Crossing Saginaw Bay the _Griffin_ lay for two days among the Thunder Bay islands and then continued her way into the North. Almost immediately after this, La Salle and his companions were caught in a terrific storm, and in the height of its fury, when it was thought that the end had come and that all the demons of this mysterious world were working their destruction, La Salle made a vow that if God would deliver them he would erect a chapel in Louisiana to the memory of St. Anthony de Padua, the tutelary saint of the sailor. As if in response to this vow, the wind subsided and the storm-beaten _Griffin_ found shelter in Michilimackinac Bay, where a mission had been built among the Ottawas. Early in September, the _Griffin_ sailed into Lake Michigan and continued to Washington Island, at the entrance to Green Bay. Here a party of missionaries and traders had been established for a year. They had collected a large quantity of furs, valued at about twelve thousand dollars, and La Salle changed his original plans and sent the _Griffin_ back to Niagara with this treasure, with the idea of continuing his own exploration by canoe. On the eighteenth of September, 1679, La Salle bade adieu to the _Griffin_ and her crew, and from the point of a headland watched her white sails until they dropped below the horizon. It was the last he ever heard or saw of the ship. No sign of her was ever afterward found, no soul who sailed with her lived to tell the story of her tragic end. In the years that followed, it was rumoured that Indians boarded and destroyed her, and massacred her crew. Hennepin was of the opinion that she was lost in a storm. Others believed that some of her crew had mutinied and that after murdering their companions they had joined the Ottawas, where they met their own fate. From time to time in recent years, relics have been found along the Lakes which have revived stories of the mysterious disappearance of the _Griffin_, but none of these finds have yet thrown reasonable light upon the tragic end of this first vessel to navigate the Inland Seas and of the venturesome spirits who manned her. By all but a few the _Griffin_ is forgotten, or has never been known. Yet by the millions who live along the Great Lakes she should be held in much the same reverence as are the caravels of Columbus by the whole nation. [Illustration: Marquette’s Grave, St. Ignace, Michigan.] II The Lakes Change Masters