The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers Part 26

"Then he remembered that the wireless instruments were clamped on to a wooden bench and he went into the deck-house to try to tear that apart.

The door slammed as he went in, and while he was yanking at the bench the ship buckled and the pressure jammed the door, making him a prisoner. He seems to remember very little after that, but he must have tried hard to get out, for he broke his arm in some way."

"How about the wireless messages?"

"He says the operator had jotted down the original message he had sent, and he tried to repeat it as best he could. Of course all that last stuff no one could understand was sent when he was semi-conscious."

Eric winced as the other touched his shoulder.

"Get ready now," the surgeon said, "I'm going to snap that bone back into place. Ready?"

"Go ahead," the boy answered through set teeth.

The surgeon gave a quick sharp twist and there was a click as the shoulder went back.

"That's going to be a bit sore for a while," he said, "but you ought to be mighty thankful you put it out of joint."

"Why?"

"You'd have broken something instead, if it hadn't slipped," was the reply; "you must have hit that door an awful welt, for you're bruised on that side from the shoulder down. Just black and blue with a few touches of reddish purple. You're an impressionist sketch on the bruise line, I tell you! But there's nothing serious there. Using your carca.s.s for a battering ram is apt to make a few contusions, and you've done well to get off so easily."

"I had to get into that deck-house. I wanted to be sure no one was there."

"It took more than wanting," the surgeon said, "you must have been just about crazy. A man's got to be nearly in the state of a maniac before he'll hurl himself against an iron door like that without thinking of the consequences to himself. You were out of your head with pain, Swift, the way it looks to me, you'd never have tried it in your sober senses."

"Glad I got crazy, then, Doctor," said Eric, gingerly moving himself a fraction of an inch, but wincing as he did so; "if I hadn't, I'd have failed."

"Well," the surgeon said, rising to go, "I think the fates have been mighty good to you, Swift, if you ask me. There's many a man has the daring and the pluck to do what you've done, but never has the chance.

You had your chance. And you made good!"

As a matter of course, Eric's bunk became a center round which the other cadets gravitated, and his cla.s.smates did everything they could to make things as pleasant for him as possible. He was glad, none the less, when two or three days later, he was told that he might go up on deck.

The boy was scarcely aware of it, but with his shoulder and arm bandaged and both feet heavily swathed, he made rather a pathetic sight, which his white and drawn face accentuated. A hammock had been rigged up on the sunny side of the deck and to this he was carried.

Just as soon as he appeared on deck, for an instant there was a cessation of all work that was going on. Then, suddenly, started by no one knew whom, from the throat of every man on deck came a burst of cheers. It was the tribute of gallant men to a gallant lad.

Weakly, and with a lump in his throat, Eric saluted with his left hand, in reply.

It was an infraction of discipline, no doubt, but the officer in charge of the deck ignored it. Indeed, he was afterwards heard to say that he had difficulty in not joining in himself. A little later in the day, the captain himself came on deck. Before going below, he came amidships where Eric was lying, feeling weak, but thoroughly happy.

"I have the pleasure of informing you, Mr. Swift," he said, formally, "that I have entered your name in the ship's log for distinguished services."

This was more than Eric could have hoped for and he saluted gratefully.

The boy realized how much more significant was this actual visit of the captain than if it had followed the usual custom of a message sent through the executive officer of the ship, and his pride and delight in the Coast Guard was multiplied.

Naturally, under the conditions, there was a slight relaxation of discipline in Eric's case, and more than once the first lieutenant came and chatted to the lad. Finding out that he was especially interested in Alaska, the lieutenant talked with him about the work of the Coast Guard in the Bering Sea and the Arctic Ocean. The officer was an enthusiast about the Eskimo, holding them to be a magnificent race, enduring the rigors of the far north and holding themselves clean from the vices of civilization. As one of his cla.s.smates was taking up Eskimo language, Eric also took up the study of it, since he had spare time on his hands while in sick-bay. Meantime, however, he kept up his studies at top notch.

The value of the Eskimo language to him, however, Eric never realized until the close of his third year. Though limping a good deal, he had been able to be up and around for a month before the exams and he had been slaving like a forty-mule team. Still, work as hard as he could, the boy was conscious that there were others who could surpa.s.s him.

Especially there was one, a fellow called Pym Arbuthnot, who was a hard compet.i.tor.

[Ill.u.s.tration: COAST GUARD CUTTER, _MIAMI_, ON JULY FOURTH.

Vessel on which Eric was lieutenant, dressed for national holiday and firing a salute.

Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.]

They used to say of Pym that he could learn a subject by looking at the outside of a book, and his memory was as retentive as his acquisition was quick. He was always first--in everything but mathematics. There Eric had him. Often he blessed the memory of the old puzzle-maker, as week by week his success in mathematics kept him right abreast of his rival. When at last the exams came off and the lists were made known, Eric was second. He had not quite been able to catch up with Pym, who was first, as every one had expected. To Eric's great delight, moreover, Homer was first in the engineering cla.s.s.

About a week later, the commandant called him into his office.

"Lieutenant Swift," he said, and the boy's face glowed at this first use of the t.i.tle, "you have been commissioned and ordered to the _Bear_.

I am told that you know a little Eskimo."

"Yes, sir, a little," Eric answered.

"Your showing in the Academy has been creditable," the commandant continued, "and I have the pleasure of informing you that your appointment as United States Commissioner on the _Bear_ on her next trip has been forwarded to me," and he touched a paper lying on the desk.

"I have to thank Mr. Sutherland for that, sir," Eric answered.

"It is a matter of record, sir," the commandant answered a trifle sternly, "that you have done your duty. Appointments in the Coast Guard, Mr. Swift, are made upon the single basis of efficiency and fitness. I have the honor to congratulate you upon your commission and to wish you well."

Walking from the commandant's office, Eric, now "Lieutenant Swift," met the first lieutenant. He looked so excited that the officer stopped and spoke to him.

"You wanted to speak to me?"

"I've been ordered to the _Bear_, sir," blurted out Eric, for a moment dropping the official speech and talking eagerly, "and I've got the Commissionership, too!"

The first lieutenant raised his eyebrows slightly at the conversational form of address, but he realized that the boy was bubbling over with his news.

"I'm very glad, Mr. Swift," he said heartily; "perhaps you'll be able to use a little of that Eskimo you learned."

"I'm so grateful to you, Mr. Sutherland," Eric began, but the other stopped him with a slight gesture.

"I rather envy you your first trip into the Arctic," he said; "it's an experience that no one ever forgets. And you will find out for yourself whether I have overestimated the Eskimo as a race." He put his hand kindly on the lad's shoulder, as he noticed the slight limp, and remembered.

"You're going to extremes," he continued; "from the red-hot decks of a burning ship to the ice hummocks of the polar seas. In that country I'll pa.s.s on to you a word of warning that Commodore Peary once gave me. Make it your motto in the Arctic. It is this--'Be bold, but never desperate.'"

With a grateful answer, and with his commission as third lieutenant and his appointment as United States Commissioner in his hand, Eric walked out a full-fledged officer of the Coast Guard and Uncle Sam's representative in the Arctic seas.

Several weeks later, Eric reported on board the _Bear_. He had broken his trip west for a couple of days at home and had managed to s.n.a.t.c.h the time to run up to his old Coast Guard station and to visit his friend, the puzzle-maker. He really felt that he owed the initial success of his career to the old mathematician, and in this he was far more nearly right even than he imagined. He carried with him into the Arctic the old man's last advice.

"I'm gittin' old," the puzzle-maker had said to him, "not here when you come back. Life--he is like figuring, you think him straight, you work him careful, right every time!"

It was with a keen delight that Eric realized, when he boarded the _Bear_, that sailorship was not merely a thing of the books. Although he knew that the Coast Guard vessel was a converted whaler, it had never fixed itself in his mind that the _Bear_ was a sailing vessel with auxiliary steam, and that she was handled as a sailing vessel.

Barkentine-rigged, with square sails on the foremast and fore-and-aft rig on her main and mizzen, Eric found later by experience that her sailing powers were first-cla.s.s. His delight in the handling of the ship added to his popularity with his brother officers, all of whom, as older men, had been trained in clipper days.

At Seattle the _Bear_ took aboard the mail for Nome and St. Michael.

This consisted of over 400 sacks, an indication of the growth of a city which in the spring of 1897 consisted only of a row of tents on a barren beach. At Unalaska, in the Aleutian Islands, five dest.i.tute natives were taken aboard the _Bear_ for transportation to their homes in St.