CHAPTER XVITHE FIRST ICE
Before they hove to theSelache, daylight broke on a frothing sea, across which scudded wisps of smoke-adrift and thin showers of snow. With two little wet rags of canvas set the schooner lay almost head on to the big combers. Having little way upon her, she lurched over instead of ramming the waves, and though now and then one curled on board across her rail it was not often that there was much heavy water upon her slanted deck.
All around the narrow circle a leaden sky met the sea. It was bitterly cold, and the spray stung the skin like half-spent pellets from a gun. There was only one man, in turn, exposed to the weather, and he had little to do but brace himself against the savage buffeting of the wind as he clutched the wheel. TheSelache, for the most part, steered herself, lifting buoyantly while the froth came sluicing aft from her tilted bows, falling off a little with a vicious leeward roll when a comber bigger than usual smote her to weather, and coming up again streaming to meet the next. Sometimes she forged ahead in what is called at sea, by courtesy, a “smooth,” and all the time shroud and stay to weather gave out tumultuous harmonies, and the slack of every rope to leeward blew out in unyielding curves.
Three of the white men lay sleeping or smoking in the little cabin, which was partly raised above and partly sunk beneath the after-deck. It was a reasonably strong structure, but it worked, and sweated, as they sat at sea, and the heat of the stove had further opened up the seams in it.Moisture dripped from the beams overhead, moisture trickled up and down the slanting deck, there were great globules of water on the bulk-heading, and everything, including the men’s clothes and blankets, was wet. The men lay in their bunks from necessity, because it was a laborious matter to sit. They said very little since it was difficult to hear anything amid the cataclysm of elemental sound. It became at length almost a relief to turn out into inky darkness or misty daylight, dimmed by flying spray, to take a turn at the jarring wheel.
For three days the bad weather continued, and then, when the gale broke and a little pale sunshine streamed down on the tumbling sea, changing the gray combers to flashing white and green, the skipper gave her a double-reefed mainsail, part of the boom-foresail, and a jib or two, and thrashed her slowly back to the northward on the starboard tack. More than one of the men glanced over the taffrail longingly as the schooner gathered way. She was fast, and with a little driving and that breeze over her quarter she would bear them south toward warmth and ease at some two hundred miles a day, while the way they were going it would be a fight for every fathom with bitter, charging seas, and there lay ahead of them only cold and peril and toil incredible.
There are times at sea when human nature revolts from the strain that the overtaxed body must bear, the leaden weariness of worn-out limbs, and the subconscious effort to retain warmth and vitality in spite of the ceaseless lashing of the icy gale. Then, as aching muscles grow lax, the nervous tension becomes more insupportable, unless, indeed, utter weariness breeds indifference to the personal peril each time the decks are swept by a frothing flood, or a slippery spar must be clung to with frost-numbed and often bleeding hands.The men on theSelacheknew this, and it was to their credit that they obeyed when Dampier gave the word to put the helm up and trim the sheets over. Wyllard, however, stood a little apart with a hard-set face, and he looked forward over the plunging bows, for he was troubled by a sense of responsibility such as he had not felt since he had, one night several years before, asked for volunteers. He realized that an account of these men’s lives might be demanded from him.
It was a fortnight later, and they had twice made a perilous landing without finding any sign of life on or behind the hammered beach, when they ran into the first of the ice. The gray day was near its end. The long heave faintly twinkling here and there, ran sluggishly after them. When creeping through a belt of haze they came into sight of several blurrs of grayish white that swung with the dim, green swell. TheSelachewas slowly lurching over it with everything aloft to the topsails then, and Dampier glanced at the ice with a feeling of deep anxiety.
“Earlier than I expected,” he commented. “Anyway, it’s a sure thing there’s plenty more where that came from.”
“Big patch away to starboard!” cried a man in the foremast shrouds.
Dampier turned to Wyllard. “What are you going to do?”
“What’s most advisable?”
The skipper looked grave. “Well,” he said, “that’s quite simple. Get out of this, and head her south just as soon as we can, but I guess that’s not quite what you mean.”
“No,” admitted Wyllard. “I meant for the next few hours or so. In a general way, we’re still pushing on.”
“I’m not worrying much about pushing her through.That ice is light and scattered, and as she’s going it won’t hurt her much if she plugs some in the dark. It’s what we’re going to do the next two weeks that I’m not sure about. If there’s ice we mayn’t fetch the creek, where we’d figured on laying her up. It’s still most a hundred miles to the north of us. The other inlet I’d fixed on is way further south.”
This brought them back to the difficulty with which they had grappled at many a council. The men for whom they searched might have gone either north or south, or they might have gone inland, if, indeed, any of them survived.
“If we only knew how they had headed,” said Wyllard quietly. “Still, right or not, I’m for pushing on.”
Then Charly, who held the wheel, broke in.
“I guess it’s north,” he assented. “They’d have no use for fetching up among the Russians, and there’s nobody else until you get to Japan. No white men, anyway. Besides, from the Behring Sea to the Kuriles is quite a long way.”
“If you were dumped down ashore there, which way would you go?” Dampier asked.
“If I’d a wallet full of papers certifying me as a harmless traveler, it would be south just as hard as I could hit the trail. Guess I’d strike somebody out prospecting, or surveying, and they’d set me along to the Kuriles. Still, if I’d been sealing, I wouldn’t head that way. No, sir. That’s dead sure.”
There was a reason for this certainty, right or wrong, in the minds of the sealers. How many of the skins they brought home were obtained in open water where they could fish without molestation they alone knew; but they were regarded in certain quarters as poachers and outlaws, who deserved no mercy. They had their differences with the Americans who owned the Pribilofs. It was admittedthat the Americans had bought the islands, and might reasonably be considered to have some claim upon the seals which frequented them. The free-lances bore their execrations and reprisals more or less resignedly, though that did not prevent them from occasionally exchanging compliments with oar butts or sealing clubs. But the Muscovite was a grim, mysterious figure they feared and hated.
“Then you’d have tried up north?” Wyllard suggested.
“Sure,” answered the helmsman. “If I’d a boat and a rifle, and it was summer, I’d have pushed across for Alaska. You can eat birds and walrus, and a man might eat a fur-seal if he’d had nothing else for a week, though I’ve struck nothing that has more smell than the holluschickie blubber. If it was winter, I’d have tried the ice. The Huskies make out on it for weeks together, and quite a few of the steam whaler men have trailed an odd hundred or two miles over it one time or another. They hadn’t tents and dog-teams either.”
Wyllard’s face grew anxious. He had naturally considered both courses, and had decided that they were out of the question. Seas do not freeze up solid, and that three men should transport a boat, supposing that they had one, over leagues of ice appeared impossible. An attempt to cross the narrow sea, which is either wrapped in mist or swept by sudden gales, in any open craft would clearly result only in disaster, but, admitting that, he felt that, had he been in those men’s place, he would have headed north. There was one question which had all along remained unanswered, and that was how they had reached the coast from which they had sent their message.
“Anyway,” he said, after a long pause, “we’ll stand on, and run into the creek we’ve fixed on, if it’s necessary.”
Dusk had closed down on them, and it had grown perceptibly colder. The haze crystallized on the rigging, therail was white with rime, and the deck grew slippery, but they left everything on theSelacheto the topsails, and she crept on erratically through the darkness, avoiding the faint spectral glimmer of the scattered ice. The breeze abeam propelled her with gently leaning canvas at some four knots to the hour, and now and then Wyllard, who hung about the deck that night, fancied he could hear a thin, sharp crackle beneath the slowly lifting bows.
Next day the haze thickened, and there seemed to be more ice about, but the breeze was fresher, and there was, at least, no skin upon the ruffled sea. They took off the topsails, and proceeded cautiously, with two men with logger’s pikepoles forward, and another in the eyes of the foremast rigging. They struck nothing, fortunately, and when night came theSelachelay rolling in a heavy, portentous calm. Dampier and one or two of the men declared their certainty that there was ice near them, but, at least, they could not see it, though there was now no doubt about the crackling beneath the schooner’s side. It was an anxious night for most of the crew, but a breeze that drove the haze aside got up with the sun, and Dampier expected to reach the creek before darkness fell. He might have succeeded but for the glistening streak on the horizon, which presently crept in on them, and resolved itself into detached gray-white masses, with openings of various sizes in and out between them. The breeze was freshening, and theSelachewas going through it at some six knots, when Dampier came aft to Wyllard, who was standing at the wheel. There was a moderately wide opening in the floating barrier close ahead of him. The rest of the crew stood silent watching the skipper, for they were by this time more or less acquainted with Wyllard’s temperament.
“You can’t get through that,” said Dampier, pointing to the ice.
Wyllard looked at him sourly, and the white men, at least, understood what he was feeling. So far, he had had everything against him—calm, and fog, and sudden gale—and now, when he was almost within sight of the end of the first stage of his journey, they had met the ice.
“You’re sure of that?” he questioned.
Dampier smiled. “It would cost too much, or I’d let you try.” He called to the man perched high in the foremost shrouds, and the answer came down: “Packed right solid a couple of miles ahead.”
Wyllard lifted one hand, and let it suddenly fall again.
“Lee, oh! We’ll have her round,” he said, and spun the wheel.
The men breathed more easily as they jumped for the sheets, and with a great banging and thrashing of sailcloth the vessel shot up to windward, and turned as on a pivot. As the schooner gathered way on the other tack, the men glanced at Wyllard, for theSelache’sbows were pointing to the southeast again, and they felt that was not the way he was going.
Wyllard turned to Dampier with a gesture of impatience.
“Baulked again!” he said. “It would have been a relief to have rammed her in. With this breeze we’d have picked that creek up in the next six hours.”
“Sure!” replied Dampier, who glanced at the swirling wake.
“Then, if we can’t get through the ice we can work the schooner round. Stand by to flatten all sheets in, boys.”
They obeyed orders cheerfully, though they knew it meant a thrash to windward along the perilous edge of the ice. Soon the windlass was caked with glistening ice, and long spikes of it hung from her rail, while the slippery crystals gathered thick on deck. Lumps and floes of icedetached themselves from the parent mass, and sailed out to meet the vessel, crashing on one another, while it seemed to the men who watched him that Wyllard tried how closely he could shave them before he ran theSelacheoff with a vicious drag at the wheel. None of them, however, cared to utter a remonstrance.
They brought the schooner around when she had stretched out on the one tack a couple of miles, and, standing in again close-hauled, found the ice thicker than ever. Then she came around once more, and, until the early dusk fell, Wyllard stood at the jarring helm or high up in the forward shrouds.
“We can’t work along the edge in the dark,” he said to Dampier.
“Well,” answered the skipper dryly, “it wouldn’t be wise. We could stand on as she’s lying until half through the night, and then come round and pick up the ice again a little before sun-up.”
Wyllard made a sign of acquiescence. “Then,” he said, “don’t call me until you’re in sight of it. A day of this kind takes it out of one.”
He moved aft heavily toward the deck-house, and Dampier watched him with a smile of comprehension, for he was a man who had in his time made many fruitless efforts, and bravely faced defeat. After all, it is possible that when the final reckoning comes some failures will count.
For several hours theSelachestretched out close-hauled into what they supposed to be open water, and they certainly saw no ice. They hove her to, and when the wind fell light brought her round and crept back slowly upon the opposite tack. Wyllard had gone to sleep after his day of anxious work, and daylight was just breaking when he next went out on deck. There was scarcely a breath ofwind and the heavy calm seemed portentous and unnatural. The schooner lay lurching on a sluggish swell, with the frost-wool thick on her rigging, and a belt of haze ahead of her. The ice glimmered in the growing light, but in one or two places stretches of blue-gray water seemed to penetrate it, and Dampier, who strode aft when he saw Wyllard, said he believed that there must be an opening somewhere.
“By the thickness of it, that ice has formed some time, and as we’ve seen nothing but a skin it must have come from further north,” he added. “It gathered up under a point or in a bay most likely, until a shift of wind broke it out, and the stream or breeze sent it down this way. That seems to indicate that there can’t be a great deal of it, but a few days’ calm and frost would freeze it solid.”
“Well?” Wyllard returned impatiently.
“It lies between us and the inlet, and it’s quite clear that we can’t stay where we are. Once we got nipped, there’d probably be an end of her. We must get into that inlet at once or make for the other further south.”
Wyllard shook his head. “It all leads back to the same point. We must get through the ice. The one question is—how is it to be done?”
“With a working breeze I’d stand into the biggest opening, but as there’s none we’ll wait until it clears a little, and then send a boat in. The sun may bring the wind.”
They had breakfast while they waited, but the wind did not come, and it was several hours later when a pale coppery disc became visible and the haze grew thinner. Then they swung a boat out hastily, for it would not be very long before the light died away again. Two white men and an Indian dropped into the boat and they pulled across half a mile of sluggishly heaving water, crept up an opening, and presently vanished among the ice. Soonafterward the low sun went out, and wisps of ragged cloud crept up from the westward, while smears of vapor blurred the horizon, and the swell grew steeper. There was no wind at all, but blocks and canvas banged and thrashed furiously at every roll, until they lowered the mainsail and lashed its heavy boom to the big iron crutch astern. The boat remained invisible, but its crew had been given instructions to push on as far as possible if they found clear water, and Dampier, who did not seem uneasy about the men, paced up and down the deck while the afternoon wore away.
CHAPTER XVIIDEFEAT
A gray dimness was creeping in upon the schooner when a bitter breeze sprang tip from the westward, and Dampier bade the crew get the mainsail on to theSelache.
“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 the sailors. The white men had been conscious of a growing uneasiness about their comrades in the boat, and action of any sort was welcome. The breeze had freshened before they set the sail, and there were whitecaps on the water when theSelacheheaded for the ice, which had somewhat changed its formation, for big masses had become detached from it and were moving out into the water, while the open space had become perceptibly narrower. The light was now fading rapidly, and Wyllard took the wheel when Dampier sent forward the man who had held it.
“Get the cover off the second boat, and see everything clear for hoisting out,” commanded the skipper, and then called to Wyllard, “We’re close enough. You’d better heave her round.”
The schooner came around with a thrashing of canvas, stretched out seawards, and came back again with her deck sharply slanted and little puffs of spray blowing over her weather-rail, for there was no doubt that the breeze was freshening fast. Dampier now sent a man up into the foremast shrouds, and looked at Wyllard afterward.
“I’d heave a couple of reefs down if I wasn’t so anxiousabout 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 realized that Dampier was right as he glanced over the rail at the dimness that was creeping in on them. It was blowing almost fresh by this time, and theSelachewas driving very fast through the swell, which began 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. 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”—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 recognized, was necessary, though he would rather have had somebody by him and the rest of them ready to let the mainsheet run, inasmuch as 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 the boat emerge from the ice, and the men in her appeared to be pulling strenuously. They were, perhaps, half a mile off, and the schooner, heading for the ice, was sailing very fast. Wyllard lost sight of the boat 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. TheSelacheswung around, 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 main-boom over when she is running hard, and this is apt to result in disaster to her spars. So fast was theSelachetraveling that the sea piled up in big white waves beneath her quarter, and, cold as the day was, the sweat of tense effort dripped from Wyllard as he foresaw what he had to do. First of all, he must hold the schooner 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 up the schooner 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 blowing furiously and the schooner was greatly 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 down the gaff. 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 before, the desire to pick up the boat while there was a little light left became an obsession.
The swell was rapidly whitening and getting steeper.TheSelachehove herself out of it forward as she swung up with streaming bows. It seemed to Wyllard that he must overrun the boat before he noticed her, but at last he saw Dampier swing himself on to the rail. The skipper stood there clutching at a shroud, and presently swinging an arm, turned toward Wyllard.
“Eight 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 conscious only that he had to decide what he must do in the next few seconds. If he let theSelachecome 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 invain 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 theSelachelurched 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 lacerationin his scalp. Dampier, who noticed his chilliness, did not trouble about the wound. He stripped off the senseless man’s long boots, and, unshipping 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.
TheSelachewas 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, andpartly 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, 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 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 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 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 authoritywould 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 ashore 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 afraidof 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, theSelachewould 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 theSelachearrived, but when Dampier went ashore 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 wouldhave 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.
CHAPTER XVIIIA DELICATE ERRAND
There was a sharp frost outside, and the prairie was white with a thin sprinkle of snow, when a little party sat down to supper in the Hastings homestead, one Saturday evening. Hastings sat at the head of the table, Mrs. Hastings at the foot with her little daughters, and Agatha, Sproatly, and Winifred between them. Sproatly and Winifred had just driven over from the railroad settlement, as they did now and then, and that was why the meal, which was usually served early in the evening, had been delayed an hour or so. The two hired men, whom Mrs. Hastings had not kept waiting, had gone out to some task in the barn or stables.
Sproatly took a bundle of papers out of his pocket and laid them on the table. There had been a remarkable change in his appearance, for he now wore store clothes, and the skin coat he had taken off when he came in was a new one. It occurred to Mrs. Hastings that there was a certain significance in this, though Sproatly had changed his occupation some time before, and now drove about the prairie as an agent for certain makers of agricultural implements.
“I called for your mail and Gregory’s before we left,” he said. “I had to go around to see Hawtrey, which is partly what made us so late, though Winifred couldn’t get away as soon as she expected. They have floods of wheat coming in to the elevators and I understand that the milling people can’t take another bushel in.”
Mrs. Hastings glanced at Agatha, who understood whatthe look meant, for Sproatly had hitherto spoken of Winifred circumspectly as Miss Rawlinson.
Hastings took the papers which Agatha handed to him and laid them aside.
“We’ll let them wait until supper’s over. I don’t expect any news that’s particularly good,” he said. “The bottom’s apparently dropping out of the wheat market.”
“Mr. Hamilton can’t get cars enough, and we’ll have to shut down in another day or two unless they turn up,” remarked Winifred. “It’s much the same all along the line. The Winnipeg traffic people wired us that they haven’t an empty car in the yards. Why do you rush the grain in that way? It’s bound to break the market.”
Hastings smiled. “Well,” he explained, “a good many of us have bills to meet. For another thing, they’ve had a heavy crop in Manitoba, Dakota and Minnesota, and I suppose some folks have an idea they’ll get in first before the other people swamp the Eastern markets. I think they’re foolish. It’s a temporary scare. Prices will stiffen by and by.”
“That’s what Mr. Hamilton says, but I suppose the thing is natural. Men are very like sheep, aren’t they?”
Mr. Hastings laughed. “Well,” he admitted, “we are, in some respects. When prices break a little we generally rush to sell. One or two of my neighbors are holding on, and it’s hardly likely that very much of my wheat will be flung on to a falling market.”
“We have been getting a good deal from the Range.”
There was displeasure in Hastings’ face. “Gregory’s selling largely on Harry’s account?”
“They’ve been hauling wheat in to us for the last few weeks,” said Winifred.
Agatha noticed that Hastings glanced at his wife significantly, but Mrs. Hastings interposed and forbade anyfurther conversation on the subject until supper was over. After the table had been cleared Hastings opened his papers. The others sat expectantly silent, while he turned the pages over one after another.
“No,” he said, “there’s no news of Harry, and I’m afraid it’s scarcely possible that we’ll hear anything of him this winter.”
Agatha was conscious that Mrs. Hastings’ eyes were upon her, and she sat very still, though her heart was beating faster than usual. Hastings went on again:
“TheColonisthas a line or two about a barque from Alaska which put into Victoria short of stores. She was sent up to an A. C. C. factory, and had to clear out before she was ready. The ice, it seems, was closing in unusually early. A steam whaler at Portland reports the same thing, and from the news brought by a steamer from Japan all communication with Northeastern Asia is already cut off.”
No one spoke for a moment or two, and Agatha, leaning back in her chair, glanced around the room. There was not much furniture in it, but, though this was unusual on the prairie, door and double casements were guarded by heavy hangings. The big brass lamp overhead shed a cheerful light, and birch wood in the stove snapped and cracked noisily, and the stove-pipe, which was far too hot to touch, diffused a drowsy heat. One could lounge beside the fire contentedly, knowing that the stinging frost was drying the snow to dusty powder outside. The cozy room heightened the contrast that all recognized in thinking of Wyllard. Agatha pictured the little schooner bound fast in the Northern ice, and then two or three travel-worn men crouching in a tiny tent that was buffeted by an Arctic gale. She could see the poles bend, and the tricings strain.
After that, with a sudden transition, her thoughts went back to the early morning when Wyllard had driven away, and every detail of the scene rose up clearly in her mind. She saw him and the stolid Dampier sitting in the wagon, with nothing in their manner to suggest that they were setting out upon a perilous venture, and she felt his hand close tight upon her fingers, as it had done just before the vehicle jolted away from the homestead. She could once more see the wagon growing smaller and smaller on the white prairie, until it dipped behind the crest of a low hill, and the sinking beat of hoofs died away. Then, at least, she had realized that he had started on the first stage of a journey which might lead him through the ice-bound gates of the North to the rest that awaits the souls of sailors. She could not, however, imagine him shrinking from any ordeal. Gripping helm, or hauling in the sled traces, he would gaze with quiet eyes steadfastly ahead, even if he saw only the passage from this world to the next. Once more a curious thrill ran through her, and there was pride as well as regret in it. Presently she became conscious that Hastings was speaking.
“What took you around by the Range, Jim?” he asked.
“Collecting,” answered Sproatly. “I sold Gregory a couple of binders earlier in the season, but I couldn’t get a dollar out of him.” He laughed. “Of course, if it had been anybody else I’d have stayed until he handed over the money, but I couldn’t press Gregory too hard after quartering myself upon him as I did last winter, though I’m rather afraid my employers wouldn’t appreciate that kind of delicacy.”
Mrs. Hastings looked thoughtful. “Gregory should have been able to pay. He thrashed out a moderately good crop.”
“About two-thirds of what it should have been, and I’vereason for believing that he has been putting up a mortgage. Interest’s heavy. There’s another matter. I wonder if you’ve heard that he’s getting rid of two of Harry’s hands? I mean Pat and Tom Moran.”
“You’re sure of that?” Hastings asked sharply.
“Tom told me.”
Mrs. Hastings leaned forward suddenly in her chair. “Then,” she said, “I’m going to drive across on Monday, and have a few words with Gregory. Did Moran tell you that Harry had decided to keep the two of them on throughout the year?”
“He wasn’t very explicit, but he seemed to feel he had a grievance against Gregory. Of course, in a way, you can’t blame Gregory. He’s in charge, and it isn’t in him to carry out Harry’s policy. This fall in wheat is getting on his nerves, and in any case he’d probably have held his hand and cut down the crop next year.”
“I do blame him.” Mrs. Hastings turned to Agatha. “You will understand that in a general way there’s not much that can be done when the snow’s upon the ground, and as one result of it the hired man prefers to engage himself for the year. To secure himself from being turned adrift when harvest is over he frequently makes a concession in wages. Now I know Harry intended to keep those two men on, and Tom Moran, who has a little half-cleared ranch back somewhere in the bush of Ontario, came out here tempted by higher wages. I understand he had to raise a few dollars or give the place up, and he left his wife behind. Many of the smaller ranch men can’t live upon their holdings. Well, I’m going over on Monday to tell Gregory he has got to keep these two men, and you’re coming with me.”
Agatha made no reply. In the first place, she knew that if Mrs. Hastings had made any plan she would gainnothing by objecting, and in addition to this she was conscious of a certain desire to go. She felt that if Wyllard had let the men understand that he would not dismiss them, the promise, implied or explicit, must be redeemed. Wyllard would not have attempted to release himself from it—she was sure of that—and it appeared intolerable to her that another man should be permitted to do anything that would unfavorably reflect on him. Somewhat to her relief, Hastings started another topic.
“You have sold quite a few binders and harrows one way or another, haven’t you, Jim?” he asked.
Sproatly laughed. “I have,” he answered. “As I told the Company’s Western representative some time ago, a man who could sell patent medicine to the folks round here could do a good trade in anything. He admitted that my contention sounded reasonable, but I didn’t wear store clothes then, and he seemed very far from sure of me. Anyway, he gave me a show, and now I’ve got two or three complimentary letters from the Company. They’ve added a few dollars to my salary, and hint that it’s possible they may put me in charge of an implement store.”
“And you’re satisfied?”
“Well,” said Sproatly, with an air of reflection, “in some respects, I suppose I am. In others, the thing’s galling. You have to report who you’ve called upon, and, if you couldn’t do business, why they bought somebody else’s machines. If you can’t get a farmer to take you in you have to put up at a hotel. There’s no more camping in a birch bluff under your wagon. Besides, you have to wear store clothes.”
Hastings glanced at Winifred, and Agatha fancied that she understood what was in his mind.
“Some folks would sooner sleep in a hotel,” he remarked, with a twinkle in his eyes.
“Then,” declared Sproatly, “they don’t know very much. They’re the kind of men who’d spend an hour every morning putting their clothes on, and they haven’t found out that there’s no comfort in any garment until you’ve had to sew two or three flour bag patches on to it. Then think of the splendid freeness of the other way of living. You get your supper when you want it and just as you like it. No tea tastes as good as the kind with the wood smoke in it that you drink out of a blackened can. You can hear the little birch leaves and the grasses whispering about you when you lie down at night, and you drive on in the glorious freshness—just when it pleases you—every morning. Now the Company has the whole route and programme plotted out for me. Their clerks write me letters demanding most indelicately why I haven’t done this and that.”
Winifred looked at him disapprovingly. “Civilization,” she said, “implies responsibility. You can’t live just as you like without its being detrimental to the community.”
“Oh, yes,” returned Sproatly with a rueful gesture, “it implies no end of giving up. You have to fall into line, and that’s why I kept outside it just as long as I could. I don’t like standing in a rank, and,” he glanced down at his cloth, “I’ve an inborn objection to wearing uniform.”
Agatha laughed as she caught Hastings’ eye. She guessed that Sproatly would be sorry for his candor afterwards, but to some extent she understood what he was feeling. It was a revolt against cramping customs and conventionalities, and she partly sympathized with it, though she knew that such revolts are dangerous. Even in the West, those who cannot lead must march in column with the rank and file or bear the consequences of their futilemutiny. It is a hard truth that no man can live as he pleases.
“Restraint,” asserted Winifred, “is a wholesome thing, but it’s one most of the men I have met are singularly deficient in. That’s why they can’t be left alone, but must be driven, as they are, in companies. It’s their own fault if they now and then find it a little humiliating.”
There was a faint gleam in her eyes, at which Sproatly apparently took warning, for he said no more upon that subject, and they talked about other matters until he took his departure an hour or two later. It was the next afternoon when he appeared again and Mrs. Hastings smiled at Agatha as he and Winifred drove away together.
“Thirty miles is a long way to drive in the frost. I suppose you have noticed that she calls him Jim?” Mrs. Hastings commented. “Anyway, there’s a good deal of very genuine ability in that young man. He isn’t altogether wild.”
“His appearance rather suggested it when I first met him,” replied Agatha with a laugh. “Was it a pose?”
“No,” said Mrs. Hastings reflectively. “I think one could call it a reaction, and it’s probable that some very worthy people in the Old Country are to blame for it. Sproatly is not the only young man who has suffered from having too many rules and conventions crammed down his throat. In fact, they’re rather plentiful.”
Agatha said nothing further, for the little girls appeared just then, and it was not until the next afternoon that she and Mrs. Hastings were again alone together. Then as they drove across the prairie the older woman spoke of the business they had in hand.
“Gregory must keep those men,” she said. “There’s no doubt that Harry meant to do it, and it would be horribly unfair to turn them loose now when there is absolutely nothing going on. Besides, Tom Moran is a man I’mspecially sorry for. As I told you, he left a young wife and a very little child behind him when he came out here.”
“One would wonder why he did it,” responded Agatha.
“He had to. There seems to be a notion in the Old Country that we earn our money easily, but it’s very wrong. We’ll take that man’s case as an example. He has a little, desolate holding up in the bush of Ontario, a hole chopped out of the forest and studded all over with sawn-off fir-stumps. On it is a little two-roomed log shack. In all probability there isn’t a settlement within two or three leagues of the spot. Now, as a rule, a place of that kind won’t produce enough to keep a man for several years after he has partially cleared it, and unless he can earn something in the meanwhile he must give it up. Moran, it seems, got heavily into debt with the nearest storekeeper, and had to choose between selling the place or coming out here where wages are higher. Well, you can probably imagine what it must be to the woman who stayed behind in the desolate bush, seeing nobody for weeks together, though I’ve no doubt that she’d bear it uncomplainingly believing that her husband would come back with enough to clear the debt.”
Agatha could imagine the state of affairs in the little home, and a certain indignation against Gregory crept into her heart. She had once liked to think of him as pitiful and chivalrous, and now, it seemed, he was quite willing that this woman should make her sacrifice in vain.
“But why have you taken the trouble to impress this on—me?” she asked.
Mrs. Hastings smiled. “I want you to plead that woman’s cause. Gregory may do what you ask him gracefully. That would be much the nicest way out of it.”
“The nicest way?”
“Yes,” answered Mrs. Hastings, “there is another one. Gregory is going to keep Tom Moran, anyway. Harry hasone or two friends in this neighborhood who feel it more or less of an obligation on them to maintain his credit.”
Agatha felt the blood rise to her face. It was an unpleasant thing to admit, but she fancied that Gregory might yield to judicious pressure when he would not be influenced by either compassion or a sense of equity. It flashed upon her that had Mrs. Hastings believed that she still retained any tenderness for the man, the story of Moran would not have been told to her. The whole situation was horribly embarrassing, but Agatha had courage in her.
“Well,” she promised simply, “I will speak to him.”
They said nothing more until they approached the Range, and as they drove by the outbuildings Agatha glanced about her curiously. It occurred to her that the homestead did not look quite the same as it appeared when Wyllard was there. A wagon without one wheel stood near the straw pile. A door of the barn hung awkwardly open in a manner which suggested that it needed mending, and the snow had blown inside the building. In the side of one sod and pole structure there was a gap which should have been repaired. Several other things suggested slackness and indifference. She saw Mrs. Hastings frown.
“There is a change in the place already,” said her friend. They alighted in another minute or two, and when they entered the house the gray-haired Swedish woman greeted them moodily. She seemed to notice the glance Mrs. Hastings cast around her, and her manner became deprecatory.
“I can’t keep things straight now. It is not the same,” she complained.
Mrs. Hastings asked if Hawtrey was in, and hearing that he was, turned to Agatha. “Go along and talk to him. I’ve something to say to Mrs. Nansen,” she said.