The Secret of the Reef Page 3

  CHAPTER III--THE FURY OF THE SEA

  In the evening of the day on which they saw the last of VancouverIsland, Jimmy sat in the _Cetacea's_ cockpit with a chart of the NorthPacific spread out before him on the cabin hatch. It showed the tortuousstraits, thickly sprinkled with islands of all sizes, through which theyhad somehow threaded their way during the last week, in spite ofbaffling head winds and racing tides, and though Jimmy was a navigatorhe felt some surprise at their having accomplished the feat withouttouching bottom. Now he had their course to the north plotted out alongthe deeply fretted coast of British Columbia, and rolling up the charthe rose to look about.

  It was nine o'clock, but the light was clear, and a long, slate-greenswell slightly crisped with ripples rolled up out of the south; to thenorthwest a broad stripe of angry saffron, against which the sea-topscut, glowed along the horizon; but the east was dim, and steeped in ahard, cold blue. Shadowy mountains were faintly visible high up againstthe sky; and, below, a few rocky islets rose, blurred by blue haze, outof the heaving sea.

  The sloop rolled lazily, her boom groaning and the tall, white mainsailalternately swelling out and emptying with a harsh slapping of canvasand a clatter of shaken blocks. Above it the topsail raked in a wide arcacross the sky. Silky lines of water ran back from the stern, there wasa soft gurgle at the bows; Jimmy computed that she was slipping along atabout three miles an hour.

  "What do you think of the weather?" Bethune asked, as he lounged at thesteering wheel.

  "It doesn't look promising," Jimmy answered. "If time wasn't an object,I'd like the topsail down. We'll have wind before morning."

  "That's my opinion; but time is an object. When the cost of every dayout is an item to be considered, we must drive her. Have you reckoned upwhat we're paying every week to the ship-chandler fellow who found usthe cables and diving gear?"

  "I haven't; his terms were daunting enough as a whole without analyzingthem. Have you?"

  Bethune chuckled.

  "I have the cost of everything down in my notebook; although I willconfess that I was mildly surprised at myself for taking the trouble. IfI'd occasionally made a few simple calculations at home and acted onthem, the chances are that I shouldn't be here now." Bethune made agesture of disgust. "Halibut boiled and halibut fried begins to pall onone; but this is far better than our quarters in Vancouver, and theywere a big improvement on those I had in Victoria. I daresay it wasnatural I should stick to the few monthly dollars as long as possible,but it will be some time before I forget that hotel. I never quite gotused to the two wet public towels beside the row of sloppy wash-basins,and the gramophone going full blast in the dirty dining-room; and thelong evening to be dawdled through in the lounge was worst of all. Youhave, perhaps, seen the hard-faced toughs lolling back with their feeton the radiator pipes before the windows, the heaps of dead flies thatare seldom swept up, the dreary, comfortless squalor. Imagine three orfour hours of it every night, with only a last-week's _Colonist_ towhile away the time!"

  "I should imagine things would be better in a railroad or logging camp."

  "Very much so, though they're not hotbeds of luxury. The trouble wasthat I couldn't come down to Victoria and hold my job. Once or twicewhen the pay days approximated, I ran it pretty fine; and I've a vividmemory of walking seventy miles in two days over a newly made wagontrail. The softer parts had been graded with ragged stones from thehillside, the drier bits were rutted soil--it needed a surgicaloperation to get my stockings off."

  "It might have paid you better to forfeit your allowance," Jimmysuggested.

  "That's true," said Bethune. "I can see it now, but I had a dauntingexperience of clearing land and laying railroad track. Draggingforty-foot rails about through melting snow, with the fumes ofgiant-powder hanging among the rocks and nauseating you, is exhaustingwork, and handspiking giant logs up skids in rain that never stops isworse. The logs have a way of slipping back and smashing thetenderfoot's ribs. I suppose this made me a coward; and, in a sense, theallowance was less of a favor than a right. The money that provided ithas been a long time in the family; I am the oldest son; and while Ican't claim to have been a model, I had no serious vices and hadcommitted no crime. If my relatives chose to banish me, there seemed noreason why they shouldn't pay for the privilege."

  Jimmy agreed that something might be said for his comrade's point ofview.

  "Now I stand on my own feet," Bethune went on, with a carefree laugh;"and while it's hard to predict the end of this adventure, the presentstate of things is good enough for me. Is anything better than beingafloat in a staunch craft that's entirely at your command?"

  Jimmy acquiesced heartily as he glanced about. Sitting to windward, hecould see the gently rounded deck run forward to the curve of the liftedbows, and, above them, the tall, hollowed triangle of the jib. Thearched cabin-top led forward in flowing lines, and though there werepatches on plank and canvas, all his eye rested on was of harmoniousoutline. The _Cetacea_ was small and low in the water, but she was fastand safe, and Jimmy had already come to feel a certain love for her.Their success depended upon her seaworthiness, and he thought she wouldnot fail them.

  "I like the boat; but I've been mending gear all day, and it's my turnbelow," he said.

  The narrow cabin that ran from the cockpit bulkhead to the stem wascumbered with dismantled diving pumps and gear, but there was a lockeron each side on which one could sleep. It was, moreover, permeated withthe smell of stale tobacco smoke, tarred hemp, and fish, but Jimmy hadput up with worse odors in the Mercantile Marine. Lying down, fullydressed, on a locker, he saw Moran's shadowy form, wrapped in oldoilskins, on the opposite locker, rise above his level and sink as the_Cetacea_ rocked them with a rhythmic swing. The water lapped noisilyagainst the planks, and now and then there was a groaning of timber anda sharp clatter of blocks; but Jimmy soon grew drowsy and noticednothing.

  He was awakened rudely by a heavy blow, and found he had fallen off thelocker and struck one of the pump castings. Half dazed and badly shaken,as he was, it was a few moments before he got upon his knees--one couldnot stand upright under the low cabin-top. It was very dark, Jimmy couldnot see the hatch, and the _Cetacea_ appeared to have fallen over on herbeam-ends. A confused uproar was going on above: the thud of heavy waterstriking the deck, a furious thrashing of loose canvas, and the savagescream of wind. Bethune's voice came faintly through the din, and heseemed to be calling for help.

  Realizing that it was time for action, Jimmy pulled himself together andwith difficulty made his way to the cockpit, where he found it hard tosee anything for the first minute. The spray that drove across the boatbeat into his face and blinded him; but he made out that she was presseddown with most of her lee deck in the water, while white cascades thatswept its uplifted windward side poured into the cockpit. The tallmainsail slanted up into thick darkness, but it was no longer thrashing,and Jimmy was given an impression of furious speed by the way the halfvisible seas raced past.

  "Shake her! Let her come up!" he shouted to the dark figure bent overthe wheel.

  He understood Bethune to say that this would involve the loss of themast unless the others were ready to shorten canvas quickly.

  Jimmy scrambled forward through the water and loosed the peak-halyard.The head of the sail swung down and blew out to leeward, bangingthreateningly, and he saw that the half-lowered topsail hung beneath it.This promised to complicate matters; but Moran was already endeavoringto change the jib for a smaller one, and Jimmy sprang to his assistance.Though the sail was not linked to a masthead stay, it would not run in;and when Bethune luffed the boat into the wind, the loose canvas sweptacross the bows, swelling like a balloon and emptying with a shock thatthreatened to snap the straining mast. It was obvious to the men whoknelt in the water dragging frantically at a rope that something drasticmust be done; but both were drenched and half blinded and had beensuddenly roused from sleep. The boat was large enough to make her gearheavy to handle, and yet not so large as to obviate the
need for urgenthaste when struck with all her canvas set by a savage squall. Thoughthey recognized this, Jimmy and his comrade paused a few moments togather breath. The jib, however, must be hauled down; and with a hoarseshout to Moran, Jimmy lowered himself from the bowsprit until he feltthe wire bobstay under his feet.

  The _Cetacea_ plunged into the seas, burying him to the waist, but hemade his way out-board with the canvas buffeting his head until heseized an iron ring. It cost him a determined effort to wrench it looseso it could run in, and when, at last, the sail swept behind him he feltthe blood warm on his lacerated hand. Then he crawled on board, and whenhe and Moran had set a smaller jib it was high time to reef themainsail; but they spent a few moments in gathering strength for thetask.

  She was down on her beam-ends, with the sea breaking over her. Jimmycould not imagine what Bethune was doing at the wheel. The foam thatswirled past close under the boom on her depressed side lapped to thecabin top; it looked as if she were rolling over. They felt helpless andshaken, impotent to master the canvas that was drowning her. But thefight must be made; and, rousing themselves for the effort, they gropedfor the halyards. The head of the sail sank lower; gasping, andstraining every muscle, they hauled its foot down, and then Jimmy,leaning out, buried to the knees in rushing foam, with his breast on theboom, knotted the reef-points in. It was done at last. Rising moreupright, she shook off some of the water.

  Moran turned to Bethune, who was leaning as if exhausted on his helm,and demanded why he had not luffed the craft, which would have easedtheir work. Then the dripping man showed them that the boat they carriedon deck had been washed against the wheel so that he could not pull thespokes round. They moved her, and when Bethune regained control of thesloop, he told them what had happened, in disjointed gasps.

  "Wind freshened--but I--held her at it. Then there was a--burst of rainand I--let the topsail go--thinking the breeze would lighten again.Instead of that--it whipped round ahead--screaming--and I called foryou."

  Conversation was difficult amid the roar of the sea, with the spraylashing them and their words blowing away, but Jimmy made himself heard.

  "Where's the compass?"

  "In the cockpit, or overboard--the dory broke it off."

  Moran felt in the water that washed about their feet and, pickingsomething up, crept into the cabin, where a pale glow broke out. Itdisappeared in a minute or two and he came back.

  "Binnacle lamp's busted," he reported. "She's pointing about east."

  "Inshore," said Jimmy. "When you're ready, we'll have her round."

  She would not come. Overpowered by wind and sea, she hung up for a fewmoments, and then fell off on her previous course. They tried it twice,not daring to wear her round the opposite way; and afterward they sat inthe slight shelter of the coaming, conscious that there was nothing morethey could do.

  "She may keep off the beach until daylight," Jimmy observed hopefully;"then we'll see where we are."

  The glance he cast forward did not show him much. The long swell hadrapidly changed into tumbling combers that rolled down upon the laboringsloop out of the dark. As she lurched over them, the small patch ofstorm-jib swept up, showing the sharply slanted strip of mainsail; butthe rest of her was hidden by spray and rushing foam. She was sailingvery fast, close-hauled, and was rushing toward the beach. Jimmy couldfeel her tremble as she pitched into the seas.

  Morning seemed a very long time in coming; but at last the darkness grewless thick. The foam got whiter and the gray bulk of the rollers moresolid and black, as they leaped, huge and threatening, out of theobscurity. Then the sky began to whiten in the east, and the weary menanxiously turned their eyes shoreward as they shivered in the bitingcold of dawn. After a time, during which the horizon steadily receded, agray and misty blur appeared on the starboard hand, and, now that theycould see the combers, they got the _Cetacea_ round. As she headedoffshore a red flush spread across the sky, and rocks and pines grewinto shape to the east. Then a break in the coastline where they couldsee shining water instead of foam indicated an island; and, getting herround again, they stood in cautiously, because she could make nothing towindward through the steep, white seas outshore. Reeling before them,with lee deck in the water as she bore away, she opened up the sound,and presently her crew watched the rollers crumble on aboulder-sprinkled point. Moving shoreward majestically in ordered ranks,the waves hove themselves up when they met the shoal and dissolved intofrothy cataracts. It was an impressive spectacle, and the sloop lookedby contrast extremely small. Still, she drove on, and Jimmy, standing atthe wheel, gazed steadily ahead.

  "We'll have to chance finding water, because the lead's no guide," hesaid. "If there's anything in the sound, it will be a steep-to rock."

  She lurched in past the point, rolling, spray-swept, with two rags ofdrenched canvas set. As Jimmy luffed her into the lee of the islandthere was a sudden change. The water, smoothing to a measured heave,glittered with tiny ripples; the slanted mast rose upright; and thesloop forged on toward a shelving beach, through variable flaws. Then,as she slowed and the canvas flapped, the anchor was flung over, and therattle of running chain sent a cloud of birds circling above the rocks.

  Half an hour later the men were busy cooking breakfast, and soonafterward they were fast asleep; but the night's breeze had made achange in their relations. Their mettle had been rudely tested and hadnot failed. Henceforward it was not to be mere mutual interest that heldthem together, but a stronger though more elusive bond. They werecomrades by virtue of a mutual respect and trust.