THE BEACH.
For a fortnight after they reached Vancouver Wyllard and Dampier were
very busy. They had various difficulties to contend with, for while
they would have preferred to slip away to sea as quietly as possible a
British vessel's movements are fenced about with many formalities, and
they did not wish to ship a white man who could be dispensed with.
Wyllard fancied there were sailormen and sealers in Vancouver and down
Puget Sound who would have gone with him, but there was a certain
probability of their discussing their exploits afterwards in the
saloons ashore, which was about the last thing that he desired. It
appeared essential that he should avoid notoriety as much as possible.
He had further trouble about obtaining provisions and general
necessaries, for considerably more attention than the free-lance
sealers cared about was being bestowed upon the North just then, and he
did not desire to rouse the curiosity of the dealers as to why he was
filling his lazaret up with Arctic stores. He obviated that difficulty
by dividing his orders among the whole of them, and buying as little as
possible. Dampier, however, proved an adept at the difficult business,
and eventually the schooner _Selache_ crept out from the Narrows at
dusk one evening under all plain sail, painted a pale green, with her
big main-boom raking at least a fathom beyond her taffrail. There were
then Wyllard, Dampier, and two other white men on board her. A week
later she sailed into a deep, rock-walled inlet on the western coast of
Vancouver Island with a settlement at the top of it, where the
storekeeper made no difficulty about selling Wyllard all his flour and
canned goods at higher figures than there was any probability of his
obtaining from the local ranchers.
Then the _Selache_ slid down the inlet again, and lay for several days
in a forest-shrouded arm near the mouth of it, while, when she once
more dropped her anchor off a Siwash rancherie far up on the wild West
coast, she was painted a dingy grey, and her sawn-off boom just topped
her stern. One does not want a great main-boom in the northern seas,
and a big mainsail needs men to handle it. Wyllard, however, shipped
several sea-bred Indians who had made wonderful perilous voyages on the
trail of the seal and halibut in open canoes. All of them had, as it
happened, also sailed in sealing schooners. Their comrades sold him
furs, and filled part of the hold up with redwood billets and bark for
the stove, for he had not considered it advisable to load too much
Wellington coal. Then he pushed out into the waste Pacific, and when
once a beautiful big white mail boat reeled by him, driving with
streaming bows into an easterly gale, he sent back a message to his
friends upon the prairie. It duly reached them, for some three weeks
afterwards Allen Hastings, opening _The Colonist_, which he had ordered
from Victoria as soon as Wyllard sailed, read out to his wife and
Agatha a paragraph in the shipping news:
"_Empress of India_, from Yokohama, reports having passed small grey
British schooner, flying----" There followed several code letters, the
latitude and longitude, and a line apparently by the water-front
reporter: "No schooner belonging to this city allotted the signal in
question."
Hastings smiled as he laid down the paper. "No," he said, "that
signal's Wyllard's private code. Agatha, won't you reach me down my
map of the Pacific? It's just behind you."
Then he looked round, and noticed the significant smile in his wife's
eyes, for the girl had already turned towards the shelf where he kept
the lately purchased map.
The easterly gale, however, did not last, for the wind came out of the
west and north, and sank to foggy calms when it did not blow wickedly
hard. This meant that the _Selache's_ course was all to windward, and
though they drove her at it unmercifully under reefed boom-foresail,
main trysail, and a streaming jib or two, with the brine going over her
solid forward, she had made little when each arduous day was done.
They were drenched to the skin continuously, and lashed by stinging
spray. Cooking except of the crudest kind was out of the question, and
sleep would have been impossible to any but worn-out sailormen. Even
then, they were often roused in the blackness of the night, when she
lay with her lee rail under, and would not lift it out, to get another
reef in, or crawl out on plunging bowsprit washed by icy seas to haul a
burst jib down. It was even more trying, glad as they were of the
respite in some respects, to lie rolling wildly on the big smooth
undulations that hove out of the windless calm, while everything in her
banged to and fro, and when the breeze came screaming through the fog
or rain they sprang to make sail again.
Fate seemed dead against them, as it was certain that, if their purpose
was suspected, the hand of every white man they might come across would
be; but they held on over leagues of empty ocean while the season wore
away, until once more the wind freshened easterly, and they ran for a
week under boom-foresail and a jib, with the big grey combers curling
as they foamed by high above her rail. Then the wind fell, and
Dampier, who got an observation, armed his deep-sea lead, and finding
shells and shoal water came aft to talk to Wyllard with the strip of
Dunton's chart.
Wyllard, who was clad in oilskins, stood, a shapeless figure, by the
wheel, with his face darkened and roughened by cold and stinging brine.
There was an open sore upon one of his elbows, and both his wrists were
raw. Forward, a white man and two Siwash were standing about the
windlass, and when the bows went up a dreary stretch of slate-grey sea
opened up beyond them beneath the dripping jibs. Then the bows would
go down again, and all that was visible was the fore-shortened slope of
deck and the breast of the big undulation that hove itself up ahead.
The _Selache_ was carrying everything and lurching over the steep swell
at some four knots an hour.
Dampier stopped near the wheel, and glanced at Wyllard's oilskins.
"You'll have to take them off. It's stuffed boots and those Indian
seal-gut things or furs from now on," he said. "That leather cuff's
chewing up your hand."
"We'll cut that out," said Wyllard; "it's not to the point. Can't you
get on?"
Dampier grinned. "We're on soundings, and they and Dunton's longitude
most agree. With this wind we should pick the beach up in the next two
days. Next question is, where those men were?"
"Where they are," said Wyllard.
"If they've pushed on it's probably a different thing, though if they'd
food yonder I don't quite see why they'd want to push on anywhere. It
wouldn't be south, anyway. They'd run up against the Russians there."
"We've decided that already."
"I'm admitting it," said the skipper. "There's the other choice that
they've gone up north. It's narrower across to Alaska there, and it's
quite likely they might have a notion of looking out for one of the
steam whalers. The Koriaks up yonder will have boats of some kind. If
they're skin ones like those the Huskies have they might sledge them on
the ice."
It was a suggestion that had been made several times already, but both
the men realised that there was in all probability very little to
warrant it. Wyllard had wasted no time endeavouring to learn what was
known about the desolation on the western shore of the Behring Sea. He
had bought a schooner and set out at once. It, however, appeared
almost impossible to him that any three men could haul the skin boats
and supplies they would need far over hummocky ice.
"The point is that we'll have to fix on some course in the next few
days," added his companion. "Say we run in to make inquiries"--and a
gleam of grim amusement crept into his eyes--"what are we going to
find? A beach with a roaring surf on it, and if we get a boat through,
a desolate, half-frozen swamp behind it. It's quite likely there are
people in the country, Koriaks or Kamtchadales, but if there are
they'll probably move up and down after what they get to eat like the
Huskies do, and we can't hang on and wait for them. Most any time next
month we'll have the ice closing in."
Wyllard said nothing for another minute, and as he stood with hands
clenched on the wheel a little puff of bitter spray splashed upon his
oilskins. They had been over it all often before, weighing conjecture
after conjecture, and had found nothing in any that might serve to
guide them. Now, when winter was close at hand, they had leagues of
surf-swept beach to search for three men who might have perished twelve
months earlier.
"We'll stand in until we pick up the beach," he said at length; "then
if there's no sign of them we'll push north as long as we can find open
water. Now if you'll call Charly I'll let up at the wheel."
Another white man walked aft, and Wyllard, entering the little stern
cabin, the top of which rose some feet above the deck, sloughed off his
wet oilskins and crawled, dressed as he was, into his bunk. Evening
was closing in, and for awhile he lay blinking at the swinging lamp,
and wondering what the end of that search would be. The _Selache_ was
a little fore and aft schooner of some ninety-odd tons, wholly
unprotected against ice-chafe or nip, and he knew that prudence
dictated their driving her south under every rag of canvas now. There
was, however, the possibility of finding some sheltered inlet where she
could lie out the winter, frozen in, and he had, at least, blind
confidence in his men. The white men were sealers who had already
borne the lash of snow-laden gales, the wash of icy seas, and
tremendous labour at the oar, while the Indians had been born to an
unending struggle with the waters. All of them had times and times
again looked the King of Terrors squarely in the face. What was as
much to the purpose, they had been promised a tempting bonus if the
_Selache_ came home successful.
While Wyllard pondered upon these things he went to sleep, and slept
soundly, as he did the next night, though Dampier expected to raise the
beach some time next morning. His expectation also proved warranted,
and when Wyllard turned out it lay before them, a dingy smear on a
slate-green sea that was cut off from it by a wavy line of livid
whiteness, which he knew to be a fringe of spouting surf. It had cost
him in several ways more than he cared to contemplate to reach that
beach, and now there was nothing that could excite any feeling except
shrinking in the dreary spectacle. There was little light in the heavy
sky or on the sullen heave of sea; the air was raw, the schooner's
decks were sloppy, and she rolled viciously as she crept shorewards
with her mainsail peak eased down. What wind there was blew dead
on-shore, which was not as he would have had it.
He heard the splash of the lead as he and the white man Charly made
their breakfast in the little stern cabin. Then there was a clatter of
blocks, and on coming out again he found the others swinging a boat
over. Charly and he and two of the Indians dropped into her, and
Dampier, who had hove the schooner to, looked down on them over her
rail.
"If you knock the bottom out of her put a jacket on an oar, and I'll
try to bring you off," he said. "If you don't signal I'll stand off
and on with a thimble-header topsail over the mainsail. You'll start
back right away if you see us haul it down. When she won't stand that
there'll be more surf than you'll have any use for with the wind dead
on the beach."
Wyllard made a sign of comprehension, and they slid away on the back of
a long sea. Others rolled up behind them, cutting off the schooner's
hull so that only her grey canvas showed above dim slopes of water, but
there was no curl on any and the beach rose fast. It looked very
forbidding with the spray-haze drifting over it, and the long wash of
the Pacific weltering among its hammered stones, and when they drew a
little nearer Wyllard stood up with the big sculling oar in his hand.
There was no point to offer shelter, and in only one place could he see
a strip of surf-lapped sand.
"It's a little softer than the boulders, anyway; we'll try it there,"
he said.
The oars dipped again, and in another minute or two the sea that came
up behind them hove them high and broke into a little spout of foam.
The next had a hissing crest, part of which splashed on board, and they
went shorewards like a toboggan down an icy slide on the shoulders of
the third. To keep her straight while it seethed about them was all
that they could do, but it was also essentially necessary, and for a
moment their hearts were in their mouths when it left them to sink with
a dizzy swing into the hollow. Then they pulled desperately as another
white-topped ridge came on astern, and went up with it amidst a chaotic
frothing and splashing and a haze of spray. After that there was a
shock and a crash, and they sprang out knee-deep and held fast to the
boat while the foam boiled into her, floundering and stumbling over
sliding sand. Still, before the next sea came in they had run her up
beyond its reach, and there did not seem to be much the matter with her
when they hove her over. Wyllard, however, looked back at the tumbling
surf.
"Dampier was right about that topsail; it won't be quite as easy
getting off," he said. "You'll stand by, Charly, and watch the
schooner. If the surf gets steeper you can make some sign. I'll leave
one of the Siwash on the rise yonder."
Then he walked up the beach, and stopped awhile on the crest of the low
rise a mile or two behind it, gazing out at what seemed to be an empty
desolation. There were willows in the hollow beneath him, and upon the
slope a few little stunted trees, which he fancied resembled the
juniper he had seen among the ranges of British Columbia, but he could
see no sign of any kind of life. What was more portentous, the mossy
sod he stood upon was frozen, and there were smears of snow among the
straggling firs upon a rather higher ridge. Inland, the little breeze
seemed to have fallen dead away, and there was an oppressive silence
which the rumble of the surf accentuated.
He left an Indian on the rise, and going on with the other scrambled
through a half-frozen swamp in the hollow; but when they came back
hours afterwards as the narrow horizon was drawing further in they had
found nothing to show that any man had ever entered that grim, silent
land. The surf seemed a little smoother, and they reeled out through
it with no more than a few inches of very cold water splashing about
their boots, and pulled across a long stretch of darkening sea towards
the rolling schooner.
Wyllard was a little weary, and more depressed, but it was not until he
sat in the stern cabin with its cheerful twinkling stove and swinging
lamp that he understood how he had shrunk from that forbidding
wilderness. His consultation with Dampier, who came in by and bye, was
very brief.
"We'll head north for a couple of days, and try again," he said.
He crawled into his berth early, and it was some time after midnight
when he was awakened by being rudely flung out of it. That fact, and
the slant of deck and sounds above, suggested that the schooner had
been hove down by a sudden gale. He had, however, grown more or less
accustomed to occurrences of this kind and to sleeping fully dressed,
and in another moment or two he was out of the deck-house. Then a wind
that seemed sharp as steel drove stinging flakes of snow into his face.
It was very dark, but he fancied that the schooner's rail was in the
sea, which was washing over her to weather, and that some of the others
were struggling to get the mainsail off her. Then a man whom he
supposed to be Charly ran into him.
"Better come for'ard. Got to haul outer jib down before it blows
away," he said.
Wyllard staggered after him up to his knees in water, and made out by
the mad banging that some of them had already cast the peak of the
boom-foresail loose. Then he reached the windlass, and clutched it as
a sea that took him to the waist frothed in over the weather rail. The
bows lurched out of it viciously, hurling another icy flood back on
him, and he could see a dim white chaos about and beneath them. Over
it rose the black wedge of the jibs.
He did not want to get out along the bowsprit to stop one of them down.
Indeed his whole physical nature shrank from it, but there are many
things flesh and blood shrink from which must be faced at sea. Then he
made out that a Siwash was fumbling at the down-haul made fast near his
side, and when his companion's shadowy figure rose up against the
whiteness of the foam he made a jump forward. Then he was on the
bowsprit, lying upon it while he felt for the foot-rope slung beneath.
He found it, and was cautiously lowering himself when the man in front
of him called out harshly, and he saw a white sea range up ahead. It
broke short over with a rush and roar, and he clung with hands and feet
for his life as the schooner's dipping bows rammed the seething mass.
She went into it to the windlass. He was smothered in an icy flood
that seemed bent on wrenching him from his hold, but that was only for
a moment or two, and then he was swung, gasping and streaming with
water, high above the sea again. It was bad enough merely to hold on,
but that was a very small share of his task, for the big black sail
that cut the higher darkness came rattling down its stay and fell upon
him and his companion bodily. As it dropped the wind took hold of the
folds of it and buffeted them cruelly. This was a thing he had once
been accustomed to, but as he clutched at the canvas it seemed to him
incredible that he had not already been flung off headlong from the
reeling spar. Still, that banging, thrashing canvas must be mastered
somehow, though it was snow-soaked and almost unyielding, and he clawed
at it furiously with bleeding hands while twice the bowsprit raked a
sea and dipped him waist-deep in. At length the other man flung him
the end of the gasket, and they worked back carefully, leaving the sail
lashed down, and scrambled aft to help the others who were making the
big main-boom fast. When this was done Wyllard fell against Dampier
and clutched at him.
"How's the wind?" he roared.
"North-east," said the skipper.
They could scarcely hear each other, though the schooner was lurching
over it more easily now with shortened canvas, and Wyllard only made
Dampier understand that he wished to speak to him by thrusting him
towards the deck-house door. They went in together, and stood
clutching at the table with the lamplight on their tense, wet faces and
the brine that ran from them making pools upon the deck.
"It's hauled round," said the skipper, "the wrong way."
Wyllard made a savage gesture. "We've had it from the last quarter we
wanted ever since we sailed, and we sailed nearly three months too
late. We're too close in to the beach for you to heave her to?"
"A sure thing," said the other. "I was driving her to work off it with
the sea getting up when the breeze burst on us. She put her rail right
under, and we had to let go most everything before she'd pick it up.
She's pointing somewhere north, jammed right up on the starboard tack
just now, but I can't stand on."
This was evident to Wyllard, and he closed one hand tight. He wanted
to stand on as long as possible before the ice closed in, but he
realised that to do so would put the schooner ashore.
"Well?" he said sharply.
Dampier made a grimace. "I'm going out to heave her round. If we'd
any sense in us we'd square off the boom then, and leg it away across
the Pacific for Vancouver."
"In that case," said Wyllard, "somebody would lose his bonus."
Dampier swung round on him with a flash in his eyes.
"The bonus!" he said. "Who was it came for you with two dollars in his
pocket after he'd bought his ticket from Vancouver?"
Wyllard smiled at him. "If you took that up the wrong way I'm sorry.
She ought to work off on the port tack, and when we've open water to
leeward you can heave her to. When it moderates we can pick up the
beach again."
"That's just what I mean to do."
Then Dampier went out on deck, while Wyllard, flinging off his dripping
clothing, crawled into his bunk and went quietly to sleep.