Ottumwa tri-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1903-1916, 1909-02-04

mer winds and protected dwaters; new
er such an one as this. Yet he liked
her
Deep bosomed she was, with no cen
ter-board, dependent on her draught
and heavy keel to hold her on the
wind; stanch and seaworthy, sheathed
with stout plank and ribbed with sea-
soned timber, designed to keep afioat
in the wickedest weather brewed by
the foul-tcmpered German ocean.
Withal her lines were fine and clean;
for all her beam she was calculated to
nose narrowly into the wind and
n AXE a pretty pace as we'll. A good
boat; he had the grace to give the
credit to his luck.
Her disposition was more fully dis
closed as they drew away from the
beach. Inshore with shoaling water
the waves had been choppy and spite
full but lacking force of weight. Far
ther out, as the bottom fell away, the
rollers became more uniform and pow
erful; heavy sweeping seas met the
cat-boat, from their follows looming
mountainous to the man in the tiny
cockpit; who was nevertheless aware
that to a steamer they would be neglig-
lille.
His boat breasted them CALAMITY,
toiling sturdily up the steep activities,
posing breathlessly on foam-crested
SUBMITS for dizzy instants, then
plum ging headlong down the deep
green swales; and left boiling wake
behind her-urging ever onward, hug
ging the wind in her wisp of blood-red
nd int II milling 9t the
tiller with the mettle of race-horso
smuggling at the bit
Offshore, too, the wind stormed with
added strength. or, possibly, had fresh
ened. For minutes on end the leeWard
gunwales would run green and now
and again the screaming peltinS
squalls that secured the estuary would
heel her over until the water cascaded
in over the lee combing, and the rud-
der, lifted clear, would hang idle until,
smitten by some racing billow the til
Ter would be all but torn from Kirk
woods hands. Again and again this
happened; and those were times OF
trembling. But always the cat-boat
righted, shaking the clinging waters
from her and swinging her stem into
the wind again; and there would fol
low an abbreviated breathing spell,
during which Kirkwood was at liberty
to dash the salt spray from his eyes
and search the windharried waste for
the brigantine. Sometimes he found
her, sometimes not.
Long after he had expected her to,
she went about and they began to
close in upon each other. He could see
that even with shortened canvas she
was staggering drunkenly under the
fierce impacts of the wind. For him
self, it was nip-and-tuck, now, and no
man in his normal sense would have
risked a sixpence on the boats chance
to live until she crossed the brigan
tines bows.
Time out of reckoning he was forced
to kneel in the swimming cockpit,
steering with one hand, using the bail
ing-dish with the other, and keeping
his eyes religiously turned to the
bellying patch Of sail It was heart
breaking toll; he began reluctantly to
concede that it could not last much
longer And if he missed the brigan-
tine he would be lost mortal strength
was not enough to stand the unend-
ing strain upon every bone, muscle
and sinew, required to keep the boat
upon her course; though for a time it
might cope with and solve the prob
lens presented by each new, malig-
nant billow and each furious, bowling
sQuall; the end inevitably must be
failure. To struggle on would be but
to postpone the certain end save
and expect the possibility of his gain
ing the brigantine within the period of
time strictly and briefly limited by
his powers of endurance.
Long since he had become numb
with cold from the incessant drench-
ings of icy spray, that piled in over the
Windward counter, keeping the bottom
ankle-deep regardless of his laborious
but Intermittent efforts with the bail
ing-dish. And the two brigantine and
cockle-shell, were drawing together
with appalling elaboration
A dozen times he was on the point
of surrender, as often plucked up
hope; as the minutes wore on and he
kept above water he began to believe
that if he could stick it out his judg-
! ment and seamanship would be justi.
fed though human ingenuity
backed by generosity could by no
means contrive adequate excuse for
his foolhardiness.
But that was aside, something ir.
reparable. Wan and grim, he fought
| it out.
But that his voice stuck in his
parched throat, he could have shouted
in his citation, when eventually he
gained the point of intersection an
eighth of mile ahead of the brig
antine and got sight of her windward
freeboard as, most slowly, the cat
| boat forged across her course.
For all that, the moment of his
actual triumph was not yet; he had
still to carry off successfully a scheme
that for sheer audacity of conception
and contempt for danger, transcribed
all that had gone before
Holding the cat-boat on for time
he brought her about handsomely .
little way beyond the brigantine's
course, and hung in the eye of the
wind the leach Tapping and tighten
ing with reports like rifie-shots, ant
the water sloshing about her calves