Hawtrey's Deputy Part 24

"Wait," said Wyllard; "there's a little more to be said. I can't be back before the frost, and I may be away eighteen months. While I am away you will have a clear field--and you must make the most of it. If you are not married when I come back I shall ask Miss Ismay again.

Now"--and he glanced at his comrade steadily--"does this stand in the way of your going on with the arrangement we have arrived at?"

There was a rather tense silence for a moment or two, and then Hawtrey broke it.

"No," he said; "after all, there is no reason why it should do so. It has no practical bearing upon the other question."

Wyllard rose. "Well," he said, "if you will call Allen Hastings in we'll get this thing fixed up."

The doc.u.ment was duly signed, and a few minutes later Wyllard drove away; but Mrs. Hastings contrived to have a few words with Hawtrey before he did the same.

"I've no doubt that Harry took you into his confidence on a certain point," she said.

"Yes," admitted Hawtrey; "he did. I was a little astonished, besides feeling rather sorry for him. There is, however, reason to believe that he'll soon get over it."

"You feel sure of that?" and Mrs. Hastings smiled.

"Isn't it evident? If he had cared much about her he certainly wouldn't have gone away."

"You mean you wouldn't?"

"No," said Hawtrey, "there's no doubt of that."

His companion smiled again. "Well," she said drily, "I would like to think you were right about Harry; it would be a relief to me."

Hawtrey, who said nothing further, presently drove away, and soon after he did so Agatha approached Mrs. Hastings.

"There's something I must ask you," she said. "Has Gregory consented to take charge of Wyllard's farm?"

"He has," said her companion in her dryest tone.

Agatha's face flushed, and there was a flash in her eyes.

"Oh," she said, "it's almost insufferable!"

Then she turned and left Mrs. Hastings without another word.

She only saw Wyllard once again, and that was when he called at the homestead early one morning. He got down from the waggon where Dampier sat, and shook hands with her and Allen and Mrs. Hastings. Very few words were spoken, and she could not remember what she said, but when he swung himself up again and the waggon jolted away into the white prairie she went back to the house with her heart beating unpleasantly fast and a very curious feeling of depression.

CHAPTER XV.

THE BEACH.

For a fortnight after they reached Vancouver Wyllard and Dampier were very busy. They had various difficulties to contend with, for while they would have preferred to slip away to sea as quietly as possible a British vessel's movements are fenced about with many formalities, and they did not wish to ship a white man who could be dispensed with.

Wyllard fancied there were sailormen and sealers in Vancouver and down Puget Sound who would have gone with him, but there was a certain probability of their discussing their exploits afterwards in the saloons ash.o.r.e, which was about the last thing that he desired. It appeared essential that he should avoid notoriety as much as possible.

He had further trouble about obtaining provisions and general necessaries, for considerably more attention than the free-lance sealers cared about was being bestowed upon the North just then, and he did not desire to rouse the curiosity of the dealers as to why he was filling his lazaret up with Arctic stores. He obviated that difficulty by dividing his orders among the whole of them, and buying as little as possible. Dampier, however, proved an adept at the difficult business, and eventually the schooner _Selache_ crept out from the Narrows at dusk one evening under all plain sail, painted a pale green, with her big main-boom raking at least a fathom beyond her taffrail. There were then Wyllard, Dampier, and two other white men on board her. A week later she sailed into a deep, rock-walled inlet on the western coast of Vancouver Island with a settlement at the top of it, where the storekeeper made no difficulty about selling Wyllard all his flour and canned goods at higher figures than there was any probability of his obtaining from the local ranchers.

Then the _Selache_ slid down the inlet again, and lay for several days in a forest-shrouded arm near the mouth of it, while, when she once more dropped her anchor off a Siwash rancherie far up on the wild West coast, she was painted a dingy grey, and her sawn-off boom just topped her stern. One does not want a great main-boom in the northern seas, and a big mainsail needs men to handle it. Wyllard, however, shipped several sea-bred Indians who had made wonderful perilous voyages on the trail of the seal and halibut in open canoes. All of them had, as it happened, also sailed in sealing schooners. Their comrades sold him furs, and filled part of the hold up with redwood billets and bark for the stove, for he had not considered it advisable to load too much Wellington coal. Then he pushed out into the waste Pacific, and when once a beautiful big white mail boat reeled by him, driving with streaming bows into an easterly gale, he sent back a message to his friends upon the prairie. It duly reached them, for some three weeks afterwards Allen Hastings, opening _The Colonist_, which he had ordered from Victoria as soon as Wyllard sailed, read out to his wife and Agatha a paragraph in the shipping news:

"_Empress of India_, from Yokohama, reports having pa.s.sed small grey British schooner, flying----" There followed several code letters, the lat.i.tude and longitude, and a line apparently by the water-front reporter: "No schooner belonging to this city allotted the signal in question."

Hastings smiled as he laid down the paper. "No," he said, "that signal's Wyllard's private code. Agatha, won't you reach me down my map of the Pacific? It's just behind you."

Then he looked round, and noticed the significant smile in his wife's eyes, for the girl had already turned towards the shelf where he kept the lately purchased map.

The easterly gale, however, did not last, for the wind came out of the west and north, and sank to foggy calms when it did not blow wickedly hard. This meant that the _Selache's_ course was all to windward, and though they drove her at it unmercifully under reefed boom-foresail, main trysail, and a streaming jib or two, with the brine going over her solid forward, she had made little when each arduous day was done.

They were drenched to the skin continuously, and lashed by stinging spray. Cooking except of the crudest kind was out of the question, and sleep would have been impossible to any but worn-out sailormen. Even then, they were often roused in the blackness of the night, when she lay with her lee rail under, and would not lift it out, to get another reef in, or crawl out on plunging bowsprit washed by icy seas to haul a burst jib down. It was even more trying, glad as they were of the respite in some respects, to lie rolling wildly on the big smooth undulations that hove out of the windless calm, while everything in her banged to and fro, and when the breeze came screaming through the fog or rain they sprang to make sail again.

Fate seemed dead against them, as it was certain that, if their purpose was suspected, the hand of every white man they might come across would be; but they held on over leagues of empty ocean while the season wore away, until once more the wind freshened easterly, and they ran for a week under boom-foresail and a jib, with the big grey combers curling as they foamed by high above her rail. Then the wind fell, and Dampier, who got an observation, armed his deep-sea lead, and finding sh.e.l.ls and shoal water came aft to talk to Wyllard with the strip of Dunton's chart.

Wyllard, who was clad in oilskins, stood, a shapeless figure, by the wheel, with his face darkened and roughened by cold and stinging brine.

There was an open sore upon one of his elbows, and both his wrists were raw. Forward, a white man and two Siwash were standing about the windla.s.s, and when the bows went up a dreary stretch of slate-grey sea opened up beyond them beneath the dripping jibs. Then the bows would go down again, and all that was visible was the fore-shortened slope of deck and the breast of the big undulation that hove itself up ahead.

The _Selache_ was carrying everything and lurching over the steep swell at some four knots an hour.

Dampier stopped near the wheel, and glanced at Wyllard's oilskins.

"You'll have to take them off. It's stuffed boots and those Indian seal-gut things or furs from now on," he said. "That leather cuff's chewing up your hand."

"We'll cut that out," said Wyllard; "it's not to the point. Can't you get on?"

Dampier grinned. "We're on soundings, and they and Dunton's longitude most agree. With this wind we should pick the beach up in the next two days. Next question is, where those men were?"

"Where they are," said Wyllard.

"If they've pushed on it's probably a different thing, though if they'd food yonder I don't quite see why they'd want to push on anywhere. It wouldn't be south, anyway. They'd run up against the Russians there."

"We've decided that already."

"I'm admitting it," said the skipper. "There's the other choice that they've gone up north. It's narrower across to Alaska there, and it's quite likely they might have a notion of looking out for one of the steam whalers. The Koriaks up yonder will have boats of some kind. If they're skin ones like those the Huskies have they might sledge them on the ice."

It was a suggestion that had been made several times already, but both the men realised that there was in all probability very little to warrant it. Wyllard had wasted no time endeavouring to learn what was known about the desolation on the western sh.o.r.e of the Behring Sea. He had bought a schooner and set out at once. It, however, appeared almost impossible to him that any three men could haul the skin boats and supplies they would need far over hummocky ice.

"The point is that we'll have to fix on some course in the next few days," added his companion. "Say we run in to make inquiries"--and a gleam of grim amus.e.m.e.nt crept into his eyes--"what are we going to find? A beach with a roaring surf on it, and if we get a boat through, a desolate, half-frozen swamp behind it. It's quite likely there are people in the country, Koriaks or Kamtchadales, but if there are they'll probably move up and down after what they get to eat like the Huskies do, and we can't hang on and wait for them. Most any time next month we'll have the ice closing in."

Wyllard said nothing for another minute, and as he stood with hands clenched on the wheel a little puff of bitter spray splashed upon his oilskins. They had been over it all often before, weighing conjecture after conjecture, and had found nothing in any that might serve to guide them. Now, when winter was close at hand, they had leagues of surf-swept beach to search for three men who might have perished twelve months earlier.

"We'll stand in until we pick up the beach," he said at length; "then if there's no sign of them we'll push north as long as we can find open water. Now if you'll call Charly I'll let up at the wheel."

Another white man walked aft, and Wyllard, entering the little stern cabin, the top of which rose some feet above the deck, sloughed off his wet oilskins and crawled, dressed as he was, into his bunk. Evening was closing in, and for awhile he lay blinking at the swinging lamp, and wondering what the end of that search would be. The _Selache_ was a little fore and aft schooner of some ninety-odd tons, wholly unprotected against ice-chafe or nip, and he knew that prudence dictated their driving her south under every rag of canvas now. There was, however, the possibility of finding some sheltered inlet where she could lie out the winter, frozen in, and he had, at least, blind confidence in his men. The white men were sealers who had already borne the lash of snow-laden gales, the wash of icy seas, and tremendous labour at the oar, while the Indians had been born to an unending struggle with the waters. All of them had times and times again looked the King of Terrors squarely in the face. What was as much to the purpose, they had been promised a tempting bonus if the _Selache_ came home successful.

While Wyllard pondered upon these things he went to sleep, and slept soundly, as he did the next night, though Dampier expected to raise the beach some time next morning. His expectation also proved warranted, and when Wyllard turned out it lay before them, a dingy smear on a slate-green sea that was cut off from it by a wavy line of livid whiteness, which he knew to be a fringe of spouting surf. It had cost him in several ways more than he cared to contemplate to reach that beach, and now there was nothing that could excite any feeling except shrinking in the dreary spectacle. There was little light in the heavy sky or on the sullen heave of sea; the air was raw, the schooner's decks were sloppy, and she rolled viciously as she crept sh.o.r.ewards with her mainsail peak eased down. What wind there was blew dead on-sh.o.r.e, which was not as he would have had it.

He heard the splash of the lead as he and the white man Charly made their breakfast in the little stern cabin. Then there was a clatter of blocks, and on coming out again he found the others swinging a boat over. Charly and he and two of the Indians dropped into her, and Dampier, who had hove the schooner to, looked down on them over her rail.

"If you knock the bottom out of her put a jacket on an oar, and I'll try to bring you off," he said. "If you don't signal I'll stand off and on with a thimble-header topsail over the mainsail. You'll start back right away if you see us haul it down. When she won't stand that there'll be more surf than you'll have any use for with the wind dead on the beach."