scue boat came out to
the Mariposa Belle.

I suppose that when they put her in the water the lifeboat touched it
for the first time since the old Macdonald Government placed her on Lake
Wissanotti.

Anyway, the water poured in at every seam. But not for a moment,--even
with two miles of water between them and the steamer,--did the rowers
pause for that.

By the time they were half-way there the water was almost up to the
thwarts, but they drove her on. Panting and exhausted (for mind you, if
you haven't been in a fool boat like that for years, rowing takes it out
of you), the rowers stuck to their task. They threw the ballast over
and chucked into the water the heavy cork jackets and lifebelts that
encumbered their movements. There was no thought of turning back. They
were nearer to the steamer than the shore.

"Hang to it, boys," called the crowd from the steamer's deck, and hang
they did.

They were almost exhausted when they got them; men leaning from the
steamer threw them ropes and one by one every man was hauled aboard just
as the lifeboat sank under their feet.

Saved! by Heaven, saved, by one of the smartest pieces of rescue work
ever seen on the lake.

There's no use describing it; you need to see rescue work of this kind
by lifeboats to understand it.

Nor were the lifeboat crew the only ones that distinguished themselves.

Boat after boat and canoe after canoe had put out from Mariposa to the
help of the steamer. They got them all.

Pupkin, the other bank teller, with a face like a horse, who hadn't gone
on the excursion,--as soon as he knew that the boat was signalling for
help and that Miss Lawson was sending up rockets,--rushed for a row
boat, grabbed an oar (two would have hampered him), and paddled madly
out into the lake. He struck right out into the dark with the crazy
skiff almost sinking beneath his feet. But they got him. They rescued
him. They watched him, almost dead with exhaustion, make his way to the
steamer, where he was hauled up with ropes. Saved! Saved!!

They might have gone on that way half the night, picking up the
rescuers, only, at the very moment when the tenth load of people left
for the shore,--just as suddenly and saucily as you please, up came the
Mariposa Belle from the mud bottom and floated.

FLOATED?

Why, of course she did. If you take a hundred and fifty people off a
steamer that has sunk, and if you get a man as shrewd as Mr. Smith
to plug the timber sea