THURSDAY morning, a day and a half before the hour set for the wedding, they lay at a wharf in Milwaukee River, ready to sail. The sky was heavy and a roaring wind blew from the lake. Half a dozen steamers and two schooners had made the harbor since daybreak, and each had a story of hard struggling with wind and sea, stories which spread rapidly along the river, causing more than one outbound captain to shake his head, and resolve to wait a few hours or a day longer.
T
Hunch had gone out to the life-saving station at the pier, and now at eight o'clock he stood looking at the tumbling white rollers that came on squarely be tween the piers and ran far up into the channel before they were spent. On the horizon a row of schooners, barges, and freighters were holding their noses against the sea, until it should be safe to run for the harbor. A little nearer a big whaleback was tossing and rolling badly. One of the crew men watched her through a glass. A few tugs hung about inside the basin, looking for a stray job at advanced rates.
Hunch, after looking it all over, chartered a tug, then returned to the schooner, where Bruce and Billy were waiting. He and Bruce had not been talkative of late.
“Get everything tight, Bruce,” he said, jumping down upon the deck. “We're going out in half an hour.”
“How about it, Hunch? Can we make it, think?”
Hunch did not trouble to reply, and Bruce, as he worked along the deck, watched him nervously.
Before the tug appeared, Hunch went ashore and crossed the wharf to a saloon at the corner. He returned with a jug, which he put in his bunk where the bedding would protect it when the schooner got to pitching. He sometimes drank whisky to steady his nerves when fighting a heavy sea. In a few minutes the tug came alongside.
“Everything fast, Bruce?”
Brace grunted, and Billy lifted the lines off the snubbin' posts and followed them aboard.
They went out in tow, on a long hawser and under bare poles. When they were half a mile beyond the piers, wrenching and slapping through the seas, and shipping a
Prev.
Back
Top