Lake Superior the alarm that she was sinking. Signals from her then ceased but watchers on the cliffs near the little Keweenaw settlement of Brebeuf saw a steamer, struggling with the storm, come within a mile of the cliffs before she foundered. They saw a lifeboat upturned and specks, which were men, tossed in the waves and disappear.
They saw a mast above the waves: a mast, from the sunken hull, stood; and on the mast clustered five specks. A good glass showed them plainly; they were men. They could not save themselves and no one could save them.
No boat could live in the gale-driven surf over the rocky reef between the mast and the shore; no coastguard cannon could carry a line that distance. The sole chance of success was from the lake and the freighter Gilbert Ramsay tried to approach the mast—and turned back. The Albert Loring got closer, before giving up; and the master of the coal-carrier Donagon put his ship nearly beside the wreck only to find, and to report, that the situation was hopeless because the Gant lay slightly on her side, tilting the mast toward the shore so that it was impossible to reach the men from another vessel.
So the ships could do nothing but stand by, a mile or so away in deep water, stand by and watch, helpless as the watchers on the shore.
On the first day, the newspapers printed only brief reports of the fact. Night passed, and in the morning the five specks were upon the mast; the glass showed that they moved their arms. The five men lived and looked at the ships and at the shore. And there they clung, in their lashings, and looked all day.
That night, in thousands and tens of thousands of
