The Secret of the Reef Part 3

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

She was down on her beam-ends, with the sea breaking over her. Jimmy could not imagine what Bethune was doing at the wheel. The foam that swirled past close under the boom on her depressed side lapped to the cabin top; it looked as if she were rolling over. They felt helpless and shaken, impotent to master the canvas that was drowning her. But the fight must be made; and, rousing themselves for the effort, they groped for the halyards. The head of the sail sank lower; gasping, and straining every muscle, they hauled its foot down, and then Jimmy, leaning out, buried to the knees in rushing foam, with his breast on the boom, knotted the reef-points in. It was done at last. Rising more upright, 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 eased their work. Then the dripping man showed them that the boat they carried on deck had been washed against the wheel so that he could not pull the spokes round. They moved her, and when Bethune regained control of the sloop, he told them what had happened, in disjointed gasps.

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

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

"Where's the compa.s.s?"

"In the c.o.c.kpit, or overboard-the dory broke it off."

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

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

"Insh.o.r.e," 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 few moments, 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 in the slight shelter of the coaming, conscious that there was nothing more they 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 had rapidly changed into tumbling combers that rolled down upon the laboring sloop out of the dark. As she lurched over them, the small patch of storm-jib swept up, showing the sharply slanted strip of mainsail; but the rest of her was hidden by spray and rushing foam. She was sailing very fast, close-hauled, and was rushing toward the beach. Jimmy could feel her tremble as she pitched into the seas.

Morning seemed a very long time in coming; but at last the darkness grew less thick. The foam got whiter and the gray bulk of the rollers more solid and black, as they leaped, huge and threatening, out of the obscurity. Then the sky began to whiten in the east, and the weary men anxiously turned their eyes sh.o.r.eward as they shivered in the biting cold of dawn. After a time, during which the horizon steadily receded, a gray and misty blur appeared on the starboard hand, and, now that they could see the combers, they got the _Cetacea_ round. As she headed offsh.o.r.e a red flush spread across the sky, and rocks and pines grew into shape to the east. Then a break in the coastline where they could see shining water instead of foam indicated an island; and, getting her round again, they stood in cautiously, because she could make nothing to windward through the steep, white seas outsh.o.r.e. 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 a boulder-sprinkled point. Moving sh.o.r.eward majestically in ordered ranks, the waves hove themselves up when they met the shoal and dissolved into frothy cataracts. It was an impressive spectacle, and the sloop looked by contrast extremely small. Still, she drove on, and Jimmy, standing at the wheel, gazed steadily ahead.

"We'll have to chance finding water, because the lead's no guide," he said. "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 of drenched canvas set. As Jimmy luffed her into the lee of the island there was a sudden change. The water, smoothing to a measured heave, glittered with tiny ripples; the slanted mast rose upright; and the sloop forged on toward a shelving beach, through variable flaws. Then, as she slowed and the canvas flapped, the anchor was flung over, and the rattle of running chain sent a cloud of birds circling above the rocks.

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

CHAPTER IV-THE ISLAND

On a gray afternoon, with a fog hovering over the leaden water, they sighted the island where the wreck lay. What wind there was blew astern, but it had scarcely strength enough to wrinkle the long heave that followed the sloop; the tide, Jimmy computed, was at half flood. This was borne out by the way a blur on their port hand grew into a tongue of reef on which the sea broke in snowy turmoil, and by the quickness with which the long, gray ridge behind it emerged from the fog. Sweeping it with the gla.s.ses, Jimmy could distinguish a few dark patches that looked like scrub-pines or willows. Then, as she opened up the coastline, he noticed the strip of sloppy beach sprinkled with weedy boulders, and the bare slopes of sand and stones beyond. The spot was unlike the islands at which they had called on their way up; for they were thickly covered with ragged firs and an undergrowth of brush and wild-fruit vines; this had a desolate, forbidding look, as if only the hardiest vegetation could withstand the chill and savage winds that swept it.

The men were all somewhat worn by the voyage, which had been long and difficult. Their clothes were stiff with salt from many soakings, and two of them suffered from raw sores on wrists and elbows caused by the rasp of the hard garments. Their food had been neither plentiful nor varied, and all had grown to loathe the sight of fish.

"I've seen more cheerful places," Bethune declared, when Jimmy had handed him the gla.s.ses. "I suppose we bring up under its eastern end?"

Moran nodded.

"Pretty good shelter in the bight in about two fathoms. Watch out to starboard and the reef will show you where she is."

Jimmy turned his eyes in that direction, but saw nothing for a minute.

Then the swell, which ran after them in long undulations nearly as smooth as oil, suddenly boiled in a white upheaval, and a cloud of fine spray was thrown up as by a geyser.

"One can understand the old steamboat's breaking her back," he said.

"Where's she lying?"

"Not far ahead; but by the height of the water on the beach, there'll be nothing to be seen of her for the next nine hours."

"And it will be dark then!" Bethune said gloomily. Jimmy shared his comrade's disappointment. After first sighting land they had felt keen suspense. There was a possibility that the wreck had broken up or sunk into the sand since Moran had visited her; and, after facing many hardships and risks to reach her, they must go back bankrupt if she had disappeared. The important question could not be answered until the next day.

"Couldn't we bring up here and look for her in the dory when the tide falls?" Jimmy suggested.

"It sure wouldn't be wise. When you get your anchor down in the bight you're pretty safe; but two cables wouldn't hold her outside when the sea gets up-and I don't know a place where it blows oftener."

"Then you had better take her in. I can't say that we've had much luck this trip; and we've been a fortnight longer on the way than I calculated. It will be something to feel the beach beneath our feet."

They ran into a basin with gray rocks and stones on its landward side, and a shoal on which the surf broke to seaward; and, soon after dropping anchor, they rowed ash.o.r.e.

The island appeared to be two miles long, and nothing grew on it except a few patches of scrub in the hollows of its central ridge; but it had, as Moran pointed out, two springs of good water. Birds screamed above the surf and waded along the sand, and a seal lolled upon a stony beach; but these were the only signs of life, and the raw air rang with the dreary sound of the sea.

When dusk crept in they went back on board, and with the lamp lighted the narrow cabin looked very cozy after the desolate land; but conversation languished, for the men were anxious and somewhat depressed. Daylight would show them whether or not their work had been thrown away. With so much at stake it was hard to wait.

"As soon as we've found if she's still on the bank," Moran said, as they were arranging their blankets on the lockers, "we'll get out the net and all the lines we brought; then I guess we had better keep the diving pump in a hole on the beach."

"I suppose we must fish and save our stores," Jimmy agreed; "though the worst beef they ever packed in Chicago would be a luxurious change. But what's your reason for putting the pump ash.o.r.e?"

Moran was not a humorous man, but he smiled.

"Well," he said, "we certainly haven't a lien on the wreck, and if it was known where she's now lying, we'd soon have a steamboat up from Portland or Vancouver with proper salvage truck. This island's off the track to the Alaska ports; but, so far's my experience goes, it's when you least want folks around that they turn up."

"He's right," Bethune declared. "There's no reason why we should make our object plain to anybody who may come along. I don't know much about the salvage laws, but my opinion is that the underwriters would treat us fairly if we brought back the gold; and if we couldn't come to terms with them, the courts would make us an award. Still, there's need for caution; we have n.o.body's authority, and might be asked why we didn't report the find instead of going off to get what we could on the quiet."

They went to sleep soon after this, and awakening in a few hours, found dawn breaking; for when the lonely waters are free from ice there is very little night in the North. A thin fog hid the land, leaving visible only a strip of wet beach, and there was still no wind, which Moran seemed to consider somewhat remarkable. As the tide was falling, Jimmy suggested that they should launch the dory and row off at once to look for the wreck; but Moran objected.

"It's a long pull, and we don't want to lose time," he said. "S'pose we find her? We couldn't work the pump from the boat, and we'd have to come back for the sloop. You don't often strike it calm here, and we have to get ahead while we can."

The others agreed; and after a hurried breakfast they hove the anchor and made a start, Moran sculling the _Cetacea_, Jimmy and Bethune towing her in the dory. They found the towing hard work, for stream and swell set against them and the light boat was jerked backward by the tightening line as she lurched over the steep undulations. Then, in spite of their care, the line would range forward along her side as she sheered, and there was danger of its drawing her under. Though the air was raw, they were bathed in perspiration before they had made half a mile; and Bethune paused a moment to cool his blistering hands in the water.

"This kind of thing is rather strenuous when you're not used to it," he grumbled.

Jimmy was glad of a moment's rest; but immediately there came a cry from Moran. "Watch out! Where you going to?"

Looking round, they saw the _Cetacea's_ bowsprit close above their heads as she lurched toward them on the back of a smooth sea. Pulling hard, with the hampering rope across her, they got the dory round, and afterward rowed steadily, while their breath came short and the sweat dripped from them. It was exhausting work; but Bethune pointed out the fact that they had not embarked on a pleasure excursion.

At last Moran dropped anchor; and, boarding the sloop, the men spent an hour of keen suspense watching the sea. The island had faded to a faint, dark blur, and all round the rest of the circle an unbroken wall of mist rested on the smoothly lifting swell. None of them had anything to say; they smoked in anxious silence, their eyes fixed on the gla.s.sy water which gave no sign of hiding anything below.

Bethune impatiently jumped up.

"This is too tedious for me!" he exclaimed. "Can't we sweep for the wreck from the dory with the bight of a line?"