Masters of the Wheat-Lands Part 24

Hawtrey presently drove away, and soon after he left the homestead 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," answered Mrs. Hastings in her dryest tone.

There was a flash in Agatha's eyes.

"Oh," she said, "it's almost unendurable."

Agatha saw Wyllard only once again, and that was when he called early one morning. He got down from the wagon where Dampier sat, and shook hands with her and Allen and Mrs. Hastings. Few words were spoken, and she could not remember what she said, but when he swung himself up again and the wagon jolted away into the white prairie she went back to the house with a feeling of loss and 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 knew there were sailors 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 was 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, and he did not desire to arouse 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 all of them, and buying as little as possible. Dampier proved an adept at the difficult business, and eventually the schooner _Selache_, painted a pale green, crept out from the Narrows, at dusk one evening, under all plain sail, with her big main-boom making at least a fathom beyond her taffrail. On board were Wyllard, Dampier, and two other white men. A week later the _Selache_ sailed into a deep, rock-walled inlet on the western coast of Vancouver Island. At the settlement the storekeeper made no difficulty about selling Wyllard all his flour and canned goods at higher figures than there was any probability of obtaining from the local ranchers.

The _Selache_ slid down the inlet again, and lay for several days in a forest-shrouded arm near the mouth of it. When she once more dropped her anchor off a Siwash rancherie far up on the wild west coast, she was painted a dingy gray, 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 perilous voyages on the trail of the seal and halibut in open canoes. All of them had also sailed in sealing schooners. Their comrades sold him furs, and filled part of the hold with redwood billets and bark for the stove, for he had not considered it advisable to load too much Wellington coal.

Wyllard pushed out into the waste Pacific, and once when 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 three weeks afterward Allen Hastings, opening _The Colonist_, which he had ordered from Victoria as soon as Wyllard sailed, read to his wife and Agatha a paragraph in the shipping news:

"_Empress of India_, from Yokohama, reports having pa.s.sed small gray 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 observed, "that signal is Wyllard's private code. Agatha, won't you reach me down my map of the Pacific? It's just behind you."

As he looked around he noticed the significant expression on his wife's face, for the girl already had turned towards the shelf where he kept the lately purchased map.

The easterly gale that started 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 unmercifully under reefed book-foresail, main trysail, and a streaming jib or two, with the brine going over her, she had made little headway 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 sailors. The little crew was often aroused in the blackness of the night to haul down a burst jib, to get in another reef, or to crawl out on a plunging bowsprit washed by icy seas as the schooner lay with her lee rail under. Glad as they were of the respite it was even more trying to lie rolling wildly on the big smooth waves that hove out of the windless calm, while everything in the vessel banged to and fro. When the breeze came screaming through the fog or rain they sprang to make sail again.

Fate seemed to oppose them, as it was certain that, if their purpose was suspected, the hand of every white man whom they might come across would be against them. But they held on over leagues of empty ocean.

The season wore away, and at last the wind freshened easterly, and they ran for a week under boom-foresail and a jib, with the big gray 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, went aft to talk to Wyllard with the strip of Dunton's chart.

Wyllard, who was clad in oilskins, stood by the wheel. His face was tanned 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-gray sea opened beyond them, beneath the dripping jibs. The _Selache_ was carrying sail, 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," replied 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 were those men?"

"Where are they?" corrected 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 the boats are skin ones like those the Huskies have they might sledge them on the ice."

It was a suggestion that had been made several times before, but both the men realized that there was in all probability very little to warrant it. Wyllard had wasted no time endeavoring 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 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 Dampier. "Say we run in to make inquiries"--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 made no reply for another minute, and, as he stood with hands clenched on the wheel, a 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 several feet above the deck, took off his wet oilskins and crawled, dressed as he was, into his bunk. Evening was closing in, and for a while he lay blinking at the swinging lamp, and wondering what the end of the 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 blind confidence in his crew. The white men were sealers who had borne the lash of snow-laden gales, the wash of icy seas, and tremendous labor at the oar, and the Indians had been born to an unending struggle with the waters. All of them had many times looked the King of Terrors squarely in the face. As an encouraging aid to strenuous effort they had been promised a tempting bonus if the _Selache_ returned home successful.

While Wyllard pondered upon these things he went to sleep and slept soundly, though Dampier expected to raise the beach some time next morning. The skipper's expectation proved to be warranted, and, when Wyllard turned out, the stretch of sh.o.r.e lay before them, a dingy smear on a slate-green sea that was cut off from it by a wavy line of vivid whiteness, which he knew to be a fringe of spouting surf. It had cost Wyllard more than he cared to contemplate to reach that beach, and now there was nothing in the dreary spectacle that could excite any feeling, except a shrinking from the physical effort of the search. 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 the vessel 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 the skipper would have had it.

Wyllard heard the splash of the lead as he and the white man, Charly, ate their breakfast in the little stern cabin. There was a clatter of blocks, and on going out on deck he found the men swinging a boat over.

With Charly and two of the Indians he dropped into the boat, and Dampier, who had hove the schooner to, looked down on them over the vessel's 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, pointing toward the boat. "If you don't signal I'll stand off and on with a thimble-headed 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."

Wyllard made a sign of comprehension, and they slid away on the back of a long sea. Waves rolled up behind them, cutting off the schooner's hull so that only her gray canvas showed above dim slopes of water. The beach rose fast before them. It looked forbidding with the spray-haze drifting over it, and the long wash of the Pacific weltering among its hammered stones. When the men drew a little nearer Wyllard stood up with the big sculling oar in his hand. There was no point to offer shelter, and in only one place could he see a strip of surf-lapped sand.

"It's a little softer than the boulders, anyway; we'll try it there," he ordered.

The oars dipped again, and in another minute the sea that came up behind them hove them high and broke into a little spout of foam. The next wave had a hissing crest, part of which splashed on board, and, like a toboggan down an icy slide, the boat went sh.o.r.eward on the shoulders of the third. To keep her straight while the water seethed about them was all that they could do. For a moment their hearts were in their mouths when the wave left them to sink with a dizzy swing into the hollow of the sea.

They pulled desperately as another white-topped ridge came on astern, and they went up with it amid a chaotic frothing and splashing of spray.

After that there was a shock and a crash. They sprang out into the knee-deep water and held fast to the boat while the foam boiled into her. Before the next sea came in they had run the boat up beyond its reach, and they discovered that there was not much the matter with her when they hove her over. Wyllard looked back at the tumbling surf.

"Dampier was right about that topsail; it won't be quite so easy getting off," he declared. "You'll stand by, Charly, and watch the schooner. If the surf gets steeper you can make some sign. I'll leave one of the Siwash on the rise yonder."

Then he walked up the beach. On the crest of the low rise a mile or two behind it, he stopped a while, gazing out at what seemed to be an empty desolation. There were willows in the hollow beneath him, and upon the slope a few little stunted trees, which resembled the juniper that he had seen among the ranges of British Columbia, but he could see no sign of any kind of life. What was more portentous, the mossy sod he stood upon was frozen, and there were stretches of snow among the straggling firs upon a higher ridge. Inland, the little breeze seemed to have fallen dead away, and there was an oppressive silence which the rumble of the surf accentuated.

Wyllard left one of the Indians on the hill and going on with the other scrambled through a half-frozen swamp in the hollow; but when they came back hours afterwards as the narrow horizon was drawing further in, they had found nothing to show that any man had ever entered that grim, silent land. The surf seemed a little smoother, and they reeled out through it with only a few inches of very cold water splashing about their boots, and pulled across a long stretch of darkening sea toward the rolling schooner.

Wyllard was weary and depressed, but it was not until he sat in the stern cabin with its cheerful twinkling stove and swinging lamp that he understood how he had shrunk from that forbidding wilderness. His consultation with Dampier, who came in by and by, was brief.

"We'll head north for a couple of days, and try again," he said.

He crawled into his berth early, and it was some time after midnight when he was awakened by being rudely flung out of it. That fact, and the slant of deck and sounds above, suggested that the schooner had been struck down by a sudden gale. He had grown more or less accustomed to such occurrences and to sleeping fully dressed, and in another moment or two he was out of the deck-house. A sharp wind drove stinging flakes of snow into his face. It was very dark, but he guessed that the schooner's rail was in the sea, which was washing the decks, and that some of the crew were struggling to get the mainsail off her. A man whom he supposed to be Charly ran into him.