In the evening of the day on which they saw the last of Vancouver
Island, Jimmy sat in the _Cetacea's_ cockpit with a chart of the North
Pacific spread out before him on the cabin hatch. It showed the tortuous
straits, thickly sprinkled with islands of all sizes, through which they
had somehow threaded their way during the last week, in spite of
baffling head winds and racing tides, and though Jimmy was a navigator
he felt some surprise at their having accomplished the feat without
touching bottom. Now he had their course to the north plotted out along
the deeply fretted coast of British Columbia, and rolling up the chart
he rose to look about.
It was nine o'clock, but the light was clear, and a long, slate-green
swell slightly crisped with ripples rolled up out of the south; to the
northwest a broad stripe of angry saffron, against which the sea-tops
cut, glowed along the horizon; but the east was dim, and steeped in a
hard, cold blue. Shadowy mountains were faintly visible high up against
the sky; and, below, a few rocky islets rose, blurred by blue haze, out
of the heaving sea.
The sloop rolled lazily, her boom groaning and the tall, white mainsail
alternately swelling out and emptying with a harsh slapping of canvas
and a clatter of shaken blocks. Above it the topsail raked in a wide arc
across the sky. Silky lines of water ran back from the stern, there was
a soft gurgle at the bows; Jimmy computed that she was slipping along at
about three miles an hour.
"What do you think of the weather?" Bethune asked, as he lounged at the
steering wheel.
"It doesn't look promising," Jimmy answered. "If time wasn't an object,
I'd like the topsail down. We'll have wind before morning."
"That's my opinion; but time is an object. When the cost of every day
out is an item to be considered, we must drive her. Have you reckoned up
what we're paying every week to the ship-chandler fellow who found us
the cables and diving gear?"
"I haven't; his terms were daunting enough as a whole without analyzing
them. Have you?"
Bethune chuckled.
"I have the cost of everything down in my notebook; although I will
confess that I was mildly surprised at myself for taking the trouble. If
I'd occasionally made a few simple calculations at home and acted on
them, the chances are that I shouldn't be here now." Bethune made a
gesture of disgust. "Halibut boiled and halibut fried begins to pall on
one; but this is far better than our quarters in Vancouver, and they
were a big improvement on those I had in Victoria. I daresay it was
natural I should stick to the few monthly dollars as long as possible,
but it will be some time before I forget that hotel. I never quite got
used to the two wet public towels beside the row of sloppy wash-basins,
and the gramophone going full blast in the dirty dining-room; and the
long evening to be dawdled through in the lounge was worst of all. You
have, perhaps, seen the hard-faced toughs lolling back with their feet
on the radiator pipes before the windows, the heaps of dead flies that
are seldom swept up, the dreary, comfortless squalor. Imagine three or
four hours of it every night, with only a last-week's _Colonist_ to
while away the time!"
"I should imagine things would be better in a railroad or logging camp."
"Very much so, though they're not hotbeds of luxury. The trouble was
that I couldn't come down to Victoria and hold my job. Once or twice
when the pay days approximated, I ran it pretty fine; and I've a vivid
memory of walking seventy miles in two days over a newly made wagon
trail. The softer parts had been graded with ragged stones from the
hillside, the drier bits were rutted soil--it needed a surgical
operation to get my stockings off."
"It might have paid you better to forfeit your allowance," Jimmy
suggested.
"That's true," said Bethune. "I can see it now, but I had a daunting
experience of clearing land and laying railroad track. Dragging
forty-foot rails about through melting snow, with the fumes of
giant-powder hanging among the rocks and nauseating you, is exhausting
work, and handspiking giant logs up skids in rain that never stops is
worse. The logs have a way of slipping back and smashing the
tenderfoot's ribs. I suppose this made me a coward; and, in a sense, the
allowance was less of a favor than a right. The money that provided it
has been a long time in the family; I am the oldest son; and while I
can't claim to have been a model, I had no serious vices and had
committed no crime. If my relatives chose to banish me, there seemed no
reason why they shouldn't pay for the privilege."
Jimmy agreed that something might be said for his comrade's point of
view.
"Now I stand on my own feet," Bethune went on, with a carefree laugh;
"and while it's hard to predict the end of this adventure, the present
state of things is good enough for me. Is anything better than being
afloat in a staunch craft that's entirely at your command?"
Jimmy acquiesced heartily as he glanced about. Sitting to windward, he
could see the gently rounded deck run forward to the curve of the lifted
bows, and, above them, the tall, hollowed triangle of the jib. The
arched cabin-top led forward in flowing lines, and though there were
patches on plank and canvas, all his eye rested on was of harmonious
outline. The _Cetacea_ was small and low in the water, but she was fast
and safe, and Jimmy had already come to feel a certain love for her.
Their success depended upon her seaworthiness, and he thought she would
not fail them.
"I like the boat; but I've been mending gear all day, and it's my turn
below," he said.
The narrow cabin that ran from the cockpit bulkhead to the stem was
cumbered with dismantled diving pumps and gear, but there was a locker
on each side on which one could sleep. It was, moreover, permeated with
the smell of stale tobacco smoke, tarred hemp, and fish, but Jimmy had
put up with worse odors in the Mercantile Marine. Lying down, fully
dressed, on a locker, he saw Moran's shadowy form, wrapped in old
oilskins, on the opposite locker, rise above his level and sink as the
_Cetacea_ rocked them with a rhythmic swing. The water lapped noisily
against the planks, and now and then there was a groaning of timber and
a sharp clatter of blocks; but Jimmy soon grew drowsy and noticed
nothing.
He was awakened rudely by a heavy blow, and found he had fallen off the
locker and struck one of the pump castings. Half dazed and badly shaken,
as he was, it was a few moments before he got upon his knees--one could
not stand upright under the low cabin-top. It was very dark, Jimmy could
not see the hatch, and the _Cetacea_ appeared to have fallen over on her
beam-ends. A confused uproar was going on above: the thud of heavy water
striking the deck, a furious thrashing of loose canvas, and the savage
scream of wind. Bethune's voice came faintly through the din, and he
seemed to be calling for help.
Realizing that it was time for action, Jimmy pulled himself together and
with difficulty made his way to the cockpit, where he found it hard to
see anything for the first minute. The spray that drove across the boat
beat into his face and blinded him; but he made out that she was pressed
down with most of her lee deck in the water, while white cascades that
swept its uplifted windward side poured into the cockpit. The tall
mainsail slanted up into thick darkness, but it was no longer thrashing,
and Jimmy was given an impression of furious speed by the way the half
visible seas raced past.
"Shake her! Let her come up!" he shouted to the dark figure bent over
the wheel.
He understood Bethune to say that this would involve the loss of the
mast unless the others were ready to shorten canvas quickly.
Jimmy scrambled forward through the water and loosed the peak-halyard.
The head of the sail swung down and blew out to leeward, banging
threateningly, and he saw that the half-lowered topsail hung beneath it.
This promised to complicate matters; but Moran was already endeavoring
to change the jib for a smaller one, and Jimmy sprang to his assistance.
Though the sail was not linked to a masthead stay, it would not run in;
and when Bethune luffed the boat into the wind, the loose canvas swept
across the bows, swelling like a balloon and emptying with a shock that
threatened to snap the straining mast. It was obvious to the men who
knelt in the water dragging frantically at a rope that something drastic
must be done; but both were drenched and half blinded and had been
suddenly roused from sleep. The boat was large enough to make her gear
heavy to handle, and yet not so large as to obviate the need for urgent
haste when struck with all her canvas set by a savage squall. Though
they recognized this, Jimmy and his comrade paused a few moments to
gather breath. The jib, however, must be hauled down; and with a hoarse
shout to Moran, Jimmy lowered himself from the bowsprit until he felt
the wire bobstay under his feet.
The _Cetacea_ plunged into the seas, burying him to the waist, but he
made his way out-board with the canvas buffeting his head until he
seized an iron ring. It cost him a determined effort to wrench it loose
so it could run in, and when, at last, the sail swept behind him he felt
the blood warm on his lacerated hand. Then he crawled on board, and when
he and Moran had set a smaller jib it was high time to reef the
mainsail; but they spent a few moments in gathering strength for the
task.
She was down on her beam-ends, with the sea breaking over her. Jimmy
could not imagine what Bethune was doing at the wheel. The foam that
swirled past close under the boom on her depressed side lapped to the
cabin top; it looked as if she were rolling over. They felt helpless and
shaken, impotent to master the canvas that was drowning her. But the
fight must be made; and, rousing themselves for the effort, they groped
for the halyards. The head of the sail sank lower; gasping, and
straining every muscle, they hauled its foot down, and then Jimmy,
leaning out, buried to the knees in rushing foam, with his breast on the
boom, knotted the reef-points in. It was done at last. Rising more
upright, she shook off some of the water.
Moran turned to Bethune, who was leaning as if exhausted on his helm,
and demanded why he had not luffed the craft, which would have eased
their work. Then the dripping man showed them that the boat they carried
on deck had been washed against the wheel so that he could not pull the
spokes round. They moved her, and when Bethune regained control of the
sloop, he told them what had happened, in disjointed gasps.
"Wind freshened--but I--held her at it. Then there was a--burst of rain
and I--let the topsail go--thinking the breeze would lighten again.
Instead of that--it whipped round ahead--screaming--and I called for
you."
Conversation was difficult amid the roar of the sea, with the spray
lashing them and their words blowing away, but Jimmy made himself heard.
"Where's the compass?"
"In the cockpit, or overboard--the dory broke it off."
Moran felt in the water that washed about their feet and, picking
something up, crept into the cabin, where a pale glow broke out. It
disappeared in a minute or two and he came back.
"Binnacle lamp's busted," he reported. "She's pointing about east."
"Inshore," said Jimmy. "When you're ready, we'll have her round."
She would not come. Overpowered by wind and sea, she hung up for a few
moments, and then fell off on her previous course. They tried it twice,
not daring to wear her round the opposite way; and afterward they sat in
the slight shelter of the coaming, conscious that there was nothing more
they could do.
"She may keep off the beach until daylight," Jimmy observed hopefully;
"then we'll see where we are."
The glance he cast forward did not show him much. The long swell had
rapidly changed into tumbling combers that rolled down upon the laboring
sloop out of the dark. As she lurched over them, the small patch of
storm-jib swept up, showing the sharply slanted strip of mainsail; but
the rest of her was hidden by spray and rushing foam. She was sailing
very fast, close-hauled, and was rushing toward the beach. Jimmy could
feel her tremble as she pitched into the seas.
Morning seemed a very long time in coming; but at last the darkness grew
less thick. The foam got whiter and the gray bulk of the rollers more
solid and black, as they leaped, huge and threatening, out of the
obscurity. Then the sky began to whiten in the east, and the weary men
anxiously turned their eyes shoreward as they shivered in the biting
cold of dawn. After a time, during which the horizon steadily receded, a
gray and misty blur appeared on the starboard hand, and, now that they
could see the combers, they got the _Cetacea_ round. As she headed
offshore a red flush spread across the sky, and rocks and pines grew
into shape to the east. Then a break in the coastline where they could
see shining water instead of foam indicated an island; and, getting her
round again, they stood in cautiously, because she could make nothing to
windward through the steep, white seas outshore. Reeling before them,
with lee deck in the water as she bore away, she opened up the sound,
and presently her crew watched the rollers crumble on a
boulder-sprinkled point. Moving shoreward majestically in ordered ranks,
the waves hove themselves up when they met the shoal and dissolved into
frothy cataracts. It was an impressive spectacle, and the sloop looked
by contrast extremely small. Still, she drove on, and Jimmy, standing at
the wheel, gazed steadily ahead.
"We'll have to chance finding water, because the lead's no guide," he
said. "If there's anything in the sound, it will be a steep-to rock."
She lurched in past the point, rolling, spray-swept, with two rags of
drenched canvas set. As Jimmy luffed her into the lee of the island
there was a sudden change. The water, smoothing to a measured heave,
glittered with tiny ripples; the slanted mast rose upright; and the
sloop forged on toward a shelving beach, through variable flaws. Then,
as she slowed and the canvas flapped, the anchor was flung over, and the
rattle of running chain sent a cloud of birds circling above the rocks.
Half an hour later the men were busy cooking breakfast, and soon
afterward they were fast asleep; but the night's breeze had made a
change in their relations. Their mettle had been rudely tested and had
not failed. Henceforward it was not to be mere mutual interest that held
them together, but a stronger though more elusive bond. They were
comrades by virtue of a mutual respect and trust.