It was a mean night, and I knew that the steward’s boys would be busy answering bells from the passengers before an hour was over. I stood below the bridge deck, glorying in the coolness of the day after roasting in our smelly Superior slip, and did not get the full thrust of the wind until the captain had backed out into the harbor and turned the _Chippewa’s_ nose toward the tiny traveling bridge that carries pedestrians across the cut. Then I knew in an idle manner--wireless operators don’t take much responsibility for such things--that the old man might have trouble in poking the ship’s nose out into the black night beyond. Just as we were about to make the opening, a blunt-nosed ore carrier, far down in the water, hove in sight, coming up swiftly with the wind on her back. She headed for the opening to get out of the dusk into quieter waters, just in time to prevent Trinder from making it. He rang down the engines and then called for reverse so that we would be out of the way of the “tin stack.” When she got through in her lubberly manner, the _Chippewa_ was again aimed at the opening, but this time the wind carried her so far off we threatened to pile up on the breakwater. The skipper again rang for reverse, and we backed out and tried again. I remember him facing the wind and trying, I suppose, to get the feel of his ship. He was used to heavier vessels, and his first trip out with a boatload of passengers was not starting auspiciously. He heaved over the anchor, reversed the engines slowly, pulling against the hook until the nose of the _Chippewa_ was pointed straight at the center of the cut. At the proper moment he called for half speed ahead, the deck gang turned steam into the anchor winch, and as the chain came slowly aboard, the _Chippewa_ eased out into the open Superior waters which the wind had by this time lashed into fury. It was a neat maneuver, but there was nothing queer about it. It was straight seamanship, and a nasty problem had been solved as another skipper in the same position might have solved it. The passengers laughed and marveled, thinking this a part of every trip out. The pitching of the ship in the long Superior rollers soon drove most of them below, and after a whirl or two around the boat deck, I went to the radio cabin to fill out what remained of the six-to-twelve watch. When we got away from the shallower waters near the western end of the lake the surface rollers quieted down into those long swells that mark deep water. The ship steadied herself and assumed a comfortable heave and fall that was pleasant rather than otherwise.