The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThrice ArmedThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Thrice ArmedAuthor: Harold BindlossRelease date: February 1, 2012 [eBook #38747]Most recently updated: January 8, 2021Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Steven desJardins and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THRICE ARMED ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Thrice ArmedAuthor: Harold BindlossRelease date: February 1, 2012 [eBook #38747]Most recently updated: January 8, 2021Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Steven desJardins and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
Title: Thrice Armed
Author: Harold Bindloss
Author: Harold Bindloss
Release date: February 1, 2012 [eBook #38747]Most recently updated: January 8, 2021
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Steven desJardins and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THRICE ARMED ***
BYHAROLD BINDLOSS
Author of "Winston of the Prairie," "Delilah of the Snows," "By Right of Purchase," "Lorimer of the Northwest," etc.
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NEW YORKFREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANYPUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1908, byFREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
It was with somewhat mixed feelings, and a curious little smile in his eyes, that Jim Wheelock stood with a brown hand on theTyee's wheel as the deep-loaded schooner slid out through Vancouver Narrows before a fresh easterly breeze. Dim heights of snow rose faintly white against the creeping dusk above her starboard hand, and the busy British Columbian city, girt with mazy wires and towering telegraph poles, was fading slowly amidst the great black pines astern. An aromatic smell of burning followed the schooner, and from the levels at the head of the Inlet a long gray smear blew out across the water. A fire which had, as not infrequently happens, passed the bounds of somebody's clearing was eating its way into that part of the great coniferous forest that rolls north from Oregon to Alaska along the wet seaboard of the Pacific Slope.
The schooner was making her six knots, with mainboom well out on her quarter and broad wisps of froth washing off beneath her bows, slanted until her leewardscuppers were close above the sliding foam. Wheelock stood right aft, with his shoulders just above the roof of the little deckhouse, and, foreshortened as the vessel was, she seemed from that point of view a mere patch of scarred and somewhat uncleanly deck surmounted by a towering mass of sail. Two partly seen figures were busy bending on a gaff-topsail about the foot of her foremast, and Wheelock turned as one of them came slouching aft when the sail had been sent aloft. The man wore dungaree and jean, with a dilapidated oilskin coat over them, for the wind was keen. He appeared to be at least fifty years of age. Leaning against the rail, he grinned at Wheelock confidentially.
"She'll make a short trip of it if this breeze holds," he said. "I guess you find things kind of different from what they were in the mail-boats?"
Jim Wheelock nodded as he pulled up a spoke of his wheel, for it was that difference that had brought the smile to his eyes. It was several years now since he had touched a vessel's wheel, or done more than raise a directing hand to the trimly uniformed quartermaster who controlled the big liner's steering engine. He was twenty-eight years of age, and held an extra-master's certificate, and he had just completed the year's training in a big British warship which gave him his commission as a lieutenant R.N.R. It was certainly a distinct change to figure as supernumerary on board the Canadian coasting schoonerTyee, but he did not resent the fact that it was the grizzled, hard-faced man leaning on the rail beside him who had brought him there.
"Aren't you going to get the main gaff-topsail on toher? We'll carry smooth water with us 'most across the Straits," he said.
This was not to the purpose, as both of them felt, but it gave the other man the opening for which he had been looking.
"No," he replied, "I guess not. We'll feel the wind fresher when she draws out from the land, and there's a streak of dry rot in her mainmast round the partners. That stick was sound right through when we put it into her, but it has stood the wind and weather quite a while, and I guess it's getting shaky, like its owner."
Now, the redwood logs hewn in the British Columbian forest as a rule make excellent masts, but they naturally deteriorate with time, and in some of them there is hidden a latent cause of trouble which now and then leads to premature decay. Jimmy was aware of this, and fancied that he knew why his companion had reminded him of it. It was scarcely two hours since he had arrived on board theTyee. He had made a long journey to join her, because his father's kinsman Prescott, her mate, had sent for him; and now, though he almost shrank from asking for the information, there were points on which it was necessary that the latter should enlighten him. He leaned on his wheel in silence a minute or two and the smile died out of his eyes. Prescott regarded him steadily.
Jim Wheelock, who hitherto had taken life lightly, could bear inspection, for he was a personable man, as more than one of the young women who traveled in the big liner of which he had been mate had decided, and he had seldom experienced much difficulty in finding a pretty partner at any of the dances given to the warship's officers. He had whimsical blue eyes, and, though he was Colonial-born, a face of the fair, clean-skinned English type, which had in it an occasional suggestion of latent force. He had a well-proportioned frame, and his life in the mail-boats, and the R.N.R. training, had set their stamp on him. Just then he was attired incongruously in an old skin-cap, battered gum-boots which reached to his knees, trousers showing signs of wear, and a steamboat mate's jacket with gilt buttons on it, in much the same condition; but, in spite of that, he did not appear the kind of man one would have expected to come upon steering a coasting schooner.
"What do you think about my father, Bob?" he asked.
"What I said in the letter," the other man replied. "I guess you ought to understand it, now you've seen him. Tom's going to looard fast, 'most as fast"—and he seemed to search for a metaphor—"as a center-boarder when her board won't come down. It kind of struck me it was 'bout time you came home and looked after things and him. That's why I wrote you. He'd have never done it, anyway."
Jim Wheelock knew this was true. Prescott's letter, which had come to hand at Portsmouth just after he had finished his navy training, had somewhat startled him, and, as the result of it, he had forthwith started for Vancouver, traveling second-class and by Colonist car, as one does not gain very much financially by serving in the R.N.R. On arriving there he had been further startled by the change in his father whom he had last seen several years earlier when Tom Wheelock was, apparently, at least, beyond the reach of adversity as the owner of several small coasting vessels, one of which he insisted on sailing personally, though this had not seemed needful at the time. It was evident to Jimmy that he had been going to leeward very fast in several ways since then.
"Yes," he said, "that is a sure thing. When did the change begin? I mean, when did things first go wrong with him?"
"When he lost theFish-hawk—that was 'most four years ago. Anyway, that was when I began to notice it. Then the cannery people put on their steamboat, and he couldn't keep theEaglegoing without their trade. She lay ashore in a bad berth with a big load of Wellington coal in her, and it cost him about a thousand dollars before she was fit for sea again. Things were slack that season, and he gave Merril a bond for the money. I guess that made the real trouble. Merril's a mighty hard man, and he has been putting the screw on him."
Jim Wheelock looked thoughtful. "A thousand dollars isn't such a great deal of money, after all. The old man seemed to have plenty of it when I left home."
"Well," said Prescott dryly, "it's quite certain he hasn't got it now, and I've more than a notion that there's a big bond on theTyee. Why did he bring your sister Ellen back from Toronto?"
Jim Wheelock did not know. He had, in fact, once or twice asked himself the same question without finding an answer. His sister Eleanor, who was an ambitious and capable young woman, was now earning a pittance by teaching at a ranch near New Westminster; but she had never given him any reason in her letters forabandoning the studies she had gone East to pursue in Toronto.
"Anyway," said Prescott, "it's quite clear to me that your father needs a man with sense and snap to stand right behind him and see that he worries out of Merril's clutches. I don't know whether you can do it—I can't—I'm no use at business. Tom and I were always honest. Then, supposing you can do that, you're 'bout half-way through with the thing."
"Only half-way?"
"'Bout that. Tom's been drifting to looard. You want to brace him sharp up on the wind again."
He broke off somewhat abruptly, for the scuttle slide in the deckhouse roof was flung back, and a man below lifted his head above it.
"Come right down and get your supper, Jimmy. Bob will take your wheel," he said.
Jimmy left the helm to Prescott, and with an effort he braced himself for the interview before him as he descended to the little stuffy cabin. It was dimly lighted by an oil-lamp that creaked as it swung, though theTyeewas ploughing her way westward steadily as yet. A little stove made it almost intolerably hot, and the swirl of brine beneath the lee quarter filled it with a sound that was like the rattle of sliding gravel. Jimmy sat down, and ate the pork, potatoes, fresh bread, and desiccated apples set before him, which he surmised might be considered somewhat of a banquet on board theTyee, and then he took out his pipe and turned toward his father as he filled his pannikin again with strong green tea. He had arrived in Vancouver only that afternoon, and they hadhad no time for conversation in the hurry of getting to sea.
"Take some whisky in it?" asked Tom Wheelock. "It's not much of a supper after what you've been used to on board the liners."
"No, thanks," said Jimmy. "I'm glad I didn't miss you."
"Got your wire," said Wheelock, who helped himself liberally to the whisky. "We weren't through with the loading until yesterday, and, though the folks want those sawmill fixings bad, I figured we could wait another twenty-four hours. It's good to see you sitting there; but I don't know yet what brought you over. It's quite a long way."
Jimmy spent some time in filling his pipe. He was a truthful person, and Prescott, who wrote the letter, had pledged him to secrecy; then, too, he was by no means certain that his father would appreciate what either of them had done, or would consider it in any way necessary. He also had scarcely got used to the change in his circumstances and surroundings, and did not feel quite at ease. On the last liner he sailed in, the officers dined in the saloon, and, though the battleship's wardroom was less luxurious, it was, at least, very different from theTyee's quarter-cabin. Tin pannikins and plates of indurated ware lay on a soiled, uncovered table; a grimy brown blanket from the skipper's bunk trailed down across the locker that served as a settee; and the fish-oil lamp smelt horribly. Then he glanced at his father, who sat silent, sipping his tea, which was freely laced with whisky.
Tom Wheelock was by no means dressed as neatly asmost of the Vancouver wharf-hands, and he looked like a man who had lost heart, and pride as well. He was gaunt and big-boned, with a seaman's weather-darkened face, but there was weariness and something that suggested vacancy in its expression. He and Jimmy had the same blue eyes, and they were kindly and honest in the case of each; but Tom Wheelock's were a trifle watery, and there was a certain bagginess under them, while his mouth was slack. In fact, the man, as his son recognized, appeared to have sunk into a state of limpness that was mental as well as physical.
"Well," said Jimmy, with a little laugh, "I don't quite know. There were, you see, several reasons. To begin with, I had to come out of the mail-boat for my year's training, and when that was over there were a good many men on the Company's list to be worked off before they wanted me again. Trade is slack over there, and it seemed wiser to await my turn. After all, it doesn't cost so much to come across second-class and Colonist; and I guessed you would be glad to see me."
"So I am;" and there was no doubt that Wheelock meant it. "I've been wanting you quite a while, Jimmy. Things aren't going well with me. Take some whisky?"
It was evident to Jimmy that his father already had taken as much as was good for most men; and he did not often shrink from a responsibility, that is, when he recognized it as such, which is now and then a little difficult when one is young.
"Well," he said, "this time I guess I will."
He took the bottle, and, after helping himself sparingly, contrived to slip it out of sight on the locker.
"How's Eleanor?" he asked.
"Quite well; but though she has her mother's grit, life's hard on the girl. Ellen could have done 'most anything if she'd got her diplomas, or whatever they are, and I had figured I'd do something for one of my children when I sent her back East. It was your mother's brother—the brains come from that side of the family—did everything for you. A kind of pity you and he quarreled, Jimmy!"
Jimmy smiled drily as he remembered the year he had spent in Winnipeg with the grim business man before the call of the sea that he was born to listen to grew irresistible and the rupture came. Young as he was then, he had proved himself equal in strength of purpose to the hard old man, and had gone to sea in an English ship. It cost his father fifty pounds for his outfit and premium, and that was all that Tom Wheelock had done for him. He had made his own way into the steamers, and the extra-master certificate and the commission in the R.N.R. he owed to himself. Now it was evident that he must renounce all that they might bring him—at least, for a while.
"I don't think we ever would have hit it off together; and I can't help a fancy that, after all, he didn't blame me very much for taking my own way in spite of him," he said. "Still, it is a pity Eleanor had to come back. I suppose keeping her in Toronto was out of the question?"
Wheelock's eyes seemed to grow a trifle bloodshot, and his voice sank to a hoarser note. "Quite. I might have done it but for the bond I gave Merril when theEaglewent ashore. It wasn't that big a one, but hefixed up quite a lot of things I never figured on. I was to insure to full value, and have her repaired whenever his surveyor considered she wanted it. Twice the man ran me up a big unnecessary bill, and I had to go to Merril for the money. Now the boat's his, and there's a bond on theTyee. When the old man goes under, you'll remember who it was squeezed the life out of him, Jimmy. Say, where d'you put that whisky?"
"I'm not quite through with it yet;" and Jimmy, who did not pass it to him, smiled reassuringly. "Anyway, I wouldn't worry too much about Merril. I've a few dollars laid by, and I'm going to stay right here and look after you. Bob Prescott tells me the Siwash wants to go ashore, and that makes a berth for me. It's scarcely likely the Company will want me for three months or more."
The old man looked at him with a gleam of comprehension in his watery eyes. "Jimmy," he said, "you have been a good son—and it wasn't quite my fault I never did anything for you. Your mother was often ailing, and when I sent her East twice to the specialists the freights I was getting would scarcely foot the bill. Oh, yes, things were generally tight with me. Now they're tight again; but when Merril wants my blood you've come back to see it out with me."
He made a gesture of weariness. "Well, I guess I'll turn in. I've been trailing round the city most of the day after a man who owes me forty dollars—and I'm 'way from being as young as I used to be."
He climbed somewhat stiffly into his bunk, and Jimmy went up on deck. It was dark now, and theTyee, leaning down until the foot of her lee bulwarkswas almost in the foam, swept through the dark water with a leisurely dip and swing. A dim star or two hung over her mastheads, and the peak of the big gaff-topsail swung athwart them a little blacker than the night; but there was no shimmer of light on all the water, and the schooner swung out to westward, vague and shadowy, with one blurred shape gripping her straining wheel. It reminded Jimmy of the sailing-ship days when he had set his teeth and borne what came to him—wet and cold, utter weariness, want of sleep, purposeless exactions, and brutal hazing. Those black days had gone. He had lived through them, and had been about to reap his reward when the summons had come and he had gone back West to his duty. The broken-down man in the little cabin needed him, as Jimmy, who tried not to admit the greatness of the change in him, realized. Then he turned as Prescott spoke to him from the wheel.
"Now you've had a talk to him, I guess you'll understand why I sent for you," he said. "You've got to take hold and straighten things. Tom's been letting go fast."
Jimmy Wheelock said nothing, but he knew that in the meanwhile he must put his career aside; and once more he set his lips and braced himself to face the task before him as he had done often in the sailing-ship days.
Two days had slipped away since Jimmy joined theTyee, when, with her dew-wet canvas slatting at every roll, she crept out from the narrow waters into the Pacific. Astern of her the Olympians towered high above the forests of Washington, a great serrated ridge of frosted silver that cut coldly white against the blue of the morning sky. To starboard the shore of Vancouver Island rose, a faint blur of misty pines, and ahead the sea was dimmed by drifting vapors out of which the long swell swung glassily. At times a wandering zephyr crisped it with a darker smear, and theTyeecrawled ahead a little. Then she stopped again, heaving her bows high out of the oily sea, while everything in her banged and rattled.
There was nothing that any one on board her could do but wait for the breeze and wonder whether it would come from the right direction. Jimmy sat on the deckhouse with his pipe in his hand, and Tom Wheelock, whose face looked careworn in the early light and showed pasty gray patches amidst its bronze, glanced westward a trifle anxiously as he held the jerking wheel.
"It's a kind of pity we lost that breeze," he said."The people up yonder want those sawmill fixings, and with the wind from the east we'd 'most have fetched the Inlet to-night. There was talk of somebody putting a steamboat on, but the mill's a small one, and they figured they'd give me a show as long as I could keep them going. I've got to do it. There's a living in the contract."
Then his face hardened suddenly, and he sighed. "That is, there would have been if Merril hadn't got his grip on me. That man wants everything."
He appeared about to say something further, but just then Prescott flung the scuttle slide back, and a smell of coffee and frizzling pork flowed out of it.
"If you want your breakfast, Tom, I guess you'd better get it," he said, and lumbered round the deckhouse toward the wheel.
Wheelock went below, and Jimmy, who seemed to forget that he had meant to light his pipe, glanced thoughtfully at Prescott.
"Who is this Merril, Bob?" he asked.
Prescott made a vague gesture. "I guess he's everything. He has a finger in most of what goes on in this Province, and feels round with it for the money. Calls himself general broker and ship-store dealer; but he has money in everything, from bush ranches to steamboats."
"You mean he holds stock in them?"
"No," said Prescott, "I guess I don't. I'm not smart at business, and Tom isn't either, or he'd never have let Merril get his claws on him; but it's quite plain to me that stocks don't count along with mortgages and bonds. When you buy stock you take your chances,and quite often that's 'bout all; but when you hold a bond at a big interest you usually get the ship or mill. Anyway, that's how Merril fixes it."
Jimmy lighted his pipe, but he looked more thoughtful than ever, as, in fact, he was. Hitherto, he had taken life lightly, for, after all, wet and cold, screaming gale and stinging spray, are things one gets used to and faces unconcernedly; but Jimmy could recognize a responsibility, and he realized that there was now to be a change. Tom Wheelock was growing prematurely old and shaky, and it was, it seemed, his son's part to free him from the load of debt that was crushing him, if this by any means could be done; if not, at least to share it with him. He feared it would be the latter. Hitherto he had waged only the clean, primitive strife with the restless sea; but he did not shrink from the prospect of the meaner and more arduous conflict with the wiles of man and the forces of capital, or consider that in renouncing his career he was doing a commendable thing. He was by no means brilliant intellectually, though he had a certain shrewdness and a ready wit; and it only occurred to him that the course he had decided on was the obvious one. He did not even think it worth while to mention that he had done so, which indeed would have been unnecessary, since Prescott seemed to take it for granted.
"I believe you had the wind from the east for several days," he said. "Why didn't you run across before?"
"Well," replied Prescott reflectively, "we might have done so, but Tom didn't seem greatly stuck on trying it. Took time over his loading when he got your wire.Perhaps he didn't want to leave you hanging round Vancouver until we got back again."
Jimmy said nothing—he had partly expected this; and while he smoked his second pipe, the vapors were rolled apart, and the breeze came down on them. Unfortunately it came from the northwest, which, as the sawmill they were bound for stood at the head of a deep inlet on the west coast of Vancouver Island, was ahead of them; so for a while they let her stretch out into the Pacific, close-hauled upon the starboard tack.
TheTyeewas comparatively fast, and, under all the sail they could pile on to her, excepting the main gaff-topsail, she drove along with a wide curl of foam under her lee bow and the froth lapping high and white on her side. Then by degrees the long roll of the Pacific heaved itself up into steep, blue-sided seas with tops of incandescent whiteness, and as she lurched over them the spray whirled in filmy clouds from her plunging bows. Still the breeze freshened, and by noon they hove her to with jibs aback while they hauled two reefs down in her mainsail, and it became necessary for somebody to crawl out to the end of its tilting boom, which stretched a good fathom beyond her stern. Prescott was a little too old for that work; Tom Wheelock held the wheel; and the Siwash deck-hand was busy forward. Jimmy laughed as he swung himself up to the footrope.
"It's several years since I've done anything of this kind, but I dare say I can tie those after-points in," he said.
He clawed his way out, and, as he hung with waist across the spar and both hands busy while theTyee,flinging the spray all over her, plunged upon the long, foam-tipped roll, a big Empress liner came up from the eastward, white and majestic. She drove close by the schooner with a slow and stately dip and swing, and Jimmy Wheelock, clinging to theTyee's reef-points, smiled somewhat curiously as he glanced up at her. Her tall side rose above him like a wall, and he saw the cluster of saloon passengers beneath the tier of deckhouses move toward the rail to gaze down upon the little dingy vessel, and the two trim officers high above them in the sunshine on the slanting bridge. That was his world—one in which steam did the hard work, and man merely pressed the telegraph handle or laid a finger on a spoke of the little steering wheel; but it was a world on which he had turned his back, and there was nothing to be gained by repining.
He broke two of his nails before he finished his task and dropped from the footrope to theTyee's deck, and the liner had sunk to a gleaming white blur and a smoke-trail on the rim of the sea before they had reefed the foresail and once more got way on her. Then Prescott grinned at Jimmy as he glanced toward the fading smear of vapor.
"A head-wind's quite a little matter to that boat," he said. "I guess you'd feel more at home on board of her?"
Jimmy laughed good-humoredly. "Perhaps I would, but after all I don't know that it counts for very much."
They came round some hours later, and, heading her in for the land on the other tack, found how little they had made to windward, whereupon there followeda consultation. Prescott was for running back and coming to an anchor in smooth water to wait for a shift of wind, but Wheelock would go on. He blinked at the white sea to windward with watery eyes, while theTyee, putting her bows in, flung the spray all over her; but there was a certain grimness in Tom Wheelock's eyes, for, if he was not smart at business, he was at least a resolute seaman.
"Those sawmill people want their fixings, and if we're to hold on to their contract I guess they've got to have them," he said. "She should thrash down to the Inlet by to-morrow night. I figure she'd go along a little easier without her staysail."
They hauled it down; but theTyee, being loaded deep with heavy machinery, was not appreciably drier afterward, and by the time the angry, saffron sunset faded off the foam-crested sea, she put her bows in somewhat frequently. Then there was a thud as she charged a big comber, and the frothy cataract that seethed in over her weather rail swirled aft a foot deep, while the spray blew all over her. Jimmy, buttoned to the throat in oilskins, stood at her wheel dripping, through four hours of darkness; and then, crawling down into the little cabin, which was intolerably foul, flung himself into his bunk and incontinently fell asleep, with the thud and swish of falling water going on above him. When he awakened, his first proceeding was to grope for the button that would summon a steward boy to bring him his morning coffee, but as he could not find it he looked around and saw his wet oilskins, which had shaken off the hook, sliding amidst the water up and down theTyee's cabin floor. Then he remembered suddenly, and, dropping from his bunk, put on the oilskins and went up on deck.
A sheet of spray temporarily blinded him as he crawled out of the scuttle, and then there was little to be seen but a haze of it flying athwart a gray sea lined by frothy ridges and smears of low-driving cloud. TheTyee's slanted mastheads seemed to rake through the latter, and she was wet everywhere; but she was still hammering to windward with bows that swung up streaming over the long seas. On the one hand, a dingy smear, that might have been a point with pines on it, lifted itself out of the grayness, and Tom Wheelock pointed to it as he swayed with his wheel. His wet face was almost gray, and Jimmy could see the suggestive bagginess under his eyes.
"I guess we should fetch the Inlet by dark if it doesn't harden any more; but we'll have another reef down now you're up," he said.
They got the reef in with some difficulty, for all of them were needed to haul the leech-earing down; and, because the Siwash hand was a better boatman than sailor, Jimmy went out to the end of the boom again to tie the after-points. When he came back theTyeeproceeded a little more dryly, with the big gray seas that were topped with livid froth and had deep hollows between them rolling up in long succession to meet her. She went through some of them, for the sawmill machinery was a dead-weight in her, and a white cataract foamed across her forward. When she plunged into one that was larger than usual, Prescott, who now stood knee deep at her wheel, shook his head.
"Tom didn't ought to expect it of her," he said. "Hewouldn't have held her at it if he hadn't been mighty afraid of losing that contract."
Jimmy made no answer. He understood by this time how his father was circumstanced, and had discovered already that the man who stands between the devil and the deep sea cannot afford to be particular. Merril, who held a bond on theTyee, might, it seemed, very well stand for the devil.
They thrashed her to windward most of that day. The sea got worse, and there was not a dry stitch on any of them; but just at sunset the clouds were rent apart, and Wheelock, who was standing on the deckhouse, pointed to something that loomed amidst the vapor as they reeled inshore.
"The head!" he said. "The Inlet's about two miles beyond it."
Prescott glanced at Jimmy as he pulled up the wheel. "With a blame ugly tide-rip setting dead to windward across the mouth of it!"
Jimmy said nothing, though naturally he was aware that when the ocean streams run against the breeze they are very apt to pile up whatever sea there is into curling, hollow-crested combers. A craft of theTyee's size will often snugly ride out a hard gale—that is, if she is hove-to under a strip or two of canvas; but to drive her to windward when she must meet the onslaught of the seas, and go through them, is an altogether different matter, and it seemed to him that she was already doing as much as any one reasonably could expect from her. Then his father came down from the deckhouse.
"Well," he said, "she has got to go through it;those people want their fixings. I guess we'll heave her round."
The words were simple, but they implied a good deal. Wheelock could have heaved his schooner to, or could have run away for shelter in another inlet down the coast; but, as he had said, the sawmill people wanted their machinery, and when he must choose between it and the devil he would sooner face his ancient enemy the sea. Its attack was honest and open, and the man with nerve enough might meet and withstand the charge of its seething combers. Quickness of hand and rude, primitive valor counted here, but it was otherwise in the insidious conflict with the human schemer. Tom Wheelock's eyes were watery, but there was a snap in them as he signed to Prescott and laid his hands on the wheel.
"Get forward, Jimmy, and tend your head-sheets," he said. "We'll have her round."
She came round, but none too readily; and as they stretched out seaward Jimmy had a brief vision of great rocks and hollows filled with pines that opened out and closed on one another. Then as he glanced to windward he saw the seatops heave athwart a blaze of crimson and saffron low down under ragged wisps of cloud.
They brought her round again presently, and she reeled in shoreward to weather the second head on that side of the Inlet, with her little three-reefed mainsail wet to its peak and the two jibs above her bowsprit streaming at every plunge, while the big combers in the tideway smote her weather-bow and poured out to leeward in long wisps of brine. Still, she was slowly opening up the sheltered Inlet, and it was only a question whethershe would go clear enough of the head on that tack. It was, however, a somewhat momentous question, for it seemed to Jimmy very doubtful whether she would come round with them again.
Tom Wheelock stayed at the helm, and the head that had grown dim again lifted its vast rock wall higher and higher out of the whirling vapors that streamed amid the shadowy pines. It grew very close to them, but theTyeewas half-buried forward most of the time, and the break beyond the crag, where smooth water lay, had crept a little forward instead of aft from under her lee-bow when a comber higher than the rest hove itself up to weather, and fell upon her. It foamed across her forward, and when it went seething aft as she swung her bows up there was a crash, and Tom Wheelock loosed the spinning wheel.
Jimmy saw him strike the bulwark and Prescott clutch him; but, knowing that the plunge would probably make an end of the schooner if she rammed another sea, he sprang to the wheel. She was coming up when he seized it, which almost threw him over it, and there was a bang like a rifle-shot as one of her streaming jibs was blown away. The veins swelled on his forehead as he forced the helm up, and as theTyeefell off on her course again he had a momentary vision of a great wall of rock that seemed to be creeping up on them. He also saw a man lying in the water that sluiced about her deck, while another who strove to hold him with one hand clung to a stanchion. Then, while he set his teeth and braced himself against the drag of the wheel, he could discern nothing but a haze of flyingbrine, and could feel the hard-pressed vessel strain and tremble under him.
He did not know how long the tension lasted, nor for a minute or two did he see much of Prescott and his father; but at last the rocks seemed to slide away, and theTyeedrove through the furious turmoil in the mouth of the Inlet. Then the wind fell suddenly, and, rising upright, the dripping schooner slid forward beneath long ranks of misty pines. He left the helm to the Siwash, and Prescott and he between them got Wheelock down into the little cabin. He gasped when they had put him into his bunk and poured a liberal measure of raw whisky down his throat.
"Well," he said faintly, "I guess we've saved that contract. You weathered the head?"
"We did," answered Prescott. "Jimmy grabbed the wheel in time. Seems to me we had 'bout twenty fathoms to spare. Feel as if you'd broke anything inside you?"
Tom Wheelock moved himself a little, and groaned. "No," he said, "I guess I haven't; but it hurt me considerably when I washed up against the rail. Mightn't have felt it one time, but I'm getting old and shaky. Anyway, you can light out and get your anchor clear. I'm feeling kind of dizzy."
Prescott went up the ladder, but Jimmy stayed where he was, and did not go up on deck until his father's eyes closed. It was quite dark, and he could see only vague, shadowy mountains black against the sky. Presently, a long Siwash canoe with several men paddling hard on board her came sliding down the dim lane of water thatseemed to wind into the heart of the forests. She stopped alongside, and a man climbed on board.
"We've been expecting you the last two days, and I'm glad you got in now," he said. "Merril, who talks of running a steamer up this coast, has been worrying our Vancouver people to make him an offer for their carrying. It's quite likely they'd have made a deal with him if you'd kept us waiting."
They made the canoe fast, and theTyeeslowly crept on beneath the shadowy mountains and the misty pines, for only a faint air of wind disturbed the deep stillness here. Jim Wheelock, however, noticed very little as he leaned on the rail with a vindictive hatred in his heart for the man who, it seemed, was bent upon his father's ruin.
They had landed the machinery, and partly loaded theTyeewith dressed lumber, when Jimmy Wheelock, who was aching in every limb after a day's arduous toil, sat, cigar in hand, in the office of the sawmill manager. It was singularly untidy as well as unclean, for few men in that country have time to consider their comfort. Odd bottles of engine-oil and samples of belting lay amid the litter of sketches and specifications, while the plates and provision-cans on the table suggested that the manager and his guest had just finished their evening meal. The window was open wide, and a clean smell of freshly cut cedar drifted in with the aromatic fragrance of the pines. From where he sat Wheelock could see them rolling up the steep hillside with the white mists streaming athwart them, and the narrow lane of clear, green water winding past their feet. There was deep stillness among them, for the mill was silent at last, and it was only now and then that a voice rose faintly from the little wooden settlement which straggled up the riverside.
The manager, dressed in a store jacket and trousers of jean, lay upon what seemed to be a tool-chest, andhe had, like Wheelock, a cigar of exceptional flavor in his hand. He was a young, dark-eyed man, somewhat spare of frame, and when he spoke, his quick, nervous gestures rather than his accent, which was by no means marked, proclaimed him an American of the Pacific Slope. It was characteristic that Wheelock, who had spent less than a week in his company, already felt on familiar terms with him. He had discovered that it is usually difficult to make the acquaintance of an insular Englishman in anything like that time.
"Old man feeling any better this afternoon?" inquired his companion.
"He says so;" and Jimmy looked thoughtful, as he had done somewhat frequently of late, though this had not been a habit of his. "Still, he was flung rather heavily against the rail, and, though he insisted on working, I'm not quite satisfied about him."
The American nodded comprehendingly. "Parents are a responsibility now and then. I lost mine, though. Raised myself somehow down in Washington. Anyway, your father has been going down grade fast the two years I've known him, and I'm sorry. He's a straight man. I like him."
A trace of darker color crept into Jimmy's bronze, though he was aware that candor of that kind is usual on the Pacific Slope, and there was nothing he could resent in his companion's manner. However, he made no answer, and the American spoke again.
"I'm glad you got in on time. As I told Prescott, Merril has a notion of going into the coasting trade, and wants our carrying. He has a pull on some of our stockholders, but I don't like the man, and you'll getour freight as long as you can keep us going. Why did you let the old man borrow that money from Merril?"
"I wasn't here. In fact, it's only a few weeks since I left an English ship at Portsmouth."
"Mail-boat?"
"No," said Jimmy; "a warship."
The American looked at him hard a moment, and then made a little gesture with the hand that held the cigar. He had seen Jimmy Wheelock carrying boards on his shoulder all that day, and now he was dressed in the Canadian wharf-hand's jean; but he had no difficulty in believing him.
"Lieutenant in your second fighting line? Came back to look after the old man?" he said. "Well, I guess he needs you. You want to keep your eye on Merril, too. If you don't, he'll have the schooner. It's a sure thing."
Jimmy realized, without knowing exactly why, that he could give this man, whom he had met only a few days ago, his confidence.
"The same thing has occurred to me," he said. "Do you mind telling me what you know about Merril?"
"No; it's only what everybody else knows. Merril's a machine for stamping money—out of anything. Got a ship-supply store in Vancouver, and is working himself into the general carrying business. Lends money on vessels, and fits them out. He'll give you a long credit, at a blame long interest, and by and by he gets the vessel, or a controlling share in her. He can't touch the express freight and passenger traffic—knows too much to kick against the C.P.R. or the big soundsteamers; but there's the general freight for the mines, sawmills and canneries up and down the coast, and his vessels won't cost him much the way he buys them. The trade's going to be a big one. If I'd forty thousand dollars I'd buy a steamer."
Jimmy's eyes twinkled. "A steamboat isn't a sawmill. Would you know how to run her?"
The American laughed. "If I didn't, I guess I could learn. It can't be harder than playing the fiddle, and I've worried into that."
He stopped a moment, and then announced quietly with the almost dramatic abruptness which usually characterized him: "Anyway we'd make something of it. I'd put you in command of her."
"I wonder what leads you to believe I would suit you?" said Jimmy reflectively.
His companion waved his cigar. "Saw you packing lumber. You stayed right with the contract, though you'd never done the thing before. Know what the first few days are—I've been there. Stacked two-inch planks in Washington when I was seventeen and my strength hadn't quite come to me, and went home at nights walking double, with every joint in my body aching. Then they started me log-wedging, and that's 'most enough to break a weak man's heart. Still, I stayed with it, and now I'm drawing royalties on my swing-frame and gang-saw patents, and hold stock in several mills!"
This was, perhaps, a trifle egotistical; but then it was, or would have been in most other countries, somewhat of an achievement for one, who had commenced with the lowest and most brutal labor, to make himself patentee, manager and stockholder, while still a very young man;and Jimmy had met mail-boat officers who gave themselves a good many airs on the strength of possessing a refined taste in uniform tailoring and a prepossessing personality. Individually, he felt it was more reasonable to be satisfied with one's ability to invent and run a mill. Just then, however, the door opened, and another man came in. He wore a blue shirt which fell open at the neck for want of buttons, and jean trousers which were very old and torn, and there were smears of oil and paint on his hands.
"I came to ask when you are going to saw me those fir frames, Jordan?" he said.
"Take a cigar!" said the American, and turned to Jimmy, with a grin. "Ever heard of Thoreau who lived at Walden Pond?"
Jimmy had, as it happened, read his book on board one of the mail-boats, though he scarcely would have fancied that Jordan had done so. The latter indicated the newcomer with a wave of his hand.
"Well," he said, "that's another of them, though he lives in a yacht and his name is Valentine. There are men—and they're not all cranks—who seem to think the life most other people lead isn't good enough for them."
Valentine, who looked very different from any of the yachtsmen Jimmy had seen on the English coast or elsewhere, sat down, and the latter was a trifle astonished when he said, "That wasn't why Thoreau went to Walden. He was an abolitionist, and made Walden a station for running niggers into Canada. Anyway, why does a man want to go into business and slave to pile up money, when he can have the greatest thing in nature for nothing at all?"
"What's that?" asked Jordan. "It's not the young woman one may take a fancy to; she usually costs a good deal."
Valentine laughed softly, and looked hard at Jimmy. "Though you earn your bread upon it, I think you know. There's nothing in this little world to compare with the sea!"
Then he stretched out his hand for the cigar-box. "I'll take two. It's the brand your directors use. Saw those frames to-morrow, or I'll come round and raise the roof for you. In the meanwhile, if you'll come along, Mr. Wheelock, I'll show you my boat."
Jordan grinned at Jimmy. "Better go along. You'll have to see her, anyway."
The two went out and left him, and as they paddled down the Inlet past the endless ranks of climbing pines whose aromatic odors were heavy in the dew-chilled air, Valentine glanced at his companion.
"This world was made good, except the cities; but nothing was made much better than that smell," he said. "It doesn't put unrest and longing into you like the smell of the sea-grass and the sting of the powdered spray; there's tranquillity and sound sleep in it; and, too, it gives one comprehension."
This was not what Jimmy would have expected from his companion, but he understood. In that deep rift of the ranges where no wild wind ever entered, and the sunlight called up clean, healing savors from the solemn pines, one could realize that there was a beneficent purpose behind the scheme of things, and that the world was good. Still, Jimmy usually kept any fancies of that kind to himself.
"The introduction seems familiar," he said. "I almost fancy I have heard something very much like it before."
"It's quite likely;" and Valentine laughed. "It has been said of several other things, including tobacco."
"You come here often?"
"Usually to refit. It's quiet and clean; and I like Jordan. He's a man with a mind, and straight, so far as it can be expected of any one in business."
"You don't follow any?"
Valentine smiled somewhat curiously. "I'm a pariah. I take toll of the deer and halibut instead of my fellow-men—that is, except when I charter the boat now and then. Still, it's only when money is scarce that I shoot and fish for the market. You see, I'm not in any sense of the word a yachtsman. I live at sea because I like it. The boat makes an economical home."
Jimmy felt that this was as much as he was intended to know, and he asked no more questions until presently they slid alongside a powerful cutter of some thirty tons, which lay moored with an anchor outshore and a breast-rope to the pines. Valentine took him into the little plainly fitted forecastle where he lived, and afterwards led him through the ornate saloon and white-enameled after-cabin. "That," he said, as they went up the ladder again, "is for the charterers, though I'm by no means sure the next lot will be pleased. It's a little difficult to get the smell of halibut out of her."
"You sail her alone?" asked Jimmy, who sat down on the skylights.
"Generally. Wages run high in this country. But I have to ship a man or two when any of the city peoplecharter her. She's not so much of a handful when you get used to her."
He did not seem to expect Jimmy to talk, and they sat silent a while, the latter smoking thoughtfully as he looked about him. It was growing dark, and the lower pines were wrapped in fleecy mist, out of which a rigid branch rose raggedly here and there; but the heights of the range still cut hard and sharp against the cold blueness of the evening sky. Westward, a soft smoky glow burned faintly behind a great hill shoulder, and, for no sound reached them from the little settlement, it was impressively still.
Jimmy felt the vague influence of the country creeping over him. It is a land of wild grandeur, empty for the most part as yet, though it is rich in coal and iron as well as in gold and silver, and its hillsides are draped with forests whose timber would supply the world. It is also, as he seemed to feel, for the bold man, a land of possibilities. Enterprise, and even labor, is worth a good deal there; and Jimmy felt that if his heart were stout enough such a land might have more to offer him than a mate's berth on a heavily mortgaged schooner. Jordan evidently believed that one might achieve affluence by making the requisite effort, and Jimmy considered himself equally as capable as the sawmiller. Still, as he sat there in the dewy stillness breathing the clean scent of the pines, he realized that there was also something to be said for his companion's attitude. He asked and strove for nothing, but was content to live and enjoy what was so bountifully given him. Perhaps Valentine guessed where his thoughts were leading him, for once more he broke into his little soft laugh.
"One is as well off here as in the cities," he said. "Are you one of the hustlers like Jordan yonder?"
Though it was growing dark, Jimmy, disregarding the question, looked at him thoughtfully. "Do you know? Have you tried the other thing?"
"Oh, yes!" said Valentine, with a wry smile in his eyes. "I have tried them both, and that is one reason why I'm here. You haven't answered me; though, after all, I guess it's an unnecessary question."
This time Jimmy laughed. "I don't know that I have any option. It seems that a life of the kind Jordan leads will be forced on me. There are circumstances in which one's inclinations don't count for very much, you see. Anyway, it's almost time I turned in; I've been loading lumber since early morning."
Valentine got into the dory, and paddled him to the little wharf where theTyeewas lying.
"Come off again, and any time you see the boat along the coast I'll expect you on board," he said.
Jimmy climbed on board the schooner, and, descending to the little cabin, found his father lying propped up in his bunk. His eyes were more watery than ever, and when he spoke his voice was a trifle thick. The light of the fish-oil lamp projected his worn face blackly in gaunt profile on the bulkhead.
"Been talking to Jordan? He's a man to make friends with," he said. "Guess he and the other young ones with blood and grit in them are going to set their mark on this country. It mayn't count against you if you leave the mail-boats, Jimmy. Manhood standsfirst here, though my day has gone. Perhaps I fooled my chances, or didn't see them when they came. But you're going to be smarter; you have red blood and brains."
Jimmy said nothing. He had noticed already that Tom Wheelock had fallen into a habit of inconsequent rambling, and there were times when it pained him to listen. The old man, who did not seem to notice his silence, went on:
"You got them from your mother, as Eleanor has done. She died—and I'm often thankful—before the bad days came. Guess it would break her heart if she could see her husband now, a played-out, broken man, with a bond on which he can't pay the interest on his last vessel. Maybe things would have been different if she had lived. I was never smart at business—I am a sailorman—and it was your mother who showed me how to build the fleet up and save the money to buy each new boat. When you went to sea we had four of them. Now they're all gone. The last was theFish-hawk, and she lies in six fathoms where she drove across the Qualyclot reef with her starboard bilge ground in."
"Merril doesn't own theTyeeyet," said Jimmy.
"No," said Wheelock drowsily; "but unless you know enough to stop him he's going to. You'll have nothing, Jimmy, when I'm gone; but you'll remember it was that man squeezed the blood out of me. Anyway, it won't be long. I'm played out, and kind of tired of it all. Couldn't worry through without your mother. Never was smart at business—I am a sailorman. It was she who made me boss of the Wheelock fleet, and now I guess she's waiting for the old and broken man."
His elbow slipped from under him, and, falling back, he lay inert and silent, with eyes that slowly closed, and his face showing very gaunt and unhealthily pallid in patches under the fish-oil lamp. There was no longer any suggestion of strength in it, for dejection had slackened his mental grip as indulgence had sapped the vigor of his body. Jimmy Wheelock, who remembered what his father had been, felt a haze creep across his eyes as he gazed at him, and then a sudden thrill of anger seemed to fill his blood with fire. Merril, who held a bond on theTyee, had, it seemed, a good deal to answer for.
It was a month later when Jimmy Wheelock stood leaning on theTyee's rail one morning, while she lay alongside a sawmill wharf at Vancouver. The Siwash deck-hand had left them, and Jimmy, who had done his work, was very hot and grimy after trimming ballast in the hold. He and Prescott were waiting for another few loads of it, and expected that theTyeewould go to sea shortly after they got them. This, however, was by no means certain, since a surveyor had come on board a few days ago, and Tom Wheelock, who had been summoned to Merril's office, had not yet come back.
It was then about eleven o'clock, and the broad Inlet sparkled in a blaze of sunshine, with a fresh breeze that came off from the black pine forests crisping it into little splashing ripples. Jimmy was glad of the chill of it on his dripping face, and as grateful for the respite from toil with the shovel, as he gazed at the climbing city. It rose with the dark pines creeping close up to it, ridged with mazy wires and towering poles, roof above roof, up the low rise, and the air was filled with the sound of its activity. A train of ponderous freight-cars rolled clanging along the wharf; a great locomotive with tolling bell was backing more carsin; and the scream of saws rang stridently through the clatter of the winches as Empress liner and sound steamer hove their cargo in. Jimmy Wheelock had, of course, gazed upon a similar scene in other ports, but there was, he seemed to feel, a difference here.
In this new land the toiler was not bound by iron laws of caste and custom forever to his toil. The Mountain Province was awakening to a recognition of its wealth, and there was room in it and to spare for men with brains as well as men with muscle. There were forests to be cleared, roads to be built, and mine adits to be driven, and nobody troubled himself greatly about the antecedents of his hired hand. If the latter professed himself able to do what was required of him, he was, as they say in that country, given a show. Jimmy also knew that where all were ready to attempt the impossible, and toiled as, except in the New West, man has seldom toiled before, it was the English sailormen, runagates from their vessels, who had built the most perilous railroad trestles, and marched with the vanguard when the treasure-seekers pushed their way into the wilderness of rock and snow. He felt as he listened to the scream of the saws and the tolling of the locomotive bells that amid all that feverish activity there must be some scope for him, which was reassuring, since it was becoming clear that he would have to find some means of supporting himself and his father before very long.
Then he looked around as Prescott, who touched his arm, pointed to a trim white cutter which was sliding through the flashing water with an inclined spire of sail above her and a swath of foam at her lee bow.
"I guess that's Valentine'sSorata," he said. "Got the biggest topsail on her, and she has a deck-plank in. If she'd only her lower canvas, most men would find her quite a big handful to sail alone. It's when he rounds up to his mooring the circus will begin."
TheSoratacame straight on toward them, close-hauled on the wind, until they could hear the hissing of the brine that swept a foot deep along her slanted deck; then there was a banging of canvas, and she swung as on a pivot, while a bent figure with its back against her tiller became furiously busy. Slanting sharply, she drove away on the other tack, and shot in with canvas shaking between a great four-masted ship and a steamer with white tiers of decks. Then her head-sails dropped, and she stopped with a big iron buoy which Valentine seized with his boat-hook close beneath her bowsprit. After that there was a rattle of chain, and Prescott made a gesture of approval.
"Smart," he said. "I guess there are not many men in this Province who could have brought her up in that berth without another hand on board."
Valentine appeared to see them, for he waved his hand; but the next minute Jimmy, who looked around, lost his interest in him, for Tom Wheelock was coming slowly across the wharf. He walked wearily, with head bent and dejection expressed in every languid movement. Prescott's face grew troubled as he glanced at him.
"I guess we're not going to sea to-day," he said. "Your father has more to carry than he can stand. That—Merril has been putting the screw on him."
Wheelock dropped somewhat heavily upon theTyee's deck, and, though they looked at him questioningly, he said nothing to either of them as he made his way to the little after-cabin. When he reached it, he sat down and wiped his forehead before he poured himself out a stiff drink of whisky; then he made a little, hopeless gesture as he turned to Jimmy, who stood at the foot of the ladder with Prescott in the scuttle behind him.
"You'll stop loading that ballast," he said. "I'm fixed this time. I guess Merril has the ship. Carpenters to come on board to-morrow, and as far as I can figure, eight hundred dollars won't see them clear. Besides that, it's a sure thing we'll lose the coast mill contract."
Jimmy said nothing, but he set his lips tight, and Tom Wheelock had finished his whisky before he looked at him again. His eyes were half-closed, and he sat huddled and limp, with one hand trembling on his glass, a broken man.
"Carpenters will be here to-morrow. I guess there's no use stopping them—I've got to see the thing right out," he said. "Still, you can tell the boys we don't want that ballast. I feel kind of shaky, and I'm going to lie down. Not as strong as I used to be, Jimmy, and I haven't quite got over that thump I got against the rail."
Jimmy made a sign to Prescott and went up the ladder, and when he stood on deck the grizzled sailorman wondered at the change in him. There was no geniality in his blue eyes now, and his face was set and grim, for pity was struggling within him with a vindictive hatred of the man who had brought his fatherdown. Tom Wheelock, it was evident, had been brought low in more ways than one.
"If you'll see about that ballast, I'll go straight to Merril's office. I want this thing made clear," he said.
"Well," advised Prescott, "I'd walk round a few blocks first; you want to simmer down before you talk to a man like that. Go slow, and get a round turn on your temper."
Jimmy, who made no answer, swung himself up on the wharf, and it was not until he had traversed part of the water-front that he remembered it might have been advisable to change his clothes. He was still clad in blue jean freely smeared with the red soil that he had been shoveling in the hold, and his face and hands were grimy and damp with perspiration. Still, that did not seem to matter greatly, since, after all, it was a costume quite in accordance with his station. The days when he had worn a naval uniform had passed.
Striding into an office in a great stone building, he accosted a clerk, who said that Mr. Merril was busy, and then appeared to grow a trifle disconcerted under Jimmy's gaze. The latter smiled at him grimly.
"Then it's probably fortunate that I'm not busy at all," he said. "In fact, I'm quite prepared to stay here until this evening; and since there seems to be only one door to the place it will perhaps save Mr. Merril inconvenience if he sees me now. You can explain that to him."
The clerk, who grinned at one of his companions, disappeared, and, coming back, ushered the insistent visitor into a sumptuously furnished office; and, when the door closed behind him, Jimmy was a little astonished to find himself as collected as he had ever been in his life. He was one of the men who do not quite realize their own capabilities until driven by necessity into strenuous action. An elderly gentleman with a pallid and somewhat expressionless face, dressed with a precision not altogether usual in that country, looked up at him.
"Well?" he said inquiringly.
Jimmy drew forward a chair, and sat down uninvited. "You know my name," he said. "I want to understand exactly why you are sending those carpenters on board the schooner?"
Merril looked at him gravely, but Jimmy did not appear to find his gaze in any way troublesome.
"I don't think you have anything to do with the matter," he said. "Still, out of courtesy——"
"No," interrupted Jimmy; "I'm not asking a favor, only anticipating things a little. It is, I am afraid, quite likely that I shall have to take over the schooner before very long."