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 passed the Frying Pan Shoals Lightship, 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 Cooney, this time reported by the United States Army mine planter, Schofield. Two days afterwards in latitude 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 passed through the hawse-pipes in the burned vessel's bow. This was necessary as none of the upper works of the ship 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 ashore 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 passing 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 Washington, from the station at Beaufort, N. C., from Fernandina, Fla., from Key West and from Nassau. 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 ship from the wireless room as the operator answered the various calls with the information that the Miami was already proceeding under full speed.