ing, was making her last
southward trip of the season. I knew the _Ethie_ well, every inch of
her, for I had made the up trip and the down trip aboard her only a
few weeks before. Through no fault of her gallant captain, she had
been carrying a great many more passengers than she ever was meant to
carry. On a pinch, she had accommodations for fifty. But on one trip,
by standing up the fishermen in the washroom as if they were bunches
of asparagus, she had taken three hundred passengers. From a hundred
to two hundred was a common number. I had been one of about
twenty-five lucky enough to find a "berth" in the small dining-saloon.
The berth was like a parcel-rack in a railway car. The people of the
coast were signing a long petition to have the miserable old tub laid
up and a larger, modern vessel substituted.

When Captain English was nearing Martin's Point on the _Ethie's_ last
voyage, a high sea was running, and she sprang a leak. The water
rushed into the fireroom. Captain English went below and made an
appeal to "his boys" not to desert their fires and not to fail him.

"If you will stick till we get round the Point we can beach her," he
said. The stokers manfully plied their shovels: with the snow
whirling, and the wind blowing half a gale, the vessel struck, several
hundred yards from the beach. In a little while the waves, sweeping
furiously over the deck, would have swept the ninety-two persons
aboard into the sea.

They tried to fire a line ashore to the willing crowd that stood at
the edge of the breakers.

But the line fell short, across an ugly reef of jagged rocks half-way
to the land.

Then volunteers were asked to swim ashore with the rope. But none of
the sailors knew how to swim. It is a rare accomplishment among
sailors, especially in those bitter northern waters. So that plan was
surrendered.

A boat was launched. Before it had fairly hit the tremendous waves, it
was dashed to pieces against the _Ethie's_ side.

The company on shipboard seemed at the end of their resources. But the
people ashore had not been idle.

There was a fisherman of Martin's Point named Reuben Decker, who had a
dog whom he had not taken the trouble to name at all. It was one of
the young dogs in process of being broken to the sled, and in the
meantime it was kicked and stoned and starved--not by the owner, but
by strangers afraid of it, as is the general lot of dogs in this part
of the world, after they have done the