The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers Part 13

"Well?"

"I wasn't more than half-way to the gang when the bird began to quiver and just as I reached them, it fell off the perch. I held out the cage.

That was all the proof I needed."

"'Guess the kid's right,' the foreman of the gang said. 'Go back, boys.'

"They raised a howl with him the same way that my own men did with me.

But he was an old-timer, and without wasting any words, he smashed the foremost of the workers across the jaw. Under a torrent of abuse, the men fell back. I was half-way to the entrance when everything turned black before me. Next thing I knew, I was in the Mine Superintendent's house with a trained nurse."

"White damp?" queried Eric.

"That's what the doctor said."

"What happened to the imprisoned bunch?"

"Old Man Barnett had just reached the entrance to the working with a large rescue party all equipped with breathing apparatus, when I collapsed. He got the trapped men out."

"I should think they'd have been poisoned for fair," said Eric.

"Not a bit of it," his friend replied. "The leak of white damp had all come on the outside of the roof-fall, and there was hardly any of it on the other side. Some of the men were pretty weak from lack of air and that sort of thing, but not seriously hurt. It was the rescuers who suffered."

"How was that, Ed?"

"Three of the five men who were in my gang died," said the other mournfully.

"Great guns! Died?"

"Yes," the young miner said, "poor fellows, they went under. Another man and I were the only ones who got over it."

"Died in saving others! That's sure tough!" There was a pause, and Eric added, "What got you two clear?"

"The other chap had been lying full length on the ground, while working, and as white damp rises, he had breathed less of the gas than the others. I wasn't able to work, so I didn't have to breathe deep." He looked down at his broken arm. "It's a queer thing," he said, "but it was breaking my arm that saved my life."

CHAPTER IV

s.n.a.t.c.hED FROM A FROZEN DEATH

"Father! Father! What do you think?" cried Eric, bursting into the sitting room at breakfast one morning, a couple of weeks after his encounter with his young mining friend, "I'm going into the Life-Saving work right away!"

"What's the excitement?" his father asked, speaking for the rest of the family. "Cool down a bit, my boy, and tell us all about it."

"I've--I've just got a letter from the Captain Commandant," replied Eric, fairly stuttering in his haste to tell the good news, "and he says I can enlist in one of the lake stations until the close of navigation.

I'll get some real practical training that way, he says, and then I can take up prep. work for the Academy all winter."

In view of the fact that there had been considerable correspondence between the ruling head of the Coast Guard and Mr. Swift, the old inspector was less surprised than the boy expected. Not for the world would the lad's father have let him think that there had been any consultation about this plan. He wanted the boy to have the sense of being "on his own"!

"I remember now," he said, "you said something about writing along that line a couple of weeks ago."

"I did write, Father, I did want so awfully to get a chance. But I hardly believed that they'd actually let me do it."

"I don't see why they wouldn't. After all you told me about your swimming, they ought to have made a special bid for you," he added smiling.

"You don't mind my going, do you?"

"I'm perfectly willing, my boy," his father said. "I'm sufficiently on to your curves, Eric, to know that it isn't much use trying to pin you down to books while there are a few weeks of summer left. You'll be out of mischief at a Coast Guard station, that's one sure thing. I think I'll take you out to meet old Icchia, the veteran of the Lakes. He holds the record for one of the most sensational rescues in the history of the service. I've often heard your Uncle Jim tell the story, but I won't spoil the yarn for you by telling it myself, I'll let Icchia do that."

"When can we go to see him, Father?"

The old inspector smiled at his son's enthusiasm.

"It happens that I've got to start off on an inspection trip to-morrow, which will take me away for a week or so," he answered, "so, if you have no other plans, we might go to-day."

"I'll get ready now!" cried Eric, jumping up from the table.

"You'll do nothing of the kind," his father said rebukingly, while his mother smiled at the boy's impetuosity, "we won't go until after lunch, that is--if you can wait so long!"

"All right, but isn't it bully!" and, unable to contain himself, Eric launched into a panegyric of the Life-Saving Service, most of the history of which he knew by heart.

The lad's excitement increased tenfold when, that afternoon, they approached the little cottage of the old keeper. It was right on the seash.o.r.e in an outlying suburb looking out over the peaceful stretch of Lake St. Clair.

"Mr. Icchia," said the old inspector, after greetings had been exchanged, "my boy here is going to join one of the lake stations and, to give him an idea of what the service can do, I want you to tell him the story of that night off Chocolay Island."

"It's a deal like beatin' a big drum," began the old keeper in a quavering voice, "to bid an ol' fellow like me tell of his own doin's!"

"But you're not doing it to show off," Mr. Swift said, "I wouldn't ask you to do that. It's because I know you think a good deal of the Service that I wanted my boy to meet you, and to hear a real story of life-saving told by one of the men who was in it."

"It wasn't so much at that--" the old man began. But the lighthouse inspector interrupted.

"Spin the yarn, Icchia," he said, "it's a poor trick to make a lot of excuses! Besides, it spoils the story."

Now the old keeper had a firm belief in his own value as a story-teller and it piqued his pride to have it thought that he was spoiling a good yarn, so without further preamble he began.

"I don' know what the world is comin' to," he said, after he had filled his pipe and lit it, "but there's no sech winters to-day as there was in my young days. I kin remember, when I wasn't no older'n that bub there, there was more snow in one winter 'n we have in five, now; an' Lake Huron was always friz up. Life-savin' was a lot harder in them days, ye'd better believe me, an' not only in the winter but all year round."

"Why?" asked the boy.

"There wasn't no sech lights then as there is now, for one thing, an' a skipper had to keep his eyes peeled an' his lead goin'. An', for 'nother thing, in the days I'm talkin' of, they was mostly all sailin' craft.

Now I'm not sayin' nothin' in favor of steamers--I was raised on an ol'-time clipper. I will say that when a gale ain't too bad, a steamer kin handle herself more easy-like 'n a sailin' craft, when there ain't but a little seaway. But when she's blowin' good an' strong, an' the gale's got more heft 'n a steamer's screws, what use is her machines to her?"

"Not much," said the boy.

"Ye're sayin' it," the old keeper continued. "An' in the ol' days, when steamers first run on the Lakes, they weren't no such boats as ye see now. Our worst wrecks in them days were the steamers. This one, that your pappy wants me to tell ye 'bout, was a steamer an' a three-masted fore-an'-after she had in tow.

"This yarn I'm a spinnin' reely begins down at Marquette Breakwater. It was on the seventeenth day of November, an', let me see, it must have been in 'eighty-six, the same year my youngest was born. The winter had broke in early that year, not with any reel stormy weather, but jest a bunch o' pesky squalls. An' cold! We was in the boat mighty near every day, an' I used ter forget what bein' warm felt like. There was allers somethin' hittin' a shoal or tryin' to make a hole in the beach. It was squally an' s.h.i.+ftin', ye see. An' the mush-ice set in early."