One More Mystery of Lake Ontario: Schooner Days CMIV (904)

by C. H. J. Snider

Emerald Flashes

TWO CAPTAINS' WIVES sat at dinner in a Bathurst st. home in Toronto on Tuesday, Nov. 17, 1903. One was Mrs. John Williams, whose husband had taken the schooner Sir C. T. Van Straubenzee down the long road to Prescott on the St. Lawrence with a load of grain. The other was Mrs. Frank McMaster, whose husband had bought the ex-timber drogher Emerald when she was on her penultimate legs, and made a ship out of her again when she was turning thirty.

Every dollar that schooner earned for him went back into her, with the result that her insurance standing was raised and she had won back into class A2, the highest then enjoyed by Great Lakes sailing vessels. In three years he had her paid for, and had begun payments on this modest house on Bathurst st., to which he had brought his family.

They had all been born in Deseronto out of which port Frank McMaster had sailed for many years, master of the Picton, Annandale, and other fore-and-afters. The Emerald was his first "three-and-after." Her spars were all that he had now to worry about. He had to shorten her foremast by six feet, for it started to go at the foot, and he blocked it up on the keelson to make up the deficiency. Her bowsprit was also suspect, and he had bought a new timber to replace it during the winter layup.

Mrs. Williams, born and brought up in the Beaches district, had come five miles across the city to call on Mrs. McMaster because she was lonesome herself, with her husband away on an extra long voyage, and she knew Mrs. McMaster, new to Toronto, would be lonesome, too and particularly because her "middle boy," Walter, slender, dark-eyed, a student in the dental college, had gone with his father on this last-of-the-season trip to Fairhaven, N.Y. He was a good sailor, and had felt that his father might need him for this last voyage when men were so hard to get, and his mate, though a good man and certified captain, was stone deaf. Something inside said no, get on with your schooling. But he went. The eldest McMaster boy had his prosperous drugstore to look after in Toronto, and the youngest was still going to public school.

It was a season notable for its long trips. The St. Louis had been 22 days bringing 700 tons of coal from Fairhaven. The Straubenzee had been away two weeks. Mrs. Williams found Mrs. McMaster a tonic. She had had picture cards from her husband and her son from Charlotte, N.Y., which was on the way home. The Emerald, they said, had to go to Oswego, but that was lucky, for Frank had got two good Prince Edward County men from the Annie Minnes there, John Selleck and Edwin Ashley, making his crew full strength and over. They had put into Charlotte to ride out a sou'wester, but with the wind gone round to the east she expected her men home "anytime now."

"If we had a telephone I'd call up the Electric Light Co., and tell Frank to hurry home for supper, for I'm sure they are in," she said. The Emerald had gone for 600 tons of slack for the company, and she would be unloading at the wharf at the foot of Scott street on the old Esplanade, if she had arrived.

"Of course you'll stay for dinner with us, dear," Mrs. McMaster insisted, and bustled about and set the table. The early November dusk had fallen, darkness followed, and still no hearty sailor hails. Mrs. McMaster, apologizing for the delay, said the dinner would be spoiled if it was not eaten now, so they had better start, but she would put some by on the stove to keep warm.

"For I know they'll come," she added.

The two women sat down to the shining table, which seemed so large and empty in spite of its festive provision. The hush before grace was broken by quick footsteps, heavy and light, in the side passage which led to the outer door of the kitchen, and the door screen clicked. Mrs. Williams heard this, and Mrs. McMaster's ecstatic "There they are now! I knew they'd come!", as she rushed from the dining room to the kitchen to let them in.

There was the sound of the screen door pushed outwards, then a listening silence, and Mrs. McMaster re-entered the lighted dining room. Electric light was not then common in Toronto homes. Only the rich could afford 8 cents a kilowatt. The kitchen and the rest of the house was in darkness.

"Now isn't that strange," said Mrs. McMaster. "I was sure I heard them in the passageway, but there's nobody there. It must have been the wind blowing the dry leaves. It's changed back to westward. That means they won't be in tonight."

Never was truer word spoken. The Emerald never came in. Capt. Frank McMaster and his son Walter never came home. The schooner disappeared. How, will be told in our next.

THE EMERALD GETTING HER FOREMAST SHORTENED AT SYLVESTER'S WHARF, FOOT OF CHURCH STREET