Safe! I'm not sure now that I come to think of it that it isn't worse than sinking in the Atlantic.After all, in the Atlantic there is wireless telegraphy, and a lot of trained sailors and stewards.But out on Lake Wissanotti,--far out, so that you can only just see the lights of the town away off to the south,--when the propeller comes to a stop,--and you can hear the hiss of steam as they start to rake out the engine fires to prevent an explosion,--and when you turn from the red glare that comes from the furnace doors as they open them, to the black dark that is gathering over the lake,--and there's a night wind beginning to run among the rushes,--and you see the men going forward to the roof of the pilot house to send up the rockets to rouse the town, safe? Safe yourself, if you like; as for me, let me once get back into Mariposa again, under the night shadow of the maple trees, and this shall be the last, last time I'll go on Lake Wissanotti.
Safe! Oh yes! Isn't it strange how safe other people's adventures seem after they happen? But you'd have been scared, too, if you'd been there just before the steamer sank, and seen them bringing up all the women on to the top deck.
I don't see how some of the people took it so calmly; how Mr.Smith, for instance, could have gone on smoking and telling how he'd had a steamer "sink on him" on Lake Nipissing and a still bigger one, a side-wheeler, sink on him in Lake Abbitibbi.
Then, quite suddenly, with a quiver, down she went.You could feel the boat sink, sink,--down, down,--would it never get to the bottom?
The water came flush up to the lower deck, and then,--thank heaven,--the sinking stopped and there was the Mariposa Belle safe and tight on a reed bank.
Really, it made one positively laugh! It seemed so queer and, anyway, if a man has a sort of natural courage, danger makes him laugh.
Danger! pshaw! fiddlesticks! everybody scouted the idea.Why, it is just the little things like this that give zest to a day on the water.
Within half a minute they were all running round looking for sandwiches and cracking jokes and talking of making coffee over the remains of the engine fires.
I don't need to tell at length how it all happened after that.
I suppose the people on the Mariposa Belle would have had to settle down there all night or till help came from the town, but some of the men who had gone forward and were peering out into the dark said that it couldn't be more than a mile across the water to Miller's Point.
You could almost see it over there to the left,--some of them, Ithink, said "off on the port bow," because you know when you get mixed up in these marine disasters, you soon catch the atmosphere of the thing.
So pretty soon they had the davits swung out over the side and were lowering the old lifeboat from the top deck into the water.
There were men leaning out over the rail of the Mariposa Belle with lanterns that threw the light as they let her down, and the glare fell on the water and the reeds.But when they got the boat lowered, it looked such a frail, clumsy thing as one saw it from the rail above, that the cry was raised: "Women and children first!" For what was the sense, if it should turn out that the boat wouldn't even hold women and children, of trying to jam a lot of heavy men into it?
So they put in mostly women and children and the boat pushed out into the darkness so freighted down it would hardly float.
In the bow of it was the Presbyterian student who was relieving the minister, and he called out that they were in the hands of Providence.But he was crouched and ready to spring out of them at the first moment.
So the boat went and was lost in the darkness except for the lantern in the bow that you could see bobbing on the water.Then presently it came back and they sent another load, till pretty soon the decks began to thin out and everybody got impatient to be gone.
It was about the time that the third boat-load put off that Mr.Smith took a bet with Mullins for twenty-five dollars, that he'd be home in Mariposa before the people in the boats had walked round the shore.
No one knew just what he meant, but pretty soon they saw Mr.Smith disappear down below into the lowest part of the steamer with a mallet in one hand and a big bundle of marline in the other.
