To westward, on both sides of the river, summer boats were laid up, their decks covered with snow. On the other side, still nearer to the bridge, were some of the winter vessels; and, while the motor was on the span, the bells began ringing the alarm to clear the bridge so it could turn to let through a great steamer just in from the lake, the sun glistening on the ice covering its bows and sides back as far as Alan could see.
Forward of the big, black, red-banded funnel, a cloud of steam bellowed up and floated back, followed by another, and two deep, reverberating blasts rumbled up the river majestically, imperiously. The shrill little alarm bells on the bridge jangled more nervously and excitedly, and the policeman at the south end hastily signalled the motor cars from the city to stop, while he motioned those still on the bridge to scurry off; for a ship desired to pass.
"Can we stop and see it?" Alan appealed, as Constance ran the car from the bridge just before it began to turn.
She swung the car to the side of the street and stopped; as he gazed back, he was—she knew—seeing not only his first great ship close by, but having his first view of his people—the lake men from whom now he knew from the feeling he had found within himself, and not only from what had been told him, that he had come.
The ship was sheathed in ice from stem to stern; tons of the gleaming, crystal metal weighed the forecastle; the rail all round had become a frozen bulwark; the boats were mere hummocks of ice; the bridge was encased, and from the top of the pilot house hung down giant stalactites which an axeman was chopping away. Alan could see the officers on the bridge, the wheelsman, the lookout; he could see the spurt of water from the ship's side as it expelled with each thrust of the pumps; he could see the whirlpool about the screw, as slowly, steadily, with signals clanging clearly somewhere below, the steamer went through the draw. From up the river ahead of it came the jangling of bells and the blowing of alarm whistles as the other bridges were cleared to let the vessel through. It showed its stern now; Alan read the name and registry aloud: "'Groton of Escanaba!' Is that one of yours, Miss Sherrill; is that one of yours and my—Mr. Corvet's?"
She shook her head, sorry that she had to say no. "Shall we go on now?"
The bridge was swinging shut again; the long line of motor cars, which had accumulated from the boulevard from the city, began slowly to move. Constance turned the car down the narrow street, fronted by warehouses which Alan had passed the morning before, to Michigan Avenue, with the park and harbor to the left. When she glanced now at Alan, she saw that a reaction of depression had followed excitement at seeing the steamer pass close by.
Memory, if he could call it that, had given him a feeling for ships and for the lake; a single word—Miwaka—a childish rhyme and story, which he might have heard repeated and have asked for a hundred times in babyhood. But these recollections were only what those of a three-years' child might have been. Not only did they refuse to connect themselves with anything else, but by the very finality of their isolation, they warned him that they—and perhaps a few more vague memories of similar sort—were all that recollection ever would give him. He caught himself together and turned his thoughts to the approaching visit to Sherrill—and his father's offices.
Observing the towering buildings to his right, he was able to identify some of the more prominent structures, familiar from photographs of the city. Constance drove swiftly a few blocks down this boulevard; then, with a sudden, "Here we are!" she shot the car to the curb and stopped. She led Alan into one of the tallest and best-looking of the buildings, where they took an elevator placarded "Express" to the fifteenth floor.
On several of the doors opening upon the wide marble hall where the elevator left them, Alan saw the names, "Corvet, Sherrill and Spearman." As they passed, without entering, one of these doors which stood propped open, and he looked in, he got his first realization of the comparatively small land accommodations which a great business conducted upon the water requires. What he saw within was only one large room, with hardly more than a dozen, certainly not a score of desks in it; nearly all the desks were closed, and there were not more than three or four people in the room, and these apparently stenographers. Doors of several smaller offices, opening upon the larger room, bore names, among which he saw "Mr. Corvet" and "Mr. Spearman."