Page:Dangerous Business (1927).pdf/233

 sail that day, through which the wind blew rain and rain and they pumped to keep afloat, navigating by guess largely and seasick, some of them.

Jay wasn't; nor Lyman. Off watch, they consumed crackers and cheese and sardines and, paired at the pumps, they did double time twice.

Shore stood to starboard; they sighted Point Betsie with Frankfort Harbour below but never thought of putting in. They pumped and passed the Sleeping Bear; now the Manitous in a mist of rain. They pumped on.

Ile Aux Galets shoals—"Skilagalee" (the graveyard of the Lakes)—took its turn at them. The steering gear smashed, the wheel-box split, the rudder was useless. So they stripped to a storm jib (pumping meanwhile) and made repairs which let them hoist sail and which held through the Straits and into Huron!

They finished! Seventy-two hours out, indeed—three days and three nights from the start—but they finished. Nine sail ahead of them. The Vega of course and other schooners; yawls, too; and sloops, which had been built for heavy weather; but not the Saracen, light like the Arletta.

"Saracen?" Lyman Howarth hailed. "Where is she?"

"In Charlevoix! They were taken in, sinking."

At this, Lyman hugged his partner of the pumps and did a dance. "Outpumped 'em, b'God; we pumped out Cornell and Princeton!"

The sun was smiling on the little strait between Mackinac and Round Island. The wind had died; only a breeze was blowing, and the Arletta, having finished, lazily was seeking the shelter of the shore. Jay sat at the stem, very