SANTANDER ROCK
The wind held steady all that day and half the following night, then
it died to a tepid breeze just sufficient to keep steerage way on the
schooner.
Hank was the first up in the morning, relieving George at the wheel.
After supper, on the night before, they had made a plan, based on the
fact that there were provisions on board enough for a three months’
cruise for four people. This plan was simple enough. They would put out
far to avoid the Islands and any bother of complications. Hank’s idea
was to strike a course nor’west to a point midway between Honolulu and
San Francisco, and then make directly for the city of the Golden Gate.
They would tell Tyrebuck the truth, but it would be no sin to delude
the gaping public with a Hank constructed yarn, sure that McGinnis or
his relations would never dispute it. The only bother was that Tyrebuck
would want his ten thousand dollars. If the _Wear Jack_ had been
wrecked, all would have been well, for the insurance people would have
paid, but they had just lost her, as a person might lose a horse or a
motor car.
“Of course,” said Hank, “there was no agreement with him. Who’d have
ever imagined such a thing as our losing her like that? All the same,
I’ve got to pay old man Tyrebuck, it’s a debt of honour. I’ll have to
mortgage the trap that’s all.”
“I’ll go half,” said George.
“No, you won’t. I was the borrower, this expedition was mine. If I’d
got the twenty-five thousand reward, I’d have stuck to it.”
“Say,” said George.
“Yep.”
“You told me you’d written a story once.”
“What about it?”
“Well, write the whole of this expedition up and sell it to a magazine,
if you want money.”
“B’gosh!” said Hank, “that’s not a bad idea—only it would give the show
away.”
“Not a bit, pretend it’s fiction.”
“It sounds like fiction,” said Tommie. “I don’t mind. You can stick me
in as much as you like.”
“I’ll do it, maybe,” said Hank.
But there was another point. Wallack’s and their wrecked junk, and
Tommie and her story. The public would want to know the particulars
of her abduction and Wallack’s would want compensation. Althusen and
Moscovitch and Mrs. Raphael would not be behindhand in their wants,
either.
“Leave it to me,” said Miss Coulthurst. “When we get to San Francisco,
just let me slip on shore, and I’ll take the first train to Los Angeles
and I’ll fix it. I’ll tell old Wallack the whole truth. He won’t want
compensation. I guess the advertisement he’s had will be enough for
him, and the film wasn’t damaged; the reel was safe in one of those
tents.”
They left it at that, ignorant of the new development impending.
Hank took the wheel and George snuffed out the binnacle lights. It was
day, though the sun had not yet broken the morning bank on the eastern
horizon.
“There’s a big rock on the port bow,” said George, “away over there.
It’s the Santander, I believe—remember? It’s on the chart.”
“Where’s Jake?”
“Right,” said Hank. “Where’s Jake? I let him turn in ten minutes ago,
he’s in the focs’le.”
“Well, I’ll go and make some coffee,” said George. “Keep her as she
goes.”
He disappeared, and Hank, left alone, stood at the wheel, the warm wind
gently lifting his hair and his hawk eyes wandering from the binnacle
to the far off rock and from the rock to the sea line.
Ten minutes passed and then George appeared, a cup of coffee in his
hand.
“Shove her on the deck for a minute,” said Hank, “and have a look with
those binoculars. Something funny about that rock, seems to me.”
George placed the cup on the deck, fetched the old binoculars Jake had
been using the day before, and leveled them at the rock.
“Ship piled on the north side,” said George. “I can see the masts; some
sort of small hooker or another. It’s the Santander rock, can’t be
anything else, there’s nothing else of any size marked down just here
but the Tres Marias Island, and they are to the south.”
“Well, we’ll have a look at her,” said Hank. “There’s maybe some poor
devils on board. She’s flying no signals, is she?”
“No, she’s signal enough in herself.”
Just then Tommie came on deck.
She had a look through the binoculars and then went off to the galley
with George to see about breakfast. There were plenty of provisions
on the _Heart_; McGinnis and his crew had evidently plenty of cash or
credit, to judge by the condition of the lazarette and store room, and
when Tommie and George had satisfied their wants, Hank, giving them the
deck, came down.
When he returned on deck, the schooner was closing up with the rock and
the wreck was plainly visible to the naked eye, with the gulls shouting
around her.
The Santander rock, shaped and spired like a cathedral, runs north and
south, three hundred yards long, two hundred feet high, caved here and
there by the sea and worn by wind and rain into ledges and depressions
where the gulls roost—where they have roosted for ten thousand years.
It is the top of a big submarine mountain that rises gradually from the
depth of a mile. Quite in shore, on the northern side, the lead gives
a depth of only twenty fathoms, gradually deepening, as you put away,
by five fathoms to the hundred yards, till suddenly the lead finds
nothing. There must be a sheer, unimaginable cliff just there, some
three quarters of a mile high!
It was on the north side of this great rock, which is at once a
monstrous and a tragic figure, that the wreck was skewered, listing to
starboard, her sticks still standing but her canvas unstowed. The crew
had evidently piled her there, perhaps in the dark.
Now, drawing close to her, that stern seemed familiar, and the fact
that she was a yacht became apparent. It was Hank who voiced the
growing conviction in their minds.
“Boys!” cried Hank, “she’s the _Wear Jack_!”
George and Tommie were the only boys on that deck beside himself, but
Tommie did not laugh. She heaved a deep breath and stood with her hands
on the rail and her eyes fixed on the wreck.
“She is,” said George. “Look at her paint. Lord, this is lovely, that
fellow has piled her.”
“And got off in the boat,” said Hank. “The boat’s gone. They’d have
easy lowered her over the starboard side.”
“What are you going to do?” asked the other. “Shall we board her?”
“Sure,” said Hank. “Roust out Jake and get ready to drop the hook if we
can find anchorage. Get the lead ready.”
George ran to the foc’sle and rousted out Jake who came on deck rubbing
his eyes.
“Why there’s the—old _Jack_,” cried he. “Piled!” He clapped his hand on
his thigh, then fetched the lead at the order of Hank and hove it.
Forty fathoms rocky bottom, was the result. Then, as they came slowly
up, the depth shoaled.
“Get ready with the anchor,” cried Hank. He brought the _Heart_ along
till they were almost abreast of the wreck, and at a safe distance,
then, in thirty fathoms, the anchor was dropped and the _Heart_ slowly
swung to her moorings.
The dinghy was lowered and Hank and George got in.
Yes, it was the _Wear Jack_ right enough, lying there like a stricken
thing, the gentle list bringing her starboard rail to within a few
feet of the blue lapping swell. Gaffs brought down on the booms, booms
unsupported by the topping lifts, boat gone, she made a picture of
desolation and abandonment unforgettable, seen there against the grim
gray background of the rock.
“Well, he’s made a masterpiece of it,” said Hank as they tied on and
scrambled on board. “He sure has.”
They were turning aft along the slanting deck when up through the cabin
hatch came the head and shoulders of a man, a man rubbing sleep from
his eyes. It was Candon.