g an accident until just after sundown when they--

Well, have you ever heard the long booming whistle of a steamboat two
miles out on the lake in the dusk, and while you listen and count and
wonder, seen the crimson rockets going up against the sky and then heard
the fire bell ringing right there beside you in the town, and seen the
people running to the town wharf?

That's what the people of Mariposa saw and felt that summer evening as
they watched the Mackinaw life-boat go plunging out into the lake
with seven sweeps to a side and the foam clear to the gunwale with the
lifting stroke of fourteen men!

But, dear me, I am afraid that this is no way to tell a story. I suppose
the true art would have been to have said nothing about the accident
till it happened. But when you write about Mariposa, or hear of it, if
you know the place, it's all so vivid and real that a thing like the
contrast between the excursion crowd in the morning and the scene at
night leaps into your mind and you must think of it.

But never mind about the accident,--let us turn back again to the
morning.

The boat was due to leave at seven. There was no doubt about the
hour,--not only seven, but seven sharp. The notice in the Newspacket
said: "The boat will leave sharp at seven;" and the advertising posters
on the telegraph poles on Missinaba Street that began "Ho, for Indian's
Island!" ended up with the words: "Boat leaves at seven sharp." There
was a big notice on the wharf that said: "Boat leaves sharp on time."

So at seven, right on the hour, the whistle blew loud and long, and then
at seven fifteen three short peremptory blasts, and at seven thirty one
quick angry call,--just one,--and very soon after that they cast off
the last of the ropes and the Mariposa Belle sailed off in her cloud of
flags, and the band of the Knights of Pythias, timing it to a nicety,
broke into the "Maple Leaf for Ever!"

I suppose that all excursions when they start are much the same. Anyway,
on the Mariposa Belle everybody went running up and down all over the
boat with deck chairs and camp stools and baskets, and found places,
splendid places to sit, and then got scared that there might be better
ones and chased off again. People hunted for places out of the sun and
when they got them swore that they weren't going to freeze to please
anybody; and the people in the sun said that they hadn't paid fifty
cents to be roasted. Others said that they hadn't paid f