TO WINDWARD
Two days had slipped away since Jimmy joined the _Tyee_, when, with her
dew-wet canvas slatting at every roll, she crept out from the narrow
waters into the Pacific. Astern of her the Olympians towered high above
the forests of Washington, a great serrated ridge of frosted silver that
cut coldly white against the blue of the morning sky. To starboard the
shore of Vancouver Island rose, a faint blur of misty pines, and ahead
the sea was dimmed by drifting vapors out of which the long swell swung
glassily. At times a wandering zephyr crisped it with a darker smear,
and the _Tyee_ crawled ahead a little. Then she stopped again, heaving
her bows high out of the oily sea, while everything in her banged and
rattled.
There was nothing that any one on board her could do but wait for the
breeze and wonder whether it would come from the right direction. Jimmy
sat on the deckhouse with his pipe in his hand, and Tom Wheelock, whose
face looked careworn in the early light and showed pasty gray patches
amidst its bronze, glanced westward a trifle anxiously as he held the
jerking wheel.
"It's a kind of pity we lost that breeze," he said. "The people up
yonder want those sawmill fixings, and with the wind from the east we'd
'most have fetched the Inlet to-night. There was talk of somebody
putting a steamboat on, but the mill's a small one, and they figured
they'd give me a show as long as I could keep them going. I've got to do
it. There's a living in the contract."
Then his face hardened suddenly, and he sighed. "That is, there would
have been if Merril hadn't got his grip on me. That man wants
everything."
He appeared about to say something further, but just then Prescott flung
the scuttle slide back, and a smell of coffee and frizzling pork flowed
out of it.
"If you want your breakfast, Tom, I guess you'd better get it," he said,
and lumbered round the deckhouse toward the wheel.
Wheelock went below, and Jimmy, who seemed to forget that he had meant
to light his pipe, glanced thoughtfully at Prescott.
"Who is this Merril, Bob?" he asked.
Prescott made a vague gesture. "I guess he's everything. He has a finger
in most of what goes on in this Province, and feels round with it for
the money. Calls himself general broker and ship-store dealer; but he
has money in everything, from bush ranches to steamboats."
"You mean he holds stock in them?"
"No," said Prescott, "I guess I don't. I'm not smart at business, and
Tom isn't either, or he'd never have let Merril get his claws on him;
but it's quite plain to me that stocks don't count along with mortgages
and bonds. When you buy stock you take your chances, and quite often
that's 'bout all; but when you hold a bond at a big interest you usually
get the ship or mill. Anyway, that's how Merril fixes it."
Jimmy lighted his pipe, but he looked more thoughtful than ever, as, in
fact, he was. Hitherto, he had taken life lightly, for, after all, wet
and cold, screaming gale and stinging spray, are things one gets used to
and faces unconcernedly; but Jimmy could recognize a responsibility, and
he realized that there was now to be a change. Tom Wheelock was growing
prematurely old and shaky, and it was, it seemed, his son's part to free
him from the load of debt that was crushing him, if this by any means
could be done; if not, at least to share it with him. He feared it would
be the latter. Hitherto he had waged only the clean, primitive strife
with the restless sea; but he did not shrink from the prospect of the
meaner and more arduous conflict with the wiles of man and the forces of
capital, or consider that in renouncing his career he was doing a
commendable thing. He was by no means brilliant intellectually, though
he had a certain shrewdness and a ready wit; and it only occurred to him
that the course he had decided on was the obvious one. He did not even
think it worth while to mention that he had done so, which indeed would
have been unnecessary, since Prescott seemed to take it for granted.
"I believe you had the wind from the east for several days," he said.
"Why didn't you run across before?"
"Well," replied Prescott reflectively, "we might have done so, but Tom
didn't seem greatly stuck on trying it. Took time over his loading when
he got your wire. Perhaps he didn't want to leave you hanging round
Vancouver until we got back again."
Jimmy said nothing--he had partly expected this; and while he smoked his
second pipe, the vapors were rolled apart, and the breeze came down on
them. Unfortunately it came from the northwest, which, as the sawmill
they were bound for stood at the head of a deep inlet on the west coast
of Vancouver Island, was ahead of them; so for a while they let her
stretch out into the Pacific, close-hauled upon the starboard tack.
The _Tyee_ was comparatively fast, and, under all the sail they could
pile on to her, excepting the main gaff-topsail, she drove along with a
wide curl of foam under her lee bow and the froth lapping high and white
on her side. Then by degrees the long roll of the Pacific heaved itself
up into steep, blue-sided seas with tops of incandescent whiteness, and
as she lurched over them the spray whirled in filmy clouds from her
plunging bows. Still the breeze freshened, and by noon they hove her to
with jibs aback while they hauled two reefs down in her mainsail, and it
became necessary for somebody to crawl out to the end of its tilting
boom, which stretched a good fathom beyond her stern. Prescott was a
little too old for that work; Tom Wheelock held the wheel; and the
Siwash deck-hand was busy forward. Jimmy laughed as he swung himself up
to the footrope.
"It's several years since I've done anything of this kind, but I dare
say I can tie those after-points in," he said.
He clawed his way out, and, as he hung with waist across the spar and
both hands busy while the _Tyee_, flinging the spray all over her,
plunged upon the long, foam-tipped roll, a big Empress liner came up
from the eastward, white and majestic. She drove close by the schooner
with a slow and stately dip and swing, and Jimmy Wheelock, clinging to
the _Tyee_'s reef-points, smiled somewhat curiously as he glanced up at
her. Her tall side rose above him like a wall, and he saw the cluster of
saloon passengers beneath the tier of deckhouses move toward the rail to
gaze down upon the little dingy vessel, and the two trim officers high
above them in the sunshine on the slanting bridge. That was his
world--one in which steam did the hard work, and man merely pressed the
telegraph handle or laid a finger on a spoke of the little steering
wheel; but it was a world on which he had turned his back, and there was
nothing to be gained by repining.
He broke two of his nails before he finished his task and dropped from
the footrope to the _Tyee_'s deck, and the liner had sunk to a gleaming
white blur and a smoke-trail on the rim of the sea before they had
reefed the foresail and once more got way on her. Then Prescott grinned
at Jimmy as he glanced toward the fading smear of vapor.
"A head-wind's quite a little matter to that boat," he said. "I guess
you'd feel more at home on board of her?"
Jimmy laughed good-humoredly. "Perhaps I would, but after all I don't
know that it counts for very much."
They came round some hours later, and, heading her in for the land on
the other tack, found how little they had made to windward, whereupon
there followed a consultation. Prescott was for running back and coming
to an anchor in smooth water to wait for a shift of wind, but Wheelock
would go on. He blinked at the white sea to windward with watery eyes,
while the _Tyee_, putting her bows in, flung the spray all over her; but
there was a certain grimness in Tom Wheelock's eyes, for, if he was not
smart at business, he was at least a resolute seaman.
"Those sawmill people want their fixings, and if we're to hold on to
their contract I guess they've got to have them," he said. "She should
thrash down to the Inlet by to-morrow night. I figure she'd go along a
little easier without her staysail."
They hauled it down; but the _Tyee_, being loaded deep with heavy
machinery, was not appreciably drier afterward, and by the time the
angry, saffron sunset faded off the foam-crested sea, she put her bows
in somewhat frequently. Then there was a thud as she charged a big
comber, and the frothy cataract that seethed in over her weather rail
swirled aft a foot deep, while the spray blew all over her. Jimmy,
buttoned to the throat in oilskins, stood at her wheel dripping, through
four hours of darkness; and then, crawling down into the little cabin,
which was intolerably foul, flung himself into his bunk and
incontinently fell asleep, with the thud and swish of falling water
going on above him. When he awakened, his first proceeding was to grope
for the button that would summon a steward boy to bring him his morning
coffee, but as he could not find it he looked around and saw his wet
oilskins, which had shaken off the hook, sliding amidst the water up and
down the _Tyee_'s cabin floor. Then he remembered suddenly, and,
dropping from his bunk, put on the oilskins and went up on deck.
A sheet of spray temporarily blinded him as he crawled out of the
scuttle, and then there was little to be seen but a haze of it flying
athwart a gray sea lined by frothy ridges and smears of low-driving
cloud. The _Tyee_'s slanted mastheads seemed to rake through the latter,
and she was wet everywhere; but she was still hammering to windward with
bows that swung up streaming over the long seas. On the one hand, a
dingy smear, that might have been a point with pines on it, lifted
itself out of the grayness, and Tom Wheelock pointed to it as he swayed
with his wheel. His wet face was almost gray, and Jimmy could see the
suggestive bagginess under his eyes.
"I guess we should fetch the Inlet by dark if it doesn't harden any
more; but we'll have another reef down now you're up," he said.
They got the reef in with some difficulty, for all of them were needed
to haul the leech-earing down; and, because the Siwash hand was a better
boatman than sailor, Jimmy went out to the end of the boom again to tie
the after-points. When he came back the _Tyee_ proceeded a little more
dryly, with the big gray seas that were topped with livid froth and had
deep hollows between them rolling up in long succession to meet her. She
went through some of them, for the sawmill machinery was a dead-weight
in her, and a white cataract foamed across her forward. When she plunged
into one that was larger than usual, Prescott, who now stood knee deep
at her wheel, shook his head.
"Tom didn't ought to expect it of her," he said. "He wouldn't have held
her at it if he hadn't been mighty afraid of losing that contract."
Jimmy made no answer. He understood by this time how his father was
circumstanced, and had discovered already that the man who stands
between the devil and the deep sea cannot afford to be particular.
Merril, who held a bond on the _Tyee_, might, it seemed, very well stand
for the devil.
They thrashed her to windward most of that day. The sea got worse, and
there was not a dry stitch on any of them; but just at sunset the clouds
were rent apart, and Wheelock, who was standing on the deckhouse,
pointed to something that loomed amidst the vapor as they reeled
inshore.
"The head!" he said. "The Inlet's about two miles beyond it."
Prescott glanced at Jimmy as he pulled up the wheel. "With a blame ugly
tide-rip setting dead to windward across the mouth of it!"
Jimmy said nothing, though naturally he was aware that when the ocean
streams run against the breeze they are very apt to pile up whatever sea
there is into curling, hollow-crested combers. A craft of the _Tyee_'s
size will often snugly ride out a hard gale--that is, if she is hove-to
under a strip or two of canvas; but to drive her to windward when she
must meet the onslaught of the seas, and go through them, is an
altogether different matter, and it seemed to him that she was already
doing as much as any one reasonably could expect from her. Then his
father came down from the deckhouse.
"Well," he said, "she has got to go through it; those people want their
fixings. I guess we'll heave her round."
The words were simple, but they implied a good deal. Wheelock could have
heaved his schooner to, or could have run away for shelter in another
inlet down the coast; but, as he had said, the sawmill people wanted
their machinery, and when he must choose between it and the devil he
would sooner face his ancient enemy the sea. Its attack was honest and
open, and the man with nerve enough might meet and withstand the charge
of its seething combers. Quickness of hand and rude, primitive valor
counted here, but it was otherwise in the insidious conflict with the
human schemer. Tom Wheelock's eyes were watery, but there was a snap in
them as he signed to Prescott and laid his hands on the wheel.
"Get forward, Jimmy, and tend your head-sheets," he said. "We'll have
her round."
She came round, but none too readily; and as they stretched out seaward
Jimmy had a brief vision of great rocks and hollows filled with pines
that opened out and closed on one another. Then as he glanced to
windward he saw the seatops heave athwart a blaze of crimson and saffron
low down under ragged wisps of cloud.
They brought her round again presently, and she reeled in shoreward to
weather the second head on that side of the Inlet, with her little
three-reefed mainsail wet to its peak and the two jibs above her
bowsprit streaming at every plunge, while the big combers in the tideway
smote her weather-bow and poured out to leeward in long wisps of brine.
Still, she was slowly opening up the sheltered Inlet, and it was only a
question whether she would go clear enough of the head on that tack. It
was, however, a somewhat momentous question, for it seemed to Jimmy very
doubtful whether she would come round with them again.
Tom Wheelock stayed at the helm, and the head that had grown dim again
lifted its vast rock wall higher and higher out of the whirling vapors
that streamed amid the shadowy pines. It grew very close to them, but
the _Tyee_ was half-buried forward most of the time, and the break
beyond the crag, where smooth water lay, had crept a little forward
instead of aft from under her lee-bow when a comber higher than the rest
hove itself up to weather, and fell upon her. It foamed across her
forward, and when it went seething aft as she swung her bows up there
was a crash, and Tom Wheelock loosed the spinning wheel.
Jimmy saw him strike the bulwark and Prescott clutch him; but, knowing
that the plunge would probably make an end of the schooner if she rammed
another sea, he sprang to the wheel. She was coming up when he seized
it, which almost threw him over it, and there was a bang like a
rifle-shot as one of her streaming jibs was blown away. The veins
swelled on his forehead as he forced the helm up, and as the _Tyee_ fell
off on her course again he had a momentary vision of a great wall of
rock that seemed to be creeping up on them. He also saw a man lying in
the water that sluiced about her deck, while another who strove to hold
him with one hand clung to a stanchion. Then, while he set his teeth and
braced himself against the drag of the wheel, he could discern nothing
but a haze of flying brine, and could feel the hard-pressed vessel
strain and tremble under him.
He did not know how long the tension lasted, nor for a minute or two did
he see much of Prescott and his father; but at last the rocks seemed to
slide away, and the _Tyee_ drove through the furious turmoil in the
mouth of the Inlet. Then the wind fell suddenly, and, rising upright,
the dripping schooner slid forward beneath long ranks of misty pines. He
left the helm to the Siwash, and Prescott and he between them got
Wheelock down into the little cabin. He gasped when they had put him
into his bunk and poured a liberal measure of raw whisky down his
throat.
"Well," he said faintly, "I guess we've saved that contract. You
weathered the head?"
"We did," answered Prescott. "Jimmy grabbed the wheel in time. Seems to
me we had 'bout twenty fathoms to spare. Feel as if you'd broke anything
inside you?"
Tom Wheelock moved himself a little, and groaned. "No," he said, "I
guess I haven't; but it hurt me considerably when I washed up against
the rail. Mightn't have felt it one time, but I'm getting old and shaky.
Anyway, you can light out and get your anchor clear. I'm feeling kind of
dizzy."
Prescott went up the ladder, but Jimmy stayed where he was, and did not
go up on deck until his father's eyes closed. It was quite dark, and he
could see only vague, shadowy mountains black against the sky.
Presently, a long Siwash canoe with several men paddling hard on board
her came sliding down the dim lane of water that seemed to wind into
the heart of the forests. She stopped alongside, and a man climbed on
board.
"We've been expecting you the last two days, and I'm glad you got in
now," he said. "Merril, who talks of running a steamer up this coast,
has been worrying our Vancouver people to make him an offer for their
carrying. It's quite likely they'd have made a deal with him if you'd
kept us waiting."
They made the canoe fast, and the _Tyee_ slowly crept on beneath the
shadowy mountains and the misty pines, for only a faint air of wind
disturbed the deep stillness here. Jim Wheelock, however, noticed very
little as he leaned on the rail with a vindictive hatred in his heart
for the man who, it seemed, was bent upon his father's ruin.