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The Secret of the Reef

by Harold Bindloss · English · Gutenberg #35823 · 528,694 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Secret of the Reef

Author: Harold Bindloss


        
Release date: April 10, 2011 [eBook #35823]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35823

Credits: Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SECRET OF THE REEF ***




Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net.


[Illustration: _"Clay Had Lost Control of His Limbs"_]



                         THE SECRET OF THE REEF

                           By HAROLD BINDLOSS

                               AUTHOR OF
         "Thurston of Orchard Valley," "By Right of Purchase,"
                   "Masters of the Wheatlands," Etc.

                      _With Frontispiece in Color_

                           A. L. BURT COMPANY
                          PUBLISHERS  NEW YORK

        _Published by Arrangement With Frederick A. Stokes Co._




                         _Copyright, 1914, by_
                     _Frederick A. Stokes Company_

                         _All rights reserved_






CONTENTS


  - CHAPTER I--DISMISSED

  - CHAPTER II--A NEW VENTURE

  - CHAPTER III--THE FURY OF THE SEA

  - CHAPTER IV--THE ISLAND

  - CHAPTER V--AN INTERRUPTION

  - CHAPTER VI--BLOWN OFF

  - CHAPTER VII--GRUBSTAKED

  - CHAPTER VIII--PUZZLING QUESTIONS

  - CHAPTER IX--THE MINE AT SNOWY CREEK

  - CHAPTER X--THE WRECK OF THE _KANAWHA_

  - CHAPTER XI--FATHER AND SON

  - CHAPTER XII--READY FOR THE FRAY

  - CHAPTER XIII--THE REPULSE

  - CHAPTER XIV--FIGHTING FOR A LIFE

  - CHAPTER XV--ILLUMINATION

  - CHAPTER XVI--A GHOST OF THE PAST

  - CHAPTER XVII--THE STRONG-ROOM

  - CHAPTER XVIII--BOGUS GOLD

  - CHAPTER XIX--A DANGEROUS SECRET

  - CHAPTER XX--HOUNDED

  - CHAPTER XXI--JIMMY'S EMBARRASSMENT

  - CHAPTER XXII--A WARNING

  - CHAPTER XXIII--THE FIRST ATTACK

  - CHAPTER XXIV--THE GIRL IN THE BOAT

  - CHAPTER XXV--PAYING A DEBT

  - CHAPTER XXVI--AN UNEXPECTED DELAY

  - CHAPTER XXVII--ON THE BEACH

  - CHAPTER XXVIII--A TRUCE

  - CHAPTER XXIX--THE HIDDEN GOLD

  - CHAPTER XXX--THE LAST OF THE WRECK

  - CHAPTER XXXI--A GIFT FROM THE DEAD

  - CHAPTER XXXII--THE BARRIERS GO DOWN



                         THE SECRET OF THE REEF





CHAPTER I--DISMISSED


The big liner's smoke streamed straight astern, staining the soft blue
of the sky, as, throbbing gently to her engines' stroke, she clove her
way through the smooth heave of the North Pacific. Foam blazed with
phosphorescent flame beneath her lofty bows and, streaking with green
and gold scintillations the long line of hull that gleamed ivory-white
in the light of a half moon, boiled up again in fiery splendor in the
wake of the twin screws. Mastheads and tall yellow funnels raked across
the sky with a measured swing, the long deck slanted gently, its
spotless whiteness darkened by the dew, and the draught the boat made
struck faint harmonies like the tinkle of elfin harps from wire shroud
and guy. Now they rose clearly; now they were lost in the roar of the
parted swell.

A glow of electric light streamed out from the saloon-companion and the
smoking-room; the skylights of the saloon were open, and when the notes
of a piano drifted aft with a girl's voice, Jimmy Farquhar, second mate,
standing dressed in trim white uniform beneath a swung-up boat, smiled
at the refrain of the old love song. He was in an unusually
impressionable mood; and he felt that there was some danger of his
losing his head as his eyes rested admiringly on his companion, for
there was a seductive glamour in the blue and silver splendor of the
night.

Ruth Osborne leaned on the steamer's rail, looking forward, with the
moonlight on her face. She was young and delicately pretty, with a
slender figure, and the warm coloring that often indicates an
enthusiastic temperament. In the daylight her hair had ruddy gleams in
its warm brown, and her eyes a curious golden scintillation; but now it
arched in a dusky mass above the pallid oval of her face, and her look
was thoughtful.

She had fallen into the habit of meeting Jimmy when he was not on watch;
and the mate felt flattered by her frank preference for his society, for
he suspected that several of the passengers envied him, and that Miss
Osborne was a lady of importance at home. It was understood that she was
the only daughter of the American merchant who had taken the two best
deck rooms, which perhaps accounted for the somewhat imperious way she
had. Miss Osborne did what she liked, and made it seem right; and it was
obvious that she liked to talk to Jimmy.

"It has been a delightful trip," she said.

"Yes," agreed Jimmy; "the finest I recollect. I wanted you to have a
smooth-water voyage, and I am glad you enjoyed it."

"That was nice of you," she smiled. "I could hardly help enjoying it.
She's a comfortable boat, and everybody has been pleasant. I suppose
we'll see Vancouver Island late to-morrow?"

"It will be dark when we pick up the lights, but we'll be in Victoria
early the next morning. I think you leave us there?"

The girl was silent for a few moments, and in her expression there was a
hint of regret that stirred Jimmy's blood. They had seen a good deal of
each other during the voyage; and it was painful to the man to realize
that in all probability their acquaintance must soon come to an end; but
he ventured to think that his companion shared his feelings to some
extent.

"In a way, I'm sorry we're so nearly home," Ruth said frankly; and
added, smiling, "I'm beginning to find out that I love the sea."

Jimmy noted the explanation. He was a handsome young Englishman of
unassuming disposition, and by no means a fortune-hunter, but he had
been bantered by the other mates, and he knew that it was not an
altogether unusual thing for a wealthy young lady to fall in love with a
steamboat officer during a long, fine-weather run. Miss Osborne,
however, had shown only a friendly liking for him; and, as he would see
no more of her after the next day, he must not make a fool of himself at
the last moment.

"The sea's not always like this," he replied. "It can be very cruel; and
all ships aren't mailboats."

"I suppose not. You mean that life is harder in the others?"

Jimmy laughed. He had been a _Conway_ boy, but soon after he finished
his schooling on the famous old vessel the death of a guardian deprived
him of the help and influence he had been brought up to expect. As a
result of this, he had been apprenticed to a firm of parsimonious
owners, and began his career in a badly found and undermanned iron
sailing ship. On board her he had borne hunger and wet and cold, and was
often worked to the point of exhaustion. Pride kept him from deserting,
and he had come out of the four years' struggle very hard and lean, to
begin almost as stern a fight in steam cargo-tramps. Then, by a stroke
of unexpected luck, he met an invalid merchant on one of the vessels,
and the man recommended him to the directors of a mail company. After
this, things became easier for Jimmy. He made progress, and, after what
he had borne, he found his present circumstances almost luxuriously
easy.

"Steam is improving matters," he said; "but there are still trades in
which mates and seamen are called upon to stand all that flesh and blood
can endure."

"And you have known something of this?"

"All I want to know."

"Do tell me about it," Ruth urged. "I am curious."

Jimmy laughed.

"Well, on my first trip round Cape Horn we left the Mersey undermanned
and lost three of our crew before we were abreast of the Falkland Isles;
two of them were hurled from the royal yard through the breaking of
rotten gear. That made a big difference, and we had vile weather: gales
dead ahead, snow, and bitter cold. The galley fire was washed out half
the time, the deckhouse we lived in was flooded continually; for weeks
we hadn't a rag of dry clothes, and very seldom a plateful of warm food.
It was a merciful relief when the gale freshened, and she lay hove to,
with the icy seas bursting over her weather bow while we slept like logs
in our soaking bunks; but that wasn't often. With each shift or fall of
wind we crawled out on the yards, wet and frozen to the bone, to shake
the hard canvas loose, and, as it generally happened, were sent aloft in
an hour to furl it tight again. Each time it was a short-handed fight
for life to master the thrashing sail. Our hands cracked open, and the
cuts would not heal; stores were spoiled by the water that washed over
everything, and some days we starved on a wet biscuit or two; but the
demand for brutal effort never slackened. We were worn very thin when we
squared away for the north with the first fair wind."

"Ah!" exclaimed Ruth. "It must have been a grim experience. Didn't it
daunt you, and make you hate the sea?"

"I hated the ship, her skipper, and her owners, and most of all the
smart managing clerk who had worked out to the last penny how cheaply
she could be run; but that was a different thing. The sea has a spell
that grips you, and never lets go again."

"Yes," said Ruth; "I have felt that, though I have seen it only in fine
weather and from a liner's saloon deck." She mused for a few moments
before she went on. "It will be a long time before I forget this voyage,
steaming home over the sunlit water, with the wind behind us and the
smoke going straight up, the decks warm, everything bright and
glittering, and the glimmer of the moon and the sea-fire about the hull
at night."

There was an opening here for an assurance that the voyage would live
even longer in his memory; but Jimmy let it pass. He feared that he
might say too much if he gave the rein to sentiment.

"Were you not charmed with Japan?" he asked.

Ruth acquiesced in the change of topic, and her eyes sparkled
enthusiastically.

"Oh, yes! It was the time of the cherry-blossom, and the country seemed
a fairyland, quainter, stranger, and prettier than anything I had ever
dreamed of!"

"Still, you must have seen many interesting places."

"No," she said with a trace of graveness. "I don't even know very much
about my own country."

"All the Americans I have met seemed fond of traveling."

"The richer ones are," she answered frankly. "But until quite lately I
think we were poor. It was during the Klondyke rush that my father first
became prosperous, and for a number of years I never saw him. When my
mother died I was sent to a small, old-fashioned, New England town,
where some elderly relatives took care of me. They were good people, but
very narrow, and all I heard and saw was commonplace and provincial.
Then I went to a very strict and exclusive school and stayed there much
longer than other girls." Ruth paused and smiled. "When at last I joined
my father I felt as if I had suddenly awakened in a different world. I
had the same feeling when I saw Japan."

"After all, you will be glad to get home."

"Yes," she said slowly; "but there's a regret. We have been very happy
since we left; my father has been light-hearted, and I have had him to
myself. At home he often has an anxious look, and is always occupied. I
have some friends and many acquaintances, but now and then I feel
lonely."

Jimmy pondered, watching her with appreciative eyes. She was frank, but
not with foolish simplicity; quite unspoiled by good fortune; and had
nothing of the coquette about her. Indeed, he wondered whether she
realized her attractiveness, or if the indifference she had shown to
admiration were due to pride. He did not know much about young women,
but he thought that she was proud and of strong character.

"You must come to see us if you are ever near Tacoma," Ruth said
cordially.

Jimmy thanked her, and soon afterward left her, to keep his watch on the
bridge. As they were still out of sight of land he had no companion
except the quartermaster at the wheel in the glass-fronted pilot-house.
There was no sail or smoke trail in all the wide expanse his high view
point commanded. Rolling lazily to port and starboard, the big boat
cleft a lonely sea that was steeped in dusky blue save where a broad
belt of moonlight touched it with glittering silver. The voices and
laughter gradually died away from the decks below, the glow of light was
lessening, and the throb of the screws and the roar of flung-off water
grew louder. A faint breeze had sprung up, and the smoke stretched out,
undeviating, in a broad black smear over the starboard quarter; Jimmy
noticed this while he paced to and fro, turning now and then to sweep a
different arc of horizon. The last time he did so he stopped abruptly,
for the smoke had moved forward. For a moment he fancied that the wind
had changed, but a glance at the white-streaked wake showed him that the
vessel was swinging round. Then he sprang to the pilot-house, and,
looking in through the open door, saw the quartermaster leaning slackly
on the small brass wheel. His face showed livid in the moonlight, and
his forehead was damp with sweat.

"What's this, Evans?" Jimmy cried.

Pulling himself together with an effort, the man glanced at the compass
in alarm.

"Sorry, sir," he said thickly, spinning the wheel. "She's fallen off a
bit. Something came over me; but I'm all right now."

"It may come over you once too often. This isn't the first time," Jimmy
reminded him.

A shadow obscured the moonlight; and, turning abruptly, Jimmy saw the
captain in the doorway. The skipper looked at the compass and studied
the quartermaster's face; then he beckoned Jimmy outside. He had come up
in soft slippers which made no noise, and Jimmy was keenly concerned to
know how long he had been there. Jimmy had never got on well with his
captain.

"Evans had his helm hard over; was she much off her course?" the captain
asked with an ominous calm.

"About thirty degrees, sir."

"How long is it since you checked his steering?"

Jimmy told him.

"You consider that often enough?"

"I had my eye on the smoke, sir."

"The smoke? I suppose you know a light breeze is often variable?"

"Yes, sir," said Jimmy. "She couldn't swing off much without my noticing
it."

"One wouldn't imagine so after what I discovered. But I gathered that
Evans had been seized in this way during your watch before."

"Yes, sir," Jimmy repeated doggedly.

"Didn't it strike you that your duty was to report the matter? You knew
that Evans has a weakness of the heart that may seize him unexpectedly
at any time. If it did so when we were entering a crowded harbor or
crossing another vessel's course, the consequences might prove
disastrous. In not reporting it you took upon yourself a responsibility
I can't allow my officers. Have you anything to say?" Jimmy knew he
could make no answer that would excuse him. When, as is now usual, a
fast vessel's course is laid off in degrees, accurate steering is
important, and he had been actuated by somewhat injudicious pity. Evans
was a steady man, with a family in England to provide for, and he had
once by prompt action prevented the second mate's being injured by a
heavy cargo-sling.

"Perhaps the best way of meeting the situation," the captain said
curtly, "would be for you to voluntarily leave the ship at Vancouver.
You can let me know what you decide when you come off watch."

Jimmy moodily returned to his duty. He thought his fault was small, but
there was no appeal. He would have no further opportunity for serving
his present employers; and mailboat berths are not readily picked up. He
kept his watch, and afterward went to sleep with a heavy heart.

The next evening he was idling disconsolately on the saloon deck when he
saw Miss Osborne coming toward him. He was standing in the shadow of a
boat and stayed there, feeling in no mood to force a cheerfulness he was
far from feeling. Besides, he had now and then, when the girl was
gracious to him, found it needful to practise some restraint, and now he
felt unequal to the strain.

"I have been looking for you," she said. "As I suppose everybody will be
busy to-morrow morning, I may not see you then. But you seem downcast!"

Jimmy shrank from telling her that he had been dismissed; and, after
all, that was a comparatively small part of his trouble. The girl's tone
was gentle, and there was in her eyes a sympathy that set his heart
beating. He wished he were a rich man, or, indeed, almost anything
except a steamboat officer who would soon be turned out of his ship.

"Well," he said, "for one thing, the end of a voyage is often a
melancholy time. After spending some weeks with pleasant people, it's
not nice to know they must all scatter and that you have to part from
friends you have made and like."

A faint tinge of color crept into Ruth's face; but she smiled.

"It doesn't follow that they're forgotten," she replied; "and there's
always a possibility of their meeting again. We may see you at Tacoma;
it isn't very far from Vancouver."

Jimmy was not a presumptuous man, but he saw that she had given him a
lead and he bitterly regretted that he could not follow it. Though of
hopeful temperament, stern experience had taught him sense, and he
recognized that circumstances did not permit of his dallying with
romance. There was nothing to be gained and something to be lost by
cultivating the girl's acquaintance.

"I may have to sail on a different run before long," he said.

She gave him a glance of swift but careful scrutiny. The moonlight was
clear, and he looked well in his white uniform, which showed his solid
but finely molded figure and emphasized the clean brownness of his skin.
He had light hair and steady, dark blue eyes, which had just then a hint
of trouble.

"Well," she responded, "you know best; but, whether you come or not, my
father and I are in your debt. You have done much to make this a very
pleasant voyage." She gave him her hand, which he held a moment. "And,
now, since you wish it, good-by!"

When she turned away, Jimmy leaned on the rail, watching her move
quietly up the long deck. He was troubled with confused and futile
regrets. Still, he had acted sensibly: it was unwise for a dismissed
steamboat officer to harbor the alluring fancies he had sternly driven
from his mind.




CHAPTER II--A NEW VENTURE


The sun had dipped behind a high black ridge crested with ragged pines,
when Jimmy, dressed in brown overalls and a seaman's jersey, sat cooking
supper on a stony beach of Vancouver Island. In front of him the
landlocked sea ran back, glimmering with a steely luster, into the east;
behind, where the inlet reached the hillfoot, stood the City of the
Springs, which then consisted of a shut-down sawmill, a row of
dilapidated wooden houses, and two second-rate hotels. Shadowed by
climbing pinewoods, sheltered by the rocks, the site was perhaps as
beautiful as any in the romantic province of British Columbia, though
man's crude handiwork defaced its sylvan charm with rusty iron
chimney-stacks, rows of blackened fir-stumps, and unsightly sawdust
heaps. For all that, giant, primeval forest rolled close up to it, and
in front lay the untainted sea. The air had in it a curious exhilarating
quality; the balsamic scent of the firs mingled with the sharp odors of
drying weed, tar, and cedar shavings that lay about the camp; and Jimmy,
stooping over his frying-pan, sniffed the air with satisfaction. These
were odors that belonged to the sea and the wilds; and he had lately
renounced the comforts of civilization and embarked upon an adventure
that appealed to him.

Near him, a man with a rugged, weatherbeaten face was engaged in fitting
a plank into the bilge of a hauled-up sloop. She was a small but shapely
vessel of about forty feet in length, and had been built after a design
adopted by a famous yacht club on the Atlantic coast. Jimmy could see
that she was fast; but she had been put to base uses, and had suffered
from neglect. As a matter of fact, he never learned her history, and had
always some doubt as to whether the man from whom he and his companion
bought her had an indisputable right to sell her.

Moran had been a Nova Scotian lobster catcher before he came to British
Columbia to engage in the new halibut fishery, which had proved
disappointing. Bethune, who lay upon the shingle in garments much the
worse for wear, was a "remittance man," with a cheerful expression and a
stock of unvarying good humor. It was some time since he had engaged in
any exacting occupation, and now, after using the saw all day, he was
resting from his unaccustomed exertions and bantering Moran.

Jimmy had met them both in a second-rate Vancouver boarding-house, to
which he had resorted after failing to find a ship, and working on the
wharf. He might have sailed before the mast, but he knew that when he
next applied for a berth on board a liner he must account for his
voyagings, and the fact that he had served as able seaman would not
recommend him. When there was no cargo to be handled, he worked in the
great Hastings mill; but he promptly discovered that he would never grow
rich by this means; and the unrelaxing physical effort, demanded by
foremen who knew how to drive hard, began to pall on him. He could have
stood it had he come fresh from the sailing ships, but he frankly
admitted that it was trying to a mailboat officer. He had, however, some
small savings, and when Bethune proposed a venture, in which Moran
joined, Jimmy agreed.

"Hank," Bethune drawled, after watching Moran for several minutes, "you
Maritime Provinces people are a hard and obstinate lot, but you won't
get the plank in that way if you stick at it until to-morrow."

Moran looked up with the sweat dripping from his brow.

"I surely hate to be beat," he admitted. "I can spring her plumb up
lengthways, but her edges won't bend into the frames."

"Exactly. This isn't a cod-fishing dory or a lobster punt. Take your
plane and hollow the plank up the middle."

After doing as he was instructed, Moran had not much trouble in fitting
it into place.

"Why didn't you tell me that before?" he asked.

"I've known you some time," Bethune answered with a grin. "There are
people to whom you can't show the easiest way until they've tried the
hardest one and found it won't do. It's not their fault; I hold you
can't make a man responsible for his temperament--and it's a point on
which I speak feelingly, because my temperament has been my bane."

"How d'you know these things, anyway? I mean about bending planks. You
never allowed you'd been a boatbuilder."

"Do you expect a man to exhibit all his talents? Here's another tip.
Don't nail that plank home now. Leave it shored up until morning, and
you'll get it dead close then with a wedge or two. And now, if Jimmy
hasn't burned the grub, I think we'll have supper."

The meal might have been better, but Moran admitted that he had often
eaten worse, and afterward they lay about on the shingle and lighted
their pipes. Bethune, as usual, was the first to speak.

"The lumber, and the canvas Jimmy gets to work upon to-morrow, have
emptied the treasury," he remarked. "If we incur any further
liabilities, there's a strong probability of their not being met; but
that gives the job an interest. Prudence is a cold-blooded quality,
which no man of spirit has much use for. To help yourself may be good,
but doing so consistently often makes it harder to help the other
fellow."

"When you have finished moralizing we'll get to business," Jimmy
rejoined. "Though I'm a partner in the scheme, I know very little yet
about the wreck you're taking us up to look for. Try to be practical."

"Moran is practical enough for all three of us. I'll let him tell the
tale; but I'll premise by saying that when he found the halibut fishing
much less remunerative than it was cracked up to be, he sailed up the
northwest coast with another fellow to trade with the Indians for furs.
It was then he found the vessel."

"The reef," said Moran, "lies open to the south-west, and I got seven
fathoms close alongside it at low water. A mile off, and near a low
island, a bank runs out into the stream, and the after-half of the wreck
lies on the edge of it, worked well down in the sand. At low ebb you can
see the end of one or two timbers sticking up out of the broken water."

"Is it always broken water?" Jimmy interrupted.

"Pretty near, I guess. Though there's a rise and fall on the island
beach, the stream ran steady to the northeast at about two miles an
hour, the whole week we lay sheltering in the bight, and the swell it
brings in makes a curling sea on the edge of the shoals."

"Doesn't seem a nice place for a diving job. How did you get down to
her?"

"Stripped and swam down. One day when it fell a flat calm for a few
hours and Jake was busy patching the sail, I pulled the dory across. I
wanted to find out what those timbers belonged to, and I knew I had to
do it then, because the ice was coming in, and we must clear with the
first fair wind. Well, I got a turn of the dory's painter round a
timber, and went down twice, seeing bottom at about three fathoms with
the water pretty clear. The sand was well up her bilge, but she was
holding together, and when I swam round to the open end of her there
didn't seem much in the way except the orlop beams. I could have walked
right aft under decks if I'd had a diving dress; but I'd been in the
water long enough, and a sea fog was creeping up."

Moran apparently thought little of his exploit; but Jimmy could
appreciate the hardihood he had shown. The wreck lay far up on the
northern coast, where the sea was chilled by currents from the Pole, and
Moran had gone down to her when the ice was working in. Jimmy could
imagine the tiny dory lurching over the broken swell, and the
half-frozen man painfully crawling on board her with many precautions to
avoid a capsize, while the fog that might prevent his return to his
vessel crept across the water. It was an adventure that required unusual
strength and courage.

"Why didn't you take your partner out with you?" he asked.

"I'd seen Jake play some low-down tricks when we traded for the few furs
we got, and I suspicioned he wasn't acting square with me. Anyhow, he
allowed he didn't take much count of abandoned wrecks, and when he saw
I'd brought nothing back, he never asked me about her."

"But if she was lost on the reef, how did she reach the bank a mile
away?"

"I can't tell you that, but I guess she shook her engines out after she
broke her back, and then slipped off into deeper water. The stream and
surge of sea may have worked her along the bottom."

"It came out that she had only a little rock ballast in her," Bethune
explained. "There may not have been enough to pin her down; but the
important point is that the strong-room was aft, and Hank says that part
is sound."

Jimmy nodded.

"Suppose you tell me all you know about the matter," he said.

It was characteristic of both of them that when they first discussed the
venture the one had been content with sketchily outlining his plans, and
the other had not demanded many details. The project appealed to their
imagination, and once they had decided upon it the necessary
preparations had occupied all their attention.

Leaning back against a boulder, Bethune refilled and lighted his pipe.
His clothes were far from new, and were freely stained with tar, but he
spoke clean English, and his face suggested intelligence and refinement.

"Very well," he said. "When Hank mentioned his discovery I thought I saw
an opportunity of the kind I'd been waiting for; and I took some trouble
to find out what I could about the vessel. She was an old wooden
propeller that came round Cape Horn a good many years ago. When she
couldn't compete with modern steamboats, they strengthened her for a
whaler, and she knocked about the Polar Sea; but she burned too much
coal for that business, and wouldn't work well under sail. It looked as
if there wasn't a trade in which she could make a living; but the
Klondyke rush began, and somebody bought her cheap, and ran her up to
Juneau, in Alaska, and afterward to Nome. There were better boats, but
they were packed full, fore and aft, and the crowd going north was not
fastidious: all it wanted was to get on the goldfields as soon as
possible. Well, she made a number of trips all right, though I believe
her owners had trouble when the pressure eased and the United States
passenger-carrying regulations began to be properly applied. It was
probably because no other boat was available that a small mining
syndicate, which seems to have done pretty well, shipped a quantity of
gold down from the north in her. Besides this, she brought out a number
of miners, who had been more or less successful. Something went wrong
with the engines when she had been a day or two at sea; but they got
sail on her, and she drove south before a fresh gale until she struck
the reef on a hazy night. It broke her back, and the after hold was
flooded a few minutes after she struck. The strong-room was under water,
there was no time to cut down to it; but they got the boats away, and
after the crew and passengers were picked up, a San Francisco salvage
company thought it worth while to attempt the recovery of the gold. It
was late in the season when their tug reached the spot, and the ice
drove her off the reef; the sea was generally heavy, and after a week or
two they threw up the contract. The underwriters paid all losses, and
that was the end of the matter. It is only the drifting of the stern
half into shoal water that gives us our chance. Now I think you know as
much as I do."

Jimmy sat thoughtfully silent for a few minutes, realizing that it was a
reckless venture he had undertaken. The wreck lay in unfrequented waters
which were swept by angry currents that brought in the ice, vexed by
sudden gales, and often wrapped in fog. The appliances the party had
been able to procure were of the cheapest description, and there was a
risk in making the long voyage in so small a vessel as the sloop. Still,
Jimmy's fortunes needed a desperate remedy, and he was not much daunted
by the difficulties he must face.

"Well," he said, "I suppose we have some chance; but I don't quite see
what made you so keen on taking up the thing."

"It's explainable," Bethune drawled, picking up a pebble and lazily
flipping it out over the water. "Victoria's a handsome city, and the
views from it are good. For all that, when you can find no occupation,
and have spent some years lounging about the waterfront and the bars of
cheap hotels, the place, to put it mildly, loses its charm."

"You could leave it. As a matter of fact, I met you at Vancouver."

"Oh, yes. I could leave it for a maximum period of thirty days, because,
with the exception of Sundays and one or two holidays, I was required to
present myself at a lawyer's office on the first of every month. Then I
was paid enough to keep me, with rigid economy, for the next four weeks;
but on the first occasion I failed to come up to time the allowance was
to stop for good. It's a system that has some advantages for the people
who provide the funds in the old country, since it assures the payee's
stopping where he is--but it has its drawbacks for the latter. How can a
man get a job and hold it anywhere outside the town if he must return at
a fixed hour every month? When I was in Vancouver it cost me a large
share of the allowance to collect it."

"And now, by going north, you throw it up?"

"Exactly," said Bethune. "It should have been done before, but, as I had
never been taught to work or go without my dinner, the course I am at
last taking needed some moral courage. It's sink or swim now."

Jimmy made a sign of agreement. All the money he possessed had been sunk
in the undertaking; and now, in order to get it back, he must succeed
where a well-equipped salvage expedition had failed. Though the wreck
had since changed her position, the prospects were not very encouraging.

"Well," he said, "we must do the best we can; but I wish our funds had
run to a better supply of stores."

"Hank can fish," grinned Bethune. "In fact, he'll have to whenever
there's anything to catch. Fortunately, fish is wholesome and
sustaining. However, as this job must be finished to-morrow, we had
better get to sleep early."

Jimmy sat smoking for a few minutes after the others went on board the
sloop. It was getting dark, but a band of pure green light still
glimmered along the crest of the black ridge to the west. The air was
cold and very still, and gray wood smoke hung in gauzy wreaths above the
roofs of the town. The tall pines were growing blurred, but their keen,
sweet fragrance hung about the beach, and the smooth swell lapped with a
drowsy murmur upon the shingle.

Jimmy loved the sea; and now he was to go afloat again, in his own
vessel, bound by no restrictions except the necessity for making the
voyage pay. This would not be easy; but there was a romance about the
undertaking that gave it a zest.




CHAPTER III--THE FURY OF THE SEA


In the evening of the day on which they saw the last of Vancouver
Island, Jimmy sat in the _Cetacea's_ cockpit with a chart of the North
Pacific spread out before him on the cabin hatch. It showed the tortuous
straits, thickly sprinkled with islands of all sizes, through which they
had somehow threaded their way during the last week, in spite of
baffling head winds and racing tides, and though Jimmy was a navigator
he felt some surprise at their having accomplished the feat without
touching bottom. Now he had their course to the north plotted out along
the deeply fretted coast of British Columbia, and rolling up the chart
he rose to look about.

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

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

"What do you think of the weather?" Bethune asked, as he lounged at the
steering 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 day
out is an item to be considered, we must drive her. Have you reckoned up
what we're paying every week to the ship-chandler fellow who found us
the cables and diving gear?"

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

Bethune chuckled.

"I have the cost of everything down in my notebook; although I will
confess that I was mildly surprised at myself for taking the trouble. If
I'd occasionally made a few simple calculations at home and acted on
them, the chances are that I shouldn't be here now." Bethune made a
gesture of disgust. "Halibut boiled and halibut fried begins to pall on
one; but this is far better than our quarters in Vancouver, and they
were a big improvement on those I had in Victoria. I daresay it was
natural 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 got
used 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 the
long evening to be dawdled through in the lounge was worst of all. You
have, perhaps, seen the hard-faced toughs lolling back with their feet
on the radiator pipes before the windows, the heaps of dead flies that
are seldom swept up, the dreary, comfortless squalor. Imagine three or
four hours of it every night, with only a last-week's _Colonist_ to
while 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 was
that I couldn't come down to Victoria and hold my job. Once or twice
when the pay days approximated, I ran it pretty fine; and I've a vivid
memory of walking seventy miles in two days over a newly made wagon
trail. The softer parts had been graded with ragged stones from the
hillside, the drier bits were rutted soil--it needed a surgical
operation to get my stockings off."

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

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

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

"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 present
state of things is good enough for me. Is anything better than being
afloat in a staunch craft that's entirely at your command?"

Jimmy acquiesced heartily as he glanced about. Sitting to windward, he
could see the gently rounded deck run forward to the curve of the lifted
bows, and, above them, the tall, hollowed triangle of the jib. The
arched cabin-top led forward in flowing lines, and though there were
patches on plank and canvas, all his eye rested on was of harmonious
outline. The _Cetacea_ was small and low in the water, but she was fast
and safe, and Jimmy had already come to feel a certain love for her.
Their success depended upon her seaworthiness, and he thought she would
not fail them.

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

The narrow cabin that ran from the cockpit bulkhead to the stem was
cumbered with dismantled diving pumps and gear, but there was a locker
on each side on which one could sleep. It was, moreover, permeated with
the smell of stale tobacco smoke, tarred hemp, and fish, but Jimmy had
put up with worse odors in the Mercantile Marine. Lying down, fully
dressed, on a locker, he saw Moran's shadowy form, wrapped in old
oilskins, on the opposite locker, rise above his level and sink as the
_Cetacea_ rocked them with a rhythmic swing. The water lapped noisily
against the planks, and now and then there was a groaning of timber and
a sharp clatter of blocks; but Jimmy soon grew drowsy and noticed
nothing.

He was awakened rudely by a heavy blow, and found he had fallen off the
locker 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 could
not stand upright under the low cabin-top. It was very dark, Jimmy could
not see the hatch, and the _Cetacea_ appeared to have fallen over on her
beam-ends. A confused uproar was going on above: the thud of heavy water
striking the deck, a furious thrashing of loose canvas, and the savage
scream of wind. Bethune's voice came faintly through the din, and he
seemed to be calling for help.

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

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

He understood Bethune to say that this would involve the loss of the
mast 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, banging
threateningly, and he saw that the half-lowered topsail hung beneath it.
This promised to complicate matters; but Moran was already endeavoring
to 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 swept
across the bows, swelling like a balloon and emptying with a shock that
threatened to snap the straining mast. It was obvious to the men who
knelt in the water dragging frantically at a rope that something drastic
must be done; but both were drenched and half blinded and had been
suddenly roused from sleep. The boat was large enough to make her gear
heavy to handle, and yet not so large as to obviate the need for urgent
haste when struck with all her canvas set by a savage squall. Though
they recognized this, Jimmy and his comrade paused a few moments to
gather breath. The jib, however, must be hauled down; and with a hoarse
shout to Moran, Jimmy lowered himself from the bowsprit until he felt
the wire bobstay under his feet.

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 compass?"

"In the cockpit, 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."

"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 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 shoreward 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
offshore 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 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 a
boulder-sprinkled point. Moving shoreward 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 glasses, 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 glasses. "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 ashore.

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 ashore?"

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 nobody'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 glassy 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?"

"You want to keep fresh," Moran warned him. "If she's there, she'll show
up before long."

They waited, Jimmy quietly glancing at his watch now and then; and at
last Moran stretched out a pointing hand.

"What's that, to starboard?" he asked.

For a few moments, during which the tension set their nerves on edge,
the others saw nothing; and then a faint ripple broke the glassy surface
of the swell. It smoothed out and the long heave swung undisturbed
across the spot for a time; but the ripple appeared again, with a dark
streak in the midst of it.

"Weed!" cried Bethune. "It must grow on something!"

"I guess so," said Moran. "It's fast to a ship's timber."

Five minutes later the head of the timber was visible, and in keen but
silent excitement they took out a line to it and hove the sloop close
up. The diving pumps were already rigged, and when they had lowered and
lashed a ladder, Moran coolly put on the heavy canvas dress. He said
that, as the show was his, he would go down first. It was with grave
misgivings that his companions screwed on the copper helmet and hung the
lead weights about him, for neither of them knew anything about the work
except what they had learned from a pamphlet issued by a maker of diving
apparatus. This they had diligently studied and argued over on the
voyage up, but there was the unpleasant possibility that it might not
contain all the information needful, and a small oversight might have
disastrous consequences.

When the copper helmet sank below the surface and a train of bubbles
rushed up, Jimmy felt his heart beat and his hand grow damp with
perspiration. He held the signal line and knew the code, as well as the
number of strokes to the minute that should give air enough; but he had
not much confidence in the pumps. Though he had had to pay a heavy
deposit on them, and their hire was costly, they were far from new. The
bubbles moved, however, drawing nearer the weed-crusted wood.

Suddenly the line jerked, and Bethune looked at Jimmy sharply.

"More air!" he cried. "Give her a few more revolutions--he's all right
so far."

It was a relief to both when the bubbles moved back toward the ladder,
and when the diver crawled on board they eagerly unscrewed the helmet.
Moran gasped once or twice and wiped his face before he turned to them.

"It's not too bad after the first minute or two," he said, and this was
the only allusion he made to his sensations. "Now, so far as I can make
out, there's no getting into her from the deck. Poop's badly smashed,
and you'd certainly foul the pipe or line among the broken beams; but it
looks pretty clear in the hold. Guess we'll have to break through the
after bulkhead; but it's sanded up and there's a pile of stuff to move.
You're sure about the strong-room, Bethune?"

"I took some trouble to find out, and was told it was under the poop
cabin. I couldn't get a plan of her."

"We'll try the bulkhead." Moran turned to Jimmy. "If you're going next,
take the shovel and see if you can shift some of the sand."

Jimmy was not a timid man, but he felt far from happy as his comrades
encased him in the dress and helmet. He found them an intolerable weight
as he moved toward the ladder and went down it, clinging tightly to the
rungs, and then, as a green mist crept across the glasses, he was
conscious of an unnerving fear. Struggling with it, he descended, and
was next troubled by a pain in his head and an unpleasant feeling of
pressure. Something throbbed in his ears, his breathing did not seem
normal, and he stopped, irresolute, at the foot of the ladder. He could
see a short distance, but it was like looking through dirty, greenish
glass, and the wavering light had puzzling reflections in it. He watched
the air globules rush to the surface and the shadow of the sloop's
bottom move to and fro; and then he fixed his eyes on a badly defined
dark object which he supposed was the wreck.

As he reluctantly let go the ladder he was surprised by another change.
Instead of carrying a crushing weight, he felt absurdly light and, in
spite of his weighted boots, it was difficult to keep his balance. His
feet did not fall where he intended, and when he moved the shovel he
carried, the motion of his arm was not perfectly controllable. It seemed
to him that if the stream were strong, he must hopelessly float away;
but he resolutely pulled himself together. He had not spent all his
money and made a daring voyage to be daunted by a few unusual
sensations. It was his business to break into the wreck; and he made his
way cautiously toward her. Stopping at the place where her after-half
had broken off, he saw in front of him a dark cavern, edged with ragged
planking and parted timbers and garlanded with long streamers of weed.
They uncoiled and wavered as the sea washed in and out, and Jimmy felt a
strong reluctance to enter. The darkness might hide strange and
dangerous creatures; for a few moments he allowed his imagination to run
riot like that of a frightened child.

This, however, must be stopped. Jimmy remembered that he was supplied
with an electric lamp. He fumbled clumsily with the switch, and, as a
wavering beam of light ran through the water, he cautiously entered the
hold. Sand had filled up the hollows among the stone ballast, and there
was only a broken orlop beam in his way. He began to feel easier,
reflecting that he was, after all, only a short distance beneath the
surface; though he would have preferred more experienced assistants at
the pumps. Making his way aft beside the shaft tunnel, he presently
reached a bank of sand which ran up to the splintered deck. The bulkhead
shutting off the lazaret was obviously behind it, and Jimmy began to use
the shovel.

It proved difficult work. A vigorous movement upset his unstable
equilibrium, and he wondered whether the weight he carried and the
pressure applied were adapted to the depth. This could be ascertained
only by experiment; and Jimmy feared to make it. Gripping himself,
however, he removed a few shovelfuls of sand; and then the pain in his
head got worse, and, driving in the shovel deeper than before, he fell
forward with the effort. Instead of coming to the ground, he made some
ridiculous gyrations before he recovered his footing; and then the
signal line, which he felt at to reassure himself, seemed tauter than it
should be.

Grabbing up the shovel, Jimmy commenced his retreat. The line might be
foul of something, and if so there was a danger of the air pipe's
entanglement. It was disconcerting to contemplate the result of that.
When he left the hull he felt a strong inclination to kick off his
leaded shoes and try to swim to the surface instead of slowly mounting
the ladder; but he conquered it and climbed up.

When at last the glasses were unscrewed and the air flowed in on his
face, Jimmy was conscious of intense relief. For a minute he sat limply
on the cabin top.

"I dare say we'll get accustomed to the thing," he said slowly to
Bethune; "but you'll find out that one mustn't expect to do much at
first."

Bethune went down, and when he came up Moran asked him dryly:

"How much of that sand did you shift?"

"Three good bucketfuls, which I imagine is more than Jimmy did," Bethune
answered with a grin. Then his face grew serious. "As there seems to be
forty or fifty tons of it, we'll have to do better."

"That," agreed Moran, "is a sure thing."

They were silent after this, and Jimmy lighted his pipe. Though the day
was chilly, it was pleasant to lie on the open deck and breathe air at
normal pressure. The stream was not strong, the sea was as smooth as he
thought it likely to be, and all the conditions were favorable to the
work; but he shrank from going down again, and he imagined that his
companions shared his unwillingness. Though he censured himself for
feeling so, he was glad when the mist, which had grown thinner, suddenly
streamed away and revealed a dark line advancing toward them across the
heaving water.

"A breeze!" he exclaimed. "Perhaps we'd better get back while we can.
There won't be much water up the channel at lowest ebb."

Bethune nodded agreement as a puff of cold air struck his face, and
while they shortened in the cable small white ripples splashed against
the bows. These grew larger and angrier as they ran the mainsail up;
and, getting the anchor, they bore away for the bight with the swell
crisping and frothing astern. Before they ran in behind the sheltering
sands it was blowing hard, and they spent the rest of the day lounging
on the cabin lockers, while the sloop strained at her cable and the
halyards beat upon the mast.




CHAPTER V--AN INTERRUPTION


For three days a bitter gale raged about the island, blowing clouds of
sand and fine shingle along the beach and piling the big Pacific combers
upon the shoals. The air was filled with the saltness of the spray, and
even below deck the men's ears rang with the clamor of the sea. Then the
wind fell, and when the swell went down they set to work again and found
their task grow less troublesome. They learned the pressure best suited
to the very moderate depth, their lungs got accustomed to the extra
labor, and none of them now hesitated about entering the gloomy hold.
Though they were interrupted now and then by the rising sea, they
steadily removed the sand. Their greatest difficulty was the shortness
of the time one could remain below. There was no sign of the bulkhead
yet, and a gale from the eastward might wash back the sediment they had
laboriously dug out. If this happened, they must try to break an opening
through the side of the hull; and none of them was anxious to do that,
because the timbers of a wooden ship are closely spaced and thick.

For a while nothing but the weather disturbed them; and then, one calm
day when trails of mist moved slowly across the water, Jimmy saw a
streak of smoke on a patch of clear horizon.

"Somebody farther to the east than he ought to be," he said, leaning on
the pump-crank; and then he fixed his eyes on the spot where the bubbles
broke the surface. Though he had grown used to the work, the bubbles had
still a curious fascination. It was difficult to turn his glance from
them as they traced a milky line across the green water or stopped and
widened into a frothy patch. So long as they did either, all was well
with the man below.

An hour later, when the mist closed in again, Jimmy lay smoking on the
deck. He had gone down and stayed longer than usual, and he felt tired
and somewhat moody. Of late he had been troubled by a bad headache,
which he supposed was the result of diving, and during the last few days
he had found the sand unusually hard. The lower layers had been
consolidated into a cement-like mass by the action of wave and tide.
Moreover, the work was arduous even when they were not down at the
wreck. It was no light task to tow the sloop out against the swell in
the calms; and when the sea rose suddenly, as it often did, they were
forced, if the tide was low, to thrash her out for an offing and face
the gale until there was water enough to take them up the channel.
Indeed, at times they dare not attempt the entrance, and lay to under
storm canvas to wait for better weather. Then they sat at the wheel in
turn while the hard-pressed craft labored among the frothing combers,
and afterward lay, wedged into place with wet sails and gear, on the
cabin lockers, while the erratic motion rendered sleep or any occupation
impossible. The _Cetacea_ was small enough to drift to leeward fast, and
it sometimes took them hours to drive her back to the island against the
still heavy sea when the wind began to lighten. It was a wearing life,
and Jimmy felt his nerves getting raw.

Bethune had gone below and Jimmy was turning the crank of the pump when
a dull, throbbing sound came out of the mist. Moran looked up sharply.

"That blame steamboat is coming here!" he cried, diving into the cabin
to get their glasses.

The measured thud of engines was plainly distinguishable with the roar
of water flung off the bows. Jimmy supposed the clank of the pump had
prevented their hearing it before.

"She's pretty close! Keep turning, but bring him up; you have the line!"
Moran exclaimed.

Bethune answered the signal; but as the bubbles drew near the sloop, the
steamer appeared in an opening in the mist. Her white hull and small,
cream funnel proclaimed her an auxiliary yacht.

"There's wind enough to move us, and we have to light out of this as
quick as we can," Moran said, signaling again to Bethune.

When the copper helmet came into sight, they dragged Bethune on deck and
then set to work to shorten cable. The yacht was now plainly visible
about a mile off, and seemed to be moving slowly, which suggested that
soundings were being taken preparatory to anchoring; but the sloop would
not readily be seen against the land. There was, however, a quantity of
heavy chain to get in before they hoisted sail, and Jimmy in haste
slipped the breast rope that held them to the wreck. For convenience in
picking it up, they had attached its outer end to a big keg buoy.

Getting under way, they headed for the bight, and presently saw a white
gig following them.

"They won't stay long," said Bethune. "Want fresh water, or, perhaps, a
walk ashore; but it's a pity we have no time to land and hide the pumps.
The best thing we can do is to meet the party at the water's edge. It's
lucky the big net is lying there."

Pulling ashore in the dory, they waited for the yacht's boat, which
carried two uniformed seamen and a young man smartly dressed in blue
serge with bronze buttons, and pipeclayed shoes. He had a good-humored
look, and greeted them affably, glancing at the net.

"Glad to find somebody here; you're fishing, I suppose?" he said.
"You'll know where there's water, and ours is getting short. The
engineer has had some trouble with salting boilers and won't give us
any. I'll take some fish, if you can spare it."

Bethune laughed.

"You can have all we've got," he said. "Any we keep we'll have to eat,
and we're getting pretty tired of the diet. There's a good spring behind
the ridge; we'll show you where it is."

The man beckoned the seamen, who shouldered two brass-hooped breakers,
and the party set off up the beach. When they reached the spring the
seamen returned with the breakers to empty them into the boat, using her
as a tank to carry the water off, and Jimmy took the yachtsman into a
hut they had roughly built of stones between two big rocks. Here they
sometimes lived when wind or fog stopped their work. He gave them some
cigars and told them that the yacht was returning from a trip to the
North, where they had explored several of the glaciers. He was a bit of
a naturalist and interested in birds, and that was why he had come
ashore; but the desolate appearance of the island had deterred his
friends, who were playing cards.

"Have you noticed any of the rarer sea-birds here?" he asked.

"There are a number of nests some distance off," Bethune answered. "I
don't know what kind they are, but after making two or three attempts to
eat them, I can't recommend the eggs."

The yachtsman laughed.

"You may have made omelettes of specimens collectors would give a good
deal for. Anyway, I'd be glad if you would show me the place. As we must
take off as much water as she'll carry, the boys will be busy for some
time."

"I'll go with you in a minute," Bethune said, giving Jimmy a warning
look. "Have you the ball of fine seizing?" he asked his comrade. "There
are some hooks to be whipped on to the new line."

Jimmy, understanding that Bethune wanted a word with him in private,
went out, and Bethune followed.

"Well?" Jimmy queried.

"What do you think of the weather?"

Jimmy looked round carefully. The sky was clear overhead except for
thin, streaky clouds, and the mist was moving, sliding in filmy trails
along the shore.

"It won't be so thick presently, and we may have a breeze."

"That's my opinion. Has it struck you that it will be after half-ebb
when our yachting friend leaves? Besides, it would look inhospitable and
perhaps suspicious if we didn't take him off to supper."

"Ah!" exclaimed Jimmy. "The wreck will be showing, the pumps are on
board, and it's unfortunate we forgot to move our buoy."

"Sure! There's no reason for supposing the man's a fool, and I've no
doubt he'll draw conclusions if he sees the diving truck and the buoy.
It's certain that somebody on board the steamer has heard about the
wreck; and any mention of our doings in the southern ports would lead to
the sending up of a proper salvage gang. We might finish before they
arrived; but I'm doubtful."

"You're right," said Jimmy. "What's to be done?"

"The best plan would be for you and Hank to get the pumps ashore while
there's fog enough to hide you. Then you can slip the buoy and leave it
among the boulders abreast of the wreck. I'll keep our friend away from
the water; but the high ground where the nests are looks down on the
beach and you'll have the steamer not far outshore of you."

Turning at a footstep, Jimmy saw the stranger leave the hut.

"My partner will take you to the nests," he said. "I have something to
do on board."

Beckoning Moran, Jimmy turned away, and as the two went down to the
beach he explained his object to the fisherman. Moran agreed that if
news of their doings leaked out, they might as well give up the search.
They must, however, be careful, because there was a chance of their
being seen by anybody with good glasses on board the yacht, which had
moved close in to shorten the journey for the boat. Now and then they
could see her white hull plainly, but it grew dim and faded into the
mist again.

Boarding the sloop, they dismantled the pumps, and then found that with
these, the lead weights, and the diving helmet, the small dory had a
heavy load. The tide was, however, falling, and for some distance it
carried them down a smooth channel between banks of uncovered sand. They
had no trouble here, but when they reached open water they found a
confused swell running against them. The fog had again thickened and
they could see only the gray slopes of water that moved out of the haze.
It was hard work rowing, and care was needed when an undulation curled
and broke into a ridge of foam. If that happened before they could avoid
it, the dory might be overturned; and the water was icy cold. They
toiled across a broad shallow, sounding with the oars, until they lost
touch of the bottom and pulled by guess for a spot where landing was
safe.

Soon it seemed that they had gone astray, for they could see nothing of
the beach and a harsh rattle broke out close ahead. Moran stopped
rowing.

"Tide has run us well offshore," he said. "The yacht skipper's
shortening cable or going to break out his anchor. Guess he's swung into
shoaler water than he figured on."

While they waited and the tide carried them along, the rattle of the
windlass grew louder; and when it stopped, a dim, white shape crept out
of the fog. It increased in size and distinctness; they could see the
sweeping curve of bow, the trickle of the stream along the waterline,
and the low deckhouse above the rail. There was no avoiding the yacht by
rowing away without being seen, but the dory was very small and low in
the water.

"They've hove her short and found another fathom, and I expect they're
satisfied," Jimmy said; "but they'll keep good anchor watch. The best
thing we can do is to lie down in the bottom."

They got down on the wet floorings, and Jimmy looked over the gunwale.
They were close to the yacht, and he could make out a figure or two in
front of the house. As they drifted on, the figures grew plainer, and it
seemed impossible that they could escape being seen. For all that,
nobody hailed them, though they were near enough to hear voices and the
notes of a piano. The vessel's tall, white side seemed right above them,
but they were abreast of the funnel now, and the ash hoist began to
clatter; Jimmy saw the dust and steam rise as the furnace clinkers
struck the sea. Still, they were drifting aft, a gray blotch on the
water, and were almost level with her stern when Jimmy saw a man leaning
on the rail. By the way his head was turned he was looking toward the
dory, and for several anxious moments Jimmy expected his hail. It did
not come; the graceful incurving of the white hull ended in the sweep of
counter above the tip of a propeller blade, and the dory drifted on into
the mist astern.

"Now we'll have her round!" Moran exclaimed, with relief in his voice.
"I guess you've got to pull."

It was difficult to prevent her heavy load from swamping her as they
approached the beach; but they ran her in safely, and, after carrying up
their cargo, set off for the wreck. Their buoy was visible some distance
off, for the mist was now moving out to sea; and their chief trouble was
to get the awkward iron keg ashore. They had hardly done so when the
steamer showed up plainly through a rift in the fog and a draught of
cold air struck Jimmy's face.

"It's coming!" he cried. "We've no time to lose in getting back!"

The tide was beginning to ripple as they pulled off the beach, and the
yacht was plainly disclosed, shining like ivory on the clear, green
water. It did not matter now that they could be seen; their one concern
was to get home before the freshening wind raised the sea. In a short
time the spray was flying about the dory and frothing ridges ran up
astern of her. These got steeper as they reached the shoals, and the men
had hard work to hold her straight with the oars as she surged forward,
uplifted, on a rush of foam. They had no time to look about, but they
heard the steamer whistle to recall her boat, and presently a gasoline
launch raced by, rolling wildly, through deeper water.

As they entered the channel into the bight, they met the launch coming
out more slowly with the boat in tow, and somebody on board her waved
his hand. Then she disappeared beyond a projecting bank, and Jimmy and
Moran rowed on to the sloop.

"They were only just in time," Bethune said as they got on board. "I
suppose you saw our friend go; but if they don't tow her carefully, it
won't be fresh water when it gets into their tank." He paused with a
laugh and showed them some silver coins. "Anyhow, we have earned
something this afternoon. The fellow insisted on paying for the fish,
and I thought I'd better let him."

"It was wise," agreed Jimmy. "Moran and I have done our share, so it's
up to you to get supper."

While they ate it, they heard the rattle of a windlass; and, looking out
through the scuttle, they saw the yacht steam away to sea.




CHAPTER VI--BLOWN OFF


Though it was nearly eleven o'clock at night, the light had not quite
gone and the sea glimmered about the sloop as she rose and fell at her
moorings by the wreck. To the north the sky was barred with streaks of
ragged cloud and the edge of the sea-plain was harshly clear; to the
east the horizon was hidden by a cold, blue haze, and the tide was near
the lowest of its ebb. An angry white surf broke along the uncovered
shoals with a tremulous roar, and the swell, though smooth as oil on its
surface, was high and steep. No breath of wind touched the water, but
Jimmy agreed with Moran that there was plenty on the way.

A light burned in the low-roofed cabin where the men waited for the meal
which Bethune was cooking. They felt languid as well as tired and
hungry, for supper had been long deferred to enable them to continue
diving, and they had been under water much oftener than was good for
them during the day. The bulkhead they strove to clear of sand was still
inaccessible, and, as bad weather had frequently hindered work, they
felt compelled to make good use of every favorable minute. This was why
they had held on to the wreck, instead of entering the bight before the
falling tide rendered its approach dangerous. Moreover, their provisions
were running low, and Bethune was experimenting with some damaged flour
which had lain forgotten in a flooded locker for several days while they
rode out a gale. The bannocks he turned in the frying-pan had a sour,
unappetizing smell.

"They may taste better than they promise," he said encouragingly. "If
the sky had looked as bad at half-tide as it does now, I'd have made you
take her in. We won't get much done to-morrow."

Moran stretched himself out listlessly on the port locker.

"We ought to tie two reefs in the mainsail handy, but I feel played out,
and the breeze may not come before morning. It strikes me the most
important thing is the question of grub. We can't hang on much longer if
that flour's too bad to eat. I can't see how it went so moldy in a day
or two. You can leave a flour-bag in the water for quite a while and
then find the stuff all right except for an inch on the outside."

"That's so," Jimmy put in. "My notion is that the flour was bad when we
got it. The ship-chandler fellow had a greedy eye. But when you deal
with the man who finds the money you can't be particular."

"He's pretty safe," grumbled Bethune. "With a bond on the boat for his
loan and a big profit on everything he supplied, the only risk he runs
is of our losing her--though I'll admit that nearly happened once or
twice. However, you can try the flour."

Taking the frying-pan off the stove, he served out a thick, greasy
bannock and a very small piece of pork to each of his companions. The
food was too hot to eat, and Jimmy, breaking his with his knife, waited
with some anxiety while it cooled. If they could use the flour, it would
enable them to remain a week or two longer at the wreck; and he believed
it would not take many days to reach the strong-room. Failing this, it
looked as if he must return to his toil at the sawmill and the dreary
life in the cheap hotels.

He believed that he had learned on board the sailing ships not to be
dainty, but he sniffed at the food with repugnance and then resolutely
cut off a piece. When he had eaten a bite of it he threw down his knife.

"It's rank!" he exclaimed.

Moran, reaching up through the scuttle, threw his bannock overboard.

"Very well!" said Bethune. "That shortens our stay. Perhaps we had
better get the pumps down into the cockpit when you have finished the
pork and tea."

They did so, grumbling, and then lay on the lockers, smoking and
disinclined for sleep. There was a tension in the air, and something
ominous in the roar of the surf, which seemed to grow louder and more
insistent.

"Whether we'll find the gold or not is doubtful; the only thing certain
is that we'll have an opportunity for doing a lot of work," Bethune
observed after a while. "In a way, Hank's more to be pitied than either
of us. He hadn't the option of taking things easily when he came out
West."

"The big lobsters were most killed off; you couldn't make your grub with
the traps," Moran explained. "Then I got some little books showing it
was easy to get rich by fishing in British Columbia. Wish I had the
liars who wrote them out in a half-swamped dory picking up a trawl."

"I don't see that I had much more option than he had," Jimmy objected.

"You could have stayed on board the liner, wearing smart uniforms and
faring sumptuously, with a Chinese steward to look after you, if you'd
exercised a little tact and shown a proper respect for authority. When
the skipper disapproved of a man with heart trouble steering his ship,
as he had every right to do, you should have agreed with him."

"I'm glad I didn't," Jimmy said stubbornly. "Anyhow, you're no better
off, even if you practise what you preach."

"That would be too much to expect; but then I admit that I am a fool,"
Bethune laughed. "If I doubted it, the number of times it has been
delicately pointed out would have convinced me. After all, it's easy to
conform outwardly, which is all that is required, and you can do what
you like in private. A concession to popular opinion here and there
doesn't cost one much."

"If you mean I ought to have got the quartermaster sacked after he'd
prevented a ton of cargo from dropping on my head, I'd rather starve."

"There's a risk of your doing so if you persist in your foolishness. If
you had stopped to reason, you would have seen it was your duty to agree
with your skipper. Misguided pity is a dangerous thing."

"Moralizing of this kind makes my headache worse!" said Jimmy
disgustedly. "Drop it and light your pipe!"

"Let him alone; he has to talk," Moran interposed. "It doesn't matter so
long as you don't worry about what he means."

"Well," drawled Bethune, "I'll conclude. Which of you is going to wash
up?"

Moran picked up the dirty plates and thrust them into a locker.

"I'm played out and homesick! Wish I was back East, where I did my
fishing in the natural way--on top of the water! But it's a sure thing
none of us will be down at the wreck to-morrow."

There was silence except for the rumble of the surf and the occasional
rap of a halyard against the mast. The sound became more frequent as
Jimmy got drowsy, but he was used to the approach of bad weather.
Stretched out comfortably on the locker, he soon fell asleep; and it was
as dark as it ever is in the North in summer when he was rudely awakened
by a terrific jar. The sloop seemed to be rearing upright, and Moran's
hoarse shouts were all but drowned by the rattle of chain on deck.

Scrambling out quickly, Jimmy saw the fisherman stooping forward where
the cable crossed the bits, and a narrow stretch of smoking sea ahead.
Individual combers emerged from it, and the sloop alternately reeled
over them with a white surge boiling at her bows and plunged into the
hollows. Jimmy, however, wasted no time in looking about; they had hung
on to their moorings longer than was prudent, and prompt action was
needed.

With Bethune's assistance he close-reefed the mainsail and got the
shortened canvas up; then all three were needed to break out the anchor,
and Jimmy crouched in the water that swept the forward deck as he stowed
it while his comrades hoisted a storm-jib. After that she drove away
before the sea, and the men anxiously watched for the entrance to the
channel. Though dawn had not broken, it was by no means dark, and they
could see the streaky backs of the rollers that ran up the shoals, and
beyond them a broad, white band of surf. Presently a break opened up,
but it was narrow and crooked, and it seemed impossible that the sloop
could get through. When they had run on for a minute or two longer,
Moran stood up on deck to command a better view.

"We'd have about two feet under her at the bend, and if she didn't luff
up handy she'd sure go ashore," he said. "Seems to me the chances are
too blamed steep."

They might reach shelter by taking the risk, and to refuse it meant a
struggle with the sea; but Jimmy reluctantly agreed with Moran.

"Yes," he said; "we had better stand off. Look out while I jibe her
round."

She swung on before the sea as he put up his helm, followed close by a
comber that reared its crest astern, her boom flung on end with the
patch of wet mainsail swelling like a balloon. Moran and Bethune were
desperately busy with the sheet, for safety depended on their speed.
Jimmy moved his wheel another spoke, and sail and heavy spar swung over,
while the _Cetacea_, coming round, buried her lee deck in the sea. With
a wild plunge she shook off the water, and, while Bethune and his
comrade flattened in the sheets, drove out to windward away from the
dangerous shoal. Since they could not reach the bight, she would be
safer in open water.

When dawn broke, ominously red, the _Cetacea_ was hove to with a small
trysail set, rising and falling with a drunken stagger, as the long,
white seas rolled up on her weather bow. Though she shipped no heavy
water, she was drifting fast to leeward: the island had faded to a gray
streak on the horizon. It would be a day's work to beat back again, even
if the wind abated, and it showed no sign of doing so. By noon the land
was out of sight, and the sea had grown heavier. For an hour or two
there was misty sunshine, and the oncoming walls of water glistened
luminously blue beneath their incandescent crests. Some of them curled
dangerously, and the trysail flapped, half empty, when the _Cetacea_
sank into the trough. She lay there a few moments while her crew watched
the comber that rose ahead. With slanted mast and rag of drenched sail
she looked uncomfortably small; but somehow she staggered up the slope
before the roller broke. Jimmy could not tell how far he helped her with
the helm, but the sweat of nervous strain dripped from his face as he
turned his wheel. Now and then she was a few seconds slow in responding
to it, and when her bows swung clear her after-half was buried in a rush
of spouting foam. It sluiced off, however, and the sharp swoop into the
trough was repeated as comber after comber swept upon them.

When Moran relieved him, Jimmy felt worn out. He had had only an hour or
two's sleep after a day of exhausting work; his breakfast had consisted
of a morsel of stale, cold fish, hurriedly torn with his fingers from
the lump in the pan; and they had had no opportunity for cooking dinner.

"I'll try to make some coffee," he said, as he went below.

It was difficult to light the stove. The cabin trickled with moisture
like a dripping-well. Grate and wood were wet; and when at last the fire
began to crackle, Jimmy had to kneel on a locker as he held the kettle
on, in order to keep his feet out of the water which washed up from the
bilge. There seemed to be a good deal of it.

"Can't you start the pump?" he called to Bethune.

"I might. I don't know that it would do much good. The suction's
uncovered, and the delivery under water half the time."

"Then come in and cook, while I get at it!"

"Oh, I'll try!" Bethune answered morosely; and Jimmy resumed his watch
on the kettle and left his companion alone.

He knew the curious slackness which sometimes seizes men exposed to the
fury of the sea. It differs from fatigue in being moral rather than
physical, and it is distinct from fear; its victim is overwhelmed by a
sense of the futility of anything that he can do. Determined effort is
its best cure, and Jimmy smiled as he heard the clatter of the pump. He
thought Bethune would feel better presently.

He made the coffee, found a few of the tough cakes Moran called
biscuits, and recklessly opened a can of meat. After the meal, which
they all found a luxurious change from fish, Jimmy lay down, wet through
as he was, on a locker, and, wedging himself fast with parts of the
dismantled diving pump, sank into broken sleep.

It was midnight when he went up again to take the helm. There was no
moon, and gray scud obscured the sea. Foam-tipped ridges came rolling
out of it, and the _Cetacea_ labored heavily. Jimmy watched Moran pump a
while before he went below, and then he pulled himself together to keep
his dreary watch. The slow whitening of the east brought no change. Dawn
came, and throughout another wearing day they still lay hove to. The
sloop did not give them much trouble, and they could easily pump out all
the water she shipped; but toward evening they began to feel anxious.
The gale had increased. They must already have made a good deal of
leeway and they might be drifting near the land; if so, she would not
carry enough sail to drive her clear, and there would soon be an end of
her if she were blown ashore.

Jimmy was on deck at dawn the next morning, but saw nothing except a
narrow circle of foaming sea and the flying scud that dimmed the
horizon. Toward noon, however, it began to clear, and, getting out the
glasses, he waited eagerly during an hour or two of fitful sunshine. The
wind seemed to be falling, and the haze had thinned. Slowly it blew
away, and a high, gray mass rose into view, four or five miles off.
Moran called out as he saw it, but Jimmy quietly studied the land
through his glasses.

"The head, sure enough!" he said. "If it had kept thick, we'd have been
ashore and breaking up long before dark. Now we have to decide what it's
best to do. She might stand a three-reefed mainsail."

"It would take us a week to beat back to the island, and we wouldn't
have many provisions left when we got there," Bethune pointed out. "I
don't feel keen on facing the long thrash to windward."

"She wouldn't be long making Comox with this breeze over her quarter,"
Moran suggested. "We might get somebody to grubstake us at one of the
stores."

"Considering that there's a bond on her, it isn't likely," Jimmy
replied.

They let her drift while they looked gloomily to windward, where the
island lay. It would need a stern effort to reach it unless the wind
should change; a long stretch of foaming sea which the sloop must be
driven across close-hauled divided the men from the wreck. They were all
worn out and depressed; and neither of Moran's comrades protested when
he got up abruptly and slacked off the mainsheet.

"I guess we'll go where there's something to eat," he said. "You can
square off for the straits while I loose the mainsail."

Jimmy put up his helm with a keen sense of relief, and the _Cetacea_
swung away swiftly for the south with the sea behind her. It was nervous
work steering, and Jimmy advised Moran to leave the mainsail furled; but
the worst of the strain had passed, and rest and shelter lay ahead.




CHAPTER VII--GRUBSTAKED


A light wind faintly ruffled the landlocked water when the _Cetacea_
crept up to her anchorage off a small lumber port on the eastern coast
of Vancouver Island. A great boom of logs was moored near the wharf, and
stacks of freshly cut lumber and ugly sawdust heaps rose along the
beach. Behind these were tall iron chimney-stacks, clusters of wooden
houses, and rows of fire-blackened stumps; then steep, pine-clad
hillsides shut the hollow in. Though there were one or two steamers at
anchor, and signs of activity in the streets, the place had a raw,
unfinished look; but the _Cetacea's_ crew were glad to reach it. Cramped
by their narrow quarters on board, it was a relief to roam at large; and
the resinous smell that hung about the port was pleasant after the
stinging saltness of the spray.

But they had come there on business, and Bethune presently stopped a man
they met.

"Which is the best and biggest general store in the town?" he asked.

"Jefferson's; three blocks farther on. He's been here since the mills
were started."

"Is it necessary to go to the best store?" Jimmy inquired as they went
on.

Bethune laughed.

"Oh, no! Now that we've found out which it is, we can try somewhere
else. I've a suspicion that our business won't have much attraction for
a prosperous dealer who can choose his customers. It's the struggling
man who's readiest to take a risk."

"We'll leave it to you," Jimmy said confidently. Bethune had arranged
their commercial transactions with tact and shrewdness, and they had
discovered that it was far from easy to obtain supplies without paying
cash for them.

After strolling through the town, they entered a small, wooden store,
which had an inscription, "T. Jaques: Shipping Supplied," and found its
proprietor leaning idly on the counter. He was a young man with an alert
manner, but, although he was smartly dressed, Bethune, studying him,
imagined that he had not yet achieved prosperity. Indeed, he thought he
saw signs of care in the man's keen face.

Taking out his notebook, he enumerated the supplies they wanted, and
examined samples. The provisions were good; the store was neatly kept
and fairly well stocked; but Jimmy, leaning on the counter and looking
about, thought the goods had been arranged with some skill to make the
biggest show possible, which implied that the dealer had not much of a
reserve. Then, while the man talked to Bethune, Jimmy noticed a woman
approach the glass door at the back and stop a moment as if she were
interested in the proceedings. All this suggested that his comrade had
offered their custom at the right place. The provisions would not be a
large item, but they needed ropes, chain, and marine supplies, which
would cost a good deal more.

"I can send the small stores off whenever you want, but I can't give you
the other truck until the Vancouver boat comes in, and that won't be for
four days," Jaques said. He looked rather eager as he added: "I guess
you can wait?"

"Oh, yes. I expect it will be a week before we get off."

"Then, I'll wire the order. You'll pay on delivery?"

"That," answered Bethune, smiling, "is a point we must talk about. I
think I could give you ten dollars down."

The dealer's face fell and he looked thoughtful.

"Well," he said slowly, "I'd certainly like this order. What's your
proposition?"

"I don't know that I have one ready. Perhaps I'd better tell you how we
stand and leave you to suggest a way out of the difficulty."

"Come into the back store and take a smoke," invited Jaques; and they
followed him into an apartment which seemed to serve as warehouse,
general living room, and kitchen. A young woman was busy at the stove,
and after looking up with a smile of welcome she went on with her
cooking; but Jimmy felt that she had given him and his comrades a keen
scrutiny.

Jaques brought them chairs and laid a few cigars on the table.

"Now," he said to Bethune, "you can go ahead."

"First of all, I want your promise to keep what I tell you to yourself."
Bethune glanced quietly toward the woman.

"You have it, and you can trust Mrs. Jaques. Susie does all her talking
at home; and there's a good deal of her own money in this store. That's
why I brought you in. I allow she's sometimes a better judge than I am."

Bethune bowed to Mrs. Jaques; and then, to Jimmy's surprise, he began a
frank account of their financial difficulties and their salvage plans.
When it came to their doings at the wreck, he made a rather moving tale
of it, and Mrs. Jaques listened with her eyes fixed on the speaker and a
greasy fork poised in her hand. Jimmy wondered whether Bethune was
acting quite judiciously in telling so much. The storekeeper leaned an
elbow on the table, his brows knitted as if in thought; and Moran sat
still with an expressionless brown face. Except for Bethune's voice it
was very quiet in the small, rudely furnished room, and Jimmy surmised
that the projected deal was of some importance to its occupants. It was
certainly of consequence to his own party, for they could not continue
operations without supplies.

"There's a bond on your boat already," Jaques objected, when Bethune
paused.

"For about half her value. We could demand a public sale if she were
seized, and the balance would clear your debt."

"It's hard to get full price for a vessel that's too small for a regular
trade. You allowed you bought her cheap?"

"We did," Bethune carelessly answered. "Still, one has to take a risk."

They were interrupted by a knocking, and Jaques went into the store and
did not return for some minutes.

"Nolan, the river-jack," he explained, as he came in. "Wanted gum-boots,
and I thought I'd better let him have them; though he hasn't paid for
the last pair yet."

"That," Bethune smiled, "bears out my argument."

Jaques looked at his wife, and she made a sign of assent, as if she
understood him.

"Supper's nearly ready, and you had better stay," he said. "It's plain
fare, but you won't find better biscuits and waffles than Susie's in the
province. Besides, it will give us time to think the thing over."

They were glad to accept the invitation, and no more was said about
business while they enjoyed the well cooked and daintily served meal.
Jimmy was conscious of a growing admiration for his neat-handed hostess,
with her bright, intelligent face, and her pretty but simple dress, and
he tried to second Bethune in his amusing chatter. Jaques did not say
much, but he looked pleased. As for Moran, he steadily worked his way
through the good things set before him. His one remark was: "If we
strike grub like this, ma'am, we'll want to stop right in your town."

"Then my husband will lose his order," Mrs. Jaques replied, and though
she laughed, Jimmy thought her answer had some significance.

When she cleared the table Jaques lighted a cigar and smiled rather
grimly when Jimmy inquired if trade was good.

"Well," he said, "it might be better--that's one reason why I'd like to
make a deal with you. There's less money in keeping store than you might
suppose. I've been two years in this town, and my customers are mostly
of the kind the beginner gets--those who can't pay up in time, and those
who don't mean to pay at all. The ones worth having go to the other
man."

"Where were you before?" Jimmy asked.

"In Toronto. But the wages I was making in a department store were not
enough to marry on. With a few dollars Susie had left her and with what
I'd saved we thought we might make a start; but there's not much room
for the small man now in the eastern cities, and we came out West. It's
a pull all along; but we'd make some progress if the blame bush settlers
would pay their bills."

Jimmy felt sympathetic. The man did not look as if he found the struggle
easy.

"Have you got your business fixed?" Mrs. Jaques asked, coming in from an
adjoining room.

"Not yet," Bethune answered. "I've a suspicion that your husband was
waiting for you; and I couldn't object, because I ventured to believe
you would say a word in our favor."

Mrs. Jaques studied him keenly. He was a handsome man, with graceful
manners, and she thought him honest; and it was difficult to associate
duplicity with Jimmy's open face.

"Well," she promised, "I'll go as far as I can."

"Then we'll get down to business." Jaques turned to his guests. "You
feel pretty sure you'll find the gold when you get back?"

"No," said Jimmy frankly. "We hope so; but we can't even be sure we'll
find the wreck. The gale may have broken her up and buried her in the
sand."

"Then, if your plan falls through, I won't get paid."

"That's taking too much for granted. There'll be something left over if
we have to sell the boat, and we're able to earn more than our keep on
the wharf or in the mills. Your debt would have the first claim on us."

"It would take you a long time to wipe it off on what you'd save out of
two dollars a day."

"Very true," Bethune admitted. "To clear the ground, I suppose you
believe we'd try?"

"We'll take it that you mean to deal straight with me. Anyway, you
believe you have a pretty good chance of getting at the gold?"

"I think it's a fair business risk. In proof of this, we're going back
to do our best if you will give us the supplies we want. We wouldn't be
willing to incur the liability unless we had some hope of success."

"Very well; you don't suggest my letting you have the truck and taking a
partner's share on the strength of it?"

"No," Bethune answered decidedly; "not unless you press the point."

Mrs. Jaques nodded as if she had approved of the question and found the
answer reassuring. It implied that the adventurers thought the scheme
good enough to keep to themselves.

"I'd rather my husband stuck to his regular line," she said.

"Then," said Bethune, "this is my proposition: Give us the goods, and
charge us ten per cent. interest until they're paid for. You'll get it
as well as the principal, sooner or later."

Jaques looked at his wife; and she made a sign of assent.

"Well, it's a deal!"

A half-hour later, when they rose to go, Jimmy turned to his hostess.

"While your husband has treated us fairly," he said, "we have to thank
you, and that makes it a point of honor to show you were not mistaken."

He noticed now that there were wrinkles which suggested anxious thought
already forming about her eyes, and that her hands were work-hardened;
but she smiled at him.

"One learns in keeping store that a customer's character is quite as
important as his bank account."

"That's the nicest thing I've had said about me since I came to British
Columbia!" Bethune declared gaily.

Mrs. Jaques smiled.

"If you find the evenings dull before you sail, come in and talk to us,"
she said.

When they went outside, Bethune made a confession.

"I felt strongly tempted to take our custom somewhere else. They're nice
people, and it looks as if they found it hard enough to get along."

"Whatever happens, they must be paid," Jimmy declared.

"Yes," agreed Moran, who seldom expressed his opinion except on nautical
matters; "that's a sure thing!"

"How would it do to ask them to a picnic on one of the islands?" Bethune
suggested. "It would be an afternoon's outing, and it's generally smooth
water here. I shouldn't imagine Mrs. Jaques gets many holidays."

The others thought it a good idea; and when the sloop was refitted and
ready for sea, Bethune put his suggestion into practice. His guests were
pleased to come, and with a moderate breeze rippling the blue water,
they ran up the straits in brilliant sunshine. Jimmy laid a cushion for
Mrs. Jaques near the wheel, and her rather pale face lighted up when he
asked if she would steer. He saw that she knew how by the way she held
the spokes.

"This is delightful!" she exclaimed, as they sped on swiftly. "I used to
go sailing now and then at Toronto, but all the time we have lived here
I've never been on the water."

She glanced in a half-wistful manner at the sparkling sea. A gentle surf
made a snowy fringe along the shingle beach, and beyond that dark
pinewoods rolled back among the rocks toward blue, distant peaks.
Overhead, the tall, white topsail swayed with a measured swing across
the cloudless sky. Silky threads of ripples streamed back from the bows,
and along the _Cetacea's_ side there was a drowsy gurgle and lapping of
water.

"You're to be envied when you sail away," Mrs. Jaques said, with
something that was almost a sigh. "Still, it isn't all sunshine and
smooth water in the North."

"By no means," Jimmy assured her. "I can think of a number of occasions
when I'd gladly have exchanged the sloop for your back room, or, for
that matter, for a yard or two of dry ground."

"One can imagine it," she laughed. "Well, you have to face the gale and
fog, while we try not to be beaten by Jefferson and to meet our bills. I
don't know which is the harder."

Jimmy felt compassionate. She was young, but she had a careworn look,
and he surmised that she found life difficult in the primitive wooden
town. It seemed to be all work and anxious planning with her; there was
something pathetic in the keen pleasure she took in her rare holiday.

Late in the afternoon they dropped anchor in a rock-walled cove with a
beach of white shingle on which sparkling wavelets broke. Dark firs
climbed the rugged heights above, and their scent drifted off across the
clear, green water. Bethune, who had been busy cooking, brought up an
unusually elaborate meal and laid it out on the cabin top with the best
glass and crockery he had been able to borrow. His expression, however,
was anxious as he served the first course to his guests.

"I've done my best. I used to think I wasn't a bad cook; but after the
supper Mrs. Jaques gave us, I'm much less confident," he said. "It's
easier to get proud of yourself when you have nothing to compare your
work with, and your critics are indulgent. Jimmy's been very forbearing;
and it's my opinion that Moran would eat anything that's fit for human
food."

"I've had to," Moran retorted. "Anyway, I've seen you set up worse hash
than this."

There were no complaints, and the appetite every one showed was
flattering. They jested and talked with great good humor; until at last
Moran indicated the lengthening shadow of the mast which had moved
across the deck.

"It's mighty curious, but we've been an hour over supper, and there's
something left. Guess I never spent more'n about ten minutes at my grub
before."

Bethune took a bottle from a pail of ice in a locker and filled the
borrowed glasses.

"To our happy next meeting!" he proposed. "Our guests, who have made the
trip possible, will not be forgotten while we are away."

The glasses were drained and filled again, and Mrs. Jaques turned to her
hosts with a cordial smile.

"May you win the success you deserve!" she responded; and a few minutes
afterward Bethune, beckoning Moran, went forward to raise the anchor.

The light was fading when they hove the _Cetacea_ to near the wharf and
a boat came off. With many good wishes Jaques and his wife went ashore,
and the sloop stood away for the lonely North.




CHAPTER VIII--PUZZLING QUESTIONS


Hot sunshine poured into the clearing on the shore of Puget Sound where
Henry Osborne had his dwelling. The pretty, wooden house, with its wide
veranda and scrollwork decoration, was finely situated in a belt of tall
pine forest. The resinous scent of the conifers crept into its rooms;
and in front a broad sweep of grass, checkered with glowing flower-beds,
ran down to the shingle beach. Rocky islets, crested with somber firs,
dotted the sparkling sound, and beyond them, climbing woods and hills,
steeped in varying shades of blue, faded into the distance, with behind
them all a faint, cold gleam of snow. The stillness of the afternoon was
emphasized by the soft splash of ripples on the beach and the patter of
the water which the automatic sprinklers flung in glistening showers
across the thirsty grass.

Caroline Dexter, lately arrived from a small New England town, sat in
the shade of a cedar. She was elderly and of austere character. The
plain and badly cut gray dress displayed the gauntness of her form, and
her face was of homely type; but her glance was direct, and those who
knew her best had learned that her censorious harshness covered a warm
heart. Now she was surveying her brother-in-law's house and garden with
a disapproving expression. All she saw indicated prosperity and taste,
and though she admitted that riches were not necessarily a snare, she
hoped Henry Osborne had come by them honestly.

She had never been quite sure about him, and it was not with her
goodwill that he had married her younger sister. She thought him lax and
worldly; but after his wife's death, which was a heavy blow to Caroline,
she had taken his child into her keeping and tenderly cared for her.
Indeed, she ventured to believe that she had molded Ruth Osborne's
character and won her affection. The girl might have fallen into worse
hands, for, in spite of her narrow outlook, Caroline Dexter was
unflinchingly upright.

Sitting stiffly erect in the garden chair, she turned to her niece, who
reclined with negligent grace in a canvas lounge. This, Caroline
thought, was typical of the luxurious indolence of the younger
generation, but, for all that, Ruth had some of the sterner virtues. The
girl was pretty, and though her aunt believed that beauty is a deceptive
thing, it was less dangerous when purged of pride and vanity. Caroline
hoped that the strictness with which she had brought up her niece had
freed her of these failings.

"Well, dear," she said, "this is a pretty place; and your father's
affairs have evidently improved. It's sad your dear mother didn't live
to enjoy it."

Though her dress and appearance were provincial, the austere simplicity
of her manner had in it something of distinction, and her accent was
singularly clean.

Ruth looked up at her with an air of thoughtful regret.

"Yes; I often feel that, when I think of the hard struggle she must have
had. Though I was very young then, I can remember the shabby
boardinghouses we stayed in, and my mother's pale, anxious face when she
and my father used to talk in the evenings. He seldom speaks about those
days, but I know he does not forget."

"It is to his credit that he never married again," Miss Dexter remarked
with a bluntness in which there was nothing coarse. "He loved your
mother, and one can forgive him much for that."

"But have you much to forgive? And, after all, men do sometimes marry
twice."

"And sometimes oftener! No doubt they're good enough for the women who
take them; but the love of a true man or woman is stronger than death!"

There was a warmth in the voice of this apparently unsentimental aunt
that surprised Ruth.

"You seem to speak with feeling," the girl said, half mockingly.

A shadow crept into Miss Dexter's eyes as she gazed, unseeingly, at a
seabird poised over the water; but almost immediately she turned to her
niece with her usual matter-of-fact calm.

"We were talking of your father's affairs," she said. "I notice a sinful
extravagance here: servants you do not need, a gasoline launch, and two
automobiles."

Ruth laughed.

"Father must get to town quickly, and cars sometimes break down;
besides, I believe he can afford them all. I sometimes think you are
rather hard on him."

"I'll admit that I have often wondered how he got his money. One cannot
make a fortune quickly without meeting many temptations. I suppose you
know your Uncle Charles had to lend him a thousand dollars soon after
you were born, and it was not paid back until a few years ago? Does your
father never tell you anything about his business?"

"I haven't thought of asking him," Ruth answered with some warmth. "He
has always been very kind to me, and I know that whatever he does is
right."

"A proper feeling," her aunt commented. "No doubt, he is no worse than
the others; but men's ideas are very lax nowadays."

Ruth was more amused than resentful. Though she was her father's staunch
partisan, she believed her aunt distrusted the makers of rapid fortunes
as a class rather than her brother-in-law in particular, and that her
frugal mind shrank with old-fashioned aversion from modern luxury. For
all that, Caroline Dexter had roused the girl's curiosity as to her
father's fortune and she determined to learn something about his years
of struggle when opportunity offered.

A moving cloud of dust rose among the firs where the descending road
crossed the hillside, and a big gray automobile flashed across an
opening. Ruth knew the car, and there was only one man of her
acquaintance who would bring it down the water-seamed dip at that
reckless speed.

"It's Aynsley," she said, with a pleased expression. "I'll bring him
here."

"And who is Aynsley?"

"I forgot you don't know. He's Aynsley Clay, the son of my father's old
partner, and runs in and out of the house when he's at home."

Turning away, she hurried toward the house, and as she reached it a
young man came out on the veranda. He was dressed in white flannel, with
a straw hat and blue serge jacket, and his pleasant face was bronzed by
the sea.

"I came right through," he said, holding out his hand. "It was
particularly nice of you to leave your chair to meet me."

"I'm glad to see you back," Ruth responded. "Did you have a pleasant
time? When did you get home?"

"Left the yacht at Portland yesterday, and came straight on. Found the
old man out of town, and decided I'd stop at Martin's place. I'm due
there this evening."

"But it's twenty miles off over the mountains, and this isn't the
nearest way."

Clay laughed, with a touch of diffidence that became him.

"What's twenty miles, even on a hill road, when you're anxious to see
your friends?"

He watched her as closely as he dared, for some hint of response, but he
was puzzled by her manner.

"It isn't a road," she laughed. "Some day you'll come here in pieces."

"I wonder whether you'd be sorry?"

"You ought to know. But come along--I believe my aunt is curious about
you."

When he was presented, Miss Dexter gave him a glance of candid scrutiny.
Aynsley was marked by a certain elegance and careless good humor, which
were not the qualities she most admired in young men, but she liked his
face and the frankness of his gaze. If he were one of the idle rich, he
was, she thought, a rather good specimen.

"What is your profession?" she asked him bluntly, when they had talked a
few moments.

"It's rather difficult to state, because my talents and pursuits are
varied. I'm a bit of a naturalist, and something of a yachtsman, while I
really think I'm smart at handling a refractory automobile. When I was
younger, it was my ambition to ride a raw cayuse, but now one grapples
with the mysteries of valves and cams. The times change, though one
can't be sure that they improve."

"Then you don't do anything?"

"I'm afraid you hold my father's utilitarian views, but there's room for
a difference of opinion about what constitutes hard work. To-day, for
instance, I spent two hours lying on my back beneath the car and fitting
awkward little bolts into holes; then I drove her fifty miles in three
hours over a villainous road, graded with rocks and split fir-trees. As
I've another twenty miles to go, my own opinion is that I'll have done
enough for any ordinary man when I get through."

"And how much better off is the community for your labors?"

"It's some consolation that nobody's much the worse, but I've known the
community suffer when it was slow in getting out of the way."

Though she shook her head disapprovingly, there was a gleam of amusement
in Miss Dexter's eyes.

"I suppose you're a product of your age, and can't be blamed for the
outlook your environment has forced upon you. After all, there are more
harmful toys than cars and yachts; enjoy them strenuously while you can.
It may fit you for something sterner when you lose your taste for them.
And there's something in your look which makes me think that time may
come."

A half-hour later Ruth and Aynsley were strolling together through a
grove of pines by the water's edge.

"What did you think of my aunt?" she asked.

"I think Miss Dexter is a very fine lady. What's more, I begin to see
where you got something I've noticed about you. I suppose you know that
you and she are not unlike?"

Ruth smiled. Her aunt was hard-featured and very badly dressed; but she
knew that these were not the points which had impressed him.

"The good impression seems to have been mutual," she said; "and to tell
the truth, I was slightly surprised. She's generally severe to idlers."

"I knew she'd spot me by my clothes, and I played up to the part. It
pleases people when you fall in with the ideas they form about you. But
speaking of idlers reminds me that before I went away the old man was
getting after me about wasting my talents; opined it was time I did
something, and said he'd stand for the losses I'd no doubt make in the
first two years if I'd run the Canadian mill he's lately bought. I
pointed out that it might cost him more than the boats and cars, and he
answered that he'd consider it as a fine for the way he brought me up.
However, we won't talk about that. It's too fine a day."

This was characteristic of him and Ruth laughed. He was careless and
inconsequent, but they had been friends for a long time and she liked
him. It was perhaps curious that she had never troubled herself about
his feeling for her, and had gone on taking his unexacting friendship
for granted. It was seldom that he became sentimental, and then she had
no trouble in checking him.

"Well," she said, "you have told me nothing about your voyage. You must
have seen something of interest, and had a few adventures."

"It's a good rule to avoid adventures when you can, and we followed it.
Perhaps the most interesting thing was my meeting with three men who
were fishing on a lonely island far up to the north."

"Fishing? That doesn't sound very exciting."

They sat down where an opening in the pines gave them a view of climbing
forests and sparkling sound, and Aynsley lighted a cigarette.

"That's what they seemed to be doing, but I've had my suspicions about
it since. If they caught anything, it would be a long way from a market,
and, though they were dirty and ragged enough, two of them hadn't the
look of regular fishermen. One rather amusing fellow was very much of
the kind you'd meet at a sporting club, and the other had the stamp of a
navy or first-class mailboat man. He was English."

Ruth looked up quickly. Jimmy had often been in her thoughts since she
had last seen him; although, as he had shown no anxiety to avail himself
of her invitation, she had made no inquiries about him. Osborne,
however, had visited Vancouver, and, seeing the vessel at the wharf, had
inquired about Farquhar and learned that he had left the ship on her
previous voyage. Ruth resented his silence, but she could not forget
him.

"What was the man like?" she asked.

"Which of them?"

"The last one; the navy man." She found it slightly embarrassing to
answer the question.

Aynsley gave her a keen glance.

"So far as I can recollect, he had light hair, and his eyes were a
darker blue than you often see; about my age, I think, and unmistakably
a sailor, but he had a smart look and the stamp of command. Do you know
anybody like that?"

Ruth did not answer with her usual frankness; although she did not doubt
that this was the second mate with whom she had spent many evenings on
the big liner's saloon deck.

"Oh, of course, we met several steamboat officers, and they're much of a
type," she answered in an indifferent tone.

Aynsley saw that she was on her guard. Girls, he understood, often had a
partiality for mailboat officers who were generally men of prepossessing
appearance and manners. However, he kept his thoughts to himself, for he
was usually diffident with Ruth. Although he had long admired her, he
knew that he would not gain anything by an attempt to press his suit.

"Anyway," he said, "they were pleasant fellows, and seemed to be having
a hard time. Between the ice and gales and fog, it's by no means a
charming neighborhood."

"Wasn't it on one of those islands that my father was wrecked, and lost
the gold he was bringing down?"

"Somewhere about there. Islands are plentiful in the North." Aynsley
paused and laughed. "Still, as my respected parent had some interest in
the gold, I shouldn't imagine they lost much. Losing things is not a
habit of his. I believe he had a share in the vessel, too."

"But she went down."

"That wouldn't matter. The underwriters would have an opportunity for
paying up--probably rather more than she was worth. Considering my
parentage, it's curious I have no business talent."

"Your father and mine have had dealings for a long time, haven't they?"

"They have stood by each other for a good many years. It looks as if you
and I were destined to be friends; but I sometimes think you don't
understand just what your friendship is to me."

"Of course, we are good friends," Ruth said carelessly; "but you have
plenty others."

"I have a host of acquaintances; but you're different from the rest.
That doesn't sound very original, but it's what I feel. There's an
intangible something that's very fine about you; something rare and
old-fashioned that belongs more to the quiet corners of the New England
States than to our mushroom cities. It comes of long and careful
cultivation, and isn't to be found in places that spring up in a night."

"Both my father's and my mother's people lived frugally in a very
provincial Eastern town."

"It proves my point. I know the kind of place: a 'Sleepy Hollow,' where
nothing happens that hasn't happened in the same way before, left as it
was when the tide of American life poured West across the plains. One
can imagine your mother's people being bound by old traditions and
clinging to the customs of more serious days. That, I think, is how you
got your gracious calm, your depth of character, and a sweetness I've
found in no one else."

Ruth rose with a smiling rebuke, and firmly turned the conversation into
another channel.

"Yes, I know," Aynsley said despondently. "I'm not to talk like that.
When I play the good-natured idiot people applaud, but they put me down
smartly when I speak the truth."

"You are never in the least idiotic," Ruth smiled. "But if you are to
cross the hills before dark, it's time we gave you something to eat."

He turned to her, half resigned and half indignant.

"Oh, well! If the auto jumps a bushman's bridge or goes down into a
gulch, you'll be sorry you snubbed me."

"We won't anticipate anything so direful," Ruth responded; then, with a
sudden change of tone, she added: "Take that post in your father's mill,
Aynsley; I think you ought."

He studied her a moment and then made a sign of assent.

"All right! I'll do it," he said.

An hour later she watched him start the car, and then sat down among the
pines to think, for there were questions which required an answer.
Aynsley was very likable. Beyond that she did not go. Her thoughts
turned to Farquhar, and she wondered why she so resented his dropping
out of sight. She knew little about him, but she could not forget the
evenings when they leaned on the rails together as the great ship went
steadily across the moonlit sea. Now, for she believed he was the man
Aynsley had met, he was in the desolate North, and she wondered what he
was doing there, and what perils he had to face. It cost her an effort
to banish him from her mind; but there was another question which had
aroused her curiosity. How had her father spent the years when she was
in her aunt's care, before he had grown rich? He had told her nothing
about his struggles, but she must ask. Sometimes he looked careworn and
she could give him better sympathy if it were based on understanding.
And how had his riches been gained, so quickly? Ruth had the utmost
confidence in her father, which even her aunt's doubts could not shake;
nevertheless, she resolved to question him.




CHAPTER IX--THE MINE AT SNOWY CREEK


Osborne was sitting on his veranda one hot evening while Ruth reclined
in a basket-chair, glancing at him thoughtfully. Of late she had felt
that she did not know her father as well as she ought: there was a
reserve about him which she had failed to penetrate. He had treated her
with indulgent kindness and had humored her every wish since she came to
him; but before that there had been a long interval, during which he had
sent her no word, and these years had obviously left their mark on him.
She felt compassionate and somewhat guilty. So far, she had been content
to be petted and made much of, taking all and giving nothing. It was
time there should be a change.

Osborne was of medium height and spare figure, and slightly lame in one
foot. On the whole, his appearance was pleasing; though he was not of
the type his daughter associated with the successful business man. There
was a hint of imaginative dreaminess in his expression, and his face was
seamed with lines and wrinkles that spoke of troubles borne, Ruth had
heard him described as headstrong and romantic in his younger days, but
he was now philosophically acquiescent, and marked by somewhat ironical
humor. She wondered what stern experiences had extinguished his youthful
fire.

"Aynsley was talking to me a few days ago," she said. "I understand that
he means to take charge of the Canadian mill."

"Then I suppose you applauded his decision. In fact, I wonder whether he
arrived at it quite unassisted? The last time Clay mentioned the matter
he told me the young fool didn't seem able to make up his mind."

Ruth grew somewhat uneasy beneath his amused glance. Her father was
shrewd, and she was not prepared to acknowledge that she had influenced
Aynsley.

"But don't you think Aynsley's right?" she asked.

"Oh, yes; in a sense. We admire industrial enterprise, and on the whole
that's good; but I've sometimes thought that our bush ranchers and
prospectors, who, while assisting in it, keep a little in advance of
civilized progress, show sound judgment. It's no doubt proper to turn
the beauty of our country into money and deface it with mining dumps and
factory stacks; but our commercial system's responsible for a good deal
of ugliness, moral and physical."

The girl was accustomed to his light irony, and was sometimes puzzled to
determine how far he was serious.

"But you are a business man," she said.

"That's true. I've suffered for it; but it doesn't follow that our
methods are much better because I've practised them."

"Where did you first meet Aynsley's father?" Ruth asked. She preferred
personal to abstract topics.

Osborne smiled reminiscently.

"At a desolate settlement in Arizona a number of years ago. The Southern
Pacific had lately reached the coast, and I was traveling West without a
ticket. When it was unavoidable I walked; but railroad hands were more
sympathetic in those days, and I came most of the way from Omaha inside
and sometimes underneath the freight cars. Down under them was a dusty
position in the dry belts."

Glancing round from the pretty wooden house, which had been furnished
without thought of cost, across the wide stretch of lawn, where a smart
gardener was guiding a gasoline mower, Ruth found it hard to imagine her
father stealing a ride on a freight train. But another thought struck
her.

"Where was I then?" she asked.

"With your aunt, or perhaps you had just gone to school. I can't fix the
exact time," Osborne answered unguardedly; and the girl was filled with
a confused sense of love and gratitude.

The school was expensive, and her mother's relatives were by no means
rich, but she knew that her father had been the recipient of a small sum
yearly under somebody's will. It looked as if he had turned it all over
for her benefit while he faced stern poverty.

Ruth impulsively pulled her chair nearer to her father, and her cool
little fingers closed over one of his big hands.

"I understand now," she said softly, "why there are lines on your
forehead and you sometimes look worn. Your life must have been very
hard."

"Oh, it had its brighter side," Osborne answered lightly. "Well, Clay
was also engaged in beating his passage, and I found him enjoying a long
drink from the locomotive tank. We were confronted with the problem how
to cross about a hundred miles of arid desert on a joint capital of two
dollars. Clay got over the first difficulty by making a water-bag out of
some railroad rubber sheeting which he borrowed, while I went round the
settlement in search of provisions. I got some, though prices were
ruinously high, and at midnight we hid beside the track, waiting for a
freight train to pull out. The brakemen had a trick of looking round the
cars before they made a start. Though the days were blazing hot, the
nights were cold, and we shivered as we lay behind a clump of cacti near
the wheels. A man almost trod on us as he ran along the line, but just
afterward the engine bell rang, and Clay sprang up to push back one of
the big sliding doors while I held the food and water. The runners were
stiff, the train began to move; when he opened the door a few inches I
had to trot; and by the time he could crawl through, it was too late for
me to get up. Then, with a hazy recollection that he had a long way to
go, I threw the food and water into the car."

"That was just like you!" Ruth exclaimed with a flush of pride.

"I imagine it was largely due to absence of mind. I felt very sorry for
myself when I stood between the ties and watched the train vanish into
the dark. What made it worse, was that of the joint two dollars only
fifty cents was his."

"When did you meet him again?"

"Several years afterward in San Francisco. He seemed to be prospering,
and my luck had not been good. Through him, I entered the service of the
Alaska Commercial Company. That, of course, was before the Klondyke
rush, and the A.C.C. ruled the frozen North."

"It was in Alaska that you were first fortunate, wasn't it? You have
never told me much about the mine you found."

Osborne looked as if the recollection was unpleasant, but he saw that
she was interested, and he generally indulged her. Though she believed
in and was inclined to idealize him, Ruth was forced to admit that there
was nothing in his appearance to suggest the miner. His light summer
clothes were chosen with excellent taste, and there was a certain
fastidiousness in his appearance and manners which was hardly in keeping
with his adventurous past.

"Well," he said, "it was an unlucky mine from the beginning--and I was
not the first to find it. I had been some years in the company's service
when I was sent as agent to one of their factories. It was situated on a
surf-beaten coast, with a lonely stretch of barrens and muskegs rolling
away behind, and the climate was severe. There were no trees large
enough to break the savage winds, and for six months the ground was
covered deep with snow. A small bark came up once or twice a year, and
my business was to trade with the Indians and the Russian half-breeds
for furs. In winter we had only an hour or two's daylight, but I got
books from San Francisco, and read them by the red-hot stove while the
blizzards shook the factory. Even in those days, it was suspected that
there was gold in Alaska; but the A.C.C. did not encourage prospecting,
and the roughness of the country made it almost impossible for a
stranger to traverse. Still, a few prospectors somehow made their way
into it, and probably died, for they were seldom seen after their first
appearance. I can recollect two or three, hard-bitten men who stayed a
day or two with us and then vanished into the wilds.

"It was late in the fall when one arrived with two Aleut Indians in a
skin canoe. I never learned where he came from nor how he got so far,
for there was no communication with the North except by the company's
vessels, but he told us he meant to locate a mine he had heard about and
thought he could get back before winter set in. He went off with the
Aleuts and a few provisions he bought, and that was the last we saw of
him until the following summer. Then I made a journey inland to visit a
tribe which had brought in no furs, and one night we made camp among a
patch of willows. When we were gathering wood I saw that the larger
bushes had been hacked down, and thought it had been done by a white
man. The next morning we found an empty provision can of the kind we
kept, and, later on, bits of charred sticks where a fire had been
lighted. That led us to follow up the creek we had camped by; and
presently we found the man who had made the fire."

"Dead!" Ruth exclaimed.

"He had been dead for months. All that was left was a clean-picked
skeleton bleached by the snow and a few rags of clothes. The significant
thing was that the breast-bone was cut through: sharply cleft, as if by
an ax."

"How dreadful! You think the Indians killed the man?"

"It looked like it. There may have been a fight over the last of the
provisions, which the Aleuts carried off, because I found very few cans
and only one small empty flour-bag; but the tools indicated that it was
the same man who had visited the factory. I had not even heard his name,
and if he had any friends they never learned his fate; but he died
rich."

"He had found the gold?" Ruth's eyes were large with excitement.

"Yes," said Osborne. "Not far away, where the creek had changed its bed,
there was a shallow hole, part of it filled with ashes, but as the scrub
was three or four miles off it was easy to imagine how the man must have
worked carrying the half-dry brush to keep a big fire going."

"But why did he want a big fire?"

"To soften the ground. It never thaws deeper than a foot or two beneath
the surface, and there were signs that the early winter had surprised
him at work. It was obvious that he was a stubborn man, and meant to
hold on until the last moment."

"Do you think his companions murdered him for the treasure?"

"No; in those days the Indians cared nothing for gold, though they might
have killed the man for a silver fox's skin: furs were our currency. If
there was a quarrel it probably began because he insisted on staying
when winter was close at hand and the food almost done. For all that I
couldn't find the gold he must have got, because there was plenty in the
wash-dirt he had left--tiny rounded nuggets as well as grains. It was a
rich alluvial pocket that a man could work with simple appliances, and I
made up my mind to go back to Snowy Creek some day."

"But you were not alone! What about your companions?"

"I had two half-breeds with Russian blood in them; good trappers, but,
except for that, with little more intelligence than the animals they
hunted. Gold had no value to them; their highest ambition was to own a
magazine rifle."

"But couldn't you have washed out some of the gold?"

"I got a small quantity; but I was the company's servant, and had its
business to mind, and we had only provisions enough for the trip. The
A.C.C. found the fur-trade more profitable than mining, and did not want
its preserves invaded; and nobody suspected how rich the country really
was. Anyway, soon after my return, I had a dispute with the chief factor
and, fearing trouble, said nothing about my discovery. The office
supported the fellow, and I left the A.C.C. with my secret and three or
four hundred dollars."

"What did you do then?"

"I'm afraid an account of all my shifts and adventures would be
monotonous. Sometimes I had two or three hundred dollars in hand,
sometimes I had nothing but a suit of shabby clothes; but when things
were at the worst some new chance always turned up, and I wandered about
the Pacific slope until I fell in with Clay again."

"Then you didn't go to him when you left the A.C.C.?"

"No; he had done me one good turn, and I couldn't be continually asking
favors." Osborne paused and his face turned graver. "Besides, there were
respects in which we didn't agree; and in those days I had an
independent mind."

"Haven't you now?"

"I've learned that it's sometimes wiser to reserve your opinions," said
Osborne dryly. "You can best be independent when you have nothing,
because it doesn't matter then whom you offend."

"Was Clay prosperous?" Ruth asked.

"He was getting known as a man who would have to be reckoned with; but
he was short of money and was ready for a shot at anything that promised
a few dollars. Clay never shirked a risk, but I believe he was honestly
glad to see me, and in a moment of expansion I told him about the Snowy
Creek mine and the gold that would be waiting for me when I could
return."

"Ah! I was waiting until you came to that again. I felt its importance.
It was the mine that made you rich and surrounded me with a luxury I was
half afraid of at the beginning, wasn't it?"

Miss Dexter came toward them along the terrace and Osborne smiled as he
indicated her.

"Your aunt has always been inclined to disapprove of my doings, and I
don't suppose she'd be interested in my prospecting experiences. We'll
let them stand over till another day."

Ruth agreed, but she had a puzzling suspicion that her father was
relieved by the interruption. When Miss Dexter joined them Ruth was
forced to follow his lead and confine herself to general conversation.
This, however, did not keep her from thinking, and she wondered why her
aunt, whose love for her she knew, had shown herself so hypercritical
about her father. Caroline was narrow, but she was upright, and it
seemed impossible that she could find any serious fault with him. For
all that, Ruth wished that his connection with Clay were not quite so
close. Clay was not a man of refinement or high principles, and, to do
him justice, he did not pretend to be. Ruth had heard his business
exploits mentioned with indignation and cynical amusement by men of
different temperament. There were, she supposed, envious people who
delighted to traduce successful men; but Clay was certainly not free
from suspicion, and she would have preferred that her father had chosen
a different associate.




CHAPTER X--THE WRECK OF THE _KANAWHA_


Ruth had time to ponder her father's unfinished story, for a week
elapsed before she could persuade him to continue it. Osborne was away
for a few days, and when he came home his preoccupied manner suggested
that he had business of importance on hand, and Ruth refrained from
questioning him. The subject, however, had its fascination for the girl.
She had been too young to retain more than a hazy recollection of her
father in his struggling days, and she had fallen into the way of
thinking of him as the polished and prosperous gentleman whom she had
rejoined after a long separation. Now it was difficult to readjust her
ideas and picture him as a needy adventurer, taking strange risks and
engaging in occupations of doubtful respectability. She was, she hoped,
not hypercritical, but she found it hard to reconcile the two sharply
contrasted sides of his character.

At last, one evening, when they strolled across the lawn as dusk was
falling, she determinedly led up to the subject, regardless of the smile
with which he evaded her first questions.

"I don't know why you should be so bent on hearing about the mine," he
said. "On the whole, I'd rather forget the thing, because good luck
never followed the gold that was taken from Snowy Creek. There seemed to
be a curse upon it."

They sat down on a bench beneath a tall, ragged pine, and Osborne
lighted a cigar.

"Well," he began, "some time after the Klondyke rush started, when gold
had been found freely on American as well as Canadian soil, I went up to
Alaska to re-locate the mine. Clay had gone north before this, but not
as a miner--he said it was cheaper to let somebody else dig the gold for
him. He had a share in a wooden steamboat, started a transport service
to several mining camps, and financed prospectors who made lucky finds.
Everything he touched prospered, and the man was popular where the
canvas towns sprang up; so I was not surprised when I found him
unenthusiastic about my project. However, after much persuasion, he
agreed to come, and we set off with two hired packers and supplies
enough to give us a good chance of success.

"Summer was late that year, and we hauled the hand-sledges two hundred
miles over the snow; but I needn't tell you about our journey. We made
it with some trouble, and one afternoon came down to the creek, wet and
worn out, plowing through belts of melting snow and soft muskegs made by
the sudden thaw. I had hide moccasins which were generally soaked and
they had given out under the fastenings of the snowshoes. My foot, which
had been frost-bitten on the march when I first found the mine, was cut
deep, and it cost me a pretty grim effort to hold out for the last few
miles. I made it because I couldn't let another night come before I
learned my luck. All I had was in the venture, and if it failed I must
go back to camp destitute."

"One can understand that you were anxious."

"It was hard to keep cool, but weariness and pain steadied me. I believe
I showed no excitement, but I envied the others' calm. I can picture
them now: Clay, shuffling along in his old skin-coat and torn gum-boots;
the two packers, grumbling at the slush and bent a little by their
loads. All round us a desolate wilderness ran back to the skyline; gray
soil and rocks streaked with melting snow, out of which patches of
withered scrub stuck forlornly. Well, we struck the creek, by compass,
near where I intended, for soon afterward I picked up one landmark and
Clay another."

"Clay? But he hadn't been there before!"

"You're keen," Osborne observed. "We had often talked over my plans, and
he must have known nearly as much about the place as I did. Then one
couldn't mistake a prominent strip of rising ground, though it was some
distance off when Clay saw it."

"But the mine?"

"We made the spot in the evening, and I got there first, though it hurt
me badly to put down my foot, and I've sometimes thought Clay held back
to let me pass. Then I had to get a stern grip on my self-control, and
for a few moments I stood there with my hands clenched, unable to speak.
Where I had left a small hole there was a large one, and a great pile of
tailings was thrown up in the bed of the creek. It was obvious that we
had come too late."

"How dreadful!" Ruth exclaimed. "After all you had gone through, it must
have been almost too hard to bear. What did you do?"

"I can't remember. Clay was the first to speak and I can recall his
level voice as he said, 'It looks as if somebody has been here before
us, partner!'"

"But how inadequate and commonplace! Didn't he do anything?"

"He sat down on his pack and lighted a cigar; but he was always cool in
time of strain. All I remember of my own doings was that some time
afterward I fired a stick of dynamite at the bottom of the hole and dug
out the bits and half-thawn dirt until it was dark. I knew it was wasted
labor, because whoever had found the pocket wouldn't have stopped until
he had cleaned it up. Then I threw down my tools and lay among the
stones, limp and shivering, while Clay began to talk."

"But who had found the mine?" Ruth interrupted.

"I never learned. But Clay dealt with the situation sensibly. After all,
he said, it was only a pocket; a small alluvial deposit. The stream
which had brought the gold there had, no doubt, left some more in the
slacker eddies, and it might be worth while to look for the mother-lode,
where the metal came from. We had food enough to last while we
prospected the neighborhood. The next morning we set about it, and,
following up the creek, we found gold here and there; but our provisions
threatened to run out before we came to the watershed."

"Were any of the pockets as rich as the stolen one?" Ruth asked.

"No," her father answered with a hint of reserve. "Still, we found some
gold and got back safely to the coast. For a while I helped Clay, and
then he told me he must go south before the ice closed in. We sailed in
the vessel that he and some of his friends had bought, and when we rowed
off to her one misty day through a heavy surf I did not look forward to
a comfortable trip. She was an old wooden steamer that had been whaling,
with tall bulwarks and cut-down masts, and the topsail yards she still
carried gave her a top-heavy look. The small, dirty saloon and part of
the 'tween-decks were crowded with successful miners and others who were
at least fortunate in having money enough to take them out of the
country before winter set in. None of them, I think, wished to see the
North again, and nobody who knew it could blame them. Those who had gold
had earned it by desperate labor and grim endurance; those who had none
were going back broken men--frost-bitten, crippled by accidents, and
ravaged by disease.

"We had some trouble in getting to sea. Several of the crew had
deserted, and the rest were half-mutinous because they had been forcibly
kept on board. They struck me as a slipshod, unsailorly lot. To make
things worse, it was blowing fresh on-shore, and she lay, straining at
her cables and dipping her bows, in the long roll, in an open roadstead.
They broke a messenger chain that drove the rickety windlass in getting
the stream anchor up, and the miners had to help with tackles before
they could bring the kedge to the bows. Then she crawled slowly out to
sea under half steam, and, although there was not much prospect of it, I
hoped she would make a quick passage. The young first mate and one of
the engineers seemed capable men, but there was nothing to recommend the
rest, and the skipper was slack and too convivial in his habits. He was
a little, slouching man, with an unsteady look."

"How did such an old ship get passengers, and why didn't they engage a
better crew?" Ruth wanted to know.

"Passengers were not particular during the gold rush, and good seamen
were scarce on the Pacific slope. All who were worth anything had gone
off to the diggings."

"Oh! Where was the gold she carried kept?"

"In a strong-room under the floor of the stern cabin; that is, the gold
that was formally shipped by her, because I believe some of the miners
carried as much as possible on their persons and stowed the rest under
their bunks. Anyway, you saw men keeping watch while the bedroom
stewards were at work, and I imagine it would have been dangerous to
mistake one's berth at night. I generally struck a match to make sure of
my number. However, for the most part, the passengers seemed an honest
lot, and I had more confidence in them than I had in the crew.

"Our troubles began on the first day out, for she burst a pipe in the
engine room; but there was no excitement when she stopped and a cloud of
steam rushed out of the skylights. Men who had faced the Alaskan winter
in the wilds and poled their boats through the rapids when the ice broke
up were not easily alarmed.

"'The blamed old boiler's surely blowing. Guess that means another day
or two on the road,' one remarked, and the fellow he spoke to coolly
lighted his pipe.

"'Well,' he said, 'they've got some sails up there. She'll make it all
right if you give her time.'

"She lay a good many hours in the trough of the sea, rolling so wildly
that nobody could keep his feet, while a miner and the second engineer
strapped the pipe with copper wire and brazed the joint; but the next
accident was more serious. She was steaming before a white sea with two
topsails set when there was a harsh grinding and the engines stopped
with a bang. A collar on the propeller shaft had given way, the bolts
had broken, and until it could be mended there was nothing to connect
the engines with the screw.

"They set more sail while the engineers got to work; and some hours
later Clay and I were sitting in the captain's room. Clay took the
accident lightly, but the skipper had a nervous look and had been
drinking more than was good for him. There was a bottle in the rack, and
Clay was filling a glass when a miner came in. He was a big man with a
quiet, brown face and searching eyes.

"'Can your engine crowd fix this thing, Cap?' he asked.

"'They're trying,' said the skipper shortly. 'It may take some time.'

"'What are you going to do while they're at the job?'

"'Head south under sail.' The skipper began to look angry. 'Is there
anything else you want to know?'

"'Just this--do you reckon you can handle her all right with the boys
you have?'

"The skipper got up with a red face, and I expected trouble, but Clay
glanced at the miner and pulled the skipper down.

"'You had better answer him,' he said.

"'If the wind holds, I can keep her on her course until the engines
start. That should be enough for you.'

"'Certainly,' said the miner. 'If you'd found the contract too big, we'd
have found you boys to help with the shaft or get sail on her. Anyway,
if you want them later, you can let me know.' Then he went out and the
skipper drained his glass. It was a thing he did too often."

"But could the miner have done what he promised?" Ruth interrupted.

"It's very likely. In fact, I think if we had wanted a doctor, an
architect, or even a clergyman, we could have found one among the crowd
on board. The fellow certainly found two or three mechanics, and once I
crawled into the shaft tunnel to watch them at work. As it was
impossible to get the damaged length out, they worked at it in place,
crouching awkwardly in an iron tube about four feet wide while they cut
slots in the iron. There was hardly room to use the hammer and hold the
chisel; black oil washed about the tunnel mixed with salt-water that had
come in through a strained gland. Open lamps smoked and flickered close
above their heads as she rolled and the air was foul; but they kept it
up in turns with the ship's engineers for several days while the weather
got worse and the boat lurched along before an angry sea with her canvas
set. The decks were wet because the big rollers that came up astern
splashed in across her rail. It was bitterly cold and a gray haze shut
in the horizon. As the captain could get no sights, he had to make his
course by dead reckoning, which is seldom accurate."

"You must have felt anxious with all your gold on board," Ruth said.

"No," replied Osborne, with a moment's hesitation, which she missed.
"Clay had insured the vessel and his shipments by her on a kind of
floating policy. I believe he had some trouble to effect it, but he
managed to get the thing arranged through a broker with whom he had a
little influence."

"Clay seems to have a good deal of influence," Ruth thoughtfully
remarked. "How does he get it?"

"It's a gift of his," Osborne answered, with a curious smile. "However,
to go back to my tale, I knew the gold was insured, because, as joint
owner, I had to sign a declaration about its value, which would go by
another vessel with the bill of lading. To tell the truth, I was getting
more anxious about my personal safety, for the cold and mist and wild
weather were wearing on the nerves. At last, the gale blew itself out;
but the haze got thicker as the sea began to fall; and one night I was
awakened by a shock that threw me out of my berth. As I got a few
clothes on I felt her strike again, and when I ran out on the deck, half
dressed, it was clear that she had made her last voyage. She lay, canted
over, across the sea, with her after-part sinking and the long swell
which still ran breaking over her. You could see the smooth slopes of
water roll out of the dark and melt into foam that covered half the
deck, while the planking crushed in with a horrible sound as the reef
ground through her bilge. There was, however, no panic. The miners
quietly helped to swing the boats out; and, seeing that she was holding
together, I went with Clay and two seamen to open the strong-room. It
was reached through a trap in the cabin floor, but some beams in
breaking had jambed this fast, and we attacked the deck with bars and
axes.

"It was sharply slanted, the poop heaved and worked as the swell roared
about it, and a big lamp that still burned hung at an extraordinary
angle with the bulkhead. I remember that a maple sideboard which had
wrenched itself away and slipped down to leeward, lay, smashed to
pieces, in a pool of water; but there was no time to lose in looking
about. We all worked well, but Clay did more than any of us. He was half
dressed, his face was savage and dripping with sweat, and he swung his
ax in a fury, regardless of the rest. In fact, his mood puzzled me
afterward."

"But his gold was below!" said Ruth.

"It was fully insured," Osborne explained. "I didn't think Clay was
likely to make such desperate efforts for the benefit of the
underwriters; and he was not acting a part, because when the slant of
floor got steeper and we were warned to come out before she slipped off
the reef, he shouted reckless offers of money to the men to encourage
them to keep on. We might have broken through if we had had a few more
minutes, though the strong-room must have been already flooded, but the
lamp fell as she reeled when a roller struck her, and we were left in
darkness with the water washing about our feet. It drove us out and she
was obviously going down when we waded across the after-deck. A boat lay
under the quarter, but it was swept clear as soon as I dropped on board,
and as we lurched away on the long swell there was a heavy crash. Then a
blue light flared up and showed us other boats, and only half the wreck
left, looming black amid spouting foam.

"It seemed that nobody had been left behind, and those who could row
took the oars in turns through the dreary night. In the darkness we
missed an island which lay not far off, and it was two days later when
we landed on a desolate mainland beach. We were there a fortnight,
living, for the most part, on shellfish, and then, fortunately, a
Canadian sealing schooner ran into a neighboring inlet for water. She
took us on board, and, as we filled her up, it was a relief when she
transferred us to a wooden propeller off the northern end of Vancouver
Island."

"Then the gold was lost?"

"All that was in the strong-room; the miners saved most of theirs.
Nobody was blamed for the wreck, the underwriters paid, and when a
salvage expedition failed to recover anything, there was an end of the
matter. The gold lies at the bottom of the sea, and though I don't know
that I'm superstitious, I think that's the best place for it. From the
beginning, it brought nobody luck."

"It had a tragic story," Ruth agreed. "I wonder what would happen if
somebody fished it up?"

Osborne laughed.

"There's not much fear of that. The wreck must have slipped off the reef
soon after we left, because the salvage people found both halves of her
in deep water; but the strong tides and the bad weather prevented them
from working and they declared that she would be buried in the sand
before another attempt could be made."

He turned to her with a smile in his eyes.

"Now, little girl," he said, "you know all about it, and I hope you're
satisfied."

"I found it very interesting," Ruth replied with a thoughtful air. "In
reality, it was the insurance payment that gave you a start?"

"In a sense." Osborne's tone was grave. "Still, it was not what I'd now
consider a large amount, and I've sometimes felt that I wouldn't be
sorry for an excuse to give it back."

"I don't suppose Clay ever felt that way," Ruth said.

"One wouldn't imagine so. What Clay gets he keeps. He's not the man to
let his imagination run away with him."

Osborne rose and strolled across the lawn, but Ruth sat still in the
gathering dark. It was a curious story she had heard, but she thought
she could understand her father's feeling regarding the gold. It had
brought him bitter disappointment and permanent lameness, as well as
hardships and suffering. There was, however, something puzzling in
Clay's determined attempt to break into the strong-room while the ship
was going to pieces. He was insured against all loss, and he was not the
man to take undue personal risks. Then Ruth's thoughts returned to the
gold, which had a fascination for her. After all, it was, perhaps, not
impossible that it should be recovered. A spell of unusually fine
weather or a change in the currents might make another attempt easier.
Treasure often had been taken from vessels long after they had sunk.
Ruth thought of Jimmy Farquhar, engaged in some mysterious occupation on
an island in the North. It seemed extravagant to suppose that he had
found the wreck; but it was not impossible. It would be a curious thing
if he should bring up from the depth what her father had lost. But her
father had said the gold brought bad luck in its train.

The darkness crept up across the lawn and hovered round the girl,
enshrouding her, as she thought of Jimmy Farquhar on the lonely island
in the North and puzzled over his connection with the ill-fated gold.




CHAPTER XI--FATHER AND SON


Osborne did not go to town on Saturdays, and he and Ruth were sitting in
a shady corner of the lawn during the hot afternoon when a cloud of dust
whirled up among the firs. The speed with which it streaked the climbing
forest had its significance to Ruth, but when a big gray car flashed
across an opening her expression changed.

"There's no mistaking Aynsley's trail," Osborne laughed. "He blazes it
on the bodies of straying chickens and hogs; but I imagine you noticed
that he wasn't alone."

"I did; and I would have been quite as pleased if he had left his father
at home."

"So I surmised." Osborne smiled. "It seems to be what the older
generation is intended for; but Clay's not the man to take kindly to the
shelf and, everything considered, you couldn't blame him. Aynsley's the
more ornamental--a fine figure of a man as he sits at the wheel; but his
father's the driving force that makes the machine go. So far, his son
hasn't made much of anything unless the material was put ready to his
hand."

"At least, he has done no harm."

"That's a very negative virtue. It isn't thought highly of in this
country."

"I told him not long ago that he ought to work," Ruth replied in
unguarded confidence.

"It will be interesting to see if he follows your advice. His friends
have been urging the course for several years without much effect."

"He means to take charge of the Canadian mill; but, of course, he may
have a number of reasons for doing so," Ruth added hastily.

Osborne made no comment. Of late, he had begun to wonder where her
friendship for Aynsley would lead, and although it would not have
displeased him had she shown any tenderness for the man, he could
discover no sign of this.

He went forward to meet his guests, and when they came out of the house
a few minutes later Aynsley went straight across the lawn to greet Ruth
and Miss Dexter, who had joined her niece, while Clay and Osborne
followed a path which led through the pines. Clay was strongly made and
burly, with very dark hair and eyes and a somewhat fleshy face. He
looked as if he enjoyed good living; but the alertness of his expression
redeemed it from sensuality. He had an air of rakish boldness which
rather became him, and his careless dress added to this effect. In white
Panama hat, well-cut clothes negligently put on, with a heavy gold
watch-chain, diamond studs, and a black silk band round his waist, Clay
looked more of a swashbuckler than a sober business man. His appearance
was not altogether deceptive, for, although he used modern methods with
great shrewdness, he had habits and characteristics more in keeping with
the romantic '49.

"Have you held on to those Elk Park building lots?" he asked.

Osborne nodded. "Yes."

"Still got an option on the adjoining frontage?"

"I believe so; the offer wasn't quite formal."

"Then wire and clinch the deal. Do it right now."

"Ah! The municipal improvement scheme is going through?"

"Sure. I got the tip by 'phone as I was leaving. Whatcom serves me
pretty well, but there are other fellows to take a hand in the game, and
the news will leak out some time this evening. We're an hour or two
ahead--that's all. Here, write your message."

Taking a telegram blank from his pocket, he handed it to Osborne; and
then swung off his hat with ceremonious gallantry as he came suddenly
upon the others through an opening in the pines. Ruth gave him a rather
cold bow, for his voice carried well, and she had heard enough to
disturb her. She did not expect much from Clay; but it looked as if her
father were abetting him in a conspiracy to take an unfair advantage of
some civic improvements. She had no justification for questioning either
of them; but her aunt, who was seldom diffident, proceeded to deal with
the matter boldly when Osborne joined them after dispatching the
telegram.

"What's this I hear, Henry?" Miss Dexter asked.

"I can't say. You were not intended to hear anything," Osborne replied
with a patient air.

"Then your friend should talk lower. Have you been buying up property
the city needs?"

"It's a fairly common practice. I suppose you don't approve of it?"

"Need you ask?" Miss Dexter bristled with Puritanical indignation. "Have
you any moral right to tax the people because they want a healthier and
cleaner town? Is this the example you would set your daughter?"

Osborne smiled tolerantly.

"It's hardly likely that Ruth will feel tempted to speculate in real
estate. Besides, the tax is optional. The people needn't pay it unless
they like."

"That's a quibble," Miss Dexter replied shrewdly. "They wouldn't buy
your lots at an extravagant price if there was another site available."

"It's unwise to jump at conclusions. As a matter of fact, there are two
better sites in the market."

Miss Dexter looked puzzled.

"If that's true," she declared, "the matter's more suspicious than
before. There's something not straight."

"I'm afraid there often is," Osborne responded good-humoredly. "Still,
while I can't hope for your approval of all my doings, I don't think you
have much reason to question my veracity."

"I have none. I beg your pardon, Henry," Miss Dexter said with some
dignity. "I'm glad to say that I've always found your word reliable."

"That's something to my credit, anyway." Osborne turned to Clay. "My
sister-in-law has no admiration for our modern business ethics."

"There she shows sense," Clay answered with a smile. "I'm old-fashioned
enough to believe, ma'am, that the less women have to do with business
the better."

"Why?" Miss Dexter demanded sternly.

"You have a better part in life; we look to you to raise the national
tone, to protect the family morals, and keep the home clean."

Osborne looked amused, and Aynsley undutifully grinned, but Miss
Dexter's expression hinted at rather grim astonishment.

"How is it to be done?" she asked. "What's the use in our cleaning when
you men are allowed to muss up things?"

"That sounds logical," Aynsley put in. "I'm afraid we really need
reforming."

"You do," Miss Dexter replied with an air of dry amusement which
somewhat surprised her niece. "Idle men in particular are bound to make
trouble."

"It was the busy ones I was thinking of. My idea is that a man's most
dangerous when he's making money."

"What's that?" Clay turned upon his son sternly.

"I believe I heard you agree with Miss Dexter, sir, when she condemned
our commercial morality?"

"There's a difference; she's a lady," Clay replied in a decided tone.

Aynsley laughed and turned away with Ruth, who was in a thoughtful mood,
for what she had heard deepened her distrust of Clay and made her
anxious about his influence on her father. She admitted that, in her
inexperience she could not presume to judge what was right for him, but
she felt troubled.

"Have you told your father you will take over the mill?" she asked
Aynsley.

"Yes; and I believe he was immensely gratified, though he only said he
was glad to see I was coming to my senses. However, on thinking it over,
I half regret my decision. The old man has money enough for both of us,
and, to my mind, driving a car or sailing a yacht is much less risky
work than trying to get ahead of the people you deal with."

"But is that necessary? Can't you carry on a business without taking
advantage of your rivals and customers?"

"I'm hardly in a position to judge, but from what I've heard it seems
difficult. When I take up the mill I've got to make it pay. It would be
a bad shake-up for the old man if I only lost the money he put in. He'd
feel himself disgraced, and it would be a heavy strain on his affection.
Though he tells me I'm a fool pretty often, he's really fond of me."

"Yes," said Ruth; "I've noticed that, and I like him for it. After all,
you need some sympathy. The situation's complicated."

"That's so. I'm half afraid I'm not smart enough to grapple with it. Of
course, there is such a thing as compromise: you can do your best all
round, but make a small concession here and there."

"I'm not sure that would work. Isn't there a risk of the concessions
becoming too numerous? It would be safer not to give way at all."

"It sounds a drastic rule. The trouble is that my relatives and friends
expect too much of me, and I suspect that some of them are pulling
opposite ways."

Ruth felt sorry for him. Though he was careless, he was honest, and she
thought he would shrink from anything that was mean and savored of
trickery. Now, however, he had to stand a searching test: he would be
expected to make the sawmill pay, and Clay would not be satisfied with a
small profit. Ruth felt that she had assumed some responsibility in
persuading him to undertake an uncongenial task; for if he proved
unfitted for it, his troubles would be numerous. For all that, she could
not believe that it was impossible to get rich uprightly.

"After all," she said, "you will have every advantage. The best
assistants and the latest machinery."

"That's true. But they're liabilities. I mean they'll be scored against
me, and I'll have to prove I've made the most efficient use of them. In
a way, I'd rather make a start with poorer tools."

"That sounds weak; and you're not often so hesitating."

"It's something to know your limitations," Aynsley answered. "Besides, I
feel that I have to do you and the old man credit after the rather
reckless confidence you have both shown in me."

"I am sure mine was justified," Ruth said softly.

Aynsley turned to her quickly. She was wonderfully attractive with her
slender figure in light summer drapery outlined against the darkness of
the surrounding pines; and the dusky background emphasized her fine
coloring. Her face, however, was quietly grave. He could see no trace of
the tender shyness he longed for, not even a hint of coquetry, which
might have warranted some advance. He sometimes thought that Ruth did
not know her power and had not quite awakened yet; but it was obvious
that she had spoken in mere friendly kindness, and he must be content
with that.

"Thank you," he answered in a voice that was slightly strained. "I'll
certainly have to pull myself together and see what I can do."

They heard his father calling and, turning back to the lawn, they found
Clay ready to go. He had, he explained to Miss Dexter, only called for a
word with Osborne, though he found it hard to tear himself away. She
heard him with a twinkle in her eyes, and afterward watched him cross
the lawn with his jaunty air. Somehow he made a more romantic figure
than his handsome son.

"A man of many talents, I think," she said. "One wonders whether he
makes the best use of them."

"That depends on one's point of view; and it's not our affair," Osborne
remarked.

"It is certainly not mine. How far it may be yours, I can't tell, but a
man of that kind doesn't walk alone. Where he goes he drags others after
him."

Osborne laughed as the hum of the car rushing along the hillside came
back to them.

"The pace he sets is generally hot," he admitted; "but I imagine his son
is at present gratifying his love of speed."

As a matter of fact, Clay was then leaning back on the cushions, with
his hat jammed tightly on, while he watched Aynsley, whose face was
presented to him in clearly cut profile. The car was traveling very fast
along one of the rough dirt-roads of the country, throwing up red dust
and withered needles and bouncing among the ruts. High overhead there
hung a roof of somber foliage, pierced by shafts of glittering light and
supported by the columnar trunks of great Douglas firs. There were holes
in the uneven surface of the road deep enough to wreck the machine, and
though boggy stretches had been laid with small, split logs, these left
bare, broad spaces where the wheels sank in the soft soil. Aynsley never
slackened speed. He avoided the dangers with judgment and nerve, while
the car lurched as it twisted in and out, now clinging to the edge of
the bank with tires that brushed the fern, now following a devious track
made by wagon wheels. It was an exhibition of fine driving; and Clay,
who was a shrewd judge of men, noticed the coolness, courage, and quick
decision his son displayed. He took risks that could not be avoided, but
he was bold without being rash, and this appealed to his father, who
studied him with a puzzled feeling. Considering his strength of
character, it was strange that Aynsley had done nothing yet; and Clay
was, perhaps, not altogether mistaken in deeming no occupation of
importance, unless it was connected with the earning of money. He held
that a calling which enriched a man was generally of some benefit to his
country.

"I had a letter from Vancouver this morning," he said, as they climbed a
hill and the slower pace made conversation possible. "They're putting
the new engine in and expect to start the mill in a fortnight."

"I'll be ready then," said Aynsley.

Clay noticed that, although his tone conveyed no hint of eagerness, his
expression was resolute. If the boy's task was not quite congenial, he
meant to undertake it, which was satisfactory.

"There's another matter I want to talk about. That's a nice girl of
Osborne's, though I guess you might do better."

Aynsley turned his head so he could see his father.

"The remark is obviously absurd, sir."

Clay chuckled.

"It's a proper feeling. I find no fault with it. Anyway, I'm glad to see
that this time you're looking nearer your own level. I felt a bit
worried about you some years ago."

Taken by surprise, as he was, the blood crept into Aynsley's face. He
had been infatuated with a girl in a cigar store, and it was
disconcerting to learn that his father had known all about the affair.
Clay had said nothing, but Aynsley had no doubt that he would have acted
had he thought it needful.

"Well," he said with some confusion, "I was at a sentimental age, but I
wasn't so foolish as you seem to think. Miss Neston was quite good
enough for me, and I'd like you to remember it, since you have mentioned
the matter."

"We'll let it go," Clay answered dryly. "I guess you have a different
idea of your value now. But you don't seem to be making much progress
with Ruth Osborne. I suppose you really want her?"

They had passed the steepest pitch of the hill, but Aynsley threw in the
lowest gear and turned quietly to his father.

"You have a rather crude way of putting things; but you can take it that
I want her more than anything in the world."

"Very well. I can get her for you."

Aynsley made an abrupt movement, and then said slowly, "I think not.
This is a matter in which you can't help me; I want you to understand
it."

His resolute manner puzzled Clay, who had not often found him so
determined.

"It seems to me that needs an explanation."

"Then I'll try to give you one. You have given me many things for which
I'm grateful, and now that you have bought me the sawmill, I'll do the
best I can with it. I've allowed you to choose my career; but I think
I'm justified in choosing my wife myself."

"You're young," laughed Clay, "or you'd have learned that it's very
seldom a man with red blood chooses his wife; in fact, it much oftener
happens the other way about. He meets her and that settles him. If you'd
been capable of going round with a list of qualifications looking for a
girl who could satisfy them, you'd be no son of mine. However, I'm not
dictating what you call your choice. I don't object to it; that's all."

"It's enough. How would you get Miss Osborne if I gave you permission?"

Though the question was awkward, Clay smiled. The boy was shrewder than
he thought.

"Oh," he said, "I have some influence with Osborne. He owes me several
favors."

"A man wouldn't give up his daughter in return for a favor. What is your
hold on him?"

"I don't see much reason why you should know."

"You may be right." Aynsley's tone was determined as he continued:
"Let's try to understand each other. If Miss Osborne marries me because
that's her wish, I'll be a very fortunate man; but it's unthinkable that
she should be forced to do so. I can't have any pressure put upon her
father."

"When I want a thing, I get after it the best way I can."

"I believe that's true," Aynsley answered with a smile. "In this case,
however, the way's important. I must ask you to leave it alone."

"Very well," acquiesced Clay. "As usual, though, I'll be around if you
should want me. I guess I haven't failed you yet."

"You have not, Dad," Aynsley replied in an affectionate tone. "Sit
tight; I'm going to stir up the machine."




CHAPTER XII--READY FOR THE FRAY


The train was held up on its way to the Canadian frontier by a wash-out
farther along the track. Devereux Clay stood in the noon sunshine
talking to Osborne at a small wayside station while groups of impatient
passengers strolled about the line, stopping now and then to glance at a
gap in the somber firs where the rails gleamed in the strong sunshine;
the engineer, leaning out from his cab, had his eyes turned in the same
direction. There was, however, nothing to be seen but climbing trees,
whose ragged spires rose one behind the other far up the steep hillside,
and the fragrance the hot noon sun drew out from them mingled with the
sharp smell of creosote from the ties. Except for the murmur of voices
and the panting of the locomotive pump, it was very quiet in the narrow
clearing, and the sound of falling water came up faintly from a deep
hollow where a lake glittered among the firs.

Clay leaned against the agent's wooden shack, with his watch in his
hand, for time was of value to him just then.

"Twenty minutes yet, from what that fellow said," he grumbled. "Give me
a cigar--I've run out--and you needn't wait."

"Oh, I'm in no hurry," said Osborne, glancing toward his automobile,
which stood outside the station. "I suppose it's the labor trouble
that's taking you to Vancouver?"

"You've hit it," Clay answered in a confidential tone. "I'm a bit
worried about things; but I've spent the last two days wondering whether
I'd go or not."

He was seldom so undecided, but Osborne thought he understood.

"It looks as if the unions meant business," he said, "and in this
agitation against alien labor they seem to have public sympathy. Have
you any Japs at the mill?"

"I believe so. That's partly why I'm going. Until I read the papers this
morning I thought I'd stay away. I figured it might be better to let the
boy worry through alone and see what he could make of it."

"Let him win his spurs?"

"That's right. I told him to sit tight, and so long as he made good I'd
foot the bill; but after the big row in Vancouver yesterday, I thought
I'd go along. Still, my notion is to keep in the background unless I
find I'm badly wanted."

His manner was half apologetic, and Osborne smiled. Clay was not
addicted to hovering in the background when things were happening; but
Osborne knew the affection he bore his son.

"It might be wiser for you to be on the spot; the white mob seems to be
in an ugly mood," he said. "How is Aynsley getting on?"

"Better than I expected. The boy has the right grip and he's taking
hold." Clay turned abruptly and fixed Osborne with his eyes. "I was a
bit puzzled about his making up his mind all at once that he'd run the
mill. Do you know of anything that might have helped to persuade him?"

"Since you ask, I have a suspicion," Osborne answered.

"So have I; I guess it matches yours. It's like the young fool that a
word from a girl who knows less than he does should have more effect
than all the reasons I gave him."

"It's not unnatural," Osborne smiled.

"Then suppose we're right in our idea of what this points to? You know
my boy."

"I like him. Perhaps I'd better say that if I found that Ruth shared my
good opinion, I shouldn't object. But I can't guess her views on the
matter."

"I know Aynsley's," Clay said dryly. "We had a talk not long ago, and I
offered to see what I could do."

Osborne gave him a searching glance and his expression changed. He
looked on his guard.

"So far, you have been able to get your son everything he wished for;
but you must understand that you can't dispose of my daughter. Ruth
shall please herself."

Clay's eyes gleamed with rather hard amusement.

"It's curious that my boy said much the same thing. In fact, he warned
me off. He knows how I've indulged him and seemed to think I might put
some pressure on you."

"In the present instance it wouldn't have much effect; but what you say
gives me a better opinion of Aynsley than I already had."

"That's all right," Clay rejoined, dropping his hand on the other's arm
in a friendly manner. "We certainly can't afford to quarrel, and I don't
know that it's unfortunate our children are more fastidious than we are.
Anyway, we don't want them to find us out. I'd feel mean if my son
disowned me."

Osborne winced at this allusion.

"Aynsley stands prosperity well," he said.

"In my opinion, it's considerably less damaging than the other thing.
I'm thankful I've done the grubbing in the dirt for him. I've put him
where it's easier to keep clean. So far as I can fix it, my boy shall
have a better time than was possible for me. I've put him into business
to teach him sense--I don't know a better education for any young man
than to let him earn his bread and butter. He'll learn the true value of
men and things; and when he's done that and shown he's capable of
holding his own, he can quit and do what pleases him. I've no near
relations, and there was a time when my distant connections weren't
proud of me. Everything I have goes to the boy; and if your daughter
will take him, I'd know he was in good hands. If she won't, I'll be
sorry, but he must put up with it."

Osborne felt reassured. Clay had his good points, though they were not
always very obvious, and perhaps the best was his affection for his son.
Before Osborne could reply, Clay glanced again at his watch and resumed
his usual somewhat truculent manner.

"If they get me into Vancouver after the trouble begins, I'll see the
road bosses in Seattle and have the superintendent of this division
fired!" he announced.

At that moment the telegraph began to tick in the shack, and shortly
afterward the agent came up to Clay.

"They're through. We'll get you off in five minutes, and I have orders
to cut out the next two stops," he said.

While he gave the conductor his instructions a shrill whistle rang
through the shadows of the pines and a big engine with a row of flat
cars carrying a gravel plow and a crowd of dusty men came clattering
down the line. As they rolled into the side-track Clay climbed to the
platform of his car, and almost immediately the train started. His face
grew hard and thoughtful when he leaned back in a corner seat; and he
had emptied the cigar-case his friend had given him before he reached
Vancouver, where he hired the fastest automobile he could find.

                                  ----

While his father was being recklessly driven over a very rough road
which ran through thick bush, Aynsley sat on a pile of lumber outside
the mill with his manager. It was getting dark, the saws which had
filled the hot air all day with their scream were still, and the river
bank was silent except for the gurgle of the broad, green flood that
swirled among the piles. A great boom of logs moored in an eddy worked
with the swing of the current, straining at its chains; there was a red
glimmer in the western sky, but trails of white mist gathered about the
thinned forest that shut the clearing in. Only trees too small for
cutting had been left, but the gaps between them were filled with
massive stumps. Tall iron stacks, straggling sheds, and sawdust dumps
took on a certain harsh picturesqueness in the fading light; and the
keen smell of freshly cut cedar came up the faint breeze. But Aynsley
had no eye for his surroundings. He was thinking hard.

After a brief experience, he had found, somewhat to his surprise, that
his work was getting hold of him. The mechanical part of it in
particular aroused his keen interest: there was satisfaction in feeling
that the power of the big engines was being used to the best advantage.
Then, the management of the mill-hands and the care of the business had
their attractions; and Aynsley ventured to believe that he had made few
mistakes as yet, though he admitted that his father had supplied him
with capable assistants. Now, however, he must grapple with a crisis
that he had not foreseen; and he felt his inexperience. There was, he
knew, an easy way out of the threatened difficulties, but he could not
take it. He must, so far as possible, deal effectively with an awkward
situation, and, at the same time, avoid injustice, though that would
complicate matters. The problem was not a novel one: he wanted to
safeguard his financial interests and yet do the square thing.

"You think the Vancouver boys will come along and make trouble for us
to-night, Jevons?" he asked presently.

The young manager nodded.

"That's what I'm figuring on; and it's quite likely the Westminster
crowd will join them. They've been making ugly threats. I found this
paper stuck up on the door when I made my last round."

Aynsley read the notice.

    _This is a white man's country. All aliens warned to leave.
    Those who stay and those who keep them will take the
    consequences._

"I suppose our keeping the Japs on is their only quarrel with us?"

"It's all they state."

"Well," Aynsley said slowly, "if we give way in this, I dare say they'd
find something else to make trouble about. When you begin to make
concessions you generally have to go on."

"That's so," agreed Jevons. "It looks to me as if the boys were driving
their bosses, who can't pull them up; but those I've met are reasonable
men, and when the crowd cools off a bit they'll get control again.
They'd give us leave to run the mill if you fired the Japs."

Aynsley frowned.

"I have received their deputations civilly, and during the last week or
two I've put up with a good deal. We pay standard wages and I don't
think there's a man about the place who's asked to do more than he's
able. But I can't have these fellows dictating whom I shall employ!"

"You have some good orders on the books for delivery on a time limit,"
Jevons reminded him. "You'll lose pretty smartly if we have to stop the
mill."

"That's the trouble," Aynsley admitted. "I'd hate to lose the orders;
but, on the other hand, I hired these Japs when I couldn't get white
men, and I promised their boss I'd keep them until we'd worked through
the log boom."

"You might call him up and ask what he'd take to quit. It might work out
cheaper in the end."

Aynsley pondered this. Though he had not suspected it until lately, he
had inherited something of his father's character. He had seldom thought
much about money before he entered the mill, but since then he had
experienced a curious satisfaction in seeing the balance to his credit
mount up, and in calculating the profit on the lumber he cut. Now he
found the suggestion that he should throw away part of his earnings
frankly impossible. It was, however, not so much avarice as pride that
influenced him. He had taken to business seriously, and he meant to show
what he could do.

"No," he said decidedly. "I don't see why I should let the mob fine me
for being honest. I'd rather fight, if I'm forced to; and I'm afraid
you'll have to stand in."

Jevons laughed.

"I don't know that I'm anxious to back out. I tried to show you the
easiest way, as a matter of duty; but there's a good deal to be said for
the other course. I don't think there are any union boys still in the
mill, and my notion is that the rancher crowd don't mean to quit."

Labor had been scarce that year, and Aynsley had engaged a number of
small ranchers and choppers, who, as often happens when wages are high,
had come down from their homesteads in the bush. They were useful men,
of determined character, and were content with their pay.

"Well," he said, "we may as well ask what the Japs think of doing; but
they're stubborn little fellows, and seem to have some organization of
their own. Anyway, they whipped the mob pretty badly in Vancouver a day
or two ago."

Their leader, being sent for, explained in good English that, as their
honorable employer had hired them to do certain work which was not yet
completed, they meant to stay. On being warned that this might prove
dangerous, he answered darkly that they had taken precautions, and the
danger might not be confined to them. Then, after some ceremonious
compliments, he took his leave; and Aynsley laughed.

"That settles the thing! They won't go and I can't turn them out. I have
some sympathy with the opposition's claim that this is a white man's
country; but since they couldn't give me the help I wanted, I had to get
it where I could. Now, we'll interview the white crowd."

They found the men gathered in the big sleeping-shed where the lamps had
just been lighted. They were sturdy, hard-looking fellows, most of whom
owned small holdings which would not support them in the bush, and they
listened gravely while Aynsley spoke. Then one got up to reply for the
rest.

"We've seen this trouble coming and talked it over. So long as you don't
cut wages, we've nothing much to complain of and see no reason for
quitting our job. Now, it looks as if the Vancouver boys were coming to
turn us out. We'll let them--if they can!"

There was a murmur of grim approval from the rest; and Aynsley, dividing
them into detachments, sent them off to guard the saws and booms and
engine-house. Then he turned to the manager with a sparkle in his eyes.

"I think we're ready for anything that may happen. You'll find me in the
office if I'm wanted."

On entering it he took down a couple of books from a shelf and
endeavored to concentrate his attention on the business they recorded.
It was the first serious crisis he had had to face, and he felt that
hanging idly about the mill while he waited for the attack would be too
trying. Somewhat to his surprise, he found his task engross him, and an
hour had passed when he closed the books and crossed the floor to the
open window.

It was a calm, dark night, and warm. A star or two glimmered above the
black spires of the pines, but the mist that drifted along the waterside
blurred the tall stacks and the lumber piles. There was no sign of the
men; and the deep silence was emphasized by a faint hiss of steam and
the gurgle of the river.

Leaning on the sill, Aynsley drank in the soft night air, which struck
on his forehead pleasantly cool. He admitted that he was anxious, but he
thought he could keep his apprehensions under good control.

As he gazed into the darkness, a measured sound stole out of the mist,
and, growing louder, suggested a galloping horse. It approached the
mill, but Aynsley did not go down. If anybody wanted him, it would be
better that he should be found quietly at work in his office; and he was
seated at his table with a pen in his hand when a man was shown in. The
newcomer was neatly dressed except that his white shirt was damp and
crumpled. His face was hot and determined.

"I've come to prevent trouble," he explained.

"I'm glad to hear it, because, as we both have the same wish, it ought
to simplify things," Aynsley responded. "Since yours is the party with a
grievance, you'd better tell me what you want."

"A written promise that you won't keep a Jap here after to-morrow
morning."

"I can't give it," said Aynsley firmly. "I'll undertake to hire no more
and to let these fellows go when they have finished the work I engaged
them for, if that will do."

"It won't; I can't take that answer back to the boys. You must fire the
Japs right off."

Aynsley leaned forward on the table with a patient sigh.

"Don't you understand that when two parties meet to arrange terms they
can't both have all they want? The only chance of a settlement lies in a
mutual compromise."

"You're wrong," said the stranger grimly. "The thing can be settled
straight off if one of them gives in."

"Is that what you propose to do?"

"No, sir! I don't budge an inch! The boys wouldn't let me, even if I
thought it wise."

"Then, as I can't go as far as you wish, there's no use in my making a
move," Aynsley answered coolly. "It looks as if we had come to a
standstill and there was nothing more to be said."

"I'll warn you that you're taking a big responsibility and playing a
fool game."

"That remains to be seen. I needn't keep you, though I'm sorry we can't
agree."

He went down with the man, and as they crossed the yard the fellow
raised his voice.

"Come out from the holes you're hiding in, boys!" he cried. "Are you
going to back the foreigners and employers against your friends?"

Aynsley touched his shoulder.

"Sorry, but we can't allow any speeches of that kind. You have an
envoy's privileges, so long as you stick to them, but this is breaking
all the rules."

"How will you stop me?" the fellow demanded roughly.

"I imagine you had better not satisfy your curiosity on that point,"
Aynsley answered. "The man yonder has your horse. I wish you
good-night."

The envoy mounted and rode away into the darkness; and Aynsley sought
his manager.

"I suspect his friends are not far off," he said. "We had better go
round again and see that everything's ready."




CHAPTER XIII--THE REPULSE


The night was dark and the road bad, and Clay leaned forward in the
lurching car, looking fixedly ahead. The glare of the headlamp flickered
across wagon ruts and banks of tall fern that bordered the uneven track,
while here and there the base of a great fir trunk flashed suddenly out
of the enveloping darkness and passed. Where the bush was thinnest, Clay
could see the tiny wineberries glimmer red in the rushing beam of light,
but all above was wrapped in impenetrable gloom. They were traveling
very fast through a deep woods, but the road ran straight and roughly
level, and talking was possible.

"You had trouble in the city lately. How did it begin?" Clay asked the
driver. "I'm a stranger, and know only what's in your papers."

"The boys thought too many Japs were coming in," the man replied. "They
corralled most of the salmon netting, and when there was talk about
prices being cut, the white men warned them to quit."

He broke off as the car dropped into a hole, and it was a few moments
later when Clay spoke.

"The Japs wouldn't go?"

"No, sir; they allowed they meant to hold their job; and the boys didn't
make a good show when they tried to chase them off. Then, as they were
getting other work into their hands, the trouble spread. The city's
surely full of foreigners."

"You had a pretty big row a day or two ago."

"We certainly had," the driver agreed, and added, after a pause during
which he avoided a deep rut, "The boys had fixed it up to run every
blamed Asiatic out of the place."

"I understand they weren't able to carry their program out?"

"That's so. I've no use for Japs, but I'll admit they put up a good
fight. Wherever the boys made a rush there was a bunch of them ready.
You couldn't take that crowd by surprise. Then they shifted back and
forward and slung men into the row just where they were wanted most.
Fought like an army, and the boys hadn't made much of it when the police
whipped both crowds off."

"Looks like good organization," Clay remarked. "It's useful to know what
you mean to do before you make a start. Have the boys tried to run off
those who are working at the outside mills?"

"Not yet, but we're expecting something of the kind. They'd whip them in
bunches if they tried that plan."

This was what Clay feared; it was the method he would have used had he
led the strikers. When a general engagement is risky, one might win by
crushing isolated forces; and Aynsley's mill was particularly open to
attack. It stood at some distance from both Vancouver and New
Westminster, and any help that could be obtained from the civic
authorities would probably arrive too late. There was, however, reason
to believe that the aliens employed must have recognized their danger,
and perhaps guarded against it. Clay knew something about Japs and
Chinamen, and had a high respect for their sagacity.

He asked no more questions, and as the state of the road confined the
driver's attention to his steering, nothing was said as they sped on
through the dark. Sometimes they swept across open country where
straggling split-fences streamed back to them in the headlamps' glare
and a few stars shone mistily overhead. Sometimes they raced through the
gloom beside a bluff, where dark fir branches stretched across the road
and a sweet, resinous fragrance mingled with the smell of dew-damped
dust. The car was traveling faster than was safe, but Clay frowned
impatiently when he tried to see his watch. It was characteristic that
although he was keenly anxious he offered the driver no extra bribe to
increase the pace. He seldom lost his judgment, and the possibility of
saving a few minutes was offset by the danger of their not arriving at
all.

Presently they plunged into another wood. It seemed very thick by the
way the hum of the engine throbbed among the trees, but outside the
flying beam of the lamps all was wrapped in darkness. Clay was flung
violently to and fro as the car lurched; but after a time he heard a
sharp click, and the speed suddenly slackened.

"Why are you stopping?" he asked impatiently.

"Men on the road," explained the driver. "I'm just slowing down."

Clay could see nothing, but a sound came out of the gloom. There was a
regular beat in it that indicated a body of men moving with some order.

"Hold on!" he cautioned, as the driver reached out toward the horn. "Let
her go until we see who they are. I suppose there's no way round?"

"Not a cut-out trail until you reach the mill."

"Then we'll have to pass them. Don't blow your horn or pull up unless
you're forced to."

The car slid forward softly and a few moments later the backs of four
men appeared in the fan-shaped stream of light. As it passed them
another four were revealed, with more moving figures in the gloom
beyond. Most of them seemed to be carrying something in the shape of
extemporized weapons, and their advance was regular and orderly. This
was not a mob, but an organized body on its way to execute some
well-thought-out plan. As the car drew nearer a man swung round with a
cry, and the rearmost fours stopped and faced about. There was a murmur
of voices farther in front; and, seeing no way through, the driver
stopped, though the engine rattled on.

"Let us pass, boys; you don't want all the road," he called
good-naturedly.

None of them moved.

"Where are you going?" one asked.

"To the Clanch Mill," answered the driver before Clay could stop him.

The men seemed to confer, and then one stood forward.

"You can't go there to-night. Swing her round and light out the way you
came!"

Clay had no doubt of their object; and he knew when to bribe high.

"They'll jump clear if you rush her at them," he said softly. "A hundred
dollars if you take me through!"

The car leaped forward, gathering speed with every second; and as it
raced toward them the courage of the nearest failed. Springing aside
they scrambled into the fern, and while the horn hooted in savage
warning the driver rushed the big automobile into the gap.

For a few moments it looked as if they might get through. There was a
confused shouting; indistinct, hurrying figures appeared and vanished as
the shaft of light drove on. Some struck at the car as it passed them,
some turned and gazed; but the men ahead were bolder, or perhaps more
closely massed and unable to get out of the way in time.

"Straight for them!" cried Clay.

A man leaped into the light with a heavy stake in his hand.

The next moment there was a crash, and the car swerved, ran wildly up a
bank, and overturned.

Clay was thrown violently forward, and fell, unconscious, into a brake
of fern. When he came to, he was lying on his back with a group of men
standing round him. He felt dazed and shaky, and by the smarting of his
face he thought it was cut. When he feebly put up his hand to touch it
he felt his fingers wet. Then one of the men struck a match and bent
over him.

"Broken any bones?" he asked.

"No." Clay found some difficulty in speaking. "I think not, but I don't
feel as if I could get up."

"Well," the man said, "it was your own fault; we told you to stop.
Anyhow, you had better keep still a bit. If you're here when we come
back, we'll see what we can do."

Glancing quickly round, Clay saw the driver sitting by the wrecked car;
and then the match went out. In the darkness the nearest men spoke
softly to one another.

"What were you going to the mill for?" one man asked him.

"I had some business there," Clay answered readily. "I buy lumber now
and then."

The men seemed satisfied.

"Leave them alone," one suggested; "they'll make no trouble and it's
time we were getting on."

The others seemed to agree, for there was some shouting to those in
front, and the men moved forward. Clay heard the patter of their feet
grow fainter, and congratulated himself that he had obviously looked
worse than he felt. Now that the shock was passing, he did not think he
was much injured, but he lay quiet a few minutes to recover before he
spoke to the driver.

"How have you come off?" he asked.

"Wrenched my leg when she pitched

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