DEFEAT.
A grey dimness was creeping in upon the schooner when a little bitter
breeze sprang up from westwards, and Dampier bade them get the mainsail
on to her.
"I don't like the look of the weather, and I'm beginning to feel that
I'd like to see that boat," he said. "Anyhow, we'll get way on her."
It was a relief to hoist the mainsail. The work put a little warmth
into them, and the white men, at least, had been conscious of a growing
uneasiness about their comrades in the boat. The breeze had, however,
freshened before they set it, and there were white caps on the water
when the _Selache_ headed for the ice. It had somewhat changed its
formation when they approached it, for big masses had become detached
from it and were moving out into the open water, while the opening had
become perceptibly narrower. The light was now fading rapidly, and
Wyllard took the wheel when Dampier sent the man there forward.
"Get the cover off the second boat, and see everything clear for
hoisting out," he said to him, and then called to Wyllard. "We're
close enough. You'd better heave her round."
She came round with a thrashing of canvas, stretched out seawards, and
came back again with her deck sharply slanted and little puffs of
bitter spray blowing over her weather rail, for there was no doubt that
the breeze was freshening fast. Then Dampier sent a man up into the
foremast shrouds, and looked at Wyllard afterwards.
"I'd heave a couple of reefs down if I wasn't so anxious about that
blamed boat," he said. "As it is, I want to be ready to pick her up
just as soon as we see her, and it's quite likely she'd turn up when
we'd got way off the schooner, and the peak eased down."
Wyllard fancied that he was right as he glanced over the rail at the
dimness that was creeping in on them. It was blowing almost fresh now,
and the _Selache_ was driving very fast through the swell, which
commenced to froth here and there. It is, as he knew from experience,
always hard work, and often impossible, to pull a boat to windward in
any weight of breeze, which rendered it advisable to keep the schooner
under way. If the boat drove by them while they were reefing it might
be difficult to pick her up afterwards in the dark. He was now
distinctly anxious about her. At length, just as the light was dying
out, the man in the shrouds sent down a cry.
"I see them, sir," he said.
Dampier turned to Wyllard with a gesture of relief. "That's a weight
off my mind. I wish we had a reef in, but"--and he glanced up at the
canvas--"she'll have to stand it. Anyway, I'll leave you there. We
want to get that second boat lashed down again."
This, as Wyllard recognised, was necessary, though he would sooner have
had somebody by him, and the rest of them ready to let the mainsheet
run, for he was a little to windward of the opening, and surmised that
he would have to run the schooner down upon the boat. It was a few
moments later when he saw her emerge from among the ice, and the men in
her appeared to be pulling strenuously. They were, perhaps, half a
mile off, and the schooner was sailing very fast and heading for the
ice. Then he lost sight of her again, for a thin shower of whirling
snow suddenly obscured the light. Dampier called to him.
"You'll have to run her off," he said. "Boys, slack out your sheets."
There was a clatter of blocks, and when Wyllard pulled his helm up it
taxed all his strength. The _Selache_ swung round, and he gasped with
the effort to control her as she drove away furiously into the
thickening snow. She was carrying far too much canvas, but they could
not heave her to and take it off her now. The boat must be picked up
first, and the veins rose swollen to Wyllard's forehead as he struggled
with the wheel. There is always a certain possibility of bringing a
fore-and-aft rigged vessel's mainboom over when she is running hard,
and this is rather apt to result in disaster to her spars. So fast was
she travelling that the sea piled up in a big white wave beneath her
quarter, and, cold as it was, the sweat of tense effort dripped from
Wyllard as he forecasted what he had to do. First of all, he must hold
her straight before the wind without letting her fall off to leeward,
which would bring the booms crashing over; then he must run past the
boat, which he could no longer see, and round the schooner up with
fore-staysail aback to leeward of her, to wait until she drove down on
them.
This would not have been difficult in a moderate breeze, but the wind
was freshening furiously and the schooner was horribly pressed with
sail. He thought of calling the others to lower the mainsail peak, but
with the weight of wind there was in the canvas he was not sure that
they could haul the gaff down. Besides, they were busy securing the
boat, which must be made fast again before they hove the other in, and
it was almost dark now. In view of what had happened in the same
waters one night four years ago, the desire to pick the boat up while
there was a little light left became an obsession.
In the meanwhile, the swell was rapidly whitening and getting steeper.
The _Selache_ hove herself out of it forward as she swung up with
streaming bows. It almost seemed to Wyllard that he must overrun the
boat before he noticed her, but at length he saw Dampier swing himself
on to the rail. He stood there clutching at a shroud, and presently
turned towards Wyllard, swinging up an arm.
"Right ahead!" he shouted. "Let her come up a few points before you
run over them."
Wyllard put his helm down a spoke or two, which was easy, and then as
the bows swung high again there was a harsh cry from the man who stood
above Dampier in the shrouds.
"Ice!" he roared. "Big pack of it right under your weather bow."
Dampier shouted something, but Wyllard did not hear what he said. He
was only conscious that he had to decide what he must do in the next
few seconds. If he let the _Selache_ come up to avoid the boat, there
was the ice ahead, and at the speed she was travelling it would
infallibly crush her bows in, while if he held her straight there was
the boat close in front of her. To swing her clear of both by going to
leeward he must bring the mainsail and boom-foresail over with a
tremendous shock, but that seemed preferable, and with his heart in his
mouth he pulled his helm up.
He fancied he cried out in warning, but was never sure of it, though
three men came running to seize the mainsheet. The schooner fell off a
little, swinging until the boom-foresail came over with a thunderous
bang and crash. She rolled down, heaving a wide strip of wet planking
out of the sea, and now for a moment or two there were great breadths
of canvas swung out on either hand. Then the ponderous mainboom went
up high above his head, and he saw three shadowy figures dragged aft as
they tried in vain to steady it. The big mainsail was bunched up, a
vast, portentous shape above him, and then he set his lips, and pulled
up the helm another spoke as it swung. He never quite knew what
happened after that. There was a horrible crash, and the schooner
appeared to be rolling over bodily. The spokes he clung to desperately
reft themselves from his grasp, the deck slanted until one could not
stand upon it, and something heavy struck him on the head. He dropped,
and Dampier flung himself upon the wheel above his senseless body.
Then there was mad confusion, and a frantic banging of canvas as the
schooner came up beam to the wind, with her rent mainsail flogging
itself to tatters. Its ponderous boom was broken, and the
mainmast-head had gone, but it was not the first time the sealermen had
grappled with somewhat similar difficulties, and Dampier kept his head.
He had the boat to think of, and she was somewhere to windward, hidden
in the sudden darkness and the turmoil of the quickly rising sea, but
in the meanwhile the schooner counted most of all. His crew could
scarcely hear him through the uproar the thundering canvas made, and
the screaming of the wind, but the orders were given, and from habit
and the custom of their calling they knew what they must be.
They hauled a jib down, backed the fore-staysail, and got the
boom-foresail sheeted in, but they let the rent mainsail bang, for it
could do no more damage than it had already done. Then a man sprang up
on the rail with a blue light in his hand, and as the weird radiance
flared in a long streak to leeward a cry rose from the water. In
another few moments a blurred object, half hidden in flying spray,
drove down upon the schooner furiously on the top of a sea, and then
there was sudden darkness as the man flung down the flare.
Another harsh and half-heard cry rose out of the obscurity. An
indistinguishable object plunged past the schooner's stern, there was a
crash to leeward as she rolled, and a man standing up in the boat
clutched her rail. He was swung out of it as she rolled back again,
but he crawled on to the rail with a rope in one hand, and after
jamming it fast round something sprang down with the hooks of the
lifting tackles which one of the rest had given him. Then, while two
more men scrambled up, there was a clatter of blocks, but a shattered
sea struck the boat as they hove her dear, and when she swung in the
brine poured out through the rents in her. Dampier waved an arm as
they dropped her on the deck, and they heard him faintly.
"Boys," he said, "you have got to cut that mainsail down."
They did it somehow, hanging on to the mast-hoops, buffeted and now and
then enveloped by the madly flogging canvas, floundering below amidst a
raffle of fallen gear, while the bitter spray lashed them, and the
broken boom held up by the clew ring banged savagely to and fro. After
that they trimmed her fore-staysail over, and there was by contrast a
curious quietness as Dampier jammed his helm up, and the schooner swung
off before the sea. Then somebody lighted a lantern, and Charly
stooped over Wyllard, who lay limp and still beside the wheel. His
face showed grey in the feeble light, save where a broad red stain had
spread across it. Dampier cast a glance at him.
"Get him below, and into his bunk, two of you," he said.
They did it with difficulty, for the _Selache_ lurched viciously each
time a white-topped sea came up upon her quarter, and as soon as it
seemed advisable to leave the deck Dampier went down. Wyllard lay in
his bunk, with his eyes half-open, but there was no expression in them,
and his face was almost colourless except for the broad smear of blood.
It was oozing fast from a laceration in his scalp, but Dampier, who
noticed his chilliness, did not in the meanwhile trouble about that.
He stripped off the senseless man's long boots, and unshipping a hot
fender iron from the stove laid it against his feet. Afterwards he
contrived to get some whisky down his throat, and then set to work to
wash the scalp wound, dropping into the water a little of the
permanganate of potash, which is freely used at sea. When that was
done he applied a rag dipped in the same fluid, and seeing no result of
his efforts went back on deck. He was anxious about his patient, but
not unduly so, for he had discovered long ago that men of his
description are apt to recover from more serious injuries. By and bye,
he said, Wyllard's brain, which had evidently been rudely jarred by the
shock, would resume its functions.
It was blowing very hard when he stood near the wheel. A steep sea was
already tumbling after the schooner, but she was, at least, heading out
from where they supposed the ice to be, and he let her go, keeping her
away before it, and heading a little south of east. When morning came
the sea was very high, and the faint light further dimmed by snow, but
it seemed to him just safe, and no more, to run, and they held on while
the big combers came up astern and forged by, ridged with foam, high
above her rail.
She was travelling very fast, to the eastwards, under boom-foresail and
one little jib, with her mainmast broken short off where the bolts of
the halliard blocks had traversed it, and Dampier realised that because
of that every knot she made then could not by any means be recovered
that season. He wondered, with a little uneasiness, what Wyllard would
say when he came to himself again. In the meanwhile he said nothing,
but lay like a log in his bunk, only that there was now a little warmth
in him.
Next day the breeze moderated somewhat, and they let her come up a
little, heading further south; while on the morning after that Wyllard
showed signs of returning consciousness. Dampier, however, kept away
from him, partly to allow his senses to readjust themselves, and partly
because he rather shrank from the coming interview. At length, when
dusk was falling, Charly came up to say that Wyllard, who seemed quite
sensible, insisted on seeing him, and Dampier went down with some
misgivings into the little cabin. The lamp was lighted, and when he
sat down Wyllard, who raised himself feebly on his pillow, turned a
pallid face to him.
"Charly tells me you picked the boat up," he said.
"We did," said Dampier. "She had three or four planks on one side
ripped out of her."
Wyllard's faint grimace implied that this did not matter, and Dampier
braced himself for the question he dreaded. He had to face it in
another moment.
"How's she heading?"
"A little south of east."
Wyllard's face hardened. It was still blowing moderately fresh, and by
the heave of the vessel and the wash of water outside he could guess
how fast she was travelling. Except for the latter sound, however,
there was for a moment or two an almost oppressive silence in the
little cabin. Then Wyllard spoke again.
"You have been running to the eastwards since I was struck down?" he
said.
Dampier nodded. "Three days," he said. "Just now the breeze is on her
quarter."
He winced under Wyllard's gaze, and spread his hands out deprecatingly.
"Now," he added, "what else was there I could do? She wrung her
masthead off when you jibed her and there's not stick enough left to
set any canvas that would shove her to windward, I might have hove her
to, but the first time the breeze hauled easterly she'd have gone up on
the beach or among the ice with us. I had to run!"
Wyllard closed a feeble hand. "Dunton was crippled, too. It's almost
incredible."
"In one way, it looks like that, but, after all, a jibe's quite a
common thing with a fore-and-after. If you run her off to lee when
she's going before it her mainboom's bound to come over. Of course,
nobody would run her off in a wicked breeze unless he had to, but you'd
no choice with the ice in front of you."
Wyllard lay very still for almost a minute. It was clear to him that
his project must be abandoned for that season, which meant that at
least six months must elapse before he could even approach the
Kamtchatkan coast again.
"Well," he said at length, "what do you mean to do?"
"If the breeze holds we could pick up one of the Aleutians in a few
days, but I'm keeping south of them. There'll probably be ugly ice
along the beaches, and I've no fancy for being cast ashore by a strong
tide when the fog lies on the land. With westerly winds I'd sooner
hold on for Alaska. We could lie snug in an inlet there, and, it's
quite likely, get a cedar that would make a spar. I can't head right
away for Vancouver with no mainsail."
This was clear to Wyllard, who made a feeble gesture. "If the wind
comes easterly?"
Dampier pursed his face up. "Then unless I could fetch one of the
Kuriles we'd sure be jammed. She won't beat to windward, and there'd
be all Kamtchatka to lee of us. The ice is packing up along the north
of it now, and the Russians have two or three settlements to the south.
We don't want to run in and tell them what we're after."
A faint smile crept into Wyllard's eyes. "No," he said, "not after
that little affair on the beach. Since it's very probable that the
vessel they send up to the seal islands would deliver stores along the
coast, the folks in authority would have a record of it. They'd call
the thing piracy--and, in a sense, they'd be justified."
He said nothing more for a little, and then looked up again wearily.
"I wonder," he said, "how that boat's crew ever got across to
Kamtchatka. It was north of the islands where the man brought Dunton
the message."
Dampier understood that he desired to change the subject, for this was
a question they had often discussed already.
"Well," he said, "I still hold by my first notion. They were blown
ashore on the beach we'd just left, and made prisoners. Then a supply
schooner or perhaps a steamer came along, and they sent them off in her
to be handed over to the authorities. The vessel put in somewhere.
We'll say she was lying in an inlet with a boat astern, and somehow
they cut that boat loose in the dark, and got away in her."
He broke off for a moment, and then looked at his companion
significantly.
"You can find quite a few points where that idea seems to fail," he
added. "They were in Kamtchatka, but I'm beginning to feel that we
shall never know any more than that."
Wyllard made a little weary gesture of concurrence, but before he
closed them Dampier saw no sign that he meant to abandon his project in
his eyes. In another few minutes he seemed to sink into sleep, and
Dampier, who went up on deck, paced to and fro awhile before he stopped
by the wheel and turned to the helmsman.
"You can let her come up a couple of points. We may as well make a
little southing while we can," he said.
Charly, who was steering, looked up with suggestive eagerness. "Then
he's not going for the Aleutians?"
"No," said Dampier drily. "I was kind of afraid of that, but I choked
him off. Anyway, this year won't see us back in Vancouver." He
paused, with a little jarring laugh. "We're going to stay up here
until we find out where those men left their bones. The man who has
this thing in hand isn't the kind that lets up."
Charly made no answer, but his face hardened as he put his helm down a
spoke or two.
Next day the wind fell lighter, but for a week it still held westerly,
and after that it blew moderately fresh from the south. Crippled as
she was, the _Selache_ would lie a point or two south of east when they
had set an old cut down fore-staysail on what was left of her mainmast,
and the hearts of her crew grew a little lighter as she crawled on
across the Pacific. They had no wish to be blown back to the frozen
North. The days were, however, growing shorter rapidly, and the sun
hung low in the southern sky when at length she crept into one of the
many inlets that indent the coast of Southern Alaska. There was just
wind enough to carry her in round a long, foam-lapped point, and soon
afterwards they let the anchor go in four fathoms in a sheltered arm,
with a river mouth not far away. There was no sign of life anywhere
about it, and the ragged cedars that crept close down to the beach
stood out in sombre spires against the gleaming snow.
The cold was not particularly severe when she crept in, but when
Dampier went ashore next morning to pick a log that they could hew a
mast out of the temperature suddenly fell, and that night the drift ice
from the river mouth closed in on them. When the late daylight broke
she was frozen fast, and they knew it would be several months before
she moved again. It was then before the gold rush, and in winter
Alaska was practically cut off from all communication with the south.
No man would have attempted to traverse the tremendous snow-wrapped
desolation of almost impassable hills and trackless forests that lay
between them and the nearest of the commercial factories on the north,
or the canneries on the other hand. Besides, the canneries were shut
up in winter time. They were prisoners, and could only wait with what
patience they could muster until the thaw set them free again.