mariposa Times-Herald and exposed it.
I should say that there were races too, on the grass on the open side
of the island, graded mostly according to ages, races for boys under
thirteen and girls over nineteen and all that sort of thing. Sports
are generally conducted on that plan in Mariposa. It is realized that a
woman of sixty has an unfair advantage over a mere child.
Dean Drone managed the races and decided the ages and gave out the
prizes; the Wesleyan minister helped, and he and the young student, who
was relieving in the Presbyterian Church, held the string at the winning
point.
They had to get mostly clergymen for the races because all the men had
wandered off, somehow, to where they were drinking lager beer out of two
kegs stuck on pine logs among the trees.
But if you've ever been on a Mariposa excursion you know all about these
details anyway.
So the day wore on and presently the sun came through the trees on a
slant and the steamer whistle blew with a great puff of white steam and
all the people came straggling down to the wharf and pretty soon the
Mariposa Belle had floated out on to the lake again and headed for the
town, twenty miles away.
I suppose you have often noticed the contrast there is between an
excursion on its way out in the morning and what it looks like on the
way home.
In the morning everybody is so restless and animated and moves to
and fro all over the boat and asks questions. But coming home, as the
afternoon gets later and the sun sinks beyond the hills, all the people
seem to get so still and quiet and drowsy.
So it was with the people on the Mariposa Belle. They sat there on the
benches and the deck chairs in little clusters, and listened to the
regular beat of the propeller and almost dozed off asleep as they sat.
Then when the sun set and the dusk drew on, it grew almost dark on the
deck and so still that you could hardly tell there was anyone on board.
And if you had looked at the steamer from the shore or from one of
the islands, you'd have seen the row of lights from the cabin windows
shining on the water and the red glare of the burning hemlock from the
funnel, and you'd have heard the soft thud of the propeller miles away
over the lake.
Now and then, too, you could have heard them singing on the
steamer,--the voices of the girls and the men blended into unison
by the distance, rising and falling in long-drawn melody:
"O--Can-a-da--O--Can-a-da."
You may talk as you will about the intoning choirs of your European
cathedrals, but the sound of "O--Can-a-da," borne across the waters of a
silent lake at evening is good enough for those of us who know Mariposa.
I think that it was just as they were singing like this: "O--Can-a-da,"
that word went round that the boat was sinking.
If you have ever been in any sudden emergency on the water, you will
understand the strange psychology of it,--the way in which what is
happening seems to become known all in a moment without a word being
said. The news is transmitted from one to the other by some mysterious
process.
At any rate, on the Mariposa Belle first one and then the other heard
that the steamer was sinking. As far as I could ever learn the first
of it was that George Duff, the bank manager, came very quietly to Dr.
Gallagher and asked him if he thought that the boat was sinking. The
doctor said no, that he had thought so earlier in the day but that he
didn't now think that she was.
After that Duff, according to his own account, had said to Macartney,
the lawyer, that the boat was sinking, and Macartney said that he
doubted it very much.
Then somebody came to Judge Pepperleigh and woke him up and said that
there was six inches of water in the steamer and that she was sinking.
And Pepperleigh said it was perfect scandal and passed the news on to
his wife and she said that they had no business to allow it and that if
the steamer sank that was the last excursion she'd go on.
So the news went all round the boat and everywhere the people gathered
in groups and talked about it in the angry and excited way that people
have when a steamer is sinking on one of the lakes like Lake Wissanotti.
Dean Drone, of course, and some others were quieter about it, and said
that one must make allowances and that naturally there were two sides to
everything. But most of them wouldn't listen to reason at all. I think,
perhaps, that some of them were frightened. You see the last time but
one that the steamer had sunk, there had been a man drowned and it made
them nervous.
What? Hadn't I explained about the depth of Lake Wissanotti? I had
taken it for granted that you knew; and in any case parts of it are deep
enough, though I don't suppose in this stretch of it from the big reed
beds up to within a mile of the town wharf, you could find six feet of
water in it if you tried. Oh, pshaw! I was not talking about a steamer
sinking in the ocean and carrying down its screaming crowds of people
into the hideous depths of green water. Oh, dear me no! That kind of
thing never happens on Lake Wissanotti.
But what does happen is that the Mariposa Belle sinks every now and
then, and sticks there on the bottom till they get things straightened
up.
On the lakes round Mariposa, if a person arrives late anywhere and
explains that the steamer sank, everybody understands the situation.
You see when Harland and Wolff built the Mariposa Belle, they left some
cracks in between the timbers that you fill up with cotton waste every
Sunday. If this is not attended to, the boat sinks. In fact, it is part
of the law of the province that all the steamers like the Mariposa Belle
must be properly corked,--I think that is the word,--every season. There
are inspectors who visit all the hotels in the province to see that it
is done.
So you can imagine now that I've explained it a little straighter, the
indignation of the people when they knew that the boat had come uncorked
and that they might be stuck out there on a shoal or a mud-bank half the
night.
I don't say either that there wasn't any danger; anyway, it doesn't feel
very safe when you realize that the boat is settling down with every
hundred yards that she goes, and you look over the side and see only the
black water in the gathering night.
Safe! I'm not sure now that I come to think of it that it isn't worse
than sinking in the Atlantic. After all, in the Atlantic there is
wireless telegraphy, and a lot of trained sailors and stewards. But out
on Lake Wissanotti,--far out, so that you can only just see the lights
of the town away off to the south,--when the propeller comes to a
stop,--and you can hear the hiss of steam as they start to rake out the
engine fires to prevent an explosion,--and when you turn from the red
glare that comes from the furnace doors as they open them, to the
black dark that is gathering over the lake,--and there's a night wind
beginning to run among the rushes,--and you see the men going forward
to the roof of the pilot house to send up the rockets to rouse the town,
safe? Safe yourself, if you like; as for me, let me once get back into
Mariposa again, under the night shadow of the maple trees, and this
shall be the last, last time I'll go on Lake Wissanotti.
Safe! Oh yes! Isn't it strange how safe other people's adventures seem
after they happen? But you'd have been scared, too, if you'd been there
just before the steamer sank, and seen them bringing up all the women on
to the top deck.
I don't see how some of the people took it so calmly; how Mr. Smith, for
instance, could have gone on smoking and telling how he'd had a steamer
"sink on him" on Lake Nipissing and a still bigger one, a side-wheeler,
sink on him in Lake Abbitibbi.
Then, quite suddenly, with a quiver, down she went. You could feel the
boat sink, sink,--down, down,--would it never get to the bottom? The
water came flush up to the lower deck, and then,--thank heaven,--the
sinking stopped and there was the Mariposa Belle safe and tight on a
reed bank.
Really, it made one positively laugh! It seemed so queer and, anyway,
if a man has a sort of natural courage, danger makes him laugh. Danger!
pshaw! fiddlesticks! everybody scouted the idea. Why, it is just the
little things like this that give zest to a day on the water.
Within half a minute they were all running round looking for sandwiches
and cracking jokes and talking of making coffee over the remains of the
engine fires.