The slightly retreating chin, which could be discerned through the white beard when his profile was against the light, offered a key to the frailty of his character. The power of combat was not there. He had yielded to the storms. He said they called him “Happy Cal” because he wasn’t happy at all.
One dreary forenoon, when the black clouds piled up over the lake in the northwest and the big drops began to come, I went to Cal’s shanty and was cordially asked to put my sketching outfit behind an old soap-box back of the door. It is needless to say that he had acquired this soap-box when it was empty. A long cigar and the recollection of a former visit put him at his ease.
The rain increased, and the breakers began to roar on the beach. The wind whistled through the crevices in the side of the shanty, and Cal went out to stuff them with some strips of rotten canvas that he had probably picked up along the shore. It was quite characteristic of Cal to delay this stuffing until stern necessity made it imperative.
He came in dripping wet, and asked if I happened to have a bottle with me. The stove was a metamorphosed hot-water tank. The rusty cylinder had been found somewhere among some junk years before. He had made an opening in the front for the wood, a hole in the bottom provided for the draft and the egress of the ashes, and a stove pipe, that had seen better days, led through a hole in the irregular roof.
A fire was soon singing in the cylinder, and under its genial warmth Happy Cal became reminiscent.
“I’ve had some mighty strange experiences since I’ve bin livin’ ’ere,” he began. “About nine years ago they was a shipwreck out ’ere that raised the devil with all on board an’ with me too. Nobody got drownded, but it would ’ave bin a good thing if some of ’em had.
“It was late in November an’ nobody ’ad any business navigatin’ the lake, ’less they ’ad to, ’cause when it gits to blowin’ out ’ere at that time o’ year, it blows without any trouble at all. A big gale come up in the night an’ the breakers was tearin’ away at a great rate, an’ they swashed ’most up to the shanty. I was settin’ up in the bunk playin’ sollytare, an’ wonderin’ if the shanty was goin’ to git busted up, when I thought I heard voices. I lit my lantern an’ went out to see what was doin’ an’ I saw a light a little ways out an’ heard somebody yellin’.
“There was a big schooner almost on the shore. She was poundin’ up an’ down on the bottom in about five feet o’ water. The big rollers was takin’ ’er up an’ smashin’ ’er down so you could hear it a mile. Pretty soon the light went out an’ after that four o’ the wettest fellers y’ ever seen came pilin’ in with the breakers. I grabbed one of ’em that was bein’ washed back agin’, an’ after that I got another one that seemed to be pretty near dead. The other two got out all right by themselves, but they was pretty shaky. They helped me git the others up to the shanty, an’ they was a sight o’ pity when we got ’em there.
“I put some more wood in the stove an’ gave ’em all some whisky. They was about a pint left in a gallon jug that I got about a week before, with some money I got fer a bunch o’ rabbits. I don’t drink much, but I like to keep sumpen in the shanty in case somebody should git ship-wrecked, an’ it might be me, but I ain’t got none now. I went on the water wagon about an hour ago, an’ I’m afraid I’m goin’ to fall off if I git a chance.
“Them fellers lapped up the booze like it was milk, an’ when they found they wasn’t any more they got mad an’ said I was runnin’ a temperance joint. Then they asked me sarcastic if I had any soft drinks, an’ I told ’em they’d find plenty outside. I fried ’em some fish an’ they et up all the crackers I had. Then one of ’em got my pipe an’ smoked it.