"Nothin' definite," said the other, "but as I was comin' along a chap stopped me and asked me if I were goin' out to the wreck off Au Sable.

He said he really didn't know anything about it, except there was a report that the _City of Nipigon_ was on the rocks near Grand Point."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fifth Second.]

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[Ill.u.s.tration: Twenty-third Second]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fiftieth Second.

LIFE-BOAT CAPSIZE-DRILL.

Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.]

The keeper jumped up and went to the telephone.

"Anything doing?" he asked, when the Au Sable operator got on the wire.

The chat in the station stopped to hear what the reply might be. Au Sable was the most exposed point on the coast and there was a gale beating in from the northwest.

"You'll let us know, then," said the keeper, and hung up the receiver.

"Says he's heard something about a wreck, but nothin' definite," he added, turning to the crew. "Says a boy ran in with the news, but the kid was too excited to give much information."

"Think there's anything in it?" queried one of the men.

"Hope not," said another, "I was out that way day before yesterday an'

there's an ice wall there about twenty feet high. I don't know how we'd ever get a boat over it."

"We'd get it over, all right."

"How?" asked Eric interestedly.

"Aeroplane, if necessary," said the keeper laughing.

"No, but really," the boy protested.

"Brute strength and luck, I guess," the other said, "but I'm hopin' that we don't have to go out to-night."

"Me too," added the boy. "I've got some 'trig'"--

The telephone bell rang.

"That's it, likely enough," said one of the men, getting up resignedly and going over to the locker for his oilskins.

"Well," said the keeper, as he took off the receiver. Then, a minute later turning to the men, he repeated to the crew, "'Steamer, _City of Nipigon_, seven men aboard, burnin' distress signals, on rocks north and by west of Au Sable light, quarter of a mile from land.' Right you are, boys, we're off!"

There was a transformation scene. When the keeper began the sentence, the Coast Guard station had been a scene of peace and comfort with a group of men lounging around a hot fire, some reading, some playing dominoes and others plying needle and thread. But, before the sentence was over, almost every man was in his oilskins, some were just pulling on their long boots, while others, even more nimble, had reached the boat and the apparatus-cart. They were standing by for orders when the keeper joined them.

"She's less'n a quarter of a mile out, boys," he said. "I reckon we'd better try an' get her with the gun. After, if that doesn't work, we can get the boat. But if we can put a line across her right away, it'll be safer an' quicker. I don't fancy handling the boat down any such ice as Jefferson talked about."

The apparatus-cart was out of the shed and started almost before the keeper had finished his orders. Eric, who was no mean athlete, was glad of every ounce of strength he possessed before he had gone a hundred yards. The cart, fully loaded, weighed 1120 pounds and there were seven men to drag it, a fairly good load on decent ground. But the ground was all of eight inches deep in new-fallen snow into which the wheels sank.

The on-sh.o.r.e wind was dead against them, swirling like a blizzard. The temperature was only about five degrees below zero, but there was an icy tang that cut like a jagged knife.

In spite of the intense cold, so laborious was the dragging of that cart through the snow, that Eric broke out in a violent perspiration. What troubled him still more was the realization that he was already tiring, although the party was still on the beaten road. In a very short while, he knew, they would have to strike off from the track, across wild and unbroken country to the beach.

To his surprise, the keeper kept right on, leaving the light on the left hand. The boy, forgetting discipline in his eagerness and excitement, spoke out,

"I thought they said 'west' of the light!"

The keeper turned and looked. He spoke not a word. There was no need.

Eric colored to the roots of his hair. He felt the rebuke.

Finally when they had pa.s.sed the light by nearly half a mile, the road went up a slight hill, and the keeper led the way at right angles along a ridge of rock. It was rough almost beyond believing, but its very barrenness had made it useful. As the keeper had shrewdly hoped, the swirling blizzard had left its rough length bare, when all the lower ground was deep in snow. For the hundredth time since he had been on the station, Eric had to admit the wise foreknowledge of his chief.

As they swung on to the ridge the keeper turned and looked at Eric again. He caught the boy's apologetic glance and smiled back. No word was pa.s.sed, but both understood.

The ridge helped them gallantly, though the wind whistled over it as though it were the roof-pole of the world. More than once it seemed to Eric as though the apparatus-cart would be turned upside down by some of the terrific gusts, and the boy had a mental picture of the crew floundering in the snow-drifts beneath.

Near the lighthouse, the ridge that had so befriended them merged into the level, and the crew forced its way on through ever deepening drifts.

For about fifty yards the snow was above the hubs of the wheels, and more than once it seemed that the apparatus cart was so deeply stuck as to be immovable. The men left the shafts, and crowding round the cart like ants they forced it free, and half carried and half pushed it through the snow.

"Is there any shnow left at all?" queried Muldoon, when the worst of this was overpa.s.sed.

"What do you mean?" one of the men asked.

"I thought we'd waded through all the shnow in the worrld," the Irishman replied.

For a little s.p.a.ce it was easy going until they came to the dunes above the beach. There the crew halted. As Jefferson had said, sloping upwards at an angle of forty degrees, was a steep sheet of glare ice, almost as smooth as though it had been planed. It would have taken a fly to walk on that surface, yet on the farther side of it was the only road to the wreck. The light was on the end of a little spit and the vessel in distress could be seen only from this spit. Without going on that neck of land she could not be reached by the gun, and this pa.s.sage was grimly guarded by that sloping embattlement of ice.

"Up it, lads!" said the keeper.

The crew, gathered around the apparatus-cart, started up the slope. Six feet was as far as they could get. Even without added weight no one could stand on that glistening surface, and with the drag of the cart it was impossible. Several times the men tried it, only to come sprawling in a heap at the bottom of the hill.

"Two of you get up to the top!" ordered the keeper.

Two of the lightest men started. One of them, picking his steps with great care, managed to get half-way up; the other, going back for a run, tried to take the hill with a tremendous spurt. His impetus took him almost up to the top, but he was a few feet short and slipped back. He returned for another attempt.

In the meantime Eric had an idea. Instead of attacking the cliff at the point the others were trying, and where it was shallowest, he went twenty yards farther west, where the cliff was steeper, but rougher.

Taking an ax he started to cut niches for steps up the cliff. He knew it would take a long time, but if the others did not succeed before him, he would at least get there. If the others succeeded, the loss of his time did not matter.

So, steadily, inch by inch, foot by foot, he made his way up the cliff, taking the time to make the notches deep enough for surety. The ice was not extremely hard, and Eric soon won his way to the top. He found the edge exceedingly difficult to walk on and very dangerous, for it fell in an almost sheer precipice on the water side, with the mush-ice beating up against it. The top, too, was soft and honeycombed. Using as much care in going along the edge as he had in scaling it, the boy soon found himself on the cliff immediately above the cart.