_Miami_ from stem to stern.
It was an awful night's tow, but just at eight bells of the middle watch
the cutter and the rescued vessel passed the Frying Pan Shoals
Lightship, and as soon as they got within lee of the shoals they met a
smoother sea. At nine o'clock the next morning the _Northwestern_ was
safe and sound in a good anchorage in Southport at the mouth of the Cape
Fear River.

When Eric came on deck again, he found the _Miami_ on her way south
again on the search for the derelict, _Madeleine Cooney_, this time
reported by the United States Army mine planter, _Schofield_. Two days
afterwards in latitude 27 deg. 52' N., longitude 84 deg. 34' W., a vessel
was found in 65 fathom of water, with her anchor down, burned to her main
deck and on fire aft. She was dismasted and her bowsprit had gone. Eric
was sent in charge of one of the boats to run a line. The sea was
comparatively smooth, so that the _Miami_ made fast alongside her stern
and put two lines of hose aboard. The cutter's heavy pumps were attached
and in fifteen minutes the fire was out.

The anchor chain was fouled, so the first lieutenant gave orders that
the cable should be slipped. Some of the cutter's men worked around the
masts floating alongside and the entangled rigging, and cut away enough
of the rigging to make a heavy wire bridle which was passed through the
hawse-pipes in the burned vessel's bow. This was necessary as none of
the upper works of the ship remained to which a tow-line could be
attached. To this bridle was bent the ten-inch hawser of the _Miami_,
and the derelict was towed into Tampa Bay.

On the way, however, rough weather came up and the masts and spars broke
adrift. As they were right in the path of traffic, the _Miami_ went back
to destroy these. The spars were separated and allowed to drift, as the
set of the current would soon take them ashore out of harm's way. This
got rid of everything except the lower part of the mainmast. As this
heavy spar itself might be the means of sinking a vessel if left
adrift, tossing on the waves, the _Miami_ parbuckled the big timber on
board, chopped it into small pieces--none of them large enough to do a
vessel any damage--and set them afloat.

The weather continued squally as the _Miami_ ran down the coast, the tag
end of the gale blowing itself to tatters on the stretch from Cape
Hatteras to Cape Fear. Little though Eric realized it then, before the
year was out, he was destined to kn