with the way it was, they
wa'n't no better off, even with rescue fifteen feet away, than when our
crew was a hundred miles off in Ship Island. There wa'n't nothin' for
us to do but tackle the job ourselves.

[Illustration: LAYING THE LYLE GUN.

Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.]

[Illustration: FIRING THE SHOT AND LINE.

Note line being paid out from the faking-box. This shot carried a sixth
of a mile.

Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.]

"The fishermen, the ones that had been out in the yawl, came aroun' an'
said it couldn't be done. My coxswain agreed it couldn't be done, but
we'd do it just the same."

"And you?" asked the boy.

"I jest started gettin' the boat ready," the old keeper said, simply.
"It was 'way after midnight, reckon it was nearly one o'clock, an', if
anything, the sea was wilder. An' I felt nothin' so cold afore in all my
life. The women o' Chocolay, they was out that night, bringin' steamin
mugs o' coffee. There's a deal o' credit comin' to them, too, the way I
look at it."

"I don't see that they could have done much less," said Eric.

"Maybe aye, maybe no," said the veteran, "but I reckon, no matter how
little a woman does, the right kind o' man's goin' to think it's a lot.
Well, as I was sayin', I turned to the boys to launch the boat. We got
hold of her by the rails an' waded in through the mush-ice, same as the
fishermen had done. I tell you, it guv me a big sense o' pride in men
like our Michigan fishermen when I tackled what they'd tackled. They
hadn't no cork-jackets, and they wa'n't rigged up for it. Their boat
wa'n't built for no such work but they didn't stop to think o' their own
lives or their own boat. An' a fisherman's boat, like's not, is all he's
got to make a livin' with. It makes a man feel good to think there's
other men like that!

"That mush reached two hundred yards f'm land. I don't know how them
fisher chaps ever got through the ice at all. It took us nigh half 'n
hour to make the last hundred yards. When the water deepened so's we
could get into the boat, every man's clothes was drenched an' they friz
right on to him. Every time we dipped the oars in that mush they'd
stick, 'n' onless we'd pulled 'em out mighty fast they'd have friz right
there. 'Bout every ten yards we had to chop the oar-locks free of ice
an' the only part of our slickers what wa'n't friz was where the muscles
was playin'. The cox'n, he looked like one of them petrified men ye read
about.