Part 34 (2/2)

”But the honors are with the caisson-men,” suggested Eric.

”Yes,” agreed the other, ”the hero of Smith's Point lighthouse is Griffin, the caisson-man.”

CHAPTER X

ADRIFT ON A DERELICT

”Looks to me as though we're going to have a ripsnorter for Christmas,”

said Eric to his friend, Homer, the day before the festive season. ”If the sea gets much higher, Cookie won't have to stir the plum duff at all!”

”How's that?”

”All he's got to do is to leave the raisins and the flour and the currants and whatever else goes into the duff lying loose on a table.

The old lady is kicking loose enough to mix it up all right. Doesn't she pitch!”

”Great cook you'd make,” laughed the other. ”I'm glad we don't have to mess from your galley. But you're right about the weather. It's all right to go hunting for derelicts, but I don't know how the deuce anybody can be expected to find one in a sea like this!”

”We might hit her,” suggested Eric, cheerfully.

”You're a hopeful prophet, you are,” retorted his chum. ”I'm not aching to feed the fishes yet awhile.”

”Well, we might b.u.mp, just the same. Then the _Seminole_ would have a chance to hunt us as a derelict, and Van Sluyd--he's on her now, you know--would have the time of his young life.”

”I don't think you need to worry about sending a message to Van Sluyd yet awhile,” the other answered; ”after all, the _Miami_ is still above water.”

”She is, once in a while,” Eric commented, as the cutter ”took it green”

and the water came flooding down the deck. Homer, seeing the wave coming, scuttled for the companion hatchway and went below.

As Eric had said, it seemed difficult to try to locate a derelict in a half a gale of wind. Yet, so dangerous to navigation was the floating wreck which the _Miami_ was seeking, that the risk was worth taking.

When he remembered what the lieutenant of the _Bear_ had said to him once about derelicts, he realized the terrible importance of the quest.

”Every year,” he had said, ”hundreds of vessels, both sail and steam, leave their home ports for foreign sh.o.r.es, or start from foreign ports for home. The day of the expected arrival comes and goes, two or three days drag by, and still there is no sign of them. Anxious relatives and friends besiege the s.h.i.+pping offices daily for word, and no word comes.

When suspense has pa.s.sed into a.s.sured disaster, the underwriters inscribe against that vessel's name the one word, ”Missing!” An average of a vessel a day is the toll of the Seven Seas upon the world's s.h.i.+pping. And the princ.i.p.al cause is--derelicts.”

As the _Miami_ plowed her way through the water, dipping her nose into the waves raised by a stiff southeaster, Eric thought of the suddenness of the catastrophe if the Coast Guard cutter, in the darkness, should strike one of those abandoned hulks, floating almost level with the water, and scarcely visible from the vessel's decks.

It was a night calculated to shake the nerve of a youngster who knew that this deadly menace to the life of every one on board might be suddenly lurking in the trough of any one of the waves, that came shouldering their vengeful resentment against the st.u.r.dy little vessel that defied them. They had nourished their grudge against Man, the violator of their ancient domain, over a thousand leagues of sea, for the _Miami_ was a hundred miles to the eastward of the Lookout Shoal, though westward of the limit of the Gulf Stream. The billows thus had a stretch of unbroken ocean from the frozen continent of Antarctica. Of this they made full use, and staunch little vessel though the cutter was, she was making bad weather of it.

The fog was dense and the gale whipped the spray into a blinding sheet.

This was varied by squalls of sleet and hail and for three hours a blinding snowstorm added to the general discomfort. Less than thirty miles to the eastward lay the Gulf Stream, where the water was over 70 and where no snow could ever be, but that gave the crew of the _Miami_ little comfort.

It was not a coast on which vigilance could be relaxed, and Eric was glad when the search for the _Madeleine c.o.o.ney_ was abandoned for a while. It was time, too, for the _Miami_ had all she could do to take care of herself. The Coast Guard vessel was midway between the Frying Pan and the Lookout Shoals, two of the most famous danger points on the Atlantic coast, and the wind had risen to a living gale. The first lieutenant was on the bridge a great deal of the time. For forty-eight hours there had been absolutely no sign of the sun or any star. There was no way to determine the vessel's position except by dead reckoning--always a dangerous thing to trust when there is much leeway and many cross-currents. The lead was going steadily, heaved every few minutes, while the _Miami_ crept along cautiously under the guidance of that ancient safeguard of the mariner.

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