The daily Alaskan., 1922-05-30
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 Near the northern end Of Lake Michigan, where the blur-bOwed ore carriers and the big, low-lying, wheat 1 laden steel frelghters from Lake Su- | ner,or push out from the Straits or Macklnac and dispute the right or WAY. in the island-divtded channel ! with the whlteand-gold, electric-hght- ed. wireless-eQulpped passenger steam srs hound for Detroit and BuHaio, there Is a cOpse of pine and hernIock | hack from the shingly beach. From ! this copse-dark, blue, primeval, silent i ,t most times as when the Great Manl- tou ruled his inland waters-there comes at time of storm a sound Ike the booming of an old Indian drum 1 This drum beat, so the tradition says whenever the lake took life; ana i ss A sign perhaps that 1t Is still the ' AtenItou who rules the waters in spite ' of all the commerce of the cities, the 1 drum Stlu beats Its roll for every snip l lost on the lake one beat for every ! life.
 So-men say-they heard and count ed the heatings of the drum to thirty five upon the hour when. as afterward they learned, the great steel steamer | Wenota sank with tweny-four Of It's crew and eleven passengers; So-Inen ] Eav-they heard the requiem of the 1 five who went down with the schooner | Grant. and of the seventeen lost with the Susan Hart; and so of a score or ships more. Once only. it Is told, has the drum counted wrong.
 Al the height of the great storm of December. lS9i. he drum heat ;the rcu of sinking ship. One. two. three-the hearers counted the drum beats. time and again in their inter- mitteut booming, Co twentyfour. They waited. therefore. for report of ShiU loSt with tweuty-fOur lives: no SucN news came. The new steel freIghter ! AiIvaka. on her maiden trip during tie storm with twenty twens l aforementioned never made her port nu news WAS eyer heard from h'r. no wreckage ever was found. On this ac-. count. throughout the families whose fg,hers. brothers and sons were the | utFicprs and crew of 'he Mlwaka. there stirred for a time a desperate heller tbof one of the men on the -AU%aka vus saved that somewhere. somehow, he was alive and might return. The day of the destruction of the Niwaka was fixed as December by the time at which she passed the government lookout al the straits: the hour was fixed as five o'clock in the morning only bv the sounding of the drum.
 70 ! Storm-the s'inglng, frozen sleet slash of the February mortimer whIS- ting down the fOe-Jammed length of the Iake-was usSuultIng Chicago. So ' heavy was this frost on the panes of thp Fort Dearborn club-One of the sraidest of the downtown clubs for men-that the great log fires blazing on the open hearthS added appreCluble ! light as well as warmth to the rooms.
 The few members present al this hour of the afternoon showed by their lazy attitudes and the desultorlness of their conversation the dulling of vitality which warlarh and shelter bring on a day of cold and storm. On one however. the storm had had con, trarv effect. With swift. uneven steps he paced now one room, now another; from time to time he stopped ab rurtlv by q window, sCraped from t' with finger nall the frost, stared oni for an Instant through the little open Ing he had made then resumed as ao- ruptly his nervous pacing with man Der SO uneasy and distraught that, since his arrival at the club an hour before. none even among those wh" [ knew him best had ventured to speak to him.
 The man who was pacing restlesslN and alone the rooms of the Fort Dear. born club on this stormy afternoon was the man who, to most people, bod
 led forth the life underlying all other commerce whereabouts but the leaS, known. the life of the lakes.
 The lakes, which mark unmlstak
 ably those who get their living from them. had put their marks on him | Though he was slight In frame with spare, almost ascetic leauneSS. he huG the wlry strength and endurance O( the mnn whose youth had been passed upon the water. He was very close to sixty now, but his thick, straight q hair was Stlll jet black except for slash of pure white above on" temple
 his brOws were black above his deep blue eyes. His acquaintances, in eX- olalning him to strangers, said he had lived too much by himself of late; he and one man servant shared the great house which had been unchanged-and
 ln which nothing appeared to have needed replacing since his wife 'ef'
 him, suddenly and unaccOuntably
 about twenty years before. People said he looked more French. referring