Masters of the Wheat-Lands Part 27

"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 conscious only 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 traveling it would infallibly incrush her bows, 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 main-boom 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 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.

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 sealers had grappled with 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 the schooner counted most of all!

His crew could scarcely hear him through the uproar made by the thundering canvas, and the screaming of the wind, but the orders were given, and from habit and the custom of their calling the men knew what the commands 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.

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 torch.

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 the schooner rolled, and a man standing up in the boat clutched her rail. The man was swung out of it as the vessel rolled back again, but he crawled on to the rail with a rope in one hand, and after jamming it fast around something, he sprang down with the hooks of the lifting tackles which one of the crew had given him. While two more men scrambled up, there was a clatter of blocks, but a shattered sea struck the boat as they hove her clear, 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 shouted, "you have got to cut that mainsail down!"

They obeyed somehow, hanging on to the mast-hoops, and now and then enveloped by the madly flogging canvas. 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. In the feeble light, Wyllard's face showed gray except 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 commanded.

The men carried him with difficulty, for the _Selache_ lurched viciously each time a white-topped sea came up upon her quarter. As soon as it seemed advisable to leave the deck Dampier went down. Wyllard lay in his bunk, with his eyes half-open. His face was colorless except for the broad smear of blood, which was oozing fast from a laceration in his scalp. Dampier, who noticed his chilliness, did not trouble about the wound. He stripped off the senseless man's long boots, and, uns.h.i.+pping a hot fender iron from the stove, laid it against his feet. Afterward he contrived to get some whisky down Wyllard's throat, and then he 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 Wyllard's type are apt to recover from more serious injuries.

It was blowing very hard when the skipper 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. The next morning the sea was very high, and the faint light was further dimmed by snow, but it seemed safe to Dampier, and the vessel held on while the big combers came up astern and forged by high above her rail.

The _Selache_ was traveling fast to the eastward. She was under boom-foresail and one little jib, with her mainmast broken short off where the bolts of the halliard blocks had traversed it. Dampier realized that every knot the vessel made then could not be recovered that season. He wondered, with a little uneasiness, what Wyllard would say when he came to himself again.

Next day the breeze moderated somewhat, and they let the schooner come up a little, heading further south. 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 shrank from the necessary interview. When dusk was falling, Charly went on deck to say that Wyllard, who seemed perfectly conscious, insisted on seeing the skipper, and with some misgivings Dampier went down 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," answered 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 another moment.

"How's she heading?"

"A little south of east."

Wyllard's face hardened. It was still blowing moderately and by the heave of the vessel and the wash of water outside he could guess how fast she was traveling. For a moment or two there was an oppressive silence in the little cabin. Then Wyllard spoke again.

"You have been running to the eastwards since I was struck down?" he asked.

Dampier nodded. "Three days," he confessed. "Just now the breeze is on her quarter."

He winced under Wyllard's gaze, and spread out his hands with a deprecating gesture.

"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, n.o.body 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 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 inquired 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 the islands. There'll probably be ugly ice along the beaches, and I've no fancy for being cast ash.o.r.e 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 weak gesture. "If the wind comes easterly?"

Dampier pursed up his lips. "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 touched Wyllard's lips. "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 store along the coast, the folks in authority would have a record of it. They would call the thing piracy--and, in a sense, they'd be justified."

He was silent for a few moments, and then looked up again wearily.

"I wonder," he remarked, "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 Wyllard desired to change the subject, for this was a question they had often discussed already.

"Well," he replied, "I still hold to my first notion. They were blown ash.o.r.e on the beach we have just left, and made prisoners. Then a supply schooner or perhaps a steamer came along, and they were sent 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 our friends cut that boat loose in the dark, and got away in her."

He broke off for a moment to look 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 gesture of concurrence, but in his face Dampier saw no sign that he meant to abandon his project. He seemed to sink into sleep, and the skipper, who went up on deck, paced to and fro a while 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," answered Dampier dryly. "I was kind of afraid of that, but I choked him off. Anyway, this year won't see us back in Vancouver." He paused. "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. The hearts of her crew became lighter as she crawled on across the Pacific.

The men had no wish to be blown back to the frozen North.

The days were growing shorter rapidly, and the sun hung low in the southern sky when at last the schooner crept into one of the many inlets that indent the coast of Southern Alaska. There was just wind enough to carry her in around a long, foam-lapped point, and soon afterwards they let the anchor go in four fathoms of water. Their haven was a sheltered arm of the sea with a river mouth not far away. There was no sign of life anywhere and the ragged cedars that crept close down to the beach stood out in somber spires against the gleaming snow.

The cold was not particularly severe when the _Selache_ arrived, but when Dampier went ash.o.r.e next morning to pick a log from which they could hew a mast the temperature suddenly fell, and that night the drift ice from the river mouth closed in on them. When the late daylight broke the schooner was frozen fast, and they knew it would be several months before she moved again. It was 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 impa.s.sable 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.