Roche went out, and the others got up one by one and took shelter in the lee of a lumber pile on the wharf. A little later, when he saw the tug steaming up the river, Roche shook the rain from his eyes and looked long at the black cloud billows that were rolling up from the northwest, then he slipped below and took a strong pull at his flask. The tug came alongside, and then Roche sought Dick.
“Cap’n, what’s the use?” he said in an agitated voice. “Don’t you see we’re runnin’ our nose right into it? Why, if we was a three-hundred-footer, we’d have our hands full out there. I don’t like to say nothin’, but – ”
Smiley, his hat jammed on the back of his head, his shirt, now dripping wet, clinging to his trunk and outlining bunches of muscle on his shoulders and back, his light hair stringing down over his forehead, merely looked at him curiously.
“You see how it is, Cap’n, I – ”
“What are you talking about? All right, Pink, make fast there! Who’s running this schooner, you or me?”
“Oh, I don’t mean nothin’, Cap’n; but seein’ there ain’t no particular hurry – ”
“No hurry! Why, man, I’ve got to lay alongside the Lakeville pier by Wednesday night, or break something. What’s the matter with you, anyhow? Lost your nerve?”
“No, I ain’t lost my nerve. And you ain’t got no call to talk that way to me, Dick Smiley.”
“Here, here, Pete, none of that. We’re going to pull out in just about two minutes. If you aren’t good for it, I ‘ll wait long enough to tumble your slops ashore. Put your mind on it now – are you coming or not?”
“Oh, I’m cornin’, Cap’n, of course, but – ”
“Shut up, then.”
The idlers on the wharf had not heard what was said, but they saw Roche change color and duck below for another pull at his flask.
The tug swung out into the stream; the Merry Anne fell slowly away from the wharf.
“Call up those loafers, Pete,” shouted Smiley, as he rested his hands on the wheel. The two sailors, roused by a shake and an oath, scrambled drowsily upon the deck with red eyes and unsettled nerves, and were set to work raising the jib and double-reefing foresail and mainsail. Captain Peters sounded three blasts for the first bridge, and headed down-stream.
Passing on through the narrow draws of the bridges and between the buildings that lined the river, the Merry Anne drew near to the long piers that formed the entrance to the channel. And Roche, standing with flushed face by the foremast, looked out over the piers at the angry lake, now a lead-gray color, here streaked with foam, there half obscured by the driving squalls. His eyes followed the track of one squall after another as they tore their way at right angles to the surf.
Already the Anne had begun to stagger. At the end of the towing hawser the tug was nosing into the half-spent rollers that got in between the piers, and was tossing the spray up into the wind.
One of the life-saving crew, in shining oilskins, was walking the pier; he paused and looked at them – even called out some words that the wind took from his lips and mockingly swept away. Roche looked at him with dull eyes; saw his lips moving behind his hollowed hands; looked out again at the muddy streaks and the whirling mist, out beyond at the two barges laboring on the horizon, gazed at the white and yellow surf. Then his eye lighted a little, and he made his way back to the wheel.
“Don’t be a fool, Dick,” he shouted. “Just look a’ that and tell me you can make it. I know better. I’m an old friend, Dick, and I like you better’n anybody, but you mustn’t be a dam’ fool. Ain’t no use bein’ a dam’ fool.”
“Who are you talking to?”
“Lemme blow the horn, Dick.‘Taint too late to stop ‘em. We can get back all right – start in the mornin’. Don’t you see, Dick – ”
Smiley’s eyes were fixed keenly on him for a moment; then they swept to the windward pier. He snatched the horn from Roche’s hand and blew a blast.
The sailors up forward heard it, and shouted and waved their arms. A tug hand, seeing the commotion, though he heard nothing, finally was made to understand, and Captain Peters slowed his engines. Smiley, meanwhile, was steering up close to the windward pier.
“Tumble off there, Pete,” he ordered. “Quick, now.”
“What you going to do to me? Ain’t goin’ to put me off there, are you?”
“Get a move on, or I ‘ll throw you off. There’s no room for you here.”
“Hold on there, Dick; I ain’t got no clothes or nothin’. And you owe me my pay – ”
“You ‘ll have to go to Cap’n Stenzenberger about that. Here, Pink, heave him off. Quick, now!”
“Don’t you lay your hand on me, Pink Harper – ”
But the words were lost. The young sailor in the red shirt fairly pitched him over the rail. The life saver, running alongside, gave him a hand. Captain Peters was leaning out impatiently from his wheel-house door, and now at the signal he dove back and hurriedly rang for full steam ahead; it was no place to run chances. And as the schooner passed out into the open lake, leaving the lighthouse behind her, and soon afterward casting off the tug, there was no time to look back at the raging figure on the pier. Though once, to be sure, Dick had turned with a laugh and shouted out a few lines of a wild parody on the song of the day, “Baby Mine.”
The song proved so amusing that, when they were free of the tug and were careening gayly off to the southwest with all fast on board and a boiling sea around them, he took it up again. And braced at a sharp angle with the deck, one eye on the sails, another cast to windward, his brown hands knotted around the spokes of the wheel, he sang away at the top of his lungs: – =
"He is coming down the Rhine.
With a bellyful of wine,"=
Young Harper worked his way aft along the upper rail. His eye fell on the figure of his captain, and he laughed and nodded.
“Lively goin’, Cap’n.”
Lively it certainly was.
“Guess there ain’t no doubt about our makin’ it!”
“Doubt your uncle!” roared the Captain. And he winked at his young admirer.
“Guess Mr. Roche didn’t like the looks of it.”
“Guess not.”
Harper crept forward again. And Smiley, with a laugh in his eye, squared his chest to the storm, and thought of the necklace stowed away in the cabin; and then he thought of her who was to be its owner day after to-morrow, and “I wonder if we will make it,” thought he; “I wonder!”
And make it they did. Sliding gayly up into a humming southwest wind, with every rag up and the sheets hauled home, with the bluest of skies above them and the bluest of water beneath (for the Lakes play at April weather all around the calendar), Wednesday afternoon found them turning Grosse Pointe.
The bright new paint was prematurely old now, the small boat was missing from the stern davits, the cabin windows had been crushed in, and one sailor carried his arm in a sling, but they had made it. Harper, hollow-eyed, but merry, had the wheel; Smiley was below, snatching his first nap in forty-eight hours, with the red corals under his head.
“Ole,” called Harper, “wake up the Cap’n, will you? I can’t leave the wheel. He said we was to call him off Grosse Pointe.”
So Ole called him, and was soon followed back on deck by another hollow-eyed figure.
“Guess it’s just as well Mr. Roche didn’t come along,” observed the boy, as he relinquished the wheel. “He’d’a’ had all he wanted, and no mistake.”
“He