The Indian Drum by William MacHarg (classic english novels txt) 📕

Benjamin Corvet, when he went away, had tried to leave his place and power among lakemen to Alan; Alan, refusing to accept what Corvet had left until Corvet's reason should be known, had felt obliged also to refuse friendship with the Sherrills. When revelation came, would it make possible Alan's acceptance of the place Corvet had prepared for him, or would it leave him where he was? Would it bring him nearer to Constance Sherrill, or would it set him forever away from her?

"Colder some to-night, Conrad."

"Yes, sir."

"Strait's freezing over, they say."

"Pretty stiff ice outside here already, sir."

The skipper glanced out and smiled confidently but without further comment; yet he took occasion to go down and pass along the car deck and observe the men who under direction of the mate were locking the lugs under the car wheels, as the trains came on board. The wind, which had risen with nightfall to a gale off the water, whipped snow with it which swirled and back-eddied with the switching cars into the great, gaping stern of the ferry.

Officially, and to chief extent in actuality, navigation now had "closed" for the winter. Further up the harbor, beyond Number 25, glowed the white lanterns marking two vessels moored and "laid up" till spring; another was still in the active process of "laying up." Marine insurance, as regards all ordinary craft, had ceased; and the Government at sunrise, five days before, had taken the warning lights from the Straits of Mackinaw, from Ile-aux-Galets, from north Manitou, and the Fox Islands; and the light at Beaver Island had but five nights more to burn.

Alan followed as the captain went below, and he went aft between the car tracks, watching old Burr. Having no particular duty when the boat was in dock, old Burr had gone toward the steamer "laying up," and now was standing watching with absorption the work going on. There was a tug a little farther along, with steam up and black smoke pouring from its short funnel. Old Burr observed this boat too and moved up a little nearer. Alan, following the wheelsman, came opposite the stern of the freighter; the snow let through enough of the light from the dock to show the name Stoughton. It was, Alan knew, a Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman ship. He moved closer to old Burr and watched him more intently.

"What's the matter?" he asked, as the old man halted and, looking down at the tug, shook his head.

"They're crossing," the wheelsman said aloud, but more to himself than to Alan. "They're laying her up here," he jerked his head toward the Stoughton. "Then they're crossing to Manitowoc on the tug."

"What's the matter with that?" Alan cried.

Burr drew up his shoulders and ducked his head down as a gust blew. It was cold, very cold indeed in that wind, but the old man had on a mackinaw and, out on the lake, Alan had seen him on deck coatless in weather almost as cold as this.

"It's a winter storm," Alan cried. "It's like it that way; but to-day's the 15th, not the 5th of December!"

"That's right," Burr agreed. "That's right."

The reply was absent, as though Alan had stumbled upon what he was thinking, and Burr had no thought yet to wonder at it.

"And it's the Stoughton they're laying up, not the—" he stopped and stared at Burr to let him supply the word and, when the old man did not, he repeated again—"not the—"

"No," Burr agreed again, as though the name had been given. "No."

"It was the Martha Corvet you laid up, wasn't it?" Alan cried quickly. "Tell me—that time on the 5th—it was the Martha Corvet?"

Burr jerked away; Alan caught him again and, with physical strength, detained him. "Wasn't it that?" he demanded. "Answer me; it was the Martha Corvet?"

The wheelsman struggled; he seemed suddenly terrified with the terror which, instead of weakening, supplied infuriated strength. He threw Alan off for an instant and started to flee back toward the ferry; and now Alan let him go, only following a few steps to make sure that the wheelsman returned to Number 25.

Watching old Burr until he was aboard the ferry, Alan spun about and went back to the Stoughton.

Work of laying up the big steamer had been finished, and in the snow-filled dusk her crew were coming ashore. Alan, boarding, went to the captain's cabin, where he found the Stoughton's master making ready to leave the ship. The captain, a man of forty-five or fifty, reminded Alan vaguely of one of the shipmasters who had been in Spearman's office when Alan first went there in the spring. If he had been there, he showed no recollection of Alan now, but good-humoredly looked up for the stranger to state his business.

"I'm from Number 25," Alan introduced himself. "This is a Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman ship. Do you know Mr. Corvet when you see him, sir?"

"Know Ben Corvet?" the captain repeated. The manner of the young man from the car ferry told him it was not an idle question. "Yes; I know Ben Corvet. I ain't seen him much in late years."

"Will you come with me for a few minutes then, Captain?" Alan asked. As the skipper stared at him and hesitated, Alan made explanation, "Mr. Corvet has been missing for months. His friends have said he's been away somewhere for his health; but the truth is, he's been missing. There's a man I want you to look at, Captain—if you used to know Mr. Corvet."

"I've heard of that." The captain moved alertly now. "Where is he?"

Alan led the master to the Ferry. Old Burr had left the car deck; they found him on his way to the wheelhouse.

The Stoughton's skipper stared. "That the man?" he demanded.

"Yes, sir. Remember to allow for his clothes and his not being shaved and that something has happened."

The Stoughton's skipper followed to the wheelhouse and spoke to Burr. Alan's blood beat fast as he watched this conversation. Once or twice more the skipper seemed surprised; but it was plain that his first interest in Burr quickly had vanished; when he left the wheelhouse, he returned to Alan indulgently. "You thought that was Mr. Corvet?" he asked, amused.

"You don't think so?" Alan asked.

"Ben Corvet like that? Did you ever see Ben Corvet?"

"Only his picture," Alan confessed. "But you looked queer when you first saw Burr."

"That was a trick of his eyes. Say, they did give me a start. Ben Corvet had just that sort of trick of looking through a man."

"And his eyes were like that?"

"Sure. But Ben Corvet couldn't be like that!"

Alan prepared to go on duty. He would not let himself be disappointed by the skipper's failure to identify old Burr; the skipper had known immediately at sight of the old man that he was the one whom Alan thought was Corvet, and he had found a definite resemblance. It might well have been only the impossibility of believing that Corvet could have become like this which had prevented fuller recognition. Mr. Sherrill, undoubtedly, would send some one more familiar with Benjamin Corvet and who might make proper allowances.

Alan went forward to his post as a blast from the steam whistle of the switching engine, announcing that the cars all were on board, was answered by a warning blast from the ferry. On the car decks the trains had been secured in place; and, because of the roughness of the weather, the wheels had been locked upon the tracks with additional chains as well as with the blocks and chains usually used. Orders now sounded from the bridge; the steel deck began to shake with the reverberations of the engines; the mooring lines were taken in; the rails upon the fantail of the ferry separated from the rails upon the wharf, and clear water showed between. Alan took up his slow pace as lookout from rail to rail across the bow, straining his eyes forward into the thickness of the snow-filled night.

Because of the severe cold, the watches had been shortened. Alan would be relieved from time to time to warm himself, and then he would return to duty again. Old Burr at the wheel would be relieved and would go on duty at the same hours as Alan himself. Benjamin Corvet! The fancy reiterated itself to him. Could he be mistaken? Was that man, whose eyes turned alternately from the compass to the bow of the ferry as it shifted and rose and fell, the same who had sat in that lonely chair turned toward the fireplace in the house on Astor Street? Were those hands, which held the steamer to her course, the hands which had written to Alan in secret from the little room off his bedroom and which pasted so carefully the newspaper clippings concealed in the library?

Regularly at the end of every minute, a blast from the steam whistle reverberated; for a while, signals from the shore answered; for a few minutes the shore lights glowed through the snow. Then the lights were gone, and the eddies of the gale ceased to bring echoes of the obscuration signals. Steadily, at short, sixty-second intervals, the blast of Number 25's warning burst from the whistle; then that too stopped. The great ferry was on the lake alone; in her course, Number 25 was cutting across the lanes of all ordinary lake travel; but now, with ordinary navigation closed, the position of every other ship upon the lake was known to the officers, and formal signals were not thought necessary. Flat floes, driven by wind and wave, had windrowed in their course; as Number 25, which was capable of maintaining two thirds its open water speed when running through solid "green" ice two feet thick, met this obstruction, its undercut bow rose slightly; the ice, crushed down and to the sides, hurled, pounding and scraping, under the keel and along the black, steel sides of the ship; Alan could hear the hull resounding to the buffeting as it hurled the floes away, and more came, or the wind threw them back. The water was washing high—higher than Alan had experienced seas before. The wind, smashing almost straight across the lake from the west, with only a gust or two from the north, was throwing up the water in great rushing ridges on which the bow of Number 25 rose jerkily up and up, suddenly to fall, as the support passed on, so that the next wave washed nearly to the rail.

Alan faced the wind with mackinaw buttoned about his throat; to make certain his hearing, his ears were unprotected. They numbed frequently, and he drew a hand out of the glove to rub them. The windows to protect the wheelsman had been dropped, as the snow had gathered on the glass; and at intervals, as he glanced back, he could see old Burr's face as he switched on a dim light to look at the compass. The strange placidity which usually characterized the old man's face had not returned to it since Alan had spoken with him on the dock; its look was intent and queerly drawn. Was old Burr beginning to remember—remember that he was Benjamin Corvet? Alan did not believe it could be that; again and again he had spoken Corvet's name to him without effect. Yet there must have been times when, if he was actually Corvet, he had remembered who he was. He must have remembered that when he had written directions to some one to send those things to Constance Sherrill; or, a strange thought had come to Alan, had he written those