He never for a moment imagined she was on the Lusitania or the Olympic or any other boat.He knew she was on this one.He said you could have knocked him down where he stood.But no one had.Not even when he got halfway down,--on his knees, and it would have been easier still to knock him down or kick him.People do miss a lot of chances.
Still, as I say, neither Yodel nor Morison nor anyone thought about there being an accident until just after sundown when they--Well, have you ever heard the long booming whistle of a steamboat two miles out on the lake in the dusk, and while you listen and count and wonder, seen the crimson rockets going up against the sky and then heard the fire bell ringing right there beside you in the town, and seen the people running to the town wharf?
That's what the people of Mariposa saw and felt that summer evening as they watched the Mackinaw life-boat go plunging out into the lake with seven sweeps to a side and the foam clear to the gunwale with the lifting stroke of fourteen men!
But, dear me, I am afraid that this is no way to tell a story.Isuppose the true art would have been to have said nothing about the accident till it happened.But when you write about Mariposa, or hear of it, if you know the place, it's all so vivid and real that a thing like the contrast between the excursion crowd in the morning and the scene at night leaps into your mind and you must think of it.
But never mind about the accident,--let us turn back again to the morning.
The boat was due to leave at seven.There was no doubt about the hour,--not only seven, but seven sharp.The notice in the Newspacket said: "The boat will leave sharp at seven;" and the advertising posters on the telegraph poles on Missinaba Street that began "Ho, for Indian's Island!" ended up with the words: "Boat leaves at seven sharp." There was a big notice on the wharf that said: "Boat leaves sharp on time."So at seven, right on the hour, the whistle blew loud and long, and then at seven fifteen three short peremptory blasts, and at seven thirty one quick angry call,--just one,--and very soon after that they cast off the last of the ropes and the Mariposa Belle sailed off in her cloud of flags, and the band of the Knights of Pythias, timing it to a nicety, broke into the "Maple Leaf for Ever!"I suppose that all excursions when they start are much the same.
Anyway, on the Mariposa Belle everybody went running up and down all over the boat with deck chairs and camp stools and baskets, and found places, splendid places to sit, and then got scared that there might be better ones and chased off again.People hunted for places out of the sun and when they got them swore that they weren't going to freeze to please anybody; and the people in the sun said that they hadn't paid fifty cents to be roasted.Others said that they hadn't paid fifty cents to get covered with cinders, and there were still others who hadn't paid fifty cents to get shaken to death with the propeller.
Still, it was all right presently.The people seemed to get sorted out into the places on the boat where they belonged.The women, the older ones, all gravitated into the cabin on the lower deck and by getting round the table with needlework, and with all the windows shut, they soon had it, as they said themselves, just like being at home.
All the young boys and the toughs and the men in the band got down on the lower deck forward, where the boat was dirtiest and where the anchor was and the coils of rope.
And upstairs on the after deck there were Lilian Drone and Miss Lawson, the high school teacher, with a book of German poetry,--Gothey I think it was,--and the bank teller and the younger men.
In the centre, standing beside the rail, were Dean Drone and Dr.
Gallagher, looking through binocular glasses at the shore.
Up in front on the little deck forward of the pilot house was a group of the older men, Mullins and Duff and Mr.Smith in a deck chair, and beside him Mr.Golgotha Gingham, the undertaker of Mariposa, on a stool.It was part of Mr.Gingham's principles to take in an outing of this sort, a business matter, more or less,--for you never know what may happen at these water parties.At any rate, he was there in a neat suit of black, not, of course, his heavier or professional suit, but a soft clinging effect as of burnt paper that combined gaiety and decorum to a nicety.
"Yes," said Mr.Gingham, waving his black glove in a general way towards the shore, "I know the lake well, very well.I've been pretty much all over it in my time.""Canoeing?" asked somebody.
"No," said Mr.Gingham, "not in a canoe." There seemed a peculiar and quiet meaning in his tone.
"Sailing, I suppose," said somebody else.
"No," said Mr.Gingham."I don't understand it.""I never knowed that you went on to the water at all, Gol," said Mr.
Smith, breaking in.
"Ah, not now," explained Mr.Gingham; "it was years ago, the first summer I came to Mariposa.I was on the water practically all day.
Nothing like it to give a man an appetite and keep him in shape.""Was you camping?" asked Mr.Smith.
"We camped at night," assented the undertaker, "but we put in practically the whole day on the water.You see we were after a party that had come up here from the city on his vacation and gone out in a sailing canoe.We were dragging.We were up every morning at sunrise, lit a fire on the beach and cooked breakfast, and then we'd light our pipes and be off with the net for a whole day.It's a great life,"concluded Mr.Gingham wistfully.
"Did you get him?" asked two or three together.
There was a pause before Mr.Gingham answered.
"We did," he said,--"down in the reeds past Horseshoe Point.But it was no use.He turned blue on me right away."After which Mr.Gingham fell into such a deep reverie that the boat had steamed another half mile down the lake before anybody broke the silence again.
Talk of this sort,--and after all what more suitable for a day on the water?--beguiled the way.
