Chapter TEN: The Unsalted Seas

Unfortunately, Sandy Steele was wrong.

Things could get worse, and they did.

They worsened, not only for the two youths from Valley View, California, but for everyone aboard the _James Kennedy_—to say nothing of all those other thousands of human souls who sailed the lower Lakes on that memorable summer morning.

For it was on that morning that a freak summer storm that had been rushing down from the north, roared like a scourge across Lake Huron before bursting in all its fury upon the shallow waters of Lake Erie. It was a storm that blew with shattering force across a body of water notorious for rough weather.

There are no storms so sudden and so strong as those that fall upon the Great Lakes, and Sandy Steele and Jerry James were about to witness one of the worst within the memory of the grizzled sailors of “the unsalted seas.”

There are the treacherous gales, and sometimes hurricanes, of late fall or early winter—those wailing winds that sheathe a ship in fresh-water ice, before driving it to its destruction.

In the days of sailing ships, there have been single storms upon the Lakes in which as many as a hundred ships—with thousands of sailors and passengers—have perished within twenty-four hours. Steam-driven freighters, and motorships, too, have sunk to the bottom of these cold waters—and more than a few of the ocean liners that have managed to make their way to the Lakes via the St. Lawrence River have gone to a fresh-water grave.

The very first ship to sail the Lakes was the bark, _Griffon_, of the famous French explorer, LaSalle. It set sail from Buffalo on August 7, 1679, reached the shores of Lake Michigan, and then disappeared completely on its return voyage.

From Superior to Ontario, the floors of the Lakes are littered with all manner of ships that have gone down in these storms—with their cargoes, their jewels, their gold, their stacks of currency still undamaged in safes.

And it is above the surface of Lake Erie, the body of water toward which the _James Kennedy_ was placidly steaming, that the Great Lakes storms blow the worst and the wildest. For Lake Erie is the shallowest of all the lakes. Its average depth is only 70 feet, compared to that of 250 for the rest of them. At its deepest, it is only 210 feet—compared to 1,180 feet on Lake Superior.

Erie is a shallow saucer, a basin, and when the winds go whistling across its surface they create something of the effect that a boy might make by blowing onto a shallow saucer of water—but on a much, much greater scale. The winds whip up mountainous waves that can break a freighter in two. There have been storms on Lake Erie as freakish and furious as that recorded by the veteran mariner who had moored his vessel on the Canadian shore opposite Buffalo. To his amazement, the wind blew so savagely that it drove the water out and away from his ship’s hull and left him sitting there, high and dry!

Even today, in our modern age, there have been freighters that have ventured into Erie storms, from whom nothing has been heard except a last, despairing message: “We are breaking up.”

So it was on Lake Erie that this unusual summer storm struck with such violence, only a few hours after the _James Kennedy_ had left the Detroit River and swung its prow east by north for Buffalo.

Oddly enough, Captain West was elated when the storm broke.

He would not have been quite so overjoyed had he known how terrible it would become. But his first reaction to the gale was simply that this would probably keep the _James Kennedy_, and the two youths, out on the Lakes until well after Mr. Paul Chadwick had finished his deal with Mr. Kennedy.

In fact, Captain West had decided against going ashore in Detroit for much the same reasons. He had suddenly realized that it might be risky to place Sandy Steele and Jerry James within reach of a big city—with its telephones and telegraphs, and, worse, its buses and railroads. They might, in some way, get off the ship. Then they would be free to warn Mr. Kennedy.

So Captain West had left orders to make downriver past Detroit and out into Lake Erie.

He awoke to the shudder and roll of his ship. In his ears, he could hear the whine of a rising wind. When he gazed out of his porthole, his eyes fell on a slate-gray sea.

“A storm!” he cried, grinning with wicked delight. “Oh, ho, Captain West’s luck is running good. This’ll close that deal for good and all!”

Pleased as could be, the skipper sprang from his bunk and began putting on his foul-weather clothing. He strode briskly from his cabin. About to make topside, he paused at the mate’s door. He swung it open and leaned in.

“Briggs, I think you’d better unlock those boys.”

The mate gawked as though he couldn’t believe his ears, but Captain West held up a thick, hairy paw when he opened his mouth to protest.

“Do as I say! They’re not going anywhere, especially in this storm. It’s one thing to keep them locked up like that under the pretext of facing charges, Briggs. But it’s another to have them trapped below decks during a storm.”

The mate nodded obediently, and Captain West wheeled and headed for the ladder. Moving along the passageway, he was surprised to find that he had to stretch out flat against the bulkhead to keep from falling. The _James Kennedy_ was bucking that much!

Clambering up the ladder, he needed all his strength to keep from being thrown below. When he got on deck, the wind seemed to whistle through his ears, and he pursed his lips in a whistle of his own when he observed the huge, rising seas and the dirty clouds scudding low and threatening above him.

Glancing over the side, Captain West whistled again.

There was a good two feet less of freeboard already, and the _James Kennedy_ seemed to be plunging deeper into the steely, rain-dimpled waves. Captain West pulled his cap lower on his forehead and thrust one powerful shoulder ahead of him as he bucked into the screaming wind. The rain came slanting at him in sheets and raked his face. He ducked his chin deeper into his shoulder, not quite so jubilant a skipper as he had been upon awakening.

For this, indeed, was the start of a real blow!

Below decks, Sandy Steele and Jerry James were awake, too. They had been so for perhaps a half hour before Captain West, roused from a deep sleep by the unfamiliar pitching of the vessel. Now they sat on the lower bunk. Both boys had deeply serious expressions on their faces. Sandy was not even aware of the cowlick that hung forward on his forehead, and Jerry James’s brow was a mass of wrinkles. They were listening to the steady clanking and groaning of the _James Kennedy_’s steel fibers as the laden ore boat rolled in the rising seas. Even below, they could hear the thin wailing of the winds above.

“Sounds like a real storm, Sandy.”

“Yes, and do you realize what this could mean?”

“Well, I guess it could mean anything—that is, if it got bad enough.”

“Oh, I don’t mean sinking or anything like that. I mean it could keep us from reaching Buffalo in time.”

“Oh,” Jerry said, in a small, glum voice, and for a time neither youth spoke. Then they heard a rattling at their door.

It opened, and the unfriendly face of Mr. Briggs peeped in. The two youths leaped to their feet.

“Stay where you are!” the mate snapped. “You ain’t going anywheres.” He grunted, pushing the door back and securing it against the bulkhead. “Skipper says he wants your door open. Can’t say as I agree with him, but he’s the skipper.”

“Can we go out?” Sandy asked.

“No.”

“How about some food?” Jerry queried, rubbing his stomach.

The mate snickered. “You’ll get the same as the others—biscuits and water.” He snickered again. “That’s all the food that’s left after what you two boobs done to the galley.”

“What _we_ did!” they chorused, indignantly.

“Yes, you!” the mate snarled, backing into the passageway. “And don’t try to come it over me with that innocent-angels business.”

Sandy and Jerry exchanged glances of amazement, and then, again, they burst out laughing.

“Boy, oh, boy,” Jerry breathed, to the annoyance of the mate, “when our Mr. Briggs tells a story, he sticks to it!”

The mate’s mouth flew open for an angry reply, but then, it just remained agape and not a sound issued forth.

The mate seemed to be rising in the air, towering over the two youths in the cabin. He lost his balance and fell. His mouth still yawning and his hands frantically clawing for a hold on the smooth steel deck, he began to slide toward them.

Then the boys were hurled backward against the bulkhead. They struck it with a crash and slithered to the floor, all but stunned.

For one long dreadful moment, it seemed to all three of them that the _James Kennedy_ would never return from that sickening roll to starboard. There was that bottomless instant when it appeared that the heavily burdened vessel would never stop heeling over until it had turned turtle and plunged to the bottom.

Then, it stopped.

It seemed to hang in the air.

Sandy and Jerry drew their breath in sharply. They had the terrible sensation that there was nothing beneath the _James Kennedy_ to support it, and that once this long, hanging pause had ended—it would drop, drop, drop. Slowly, they let their breath out.

The vessel had begun to right itself.

With the same slow, deliberate, rolling motion, it heeled over to port, and now it was Sandy and Jerry who rose in the air above the mate and who felt themselves sliding toward him. Again, it seemed that the _James Kennedy_ would overturn, and the hanging sensation was repeated. But when the vessel had righted itself this time, it seemed merely to shiver—before plowing straight ahead.

Scrambling erect, the two youths stared at Mr. Briggs. The mate’s face had been drained of color and his little eyes glistened with fear.

“That,” he said, in a voice hoarse with awe and disbelief, “was a wave!”

Up above, in the pilothouse, Captain West had watched that monster swell come and go, and now even he was a trifle shaken as he mopped his brow in relief. He wondered what would have happened if that wall of water had struck them fore and aft, rather than abeam.

He gazed through his windows and wagged his head gravely. The winds still rose in violence. They whipped at the _James Kennedy_ from every quarter, seeming to change direction every other moment like a cyclone gone mad. The seas were a battering confusion. The waves ran this way, the wind another. Between them, they tore at the ship’s superstructure and thundered against her sides. Sometimes two great waves would dash at each other from opposite directions, colliding with a great roar and a shattering shower of spray.

Captain West saw with alarm that the waves were increasing in height. They were already well past ten feet. They would go on to twenty, of that he was disturbingly certain—and after that?

After that, Captain West knew, waves and running seas of that height would batter the long, narrow, shallow _James Kennedy_ until she broke in two. He no longer placed such great importance on staying out of port to make sure of Mr. Chadwick’s deal. He would have given anything, just then, to be safe and snug behind the breakwater at Buffalo.

Peering through his rain-splashed windows, the skipper sought a glimpse of some other vessel. But his visibility had been greatly reduced by the sheets of rain and the darkening skies. The unearthly light that had greeted him when he came on deck had been slowly subsiding. Now, as the clock raced on toward noon and the storm raged on in unabated fury, he could see only the clashing seas around him and hear that high-pitched wailing of the wind.

He shook himself.

“This is bad, very bad,” he said to Sam, who had taken over as wheelsman.

“Aye, aye, sir,” Sam said. “I’ve been through some bad ones on the Lakes—but I’ve not seen any worse than this one. And it’s just starting, if I read the signals right.”

The captain bobbed his head in unhappy assent. The _James Kennedy_ staggered and seemed to shake herself as she drove forward into a wall of lake water, and he embraced a stanchion to keep his feet. He waited until the vessel had steadied herself, and then he lurched across the pilothouse to the rear windows to stare with dismay at the spectacle below him.

Grayish seas were swamping the decks of the _James Kennedy_, and the crewmen were frantically at work trying to secure the hatch of one of the holds. Wind and water had torn at a corner of the steel hatch and had peeled it back as though a giant can opener had been at work. Each time the _Kennedy_ dug into one of the heavy seas swinging toward it, the crewmen would seize the rails and hang on for dear life while the water swept down on them.

Then, while the vessel rose high again and the waters ran off the sides, they would resume the battle against the hatch—battering away at it with sledge hammers in an attempt to seal the hold.

One look at this scene was enough for Captain West. He could see at a glance that more men were needed.

“Mr. Briggs!” he shouted at his mate through the speaking tube. “Get every available man up on deck to Number Four hatch!”

The mate’s voice wailed hollowly in reply: “They’re all up there already, sir—every man that can be spared.”

“Nonsense, Briggs! Who else have you got down there?”

“Just myself and those two high school brats.”

Captain West fell silent. He frowned. The ship shuddered and he was forced to grab Sam’s shoulder for support. Below, he could see the angry waters sweeping down the decks while the crewmen clung in terror to the rail. Many of them, he noticed, had wrapped lines around their waists and secured them to the railing. But there just weren’t enough of them—and that hatch, yawning like a fatal hole in the ship’s armor, just had to be closed! If it was not, if it grew larger, then the lake water would pour through. It would saturate the tons and tons of ore that lay in the typical ore freighter’s single huge hold. The weight of the _James Kennedy_ would be at least doubled, and the merest ripple or slightest breeze might suffice to send her plunging to the bottom!

No, that hatch must be sealed! Every available hand was needed to do it, and quickly, even though they might belong to the most troublesome pair of youths Captain West had ever known.

“Send them up, Mr. Briggs,” he ordered, and turned to give additional orders to the wheelsman, Sam.

Below, Mr. Briggs aimed a thumb at his “prisoners” and grunted, “Get up to Number Four hatch on the double. You heard the captain, so you know what’s wanted. Take a crowbar there, and you both better have a line.” He leered. “If you want to get to Buffalo, you’d better tie yourself to the rail up there and hang on tight.”

Without a word, Sandy Steele and Jerry James seized coils of rope from hooks along the passageway. Then Sandy grasped a crowbar and the two hastened topside.