THREE
The Marine Excursions of the Knights of Pythias
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.
I don't need to tell at length how it all happened after that.
I suppose the people on the Mariposa Belle would have had to settle
down there all night or till help came from the town, but some of the
men who had gone forward and were peering out into the dark said that
it couldn't be more than a mile across the water to Miller's Point.
You could almost see it over there to the left,--some of them, I
think, said "off on the port bow," because you know when you get
mixed up in these marine disasters, you soon catch the atmosphere of
the thing.
So pretty soon they had the davits swung out over the side and were
lowering the old lifeboat from the top deck into the water.
There were men leaning out over the rail of the Mariposa Belle with
lanterns that threw the light as they let her down, and the glare
fell on the water and the reeds. But when they got the boat lowered,
it looked such a frail, clumsy thing as one saw it from the rail
above, that the cry was raised: "Women and children first!" For what
was the sense, if it should turn out that the boat wouldn't even hold
women and children, of trying to jam a lot of heavy men into it?
So they put in mostly women and children and the boat pushed out into
the darkness so freighted down it would hardly float.
In the bow of it was the Presbyterian student who was relieving the
minister, and he called out that they were in the hands of
Providence. But he was crouched and ready to spring out of them at
the first moment.
So the boat went and was lost in the darkness except for the lantern
in the bow that you could see bobbing on the water. Then presently it
came back and they sent another load, till pretty soon the decks
began to thin out and everybody got impatient to be gone.
It was about the time that the third boat-load put off that Mr. Smith
took a bet with Mullins for twenty-five dollars, that he'd be home in
Mariposa before the people in the boats had walked round the shore.
No one knew just what he meant, but pretty soon they saw Mr. Smith
disappear down below into the lowest part of the steamer with a
mallet in one hand and a big bundle of marline in the other.
They might have wondered more about it, but it was just at this time
that they heard the shouts from the rescue boat--the big Mackinaw
lifeboat--that had put out from the town with fourteen men at the
sweeps when they saw the first rockets go up.
I suppose there is always something inspiring about a rescue at sea,
or on the water.
After all, the bravery of the lifeboat man is the true
bravery,--expended to save life, not to destroy it.
Certainly they told for months after of how the rescue boat came out
to the Mariposa Belle.
I suppose that when they put her in the water the lifeboat touched it
for the first time since the old Macdonald Government placed her on
Lake Wissanotti.
Anyway, the water poured in at every seam. But not for a
moment,--even with two miles of water between them and the
steamer,--did the rowers pause for that.
By the time they were half-way there the water was almost up to the
thwarts, but they drove her on. Panting and exhausted (for mind you,
if you haven't been in a fool boat like that for years, rowing takes
it out of you), the rowers stuck to their task. They threw the
ballast over and chucked into the water the heavy cork jackets and
lifebelts that encumbered their movements. There was no thought of
turning back. They were nearer to the steamer than the shore.
"Hang to it, boys," called the crowd from the steamer's deck, and
hang they did.
They were almost exhausted when they got them; men leaning from the
steamer threw them ropes and one by one every man was hauled aboard
just as the lifeboat sank under their feet.
Saved! by Heaven, saved, by one of the smartest pieces of rescue work
ever seen on the lake.
There's no use describing it; you need to see rescue work of this
kind by lifeboats to understand it.
Nor were the lifeboat crew the only ones that distinguished
themselves.
Boat after boat and canoe after canoe had put out from Mariposa to
the help of the steamer. They got them all. Pupkin, the other bank
teller, with a face like a horse, who hadn't gone on the
excursion,--as soon as he knew that the boat was signalling for help
and that Miss Lawson was sending up rockets,--rushed for a row boat,
grabbed an oar (two would have hampered him), and paddled madly out
into the lake. He struck right out into the dark with the crazy skiff
almost sinking beneath his feet. But they got him. They rescued him.
They watched him, almost dead with exhaustion, make his way to the
steamer, where he was hauled up with ropes. Saved! Saved!!
They might have gone on that way half the night, picking up the
rescuers, only, at the very moment when the tenth load of people left
for the shore,--just as suddenly and saucily as you please, up came
the Mariposa Belle from the mud bottom and floated.
FLOATED?
Why, of course she did. If you take a hundred and fifty people off a
steamer that has sunk, and if you get a man as shrewd as Mr. Smith to
plug the timber seams with mallet and marline, and if you turn ten
bandsmen of the Mariposa band on to your hand pump on the bow of the
lower decks--float? why, what else can she do?
Then, if you stuff in hemlock into the embers of the fire that you
were raking out, till it hums and crackles under the boiler, it won't
be long before you hear the propeller thud thudding at the stern
again, and before the long roar of the steam whistle echoes over to
the town.
And so the Mariposa Belle, with all steam up again and with the long
train of sparks careering from the funnel, is heading for the town.
But no Christie Johnson at the wheel in the pilot house this time.
"Smith! Get Smith!" is the cry.
Can he take her in? Well, now! Ask a man who has had steamers sink on
him in half the lakes from Temiscaming to the Bay, if he can take her
in? Ask a man who has run a York boat down the rapids of the Moose
when the ice is moving, if he can grip the steering wheel of the
Mariposa Belle? So there she steams safe and sound to the town wharf!
Look at the lights and the crowd! If only the federal census taker
could count us now! Hear them calling and shouting back and forward
from the deck to the shore! Listen! There is the rattle of the shore
ropes as they get them ready, and there's the Mariposa
band,--actually forming in a circle on the upper deck just as she
docks, and the leader with his baton,--one--two--ready now,--
"O CAN-A-DA!"
