Kitabı oku: «The Secret of the Reef», sayfa 2
Jimmy loved the sea; and now he was to go afloat again, in his own vessel, bound by no restrictions except the necessity for making the voyage pay. This would not be easy; but there was a romance about the undertaking that gave it a zest.
CHAPTER III – THE FURY OF THE SEA
In the evening of the day on which they saw the last of Vancouver Island, Jimmy sat in theCetacea’s cockpit with a chart of the North Pacific spread out before him on the cabin hatch. It showed the tortuous straits, thickly sprinkled with islands of all sizes, through which they had somehow threaded their way during the last week, in spite of baffling head winds and racing tides, and though Jimmy was a navigator he felt some surprise at their having accomplished the feat without touching bottom. Now he had their course to the north plotted out along the deeply fretted coast of British Columbia, and rolling up the chart he rose to look about.
It was nine o’clock, but the light was clear, and a long, slate-green swell slightly crisped with ripples rolled up out of the south; to the northwest a broad stripe of angry saffron, against which the sea-tops cut, glowed along the horizon; but the east was dim, and steeped in a hard, cold blue. Shadowy mountains were faintly visible high up against the sky; and, below, a few rocky islets rose, blurred by blue haze, out of the heaving sea.
The sloop rolled lazily, her boom groaning and the tall, white mainsail alternately swelling out and emptying with a harsh slapping of canvas and a clatter of shaken blocks. Above it the topsail raked in a wide arc across the sky. Silky lines of water ran back from the stern, there was a soft gurgle at the bows; Jimmy computed that she was slipping along at about three miles an hour.
“What do you think of the weather?” Bethune asked, as he lounged at the steering wheel.
“It doesn’t look promising,” Jimmy answered. “If time wasn’t an object, I’d like the topsail down. We’ll have wind before morning.”
“That’s my opinion; but time is an object. When the cost of every day out is an item to be considered, we must drive her. Have you reckoned up what we’re paying every week to the ship-chandler fellow who found us the cables and diving gear?”
“I haven’t; his terms were daunting enough as a whole without analyzing them. Have you?”
Bethune chuckled.
“I have the cost of everything down in my notebook; although I will confess that I was mildly surprised at myself for taking the trouble. If I’d occasionally made a few simple calculations at home and acted on them, the chances are that I shouldn’t be here now.” Bethune made a gesture of disgust. “Halibut boiled and halibut fried begins to pall on one; but this is far better than our quarters in Vancouver, and they were a big improvement on those I had in Victoria. I daresay it was natural I should stick to the few monthly dollars as long as possible, but it will be some time before I forget that hotel. I never quite got used to the two wet public towels beside the row of sloppy wash-basins, and the gramophone going full blast in the dirty dining-room; and the long evening to be dawdled through in the lounge was worst of all. You have, perhaps, seen the hard-faced toughs lolling back with their feet on the radiator pipes before the windows, the heaps of dead flies that are seldom swept up, the dreary, comfortless squalor. Imagine three or four hours of it every night, with only a last-week’s Colonist to while away the time!”
“I should imagine things would be better in a railroad or logging camp.”
“Very much so, though they’re not hotbeds of luxury. The trouble was that I couldn’t come down to Victoria and hold my job. Once or twice when the pay days approximated, I ran it pretty fine; and I’ve a vivid memory of walking seventy miles in two days over a newly made wagon trail. The softer parts had been graded with ragged stones from the hillside, the drier bits were rutted soil – it needed a surgical operation to get my stockings off.”
“It might have paid you better to forfeit your allowance,” Jimmy suggested.
“That’s true,” said Bethune. “I can see it now, but I had a daunting experience of clearing land and laying railroad track. Dragging forty-foot rails about through melting snow, with the fumes of giant-powder hanging among the rocks and nauseating you, is exhausting work, and handspiking giant logs up skids in rain that never stops is worse. The logs have a way of slipping back and smashing the tenderfoot’s ribs. I suppose this made me a coward; and, in a sense, the allowance was less of a favor than a right. The money that provided it has been a long time in the family; I am the oldest son; and while I can’t claim to have been a model, I had no serious vices and had committed no crime. If my relatives chose to banish me, there seemed no reason why they shouldn’t pay for the privilege.”
Jimmy agreed that something might be said for his comrade’s point of view.
“Now I stand on my own feet,” Bethune went on, with a carefree laugh; “and while it’s hard to predict the end of this adventure, the present state of things is good enough for me. Is anything better than being afloat in a staunch craft that’s entirely at your command?”
Jimmy acquiesced heartily as he glanced about. Sitting to windward, he could see the gently rounded deck run forward to the curve of the lifted bows, and, above them, the tall, hollowed triangle of the jib. The arched cabin-top led forward in flowing lines, and though there were patches on plank and canvas, all his eye rested on was of harmonious outline. TheCetacea was small and low in the water, but she was fast and safe, and Jimmy had already come to feel a certain love for her. Their success depended upon her seaworthiness, and he thought she would not fail them.
“I like the boat; but I’ve been mending gear all day, and it’s my turn below,” he said.
The narrow cabin that ran from the cockpit bulkhead to the stem was cumbered with dismantled diving pumps and gear, but there was a locker on each side on which one could sleep. It was, moreover, permeated with the smell of stale tobacco smoke, tarred hemp, and fish, but Jimmy had put up with worse odors in the Mercantile Marine. Lying down, fully dressed, on a locker, he saw Moran’s shadowy form, wrapped in old oilskins, on the opposite locker, rise above his level and sink as the Cetacea rocked them with a rhythmic swing. The water lapped noisily against the planks, and now and then there was a groaning of timber and a sharp clatter of blocks; but Jimmy soon grew drowsy and noticed nothing.
He was awakened rudely by a heavy blow, and found he had fallen off the locker and struck one of the pump castings. Half dazed and badly shaken, as he was, it was a few moments before he got upon his knees – one could not stand upright under the low cabin-top. It was very dark, Jimmy could not see the hatch, and the Cetacea appeared to have fallen over on her beam-ends. A confused uproar was going on above: the thud of heavy water striking the deck, a furious thrashing of loose canvas, and the savage scream of wind. Bethune’s voice came faintly through the din, and he seemed to be calling for help.
Realizing that it was time for action, Jimmy pulled himself together and with difficulty made his way to the cockpit, where he found it hard to see anything for the first minute. The spray that drove across the boat beat into his face and blinded him; but he made out that she was pressed down with most of her lee deck in the water, while white cascades that swept its uplifted windward side poured into the cockpit. The tall mainsail slanted up into thick darkness, but it was no longer thrashing, and Jimmy was given an impression of furious speed by the way the half visible seas raced past.
“Shake her! Let her come up!” he shouted to the dark figure bent over the wheel.
He understood Bethune to say that this would involve the loss of the mast unless the others were ready to shorten canvas quickly.
Jimmy scrambled forward through the water and loosed the peak-halyard. The head of the sail swung down and blew out to leeward, banging threateningly, and he saw that the half-lowered topsail hung beneath it. This promised to complicate matters; but Moran was already endeavoring to change the jib for a smaller one, and Jimmy sprang to his assistance. Though the sail was not linked to a masthead stay, it would not run in; and when Bethune luffed the boat into the wind, the loose canvas swept across the bows, swelling like a balloon and emptying with a shock that threatened to snap the straining mast. It was obvious to the men who knelt in the water dragging frantically at a rope that something drastic must be done; but both were drenched and half blinded and had been suddenly roused from sleep. The boat was large enough to make her gear heavy to handle, and yet not so large as to obviate the need for urgent haste when struck with all her canvas set by a savage squall. Though they recognized this, Jimmy and his comrade paused a few moments to gather breath. The jib, however, must be hauled down; and with a hoarse shout to Moran, Jimmy lowered himself from the bowsprit until he felt the wire bobstay under his feet.
The Cetacea plunged into the seas, burying him to the waist, but he made his way out-board with the canvas buffeting his head until he seized an iron ring. It cost him a determined effort to wrench it loose so it could run in, and when, at last, the sail swept behind him he felt the blood warm on his lacerated hand. Then he crawled on board, and when he and Moran had set a smaller jib it was high time to reef the mainsail; but they spent a few moments in gathering strength for the task.
She was down on her beam-ends, with the sea breaking over her. Jimmy could not imagine what Bethune was doing at the wheel. The foam that swirled past close under the boom on her depressed side lapped to the cabin top; it looked as if she were rolling over. They felt helpless and shaken, impotent to master the canvas that was drowning her. But the fight must be made; and, rousing themselves for the effort, they groped for the halyards. The head of the sail sank lower; gasping, and straining every muscle, they hauled its foot down, and then Jimmy, leaning out, buried to the knees in rushing foam, with his breast on the boom, knotted the reef-points in. It was done at last. Rising more upright, she shook off some of the water.
Moran turned to Bethune, who was leaning as if exhausted on his helm, and demanded why he had not luffed the craft, which would have eased their work. Then the dripping man showed them that the boat they carried on deck had been washed against the wheel so that he could not pull the spokes round. They moved her, and when Bethune regained control of the sloop, he told them what had happened, in disjointed gasps.
“Wind freshened – but I – held her at it. Then there was a – burst of rain and I – let the topsail go – thinking the breeze would lighten again. Instead of that – it whipped round ahead – screaming – and I called for you.”
Conversation was difficult amid the roar of the sea, with the spray lashing them and their words blowing away, but Jimmy made himself heard.
“Where’s the compass?”
“In the cockpit, or overboard – the dory broke it off.”
Moran felt in the water that washed about their feet and, picking something up, crept into the cabin, where a pale glow broke out. It disappeared in a minute or two and he came back.
“Binnacle lamp’s busted,” he reported. “She’s pointing about east.”
“Inshore,” said Jimmy. “When you’re ready, we’ll have her round.”
She would not come. Overpowered by wind and sea, she hung up for a few moments, and then fell off on her previous course. They tried it twice, not daring to wear her round the opposite way; and afterward they sat in the slight shelter of the coaming, conscious that there was nothing more they could do.
“She may keep off the beach until daylight,” Jimmy observed hopefully; “then we’ll see where we are.”
The glance he cast forward did not show him much. The long swell had rapidly changed into tumbling combers that rolled down upon the laboring sloop out of the dark. As she lurched over them, the small patch of storm-jib swept up, showing the sharply slanted strip of mainsail; but the rest of her was hidden by spray and rushing foam. She was sailing very fast, close-hauled, and was rushing toward the beach. Jimmy could feel her tremble as she pitched into the seas.
Morning seemed a very long time in coming; but at last the darkness grew less thick. The foam got whiter and the gray bulk of the rollers more solid and black, as they leaped, huge and threatening, out of the obscurity. Then the sky began to whiten in the east, and the weary men anxiously turned their eyes shoreward as they shivered in the biting cold of dawn. After a time, during which the horizon steadily receded, a gray and misty blur appeared on the starboard hand, and, now that they could see the combers, they got the Cetacea round. As she headed offshore a red flush spread across the sky, and rocks and pines grew into shape to the east. Then a break in the coastline where they could see shining water instead of foam indicated an island; and, getting her round again, they stood in cautiously, because she could make nothing to windward through the steep, white seas outshore. Reeling before them, with lee deck in the water as she bore away, she opened up the sound, and presently her crew watched the rollers crumble on a boulder-sprinkled point. Moving shoreward majestically in ordered ranks, the waves hove themselves up when they met the shoal and dissolved into frothy cataracts. It was an impressive spectacle, and the sloop looked by contrast extremely small. Still, she drove on, and Jimmy, standing at the wheel, gazed steadily ahead.
“We’ll have to chance finding water, because the lead’s no guide,” he said. “If there’s anything in the sound, it will be a steep-to rock.”
She lurched in past the point, rolling, spray-swept, with two rags of drenched canvas set. As Jimmy luffed her into the lee of the island there was a sudden change. The water, smoothing to a measured heave, glittered with tiny ripples; the slanted mast rose upright; and the sloop forged on toward a shelving beach, through variable flaws. Then, as she slowed and the canvas flapped, the anchor was flung over, and the rattle of running chain sent a cloud of birds circling above the rocks.
Half an hour later the men were busy cooking breakfast, and soon afterward they were fast asleep; but the night’s breeze had made a change in their relations. Their mettle had been rudely tested and had not failed. Henceforward it was not to be mere mutual interest that held them together, but a stronger though more elusive bond. They were comrades by virtue of a mutual respect and trust.
CHAPTER IV – THE ISLAND
On a gray afternoon, with a fog hovering over the leaden water, they sighted the island where the wreck lay. What wind there was blew astern, but it had scarcely strength enough to wrinkle the long heave that followed the sloop; the tide, Jimmy computed, was at half flood. This was borne out by the way a blur on their port hand grew into a tongue of reef on which the sea broke in snowy turmoil, and by the quickness with which the long, gray ridge behind it emerged from the fog. Sweeping it with the glasses, Jimmy could distinguish a few dark patches that looked like scrub-pines or willows. Then, as she opened up the coastline, he noticed the strip of sloppy beach sprinkled with weedy boulders, and the bare slopes of sand and stones beyond. The spot was unlike the islands at which they had called on their way up; for they were thickly covered with ragged firs and an undergrowth of brush and wild-fruit vines; this had a desolate, forbidding look, as if only the hardiest vegetation could withstand the chill and savage winds that swept it.
The men were all somewhat worn by the voyage, which had been long and difficult. Their clothes were stiff with salt from many soakings, and two of them suffered from raw sores on wrists and elbows caused by the rasp of the hard garments. Their food had been neither plentiful nor varied, and all had grown to loathe the sight of fish.
“I’ve seen more cheerful places,” Bethune declared, when Jimmy had handed him the glasses. “I suppose we bring up under its eastern end?”
Moran nodded.
“Pretty good shelter in the bight in about two fathoms. Watch out to starboard and the reef will show you where she is.”
Jimmy turned his eyes in that direction, but saw nothing for a minute. Then the swell, which ran after them in long undulations nearly as smooth as oil, suddenly boiled in a white upheaval, and a cloud of fine spray was thrown up as by a geyser.
“One can understand the old steamboat’s breaking her back,” he said. “Where’s she lying?”
“Not far ahead; but by the height of the water on the beach, there’ll be nothing to be seen of her for the next nine hours.”
“And it will be dark then!” Bethune said gloomily. Jimmy shared his comrade’s disappointment. After first sighting land they had felt keen suspense. There was a possibility that the wreck had broken up or sunk into the sand since Moran had visited her; and, after facing many hardships and risks to reach her, they must go back bankrupt if she had disappeared. The important question could not be answered until the next day.
“Couldn’t we bring up here and look for her in the dory when the tide falls?” Jimmy suggested.
“It sure wouldn’t be wise. When you get your anchor down in the bight you’re pretty safe; but two cables wouldn’t hold her outside when the sea gets up – and I don’t know a place where it blows oftener.”
“Then you had better take her in. I can’t say that we’ve had much luck this trip; and we’ve been a fortnight longer on the way than I calculated. It will be something to feel the beach beneath our feet.”
They ran into a basin with gray rocks and stones on its landward side, and a shoal on which the surf broke to seaward; and, soon after dropping anchor, they rowed ashore.
The island appeared to be two miles long, and nothing grew on it except a few patches of scrub in the hollows of its central ridge; but it had, as Moran pointed out, two springs of good water. Birds screamed above the surf and waded along the sand, and a seal lolled upon a stony beach; but these were the only signs of life, and the raw air rang with the dreary sound of the sea.
When dusk crept in they went back on board, and with the lamp lighted the narrow cabin looked very cozy after the desolate land; but conversation languished, for the men were anxious and somewhat depressed. Daylight would show them whether or not their work had been thrown away. With so much at stake it was hard to wait.
“As soon as we’ve found if she’s still on the bank,” Moran said, as they were arranging their blankets on the lockers, “we’ll get out the net and all the lines we brought; then I guess we had better keep the diving pump in a hole on the beach.”
“I suppose we must fish and save our stores,” Jimmy agreed; “though the worst beef they ever packed in Chicago would be a luxurious change. But what’s your reason for putting the pump ashore?”
Moran was not a humorous man, but he smiled.
“Well,” he said, “we certainly haven’t a lien on the wreck, and if it was known where she’s now lying, we’d soon have a steamboat up from Portland or Vancouver with proper salvage truck. This island’s off the track to the Alaska ports; but, so far’s my experience goes, it’s when you least want folks around that they turn up.”
“He’s right,” Bethune declared. “There’s no reason why we should make our object plain to anybody who may come along. I don’t know much about the salvage laws, but my opinion is that the underwriters would treat us fairly if we brought back the gold; and if we couldn’t come to terms with them, the courts would make us an award. Still, there’s need for caution; we have nobody’s authority, and might be asked why we didn’t report the find instead of going off to get what we could on the quiet.”
They went to sleep soon after this, and awakening in a few hours, found dawn breaking; for when the lonely waters are free from ice there is very little night in the North. A thin fog hid the land, leaving visible only a strip of wet beach, and there was still no wind, which Moran seemed to consider somewhat remarkable. As the tide was falling, Jimmy suggested that they should launch the dory and row off at once to look for the wreck; but Moran objected.
“It’s a long pull, and we don’t want to lose time,” he said. “S’pose we find her? We couldn’t work the pump from the boat, and we’d have to come back for the sloop. You don’t often strike it calm here, and we have to get ahead while we can.”
The others agreed; and after a hurried breakfast they hove the anchor and made a start, Moran sculling the Cetacea, Jimmy and Bethune towing her in the dory. They found the towing hard work, for stream and swell set against them and the light boat was jerked backward by the tightening line as she lurched over the steep undulations. Then, in spite of their care, the line would range forward along her side as she sheered, and there was danger of its drawing her under. Though the air was raw, they were bathed in perspiration before they had made half a mile; and Bethune paused a moment to cool his blistering hands in the water.
“This kind of thing is rather strenuous when you’re not used to it,” he grumbled.
Jimmy was glad of a moment’s rest; but immediately there came a cry from Moran. “Watch out! Where you going to?”
Looking round, they saw the Cetacea’s bowsprit close above their heads as she lurched toward them on the back of a smooth sea. Pulling hard, with the hampering rope across her, they got the dory round, and afterward rowed steadily, while their breath came short and the sweat dripped from them. It was exhausting work; but Bethune pointed out the fact that they had not embarked on a pleasure excursion.
At last Moran dropped anchor; and, boarding the sloop, the men spent an hour of keen suspense watching the sea. The island had faded to a faint, dark blur, and all round the rest of the circle an unbroken wall of mist rested on the smoothly lifting swell. None of them had anything to say; they smoked in anxious silence, their eyes fixed on the glassy water which gave no sign of hiding anything below.
Bethune impatiently jumped up.
“This is too tedious for me!” he exclaimed. “Can’t we sweep for the wreck from the dory with the bight of a line?”
“You want to keep fresh,” Moran warned him. “If she’s there, she’ll show up before long.”
They waited, Jimmy quietly glancing at his watch now and then; and at last Moran stretched out a pointing hand.
“What’s that, to starboard?” he asked.
For a few moments, during which the tension set their nerves on edge, the others saw nothing; and then a faint ripple broke the glassy surface of the swell. It smoothed out and the long heave swung undisturbed across the spot for a time; but the ripple appeared again, with a dark streak in the midst of it.
“Weed!” cried Bethune. “It must grow on something!”
“I guess so,” said Moran. “It’s fast to a ship’s timber.”
Five minutes later the head of the timber was visible, and in keen but silent excitement they took out a line to it and hove the sloop close up. The diving pumps were already rigged, and when they had lowered and lashed a ladder, Moran coolly put on the heavy canvas dress. He said that, as the show was his, he would go down first. It was with grave misgivings that his companions screwed on the copper helmet and hung the lead weights about him, for neither of them knew anything about the work except what they had learned from a pamphlet issued by a maker of diving apparatus. This they had diligently studied and argued over on the voyage up, but there was the unpleasant possibility that it might not contain all the information needful, and a small oversight might have disastrous consequences.
When the copper helmet sank below the surface and a train of bubbles rushed up, Jimmy felt his heart beat and his hand grow damp with perspiration. He held the signal line and knew the code, as well as the number of strokes to the minute that should give air enough; but he had not much confidence in the pumps. Though he had had to pay a heavy deposit on them, and their hire was costly, they were far from new. The bubbles moved, however, drawing nearer the weed-crusted wood.
Suddenly the line jerked, and Bethune looked at Jimmy sharply.
“More air!” he cried. “Give her a few more revolutions – he’s all right so far.”
It was a relief to both when the bubbles moved back toward the ladder, and when the diver crawled on board they eagerly unscrewed the helmet. Moran gasped once or twice and wiped his face before he turned to them.
“It’s not too bad after the first minute or two,” he said, and this was the only allusion he made to his sensations. “Now, so far as I can make out, there’s no getting into her from the deck. Poop’s badly smashed, and you’d certainly foul the pipe or line among the broken beams; but it looks pretty clear in the hold. Guess we’ll have to break through the after bulkhead; but it’s sanded up and there’s a pile of stuff to move. You’re sure about the strong-room, Bethune?”
“I took some trouble to find out, and was told it was under the poop cabin. I couldn’t get a plan of her.”
“We’ll try the bulkhead.” Moran turned to Jimmy. “If you’re going next, take the shovel and see if you can shift some of the sand.”
Jimmy was not a timid man, but he felt far from happy as his comrades encased him in the dress and helmet. He found them an intolerable weight as he moved toward the ladder and went down it, clinging tightly to the rungs, and then, as a green mist crept across the glasses, he was conscious of an unnerving fear. Struggling with it, he descended, and was next troubled by a pain in his head and an unpleasant feeling of pressure. Something throbbed in his ears, his breathing did not seem normal, and he stopped, irresolute, at the foot of the ladder. He could see a short distance, but it was like looking through dirty, greenish glass, and the wavering light had puzzling reflections in it. He watched the air globules rush to the surface and the shadow of the sloop’s bottom move to and fro; and then he fixed his eyes on a badly defined dark object which he supposed was the wreck.
As he reluctantly let go the ladder he was surprised by another change. Instead of carrying a crushing weight, he felt absurdly light and, in spite of his weighted boots, it was difficult to keep his balance. His feet did not fall where he intended, and when he moved the shovel he carried, the motion of his arm was not perfectly controllable. It seemed to him that if the stream were strong, he must hopelessly float away; but he resolutely pulled himself together. He had not spent all his money and made a daring voyage to be daunted by a few unusual sensations. It was his business to break into the wreck; and he made his way cautiously toward her. Stopping at the place where her after-half had broken off, he saw in front of him a dark cavern, edged with ragged planking and parted timbers and garlanded with long streamers of weed. They uncoiled and wavered as the sea washed in and out, and Jimmy felt a strong reluctance to enter. The darkness might hide strange and dangerous creatures; for a few moments he allowed his imagination to run riot like that of a frightened child.
This, however, must be stopped. Jimmy remembered that he was supplied with an electric lamp. He fumbled clumsily with the switch, and, as a wavering beam of light ran through the water, he cautiously entered the hold. Sand had filled up the hollows among the stone ballast, and there was only a broken orlop beam in his way. He began to feel easier, reflecting that he was, after all, only a short distance beneath the surface; though he would have preferred more experienced assistants at the pumps. Making his way aft beside the shaft tunnel, he presently reached a bank of sand which ran up to the splintered deck. The bulkhead shutting off the lazaret was obviously behind it, and Jimmy began to use the shovel.
It proved difficult work. A vigorous movement upset his unstable equilibrium, and he wondered whether the weight he carried and the pressure applied were adapted to the depth. This could be ascertained only by experiment; and Jimmy feared to make it. Gripping himself, however, he removed a few shovelfuls of sand; and then the pain in his head got worse, and, driving in the shovel deeper than before, he fell forward with the effort. Instead of coming to the ground, he made some ridiculous gyrations before he recovered his footing; and then the signal line, which he felt at to reassure himself, seemed tauter than it should be.
Grabbing up the shovel, Jimmy commenced his retreat. The line might be foul of something, and if so there was a danger of the air pipe’s entanglement. It was disconcerting to contemplate the result of that. When he left the hull he felt a strong inclination to kick off his leaded shoes and try to swim to the surface instead of slowly mounting the ladder; but he conquered it and climbed up.
When at last the glasses were unscrewed and the air flowed in on his face, Jimmy was conscious of intense relief. For a minute he sat limply on the cabin top.
“I dare say we’ll get accustomed to the thing,” he said slowly to Bethune; “but you’ll find out that one mustn’t expect to do much at first.”
Bethune went down, and when he came up Moran asked him dryly:
“How much of that sand did you shift?”
“Three good bucketfuls, which I imagine is more than Jimmy did,” Bethune answered with a grin. Then his face grew serious. “As there seems to be forty or fifty tons of it, we’ll have to do better.”
“That,” agreed Moran, “is a sure thing.”
They were silent after this, and Jimmy lighted his pipe. Though the day was chilly, it was pleasant to lie on the open deck and breathe air at normal pressure. The stream was not strong, the sea was as smooth as he thought it likely to be, and all the conditions were favorable to the work; but he shrank from going down again, and he imagined that his companions shared his unwillingness. Though he censured himself for feeling so, he was glad when the mist, which had grown thinner, suddenly streamed away and revealed a dark line advancing toward them across the heaving water.
