THE Merry Anne was the one lumber schooner on Lake Michigan that always appeared freshly painted; it was Dick Smiley's wildest extravagance to keep her so. Sky blue she was (Annie's favorite color), with a broad white line below the rail; and to see her running down on the north wind, her sails white in the sun, her bow laying the waves aside in gentle rolls to port and starboard, her captain balancing easily at the wheel, in red shirt, red and blue neckerchief, and slouch hat, was to feel stirring in one the old spirit of the Lakes.
It was a lowering day off Manistee. Out on the horizon, now and then dipping below it, a tug was struggling to hold two barges up into the wind. Within the harbor, at the wharf of the lumber company, lay the Merry Anne. Two of her crew were below, sleeping off an overdose of Manistee whiskey. The third, a boy of seventeen, got up in slavish imitation of his captain,—red shirt, slouch hat, and all,—was at work lashing down the deck load. Roche, the mate, stood on the wharf, the centre of a little group of stevedores and rivermen. “Hi there, Pink,” he shouted at the red shirt, “what you doin' there?”
The boy threw a sweeping glance lake-ward before replying, “Makin' fast.”
“That 'll do for you. There won't be no start this afternoon.”
“But Cap' Smiley said—”
“None o' your lip, or I 'll Cap' Smiley you.
“Pretty ugly, out there, all right enough,” observed a riverman. “Cornin' up worse, too. Give you a stiff time with all that stuff aboard.”
“I ain't so sure about that,” said Roche, with a swagger. “If I was cap'n o' this schooner, she'd start on the minute, but Smiley's one o' your fair-weather sort.”
“Sure he is. He done a heap o' talkin' about that time he brung the William Jones into Black Lake before the wind, the day the John T. Eversley was lost; but Billy Underdown was sailin' with him then, and he told me hisself that he had the wheel all the way—Smiley never done a thing but hang on to the companionway and holler at him to look out for the north set o' the surf outside the piers; and there's my little Andy that ain't nine year old till the sixth o' September, could ha' told him the surf sets south off Black Lake, with a northwest wind. If it hadn't been for Billy, the Lord only knows where Dick Smiley'd be to-day.”
A tug hand had joined the group, and now he addressed himself to Roche.