rescuers, only, at the very moment when the tenth load of people left
for the shore,--just as suddenly and saucily as you please, up came
the Mariposa Belle from the mud bottom and floated.

FLOATED?

Why, of course she did. If you take a hundred and fifty people off a
steamer that has sunk, and if you get a man as shrewd as Mr. Smith to
plug the timber seams with mallet and marline, and if you turn ten
bandsmen of the Mariposa band on to your hand pump on the bow of the
lower decks--float? why, what else can she do?

Then, if you stuff in hemlock into the embers of the fire that you
were raking out, till it hums and crackles under the boiler, it won't
be long before you hear the propeller thud thudding at the stern
again, and before the long roar of the steam whistle echoes over to
the town.

And so the Mariposa Belle, with all steam up again and with the long
train of sparks careering from the funnel, is heading for the town.

But no Christie Johnson at the wheel in the pilot house this time.

"Smith! Get Smith!" is the cry.

Can he take her in? Well, now! Ask a man who has had steamers sink on
him in half the lakes from Temiscaming to the Bay, if he can take her
in? Ask a man who has run a York boat down the rapids of the Moose
when the ice is moving, if he can grip the steering wheel of the
Mariposa Belle? So there she steams safe and sound to the town wharf!