Part 2

Suddenly the decreased throb of the engines told me that we were slowing down. We must be near the entrance. I rushed to the deck above to see what, if anything, had happened, in time to hear the gong below stop the engines completely. We slowly came to rest, and the only sound was the gentle lapping of the fog-laden waves against the sides of the vessel, and the rhythmic push-push of the water pouring from the engine-room vent into the lake. I could see the Old Man with his quartermaster up on the canvas-covered deck above the wheelhouse. Trinder’s hair was standing on end. He had taken off his white collar, put on for the benefit of passenger traffic, and now looked like the skipper of any ore or freight carrier. His attitude was one of excitement. He was listening for something, and I thought it was for the foghorn at the entrance to the river.

Within a minute or two the lazy rasp of the horn floated in on the fog from a point or two off the starboard bow. It seemed to me that once we had heard the horn we ought to know where we were, but still the _Chippewa_ did not move. Then the horn’s rasp came again, this time from a wider angle to the starboard, and the next rasp came from astern. Clearly the fog was varying the direction from which the sound came to us. We could not rely on it. It was a fact, however, that we were within a few thousand feet of the shore. The Old Man did not care to risk the second ship he had taken to the mouth of the Portage Lake Canal, let alone the three hundred pleasure seekers who lined the rail and commented idly on the situation. They were mildly amused at the disheveled appearance of the man who held their lives and a million dollars’ worth of ship and cargo in his hand.

Finally he signalled the engine room, and we pushed ahead slowly. Almost immediately, however, the engine-room gong clanged for stop, and then reverse. Dead ahead I could see the lighthouse at the channel end of the south breakwater slowly come into view and approach us as the steamer pressed forward. But as I watched, the lighthouse receded from us as quietly and stealthily as though it had come up to take a look at us, the intruders.

For a few minutes we lay motionless outside in the fog. Then I heard the horn again, now from our port quarter. It was eerie how that foghorn followed us around. Then I heard the bell in the radio room jangle, and I hurried below.

It was the skipper calling.

“Keep sharp lookout for word now,” he said.

“Who from, sir?” I asked.

“From her,” he answered curtly, and hung up. I hoped fervently that he would either find the entrance by himself without dashing us all on the breakwater to follow his wife to the bottom, or that the fog would suddenly lift and reveal to us the heavily wooded shores paralleling the narrow, sandy beach. There was nothing I could do but listen in, but I got nothing. Then I sneaked out for another look into the fog.

We were going ahead again, and I could feel that our nose was turned so that we would land farther out along the point. Suddenly the engine-room bell clanged again. Again I saw the breakwater approach us and recede, this time coming much closer than before, too close for the comfort of some of the passengers near me. They were asking me about the advisability of protesting to the skipper when he looked aft and caught sight of me.

“Go below,” he roared at me, “and get that message. She’s calling.”

I knew there was no one calling, but there was nothing to do but go down again. And then the unexpected happened. There was some one calling!

“SSE, SSE, SSE,” it said over and over again in dots and dashes. It was a strange signal, and the tone was unlike any I had ever heard on the Lakes. Perhaps in my amazement the unfamiliarity of it was exaggerated, but it was a queer signal.

“SSE, SSE, SSE,” it went on, and finally, after a whining crescendo, it said, “SSE, Anna.” And that was all.

I wrote it out on a piece of paper and took it up on the bridge. The captain looked at it, and a strange light came into his eyes. He dashed into the wheelhouse, and pushing aside the quartermaster, slowly swung the ship until her nose pointed south southeast. Then he rang for more speed ahead. Once again the shore line came into view. We could see both sides of the breakwater this time. We were aimed directly at the center of the opening.

As we passed the crib at the end of the north breakwater I noticed a small craft tied to it. Dimly I could see that on the stern was painted the one word “Anna.”

This explained the strange signals and the bearing we had secured. I suppose that from her position near the breakwater the Anna could see our masts sticking up in the air. This explanation was not so satisfactory later on when I called the _Anna_ again but got no word from her.

Within five minutes we were steaming toward Houghton, where we arrived not over half an hour late and with plenty of time for the passengers to buy copper doodads and for me to learn through one of the men at the railroad station that the _Anna_ was a Swedish boat that some foolhardy youth from Stockholm had crossed the Atlantic in. He had relatives in Minnesota. There was nothing strange about this--Swedish youths are always doing foolish things--except the fact that Swedish vessels have radio call letters beginning with S, so that the call “SSE” which I heard was probably the call signal of the craft. It was apparently just coincidence that the letters I had picked up gave us the bearing we needed.

At six that night I went on watch, and later the skipper came in.

“Well, young man, I must thank you for getting that message this morning. I always thought that if I ever got into trouble with fog I would get a message from Anna.”

“Anna?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said simply. “My wife sent the message. Her name was Anna.”

[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the December 1929 issue of _Sea Stories_ magazine.]