The Elk Mountain pilot., 1922-04-27
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
laden 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 stea,n- 1
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 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 its roll for every ship
lost on the lake, one 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 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. 1t 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-five-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 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 8 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 stinging, frozen sleet
slash of the February norther whis-
Ting down the fiOe-tammed 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 appreciable
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-
he paced now one room, now another;
from time to time he stopped abb
ruptly by window, scraped from ii
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 a 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 thereabouts 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
the wiry strength and endurance of
the man whose youth had been passed
upon the water He was very close
to sixty now, but his thick, straight
hair was still Jet black except for
slash of pure white above one temple:
his brows were black above his deep
blue eyes. His acquaintances, In ex-
planning 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-an
In which nothing appeared to have
needed replacing-since his wife left
him. suddenly and unaccountably,
about twenty years before. People
said he looked more French. referring
to his father who was known to have