"You mean it doesn't exist any more?"
"No; it was lost a long time ago."
"On the lakes here?"
"On Lake Michigan."
"You mean by lost that it was sunk?"
"It was sunk, of course; but no one knows what happened to it—whether it was wrecked or burned or merely foundered."
The thought of the unknown fate of the ship and crew—of the ship which had sailed and never reached port and of which nothing ever had been heard but the beating of the Indian drum—set her blood tingling as it had done before, when she had been told about the ship, or when she had told others about it and the superstition connected with it. It was plain Alan Conrad had not asked about it idly; something about the Miwaka had come to him recently and had excited his intense concern.
"Whose ship was it?" he asked. "My father's?"
"No; it belonged to Stafford and Ramsdell. They were two of the big men of their time in the carrying trade on the lakes, but their line has been out of business for years; both Mr. Stafford and Mr. Ramsdell were lost with the Miwaka."
"Will you tell me about it, and them, please?"