The Secret of the Reef Part 2

"I'd seen Jake play some low-down tricks when we traded for the few furs we got, and I suspicioned he wasn't acting square with me. Anyhow, he allowed he didn't take much count of abandoned wrecks, and when he saw I'd brought nothing back, he never asked me about her."

"But if she was lost on the reef, how did she reach the bank a mile away?"

"I can't tell you that, but I guess she shook her engines out after she broke her back, and then slipped off into deeper water. The stream and surge of sea may have worked her along the bottom."

"It came out that she had only a little rock ballast in her," Bethune explained. "There may not have been enough to pin her down; but the important point is that the strong-room was aft, and Hank says that part is sound."

Jimmy nodded.

"Suppose you tell me all you know about the matter," he said.

It was characteristic of both of them that when they first discussed the venture the one had been content with sketchily outlining his plans, and the other had not demanded many details. The project appealed to their imagination, and once they had decided upon it the necessary preparations had occupied all their attention.

Leaning back against a boulder, Bethune refilled and lighted his pipe.

His clothes were far from new, and were freely stained with tar, but he spoke clean English, and his face suggested intelligence and refinement.

"Very well," he said. "When Hank mentioned his discovery I thought I saw an opportunity of the kind I'd been waiting for; and I took some trouble to find out what I could about the vessel. She was an old wooden propeller that came round Cape Horn a good many years ago. When she couldn't compete with modern steamboats, they strengthened her for a whaler, and she knocked about the Polar Sea; but she burned too much coal for that business, and wouldn't work well under sail. It looked as if there wasn't a trade in which she could make a living; but the Klond.y.k.e rush began, and somebody bought her cheap, and ran her up to Juneau, in Alaska, and afterward to Nome. There were better boats, but they were packed full, fore and aft, and the crowd going north was not fastidious: all it wanted was to get on the goldfields as soon as possible. Well, she made a number of trips all right, though I believe her owners had trouble when the pressure eased and the United States pa.s.senger-carrying regulations began to be properly applied. It was probably because no other boat was available that a small mining syndicate, which seems to have done pretty well, s.h.i.+pped a quant.i.ty of gold down from the north in her. Besides this, she brought out a number of miners, who had been more or less successful. Something went wrong with the engines when she had been a day or two at sea; but they got sail on her, and she drove south before a fresh gale until she struck the reef on a hazy night. It broke her back, and the after hold was flooded a few minutes after she struck. The strong-room was under water, there was no time to cut down to it; but they got the boats away, and after the crew and pa.s.sengers were picked up, a San Francisco salvage company thought it worth while to attempt the recovery of the gold. It was late in the season when their tug reached the spot, and the ice drove her off the reef; the sea was generally heavy, and after a week or two they threw up the contract. The underwriters paid all losses, and that was the end of the matter. It is only the drifting of the stern half into shoal water that gives us our chance. Now I think you know as much as I do."

Jimmy sat thoughtfully silent for a few minutes, realizing that it was a reckless venture he had undertaken. The wreck lay in unfrequented waters which were swept by angry currents that brought in the ice, vexed by sudden gales, and often wrapped in fog. The appliances the party had been able to procure were of the cheapest description, and there was a risk in making the long voyage in so small a vessel as the sloop. Still, Jimmy's fortunes needed a desperate remedy, and he was not much daunted by the difficulties he must face.

"Well," he said, "I suppose we have some chance; but I don't quite see what made you so keen on taking up the thing."

"It's explainable," Bethune drawled, picking up a pebble and lazily flipping it out over the water. "Victoria's a handsome city, and the views from it are good. For all that, when you can find no occupation, and have spent some years lounging about the waterfront and the bars of cheap hotels, the place, to put it mildly, loses its charm."

"You could leave it. As a matter of fact, I met you at Vancouver."

"Oh, yes. I could leave it for a maximum period of thirty days, because, with the exception of Sundays and one or two holidays, I was required to present myself at a lawyer's office on the first of every month. Then I was paid enough to keep me, with rigid economy, for the next four weeks; but on the first occasion I failed to come up to time the allowance was to stop for good. It's a system that has some advantages for the people who provide the funds in the old country, since it a.s.sures the payee's stopping where he is-but it has its drawbacks for the latter. How can a man get a job and hold it anywhere outside the town if he must return at a fixed hour every month? When I was in Vancouver it cost me a large share of the allowance to collect it."

"And now, by going north, you throw it up?"

"Exactly," said Bethune. "It should have been done before, but, as I had never been taught to work or go without my dinner, the course I am at last taking needed some moral courage. It's sink or swim now."

Jimmy made a sign of agreement. All the money he possessed had been sunk in the undertaking; and now, in order to get it back, he must succeed where a well-equipped salvage expedition had failed. Though the wreck had since changed her position, the prospects were not very encouraging.

"Well," he said, "we must do the best we can; but I wish our funds had run to a better supply of stores."

"Hank can fish," grinned Bethune. "In fact, he'll have to whenever there's anything to catch. Fortunately, fish is wholesome and sustaining. However, as this job must be finished to-morrow, we had better get to sleep early."

Jimmy sat smoking for a few minutes after the others went on board the sloop. It was getting dark, but a band of pure green light still glimmered along the crest of the black ridge to the west. The air was cold and very still, and gray wood smoke hung in gauzy wreaths above the roofs of the town. The tall pines were growing blurred, but their keen, sweet fragrance hung about the beach, and the smooth swell lapped with a drowsy murmur upon the s.h.i.+ngle.

Jimmy loved the sea; and now he was to go afloat again, in his own vessel, bound by no restrictions except the necessity for making the voyage pay. This would not be easy; but there was a romance about the undertaking that gave it a zest.

CHAPTER III-THE FURY OF THE SEA

In the evening of the day on which they saw the last of Vancouver Island, Jimmy sat in the _Cetacea's_ c.o.c.kpit 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 s.h.i.+p-chandler fellow who found us the cables and diving gear?"

"I haven't; his terms were daunting enough as a whole without a.n.a.lyzing 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 smas.h.i.+ng 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 c.o.c.kpit bulkhead to the stem was c.u.mbered 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 thras.h.i.+ng 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 c.o.c.kpit, 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 c.o.c.kpit. The tall mainsail slanted up into thick darkness, but it was no longer thras.h.i.+ng, 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 a.s.sistance.

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 hoa.r.s.e shout to Moran, Jimmy lowered himself from the bowsprit until he felt the wire bobstay under his feet.