Kitabı oku: «In the Misty Seas: A Story of the Sealers of Behring Strait», sayfa 8

CHAPTER X
HOVE TO

At noon next day, Jordan once more brought the Champlain's head to wind, and they put the third reef in her mainsail, while when she swept on again the sea grew steeper behind her, until the combers that raced after her apparently hung frothing above her helmsman's head. She would fling her stern up to meet them and while the man panted over his jerking wheel her bowsprit went down and down. Then she would leisurely lift her nose and surge forward lapped in seething foam, only to sink with a smooth, swift lurch again.

It was dryest aft, though there was water splashing everywhere, and the two lads hung about the mainmast where the little deckhouse partly sheltered them, watching the helmsman's grim face as he swung with his wheel. They knew, by this time, that, while it is a somewhat difficult affair to keep a hard-pressed vessel straight before the sea, unpleasant things are apt to happen to a fore-and-aft one if it is not done.

Still, the man knew his work, and did it, and at last, towards nightfall, when the sea was all spray and foam, Jordan, who came up, stood staring astern. After a minute or two he shook his head.

"We had better round her up while we can," he said. "Get the main-gaff down, and you'll be handy with the trysail."

They were very handy, and there was a good many of them, but Appleby held his breath when the foresail was lowered, and the mainsail peak swung down. Jordan was still looking astern, and he nodded after an especially big sea went smoking past them.

"We'll try it now," he said.

The man beside him swayed with the wheel, the Champlain swung round to windward, and there was a roar when a roller burst into spray upon that side of her. Then she swung further yet, and as the big mainboom came down the little three-cornered trysail went thrashing up the mast. Everybody was doing something amidst a great banging of canvas, and in another few moments there was a wonderful quietness. Appleby gasped, and Stickine who went by dripping grinned at him, while Jordan nodded to the men.

"She'll lie easy now," he said.

In place of running before it the Champlain lay almost head to wind, rising and falling with now and then a little lurch to leeward and a curious buoyancy. The strip of sail above her bowsprit and the trysail aft just sufficed to hold her stationary, and it was with little more than a spray wisp at her bows she bobbed in a curious cork-like fashion to the sea. Except for one or two of them the men crawled away below, and the lads, who were wet through, were glad to climb down into the stuffy warmth beneath the hatch.

It was dark down there now save for the flickering radiance of the lamp which shone upon the wet brown faces and the smears of smoke. The dusky hold reeked with the smell of steaming clothes, but the lads had grown used to odours which would have sickened them before they went to sea. Niven shook off the oilskins Jordan had given him, and as usual commenced his questions.

"The sea looked nasty before we brought her up," he said. "How was it we scarcely shipped any of it?"

"It was," said Stickine dryly. "Still, Ned Jordan knows his business, sonny."

Niven did not care for the epithet, or the grin which usually accompanied it, but he had discovered that one has to put up with a good deal that one does not like at sea.

"Of course!" he said. "But why couldn't we have gone on running?"

Montreal, the man who sat nearest the stove, laughed softly as he raised his head. "Listen to it. That's why!" he said.

There was a moment's silence, and while the Champlain rolled to leeward, and the floorings slanted under them until no man could have kept his footing, all could hear the scream of the rigging ring through the roar of the wind. It was a significant answer, but it left a little that was not quite plain yet, and Stickine nodded when Appleby glanced at him.

"It works out like this. A time comes when she'll run no longer – and then it's too late to heave her to," he said.

"Yes," said Appleby reflectively. "Of course if the sea was too bad to run before it would be too big to bring her up in, because while she was swinging round she'd catch it on her beam. Still, if you had run too long what could you do?"

"Just nothing," said Stickine gravely. "Wait until she ran under and took you down."

He stopped, and there was a thud that sent a little shiver through two of the listeners as the Champlainplunged into a sea, for they had been taught sufficient to see the picture the brief words called up. In the silence that followed Brulée leaned forward with a curious intentness in his eyes.

"Comme ça!" he said, swinging down a brown hand with suggestive suddenness. "I have seen it. We come down from Labrador in the Acadie brig, and it is blow the grand ouragan."

He drew in his breath, and gazed into the dimness as though he saw none of those about him, and then with a little shake of his shoulders stretched out a finger and pointed to Niven. "I was as young as him, and it was in the clear of the moon when the Acadie was hove to, one brought me to the rail to see the Madeleine. She was topsail schooner which load with us, and we had all the friend on board her. Whether she will not heave to, or the captain he is dare too much, I do not know, but she comes up from the spray and pass close, so close. I see the topsails black in the moon, and the jib she lift high. Then she is over run the sea, and I shut tight my eye. It is in a moment I look again – and there is no more Madeleine."

Again there was silence, and Donegal nodded sympathetically when the French-Canadian turned away his head. "Ave!" he said. "For their good rest."

It was a minute or two before Niven, who had shivered a little at the tale, spoke again. "He told us the captain dared too much," he said.

"Sure!" said Donegal. "Is that perplexing ye, an' am I to stuff ye with wisdom so ye can spill it out av ye? Still, that wan's easy. 'Tis the daring ye want at sea, but ye must dare just so far, an' when it's necessary, for the man who does not know when the conthract is too big for him is going to have it shown him what he is. Ye can follow me?"

Niven was not quite sure that he did, but Stickine smiled grimly as he nodded. "It's quite plain figuring. He's a blame fool," he said.

Appleby stared at the speaker with a faint perplexity, for while there were occasions when Donegal the sealer and his comrades talked arrant rubbish they now and then brought truths the lad had scarcely realized home to him in a fashion that carried conviction as well as astonishment with it. He wondered whether the sea had taught them, or there was something that opened the eyes of the thoughtful in the simple life they led. It was one which at least demanded qualities that were an ornament to any man, and more often than not the primitive virtues which humanity cannot rise beyond showed through what some would have deemed his comrades' coarseness. Once or twice as he listened it was dimly borne in upon the lad that while manhood was a greater thing than culture or refinement all that was most worthy in it was founded on a few eternal verities.

Niven, however, could not be serious long, and presently he laughed at Donegal as he turned over to dry his other side before the little stove. He felt luxuriously contented to lie there in the stuffy warmth, and listen to the growling of the seas.

"There was something Stickine was to tell us – about a fifty-year-old schooner, and a crew of starving men," he said.

Donegal nodded. "That ate the rats? Get up on the hind legs av ye, now, an' talk, Stickine."

There was a little murmur from the rest, and the big, lean-faced Canadian looked uneasy. "Pshaw! You've heard that tale before," he said.

"Some av us," said Donegal. "An thim would hear it again. The others has not, and they're waiting on ye anxiously!"

The men murmured approval, and Stickine shook out his pipe with a little deprecatory gesture. "I'll make you very tired, boys, but if you will have it this is how it was," he said. "It was 'bout through with the afternoon watch when the fog shut down on the four of them in the whaler in Russian water. They heard the schooner's bell, but it's kind of difficult to fix a sound in a fog, and when it let up sudden they allowed they'd lost her."

"Sure!" said Donegal. "Mainsail Haul could tell ye that in a fog ye hear the sounds in front of ye behind ye. It is digressing ye are, Stickine, but the boys is wondhering what four sealermen were squandhering their time luxurious for in a whaler."

Appleby understood the comment, for he had seen a couple of whale boats on the beach at Port Parry, and they were costly examples of the boat-builder's skill. Stickine, however, laughed silently.

"Old man Corliss got her for nothing – and she was built for the Government with flooring gratings fore and aft, but we needn't worry 'bout how he did it now. Well, there they were, with a big lump of a sea running, shut in by the fog, and they had to keep her head-to with the oars when the wind came down."

"Fog – and a breeze!" said Niven, and Donegal shook his fist at him.

"'Tis bethraying the ignorance av ye, ye are again," he said. "Up there 'tis fog for ever except when 'tis a gale, an' before it's through with that the fog crawls in again. Ye will not heed the lad, Stickine."

"Well," said the sealer, "they held her head to wind, until just before sun up a gunboat came along, and she come that sudden they'd no time to heave the seals they'd with them over before she was going hard astern close alongside of them. The first look at her kind of sickened them. She was a Russian."

"There was fog – and they stopped there?" said Montreal.

"They did. There was quick-firer turned right down on the boat," said Stickine dryly. "Well, it was all fixed up inside five minutes. The whaler was hove up, and a guard with side-arms marched them before a Russian officer, and he was quite anxious to know where they'd last seen the schooner. Now, it was kind of curious there wasn't one of the boys could remember."

"Had they been sealing inside the limits?" asked Appleby.

"No, sir," said Stickine. "Not that time, anyway. When they last saw the land they were well off shore."

"Then the Russians had no right to seize them, and the Canadian Government could have made them pay up thousands of dollars," said Niven.

A little, grim smile crept into the faces of the men. "That," said one of them, "is where you're wrong. They had all the right they wanted when they had the men and guns, and who's going to believe a poaching sealer when an officer in kid-gloves tells quite a different story?"

"And have British subjects no redress?" asked Appleby with a little flush in his face, and Montreal grinned at him with grim approval.

"Oh, yes, when they can get it – and they do now and then, though they don't usually worry the Government folks at Ottawa," he said. "They took them to Peter Paul, Stickine?"

"They did," said Stickine. "And they kept them most of eight months there cooped up in a loghouse with a little dried fish to eat, and 'bout half enough sour black bread. They wouldn't tell the officer where that schooner was, you see, and when they're not put down on the papers men in prison get kind of forgotten in that country."

"And you believe it has happened – to Canadians?" asked Niven with a little gasp of anger.

The veins swelled up on Montreal's forehead. "Well, there are sealer's boats, British and American, that get lost, and nobody but the partners of the men who pulled in them and a woman or two away down south worries very much," he said. "I had a brother in one of them."

There was silence for almost a minute before Stickine went on again. "Two of them got very sick, and they all got thin, until when the spring came they were walked out every day with a guard to take care of them. Perhaps the officer figured it would be kind of awkward if they died on his hands and then somebody remembered them. Well, one day nigh sundown the mate and a sick man were sitting on the beach looking at the sea, and wondering if their folks in Canada would ever hear of them again. They were to be sent away from that place in a day or two.

"Now, there was an old schooner that must have been getting shaky when the Russians seized her years before moored in front of them. The oakum was spewing from her seams, her bulwarks were worn and weather-cracked so you could put your fingers in the rents in them, and it wasn't much use telling a sealerman what kind of canvas she would have after lying there since the Russians took her in the rain and wind. Still, she looked kind of homely, and they sat there watching her until they heard the boom of gun and there was a Russian soldier signing to them. Now, some of those folks were kind enough, but this was a bad man, and when the sealer who was sick couldn't get along fast enough he kicked him hard, and where it would hurt him."

Montreal drew his breath, and a little grey patch showed in his cheeks.

"But," he said hoarsely, "he didn't do it again!"

Stickine laughed a curious little laugh. "No," he said. "He meant to, but the man who wasn't sick was too quick for him, and the soldier wasn't handy getting his side arm out. The sealer took the point in his arm, and it ripped it to the wrist, but he got his right fist on that soldier's chin, and when he went down he made no great show of getting up again. Then the other two left him, and went back to the prison where a soldier locked them in, and when the rest heard what had happened they did some talking. They didn't take long about it, for the mate had a notion the soldier looked very sick when he left him, and it was quite plain that anything they did must be put through before they were marched away from sea.

"'We've got to light out of this right now,' says one.

"'Well,' says another, 'where are we going to?'

"'That,' says the mate, 'is quite easy. There's a schooner handy and we're going straight to sea.'

"Nobody said any more for a little, and the boys looked kind of solemn. It was a long way to British Columbia, and they knew what that schooner was like because they'd see her. Then one of them gets up.

"'I'd sooner drown out yonder than work in the mines,' says he.

"In 'bout five minutes they'd fixed up the thing, and there was one of them waiting behind the door when a soldier came in. Before he got started talking the man had his arms about him. Then there was a circus that didn't last very long, and the soldier was lying tied up quite snug with his tunic round his head when they slipped out one by one. The moon was getting up, but it was hazy with a little breeze blowing out to sea when two of them lit out for the place where the schooner was lying while the rest went for the beach where it was nearest them. There was a boat or two handy, but they were big, and you can't get a vessel that's been lying by for years off in a minute. When the two stopped abreast of her the water was very cold, and it isn't quite easy swimming in your clothes, but they knew if they took them off they would have to go home naked, and made the best of it they could, though one of them was played out when they fetched the vessel. They couldn't get a holt of her, and the tide swung them along bobbing and clawing at her side, until the mate got his fingers in a crack the sun had made. Then he got up, though he was never quite sure how it was done, and pulled the other one after him, but they fell down on deck and lay there a minute, anyway.

"After that one crawls to the foremast, and it was while he made shift to get the foresail on to her he found out what prison and hunger had done for him. It wasn't a big sail, but he sat down faint and choking when he'd got it up. Then he found where the shackle was on the chain, and smashed his fingers as he pounded it, for the pin was rusted in. He couldn't quite see straight and his hands were bleeding, but he figured they'd got to light out quick, for there was a dog howling and he could hear a boat coming. At last, when he knew another blow would knock out the pin, he let up and he and the other man tried to get the mainsail up, and stopped because they'd 'bout the strength of Mainsail Haul between them. Then while they stood there gasping a boat comes banging alongside, and the rest was crawling over the rail when the mate hears another splash of oars behind.

"'They're coming along with rifles,' says somebody.

"Well, there was nobody wanting to waste any time, and they got the mainsail up with a split you could have ridden a horse through in the middle of it, and 'bout half the staysail to swing her with. When they'd done that much they saw there wasn't much use in hoisting the rest of it, and they pulled the head right out of one of her jibs. The boat was coming up tolerably fast, and somebody hailing them, but they didn't stop to answer, and getting the staysail aback knocked out the shackle-pin. The cable ran out all right, and then they stood still, very quiet and feeling sick, for most a minute, for they could see the boat now, and the schooner wouldn't fall off handy. One or two of them will remember that minute while they live. There was so much in front of them, and, so far as they could see, more behind – and the old schooner was just hanging there with her mainsail peak swung down.

"At last she fell off slowly, but there wasn't one of them fit to howl when she started off before the wind. The mate had a kind of fancy somebody was shooting, but nobody was quite sure then or after, because they were too busy swaying the mainsail peak up and looking for a sound place to bend the halliards to the jibs. They got them up in pieces, but she was off the wind, and when the boat dropped back into the haze behind her the mate fell over on the hatch and lay there until somebody poured water on to him. It was sun up next morning before he remembered very much more, and then that schooner scared him. You could have clawed out pieces from her masts with your nails, and there were more holes than canvas in her sails. No compass, no water, not a handful of grub, and the Pacific to cross.

"They ran down the coast that day, and came to with the kedge-anchor off a village the next one. The folks came off, and brought them dried fish and water for all the odds and ends of rope and ironwork they could spare off the schooner. Then they cleared for sea again, and hung out for two weeks starving on a handful of grub each morning for every man, with only the sun, that wasn't always there, and the stars to guide them."

Stickine stopped a moment, and his face grew very grim while there was silence in the Champlain's hold, and Appleby shivered as he pictured the crazy schooner crawling as it were at random across the face of the Pacific with her crew of starving men.

"It must have been horrible," he said. "Did they lose any of them?"

Stickine shook his head. "Not a man," he said. "Still, two of them were on their backs and the others just ready to lie down when a steamer came along, and they ran slap for the bows of her when they saw the flag she was flying. She stopped, and they felt kind of shaky when she lay there rolling with white men hailing them and a boat swinging out, while when a man came on board they couldn't quite talk to him sensible, and he stared at them and the masts a minute without a word. Then he sized up what they were wanting, and there was grub and coal and water in the schooner besides a compass when the steamer went on. After that it was easier. Somehow they nursed her through two gales, and drove her south-east when they could, and then one morning there was the snow shining high, up in the sky and they knew they were through with their troubles. That's 'bout all there is to it, and I've done quite enough talking!"

"Did the Government get them any compensation, and what became of the schooner?" asked Appleby.

Stickine laughed dryly. "No, sir," he said. "They didn't. Nobody asked them to, and that schooner isn't sailing now."

"But you knew the mate?" said Appleby. "Of course it was he who brought them through."

Stickine did not answer, and Donegal reached out suddenly and grabbed his arm. Taken unawares he could not extricate it, and next moment his sleeve was drawn back and the lads saw a long white scar that ran down to the wrist. Then Stickine's face flushed a trifle, and Donegal grinned. "Ye have heard where he got it – and he swum off to her that night," he said.

The flush faded from Stickine's face, which grew grim again. "I'm owing the folks who did it more than that and the hunger," he said. "We were set down, all of us, as lost at sea, and while I was lying in that prison things had gone wrong. When I got back to Canada I knew they could never be straightened out again."

Appleby noticed how Stickine's big hands trembled, and surmised that some great sorrow he would not speak about had darkened the home-coming of the man who had risen as it were from the dead. He, however, sat still with the rest until Montreal slowly clenched a big brown fist.

"And," he said with a curious quietness, "it's a brother they're owing me."

Then there was a silence that was intensified by the roar of the sea.