The Miller press. [volume] (Miller, S.D.) 190?-current, 1922-04-27
CHAPTER l.

The Man Whom the Storm Haunted.
Near the northern end of Lake
Michigan, where the bluff-bowed ore
carriers and the big, iow-lying, wheat
laden steel freighters from Lake SUI
periOr push u from the Straits of
hackinac and dispute the right or
way, in the island-divided channel,
with the white-and-gold, electric-llght-
ed, wireless-equipped passenger stearn-
ers bound for Detroit and Buffalo,
there Is a copse of pine and hemleck
hnck from the shingly beach. From
this ~Copse-dark, blue. primeval, silent
at most times as when the Great Mani
tOu ruled his inland waters-there
ome at time of storm a sound like
the booming of an old Indian drum.
This drum beat. so the tradition says,
whenever the lake took a life; and.
as a sign perhaps that it is still the
Manitou who rules the waters in spite
81 all the commerce Of the cities. the
drum still beats it's roll for every ship
lost on the lake, n beat for every
life.
SO-men say-they heard and count
ed the beatings of the drum to thirty
five upon the hour when, as afterward
they learned, the great steel steamer
Wenota sank with t~wenty-four of its
Grew and eleven passengers: so-men
say-they heard the requiem of the
five who went down with the schooner
Grant and of the seventeen lost with
the Susan Hart; and so of a score OF
ships more. Once only. ii is told, has
the drum counted wrong.
At the height of the great storm Of
December. 1895. the drum heat the
toll of a sinking ship. One. two,
three-the hearers counted the drum
beats, time and again, in their inter-
mittent booming. to t~wenty-four. They
waited, therefore, for report of a ship
lost with twenty-four lives; no such
news came. The new steel freighter
Niwaka. on her maiden trip during
the storm with twen~ty-five--not TWEEN
ty-four-abOard never made her port
no news was ever heard from her: no
WItChdEV CNCI Us iOiIths Viz NfAiFN Y
count. throughout the families whose
fathers, brothers and sons were the
officers and crew of the Miwaka. there
stirred for a time a desperate belief
taaat one of the men on the Miwaka
was. saved that somewhere, somehow.
he was alive andp might return. The
day of the destruction of the Miwaka
was fixed as December ; by the time
al which she passed the government
lookout at the straits; the hour was
fixed as five O'clock in the morning
only by the sounding of the drum.
Storm-the singing. frozen sleet
slash Of the February norther whis-
fling down the fioe-jammed length of
the lake-was ~assaulting Chicago. ="
heavy was this frost on the panes of
the Fort Dearborn clUb-one Of the
staidest Of the downtown clubs for
nep-that the great log fires blazing
on the open hearths added ap2reciabie
light as well ms warmth to he rooms.
The few members present at this
hour of the afternoon showed by their
lazy attitudes and the desultoriness
cf their conversation the dulling of
vitality which warmth and shelter
bring on a day Of cold and storm. On
one however, the storm had had q con-
trary effect. With swift. uneven steps
he paced now n room. now another;
from time TO time he stopped alb
ruptly by a window. scraped from 1t
with finger nail the frost. stared ont
for an instant through the little open
ing he Ind made. then resumed as abb
ruptly his nervous pacing with a man
ner so uneasy and d~istranght that,
since his arrival Mt the club an hour
before. none ven among those who
knew him best had yentured to speais
TO him.