The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers Part 35

It was the evening of the second day after the worst part of the blow started that the _Miami_ dropped her anchor in eight fathoms of water off the North Carolina coast. Steam was kept full up, although the position of the cutter in the lee of a point of land precluded the immediate possibility of her dragging her anchors.

Almost exactly at noon the next day, the wireless operator intercepted a message from the Norfolk Navy Yard that the steamer _Northwestern_ was anch.o.r.ed 55 miles southwest of Lookout Shoals, with her propeller gone.

As this position, p.r.i.c.ked on the chart, showed the steamer to be in a dangerous and exposed position, and as, moreover, she was a menace to navigation, being full in the path of vessels, the _Miami_ got under way immediately.

As soon as the Coast Guard cutter reached the bar, a snowstorm, which seemed to have been waiting around, as if for that very purpose, struck down upon the water and the _Miami_ clawed out over the bar in a blinding smother. There was a nasty, choppy sea, the wind having hauled round to the westward, though it was not as violent as the day before.

At two o'clock in the afternoon the radio operator received a storm warning for a nor'wester.

A pa.s.sing vessel spoke the _Miami_ by wireless and stated that she had sighted the _Northwestern_, but gave her position twelve miles to the westward of the point first quoted. It was evening before the steamer in distress was sighted. The Coast Guard cutter ran up under her stern, and asked if she could hold on for a while. The captain of the steamer answered that he could.

"I'm all right, so far," he shouted back through the megaphone; "it's that blithering bally-hoo of a propeller!"

His language was picturesque, fluent, and convincing, and everybody on board the cutter grinned while the old sea-dog expressed a highly colored opinion of the whole tribe of s.h.i.+p-fitters, machinists, and mechanics generally. After ten minutes of descriptive shouting, during which he never repeated an adjective twice, he wound up by saying that he considered "an engine-room an insult to a seaman's intelligence,"

and said that "he'd like to pave the bottom of the sea with the skeletons of engineers diving a thousand fathom for his lost propeller!"

Following which, he seemed to feel better, and discussed what was best to be done with his s.h.i.+p.

The situation was dangerous. The sea was far too rough for the lowering of a boat, no matter how well handled. The gale was such that it was unsafe for the _Miami_ to anchor. In the case of the _Northwestern_, anchoring had been her last resort. There was fully twenty fathom of water, and fortunately the steamer's anchors held. The captain had put ninety fathom of chain on each anchor, and though the weight pulled her nose into the water, so that she snubbed into the sea like a ram trying to b.u.t.t down a wall, still everything held. The _Miami_ stood by all night, keeping close to the imperilled vessel.

Next morning the conditions were no better. The advantages of daylight were more than overcome by the increased fury of the sea. The _Northwestern_ lay in an angry rip, for the gale had come on in full force and was countering the long rollers from the southeast that had been blown up by the storm of two days before, the same which had driven the _Miami_ to shelter and which had crippled the big steamer, twice the size of the revenue cutter. The _Miami_ stayed near by, hove to, waiting for the storm to abate. But of this there were no signs. The force of the gale increased steadily through the day.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAN'S WATERSPOUT. A DERELICT'S END.

Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PREPARING TO BLOW UP A DERELICT.

Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.]

The _Northwestern_ was pitching terribly. She was heavily loaded with a cargo of crude oil, and as she swung to the squalls, the sea breached her completely and continuously. Only her high bow, p.o.o.p, and pilot-house were out of the water for any length of time. The big steamer was tearing viciously at her anchors and it was amazing that they held. The long scope of chain, however, was probably her salvation.

As darkness came on, the captain of the _Miami_ called the first lieutenant.

"Mr. Keelson," he said, "I think we'd better get a line to the steamer."

"Very well, sir," the other answered.

"If we're going to take her in tow," said Eric to Homer, overhearing the order, "we're apt to get our stern works pulled out of us. She's pitching like all billy-o!"

"We'll make it if the skipper says so," his friend said cheerfully.

It was then nearly half past four o'clock, and fortunately there was just a slight lull in the storm. Swinging across the _Northwestern's_ bow the gunner shot a line into her rigging. The steamer's crew were on the alert--they had good men aboard that craft--and tailed on to the line. The _Miami_ forged ahead and dropped anchor with sixty fathom of chain on the disabled steamer's starboard bow.

The _Northwestern_ had got enough steam up for the donkey engine. It did not take long for them to get first a strong rope and then the big hawser aboard, and make fast. As soon as the hawser was aboard, the _Northwestern_ began to heave up to her anchors. Closely watching, the _Miami_ hove up to hers, ready to break at the same instant that the steamer broke free. The instant the larger vessel's anchor raised, the _Miami_ swung hers free, to avoid fouling, for in so fierce a gale the merest touch would have been fatal to one or both vessels.

The _Northwestern_ swung down broadside to the sea and stood a fair chance of being swamped. The _Miami_, however, going ahead at full speed, just managed to bring the strain on the tow-line in time to swing the steamer clear into the crest of a huge comber which struck her bow harmlessly instead of hurling its tons of water on her unprotected deck.

The strain on the _Miami_ was extremely great, but the hawser held well, although the _Northwestern_ yawed frightfully. She would run up on the line, and the sea would strike her bow, throwing her off, tightening the tow-line suddenly with a jolt that shook the _Miami_ from stem to stern.

It was an awful night's tow, but just at eight bells of the middle watch the cutter and the rescued vessel pa.s.sed the Frying Pan Shoals Lights.h.i.+p, and as soon as they got within lee of the shoals they met a smoother sea. At nine o'clock the next morning the _Northwestern_ was safe and sound in a good anchorage in Southport at the mouth of the Cape Fear River.

When Eric came on deck again, he found the _Miami_ on her way south again on the search for the derelict, _Madeleine c.o.o.ney_, this time reported by the United States Army mine planter, _Schofield_. Two days afterwards in lat.i.tude 27 52' N., longitude 84 34' W., a vessel was found in 65 fathom of water, with her anchor down, burned to her main deck and on fire aft. She was dismasted and her bowsprit had gone. Eric was sent in charge of one of the boats to run a line. The sea was comparatively smooth, so that the _Miami_ made fast alongside her stern and put two lines of hose aboard. The cutter's heavy pumps were attached and in fifteen minutes the fire was out.

The anchor chain was fouled, so the first lieutenant gave orders that the cable should be slipped. Some of the cutter's men worked around the masts floating alongside and the entangled rigging, and cut away enough of the rigging to make a heavy wire bridle which was pa.s.sed through the hawse-pipes in the burned vessel's bow. This was necessary as none of the upper works of the s.h.i.+p remained to which a tow-line could be attached. To this bridle was bent the ten-inch hawser of the _Miami_, and the derelict was towed into Tampa Bay.

On the way, however, rough weather came up and the masts and spars broke adrift. As they were right in the path of traffic, the _Miami_ went back to destroy these. The spars were separated and allowed to drift, as the set of the current would soon take them ash.o.r.e out of harm's way. This got rid of everything except the lower part of the mainmast. As this heavy spar itself might be the means of sinking a vessel if left adrift, tossing on the waves, the _Miami_ parbuckled the big timber on board, chopped it into small pieces--none of them large enough to do a vessel any damage--and set them afloat.

The weather continued squally as the _Miami_ ran down the coast, the tag end of the gale blowing itself to tatters on the stretch from Cape Hatteras to Cape Fear. Little though Eric realized it then, before the year was out, he was destined to know that coast from painful experience and every curl of those hungry breakers was going to be imprinted on his brain.

The _Miami_ was off Cape Canaveral when a radio message was received that there was a derelict bark two hundred miles to the westward of Abaco Island, the northernmost of the Bahamas. In less than three minutes after the receipt of the message over the wireless, the captain had been advised, the course changed and the _Miami_ was headed for the derelict at full speed. She had been running for a little over an hour when a second radio was received from a land station, relayed from a steamer.

"Schooner _Marie-Rose_ reports pa.s.sing water-logged vessel 23 40' N.

and 73 10' W. Signs of distress observed. _Marie-Rose_, crippled and running before gale, could not heave to. Not known whether any one on board."

Then the wireless began to be busy. Within twenty minutes the same message was received from Was.h.i.+ngton, from the station at Beaufort, N. C., from Fernandina, Fla., from Key West and from Na.s.sau. Then by relays from vessels on the coast, from the _Seneca_, the Coast Guard's great derelict destroyer, far out on the Atlantic; from the _Algonquin_, stationed at Porto Rico; from the _Onondaga_ patrolling the coast north of Cape Hatteras and from the _Seminole_ in port at Arundel Cove undergoing repairs, came orders from the Coast Guard Headquarters. The _Miami_ was instructed to proceed at once to the point indicated, to rescue survivors if such were to be found and to destroy the derelict which was floating into the trade route and was a menace to navigation.

Meanwhile, the long harsh "buzz" of the answer sounded all over the s.h.i.+p from the wireless room as the operator answered the various calls with the information that the _Miami_ was already proceeding under full speed.

"Van Sluyd will be sore," said Eric to Homer, as the message from the _Seminole_ was received; "she'd be sent instead of us if she weren't in dock. When he hears that we're going on this chase instead of his own craft, he'll be green with envy."

"He'll get over that," said his friend; "he's under a good man. There's very little gets by the _Seminole_ that is possible of achievement."

Dawn was breaking as the _Miami_ neared the spot indicated by the wireless messages as the location of the derelict bark. Using this point as a center, the navigating officer of the _Miami_ plotted a chart of the U-shaped course which would enable her to cruise and cover the greatest amount of s.p.a.ce without doubling. At about four bells in the afternoon watch the speaking tube on the bridge whistled.

"Something that looks like a derelict, sir," came the message from the man in the crow's-nest, "bearing about a point and a half for'ard of the port beam."

The officer of the deck gave a sharp order to change the course and the _Miami_ swung round. The captain was on the bridge at the time.

"Observed anything, Mr. Hamilton?" he queried.

"Lookout reports an object, now right ahead, sir," was the reply. He picked up the tube again.

"Can you see the derelict now?"

"Yes, sir," came the reply; "we're a-raisin' her fast."

"She must be nearly flush with the water," said the officer of the deck, handing the gla.s.s to the captain; "I don't see her yet."

In half an hour, however, there was no doubt that this was the derelict that had been reported by the _Marie-Rose_. As the _Miami_ neared her it was evident that she was heavily water-logged. Her bow was deep under water, only her stern appearing above the surface. On the p.o.o.p rail had been hung a s.h.i.+rt, the white gleam of which might have been the distress signal referred to in the message of the _Marie-Rose_. The _Miami_ slowed up as she neared the derelict to survey the wreck. Suddenly there came an order,

"Clear away both cutters! Lively now, lads!"

The men sprang to stations at the word.

"Lower away together! Easy now! Let go all!"

And with the routine of clockwork two of the _Miami's_ boats were in the water and off for the derelict. The sea was choppy but not high, and the water-logged bark lay so heavily that she scarcely moved. The waves came up and dashed over her almost like a rock. One of the second lieutenants, who was in charge of the large boat, was first to round the derelict. From the lee side, he pointed with his finger.

"There must be somebody aboard her," said Eric, rightly guessing the meaning of the gesture. Then, noting the manner in which the other boat kept away, he realized that the wreckage was on that side. Wrenching the tiller round, he called,