The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers Part 21

Muldoon looked particularly proud, because he had wanted to distinguish himself before the girl. It was of vital urgency, moreover, for if Muldoon had not been able to land the line, it would have meant a trip back to the Coast Guard station to get out the surf-boat, with very little likelihood of being able to force her up against the gale.

The men on the steamer started to haul in and the life-savers bent on a larger rope with a block and tackle. Again the steamer burned a flare to show that the block had been hauled on board and securely fastened, and then the coastguardsmen began to haul on the line, pulling out to the ship a heavy hawser on which ran the carriage for the breeches-buoy.

Everything worked without a hitch, the hawser was got on board and the breeches-buoy hauled out.

Then the trouble began. The steamer lay partly submerged. She was a small boat and her only mast had gone by the board. The bridge was a tangle of wreckage. The breeches-buoy, therefore, could only be made fast to the stump of the mast a few feet above the deck. Ash.o.r.e, the same difficulty prevailed. There was no high land, the tripod being down almost on water-line. As soon as the hawser got wet and heavy with snow and the ice from the blowing spray, it began to sag so that it nearly touched the water.

With the weight of a man on it, the breeches-buoy line sank below the surface of the water, or rather the mush-ice. It was bad enough for the rescued men, already nearly perishing with exhaustion, to have to get a ducking, but there was still a greater danger. This was that the tackle might not stand the strain of dragging the breeches-buoy, with a man in it, through the mush-ice. The increased resistance might break the line and risk anew the perishing of every life on board.

The keeper saw the difficulty and decided promptly.

"Jefferson and Harris," he shouted, "you're the tallest. Get out into that mush-ice and see how deep it is. Wade out as far as you can go.

Follow the line and stand ready to catch the breeches-buoy."

The two men chosen waded out, battling almost for their lives with big pieces of ice. Fortunately the bottom sloped gradually and they were able to walk out a considerable distance. Shouting to them through his trumpet to wait there, the keeper ordered the rest of the crew to haul in the first man. As the keeper had expected, the rope sagged terribly, but, by drawing up his legs, the rescued man did not actually sink into the mush-ice until nearly up to the spot where Jefferson and Harris stood. The two men grasped the buoy and started pulling it ash.o.r.e, one man holding the survivor's head above the water and ice, while the other made a path in the ice by forcing his way ahead of the buoy.

Half-way in, Harris collapsed. It afterwards developed that he had been quite badly hurt on the ice-barrier but had not said a word about it. As four men were needed on sh.o.r.e and there should be three to help in the ice, the crew was a man short.

"I wish we had a third man!" said the keeper irritably. "Confoundedly annoying that Harris should have got hurt now."

"You have a third," said a quiet voice, and Edith Abend stepped forward.

"But, Miss!"

"Your orders, keeper?" the girl put in quietly.

The keeper looked at her sharply. He was a man of judgment and accustomed to read faces. Without another word, and in the tone he would have used in speaking to another man he said,

"Get right out there and hold the man's head above water as he comes in.

Jefferson and you, Eric, will break the way for the buoy."

And so it was, that with a light-keeper's daughter, a girl seventeen years old, as the seventh in the crew, the life-savers of Point Au Sable saved from the _City of Nipigon_ every soul on board.

CHAPTER VI

A BLAZON OF FLAME AT SEA

Three weeks after the rescue of the crew of the _City of Nipigon_, navigation on Lake Superior closed down for the winter. Although the work had been hard and, during the last month, quite exhausting, Eric felt keen regrets in leaving the station and in bidding good-by to Dan.

He had become quite attached to the old puzzle-maker and had grown to realize how valuable his help had been.

Eric found, moreover, that not only had the hermit mathematician started him along the right road to algebra, to "trig." and even toward the geometry which he once hated, but also that his training with the old puzzle-maker had taught him how to study. He settled down in deadly earnest in Detroit, keeping up with all his special studies and also doing a good deal of hard reading with his father's help. The inspector knew that the entrance examination to the Coast Guard Academy was one of the stiffest tests in the government service and he willingly gave his time to help Eric. It was a winter of hard work and, aside from some skating and ice-hockey, Eric took little time off from his books.

Largely as a result of the puzzle-maker's guidance and by his own persistent digging, Eric was well prepared for the examinations in June.

He had some difficulty with rules and forms, but the essential principles of things were fixed solidly in his mind, so that when the lists were published, Eric found his name third, and second in Mathematics. His rival was a young fellow, named Homer Tierre, from Webb Academy, who was entering as a cadet engineer. The two boys struck up a friendship outside the examination room, and Eric was delighted to find that his new acquaintance had pa.s.sed, with him, so high in the list that the acceptance of both was sure.

Although, at the Academy, Homer and Eric were apart a good deal, the one being a cadet of engineers and the other a cadet of the line, still they had many cla.s.ses together. Eric, accustomed to the life-saving work, was able to be a good deal of help to his friend and taught him many tricks of swimming that he had learned from the Eel, two years before.

Moreover, having been used to the strict discipline of the old lighthouse inspector at home, Eric fell readily into the rigid rules of the Academy and often was able to save his friend from some pickle for which the latter was headed. Homer's a.s.sistance was equally valuable to Eric, for the young cadet engineer had been daft about machinery ever since he was old enough to bang a watch to pieces to find out what made it go, and he was able to instill into Eric some of his own enthusiasm.

This friendship was an added joy to Eric's delight in the Academy. He had never been more happy than during his first year as a cadet.

Eric was fortunate in having the right angle to life on entering the Academy, so that he did not have any difficulty in understanding the character of the discipline. A number of his cla.s.smates, conscious that they were training for commissions, considered themselves as junior officers. They were quickly set right on this mistaken idea, but the process of disabusing some of them was a sharp one. One member of the cla.s.s, in particular, had the notion that the Academy was a matter of books, smart uniforms, and a preparation for epaulets. When he found that he had to drill as a private, toil as a member of a gun crew, handle heavy work, use his delicate fingers in knotting and splicing and so forth, he entered a mild protest. He was set right by a homely rebuke from one of the instructors, an old sea-dog who knew everything about seamanship from the log of Noah's Ark to the rigging of a modern sea-plane.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BREECHES-BUOY DRILL.

Firing Lyle gun in corner; shot seen carrying line to mast to right of flagpole; rest of crew preparing to erect tripod.

Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BREECHES-BUOY DRILL. RESCUING SURVIVORS.

Line has been carried to mast, and made fast; hawser pulled out; sh.o.r.e end carried over tripod; third line run out with block carrying breeches-buoy line; crew is seen hauling on line which brings in the survivor.

Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.]

"You, Mr. Van Sluyd," he said bluntly, "if you haven't the nerve to do an enlisted man's work, nor the brains to do it better'n he can, what use'll you be as an officer?"

To do Van Sluyd justice, however, he took the call-down in good part and knuckled to at the practical end of his training. Eric soon found that this rather drastic phrase was a very fair presentation of the point of view of the Academy. The several instructors absolutely demanded a greater efficiency from the cadets than from the enlisted men. They had to receive instruction from the non-commissioned officers, just like the men did. This was no joke, either, for a warrant officer in the Coast Guard, especially a boatswain, has a knowledge of his craft far beyond a landsman's imaginings.

"Homer," said Eric to his friend one day, after a particularly stiff bout of gunnery mechanics, "is there anything that's ever been invented that we don't have to do here?"

"If there is, I haven't heard of it," his chum agreed. "Let's see, we've got navigation, and surveying, and physics, and chemistry, and gunnery, and tactics, and engineering, and ship-building, and--"

"Stop it, Homer," protested Eric, "you'd have to talk for a week just to make a list. I've often wondered if all this stuff is necessary."

"It sure is," his chum answered; "that's why I came into the Coast Guard instead of the Navy. There's a heap more variety, by nature of the work.

A fellow's got to know everything about the handling of sailing ships, because part of the job is the handling of sailing ships in distress.

He's got to be a sharp on towage, because he's got to take risks in storms that drive an ocean-going tug to port. He's got to know every breed of steamship and variety of engine, because the information's apt to be called on 'most any time."

"Yes, I suppose that's so," agreed Eric. "Navigation is just as bad. In the engineering end, you don't have as much of that, Homer, as we do, but I tell you, it's a fright the amount of stuff we have to learn. You take an ordinary ship captain. He only has to run into a few ports, and, in any case, he never goes near dangerous shoals. All he's got to learn is to keep away from them. But there isn't an inch on the American coast from Maine to Texas or from Alaska to Southern California that we don't have to remember. Almost any day a fellow's likely to have to chase into a bad shoal to help some ship that's fast on a lee sh.o.r.e; and that's usually in bad weather--it's no time to guess, then, you've got to be sure."

"I sometimes doubt," said Homer, "if all this infantry drill is going to be any use."

"Oh, I can see the use of that, all right," replied Eric. "In the Spanish-American War, the Coast Guard cutters did a lot of work, and, just the other day, our men were called on to keep San Domingo in order.

After all, Homer, the Coast Guard is a military arm, just as much as the navy."

"They don't worry you the way they do us," groaned the young cadet engineer, "over all the different sorts of machinery for the handling of big guns. It's thorough, all right; there isn't a chap in our cla.s.s who couldn't figure out and explain every process of manufacture and mounting, up to the actual work of handling the gun in an engagement."

"I don't see that you've got any kick coming," Eric retorted, "you always said you liked machinery. Now I haven't much use for mathematics, though I don't hate it quite as much as I did, and yet we get enough coast and geodetic surveying to prepare us for exploring a new world. I suppose they figure that if the United States ever annexes Mars, a Coast Guard crew will be put in charge."

"Likely enough," said the other, "but isn't that what you like about it?"

"Sure, it's great," agreed Eric. "I'm just crazy over the Academy. I wouldn't be anywhere else in the world. I don't believe there's a college within a mile of it for real training. There's all the pep to it that a Naval School has got to have, and although they hold us down so hard, after all, we get a lot of fun out of it. And take them 'by and large,' as the sh.e.l.lbacks say, don't you think the Coast Guard crowd is just about the finest ever?"

"You bet," Homer answered with emphasis. "It was seeing how they handled things that first headed me for the service. Did I ever tell you what made me want to join?"