Kitabı oku: «In the Misty Seas: A Story of the Sealers of Behring Strait», sayfa 13
CHAPTER XVII
THE PLEDGE REDEEMED
The light was slowly creeping through the mist when Appleby, who had returned with two of the Indians, sat with Stickine in the gunboat's cabin. It was very early in the morning, and though there is no actual darkness in those seas at that season, the haze provided a very good substitute, and now it was sliding past as thickly as ever. Appleby also felt clammy all through, for they had had a hard pull from the schooner against a freshening wind, and nobody is very vigorous at four o'clock on a very cold morning. He shivered a little as he sat with a steaming cup of coffee before him watching his companions. Their faces showed curiously pallid in the dim light, and Stickine's was grave, while the two Americans appeared more than a little anxious. Outside the wind was wailing through the rigging, and every now and then there was a jarring grind of cable as the gunboat swung up her bows.
"You believe we had better make a start right now, and you can pick up the passage?" asked the Commander.
Stickine nodded. "The haze is not going to lift to-day, and you'd find it hard work to hold her here when the sea rolls in. There's a nasty reef close astern of you too. Now, before we start we'll go over the deal again and see if you've got it straight. Our skipper has your cheque, and I'm to take you out. You're to take our word we've killed no seals in American waters, and leave us to go just where we're wanting once you're free of the reefs."
"Yes," said the Commander. "I pledge myself to that, but you've overlooked one thing, and that's the one that's going to happen to you if you make a blunder."
There was a moment's silence, and during it the naval officer pulled his belt round a trifle and rubbed a speck of dust off his pistol-holster. The hint was plain enough, but the sealer only smiled.
"That's all right, but I want the lad up on your bridge with me," he said. "If there was any trouble he could tell folks I did the square thing by you!"
The Commander signified agreement. "Who is the lad, anyway?" he said. "He hasn't the hard look of the rest of you."
Stickine glanced at Appleby. "I don't quite know. We picked him up, and his partner told a kind of curious story. Allowed his father was a big man back there in the old country."
A little smile crept into the Commander's eyes. "Well, I shouldn't wonder if it was the right one, but that don't concern us now. Would you like more coffee before you begin?"
"No," said Stickine. "You can tell them to start the windlass when you're ready."
The windlass was rattling and the chain grinding in when they crossed the sloppy deck and climbed to the bridge. A jet of steam roared away into the haze from beside the funnel, and the tinkle of iron came up from the gratings, while Appleby noticed that every boat was swung out ready for lowering at a moment's notice. Except for one or two men forward the bluejackets were drawn up in little groups about the deck and stood motionless, apparently watching the sealers' boat that heaved in the haze ahead. Then the windlass stopped rattling and there was for a moment or two a curious silence while the steamer rolling lazily slid sideways with the stream.
"Keep your anchor at the bows," said Stickine. "Back her until she comes round under a starboard helm."
The Commander touched a handle, there was a tinkle below, the bridge commenced to tremble, and with a thud-thud of engines the steamer crawled astern. Then when her bows had swung round Stickine raised his hand.
"Ahead slow!" he said. "Just keep her going."
The engines thudded once more, and then commenced a monotonous rumbling as they crept on into the haze, while with every man pulling hard the sealers' boat slid towards them. Donovitch the Indian was standing in the bows, and Appleby, glancing round a moment, saw that the faces of the two officers on the bridge were grim and set. Neither of them or the men below, however, moved an inch, and the stillness and the silence through which he seemed to hear his heart thumping affected Appleby curiously. He felt cold beneath the old fur waistcoat Jordan had given him, for he had more than a suspicion that Stickine would only have the one chance of blundering now, and that if he did it a good many of the gunboat's company would never get ashore. A long swell heaved through the passage, roaring ominously as it seethed upon the reefs.
Then the Indian in the bows swung up an arm, and while Stickine signed to the helmsman who stood rigidly still gripping his wheel the sea was rent ahead and there rushed upwards a great cloud of spray and foam. It whirled high and a deep rumbling followed it, while another hoarse roar rang through the haze in front of them, and Appleby saw the officers glance at one another. He knew, as they did, what would happen if lifted by the swell they struck that froth-swept stone, and he felt that swift death was very near them all just then.
Still, Stickine only nodded to the helmsman, and the bows swung slowly round, while when the long swell foamed again the reef lay a score of yards away from them, and the growl of another grew louder. Appleby could faintly see the filmy cloud that whirled about it, and held his breath as he realized that the stream was carrying them towards it, and wondered if the helmsman could swing the ship clear in time. Then he gathered a little comfort from a glance at Stickine, whose face was unconcerned.
"Give her steam," he said.
For a moment the Commander stood quite still with his fingers motionless on the handle that would quicken the engines, and Appleby could guess his thoughts. If they drove the steamer faster now, and she would not swing, in less than another minute her bows would be crumpled in.
"You're taking your chances with us," he said.
"Oh, yes," said Stickine. "Unless you're quick with that telegraph I'm not going to have any. Give her steam."
The Commander thrust down the handle, there was a tinkle below, and while the engines beat faster Stickine turned his hand round as he glanced at the helmsman. Then Appleby saw nothing but the spray ahead, and heard a hollow rumbling sound that sent a shiver through him as once more a white cloud whirled up. His eyes grew dazed as he watched it blow away until the foam about the reef beneath it was blotted out by the steamer's bows. Next he became dimly conscious that the helmsman was spinning his wheel, and noticed nothing further until the horrible white confusion was sliding away behind them. There was only the haze before them now, and it seemed to be growing thinner.
"Slow!" said Stickine signing with his hand, and while the rumble of engines slackened a faint cry came out of the dimness.
Then the sealer turned to the officer, and his bronzed face was as unconcerned as ever, though his hands seemed to tremble a little. The Commander was standing very rigid, but there were beads of moisture on his forehead.
"We've left your boat astern," he said.
"Well," said Stickine gravely, "we're not going to want her. I guess I've put this contract through, and you can whistle for the schooner."
Then the tension suddenly slackened, and there was a half-audible murmur from the men below when the scream of the whistle was flung into the fog. It screamed twice before the thin tinkle of a bell rose up in answer.
"That will be your schooner. She's not far away," said the Commander.
Five minutes later the steamer stopped her engines, and while the boat crept up again the Champlain, rolling under her jibs and trysail, grew out of the haze. Stickine touched Appleby's shoulder, and turning towards the Commander held out his hand.
"It's about time we were going now. A deal's a deal, and I've kept my part of it," he said.
There was a little grim smile in the Commander's eyes, but he shook hands gravely with the sealer. "And I'll do mine," he said to Stickine as he went down the ladder. "Still, you can tell your skipper that if I ever find his schooner inside our limits again, I'll have much pleasure in sinking her."
Stickine made no answer, but he grinned.
In another minute they were pulling towards the Champlain, and when with the froth streaming away across the sea behind her the steamer forged ahead, a red flag with a beaver and maple-leaf in a corner fluttered aloft to the Champlain's masthead. Appleby smiled as he watched it stream out and sink again, for there was, it seemed to him, something almost ludicrous in this assertion of equality between the little rolling schooner and the big war-vessel, and he waited to see if the Commander would return the salutation or steam past in contemptuous silence. As he watched, a figure on the gunboat's bridge raised a hand, and the scream of her whistle vibrated across the waters. Again it hurled out its greeting while the schooner's flag rose and fell, and then with a last great volume of sound ringing above the clamour of the surf the gunboat steaming at full speed swept into the haze.
Next minute the boat was under the Champlain'srail, and Jordan looking down on them with a little, dry smile.
"I've no use for riling folks when it can be helped, and that fellow took his licking well," he said.
They climbed on board and hove the boat in, and Stickine followed Jordan into the cabin while Appleby sat down to tell the story to every unoccupied man of the Champlain's company. There was a broad grin on the listener's faces when he had finished, and one of them said, "There's not many men who could come out to windward of Ned Jordan."
Montreal nodded solemnly. "No," he said. "I guess you'd get tired considerably before you found one of them."
By and by Stickine came out of the cabin. "We'll have the reefed mainsail on her, boys," he said. "Now we're here and the wind's hauling westerly so we can't get back, we're going to run a little further east to a place where we might pick up a few pelts cheap from the Indians."
It blew hard presently, but the haze still followed them, and towards the close of the afternoon they hove the Champlain to, and lay with the stinging drift whirling about her plunging to a sea that frothed white as snow. Most of the men were sleeping or sitting snug in the hold when Stickine came below, and shook his head at Niven and Appleby. "The skipper's wanting you," he said.
Both lads felt a trifle uneasy as they went out on deck. They could not recollect any offences they had committed, but there was an unfortunate resemblance between Stickine's intimation and others they had received at Sandycombe when unpleasant things had followed the headmaster's request to see them in his study.
"I wonder if he means to put us ashore when we get to the place we're going to," said Niven.
"Wouldn't that please you?" asked Appleby with a little smile.
Niven appeared thoughtful. "No," he said, "it wouldn't, or you either. That is, if it meant we had to go back to the Aldebaran. Still, by this time she should be half-way to China, or somewhere else as far."
They had, however, reached the house now, and when they went in Jordan was sitting by the little stove, with a big lead-bottomed ink-pot standing on some papers on the table beside him. The lads stood still a moment, and waited somewhat anxiously for him to speak.
"You've folks in the old country who would worry about what had become of you?" he said.
"Yes, sir," said Niven. "It has troubled me a good deal now and then."
Jordan nodded. "You can write and tell them where you are," he said. "Sit down right here and do it now. If we've better weather we'll run for the harbour I'm making for to-morrow, and now and then a boat from St. Michael's looks in there. She would take any letters I left to Vancouver."
Niven sat down at the table, and Appleby felt very lonely as he watched the smile creep into his face, and the rusty pen scratch across the paper. He knew that other eyes would brighten when they read that letter, but there was nobody to grieve or rejoice over him, and once he coughed for no reason that was apparent to Jordan, who was watching him.
"And you. Haven't you got anybody? There's another pen," said the latter.
Appleby was never quite sure what prompted him, but the skipper's tone was kindly, and fumbling in an inner pocket he pulled out a little leather case and took from it a picture of a sandy mound with palm fronds drooping over the wooden cross at one end of it.
"That is all I have, sir," he said.
Jordan took the photograph, and his eyes grew softer as he returned it with a little nod of sympathy. "It's rough when you're young, but a lonely man's not always the worst off, my lad," he said.
Niven, however, looked round with a flush on his face. "That's not straight talk, Tom," he said. "You know my mother would do almost anything for you, and there's the rest of them. Even Nettie, and she has the faddiest notions, took to you."
"Hadn't you better get on with your writing, sonny?" said Jordan dryly. "She's your mother, and not his, anyway."
Niven made another dab at the inkpot, and though it was difficult to keep his feet at the table as the schooner rose and fell he finished his letter. He was about to fold it up when Jordan glanced at him. "You've put something 'bout me and the Champlainin?" he said.
"Yes, sir," said Niven.
"Well," said Jordan, "I'd like to hear that part of it."
Niven flushed a trifle, and sat still a moment twisting round his pen before he said, "It isn't worth listening to."
"Still," said Jordan grimly, "I'm waiting to hear it. Start in."
Niven looked round at Appleby, but Appleby only grinned, and then with the colour showing plainer in his face read a line or two. "The skipper has, taking it all round, been very good to us. He's – " The lad stopped for a moment. "This piece isn't of any moment. I'll leave it out, sir."
"I can tell better when you've read it," said Jordan.
Niven made a little half-conscious gesture of dismay, but he had reasons for remembering that when Jordan asked for anything it was wise to give it him, and he continued hastily, "He's quite a clever man in his own way, though nobody would fancy it from his appearance."
Appleby could not quite restrain a chuckle, and saw a twinkle in Jordan's eyes. He nodded as he said, "I can't find fault with that, anyway. Go on with the rest of it."
"If you saw him in his usual rig you would take him for something between a stuffed sealskin and a navvy on the tramp," said Niven.
"Now, I don't know what a navvy is," said Jordan.
Niven looked at his comrade again, and Appleby tried not to laugh. "He's a man who digs drains and makes railways in our country, sir," he said.
"Well," said Jordan dryly. "It can't be tougher work than sealing. Go on."
"Still," said Niven, turning again to the letter, "he has been quite decent, and treated us a good deal better than they did on board the Aldebaran, and I fancy it would be a nice thing if – "
He stopped again. "I can't read any more of it, sir," he said, growing very flushed in the face.
"Then," said Jordan, "I figure your partner can, and one of you is going to."
Niven set his lips a moment, and then went on with a little groan, "It would be a nice thing if you wrote one of your Canadian friends to give him a cheque. There can't be much profit in sealing and – "
"I guess that will do," said Jordan, whose face grew suddenly grim. "Get hold of your pen, and knock the last piece out of it. You've done it? Then you can put this in. 'Don't worry 'bout me. Skipper Jordan will see I earn every dollar's worth of anything I get from him, and before I get home he and Donegal have hopes of licking a little sense into me.' Got that down – all of it?"
"Yes, sir," said Niven, who was apparently almost suffocated, hoarsely.
"Well," said Jordan with a little, dry smile, "that will set your folks' minds at rest, and I guess your father will be grateful to me. Now you can tell the rest of them to get any letters they want sent home ready."
They went out together, and Niven kicked at the first thing that lay in his way savagely. As it happened, it was one of the iron pump fastenings, and it hurt his toe, while as he hopped about the deck Appleby laughed uproariously. Then almost before he knew it Niven was laughing, too, and when they climbed down into the hold there was water in both their eyes.
"Have ye been after hearing anything funny in the cabin?" asked Donegal.
"Well," said Niven with a little chuckle, "I can't help fancying the skipper did, since you want to know. Sure, now, Donegal, 'tis a testhimonial he's been after giving you."
"Tell me," said Donegal, seizing him by the neck and nipping it while the lad struggled fruitlessly.
"It's no use. I wouldn't tell any one a word of it if you strangled me," he said.
They made sail again early nest morning, but in the forenoon the wind fell away, and it was late on the following day when they crept into sight of a grey blurr that lifted itself out of the misty horizon. They could just make out that it was land, but Jordan, who went up the mast hoops with his glasses, saw something more.
"No chance of a deal now we've got here, boys," he said. "There's a steamer coming in. She'll be heading south at this season, and it's not going to take them long to heave a few bundles of furs on board her, so if you've any letters to go along with mine you'd better be handy getting the boat over."
They had her out in about two minutes, and as it was Stickine's boat the lads who sprang down refused to come out of her. She was also the biggest boat they had, and had in all probability seldom travelled faster than she did for the first mile or so. There was scarcely a breath of wind now, and the long swell ran with them, while Niven remembered what the letter he had written would mean to those who had long waited for news of him at home as he put all his strength into the oar. Appleby also recollected the tenderness he had now and then seen in Mrs. Niven's eyes as she looked at her son, and her kindness to him, and strained every muscle, for now at least it seemed he could do a little to repay her.
So they sent the boat foaming over the long swell, but each time she rose the land seemed very little nearer, and when at last a smear of smoke rose out of the greyness that hung about it, Stickine spoke.
"The steamer's firing up! You've got to stretch out, boys."
Panting and gasping they swayed up and down, the oars thudding, and the grey sea frothing under them when the boat surged forward quivering at every stroke. Still, when the veins on Appleby's forehead felt swollen to the bursting and Appleby's eyes were dim the land was at least a mile from them, and a jarring rattle came off across the water.
"Windlass going! She'll be off soon as they heave her anchor. Stiffen up," said Stickine.
The lads did what they could, for they knew it was a good deal they were rowing for. The letter they carried would bring relief from torturing anxiety to those who loved them, and tranquillity to a mother's mind, while Niven, half-choked as he was, nerved his aching arms as he remembered how in all his follies his father had borne with him. Appleby was aiding him loyally, his lips set, his face almost purple, and still, though Stickine and Donegal made the oars creak and groan, the land was only crawling towards them.
"You've got to do it, boys! There's folks back south worrying 'bout most of us," said Stickine when the scream of a whistle came off to them.
Neither of the lads had more than a hazy recollection of the last ten minutes. They had no breath left, every joint was aching, but their arms still moved almost without their will, and they were dimly sensible of the thud of oars, gurgle of water, and lurch of the quivering boat beneath them. They felt they could not be beaten now. At last while the whistle screamed again something big and black bore down on them, and they heard the thudding of engines and the flap-flap of a slowly-turning propeller.
"Stop pulling. Hang on to her," gasped Stickine, and then while the oars rested in their palms the lads could see that the bows of a steamer hung almost over them. Next moment there was a crash, and they were being hauled along with the froth splashing about them and Donegal holding on to something desperately. A man was shouting above them, and while the foam that was piled about her bows sluiced into the boat Stickine roared out hoarsely, "Letters!"
"Give us a grip of them. Let go before she goes over with you," shouted somebody, and a man swinging himself over the rail clutched at the packet held out to him. Then Donegal loosed his grasp, and they were rocking on the white wake as the steamer went on.
"Just 'bout did it," said Stickine. "I guess it was worth a pull."
Neither of the lads said anything, for they were dazed and dripping, and had no breath to waste, but they forgot their pains in a supreme content. It had been a good race, perhaps the best they would ever make, for they knew as they watched her roll away into the mist that the letters the steamer was bearing south would lift a dark cloud from an English home.
