ren't no such boats as ye see
now. Our worst wrecks in them days were the steamers. This one, that
your pappy wants me to tell ye 'bout, was a steamer an' a three-masted
fore-an'-after she had in tow.

"This yarn I'm a spinnin' reely begins down at Marquette Breakwater. It
was on the seventeenth day of November, an', let me see, it must have
been in 'eighty-six, the same year my youngest was born. The winter had
broke in early that year, not with any reel stormy weather, but jest a
bunch o' pesky squalls. An' cold! We was in the boat mighty near every
day, an' I used ter forget what bein' warm felt like. There was allers
somethin' hittin' a shoal or tryin' to make a hole in the beach. It was
squally an' shiftin', ye see. An' the mush-ice set in early."

[Illustration: WRECKS! AND THE ICE BETWEEN!

Steamer ashore near St. Joseph, Mich., under conditions all but
impossible for life-saving, yet not a soul was lost.

Courtesy of U.S. Bureau of Lighthouses.]

"What's mush-ice?" interrupted Eric.

"Mush-ice," said the old keeper, "is a mixture of frozen spray, an' ice,
an' bits o' drift, an' everythin' that kin freeze or be friz over,
pilin' up on the beach. It's floatin', ye understan', an', as a rule,
'bout two or three foot thick. Owin' to the movin' o' the water, it
don't never freeze right solid, but the surf on the beach breaks it into
bits anywheres from the size of 'n apple to a keg. An' it joggles up 'n'
down, 'n' the pieces grin' agin each other. It's jest a seesawin' edge
o' misery on a frozen beach."

"That's as bad as Alaska!" exclaimed the boy.

"It's a plumb sight worse," the other answered. "I ain't never been no
further north 'n Thunder Cape, jest by Nipigon. An' what's more, I ain't
goin'! But even up there, the ice freezes solid 'n' you kin do somethin'
with it. Mush-ice never gits solid, but like some sort o' savage critter
born o' the winter, champs its jaws of ice, waitin' for its prey."

"How do you like that, Eric?" asked his father. "That's some of the
'fun' you're always talking about."

"Can't scare me, Dad," replied Eric with a laugh. "I'm game."

"Ye'll need all yer gameness," put in the old life-saver. "Wait till ye
hear the end o' the yarn! As I was sayin', it was in November. The fust
big storm o' the winter broke sudden. I never see nothin' come on so
quick. It bust right out of a snow-squall, 'n' the glass hadn' given no
warnin'. We wa'n't expectin' trouble an' it was all we c