Kitabı oku: «Hawtrey's Deputy», sayfa 21

CHAPTER XXIX.
CAST AWAY

Tom Lewson had been an hour in camp before he commenced the story of his wanderings, and at first he spoke slowly and falteringly, lying propped up on one elbow, with the lamplight on his worn face.

"We broke an oar coming off the beach that night, and it kind of crippled us," he said. "Twice she nearly went back again in the surf, and I don't quite know how we pulled her off. Anyway, one of us was busy heaving out the water that broke into her. It was Jake, I think, and he seemed kind of silly. Once we saw a boat hove up on a sea, but we lost her in the spray, and a long while after we saw the schooner. Just then a comber that broke on board most hove us over, and when we had dodged the next two there wasn't a sign of her. After that we knew that we were done, and we just tried to keep her head-to and ease her to the seas."

He stopped a moment, and looked round at the others with troubled eyes, as though trying to marshal uncertain memories, for this was a simple sailorman, who contented himself with the baldest narrative. Still, two of those who heard him could fill in the things he had not mentioned – the mad lurching of the half-swamped boat, the tense struggle with the oars each time a big frothing comber forged out of the darkness, and the savage desperation of the drenched and half-frozen men cast away with the roaring surf to lee of them and their enemies watching upon the hammered beach.

"It blew hard that night," he added. "Somehow she lived through it, but there wasn't a sign of the island when morning came. Nothing but the combers and the flying haze. Guess the wind must have shifted a few points and drove us by the end of it. Then we found Jake had his head laid open by a sealing club. The sea was getting longer, and as we were too played out to hold her to it we got her away before it, and somehow she didn't roll over. I think it was next day, though it might have been longer, when we fetched another island. She just washed up on it, and one of the others pulled me out. There wasn't a sign of anybody on the beach, but there were plenty of skinned holluschackie seals on the slope behind it, and that was fortunate for us."

"You struck nobody on the island?" enquired Wyllard.

"We didn't," said Lewson simply. "The Russians must have sent a vessel to take off the killers after the last drive of the season a day or two before, for the holluschackie were quite fresh, and perhaps it was blowing hard and the surf getting steep, for they'd left quite a few of their things behind them. Anyway, that was how we figured it. We found the shacks the killers lived in, and we made out that winter in one of them."

It occurred to Wyllard that this was a thing very few men except sealers could have done had they been cast ashore without stores or tools to face the awful winter of the north.

"How did you get through?" he asked.

"Well," said Lewson, "we had a rifle, and the ca'tridges weren't spoilt. The killers hadn't taken their cooking outfit, and by and bye we got a walrus in an open lane among the ice. They'd left some gear behind them, but we were most of two days cutting and heaving the beast out with a parbuckle under him. There was no trouble about things keeping in that frost. Besides, we'd the holluschackie blubber to burn, and there was a half-empty bag or two of stores in one of the shacks. No, we hadn't any great trouble in making out."

"You had to stay there until the ice broke up?" said Charly.

"And after. The boat was gone, and we couldn't get away. She broke up in the surf, and we burned what we saved of her. At last a schooner came along, and we hid out across the island until she'd gone away. It was blowing fresh, and hazy, and she just shoved a new gang of killers ashore. There was an Okotsk Russian with them, but he made no trouble for us. He was white, anyway, and it kind of seemed to me he didn't like one of the other men who got hurt that night on the beach."

"Then some of them did get badly hurt?" Wyllard broke in.

Lewson laughed, a little, almost silent laugh, which nevertheless sounded strangely grim.

"Well," he said, "from what that Russian told us – and we got to understand each other by and bye – one of the killers had his ribs broke, and it seems that another would go lame for life. Besides, among other things, there was a white man got his face quite smashed. I saw him after with his nose flattened way out to starboard, and one eye canted. He was a boss of some kind. They called him Smirnoff."

Overweg looked up sharply. "Ah," he said, "Smirnoff. A man with an unsavoury name. I have heard of him."

"Anyway," Lewson went on, "we killed seals all the open season with that Russian, and I've no fault to find with him. In fact, I figure if he could have fixed it he'd have left us on the island that winter, but when a schooner came to take the killers off and collect the skins Smirnoff was on board of her. That" – and an ominous gleam crept into Lewson's eyes – "was the real beginning of the trouble."

"He had us hauled up before him – guess the other man had to tell him who we were – and when I wouldn't answer he slashed me with a sled-dog-whip across the face."

Lewson clenched a lean brown fist. "Yes," he added, hoarsely, "I was whipped – but they should have tied my hands first. It was not my fault I didn't have that man's life. It was most a minute before three of them pulled me off him, and he was considerably worse to look at then."

There was silence for a minute or two, and Wyllard, who felt his own face grow a trifle warm, saw the suggestive hardness in Charly's eyes. Lewson was gazing out into the darkness, but the veins were swollen on his forehead and his whole body had stiffened. Then he spread his hands out.

"We'll let that go. I can't think of it. They put us on board the schooner, and by and bye she ran into a creek on the coast. We were to be sent somewhere to be dealt with, and we knew what that meant, with what they had against us. Well, they went ashore to collect some skins from the Kamtchadales, and at night we cut the boat adrift. We got off in the darkness, and if they followed they never trailed us. Guess they figured we couldn't make out through the winter that was coming on."

So far the story had been more or less connected and comprehensible. It laid no great tax on Wyllard's credulity, and, indeed, all that Lewson described had come about very much as Dampier had once or twice suggested; but it seemed an almost impossible thing that the three men should have survived during the years that followed. Lewson, as it happened, never made that matter very clear. He sat silent for almost a minute before he went on again.

"We hauled the boat out, and hid her among the rocks, and after that we fell in with some Kamtchadales going north," he said. "They took us along, I don't know how far, but they were trapping for furs, and by and bye – I think it was months after – we got away from them. Then we fell in with another crowd, and went on further north with them. They were Koriaks, and we lived with them a long while – a winter and a summer anyway. It was more, perhaps – I can't remember."

He broke off with a vague gesture, and sat looking at the others vacantly with his lean face furrowed.

"We must have been with them two years – but I don't quite know. It was all the same up yonder – ever so far to the north."

It seemed to Wyllard that he had seldom heard anything more expressive in its way than this sailorman's brief and fragmentary description of his life in the wilderness. He had heard from steam whaler skippers a little about the tundra that fringes the Polar Sea, the vast desolation frozen hard in summer a few inches below the surface, on which nothing beyond the mosses ever grew. It was easy to understand the brain-crushing sameness and monotony of an existence chequered only by times of dire scarcity on those lonely shores.

"How did you live?" he asked.

"There were the birds in summer, and fish in the rivers. In winter we killed things in the lanes in the ice, though there were weeks when we lay about the blubber lamp in the pits. They made pits and put a roof on them. I don't know why we stayed there, but Jake had always a notion that we might get across to Alaska – somehow. We were way out on the ice one day when Jim fell into a crevice, and we couldn't get him out."

He broke off, and sat still awhile as one dreaming. "I can't put things together, but at last we came south, Jake and I, and struck the Kamtchadales again. We could talk to them, and one of them told us about a schooner lying in an inlet by a settlement. The Russians had brought her there from the islands, and she must have been a sealer. Jake figured it was just possible we might run away with her and push across for the Aleutians or Alaska."

Charly looked up suddenly. "She – was – a sealer – Hayson's Seminole. I was in Victoria when we heard that the Russians had seized her."

Wyllard turned to Overweg, who nodded when he asked a question in French.

"Yes," he said, "I believe the vessel lies in the inlet still. They have used her now and then. It is understood that they were warranted in seizing her, but I think there was some diplomatic pressure brought to bear on them, for they sent her crew home."

Then Lewson went on again. "Food was scarce that season, and we got most nothing in the traps," he said. "Besides, there were Russians out prospecting, and that headed us off. We figured that some of the Kamtchadales who traded skins to the settlements would put them on our trail. When we went to look for the boat she'd gone, but we hadn't much notion of getting off in her, though another time – I don't remember when – we gave two Kamtchadales messages we'd cut on slips of wood. Sometimes the schooners stood in along the coast."

Wyllard nodded. "Dunton of the Cypress got your message," he said. "He was in difficulties then, but he afterwards sent it me."

"Well," said Lewson, "there isn't much more to it. We hung about the beach awhile, and then went north before the winter. Jake played out on the trail. By and bye he had to let up, and in a day or two I buried him."

He spread his hands out, and his voice grew hoarse. "After that it didn't seem to matter what became of me, but I kept the trail somehow, and found I couldn't stay up yonder. That's why I started south with some of them before the summer came. Now I'm here – talking English – talking with white men – but it doesn't seem the same as it should have been – without the others."

He broke off, and said no more that night, but Wyllard translated part of his story for the benefit of Overweg. The latter made a little expressive gesture.

"The thing, it seems incredible," he commented. "This man, who has so little to tell, knows things which would make a trained explorer famous."

"It generally happens that way," said Wyllard with a dry smile. "The men who know can't tell."

Overweg made a sign of assent, and then changed the subject.

"What will you do now?"

"Start for the inlet where we expect to find the schooner at sunrise. I want to say" – and Wyllard hesitated – "that you have laid an obligation on me which I can never repay; but I can, at least, replace the provisions you have supplied me with."

"That goes for nothing," said the other with a smile. "I have, however, drawn upon my base camp rather heavily, and should be glad of any stores from the schooner that you could let me have. The difficulty is that I do not wish to go too far towards the beach."

They arranged a rendezvous a day or two's march from the inlet, and in another half-hour all of them were fast asleep.

When the first of the daylight came Wyllard set off with his two companions, and since it was evident that Dampier must have now lain in the inlet awaiting them a considerable time, they marched fast for several days. Then to their consternation they came upon the Siwash lying beside a river badly lame. It appeared that in climbing a slippery ridge of rock the knee he had injured had given way, and he had fallen some distance heavily, after which the Kamtchadale finding him helpless had disappeared with most of the provisions. None of the party ever learned what had become of him, but they realised in the meanwhile that the situation was now a rather serious one. Charly, who looked at Wyllard when he had heard the Indian's story, explained it concisely.

"I'm worrying about the boat we left on the edge of the ice," he said. "I've had a notion all along it was going to make trouble. Dampier would see the wreckage when he ran in, and I guess it would only mean one thing to him. He'd make quite certain he was right when he didn't find us at the inlet." He paused and pointed towards the distant sea. "You have got to push right on with Lewson as fast as you can while I try to bring the Siwash along."

Wyllard started in the next few minutes, and afterwards never quite forgot the strain and stress of that arduous march. The journey he had made with Overweg had been difficult enough, but they had then, at least, traversed rising ground from which most of the melting snow had drained away. Now, however, as they approached the more level littoral there were wide tracts of mire and swamp to be painfully floundered through, while every ravine and hollow was swept by a frothing torrent, and they had often to search for hours for a place where it was possible to cross. To make things worse, they were drenched with bitter rain half the time, and trails of dingy mist obscured their path, but they toiled on stubbornly through every obstacle, though it was only by the tensest effort that Wyllard kept pace with his companion. The gaunt, long-haired Lewson seemed proof against physical weariness, and there was seldom any change in the expression of his grim, lined face. Now and then Wyllard felt a curious shrinking as he glanced at it, for its fixed look suggested what this man had borne in the awful solitudes of the frozen north.

Slowly, with infinite toil, they crossed the weary leagues, lying at night with a single skin between them and the soil, for they travelled light; and Wyllard was limping painfully with his boots worn off his feet, when at length one morning they came into sight of a low promontory which rose against a stretch of grey, lifeless sea. His heart throbbed fast as he realised that behind it lay the inlet into which Dampier had arranged to bring the Selache. He glanced at Lewson, who said nothing, and they plodded forward faster than before.

The misty sun was high in the heavens when at length they reached the foot of the steep rise, and Wyllard gasped heavily as they crept up the ascent. He was making a severe muscular effort; but it was the nervous tension that troubled him most, for he knew that he would look down upon the inlet from the summit. He blamed himself bitterly for not sending on a messenger to Dampier when he fell in with Overweg, which, in his eagerness to follow up the clue the latter had given him, he had at first omitted to do. There had certainly been difficulties in the way, for the increase in the scientist's party had made additional packers necessary, and Wyllard felt that he could not reasonably compel him to leave the camp comforts he had evidently been accustomed to behind. In spite of that, he had been at fault in not disregarding every objection, and he realised it now.

Somehow he kept pace with Lewson, but he closed one hand tight as he neared the top. When he reached it he stopped suddenly, and his face set hard as he looked down, standing very still. Beneath him lay a strip of dim, green water, with a fringe of soft, white surf at the foot of the promontory, while beyond the latter there stretched away an empty expanse of slowly heaving sea. There was nothing else, however; no schooner in the inlet, no boat upon the beach.

In another moment or two they went down the slope savagely at a stumbling run, and then stopped, gasping by the water's edge, and looked at one another. There were marks in the sand which showed them where a boat had been drawn up not very long ago. The Selache had evidently been there, and had sailed away again.

Then Wyllard sat down limply upon the shingle, for all the strength seemed to suddenly melt out of him, and it was several minutes before he looked up. Lewson was still standing, a shapeless, barbaric figure in his garments of skins, with a dark lined face that had scarcely changed, gazing out to sea. The hide moccasins he wore had chafed through, and Wyllard noticed that the blood was trickling from one of his feet.

"Well?" he said, harshly.

Wyllard laid a stern restraint upon himself. Their case looked desperate, but it must, at least, be grappled with.

"We must go back and meet the rest," he said. "That first – what is to come afterwards I don't quite know." Then a faint gleam of resolution crept into his eyes. "The schooner the Russians seized lies in an inlet down the coast."

Lewson made a sign of comprehension. "There are four of us. There will be birds by and bye. I can trap things."

Then he flung himself down near his comrade, and for an hour neither of them said anything. Wyllard, at least, was worn-out physically, and limp from the last few hours' mental strain, while Lewson very seldom said more than was absolutely necessary. Then they made a very frugal meal, and long afterwards Wyllard was haunted by the memory of that dreary afternoon during which he lay upon the shingle watching the slow pulsations of the dim, lifeless sea.

They set out again early next morning, and, as it happened, found a little depôt of provisions that Dampier had made, but it was several days before they met Charly and the Indian, and another week had passed before Overweg reached the place appointed. He listened to Wyllard's story gravely, and then appeared to consider.

"You have some plans?" he asked.

Wyllard admitted that this was the case, and Overweg smiled behind his spectacles.

"It is, perhaps, better that you do not tell me what they are," he said. "There is, however, one thing I can do. You say you left some stores you could not carry at the depôt, which I will take, for provisions are now not plentiful with me, but there are still a few things you have not which are almost necessary at my base camp, and" – he spread his hands out – "after all, if I have to go south a little earlier than I intended it is not a great matter."

He wrote on a strip of paper which he handed to Wyllard. "You will take these, and nothing else. I may add that Smirnoff is stationed at the inlet where the schooner lies."

Wyllard thanked him, and then looked him in the eyes. "There is a long journey before us, and you have only my word that I will take nothing but these things."

Overweg nodded quietly. "Yes," he said, "it is, however, perhaps permissible to assure you that it is sufficient for me."

Very little more was said, and in another half-hour Wyllard and his companions were ready to set out. He and the little spectacled scientist grasped each other's hands, and then Wyllard abruptly turned away. A few minutes later he turned again, and looking back saw Overweg standing upon the ridge where he had left him silhouetted against a low, grey sky. He raised his cap once, and Wyllard, who answered him, swung round once more, and strode on faster towards the south. He knew that his regard for this stranger who had fallen across his path would remain unchanged while his life should last.

CHAPTER XXX.
THE LAST EFFORT

It was after a long and arduous journey which had left its mark on all of them that Wyllard and his companions lay among the boulders beside a sheltered inlet waiting for the dusk to fall one lowering evening. They were cramped and aching, for they had scarcely moved during the last hour; their garments were badly tattered, and their half-covered feet were bleeding. They were, as they recognised, a pitiful company to seize a vessel, with three knives and one rifle between them, but there was resolution in their haggard faces.

Close in front of them the green water lapped softly among the stones. The breeze was light off shore, and the tide, which was just running ebb, rippled against the bows of a little schooner lying some thirty yards from the bank. She had been seized for illegal sealing some years earlier, and it was evident that she had been very little used since then. The paint was peeling from her cracked and weathered side, her gear was frayed and bleached with frost and rain, and only very hard-pressed men would have faced the thought of going to sea in her. Wyllard and his companions were, however, very hard-pressed indeed, and they preferred the hazards of a voyage in the crazy vessel to falling into the Russians' hands. It was also clear that they had no choice. It must be either one thing or the other.

Some little distance up-stream a low rise cut against the dingy sky. It shut off all view of the upper part of the inlet, which wound in behind it, but Wyllard and his companions had cautiously climbed the slope earlier in the afternoon, and lying flat upon the summit had looked down upon the little wooden houses that clustered above the beach. He had then decided that this part of the inlet would dry out at about half-ebb, and as the schooner's boat, which he meant to seize, lay upon the shingle it was evident that he must carry out his plans within the next three hours.

These were very simple. There was nobody on board the schooner, which lay in deeper water, and he fancied that it would be possible to swim off to her and slip the cable; but they must have provisions, and there was, so far as he could see, only one way of obtaining them. A building which stood by itself close beside the beach was evidently a store, for he had seen two men carrying bags and cases out of it under the superintendence of a third in some kind of uniform, and it appeared to be unguarded. Wyllard, who had reasons for surmising that the few settlements on the coast were under strict official control, fancied that the store contained Government supplies, and had arranged that Charly and Lewson should break into it as soon as darkness fell, and pull off to the schooner with anything they could find inside. Whether they would succeed in doing this he did not know, and he admitted to himself that it scarcely seemed probable, but he could think of no other plan, and the attempt must be made.

In the meanwhile a thin haze drove across the crest of the rise, the breeze freshened slightly, and the little ripples lapped more noisily along the shingle. There was evidently a good deal of fresh water coming down the inlet, and it was in a fever of impatience he watched the schooner strain at her cable. That evening had already seemed the longest he had ever spent in his life. By and bye it commenced to rain, and little streams of chilly water trickled about the weary men, but they lay still, with lips tight set, in tense suspense. What Lewson had had to face in the awful icy wastes to the north of them Wyllard could scarcely imagine, and Lewson could not tell, but he and his two other comrades had borne things almost beyond endurance since he commenced his search, and now there was far too much at stake for him to increase the odds against them by any undue precipitancy. He was then in a dangerous mood, but he had laid his plans with grim, cold-blooded caution, and he meant to adhere to them.

At length, and very slowly, the light faded, until the beach grew shadowy, and the schooner's spars and rigging showed dim and blurred against a dusky background. The rise that shut off the settlement was lost in drifting haze, and the dull rumble of the surf on the outer beach came up more sharply through the gathering darkness. The measured beat of its deep pulsations almost maddened Wyllard as he lay and listened, for if all went right he would be sliding out over the long heave with every sail piled on to the crazy schooner in another hour or two.

At length, when there was only a faint gleam of water sliding by below, he rose stiffly to his feet, and Lewson stretched out a hand for the rifle that lay among the stones. There was a sharp click as he jerked the lever, and then he laughed, a little jarring laugh, as the magazine snapped back.

"They'll treat us as pirates if they get hands on us – and I've been lashed in the face – with a sled-dog-whip," he said.

Charly said nothing as he loosened the long seaman's knife in his belt, and Wyllard made no remonstrance, for there is, as he recognised, a point beyond which prudence does not count. After what Overweg had once or twice told him, it was unthinkable that they should fall into Smirnoff's hands.

Then Lewson and Charly melted away into the darkness, and Wyllard and the Siwash walked quietly down to the water's edge, a little up-stream of the schooner, as the stream was running strong. They, however, stripped off nothing, for it was evident that none of the rags they left behind could be replaced, and they knew from experience that when the first shock is over a man swimming in icy water is kept a little warmer by his clothing. For all that, the cold struck through Wyllard like a knife when he flung himself forward and swung his left hand out, and it was perhaps a minute before he was clearly conscious of anything beyond the physical agony and the mental effort to retain control of his faculties. Then he made out the schooner, a vague, blurred shape a little down-stream of him, and he swam furiously, his face dipping under each time his left hand came out.

He drew level with her, clutched at her cable, a foot short, and was driven against her bows. Then the stream swept him onward, gasping, and clawing savagely at her slippery side, until his fingers found a hold. It was merely the rounded top of a bolt, but with a desperate effort he clutched the bent iron that led up from it to one of the dead-eyes of the mainmast-shrouds. He could not, however, draw himself up any further, and he hung on, wondering when his strength would fail him, until the Siwash, who had already crawled up the cable, leaned down from above and seized his shoulder. In another moment or two he reached the rail, and went staggering across the deck, dripping, and half dazed.

Action was, however, imperatively necessary, and he braced himself for the effort. The schooner was lying with her anchor up-stream, but he did not think it would be possible to heave her over it and break it out unless he waited until the others arrived, and it would then be a lengthy and, what was more to the purpose, a noisy operation. The anchor must be sacrificed, but there was the difficulty that he could hardly expect to find a shackle on the cable in the dark. Running forward with the Siwash, he pulled a chain stopper out, and then shipping the windlass levers found with vast relief that it would work. It would make a horribly distinct clanking, he knew, but that could not be helped, and the next thing was to discover if the end of the chain was made fast below, for it is very seldom that a skipper finds it necessary to pay all his cable out.

Dropping into the darkness of the locker beneath the forecastle, he was more fortunate than he could reasonably have expected to be, for as he crawled over the rusty links he felt a shackle. It appeared to be of the usual harp-pattern with a cottered pin, and he called out sharply to the Siwash, who presently flung him an iron bar and a big spike. Then he struck one of the two or three sulphur matches he had carefully treasured, and when the sputtering blue flame went out set to work to back the pin out in the dark. He smashed his knuckles and badly bruised his hands, but he succeeded, and knew that he had shortened the chain by two-thirds now.

Then he scrambled up on deck again and hurried aft, for the vessel's kedge had been laid out astern to prevent her swinging. There was a heavy hemp warp attached to it, and it cost them some time to heave most of it over, after which they proceeded to get the mainsail on to her. It was covered with a coat, and Wyllard cut himself as he slashed through the tiers in savage impatience. Then he and the Siwash toiled at the halliards desperately, for the task of raising the heavy gaff was almost beyond their powers.

There was no grease on the mast-hoops, the blocks had evidently not been used for months, and several times they desisted a moment or two, gasping, breathless, and utterly exhausted. Still, foot by foot they got the black canvas up, and then, leaving the peak hanging, ran forward to the boom-foresail, which was smaller and lighter. They set that, cast two jibs and the staysail loose, and let them lie, and Wyllard sat down feeling that the thing they had done would, if attempted in cold blood, have appeared almost impossible.

It was done, however, and now he must wait until the boat appeared. There was no sign of her, and as he gazed up the inlet, seeing only the dim glimmer of the water and the sliding mist, the suspense became almost intolerable. Minute slipped by after minute, and still nothing loomed out of the haze. The canvas rustled and banged above him, there was a growing splashing beneath the bows, and the schooner strained more heavily at her cable. Everything was ready, only his comrades did not appear. He clenched his hands and set his lips as he waited, and wondered at the Siwash who sat upon the rail, a dim, shapeless figure, impassively still.

At length his heart throbbed furiously, for a faint splash of oars came out of the darkness, and they both ran forward to the windlass. The sharp clanking it made drowned the splash of oars, but in another minute or two there was a crash as the boat drove alongside, and Charly scrambled up with a rope while Lewson hurled sundry bags and cases after him. Then he climbed on deck in turn, and Charly commenced a breathless explanation.