The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers

by Francis Rolt-Wheeler

"She is, once in a while," Eric commented, as the cutter "took it green" and the water came flooding down the deck. Homer, seeing the wave coming, scuttled for the companion hatchway and went below.

As Eric had said, it seemed difficult to try to locate a derelict in a half a gale of wind. Yet, so dangerous to navigation was the floating wreck which the Miami was seeking, that the risk was worth taking. When he remembered what the lieutenant of the Bear had said to him once about derelicts, he realized the terrible importance of the quest.

"Every year," he had said, "hundreds of vessels, both sail and steam, leave their home ports for foreign shores, or start from foreign ports for home. The day of the expected arrival comes and goes, two or three days drag by, and still there is no sign of them. Anxious relatives and friends besiege the shipping offices daily for word, and no word comes. When suspense has passed into assured disaster, the underwriters inscribe against that vessel's name the one word, "Missing!" An average of a vessel a day is the toll of the Seven Seas upon the world's shipping. And the principal cause is—derelicts."

As the Miami plowed her way through the water, dipping her nose into the waves raised by a stiff southeaster, Eric thought of the suddenness of the catastrophe if the Coast Guard cutter, in the darkness, should strike one of those abandoned hulks, floating almost level with the water, and scarcely visible from the vessel's decks.

It was a night calculated to shake the nerve of a youngster who knew that this deadly menace to the life of every one on board might be suddenly lurking in the trough of any one of the waves, that came shouldering their vengeful resentment against the sturdy little vessel that defied them. They had nourished their grudge against Man, the violator of their ancient domain, over a thousand leagues of sea, for the Miami was a hundred miles to the eastward of the Lookout Shoal, though westward of the limit of the Gulf Stream. The billows thus had a stretch of unbroken ocean from the frozen continent of Antarctica. Of this they made full use, and staunch little vessel though the cutter was, she was making bad weather of it.

The fog was dense and the gale whipped the spray into a blinding sheet. This was varied by squalls of sleet and hail and for three hours a blinding snowstorm added to the general discomfort. Less than thirty miles to the eastward lay the Gulf Stream, where the water was over 70° and where no snow could ever be, but that gave the crew of the Miami little comfort.

It was not a coast on which vigilance could be relaxed, and Eric was glad when the search for the Madeleine Cooney was abandoned for a while. It was time, too, for the Miami had all she could do to take care of herself. The Coast Guard vessel was midway between the Frying Pan and the Lookout Shoals, two of the most famous danger points on the Atlantic coast, and the wind had risen to a living gale. The first lieutenant was on the bridge a great deal of the time. For forty-eight hours there had been absolutely no sign of the sun or any star. There was no way to determine the vessel's position except by dead reckoning—always a dangerous thing to trust when there is much leeway and many cross-currents. The lead was going steadily, heaved every few minutes, while the Miami crept along cautiously under the guidance of that ancient safeguard of the mariner.

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 anchored 55 miles southwest of Lookout Shoals, with her propeller gone. As this position, pricked 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.