Thrice Armed
"Those sawmill people want their fixings, and if we're to hold on to their contract I guess they've got to have them," he said. "She should thrash down to the Inlet by to-morrow night. I figure she'd go along a little easier without her staysail."
They hauled it down; but the Tyee, being loaded deep with heavy machinery, was not appreciably drier afterward, and by the time the angry, saffron sunset faded off the foam-crested sea, she put her bows in somewhat frequently. Then there was a thud as she charged a big comber, and the frothy cataract that seethed in over her weather rail swirled aft a foot deep, while the spray blew all over her. Jimmy, buttoned to the throat in oilskins, stood at her wheel dripping, through four hours of darkness; and then, crawling down into the little cabin, which was intolerably foul, flung himself into his bunk and incontinently fell asleep, with the thud and swish of falling water going on above him. When he awakened, his first proceeding was to grope for the button that would summon a steward boy to bring him his morning coffee, but as he could not find it he looked around and saw his wet oilskins, which had shaken off the hook, sliding amidst the water up and down the Tyee's cabin floor. Then he remembered suddenly, and, dropping from his bunk, put on the oilskins and went up on deck.
A sheet of spray temporarily blinded him as he crawled out of the scuttle, and then there was little to be seen but a haze of it flying athwart a gray sea lined by frothy ridges and smears of low-driving cloud. The Tyee's slanted mastheads seemed to rake through the latter, and she was wet everywhere; but she was still hammering to windward with bows that swung up streaming over the long seas. On the one hand, a dingy smear, that might have been a point with pines on it, lifted itself out of the grayness, and Tom Wheelock pointed to it as he swayed with his wheel. His wet face was almost gray, and Jimmy could see the suggestive bagginess under his eyes.
"I guess we should fetch the Inlet by dark if it doesn't harden any more; but we'll have another reef down now you're up," he said.
They got the reef in with some difficulty, for all of them were needed to haul the leech-earing down; and, because the Siwash hand was a better boatman than sailor, Jimmy went out to the end of the boom again to tie the after-points. When he came back the Tyee proceeded a little more dryly, with the big gray seas that were topped with livid froth and had deep hollows between them rolling up in long succession to meet her. She went through some of them, for the sawmill machinery was a dead-weight in her, and a white cataract foamed across her forward. When she plunged into one that was larger than usual, Prescott, who now stood knee deep at her wheel, shook his head.
"Tom didn't ought to expect it of her," he said. "He wouldn't have held her at it if he hadn't been mighty afraid of losing that contract."
Jimmy made no answer. He understood by this time how his father was circumstanced, and had discovered already that the man who stands between the devil and the deep sea cannot afford to be particular. Merril, who held a bond on the Tyee, might, it seemed, very well stand for the devil.
They thrashed her to windward most of that day. The sea got worse, and there was not a dry stitch on any of them; but just at sunset the clouds were rent apart, and Wheelock, who was standing on the deckhouse, pointed to something that loomed amidst the vapor as they reeled inshore.
"The head!" he said. "The Inlet's about two miles beyond it."
Prescott glanced at Jimmy as he pulled up the wheel. "With a blame ugly tide-rip setting dead to windward across the mouth of it!"
Jimmy said nothing, though naturally he was aware that when the ocean streams run against the breeze they are very apt to pile up whatever sea there is into curling, hollow-crested combers. A craft of the Tyee's size will often snugly ride out a hard gale – that is, if she is hove-to under a strip or two of canvas; but to drive her to windward when she must meet the onslaught of the seas, and go through them, is an altogether different matter, and it seemed to him that she was already doing as much as any one reasonably could expect from her. Then his father came down from the deckhouse.
"Well," he said, "she has got to go through it; those people want their fixings. I guess we'll heave her round."
The words were simple, but they implied a good deal. Wheelock could have heaved his schooner to, or could have run away for shelter in another inlet down the coast; but, as he had said, the sawmill people wanted their machinery, and when he must choose between it and the devil he would sooner face his ancient enemy the sea. Its attack was honest and open, and the man with nerve enough might meet and withstand the charge of its seething combers. Quickness of hand and rude, primitive valor counted here, but it was otherwise in the insidious conflict with the human schemer. Tom Wheelock's eyes were watery, but there was a snap in them as he signed to Prescott and laid his hands on the wheel.
"Get forward, Jimmy, and tend your head-sheets," he said. "We'll have her round."
She came round, but none too readily; and as they stretched out seaward Jimmy had a brief vision of great rocks and hollows filled with pines that opened out and closed on one another. Then as he glanced to windward he saw the seatops heave athwart a blaze of crimson and saffron low down under ragged wisps of cloud.
They brought her round again presently, and she reeled in shoreward to weather the second head on that side of the Inlet, with her little three-reefed mainsail wet to its peak and the two jibs above her bowsprit streaming at every plunge, while the big combers in the tideway smote her weather-bow and poured out to leeward in long wisps of brine. Still, she was slowly opening up the sheltered Inlet, and it was only a question whether she would go clear enough of the head on that tack. It was, however, a somewhat momentous question, for it seemed to Jimmy very doubtful whether she would come round with them again.
Tom Wheelock stayed at the helm, and the head that had grown dim again lifted its vast rock wall higher and higher out of the whirling vapors that streamed amid the shadowy pines. It grew very close to them, but the Tyee was half-buried forward most of the time, and the break beyond the crag, where smooth water lay, had crept a little forward instead of aft from under her lee-bow when a comber higher than the rest hove itself up to weather, and fell upon her. It foamed across her forward, and when it went seething aft as she swung her bows up there was a crash, and Tom Wheelock loosed the spinning wheel.
Jimmy saw him strike the bulwark and Prescott clutch him; but, knowing that the plunge would probably make an end of the schooner if she rammed another sea, he sprang to the wheel. She was coming up when he seized it, which almost threw him over it, and there was a bang like a rifle-shot as one of her streaming jibs was blown away. The veins swelled on his forehead as he forced the helm up, and as the Tyee fell off on her course again he had a momentary vision of a great wall of rock that seemed to be creeping up on them. He also saw a man lying in the water that sluiced about her deck, while another who strove to hold him with one hand clung to a stanchion. Then, while he set his teeth and braced himself against the drag of the wheel, he could discern nothing but a haze of flying brine, and could feel the hard-pressed vessel strain and tremble under him.
He did not know how long the tension lasted, nor for a minute or two did he see much of Prescott and his father; but at last the rocks seemed to slide away, and the Tyee drove through the furious turmoil in the mouth of the Inlet. Then the wind fell suddenly, and, rising upright, the dripping schooner slid forward beneath long ranks of misty pines. He left the helm to the Siwash, and Prescott and he between them got Wheelock down into the little cabin. He gasped when they had put him into his bunk and poured a liberal measure of raw whisky down his throat.
"Well," he said faintly, "I guess we've saved that contract. You weathered the head?"
"We did," answered Prescott. "Jimmy grabbed the wheel in time. Seems to me we had 'bout twenty fathoms to spare. Feel as if you'd broke anything inside you?"
Tom Wheelock moved himself a little, and groaned. "No," he said, "I guess I haven't; but it hurt me considerably when I washed up against the rail. Mightn't have felt it one time, but I'm getting old and shaky. Anyway, you can light out and get your anchor clear. I'm feeling kind of dizzy."
Prescott went up the ladder, but Jimmy stayed where he was, and did not go up on deck until his father's eyes closed. It was quite dark, and he could see only vague, shadowy mountains black against the sky. Presently, a long Siwash canoe with several men paddling hard on board her came sliding down the dim lane of water that seemed to wind into the heart of the forests. She stopped alongside, and a man climbed on board.
"We've been expecting you the last two days, and I'm glad you got in now," he said. "Merril, who talks of running a steamer up this coast, has been worrying our Vancouver people to make him an offer for their carrying. It's quite likely they'd have made a deal with him if you'd kept us waiting."
They made the canoe fast, and the Tyee slowly crept on beneath the shadowy mountains and the misty pines, for only a faint air of wind disturbed the deep stillness here. Jim Wheelock, however, noticed very little as he leaned on the rail with a vindictive hatred in his heart for the man who, it seemed, was bent upon his father's ruin.
CHAPTER III
JIMMY MAKES FRIENDS
They had landed the machinery, and partly loaded the Tyee with dressed lumber, when Jimmy Wheelock, who was aching in every limb after a day's arduous toil, sat, cigar in hand, in the office of the sawmill manager. It was singularly untidy as well as unclean, for few men in that country have time to consider their comfort. Odd bottles of engine-oil and samples of belting lay amid the litter of sketches and specifications, while the plates and provision-cans on the table suggested that the manager and his guest had just finished their evening meal. The window was open wide, and a clean smell of freshly cut cedar drifted in with the aromatic fragrance of the pines. From where he sat Wheelock could see them rolling up the steep hillside with the white mists streaming athwart them, and the narrow lane of clear, green water winding past their feet. There was deep stillness among them, for the mill was silent at last, and it was only now and then that a voice rose faintly from the little wooden settlement which straggled up the riverside.
The manager, dressed in a store jacket and trousers of jean, lay upon what seemed to be a tool-chest, and he had, like Wheelock, a cigar of exceptional flavor in his hand. He was a young, dark-eyed man, somewhat spare of frame, and when he spoke, his quick, nervous gestures rather than his accent, which was by no means marked, proclaimed him an American of the Pacific Slope. It was characteristic that Wheelock, who had spent less than a week in his company, already felt on familiar terms with him. He had discovered that it is usually difficult to make the acquaintance of an insular Englishman in anything like that time.
"Old man feeling any better this afternoon?" inquired his companion.
"He says so;" and Jimmy looked thoughtful, as he had done somewhat frequently of late, though this had not been a habit of his. "Still, he was flung rather heavily against the rail, and, though he insisted on working, I'm not quite satisfied about him."
The American nodded comprehendingly. "Parents are a responsibility now and then. I lost mine, though. Raised myself somehow down in Washington. Anyway, your father has been going down grade fast the two years I've known him, and I'm sorry. He's a straight man. I like him."
A trace of darker color crept into Jimmy's bronze, though he was aware that candor of that kind is usual on the Pacific Slope, and there was nothing he could resent in his companion's manner. However, he made no answer, and the American spoke again.
"I'm glad you got in on time. As I told Prescott, Merril has a notion of going into the coasting trade, and wants our carrying. He has a pull on some of our stockholders, but I don't like the man, and you'll get our freight as long as you can keep us going. Why did you let the old man borrow that money from Merril?"
"I wasn't here. In fact, it's only a few weeks since I left an English ship at Portsmouth."
"Mail-boat?"
"No," said Jimmy; "a warship."
The American looked at him hard a moment, and then made a little gesture with the hand that held the cigar. He had seen Jimmy Wheelock carrying boards on his shoulder all that day, and now he was dressed in the Canadian wharf-hand's jean; but he had no difficulty in believing him.
"Lieutenant in your second fighting line? Came back to look after the old man?" he said. "Well, I guess he needs you. You want to keep your eye on Merril, too. If you don't, he'll have the schooner. It's a sure thing."
Jimmy realized, without knowing exactly why, that he could give this man, whom he had met only a few days ago, his confidence.
"The same thing has occurred to me," he said. "Do you mind telling me what you know about Merril?"
"No; it's only what everybody else knows. Merril's a machine for stamping money – out of anything. Got a ship-supply store in Vancouver, and is working himself into the general carrying business. Lends money on vessels, and fits them out. He'll give you a long credit, at a blame long interest, and by and by he gets the vessel, or a controlling share in her. He can't touch the express freight and passenger traffic – knows too much to kick against the C.P.R. or the big sound steamers; but there's the general freight for the mines, sawmills and canneries up and down the coast, and his vessels won't cost him much the way he buys them. The trade's going to be a big one. If I'd forty thousand dollars I'd buy a steamer."
Jimmy's eyes twinkled. "A steamboat isn't a sawmill. Would you know how to run her?"
The American laughed. "If I didn't, I guess I could learn. It can't be harder than playing the fiddle, and I've worried into that."
He stopped a moment, and then announced quietly with the almost dramatic abruptness which usually characterized him: "Anyway we'd make something of it. I'd put you in command of her."
"I wonder what leads you to believe I would suit you?" said Jimmy reflectively.
His companion waved his cigar. "Saw you packing lumber. You stayed right with the contract, though you'd never done the thing before. Know what the first few days are – I've been there. Stacked two-inch planks in Washington when I was seventeen and my strength hadn't quite come to me, and went home at nights walking double, with every joint in my body aching. Then they started me log-wedging, and that's 'most enough to break a weak man's heart. Still, I stayed with it, and now I'm drawing royalties on my swing-frame and gang-saw patents, and hold stock in several mills!"
This was, perhaps, a trifle egotistical; but then it was, or would have been in most other countries, somewhat of an achievement for one, who had commenced with the lowest and most brutal labor, to make himself patentee, manager and stockholder, while still a very young man; and Jimmy had met mail-boat officers who gave themselves a good many airs on the strength of possessing a refined taste in uniform tailoring and a prepossessing personality. Individually, he felt it was more reasonable to be satisfied with one's ability to invent and run a mill. Just then, however, the door opened, and another man came in. He wore a blue shirt which fell open at the neck for want of buttons, and jean trousers which were very old and torn, and there were smears of oil and paint on his hands.
"I came to ask when you are going to saw me those fir frames, Jordan?" he said.
"Take a cigar!" said the American, and turned to Jimmy, with a grin. "Ever heard of Thoreau who lived at Walden Pond?"
Jimmy had, as it happened, read his book on board one of the mail-boats, though he scarcely would have fancied that Jordan had done so. The latter indicated the newcomer with a wave of his hand.
"Well," he said, "that's another of them, though he lives in a yacht and his name is Valentine. There are men – and they're not all cranks – who seem to think the life most other people lead isn't good enough for them."
Valentine, who looked very different from any of the yachtsmen Jimmy had seen on the English coast or elsewhere, sat down, and the latter was a trifle astonished when he said, "That wasn't why Thoreau went to Walden. He was an abolitionist, and made Walden a station for running niggers into Canada. Anyway, why does a man want to go into business and slave to pile up money, when he can have the greatest thing in nature for nothing at all?"
"What's that?" asked Jordan. "It's not the young woman one may take a fancy to; she usually costs a good deal."
Valentine laughed softly, and looked hard at Jimmy. "Though you earn your bread upon it, I think you know. There's nothing in this little world to compare with the sea!"
Then he stretched out his hand for the cigar-box. "I'll take two. It's the brand your directors use. Saw those frames to-morrow, or I'll come round and raise the roof for you. In the meanwhile, if you'll come along, Mr. Wheelock, I'll show you my boat."
Jordan grinned at Jimmy. "Better go along. You'll have to see her, anyway."
The two went out and left him, and as they paddled down the Inlet past the endless ranks of climbing pines whose aromatic odors were heavy in the dew-chilled air, Valentine glanced at his companion.
"This world was made good, except the cities; but nothing was made much better than that smell," he said. "It doesn't put unrest and longing into you like the smell of the sea-grass and the sting of the powdered spray; there's tranquillity and sound sleep in it; and, too, it gives one comprehension."
This was not what Jimmy would have expected from his companion, but he understood. In that deep rift of the ranges where no wild wind ever entered, and the sunlight called up clean, healing savors from the solemn pines, one could realize that there was a beneficent purpose behind the scheme of things, and that the world was good. Still, Jimmy usually kept any fancies of that kind to himself.
"The introduction seems familiar," he said. "I almost fancy I have heard something very much like it before."
"It's quite likely;" and Valentine laughed. "It has been said of several other things, including tobacco."
"You come here often?"
"Usually to refit. It's quiet and clean; and I like Jordan. He's a man with a mind, and straight, so far as it can be expected of any one in business."
"You don't follow any?"
Valentine smiled somewhat curiously. "I'm a pariah. I take toll of the deer and halibut instead of my fellow-men – that is, except when I charter the boat now and then. Still, it's only when money is scarce that I shoot and fish for the market. You see, I'm not in any sense of the word a yachtsman. I live at sea because I like it. The boat makes an economical home."
Jimmy felt that this was as much as he was intended to know, and he asked no more questions until presently they slid alongside a powerful cutter of some thirty tons, which lay moored with an anchor outshore and a breast-rope to the pines. Valentine took him into the little plainly fitted forecastle where he lived, and afterwards led him through the ornate saloon and white-enameled after-cabin. "That," he said, as they went up the ladder again, "is for the charterers, though I'm by no means sure the next lot will be pleased. It's a little difficult to get the smell of halibut out of her."
"You sail her alone?" asked Jimmy, who sat down on the skylights.
"Generally. Wages run high in this country. But I have to ship a man or two when any of the city people charter her. She's not so much of a handful when you get used to her."
He did not seem to expect Jimmy to talk, and they sat silent a while, the latter smoking thoughtfully as he looked about him. It was growing dark, and the lower pines were wrapped in fleecy mist, out of which a rigid branch rose raggedly here and there; but the heights of the range still cut hard and sharp against the cold blueness of the evening sky. Westward, a soft smoky glow burned faintly behind a great hill shoulder, and, for no sound reached them from the little settlement, it was impressively still.
Jimmy felt the vague influence of the country creeping over him. It is a land of wild grandeur, empty for the most part as yet, though it is rich in coal and iron as well as in gold and silver, and its hillsides are draped with forests whose timber would supply the world. It is also, as he seemed to feel, for the bold man, a land of possibilities. Enterprise, and even labor, is worth a good deal there; and Jimmy felt that if his heart were stout enough such a land might have more to offer him than a mate's berth on a heavily mortgaged schooner. Jordan evidently believed that one might achieve affluence by making the requisite effort, and Jimmy considered himself equally as capable as the sawmiller. Still, as he sat there in the dewy stillness breathing the clean scent of the pines, he realized that there was also something to be said for his companion's attitude. He asked and strove for nothing, but was content to live and enjoy what was so bountifully given him. Perhaps Valentine guessed where his thoughts were leading him, for once more he broke into his little soft laugh.
"One is as well off here as in the cities," he said. "Are you one of the hustlers like Jordan yonder?"
Though it was growing dark, Jimmy, disregarding the question, looked at him thoughtfully. "Do you know? Have you tried the other thing?"
"Oh, yes!" said Valentine, with a wry smile in his eyes. "I have tried them both, and that is one reason why I'm here. You haven't answered me; though, after all, I guess it's an unnecessary question."
This time Jimmy laughed. "I don't know that I have any option. It seems that a life of the kind Jordan leads will be forced on me. There are circumstances in which one's inclinations don't count for very much, you see. Anyway, it's almost time I turned in; I've been loading lumber since early morning."
Valentine got into the dory, and paddled him to the little wharf where the Tyee was lying.
"Come off again, and any time you see the boat along the coast I'll expect you on board," he said.
Jimmy climbed on board the schooner, and, descending to the little cabin, found his father lying propped up in his bunk. His eyes were more watery than ever, and when he spoke his voice was a trifle thick. The light of the fish-oil lamp projected his worn face blackly in gaunt profile on the bulkhead.
"Been talking to Jordan? He's a man to make friends with," he said. "Guess he and the other young ones with blood and grit in them are going to set their mark on this country. It mayn't count against you if you leave the mail-boats, Jimmy. Manhood stands first here, though my day has gone. Perhaps I fooled my chances, or didn't see them when they came. But you're going to be smarter; you have red blood and brains."
Jimmy said nothing. He had noticed already that Tom Wheelock had fallen into a habit of inconsequent rambling, and there were times when it pained him to listen. The old man, who did not seem to notice his silence, went on:
"You got them from your mother, as Eleanor has done. She died – and I'm often thankful – before the bad days came. Guess it would break her heart if she could see her husband now, a played-out, broken man, with a bond on which he can't pay the interest on his last vessel. Maybe things would have been different if she had lived. I was never smart at business – I am a sailorman – and it was your mother who showed me how to build the fleet up and save the money to buy each new boat. When you went to sea we had four of them. Now they're all gone. The last was the Fish-hawk, and she lies in six fathoms where she drove across the Qualyclot reef with her starboard bilge ground in."