Page:The Indian Drum (1917 original).pdf/373

Rh the traffic; the weak have died. Twenty years ago, when this conflict of competing interests was at its height, Corvet was the head of one line, Stafford was head of another, and the two lines had very much the same connections and competed for the same cargoes."

"I begin to see!" Father Perron exclaimed. "Please go on."

"In the early nineties both lines still were young; Stafford had, I believe, two ships; Corvet had three."

"So few? Yes; it grows plainer!"

"In 1894, Stafford managed a stroke which, if fate had not intervened, must have assured the ultimate extinction of Corvet's line or its absorption into Stafford's. Stafford gained as his partner Franklin Ramsdell, a wealthy man whom he had convinced that the lake traffic offered chances of great profit; and this connection supplied him with the capital whose lack had been hampering him, as it was still hampering Corvet. The new firm—Stafford and Ramsdell—projected the construction, with Ramsdell's money, of a number of great steel freighters. The first of these—the Miwaka, a test ship whose experience was to guide them in the construction of the rest—was launched in the fall of 1895, and was lost on its maiden trip with both Stafford and Ramsdell aboard. The Stafford and Ramsdell interests could not survive the death of both owners and disappeared from the lakes. Is this what you wanted to know?"

The priest nodded. Alan leaned tensely forward, watching; what he had heard seemed to have increased and deepened the priest's feeling over what he had to tell and to have aided his comprehension of it.