The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1922-03-31
CHAPT Err |.


Near the northern end of Lake
Michigan, where the bluff-bowed ore
carriers and the big, low-lying, wheat
laden steel freighters from Lake SUI
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 steain-
ers bound for Detroit and Buffalo,
there is a 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 life; and,
as sign perhaps that it is still the
Manitou who rules the waters in spite
of all the commerce Of the cities, the
drum still beats its roll for every ship
lost on the lake, one beat for every
life.
ed the beatings of the drum to thirty
five 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
sayAthey 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 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 a sinking ship. One, two,
three-the hearers counted the drum
beats, time and again, in their inter-
mittent booming, to twenty-four. They
waited, 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-fve-not twen-
ty-four-aboard never made her port;
no 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 a time desperate belief
that one of the men on the Miwaka
was saved; that somewhere, somehow.
he was alive and might return. The
day of the destruction of the Miwaka
was fixed as December 5 by the time
at 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-
Ting down the foe damned length of
the lake-was assaulting Chicago. So
heavy was this frost on the panes of
the Fort Dearborn club-one of the
staidest of the downtown clubs for
men-that the great log fires blazing
on the open hearths added appreciate
light as well as warmth to the rooms.
The few members present at this
hour of the afternoon showed by their
lazy attitudes and the desultoriness
of 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 con-
trary effect. With swift, uneven steps
he paced now one room, now another
from time to time he stopped alb
ruptly by a window, scraped from it
with finger nail the frost, stared out
for an instant through the little open
ing he had made, then resumed as alb
ruptly his nervous pacing with man.
ner so uneasy and distraught that,
since his arrival at the club an hour
before, none even among those who
knew him best had ventured to speak
to him.
The man who was pacing restlessly
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 least
known, the life of the lakes.
The lakes, which mark unmistak-
ably those who get their living from
them, had put their marks on him.
Though he was slight in frame with a
spare, almost ascetic leanness. he had
he wiry strength and endurance of
ne man whose youth had been passed
on the water He was very close