Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town
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!"