And it is above the surface of Lake Erie, the body of water toward which the James Kennedy was placidly steaming, that the Great Lakes storms blow the worst and the wildest. For Lake Erie is the shallowest of all the lakes. Its average depth is only 70 feet, compared to that of 250 for the rest of them. At its deepest, it is only 210 feet—compared to 1,180 feet on Lake Superior.
Erie is a shallow saucer, a basin, and when the winds go whistling across its surface they create something of the effect that a boy might make by blowing onto a shallow saucer of water—but on a much, much greater scale. The winds whip up mountainous waves that can break a freighter in two. There have been storms on Lake Erie as freakish and furious as that recorded by the veteran mariner who had moored his vessel on the Canadian shore opposite Buffalo. To his amazement, the wind blew so savagely that it drove the water out and away from his ship’s hull and left him sitting there, high and dry!
Even today, in our modern age, there have been freighters that have ventured into Erie storms, from whom nothing has been heard except a last, despairing message: “We are breaking up.”
So it was on Lake Erie that this unusual summer storm struck with such violence, only a few hours after the James Kennedy had left the Detroit River and swung its prow east by north for Buffalo.
Oddly enough, Captain West was elated when the storm broke.
He would not have been quite so overjoyed had he known how terrible it would become. But his first reaction to the gale was simply that this would probably keep the James Kennedy, and the two youths, out on the Lakes until well after Mr. Paul Chadwick had finished his deal with Mr. Kennedy.
In fact, Captain West had decided against going ashore in Detroit for much the same reasons. He had suddenly realized that it might be risky to place Sandy Steele and Jerry James within reach of a big city—with its telephones and telegraphs, and, worse, its buses and railroads. They might, in some way, get off the ship. Then they would be free to warn Mr. Kennedy.
So Captain West had left orders to make downriver past Detroit and out into Lake Erie.
He awoke to the shudder and roll of his ship. In his ears, he could hear the whine of a rising wind. When he gazed out of his porthole, his eyes fell on a slate-gray sea.
“A storm!” he cried, grinning with wicked delight. “Oh, ho, Captain West’s luck is running good. This’ll close that deal for good and all!”