Sioux County pioneer., 1922-04-20
CHAPTER /.

The Man Whom the Storm, Haunted.
Near the northern end of Lake
Michigan, where the bluff bowed ore
carriers and THE big, low-lying, wheat
aadeh steel freighters from Lake Su.
perior push out from the Straits of
Mackinac and dispute the right Of
way, In the island divided channel,
with the white-and-gold, electric-light-
ed, wireless-equipped passenger stean-
ers bound for Detroit and Buffalo,
there is copse Of pine and hemlock
back 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
comes 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 1t is still the
Manitou who rules the waters in spite
of all the commerce Of the cities, the
drum still beats It's roll for every ship
lost on the lake. one beat for every
life. "A
,ssso-men say-they heard and count
ed the bcatings of the drum to thirty.
i've upon the hour when, as afterward
they learned, the great steel steamer
Wenota sank with twenty-four Of its
crew 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, It is told, has
the drum counted wrong.
At the height Of the great storm of
December, 1895, the drum beat the
roll of sinking ship. One, two.
three-the hearers counted the drum
beats, time and again, in their inter-
pittent booming, to twenty-four. They
xaited, therefore, for report Of ship
lost with twenty-four lives; no such
news came. The new steel freighter
Miwaka, on her maiden trip during
the storm with twenty five not TWEEN,
+ ty-four aboard never made her port; !;
40 news was ever heard from her no
wreckage ever was found. On this ac-
count, throughout the families whose
fathers. brothers and sons were the
officers and crew Of the Miwaka, there
stirred for time a desperate belief
that one Of the men on the Mlwaka
was saved that somewhere, somehow
he was alive and might return. The
day Of the destruction Of the Miwaka
was fixed as December s by the time
ct which she passed the government
! lookout at the straits 4, the hour was
hxed as five O'clock III the morning
only by the sounding Of the drum, a
= j \ 8 Ssi Il.
Storm the stinging, frozen sleet
] slash Of the February norther whis-
tiing down the e-jammed length Of
\ the lake was assaulting Chicago. So
lheavy was this frost on the panes sof
the Fort Dearborn club one of the
gtaidest of the downtown clubs for
men that the great log fires blazing
E on the open 5hearths al led appreciable
light as well as warmth to the rooms.
The few smembe bers present at this
( hour OF theS afternoon showed by their
lazy attitudes and the desultorine
sof their conyersati Hon the dulling o.
vitality which { warmth and shelter
bring on {, day of cold ind storm. On
one, however, the storm had had q con-
S;itrary effect. with swim, uneven steps,
7 llsS paced now one room. now another;
from time to time he stopped abb.
suptly BY q window, scraped from $it
4 With finger mai; the frost, stared ont
\ sfor al instant through the little esopen.
ing he had made. then resumed Sas ab-
ruptly his neryo ouS pacing with d man.
nsr e 3 unsa asy and distrauSh ut that,
Silice his arrivsl at the club an hour
/ bef fore, none even among those who
knsW hln, hsst hsd yeptsred = speal