River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1913-10-16


It was not that he hated work or
craved life of ignoble ease and pleas
ure. PhiIosophically inclined, even
before he left college he had discerned
the futility of the search after hap
piness. Contentment, he knew, must
be the reward OF work But this
this eternal toll in a New York office,
adding millions to millions for the
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT of the monopoly which
his father had built up-this was what
appalled, him. In other lands man
situated as Ire was might enter poll
tics, devote his life and fortune to
his country; here-Well, his country
could get along very well without his
assistance In the vast and varied
public life of America his efforts would
be lost his ambitions crushed out
by daily disappointments and the sor-
did strife Of the political world He
saw no future of contentment for him
In the land of his birth; he, with his
millions. looked forward to fewer OPP
portunities than the poorest and most
illiterate immigrant passing beneath
the Ste tue of Liberty.
Many times a millionaire at the age
of thirty he had succeeded to the con-
troll of his fathers enormous business
He fulfilled his duties punctiliously
sedulously, but without heart. And his
week ends he spent alone in his cot
tage on the northern Long Island
shore, among his books, reading
dreaming, or wandering by the barren,
desolate marshes and the surf-swept
shores of the Sound, while his mag.
niflcient town house remained closed
and his automobile rusted unused in
his garage
Half a mile from his isolated house
he stopped, awaking out of his medi.
tations to discover that he could no
longer see his way A death-white fog,
one of the sea-borne fogs of Novem-
Der, had shrouded the land, plotting out
all the familiar landmarks. Lane drew
in great breaths of it greedily. 1t re-
minded him of London, with its mys-
terry and it's charm, of melancholy
France when the leafless poplars glis-
ten with white frost beside the Seine
His years abroad had been too few
though vivid in incident. Something
of his detection fell from him as the
pictures stirred in his mind and paint
ed themselves upon his memory in
vivid colors anew. Some day, when
he decently could, he would shake off
the cares of his life, resign the bus
mess into other hands, and withdraw
to that life of leisure which he loved
in other lands.
Suddenly he heard the booming of a
gun over the waters. 1t sounded like
the signal of some ship in distress.
That was a treacherous shore near the
east end of the Island, and one on
which ships often came to grief, for
the long, oily pillows hid the menac-
Ing rocks which threatened vessels.
Although it was far less than hun
dred miles from the metropolis, this
region might have been a remote
part of the New England shore; 1t
was out of the track of passing ships,
a little, forgotten space devoted to
sea birds and hunters.
Then over the waves came some
thing strident and shrill, hooting like
a steam siren and shrieking like an
approaching cable car And out of
the void fell something not fifty yards
away that plunged into the sand and
flung up a smoking hilloCk. Lane
walked quickly toward this object; as
he approached he neard the booming
sound once more.
When he came up he saw that it
was a fifty-pound shell from a man-of-
wars gun that had burst asunder there
and buried itself in the sand. The
shell had fallen before the booming be-
gan; sound travelled slowly; he cal
culated that the warship must be
about three miles in the offing. She
was evidently some vessel that had
lost her bearings in the fog, and was
attempting target practice notwith-
standing.
That might be a rational explana-
tion, but-suddenly the thought came
to him: was ever target practice held
in the waters of Long Island Sound
before? Though that especial region
was out of The track of ships, num-
erous small craft traversed the wa
ters, to gather oysters or lay them
down on the marine oyster farms.
Surely no man-of-war ever engaged in
target practice in that populous, land
locked sea.
Again a distant scream rose into
a dangerous din, and, as the boom of
the gun followed, a shell ploughed up
the sand, this time falling further
away. but scattering more widely.
Lane might have fastened from the
spot without imputstion upon his
courage; and so he would probably
have done. but at that moment the
fog lifted.
He stared out at a stretch of I'M
dulating. gray sea, ripping away to-
ward the horizon. Half a mile out, just
where the crests of the Rip Rocks
emerge from the waves, a small steam
ship lay on her side, grinding to
pieces. slowly under the incessant
pounding of the waters. And, fur
Their away, hulk low down on the
horizon, were the black outlines of a
man-of-war.
The warship was evidently Smelling
the steamship. This much was evil
dent, for the trajectory of her shells
was Immediately over the latter.
And it was equally clear that the
steamship was no abandoned target
destined to be battered by navy guns,
for Lane could distinguish tiny figures
+bo+ ,,oovod hithnr and thither uno0