David Lockwin--The People's Idol Part 17

"He beats _me_!" comments the contestant. "Well, pard, if you're not sick, I'd like to say a good many things. I suppose them ducks at Washington weakened. If they give me collector, here's my slate."

Corkey produces a long list of names, written on copy-paper.

"I bet she don't budge an inch," he remarks, as he hears the north wind and waves pounding at one end, and the engine pounding at the other.

"Needn't be afraid, pard. Sometimes they go out in Georgian Bay and burn some coal. Then if they can't git anywhere, they come back."

Corkey is pleased with his own remark. "Sometimes," he adds, "they don't come back. They are bluffed back by the wind."

Lockwin sits in the same uncommunicative att.i.tude.

"Pardner, you didn't come out into Georgian Bay for nothing. I know that. So I will tell you what I am going to do with the collectorship.

By the great jumping Jewhillikins, that's a wave in the stateroom windows! I never see anything like that."

The captain pa.s.ses.

"High sea, cap'n!" It is not in good form for Corkey to rise. He is a pa.s.senger, with a navigator's reputation to sustain.

"High h.e.l.l!" says the captain.

"What a hullabaloo them choppers is a-making," says Corkey to Lockwin.

"I reckon they're about scared to death. Well, as I was a-saying, I want to know what the jam-jorum said."

Corkey is terrified. He does not fear that he will go down in Georgian Bay. He dreads to hear the bursting of the bladders that are supporting him in his sea of glory.

Lockwin starts as from a waking dream:

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Corkey, but I could have told you at the start that the administration, when it was confronted by the question whether or not it would give you anything, said; 'No!' It will give you nothing. The administration said it would not appoint you lightkeeper at Ozaukee."

"There hain't no light at Ozaukee," says Corkey.

"That's what the administration said, too," replies Lockwin.

"Did you tell 'em I got you fine?" asks Corkey.

"I told them I thought you had as good a case as I had."

"Did you tell 'em I'd knock seventeen kinds of stuffin' out of their whole party? That I'd--"

Corkey is at his wits ends. His challenge has been accepted. At the outset he had saved fifty twenty-dollar gold pieces out of his wages.

He has spent fifteen already. The thought of a contest against the machine candidate carries with it the loss of the rest of the little h.o.a.rd. He has boasted that he will retain Emery Storrs, the eminent advocate. Corkey grows black in the face. He hiccoughs. He strangles.

He unburdens himself with a supreme sneeze. The mate enters the cabin.

"I _knew_ that sneeze would wreck us!" he cries savagely.

"Is your old tub sinking?" asks Corkey, in retort.

"That's what she is!" replies the mate.

Corkey looks like a man relieved. Politics is off his mind. He will not be laughed at on the docks now.

"Pardner, I'm sorry we're in this hole," he says, as the twain rush through the door to the deck. It was dim under that swinging lamp. It is dark out here. The wind is bitter. The second mate stands hard by.

"How much water is in?" asks Corkey.

"Plenty," says the second mate.

"What have ye done?" asks Corkey.

"Captain's blind, stavin' drunk, and won't do nothin'."

"Nice picnic!" says Corkey.

"Nice picnic!" says the second mate, warming up.

It is midnight in the middle of Georgian Bay. There is a fall gale such as comes only once in four or five years. In the morning there will be three hundred wrecks on the great lakes--the most inhospitable bodies of water in the world.

And of all stormy places let the sailor keep out of Georgian Bay.

CHAPTER XIII

OFF CAPE CROKER

Corkey has climbed to the upper deck and stands there alone in the darkness and the gale. The engine stops. The steamer falls into the trough of the sea.

The Africa carries two yawls attached to her davits. Corkey is feeling about one of these yawls. He suspects that the lines are old. He steps to the other side. He strains at a rope. He strives to unloose it from its cleat. The line is stiff and almost frozen.

"I'd be afraid to lower myself, anyhow," he observes, for he has the notion that everything about the Africa is insecure.

The ship gives another lurch. Something must be done. Almost before he knows it, Corkey has cut loose the stern. The rope seems strong.

Now he must unwind the bow line from its cleat, or he will lose his boat. He kicks at the cleat. He loosens a loop. He raises the boat and then lowers it. The tackle works.

The other yawl and its tackle roll and creak in the gale. n.o.body else comes up the ladders.

The man aloft pulls his line out and fastens it to the cleat which he tried to kick off. He seizes the stern of the yawl and hoists it far over the upper deck. The yawl falls outside the gunwale below, with a great crash and splintering of oars.

"She's there!" says Corkey, feeling the taut line. "She's there, and the rope is good. The davit is good."

The people below seem to know that a boat is being put out. But Corkey is the only man on the ship who thinks the idea practicable. "Of what use to lower a small boat," say the sailors, "in Georgian Bay?"

The man above must descend on that little line. He doesn't want to do that. He goes to the other boat, and makes a feeble experiment of hoisting and lowering, by means of both davits, the man to sit in the yawl. "I couldn't do it!" he vows, and recrosses.

"What'll I do when I get down there?" he mutters. "How'll I get loose?"