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The Indian Drum By: Edwin Balmer (1883-1959) |
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THE INDIAN DRUM
BY WILLIAM MacHARG AND EDWIN BALMER
FRONTISPIECE BY W. T. BENDA
NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1917, BY EDWIN BALMER
All rights reserved
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I THE MAN WHOM THE STORM HAUNTED
II WHO IS ALAN CONRAD?
III DISCUSSION OF A SHADOW
IV "ARRIVED SAFE; WELL"
V AN ENCOUNTER
VI CONSTANCE SHERRILL
VII THE DEED IN TRUST
VIII MR. CORVET'S PARTNER
IX VIOLENCE
X A WALK BESIDE THE LAKE
XI A CALLER
XII THE LAND OF THE DRUM
XIII THE THINGS FROM CORVET'S POCKETS
XIV THE OWNER OF THE WATCH
XV OLD BURR OF THE FERRY
XVI A GHOST SHIP
XVII "HE KILLED YOUR FATHER"
XVIII MR. SPEARMAN GOES NORTH
XIX THE WATCH UPON THE BEACH
XX THE SOUNDING OF THE DRUM
XXI THE FATE OF THE MIWAKA
THE INDIAN DRUM
CHAPTER I THE MAN WHOM THE STORM HAUNTED Near the northern end of Lake Michigan, where the bluff bowed
ore carriers and the big, low lying, wheat laden steel freighters from
Lake Superior push out from the Straits of Mackinac and dispute the
right of way, in the island divided channel, with the white and gold,
electric lighted, wireless equipped passenger steamers bound for
Detroit and Buffalo, there is a copse of pine and hemlock back from the
shingly beach. From this copse dark, blue, primeval, silent at most
times as when the Great Manitou ruled his inland waters there comes at
time of storm a sound like the booming of an old Indian drum. This
drum beat, so the tradition says, whenever the lake took a life; and,
as a sign perhaps that it is still the Manitou who rules the waters in
spite of all the commerce of the cities, the drum still beats its roll
for every ship lost on the lake, one beat for every life. So men say they heard and counted the beatings of the drum to
thirty five upon the hour when, as afterward they learned, the great
steel steamer Wenota sank with twenty four of its crew and eleven
passengers; so men say they heard the requiem of the five who went
down with the schooner Grant ; and of the seventeen lost with the
Susan Hart ; and so of a score of ships more. Once only, it is told,
has the drum counted wrong. At the height of the great storm of December, 1895, the drum beat the
roll of a sinking ship. One, two, three the hearers counted the drum
beats, time and again, in their intermitted booming, to twenty four.
They waited, therefore, for report of a ship lost with twenty four
lives; no such news came. The new steel freighter Miwaka , on her
maiden trip during the storm with twenty five not twenty four aboard
never made her port; no news was ever heard from her; no wreckage ever
was found. On this account, throughout the families whose fathers,
brothers, and sons were the officers and crew of the Miwaka , there
stirred for a time a desperate belief that one of the men on the
Miwaka was saved; that somewhere, somehow, he was alive and might
return. The day of the destruction of the Miwaka was fixed as
December fifth by the time at which she passed the government lookout
at the Straits; the hour was fixed as five o'clock in the morning only
by the sounding of the drum. The region, filled with Indian legend and with memories of wrecks,
encourages such beliefs as this. To northward and to westward a half
dozen warning lights Ile aux Galets ("Skilligalee" the lake men call
it), Waugaushance, Beaver, and Fox Islands gleam spectrally where the
bone white shingle outcrops above the water, or blur ghostlike in the
haze; on the dark knolls topping the glistening sand bluffs to
northward, Chippewas and Ottawas, a century and a half ago, quarreled
over the prisoners after the massacre at Fort Mackinac; to southward,
where other hills frown down upon Little Traverse Bay, the black robed
priests in their chapel chant the same masses their predecessors
chanted to the Indians of that time... Continue reading book >>
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