Kitabı oku: «The Boy Ranchers of Puget Sound», sayfa 8

CHAPTER X
A BREEZE OF WIND

The hay was almost in when Frank and Harry stood one evening close under the apex of the roof in the log barn. The crop was heavy and because the barn was small it had been their business during the afternoon to spread and trample down the grass Jake flung up to them. They had been working at high pressure at one task or another since soon after daylight that morning, and now the confined space was very hot, though the sun was low. Its slanting rays smote the cedar shingles above their bent heads, and the dust that rose from the grass floated about them in a cloud and clung to their dripping faces. Frank felt that the veins on his forehead were swollen when they paused a moment for breath, leaning on their forks.

"I suppose we could get a couple more loads in, and there can't be more than that," said Harry dubiously. "I wouldn't mind a great deal if the next jumperful upset."

Frank devoutly wished it would, for he felt that he must get out into the open air, but a few moments later they heard the plodding oxen's feet and the groaning of the clumsy sled. The sounds ceased abruptly and Jake's voice reached them.

"Tramp it down good!" he called. "You've got to squeeze in this lot and another."

Frank choked down the answer which rose to his lips. But the hay must be got in, and the boys fell with their forks upon the first of the crackling grass Jake flung up to them. There seemed to be more dust in it than usual, and before the jumper was half unloaded they were panting heavily. When at last the oxen hauled the sled away they stood doubled up knee-deep in the hay with their backs close against the roof.

"I can't see how we're to make room for the last lot," Harry gasped. "Still, I guess it has to be done."

They set to work again, packing the hay into corners and stamping it down, and his occupation reminded Frank of what he had heard about mining in a thin seam of coal. It seemed hotter than ever, the dust was choking, and at every incautious move he bumped his head or shoulders against the beams. The last sled arrived before they were ready for it, and they crawled about half buried, dragging the grass here and there with their hands and ramming it with their feet and knees into any odd spaces left. At length the work was finished, and wriggling toward the opening in the wall, Harry caught at the edge of it and finding a foothold on a log beneath boldly leaped down. Frank was, however, less fortunate when he followed his companion, for some of the hay slipped away beneath him, and, without the least intention of leaving the barn in that undignified fashion, he suddenly shot out through the hole. He felt the air rush past him, and then, somewhat to his astonishment, found himself on the ground, none the worse except for the jar of the fall.

"If I'd tried to do that it's very likely I'd have broken my leg," he panted.

He sat down and threw off his hat. It was delightful to feel the breeze upon his dripping face and to be out in the fresh air again. He had been at work for fourteen hours, and was aching all over, but that did not trouble him. The hay was safely in, and there was some satisfaction in the feeling that he had done his part in a heavy piece of work. Looking about him he noticed that the shadow of the firs had crept half across the clearing, and that thin wisps of fleecy cloud were streaming by high above their tall black tops. Then he heard Harry speaking to his father.

"There's a smart southerly breeze, and the tide is running ebb," he was saying. "What's the matter with starting for Victoria right away?"

"Haven't you done enough for to-day?" Mr. Oliver asked with a smile.

"I don't feel as fresh as I did this morning," Harry admitted. "Anyway, when we've got a fair wind and three or four hours' ebb going with us, it would be a pity not to make the most of them."

Mr. Oliver looked doubtful. "I'm anxious to get away, because, as I've arranged to meet a man in Victoria, we'll have to take the steamer unless we can slip across very shortly. I've an idea that we may get more wind than we'll have any use for before sun-up. Still, we could run in behind the point at Bannington's, if it was necessary."

Then Jake broke in: "If you're going, I'll get supper and pack some bread and pork along to the sloop."

Mr. Oliver assented, and an hour later they paddled off to the sloop. The dog jumped into the canoe with them, and when they got on board he quietly sat down on the floorings while Jake helped the boys to hoist the mainsail. When they came to the jib Mr. Oliver stood up on the deck looking about him.

"I think we'd better have the smaller one," he advised.

They were ready at length, and Jake, who was to stay behind, called the dog as he was about to jump into the canoe. Harry was busy forward just then with the mooring chain in his hand and the loose jib thrashing about him, while the big mainboom jerked over Mr. Oliver's head as he sat at the helm. The dog, however, showed no signs of moving.

"Give him a shove," said Jake, addressing Frank. "When he gets up on deck, pitch him in."

Frank turned toward the dog, and then stopped abruptly when it showed its teeth and growled.

"It looks as if he meant to go along," Jake remarked with a grin. "Prod him with the boathook if he won't move."

Frank was dubious, as he imagined the dog might resent the prodding. At that moment Harry, who had been too busy to notice what was going on, hauled up the weather sheet of the jib.

"I'm clear," he called to his father. "I'll cant her head to lee when you're ready."

Mr. Oliver put the helm up as the bows swung around, and when the sloop slanted over Jake made a futile grab at the dog. Then shouting to Frank, he dropped into the canoe and clutched the rail as the sloop forged ahead, but the boy was busy with the mainsheet and did not look up. In another moment Jake let go. Almost immediately afterward the sloop came round, and when she stretched away toward the mouth of the cove the canoe dropped astern.

"Stand by your jibsheets," called Mr. Oliver. "We'll have to come round again."

They were very busy during the next few minutes, for the cove was narrow and the wind was blowing in. When at length they swept out into the open water the dog crawled up to Harry and licked his hands. Harry looked at his father, who made a little sign of assent.

"I suppose he'll have to stay," he sighed. "When that dog decides on doing anything it's wise to let him do it. Now we'll square off the mainboom."

They let the sheet run until the big mainsail swung right out, and the sloop drove away, rolling viciously. Short, foam-flecked seas came tumbling after her, but as the tide was running the same way under them, lessening the resistance, very few broke angrily. Frank had learned enough by this time, however, to realize that it would probably be different when the stream turned. In the meanwhile the boat was sailing very fast, with a little ridge of frothing water washing by on either side when she lifted, and a thin shower of spray blowing all over her. Now and then the great sail with the heavy boom beneath it swung upward in an alarming fashion. Frank noticed that Mr. Oliver's eyes were gazing intently before him, and that his hands were clenched tightly upon the tiller.

"She seems rather bad to steer," he said.

"Yes," said Mr. Oliver, without looking up. "You have to be careful when you're running before a fresh breeze. It's remarkably easy to bring the mainsail over with a bang if you let her fall off too much, and the result of that would probably be to tear the mast out of her. It's considerably worse when there's a big sea coming along behind."

Frank glanced astern. The sun had gone and the sky was strewn with ranks of hurrying clouds, while the sea was flecked with smears of white.

"Aren't you pressing her a little?" Harry asked. "She'd be easier on the helm if we lowered the peak or tied a reef in."

"I'd like to pick up the Hootalquin reef before it's dark," answered Mr. Oliver. "I'm not sure we'll get very much farther to-night. You wanted a sail, and I fancy you're going to be gratified."

During the next hour Frank had to admit that this remark was warranted. The breeze steadily freshened, and there was no doubt that the sea was rising. It frothed in a white hillock on either side of the boat, and little trails of foam swirled about her deck. Frank could see that she was overburdened by the sail she was carrying, but Mr. Oliver still sat with a set face at the tiller and showed no desire to leave his post. In the meanwhile it was getting dark. Forest and beach had faded to a faint, shadowy blur and there was only a steadily narrowing stretch of foaming water in front of them. Frank was very wet and the spray beat upon him continually. At length, when the light had almost gone, a dusky patch of something grew out of the gathering gloom ahead, and fancying it to be a rocky point, he felt considerably relieved, because there would be shelter behind it. A minute or two later Mr. Oliver called to the boys.

"Get forward and ease the peak down," he ordered. "Then back the jib. We'll tie two reefs in."

"Aren't we going in here?" Harry asked.

His father shook his head. "No, it's too dark. I could take her through in the daylight, but there are one or two rocks in the channel. We'll have to try for Bannington's."

Frank felt a twinge of disappointment. Bannington's was still a good way off, and it seemed to him that the gale was increasing every moment. He scrambled forward with Harry, however, and when they loosened the rope the tall peak of the sail swung down. Soon after they had done this Mr. Oliver put down his helm, causing the mainboom to jerk and thrash to and fro furiously, while as the boat came up head to wind a white sea struck her side and foamed on board her.

"Handy with the throat!" shouted Mr. Oliver. "I don't want to leave the helm."

They slacked another rope, making the gaff sink farther down, after which they tied up about a yard of the inner bottom corner of the sail to the foot of the mast. This was comparatively easy, but it was different when, standing in the water on the lee deck, they grabbed the tackle beneath the boom and endeavored to pull the leach, or outer edge, of the mainsail down. It would not come, and the heavy spar struck them as it jerked in board, flinging Frank off into the well.

"Get another pull on your topping lift," ordered Mr. Oliver.

They jumped forward to do it, but it proved no easy task, for they had to raise the outer end of the heavy boom. They were struggling with the tackle again when Mr. Oliver laid both hands on the rope.

"Now," he shouted, "heave, and bowse her down!"

They succeeded this time, and afterward hung out over the water while they knotted the reef-points beneath the spar. Then when they had trimmed the jib over Mr. Oliver put up his helm and the sloop drove on again into the darkness with shortened sail.

The boys sat down as far under the side deck as they could get, out of the worst of the spray, with the dog crouching in the water which washed about the floorings at their feet.

"Why didn't your father help us more than he did?" Frank asked presently.

"He couldn't leave the tiller for more than a moment or two," said Harry. "When Jake and I reefed her the day we took you off the steamer there wasn't as much wind. Of course, there are boats in which you can lash the helm, but that's not always possible. If dad had let go the tiller she'd have fallen off and started sailing, which would have dragged the tackle from our hands or pitched us in, and then she'd have come up again banging and shaking. He kept her heading so that the mainsail was lifting slack with no weight in it."

Frank was commencing to realize that the handling of a sailboat was rather a fine art. It is as much of a machine as a steamer, but it is also of the kind whose efficiency depends directly upon the human eye, hand and brain. Man has evolved a number of such instruments, and in the right hands they are far more wonderful than the others. Any one, for instance, can learn the pianola, but to extract fine music from a Cremona violin is a very different matter.

It blew steadily harder, and there was, as Frank noticed, a difference in the sea, for the flood stream was now setting up against them and was growing shorter and more turbulent. There was a smaller interval between the waves, which seemed to become steeper and less regular. They curled over and broke about the boat with a sound that reacted unpleasantly upon Frank's nerves, and he was thankful that he could, after all, see very little of them. The sloop's motion also changed. One moment she seemed to be moving almost slowly, and the next she swung up in a quick, savage rush, with her bows in the air and the white foam boiling high about her. Sometimes, too, there was a thud and a splash astern, and the decks were swept by a deluge of seething water.

In the meanwhile the boys had contrived to light a lamp in a little box which held a compass, and they laid it on the thwart before Mr. Oliver, though, as he explained in a word or two, it was particularly difficult to steer an exact course in a sea of that kind. It was on the boat's quarter, that is, she was traveling with the wind almost behind her at a long slant across the course of the waves, but each time an extra big wave foamed up astern Mr. Oliver let her fall off and run right down wind with it to prevent its breaking on board.

Frank wondered how he did it, for the seas were following them and it was quite dark, but Mr. Oliver had no need to look around. He had for guides the sound of the oncoming seas, the pull of the tiller, and the motion of the boat, and, besides, from long experience his brain worked sub-consciously. He did not pause to consider when the bows climbed out and the stern sank down in a rush of foam, and had he done so, in all probability he would have brought the big mainboom smashing over. To run a fore-and-aft rigged craft, and a sloop in particular, before a badly breaking sea, is a difficult and somewhat perilous thing, and the ability to do it comes only from long acquaintance with the water, and, perhaps, from something in the helmsman's nature.

The boat sped on furiously, though they presently lowered the peak down to reduce the sail further, and by degrees Frank became conscious of an unpleasant nervous tension that seemed to sap away his hardihood. There was nothing to do in the meanwhile, but he felt that if he were called upon for any difficult or hazardous service he would find himself incapable of it. He was drenched and shivering, and he did not want to move. He only wished to cower beside Harry under the partial shelter of the coaming. This was, however, a feeling that other folks occasionally experience who go to sea in small vessels, which they have to grapple with and overcome. It is when there is no particular call on him, and he can only stand by and watch, that terror gets its strongest hold on the heart of a man.

At length Mr. Oliver called to the boys. "We must be close abreast of Bannington's," he said. "The end of the point should be to leeward. Get forward, Harry, where you can see out beneath the jib."

Frank followed his companion as he crawled up on the little deck. He did not want to seem afraid, but he held on tight with one hand when they knelt in the water that splashed about them. He could see the frothy seas beneath the black curve of the jib, but for what seemed a very long while there was nothing else. Then Harry suddenly raised his voice.

"Point's right ahead!" he sang out, and the next moment jumped to his feet. "There's a black patch a little to weather."

"Up peak for your lives!" cried Mr. Oliver.

He left the helm with a bound, and all three struggled desperately with a rope, while as the bagged mainsail extended and straightened out a sea broke on board the boat. Then they floundered aft and dragged in the mainsheet with all their might, after which Mr. Oliver jumped for the helm again, while the boys flattened in the jib.

"We're the wrong side of the point," gasped Harry. "I'm not sure she'll beat round it."

There was no difficulty in imagining what was likely to happen if she failed to do so, and Frank, who did not think she would last long if she washed up among the boulders before the sea that was running, clung to the coaming in a state of tense suspense. What seemed to be a continuous sheet of spray whirled about him, the boat slanted over at an alarming angle with half her lee deck in the sea, and the tops of the confused breaking waves through which she plunged washed all over her. This was sailing with a vengeance, and a very different thing from lounging at the tiller while she swung smoothly across the water before a fair wind. She was now thrashing to windward for her life, with the full weight of the sea on her weather bow and a foam-swept reef lying in wait close to lee of her, and whether she would claw off it or not depended largely upon her helmsman's skill.

Frank could see him dimly, a black shape gripping the tiller, and he was unpleasantly aware of the fact that there would speedily be an end of them all if he lost his nerve for a moment or made a blunder. It happens now and then at sea that the safety of crew and vessel hangs upon the brute strength of human muscle and the simple valor which enables a man to do what is required of him on the moment without flinching; empty assurance and a consequential air are of uncommonly little service then. Such occasions are a very grim test of manhood, and, as a rule, it is not the loud talker who best stands that strain.

Frank admitted afterward that he was badly scared, which was not in the least unnatural. It was more important that he should nevertheless realize that it was his business to trim the jib over when this was necessary. His companion, who was gazing to leeward, presently raised his voice.

"Broken water close ahead," he announced.

"Stand by your jib!" shouted Mr. Oliver. "We must try to heave her around."

Frank let the lee sheet run, groping deep in the water for it as Mr. Oliver put down the helm, and with a frantic thrashing of canvas the sloop came up into the wind. There was a moment of suspense during which she seemed to stop, and the boy felt his heart thumping furiously. He knew that if she fell off again on the previous tack nothing could save her from going ashore. Suddenly he heard Harry call to him.

"Haul it up!" he shouted. "We have to box her off."

Frank hauled with all his might, and the thrashing of the head sail ceased. It caught the wind, and a sea fell upon the boat as the bows swung around. Then they jumped to the opposite side of her and struggled desperately to haul the lee sheet in as she forged ahead again, after which there was nothing to do but wait and wonder if she was driving in toward the shore or working out toward open water. They stood on for half an hour, seeing nothing, and then came round half-swamped, only to stagger away on the opposite tack, running once more into horribly broken water. As they did so Harry shouted that there were boulders, the end of the point, he fancied, close to lee.

"She won't come about in the rabble," said Mr. Oliver.

It was evident that they must now either scrape around the point on that tack or go ashore, and Frank felt his nerves tingle as he gazed into the spray. He fancied that there was something black and solid beyond it, but could distinguish nothing further. Then the blackness faded, the sea seemed to become a little more regular, and Harry cried out hoarsely, "We're round!"

"Down peak!" called Mr. Oliver. "We'll have to jibe her."

Frank had learned that to jibe a boat is to turn her around stern to wind, instead of head-on, which is the usual way, and scrambling forward with Harry he helped lower the peak. After that they again floundered aft, leaving the mainsail reduced in size, and grabbed the sheet as Mr. Oliver put up his helm. The bows swung around as the boat went up with a sea, and the big boom tilted high up into the darkness above the boys. They struggled savagely with the sheet, which slightly restrained it, until the boat rolled suddenly down upon her side as the sail jerked over and the rope was torn swiftly through their hands. There was a crash and a bang, and Frank was conscious that the water was pouring over the coaming. He clung to the sheet, however, and while Mr. Oliver helped them with one hand they got a little of it in, after which the sloop, rising somewhat, drove forward. A few minutes later the sea suddenly became smoother, the wind seemed cut off, and Frank made out a black mass of rock rising close above them. They ran on beneath it until Mr. Oliver, rounding the boat up, bade them pitch the anchor over.