THE MERRY ANNE By Samuel Merwin Illustrated by Thomas Fogarty The Macmillan Company 1904 [Illustration: 0010] [Illustration: 0011] [Illustration: 0012] THE MERRY ANNE [Illustration: 9013] Dear H. K. TV.: This tale dedicates itself to you as a matter of right. For we grew up together on the bank of Lake Michigan; and you have not forgotten, over there in Paris, the real house on stilts, nor the miles we have tramped along the beach, nor, I am sure, the grim old life-saver on the near Ludington, and his sturdy scorn for our student life-savers at Evanston. And the endless night on Black Lake, with Klondike Andrews at the tiller and never a breath of wind, we shall not forget that. Once we differed: I failed to tempt you into a paddle in the Oki, one fresh spring day three years ago; but then, your instinct of self-preservation always worked better than mine, as the adventure in the Swampscott dory will recall to you. But, after all, these doings do not make up the reason why the story is partly yours; nor do the changes in the text that sprang from your friendly comment. I will tell you the real reason. [Illustration: 8014] Early, very early, one summer morning, you and I stood on the wheel-house of the P'ere Marquette Steamer No. 4--or was it the No. 3--a few hours from Milwaukee. The Lake was still, the thick mist was faintly illuminated by the hidden sun. Of a sudden, while the steamer was throbbing through the silence, a motionless schooner, painted blue, with a man in a red shirt at the wheel, loomed through the mist, stood out for one vivid moment, then faded away. That schooner was the Merry Anne; and the man at the wheel was Dick Smiley. What if he should some day chance upon this tale and declare it untrue? know better, for we saw it there. S. M. CHAPTER I--DICK AND HIS MERRY ANNE THE _Merry Anne_ was the one lumber schooner on Lake Michigan that always appeared freshly painted; it was Dick Smiley's wildest extravagance to keep her so. Sky blue she was (Annie's favorite color), with a broad white line below the rail; and to see her running down on the north wind, her sails white in the sun, her bow laying the waves aside in gentle rolls to port and starboard, her captain balancing easily at the wheel, in red shirt, red and blue neckerchief, and slouch hat, was to feel stirring in one the old spirit of the Lakes. It was a lowering day off Manistee. Out on the horizon, now and then dipping below it, a tug was struggling to hold two barges up into the wind. Within the harbor, at the wharf of the lumber company, lay the _Merry Anne_. Two of her crew were below, sleeping off an overdose of Manistee whiskey. The third, a boy of seventeen, got up in slavish imitation of his captain,--red shirt, slouch hat, and all,--was at work lashing down the deck load. Roche, the mate, stood on the wharf, the centre of a little group of stevedores and rivermen. “Hi there, Pink,” he shouted at the red shirt, “what you doin' there?”