Part 2

“From her,” he answered curtly, and hung up. I hoped fervently that he would either find the entrance by himself without dashing us all on the breakwater to follow his wife to the bottom, or that the fog would suddenly lift and reveal to us the heavily wooded shores paralleling the narrow, sandy beach. There was nothing I could do but listen in, but I got nothing. Then I sneaked out for another look into the fog.

We were going ahead again, and I could feel that our nose was turned so that we would land farther out along the point. Suddenly the engine-room bell clanged again. Again I saw the breakwater approach us and recede, this time coming much closer than before, too close for the comfort of some of the passengers near me. They were asking me about the advisability of protesting to the skipper when he looked aft and caught sight of me.

“Go below,” he roared at me, “and get that message. She’s calling.”

I knew there was no one calling, but there was nothing to do but go down again. And then the unexpected happened. There was some one calling!

“SSE, SSE, SSE,” it said over and over again in dots and dashes. It was a strange signal, and the tone was unlike any I had ever heard on the Lakes. Perhaps in my amazement the unfamiliarity of it was exaggerated, but it was a queer signal.

“SSE, SSE, SSE,” it went on, and finally, after a whining crescendo, it said, “SSE, Anna.” And that was all.

I wrote it out on a piece of paper and took it up on the bridge. The captain looked at it, and a strange light came into his eyes. He dashed into the wheelhouse, and pushing aside the quartermaster, slowly swung the ship until her nose pointed south southeast. Then he rang for more speed ahead. Once again the shore line came into view. We could see both sides of the breakwater this time. We were aimed directly at the center of the opening.

As we passed the crib at the end of the north breakwater I noticed a small craft tied to it. Dimly I could see that on the stern was painted the one word “Anna.”

This explained the strange signals and the bearing we had secured. I suppose that from her position near the breakwater the Anna could see our masts sticking up in the air. This explanation was not so satisfactory later on when I called the _Anna_ again but got no word from her.

Within five minutes we were steaming toward Houghton, where we arrived not over half an hour late and with plenty of time for the passengers to buy copper doodads and for me to learn through one of the men at the railroad station that the _Anna_ was a Swedish boat that some foolhardy youth from Stockholm had crossed the Atlantic in. He had relatives in Minnesota. There was nothing strange about this--Swedish youths are always doing foolish things--except the fact that Swedish vessels have radio call letters beginning with S, so that the call “SSE” which I heard was probably the call signal of the craft. It was apparently just coincidence that the letters I had picked up gave us the bearing we needed.

At six that night I went on watch, and later the skipper came in.

“Well, young man, I must thank you for getting that message this morning. I always thought that if I ever got into trouble with fog I would get a message from Anna.”

“Anna?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said simply. “My wife sent the message. Her name was Anna.”

[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the December 1929 issue of _Sea Stories_ magazine.]