the most of its nine months season. Gargantuan loaders chuted in ten thousand tons to the holds; enormous mechanical maws—"clamshells"—withdrew the ore, a thousand tons to the hour, so that incredibly the Blenmora docked, full laden, and cleared in ballast between dawn and twilight of the same day.
It mattered little where the skipper's wife awaited him throughout these months while the ship steamed south, deep-laden; red iron heaped to the tops of the holds. North, light; south, laden again. So, from the spring break-up of the ice to the winter freeze-up, Selina Powell watched the lake from the old, fresh-painted farmhouse which Adrian could just see in his spyglass as a white spot against a green hill as the Blenmora bore west onequarter north out of the Straits of Mackinac before the swing south around Waugoshance shoals.
When he passed at night, always—for his wife followed the shipping—a point of light gleamed for him, a love star on the black shore. It was his beacon, telling him all was well.
To compensate for his long absence, as absolute (save for the spyglass and the light) as though he voyaged to the antipodes, he was home while the winter held the lakes in leash. Winter, in Ellen's girlhood, meant her father. It meant little, loving mother happier and no longer waiting and watching the water; it meant love and man's tenderness and man's heartiness in the house—big, steaming breakfasts of meat and battercakes; pipe smoke; men in and out; the girls doubling (Ellen had three sisters) to supply a guest room for Curley, father's second officer, or for the Blenmora's chief engineer; guns and snowshoes;
