A wave lifted him and slammed him against the tilted hull. He managed to push off the metal and he sliced into the next wave, swimming hard away from the sinking bow section. When he lifted his head, he found that he was only a few yards from the raft. Skip Jurgenson, another of the Teasdale’s wheelsmen, leaned over the side and extended his hand. LePere fought against the waves. His fingers touched the raft. Jurgenson grasped the collar of his peacoat and helped him aboard. LePere fell against the prone form of another shipmate, Pete Swanson, a coal passer, who lay nearly motionless in the center of the raft. Swanson’s duties were in the engine room and his quarters were aft where Billy had gone. LePere grabbed him and screamed over the wind and the crash of water.

“Where’s my brother? Did you see my brother?”

Swanson was shaking violently, his face ghostly white. Although his lips formed words, no sound seemed to come forth. LePere bent close to his lips.

“I blew it,” Swanson said hoarsely. “I blew it.”

“What about Billy?” LePere shouted into his ear.

Swanson stared blankly, as if he didn’t see LePere at all, and repeated only those three words-“I blew it”-over and over again.

Jurgenson, who’d been hollering into the dark for other shipmates, quit and dropped in a dejected heap next to LePere. “I didn’t see nobody else,” he said. “Not one blessed soul.”

The storm pushed the raft far from the bow of the Teasdale. LePere and Jurgenson watched the last of the ore boat sink in a huge bloom of dark water. Then John LePere lay down and wept, crying “Billy” over and over again as he held to that tiny raft in the middle of the big lake his ancestors called Kitchigami.

1

CORCORAN O’CONNOR WAS PULLED instantly from his sleep by the sound of a sniffle near his head. He opened his eyes and the face of his six-year-old son filled his vision.