"A couple of days."
"Well, that accounts for it. You see the White Sturgeon; you start
prayin' right after. You'll need to. Nobody except that crazy Van Doorst
has ever saw him an' lived to tell about it. Well, got to get to work."
The deck hand wandered away. Ramsay turned again to face the storm and
let spray blow into his face. He thought of all that had happened since
he had, at last, reached Lake Michigan. This Wisconsin country was
indeed a land of sharp contrasts.
The _Holter_ and the _Spray_. Captain Schultz and the deck hand. Devil
Chad and Hans Van Doorst. A tannery and a fisherman. Local superstition
about a white sturgeon. Ramsay knew a rising satisfaction. This
semi-wilderness, lapped by a vast inland sea, might be a strange land,
but nobody could say that it was not an interesting or a strong one. His
last lingering doubts were set at rest and for the first time he was
entirely satisfied because he had come. A strong country was always the
place for strong people.
Ramsay raised his head, puzzled by something which, suddenly, seemed to
be out of place. For a second he did not know what it was. Then he
realized that the crying gulls which had been following the _Holter_ in
the hope that scraps or garbage would be tossed to them or else
interested in whatever debris the side wheel might churn up, were no
longer there.
Ramsay knew a second's uneasiness, and he could not explain it. He did
not know why he missed the gulls. It was just that they and their crying
had seemed a part of the lake. Now that they were gone, the lake was
incomplete. The boy braced himself against a sudden, vicious burst of
wind.
Even a land-lubber could tell that the storm's fury was increasing. A
sharp patter of rain sliced like a shower of cold knives across the
_Holter's_ deck, and Ramsay ducked his head. He raised it again,
grinning sheepishly as he did so, then gripped the rail to steady
himself. He watched with much interest as the storm raged even more
strongly.
It was driving directly out of the northwest, and it seemed to be
perpetually re-born in the dark clouds that had possession of the sky. A
howling wind accompanied it, and more shrapnel-bursts of rain.
The waves rose to prodigious heights. Dipping into them, the _Holter_
seemed no more than a leaf on this tossing sea. Turning, Ramsay saw the
helmsman clinging almost fiercely to his wheel, as though he would
somehow soften the storm's rage by doing that. In his cage the little
black horse nickered uncertainly.
Then there came something that was instantly apparent, even above the
screaming wind. The rough rhythm of the _Holter's_ throbbing engines
seemed to halt. The ship shivered mightily, as though in pain.
The engines stopped.