ASHORE
It was summer in the north, and now that the bitter wind which had blown
thick rain before it had dropped, the clammy fog shut the _Shasta_ in
like a wall. She crept through it with engines pounding steadily,
swinging to the slow heave of the swell, while Jimmy stood, chilled to
the backbone, on his bridge, as he had done for most of the last
forty-eight hours. A chart in a glass case was clamped to the rail in
front of him, and Lindstrom, the mate, stooped over it with the moisture
trickling from his oilskins.
"This thing is not much good," he said. "The stream moves a different
way with the change of wind. Also there is discrepancy in the depth of
water."
"There is. If I knew how much to mark off for leeway in that last breeze
I'd feel a good deal easier," said Jimmy, who turned to fling a
disgusted glance at the chart, upon which little arrows, that indicated
the general drifts of the currents, had apparently been scattered
promiscuously. Then he raised his voice. "Forward there! See you have a
good arming on your lead, and stand by to let go when I take the way off
her!"
He pressed down his telegraph and a curious silence followed the clang
of the gong when the engines stopped. The _Shasta_ lurched on more
slowly into the fog, and when Jimmy swung up his hand a man on the
half-seen forecastle loosed the deep-sea lead, while another, perched in
the mainmast shrouds, stood intent with a coil of slack line in his
hand. There was a splash, the line ran out, and when a sing-song cry
came up Jimmy made a little impatient gesture as he turned to the chart.
"A fathom less than we ought to have," he said, and raised his voice.
"What bottom have you got?"
A couple of men were busy hauling in the ponderous lead, and one of them
who lifted it turned to the bridge. "Mud, sir," he said. "Soft at that."
Jimmy looked at Lindstrom. "That, at least, is what this thing says. I
suppose one ought to bring her up, and wait for a sight, but we can't
stay here a week on the odd chance of a blink of clear weather. Anyway,
there's plenty water under us, and we'll try the lead again presently."
The mate made a sign of concurrence as Jimmy pressed down his telegraph.
"I was at Kenai four year ago. For two weeks we see nothing. How we get
there I cannot tell you, but I think it is by good fortune. Also the
skipper come there often for the Commercial Company. You do a thing
several times, then you shut your eye, and perhaps you do it again."
He went down the ladder, and Jimmy was left alone except for the silent,
shapeless figure in trickling oilskins at the steering wheel. How he had
groped his way to St. Michael's near the tremendous desolation of willow
swamps about the Yukon mouth he did not exactly know, but he had
accomplished it in spite of screaming gale and blinding fog, and the
treasure-seekers he had taken up had duly presented him with a written
testimonial, which was all they had to give. A few days of clear weather
had permitted him to steam across to one of the Commercial Company's
factories, but since he left it he had held southward at a venture
through thick rain and fog without a single glimpse of any celestial
body. That would not have mattered so much had the sea been still as a
lake is, for then he could have steered by dead reckoning; but that sea
is swept by currents which run for the most part in guessed-at and
variable directions, and it was impossible to calculate how far they
might have deflected his course for him. In fact, for all he knew, they
might have deflected it several times and set it right again. He had
cable enough to anchor, but, as he had said, he could not stay there for
a week or two on the odd chance of getting an hour's clear weather.
So, since the chart suggested that he was clear of the shore, he went on
leisurely, leaning on his bridge-rails chilled in every limb, with the
damp trickling off him, while the _Shasta_ bored her way through the
woolly vapor, until a little while after the lead had given him a
reassuring depth of water she stopped suddenly. Jimmy was flung against
the wheel with a violence that drove all the breath out of him, but the
next moment he had jumped for his telegraph while everything in the
vessel banged and rattled, and the gong clanged out his orders, "Stop
her!" and "Hard astern!"
Then while the smooth swell lapped level with one depressed rail the
_Shasta_ shook in every plate, and the men who came scrambling to her
slanted deck looked at him anxiously. There was, however, no clamor or
any sign of undue consternation. The men had almost expected this, and
the energy, which for want of direction now and then in such cases leads
to purposeless and unreasoning scurry, had been washed out of them.
Jimmy leaned quietly on the rails, and nodded in answer to their
glances.
"Yes," he said, "we're hard on. If the propeller won't shake her loose
in the next ten minutes, we'll see about laying out an anchor. Mr.
Lindstrom, will you clear the two boats ready, and ask Fleming if
there's any more water in his bilges?"
It was twenty minutes before the pounding engines stopped, but the
_Shasta_ had not moved an inch astern. The lower side of her lifted as
the long gray swell lapped gurgling to her rail, and then came down
again; but that was all. In the meanwhile the hand-lead armed with
tallow had shown the bottom to be soft, and Fleming quietly reported
that there was no sign of any water coming in. Then Jimmy turned to
Lindstrom, who once more had climbed to the bridge.
"If this fog lifts and the breeze gets up as usual, she'll certainly
break up," he said. "If it doesn't, I don't think there's any reason why
we shouldn't heave her off. We'll try it first with the coal in. It's a
long way to Wellington, and I don't want to dump a ton if I can help
it."
The big Scandinavian went down the ladder, and by and by half the men on
board the _Shasta_ were engaged under his direction in lashing a
platform of hatch-planks between the two boats that lay beneath the
forecastle. The long heave drove them banging against the _Shasta_'s
side, and jerked the planks loose as they strove to lash them fast; but
at last they accomplished it, and, while the dimness that stands for the
Northern summer night crept into the fog, the men on the forecastle head
lowered the anchor down. It was of the old, stocked pattern, and though
the _Shasta_ was not a large vessel, they found it and the cable which
came down after it sufficiently difficult to handle upon a slippery
platform that heaved and slanted under them. Still, the thing was done
because it was necessary; and with oars splashing clumsily, because
there was little space for the men who pulled them, they paddled off
into the fog.
When they came back the cable was unshackled and the end of it led in
through the mooring half-moon on the vessel's stern, and there then
remained the second anchor to lay out. The cable of this one was
unshackled too, but wire-rope purchases were rigged to the end of it
from the after winch, and by the time all was ready it was six o'clock
in the morning. The men were worn out, and Jimmy's eyes were heavy with
want of sleep, but nobody made any demur about facing the further work
before him. They knew what would happen if the fog lifted and the breeze
that rolled it back should find the _Shasta_ there.
Jimmy pressed down the telegraph on his bridge. Winch and windlass
groaned and rattled, the wire-rope screamed, and the clanking cable
tightened suddenly. Then the thudding propeller shook the ship until she
quivered like a thing in pain each time the smooth swell lifted one side
of her. Steam drifted about her, wire and cable were drawn rigid, but
she would not budge an inch in spite of them, and Jimmy's face was a
trifle grim when he flung up his hand. The thud of the propeller
slackened, and there was a silence that was almost oppressive when winch
and windlass stopped. The gurgle of the gray swell about the steamer's
plates and the drip of moisture from the slanted shrouds emphasized it.
Then Jimmy signed to one of the men.
"Send Mr. Fleming here," he said.
The man disappeared, and the engineer looked grave when he climbed to
the bridge.
"You'll be wanting to dump my coal now?" he asked. "How are you going to
take her home without it?"
"There is a good deal of heavy timber right down the West Coast," said
Jimmy dryly. "There are also quite a few inlets into which one could
take a steamer."
"You can't feed a boiler furnace with four-foot-diameter pines."
"They can be sawn and split. Besides, there are probably smaller ones
among those four-foot pines. They don't grow that size in a year or
two."
The engineer made a last protest. "I'm aware that it won't be much use,
but it's my duty to point out the difficulties. You can't saw those
trees without a big cross-cut, and I'm not sure what my boiler tubes
will do under a stream of resinous flame."
"Well," said Jimmy thoughtfully, "I think I could make some kind of
cross-cut out of a thin plate if I were an engineer. In fact, I'd make
two, and keep a man filing up one of them while I used the other. Then
I'd pump my feed-water rather higher than usual about those tubes."
"You can't pump water round the back-end," said the engineer. "You're
going to see that resin flame make a hole in the back plate of the
combustion chamber."
He stopped, and smiled when Jimmy looked at him. "Well, now that I've
told you, I'll start every man to dumping the coal over."
Worn out as they were, the men worked feverishly until noon. Some panted
at the ash-hoist, some standing on slippery iron ladders passed the
heavy baskets from one to another, and the rest toiled amidst the
stifling dust that streamed from the bunkers. Those who could see it
were sincerely glad that the fog still hung about them--clammy,
impenetrable, and apparently as solid as a wall.
Then it commenced to stir a little and slide past the vessel in filmy
wisps, and it seemed to Jimmy that the smooth gray swell which lapped
about her was getting steeper. Once or twice, indeed, it overlapped her
depressed rail, and poured on board in a long green cascade. He knew
that meant the breeze had already awakened somewhere not far away, and
that when the sea that it was stirring up came down on them it would not
take it very long to knock the bottom out of the _Shasta_. So did the
men, and they toiled the harder, until when the bunkers were almost
empty Jimmy once more stopped them.
"Stand by winch and windlass. We have to heave her off inside the next
hour," he said. "Tell Mr. Fleming to shake her with the propeller, and
give you all the steam he can."
The engines pounded, the sea boiled white beneath the _Shasta_'s stern,
and wire and studded cable screamed and groaned above the clamor of the
winch and the thudding of the screw. For thirty long minutes, during
which the uproar ceased for a moment or two once or twice, the _Shasta_
did not move at all, and Jimmy felt his heart thump under the tension,
while a cold breeze whipped his face. Then he thrust down his telegraph,
and his voice reached the men on the forecastle harshly when the engines
stopped.
"You have to do it now, or tear the windlass out. I'll give you all the
steam," he said.
The men understood why haste was necessary. The fog no longer slid past
them but whirled by in ragged streaks, and the wind that drove it came
up out of the wastes of the Pacific. Already the long swell was flecked
with little frothing ridges, and there was no need to tell any of those
who glanced at it anxiously that it would break across the stranded
vessel in an hour or two. Some of them stood by clanking windlass and
banging winch, while the rest swabbed the creaking wire with grease and
rubbed engine tallow on guide and block where it would ease the strain.
For five minutes they worked in silence, and then a shout went up as the
winch-drum that had spun beneath the wire took hold and reeled off a
foot or two of it. The _Shasta_ swung herself upright as a big gray
heave capped with livid white rolled in, and a curious quiver ran
through her before she came down on one side again. The roar of the jet
of steam that rushed aloft from beside her funnel grew almost deafening,
but Jimmy's voice broke faintly through the din.
"Lindstrom," he said, "tell Mr. Fleming he can turn the steam he daren't
bottle down on to his engines."
Then a sonorous pounding, and the thud of the screw joined in; and by
the time the jet of steam had died away, the _Shasta_ was quivering all
through, while her masts stood upright and did not slant back again. Her
windlass was also slowly gathering the clanking cable in, until at last
it rattled furiously as she leaped astern. Then a hoarse shout of
exultation went up, and Jimmy drew in a deep breath of relief as he
strode across his bridge.
"Heave right up to your kedge and break it out," he said. "Then we'll
let her swing, and get the stream anchor when she rides to it ahead."
It meant an hour's brutal labor overhauling hard wire tackles and
leading forward ponderous chain, but they undertook it light-heartedly,
with bleeding hands and broken nails, while the _Shasta_ heaved and
rolled viciously under them. Then, when they broke out the stream anchor
under her bows, Jimmy sighed from sheer satisfaction as he pressed down
his telegraph to "Half-speed ahead."
"We wouldn't have done it in another hour, Lindstrom," he said. "We'll
drive her west a while to make sure of things before we put her on her
course again; and in the meanwhile you'll keep the hand-lead going."
It gave them steadily deepening water, until the sea piled up and the
_Shasta_ rolled her rail under, so that the man strapped outside the
bridge could do no more than guess at the soundings; and Jimmy told him
to come in. Then he turned to Lindstrom.
"I'll have to let up now," he said; "I can't keep my eyes open."
He lowered himself down the ladder circumspectly, and found it somewhat
difficult to reach the room beneath the bridge; but five minutes after
he got there he was sleeping heavily.
They made some four knots in each of the next thirty hours, with the
gale on their starboard bow. When at last it broke, Jimmy, who got an
observation, headed the _Shasta_ southeastward, and a day or two later
ran her in behind an island. Then two boats pulled ashore across a
sluice of tide, and came back some hours later when it had slackened a
little, loaded rather deeper than was safe with sawn-up pines. Fleming
also brought two very rude saws with him, and invited Jimmy's attention
to one of them.
"Saws," he said, "are in a general way made of steel, and you can't
expect too much from soft plate-iron. The boys did well; there's not a
man among the crowd of them can get his back straight. You'd understand
the reason if you had tried to cut down big trees with an instrument
that has an edge like a nutmeg-grater."
Jimmy smiled, for he considered it very likely. "Well," he said, "what
are you going to do to make them serviceable?"
"Sit up all night re-gulletting them with a file. I want four loads of
billets before we start again; but we'll take another axe ashore in the
morning."
They went off early, when the tide was slack, taking an extra axe along,
while it was noon when they came back, with one man who had badly cut
his leg lying upon the billets. Fleming, however, insisted on his four
loads, and it was evening when he brought the last two off. The men were
almost too wearied to pull across the tide, and only the handles
attached to them suggested that the two worn strips of iron they passed
up had been meant for saws.
"That," said Fleming, who held one up before Jimmy, "says a good deal
for the boys; but if I drove them the same way any longer there would be
a mutiny."
Jimmy laughed, and told him to raise steam enough to take the _Shasta_
to sea. She made six knots most of that night; and two days later the
men went ashore again. Fleming, at least, never forgot the rest of that
trip down the wild West Coast. He mixed his resinous billets with
saturated coal-dust and broken hemlock bark, but in spite of it he
stopped the _Shasta_ every now and then when his boilers gave him water
instead of steam.
Still, she crept on south, and at last all of them were sincerely glad
when the pithead gear of the Dunsmore mines rose up against the forests
of Vancouver Island over the starboard hand. An hour or two later
Fleming stood blackened all over amidst a gritty cloud while the coal
that was to free him from his cares clattered into the _Shasta_'s
bunkers, and Jimmy sat in the room beneath her bridge with one of the
coaling clerks writing out a telegram.
"I'll get it sent off for you right away," said the coaling man. "Guess
it will be a big relief to somebody. It seems they've 'most given you up
in Vancouver."
Jimmy laughed. "Well," he said, "we have brought her here. Still, I
think there were times when my engineer felt that the contract was
almost too big for him."