CHAPTER XIV.
AGATHA PROVES OBDURATE.
It was two days later when Agatha, coming back from a stroll across the prairie with the two little girls, found Mrs. Hastings awaiting her at the homestead door.
"I'll take the kiddies. Harry Wyllard's here, and he seems quite anxious to see you, though I don't know what he wants," she said.
She flashed a searching glance at the girl, whose face, however, remained expressionless. It was, at least, not often that Agatha's composure broke down.
"Anyway," she added, "you had better go in. Allen has been arguing with him the last half-hour, and can't get any sense into him. It seems to me the man's crazy; but he might, perhaps, listen to you."
"I think that's scarcely likely," said Agatha quietly.
Her companion made a sign of impatience. "Then," she said, "it's a pity. Anyway, if he speaks to you about his project you can tell him that it's altogether unreasonable."
She drew aside, and Agatha walked into the room in which she had had one painful interview with Gregory. Wyllard, who was sitting there, rose as she came in, and half-consciously she contrasted him with her lover. Then what Mrs. Hastings had once predicted came about, for Gregory did not bear that comparison favourably. Indeed, it seemed to her that he grew coarser and meaner in person and character. Then she turned to Wyllard, who stood quietly watching her.
"Nellie Hastings or her husband has been telling you what they think of my idea?" he said.
Agatha admitted it. "Yes," she said. "Their opinion evidently hasn't much weight with you."
"I wouldn't go quite so far as that, but you might have gone a little further than you did. Haven't you a message for me?" Then he smiled before he added, "You were sent to denounce my folly—and you can't do it. If you trusted your own impulses you would give me your benediction instead."
Agatha, who was troubled with a sense of regret, noticed that there was a suggestive wistfulness in his face.
"No," she said slowly, "I can't denounce it. For one reason, I have no right of any kind to force my views on you."
"You told Nellie Hastings that?"
It seemed an unwarranted question, but the girl admitted it candidly.
"In one sense I did. I suggested that there was no reason why you should listen to me."
Wyllard smiled again. "Nellie and her husband are good friends of mine, but sometimes our friends are a little too officious. Anyway, it doesn't count. If you had had that right, you would have told me to go."
Agatha felt the warm blood rise to her cheeks. It seemed to her that he had paid her a great and sincere compliment in taking it for granted that if she had loved him she would still have bidden him undertake his perilous duty.
"Ah," she said, "I don't know. Perhaps I should not have been brave enough."
It was not a judicious answer. She quite realised that, but she felt that she must speak with unhesitating candour.
"After all," she added, "can you be quite sure that this thing is your duty?"
The man laughed in a rather grim fashion. "No," he said, "I can't. In fact, when I sit down to think I can see at least a dozen reasons why it doesn't concern me. In a case of this kind that's always easy. It's just borne in upon me—I don't know how—that I have to go."
Agatha crossed to the window and sat down. She knew there was more to follow, and it seemed advisable to secure whatever there might be in her favour in a pose of physical ease. Besides, where she stood the glare of light flung back by the white and dusty grass outside struck full upon her face, and she did not want the man to read every varying expression. He leaned upon a chair-back looking at her gravely.
"Well," he said, "we'll go on a little further. It seems better that I should make what's in my mind quite clear to you. You see, I and Captain Dampier start in a week."
Agatha was certainly conscious of a thrill of dismay, but the man proceeded quietly. "We may be back before the winter, but it's also quite likely that we may be ice-nipped before our work is through, and in that case it would be a year at least before we reach Vancouver. In fact, there's a certain probability that all of us may leave our bones up there. Now, there's a thing I must ask you. Is it only a passing trouble that stands between you and Gregory? Are you still fond of him?"
The girl felt her heart beating unpleasantly fast. It would have been a relief to assure herself that she was as fond of Gregory as she had been, but she could not do it.
"That," she said, "is a point on which I cannot answer you."
"We'll let it go at that. The fact that Gregory sent me over for you implied a certain obligation. How far events have cleared me of it I don't know—and you don't seem willing to tell me. But I fancy there is now less cause than there was for me to thrust my own wishes into the background, and, as I start in another week, the situation has forced my hand. I can't wait as I had meant to do, and it would be a vast relief to know that I had made your future safer than it is before I go. Will you marry me at the settlement the morning I start?"
Half-conscious, as she was, of the unselfishness which had prompted this suggestion, Agatha turned and faced him in hot anger.
"Can you suppose for a moment that I would agree to that?" she asked.
"Wait," said the man gravely. "Try to look at it quietly. First of all, I want you. You know that—though you have never shown me any tenderness, you can't doubt it—but I can't stay to win your liking. I must go away. Then, as things stand, your future is uncertain; and as my wife it would, at least, be safer. However badly the man I leave in charge of the Range may manage there would be something saved out of the wreck, and I would like to make that something yours. As I said, I may be away a year, perhaps eighteen months, and I may never come back. If I don't, the fact that you would bear my name could cause you no great trouble. It would lay no restraint on you in any way."
Agatha looked him steadily in the eyes, and spoke as she felt. "We can't contemplate your not coming back. It's unthinkable."
"Thank you," said Wyllard, still with the grave quietness she wondered at. "Then I'm not sure that my turning up again would greatly complicate the thing. There would, at least, be one way out of the difficulty. You wouldn't find the situation intolerable if I could make you fond of me."
The girl broke into a little, high-strung laugh that had a tinge of bitterness in it.
"Oh," she said, "aren't you taking too much for granted? Am I really to believe you are making this fantastic offer seriously? Do you suppose I would marry you—for your possessions?"
"It sounds bloodless? Perhaps it is in one way, but you wouldn't always find me that. Just now, because my hand is forced, I am only anticipating things. If I live, you will some day have to choose between me and Gregory. In this case he must hold his own if he can."
"Against what you have offered me?" She flung the question at him.
He looked at her with his face set and the signs of restraint very plain on it.
"I expect I deserved that. I wanted to make you safe. It's the most pressing difficulty."
The bitterness was still in the girl's eyes.
"So far as I am concerned, you seem to believe it is the only one." Then her anger seemed to carry her away. "Oh," she said, "do you imagine that an offer of the kind you have made me, made as you have made it, would lead anyone to love you?"
Wyllard smiled. "When I first saw your picture, and when I saw you afterwards, I loved your gracious quietness. Now you seem to have got rid of it, I love you better as you are. There is, however, one thing I must ask again, and it's your clear duty to tell me. Are you fonder of Gregory than you feel you ever could be of me?"
Agatha's eyes fell. She felt she could not look at him just then, nor could she answer his question honestly as she almost wished to.
"At least, I am bound to him until he releases me."
"Ah," said Wyllard, "that is what I was most afraid of. All along it hampered me, and in it you have the reason for my bloodlessness. It is another reason why I should go away."
"For fear that you should tempt me from my duty?"
The man's expression changed, and there crept into his eyes a gleam of the passion that she knew he was capable of.
"My dear," he said, "I seem to know that I could make you break faith with that man. You belong to me. For three years you have been everywhere with me, but we will let that go. I must go away, and Gregory will have a clear field, but the probability is in favour of me coming back again, and then, if he has failed to make the most of it, I'll enforce my claim."
He turned and seized one of her hands, holding it strongly against her will.
"That is my last word. At least, you will let me think that when I go up yonder into the mists and snow I shall take your good wishes for my success away with me."
She lifted her face, which was flushed, and once more looked him steadily in the eyes.
"They are yours, most fervently," she said. "It would be intolerable that you should fail."
He smiled very gravely, and let her hand fall. "After all," he said, "one can only do what one can."
Then he went out without another glance at her, and not long afterwards Mrs. Hastings, who was endued with a reasonable measure of curiosity, found occasion to enter the room.
"You have said something to trouble Harry?" she began.
Agatha contrived to smile. "I'm not sure he's greatly troubled. In any case, I told him I would not marry him—for the second time."
"He has given up his crazy notion, then?"
"He never suggested doing that."
Mrs. Hastings made a little sign of compassionate astonishment.
"Oh," she said, "he's mad."
"I believe I told him he was bloodless. At least, that was how he interpreted what I said."
Mrs. Hastings laughed. "Harry Wyllard bloodless! My dear, can't you see that the restraint he now and then practises is the sign of a tremendous vitality? Still, the man's mad. Did he tell you that he means to leave Gregory in charge of Willow Range?"
Agatha was certainly astonished at this, but Mrs. Hastings nodded. "It's a fact," she said. "He asked him to meet him here to save time, and"—she turned towards the window—"there's his waggon now."
She moved towards the door, and then turned again. "Is there any blood—red blood we will call it—or even common-sense in you? You could have kept that man here if you had wanted."
"No," said Agatha, "I don't think I could. I'm not even sure that if I'd had the right I would have done it. He recognised that."
Mrs. Hastings looked at her very curiously. "Then," she said, "you have either a somewhat extraordinary character, or are in love with him in a way that is beyond most of us. In any case, I can't help feeling that you will be sorry for what you have done some day."
Next moment the door closed with a bang, and Agatha was left alone endeavouring to analyse her sensations during her interview with Wyllard, which was difficult, for they had been confused and fragmentary. She had certainly been angry with him, but the cause for this was much less apparent, though there were one or two half-sufficient explanations. For one thing, it was almost intolerable to feel that he had evidently taken it for granted that the greater security she would enjoy as his wife would appeal to her, though there was a certain satisfaction in the reflection that to leave her dependent upon Mrs. Hastings caused him concern. For another thing, his reserve had been at least perplexing, and it was borne in upon her that it would have cost her a more determined effort to withstand him had he spoken with fire and passion. The restraint, however, had been evident, and he could not have practised it unless there had been something to hold in check; and then it became apparent that it was more important to ascertain his motives than her own.
If the man had been fervently in love with her, why had he not insisted on that fact, she asked. Could it have been because he had with the fantastic generosity, which he was evidently capable of, been willing to leave his comrade unhandicapped with an open field? That, however, seemed too much to expect from any man. Then there was the other explanation that he preferred to leave the choice wholly to her lest he should tempt her too strongly to break faith with Gregory, which brought the blood to her face as it had done already, since it suggested that he fancied he had only to urge her sufficiently and she would yield. There was, it seemed, no satisfactory explanation at all. Only the fact remained that he had made her a somewhat dispassionate offer of marriage, and had left her to decide, which she had done.
As it happened, Wyllard could not just then, at least, have made the matter very much clearer. Shrewdly practical, as he was, in some respects, there were times when he acted blindly, merely doing without reasoning what he sub-consciously felt was right. This had more than once involved him in disaster, but it is, perhaps, fortunate that there are others like him, for, after all, in the long run the failures of such men now and then prove better than the dictates of calculating wisdom.
In any case, Agatha found a momentary relief from her thoughts as she watched Hawtrey get down from his waggon and approach the house. The change in him was plainer than it had ever been, which may have been because she had now a standard of comparison. He was tall and well-favoured, and he moved with a jaunty and yet not ungraceful swing; but it almost seemed to her that this was merely the result of an empty self-sufficiency. There was, she felt, no force behind it which when the strain came would prove that jaunty bearing warranted. He was smiling, and for some reason his smile appeared a trifle inane, while there was certainly a hint of sensuousness in his face. It suggested that the man might sink into self-indulgent coarseness. She, however, remembered that she was still pledged to him, and determinedly brushed these thoughts aside, until she heard his footsteps inside the house, when she became possessed of a burning curiosity as to what Wyllard had to say to him, which, however, remained unsatisfied.
In the meanwhile, Hawtrey entered a room where Wyllard sat awaiting him with a paper in his hand.
"I asked you to drive over here because it would save time," he said. "I have to go in to the railroad at once. Here's a draft of the scheme I suggested. You had better tell me if there's anything you're not quite satisfied with."
He threw the paper on the table, and Hawtrey, who took it up, perused it.
"I'm to farm and generally manage the Range on your behalf," he said. "My percentage to be deducted after harvest. I'm empowered to sell out grain or horses as appears advisable, and to have the use of teams and implements for my own place when occasion requires it."
He looked up. "I've no fault to find with the thing, Harry. It's generous."
"Then you had better sign it, and we'll get Hastings to witness it in a minute or two. In the meanwhile there's a thing I have to ask you. How do you stand in regard to Miss Ismay?"
Hawtrey pushed his chair back noisily. "That," he said, "is a subject on which I'm naturally not disposed to give you any information. How does it concern you?
"In this way. Believing that your engagement must be broken off I asked Miss Ismay to marry me."
Hawtrey was clearly startled, but in a moment or two he smiled.
"Of course," he said, "she wouldn't. As a matter of fact, our engagement isn't broken off. It's merely extended."
They looked at each other in silence for a moment or two, and there was a curious hardness in Wyllard's eyes. Then Hawtrey spoke again.
"In view of what you have just told me why did you want to put me of all people in charge of the Range?" he said.
"I'll be candid," said Wyllard. "For one thing, you held on when I was slipping off the trestle that day in British Columbia. For another, you'll make nothing of your own holding, and if you run the Range as it ought to be run it will put a good many dollars into your pocket, besides relieving me of a big anxiety. If you're to marry Miss Ismay, I'd sooner she was made reasonably comfortable."
Hawtrey looked up with a flush in his face.
"Harry," he said, "this is extravagantly generous."
"Wait," said Wyllard; "there's a little more to be said. I can't be back before the frost, and I may be away eighteen months. While I am away you will have a clear field—and you must make the most of it. If you are not married when I come back I shall ask Miss Ismay again. Now"—and he glanced at his comrade steadily—"does this stand in the way of your going on with the arrangement we have arrived at?"
There was a rather tense silence for a moment or two, and then Hawtrey broke it.
"No," he said; "after all, there is no reason why it should do so. It has no practical bearing upon the other question."
Wyllard rose. "Well," he said, "if you will call Allen Hastings in we'll get this thing fixed up."
The document was duly signed, and a few minutes later Wyllard drove away; but Mrs. Hastings contrived to have a few words with Hawtrey before he did the same.
"I've no doubt that Harry took you into his confidence on a certain point," she said.
"Yes," admitted Hawtrey; "he did. I was a little astonished, besides feeling rather sorry for him. There is, however, reason to believe that he'll soon get over it."
"You feel sure of that?" and Mrs. Hastings smiled.
"Isn't it evident? If he had cared much about her he certainly wouldn't have gone away."
"You mean you wouldn't?"
"No," said Hawtrey, "there's no doubt of that."
His companion smiled again. "Well," she said drily, "I would like to think you were right about Harry; it would be a relief to me."
Hawtrey, who said nothing further, presently drove away, and soon after he did so Agatha approached Mrs. Hastings.
"There's something I must ask you," she said. "Has Gregory consented to take charge of Wyllard's farm?"
"He has," said her companion in her dryest tone.
Agatha's face flushed, and there was a flash in her eyes.
"Oh," she said, "it's almost insufferable!"
Then she turned and left Mrs. Hastings without another word.
She only saw Wyllard once again, and that was when he called at the homestead early one morning. He got down from the waggon where Dampier sat, and shook hands with her and Allen and Mrs. Hastings. Very few words were spoken, and she could not remember what she said, but when he swung himself up again and the waggon jolted away into the white prairie she went back to the house with her heart beating unpleasantly fast and a very curious feeling of depression.
CHAPTER XV.
THE BEACH.
For a fortnight after they reached Vancouver Wyllard and Dampier were very busy. They had various difficulties to contend with, for while they would have preferred to slip away to sea as quietly as possible a British vessel's movements are fenced about with many formalities, and they did not wish to ship a white man who could be dispensed with. Wyllard fancied there were sailormen and sealers in Vancouver and down Puget Sound who would have gone with him, but there was a certain probability of their discussing their exploits afterwards in the saloons ashore, which was about the last thing that he desired. It appeared essential that he should avoid notoriety as much as possible.
He had further trouble about obtaining provisions and general necessaries, for considerably more attention than the free-lance sealers cared about was being bestowed upon the North just then, and he did not desire to rouse the curiosity of the dealers as to why he was filling his lazaret up with Arctic stores. He obviated that difficulty by dividing his orders among the whole of them, and buying as little as possible. Dampier, however, proved an adept at the difficult business, and eventually the schooner Selache crept out from the Narrows at dusk one evening under all plain sail, painted a pale green, with her big main-boom raking at least a fathom beyond her taffrail. There were then Wyllard, Dampier, and two other white men on board her. A week later she sailed into a deep, rock-walled inlet on the western coast of Vancouver Island with a settlement at the top of it, where the storekeeper made no difficulty about selling Wyllard all his flour and canned goods at higher figures than there was any probability of his obtaining from the local ranchers.
Then the Selache slid down the inlet again, and lay for several days in a forest-shrouded arm near the mouth of it, while, when she once more dropped her anchor off a Siwash rancherie far up on the wild West coast, she was painted a dingy grey, and her sawn-off boom just topped her stern. One does not want a great main-boom in the northern seas, and a big mainsail needs men to handle it. Wyllard, however, shipped several sea-bred Indians who had made wonderful perilous voyages on the trail of the seal and halibut in open canoes. All of them had, as it happened, also sailed in sealing schooners. Their comrades sold him furs, and filled part of the hold up with redwood billets and bark for the stove, for he had not considered it advisable to load too much Wellington coal. Then he pushed out into the waste Pacific, and when once a beautiful big white mail boat reeled by him, driving with streaming bows into an easterly gale, he sent back a message to his friends upon the prairie. It duly reached them, for some three weeks afterwards Allen Hastings, opening The Colonist, which he had ordered from Victoria as soon as Wyllard sailed, read out to his wife and Agatha a paragraph in the shipping news:
"Empress of India, from Yokohama, reports having passed small grey British schooner, flying——" There followed several code letters, the latitude and longitude, and a line apparently by the water-front reporter: "No schooner belonging to this city allotted the signal in question."
Hastings smiled as he laid down the paper. "No," he said, "that signal's Wyllard's private code. Agatha, won't you reach me down my map of the Pacific? It's just behind you."
Then he looked round, and noticed the significant smile in his wife's eyes, for the girl had already turned towards the shelf where he kept the lately purchased map.
The easterly gale, however, did not last, for the wind came out of the west and north, and sank to foggy calms when it did not blow wickedly hard. This meant that the Selache's course was all to windward, and though they drove her at it unmercifully under reefed boom-foresail, main trysail, and a streaming jib or two, with the brine going over her solid forward, she had made little when each arduous day was done. They were drenched to the skin continuously, and lashed by stinging spray. Cooking except of the crudest kind was out of the question, and sleep would have been impossible to any but worn-out sailormen. Even then, they were often roused in the blackness of the night, when she lay with her lee rail under, and would not lift it out, to get another reef in, or crawl out on plunging bowsprit washed by icy seas to haul a burst jib down. It was even more trying, glad as they were of the respite in some respects, to lie rolling wildly on the big smooth undulations that hove out of the windless calm, while everything in her banged to and fro, and when the breeze came screaming through the fog or rain they sprang to make sail again.
Fate seemed dead against them, as it was certain that, if their purpose was suspected, the hand of every white man they might come across would be; but they held on over leagues of empty ocean while the season wore away, until once more the wind freshened easterly, and they ran for a week under boom-foresail and a jib, with the big grey combers curling as they foamed by high above her rail. Then the wind fell, and Dampier, who got an observation, armed his deep-sea lead, and finding shells and shoal water came aft to talk to Wyllard with the strip of Dunton's chart.
Wyllard, who was clad in oilskins, stood, a shapeless figure, by the wheel, with his face darkened and roughened by cold and stinging brine. There was an open sore upon one of his elbows, and both his wrists were raw. Forward, a white man and two Siwash were standing about the windlass, and when the bows went up a dreary stretch of slate-grey sea opened up beyond them beneath the dripping jibs. Then the bows would go down again, and all that was visible was the fore-shortened slope of deck and the breast of the big undulation that hove itself up ahead. The Selache was carrying everything and lurching over the steep swell at some four knots an hour.
Dampier stopped near the wheel, and glanced at Wyllard's oilskins.
"You'll have to take them off. It's stuffed boots and those Indian seal-gut things or furs from now on," he said. "That leather cuff's chewing up your hand."
"We'll cut that out," said Wyllard; "it's not to the point. Can't you get on?"
Dampier grinned. "We're on soundings, and they and Dunton's longitude most agree. With this wind we should pick the beach up in the next two days. Next question is, where those men were?"
"Where they are," said Wyllard.
"If they've pushed on it's probably a different thing, though if they'd food yonder I don't quite see why they'd want to push on anywhere. It wouldn't be south, anyway. They'd run up against the Russians there."
"We've decided that already."
"I'm admitting it," said the skipper. "There's the other choice that they've gone up north. It's narrower across to Alaska there, and it's quite likely they might have a notion of looking out for one of the steam whalers. The Koriaks up yonder will have boats of some kind. If they're skin ones like those the Huskies have they might sledge them on the ice."
It was a suggestion that had been made several times already, but both the men realised that there was in all probability very little to warrant it. Wyllard had wasted no time endeavouring to learn what was known about the desolation on the western shore of the Behring Sea. He had bought a schooner and set out at once. It, however, appeared almost impossible to him that any three men could haul the skin boats and supplies they would need far over hummocky ice.
"The point is that we'll have to fix on some course in the next few days," added his companion. "Say we run in to make inquiries"—and a gleam of grim amusement crept into his eyes—"what are we going to find? A beach with a roaring surf on it, and if we get a boat through, a desolate, half-frozen swamp behind it. It's quite likely there are people in the country, Koriaks or Kamtchadales, but if there are they'll probably move up and down after what they get to eat like the Huskies do, and we can't hang on and wait for them. Most any time next month we'll have the ice closing in."
Wyllard said nothing for another minute, and as he stood with hands clenched on the wheel a little puff of bitter spray splashed upon his oilskins. They had been over it all often before, weighing conjecture after conjecture, and had found nothing in any that might serve to guide them. Now, when winter was close at hand, they had leagues of surf-swept beach to search for three men who might have perished twelve months earlier.
"We'll stand in until we pick up the beach," he said at length; "then if there's no sign of them we'll push north as long as we can find open water. Now if you'll call Charly I'll let up at the wheel."
Another white man walked aft, and Wyllard, entering the little stern cabin, the top of which rose some feet above the deck, sloughed off his wet oilskins and crawled, dressed as he was, into his bunk. Evening was closing in, and for awhile he lay blinking at the swinging lamp, and wondering what the end of that search would be. The Selache was a little fore and aft schooner of some ninety-odd tons, wholly unprotected against ice-chafe or nip, and he knew that prudence dictated their driving her south under every rag of canvas now. There was, however, the possibility of finding some sheltered inlet where she could lie out the winter, frozen in, and he had, at least, blind confidence in his men. The white men were sealers who had already borne the lash of snow-laden gales, the wash of icy seas, and tremendous labour at the oar, while the Indians had been born to an unending struggle with the waters. All of them had times and times again looked the King of Terrors squarely in the face. What was as much to the purpose, they had been promised a tempting bonus if the Selache came home successful.
While Wyllard pondered upon these things he went to sleep, and slept soundly, as he did the next night, though Dampier expected to raise the beach some time next morning. His expectation also proved warranted, and when Wyllard turned out it lay before them, a dingy smear on a slate-green sea that was cut off from it by a wavy line of livid whiteness, which he knew to be a fringe of spouting surf. It had cost him in several ways more than he cared to contemplate to reach that beach, and now there was nothing that could excite any feeling except shrinking in the dreary spectacle. There was little light in the heavy sky or on the sullen heave of sea; the air was raw, the schooner's decks were sloppy, and she rolled viciously as she crept shorewards with her mainsail peak eased down. What wind there was blew dead on-shore, which was not as he would have had it.
He heard the splash of the lead as he and the white man Charly made their breakfast in the little stern cabin. Then there was a clatter of blocks, and on coming out again he found the others swinging a boat over. Charly and he and two of the Indians dropped into her, and Dampier, who had hove the schooner to, looked down on them over her rail.
"If you knock the bottom out of her put a jacket on an oar, and I'll try to bring you off," he said. "If you don't signal I'll stand off and on with a thimble-header topsail over the mainsail. You'll start back right away if you see us haul it down. When she won't stand that there'll be more surf than you'll have any use for with the wind dead on the beach."
Wyllard made a sign of comprehension, and they slid away on the back of a long sea. Others rolled up behind them, cutting off the schooner's hull so that only her grey canvas showed above dim slopes of water, but there was no curl on any and the beach rose fast. It looked very forbidding with the spray-haze drifting over it, and the long wash of the Pacific weltering among its hammered stones, and when they drew a little nearer Wyllard stood up with the big sculling oar in his hand. There was no point to offer shelter, and in only one place could he see a strip of surf-lapped sand.
"It's a little softer than the boulders, anyway; we'll try it there," he said.
The oars dipped again, and in another minute or two the sea that came up behind them hove them high and broke into a little spout of foam. The next had a hissing crest, part of which splashed on board, and they went shorewards like a toboggan down an icy slide on the shoulders of the third. To keep her straight while it seethed about them was all that they could do, but it was also essentially necessary, and for a moment their hearts were in their mouths when it left them to sink with a dizzy swing into the hollow. Then they pulled desperately as another white-topped ridge came on astern, and went up with it amidst a chaotic frothing and splashing and a haze of spray. After that there was a shock and a crash, and they sprang out knee-deep and held fast to the boat while the foam boiled into her, floundering and stumbling over sliding sand. Still, before the next sea came in they had run her up beyond its reach, and there did not seem to be much the matter with her when they hove her over. Wyllard, however, looked back at the tumbling surf.
"Dampier was right about that topsail; it won't be quite as easy getting off," he said. "You'll stand by, Charly, and watch the schooner. If the surf gets steeper you can make some sign. I'll leave one of the Siwash on the rise yonder."
Then he walked up the beach, and stopped awhile on the crest of the low rise a mile or two behind it, gazing out at what seemed to be an empty desolation. There were willows in the hollow beneath him, and upon the slope a few little stunted trees, which he fancied resembled the juniper he had seen among the ranges of British Columbia, but he could see no sign of any kind of life. What was more portentous, the mossy sod he stood upon was frozen, and there were smears of snow among the straggling firs upon a rather higher ridge. Inland, the little breeze seemed to have fallen dead away, and there was an oppressive silence which the rumble of the surf accentuated.
He left an Indian on the rise, and going on with the other scrambled through a half-frozen swamp in the hollow; but when they came back hours afterwards as the narrow horizon was drawing further in they had found nothing to show that any man had ever entered that grim, silent land. The surf seemed a little smoother, and they reeled out through it with no more than a few inches of very cold water splashing about their boots, and pulled across a long stretch of darkening sea towards the rolling schooner.
Wyllard was a little weary, and more depressed, but it was not until he sat in the stern cabin with its cheerful twinkling stove and swinging lamp that he understood how he had shrunk from that forbidding wilderness. His consultation with Dampier, who came in by and bye, was very brief.
"We'll head north for a couple of days, and try again," he said.
He crawled into his berth early, and it was some time after midnight when he was awakened by being rudely flung out of it. That fact, and the slant of deck and sounds above, suggested that the schooner had been hove down by a sudden gale. He had, however, grown more or less accustomed to occurrences of this kind and to sleeping fully dressed, and in another moment or two he was out of the deck-house. Then a wind that seemed sharp as steel drove stinging flakes of snow into his face. It was very dark, but he fancied that the schooner's rail was in the sea, which was washing over her to weather, and that some of the others were struggling to get the mainsail off her. Then a man whom he supposed to be Charly ran into him.
"Better come for'ard. Got to haul outer jib down before it blows away," he said.
Wyllard staggered after him up to his knees in water, and made out by the mad banging that some of them had already cast the peak of the boom-foresail loose. Then he reached the windlass, and clutched it as a sea that took him to the waist frothed in over the weather rail. The bows lurched out of it viciously, hurling another icy flood back on him, and he could see a dim white chaos about and beneath them. Over it rose the black wedge of the jibs.
He did not want to get out along the bowsprit to stop one of them down. Indeed his whole physical nature shrank from it, but there are many things flesh and blood shrink from which must be faced at sea. Then he made out that a Siwash was fumbling at the down-haul made fast near his side, and when his companion's shadowy figure rose up against the whiteness of the foam he made a jump forward. Then he was on the bowsprit, lying upon it while he felt for the foot-rope slung beneath. He found it, and was cautiously lowering himself when the man in front of him called out harshly, and he saw a white sea range up ahead. It broke short over with a rush and roar, and he clung with hands and feet for his life as the schooner's dipping bows rammed the seething mass.
She went into it to the windlass. He was smothered in an icy flood that seemed bent on wrenching him from his hold, but that was only for a moment or two, and then he was swung, gasping and streaming with water, high above the sea again. It was bad enough merely to hold on, but that was a very small share of his task, for the big black sail that cut the higher darkness came rattling down its stay and fell upon him and his companion bodily. As it dropped the wind took hold of the folds of it and buffeted them cruelly. This was a thing he had once been accustomed to, but as he clutched at the canvas it seemed to him incredible that he had not already been flung off headlong from the reeling spar. Still, that banging, thrashing canvas must be mastered somehow, though it was snow-soaked and almost unyielding, and he clawed at it furiously with bleeding hands while twice the bowsprit raked a sea and dipped him waist-deep in. At length the other man flung him the end of the gasket, and they worked back carefully, leaving the sail lashed down, and scrambled aft to help the others who were making the big main-boom fast. When this was done Wyllard fell against Dampier and clutched at him.
"How's the wind?" he roared.
"North-east," said the skipper.
They could scarcely hear each other, though the schooner was lurching over it more easily now with shortened canvas, and Wyllard only made Dampier understand that he wished to speak to him by thrusting him towards the deck-house door. They went in together, and stood clutching at the table with the lamplight on their tense, wet faces and the brine that ran from them making pools upon the deck.
"It's hauled round," said the skipper, "the wrong way."
Wyllard made a savage gesture. "We've had it from the last quarter we wanted ever since we sailed, and we sailed nearly three months too late. We're too close in to the beach for you to heave her to?"
"A sure thing," said the other. "I was driving her to work off it with the sea getting up when the breeze burst on us. She put her rail right under, and we had to let go most everything before she'd pick it up. She's pointing somewhere north, jammed right up on the starboard tack just now, but I can't stand on."
This was evident to Wyllard, and he closed one hand tight. He wanted to stand on as long as possible before the ice closed in, but he realised that to do so would put the schooner ashore.
"Well?" he said sharply.
Dampier made a grimace. "I'm going out to heave her round. If we'd any sense in us we'd square off the boom then, and leg it away across the Pacific for Vancouver."
"In that case," said Wyllard, "somebody would lose his bonus."
Dampier swung round on him with a flash in his eyes.
"The bonus!" he said. "Who was it came for you with two dollars in his pocket after he'd bought his ticket from Vancouver?"
Wyllard smiled at him. "If you took that up the wrong way I'm sorry. She ought to work off on the port tack, and when we've open water to leeward you can heave her to. When it moderates we can pick up the beach again."
"That's just what I mean to do."
Then Dampier went out on deck, while Wyllard, flinging off his dripping clothing, crawled into his bunk and went quietly to sleep.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE FIRST ICE.
Daylight broke on a frothing sea, across which there scudded wisps of smoke-like drift and thin showers of snow, before they hove her to. Then, with two little wet rags of canvas set she lay almost head on to the big combers, and met their onslaught with a hove-up weather bow. Having little way upon her, she lurched over instead of ramming them, and though now and then one curled on board across her rail it was not often that there was much heavy water upon her slanted deck.
All round the narrow circle a leaden sky met the sea. To weather the combers were bitten into it in cleancut serrations, but to leeward the dim horizon was blurred by flying spray, save when the snow whirled down in thicker wisps and blotted it out altogether. It was bitterly cold, and the spray stung the skin like half-spent pellets from a gun. There was, however, only one man exposed to it in turn, and he had little to do but brace himself against the savage buffeting of the wind as he clutched the wheel. The Selache, for the most part, steered herself, lifting buoyantly while the froth came sluicing aft from her tilted bows, falling off a little with a vicious leeward roll when a comber bigger than usual smote her to weather, and coming up again streaming to meet the next. Sometimes she forged ahead in what is called at sea, by courtesy, a "smooth," and all the time shroud and stay to weather gave out tumultuous harmonies, and the slack of every rope to leeward blew out in unyielding curves.
In the meanwhile, three of the white men lay sleeping or smoking in the little cabin, which was partly raised above and partly sunk beneath the after-deck. It was a reasonably strong structure, but it worked, and sweated, as they say at sea, and the heat of the stove had further opened up the seams of it. Moisture dripped from the beams overhead, moisture trickled up and down the slanting deck, there were great globules of it on the bulk-heading, and everything, including the men's clothes and blankets, was wet. They lay in their bunks from necessity, because it was a somewhat laborious matter to sit, and said very little since it was difficult to hear anything amidst the cataclysm of elemental sound. Indeed, it became at length almost a relief to turn out into inky darkness or misty daylight dimmed by flying spray to take a trick at the jarring wheel.
For three days this continued, and then, when the gale broke and a little pale sunshine streamed down on the tumbling sea, changing the grey combers to flashing white and green, they gave her a double-reefed mainsail, part of the boom-foresail, and a jib or two, and thrashed her slowly back to the northwards on the starboard tack. Still, more than one of them glanced over the taffrail longingly as she gathered way. She was fast, and with a little driving and that breeze over her quarter she would bear them south towards warmth and ease at some two hundred miles a day, while the way they were going it would be a fight for every fathom with bitter, charging seas, and there lay ahead of them only cold and peril and toil incredible.
There are times at sea when human nature revolts from the strain the over-taxed body must bear, the leaden weariness of worn-out limbs, and the sub-conscious effort to retain warmth and vitality in spite of the ceaseless lashing of the icy gale. Then, as aching muscles grow lax, the nervous tension becomes more insupportable, unless, indeed, utter weariness breeds indifference to the personal peril each time the decks are swept by a frothing flood, or a slippery spar must be clung to with frost-numbed and often bleeding hands. That is, at least, on board the sailing ships where man must still, with almost brutal valour, pit all the feeble powers of flesh and blood against the forces of the elements.
They knew this, and it was to their credit that they obeyed when Dampier gave the word to put the helm up and trim the sheets over. Their leader, however, stood a little apart with a hard-set face, and he looked forward over the plunging bows, for he was troubled by a sense of responsibility such as he had not felt since he had, one night several years ago, asked for volunteers. He realised that an account of these men's lives might be demanded from him.
It was a fortnight later, and they had twice made a perilous landing without finding any sign of life on or behind the hammered beach, when they ran into the first of the ice. The grey day was almost over, and the long heave ran sluggishly after them faintly wrinkled here and there, when creeping through a belt of haze they came into sight of several blurrs of greyish white that swung with the dim, green swell. The Selache was slowly lurching over it with everything aloft to the topsails then. Dampier glanced at the ice disgustedly.
"Earlier than I expected," he said. "Anyway, it's a sure thing there's plenty more where that came from."
"Big patch away to starboard!" cried a man in the foremast shrouds.
Dampier turned to Wyllard. "What are you going to do?"
"What's most advisable?"
The skipper laughed grimly. "Well," he said, "that's quite simple. Get out of this, and head her south just as soon as we can, but I guess that's not quite what you mean."
"No," admitted Wyllard. "I meant for the next few hours or so. In a general way, we're still pushing on."
"Then I'm not worrying much about pushing her through. That ice is light and scattered, and as she's going it won't hurt her much if she plugs some in the dark. It's what we're going to do the next two weeks I'm not sure about. If there's ice we mayn't fetch the creek the chart shows where we'd figured on laying her up in. It's still most a hundred miles to the north of us. The other inlet I'd fixed on is way further south."
This brought them back to the difficulty they had grappled with at many a council. The men they were in search of might have gone either north or south; or they might, though this seemed less likely, have gone inland, if, indeed, any of them survived.
"If we only knew how they'd headed," said Wyllard quietly. "Still, right or not, I'm for pushing on."
Then Charly, who held the wheel, broke in.
"I guess it's north," he said. "They'd have no use for fetching up among the Russians, and there's nobody else until you get to Japan. No white men, any way. Besides, from the Behring Sea to the Kuriles is quite a long way."
"If you were dumped down ashore there, which way would you go?" Dampier asked.
"If I'd a wallet full of papers certifying me as a harmless traveller, it would be south just as hard as I could hit the trail. Guess I'd strike somebody out prospecting, or surveying, and they'd set me along to the Kuriles. Still, if I'd been sealing, I wouldn't head that way. No, sir. That's dead sure."
There was a reason for this certainty, right or wrong, in the minds of the sealermen. How many of the skins they brought home were obtained in open water where they could fish without molestation they alone knew; but they were regarded in certain quarters as poachers and outlaws, who deserved no mercy. They had their differences with the Americans who owned the Prbyloffs, but the latter, it was admitted, had bought the islands, and might reasonably be considered to have some claim upon the seals which frequented them. The free-lances bore their execrations and reprisals more or less resignedly, though that did not prevent them occasionally exchanging compliments with oar butts or sealing clubs, but the Muscovite was a grim, mysterious figure they feared and hated.
"Then you'd have tried up north?" Wyllard suggested.
"Sure," said the helmsman. "If I'd a boat and a rifle, and it was summer, I'd have pushed across for Alaska. You can eat birds and walrus, and a man might eat a fur-seal if he'd had nothing else for a week, though I've struck nothing that has more smell than the holluschack blubber. If it was winter, I'd have tried the ice. The Huskies make out on it for weeks together, and quite a few of the steam whaler men have trailed an odd hundred or two miles over it one time or another. They hadn't tents and dog-teams either."
Wyllard's face grew grave. He had naturally considered both courses, and had decided that they were out of the question. Seas do not freeze up solid, and that three men should transport a boat, supposing that they had one, over leagues of ice appeared impossible. An attempt to cross the narrow sea, which is either wrapped in mist or swept by sudden gales, in any open craft would clearly only result in disaster, but admitting that he felt that had he been in those men's place he would have headed north. There was one question which had all along remained unanswered, and that was how they had reached the coast from which they had sent their message.
"Anyway," he said, "we'll stand on, and run into the creek we've fixed on, if it's necessary."
In the meanwhile, dusk had closed down on them, and it had grown perceptibly colder. The haze crystallised on the rigging, the rail was white with rime, and the deck grew slippery, but they left everything on her to the topsails, and she crept on erratically through the darkness, avoiding the faint spectral glimmer of the scattered ice. The breeze abeam propelled her with gently leaning canvas at some four knots to the hour, and now and then Wyllard, who hung about the deck that night, fancied he could hear a thin, sharp crackle beneath the slowly lifting bows.
Next day the haze thickened, and there seemed to be more ice about, but the breeze was fresher, and there was, at least, no skin upon the ruffled sea. They took the topsails off her, and proceeded cautiously, with two men with logger's pikepoles forward, and another in the eyes of the foremast rigging. As it happened, they struck nothing, and when night came the Selache lay rolling in a heavy, portentous calm. Dampier and one or two of the others declared their certainty that there was ice near them, but, at least, they could not see it, though there was now no doubt about the crackling beneath the schooner's side. It was a somewhat anxious night for most of them, but a breeze that drove the haze aside got up with the sun, and Dampier expected to reach the creek before darkness fell.
He might have done it but for the glistening streak on the horizon, which presently crept in on them, and resolved itself into detached grey-white masses, with openings of various sizes in and out between them. The breeze was freshening, and the Selache going through it at some six knots, when Dampier came aft to Wyllard, who was standing rather grim in face at the wheel. There was a moderately wide opening in the floating barrier close ahead of him. The rest of the crew stood silent watching the skipper, for they were by this time more or less acquainted with Wyllard's temperament.
"You can't get through that," said Dampier, pointing to the ice.
Wyllard looked at him sourly, and the white men, at least, understood what he was feeling. So far, he had had everything against him—calm, and fog, and sudden gale—and now, when he was almost within sight of the end of the first stage of his journey, they had met the ice.
"You're sure of that?" he said.
Dampier smiled. "It would cost too much, or I'd let you try." He called to the man perched high in the foremast shrouds, and the answer came down:
"Packed right solid a couple of miles ahead."
Wyllard lifted one hand, and let it suddenly fall again.
"Lee, oh! We'll have her round," he said, and spun the wheel.
The rest of them breathed more easily as they jumped for the sheets, and with a great banging and thrashing of sailcloth she shot up to windward, and turned as on a pivot. Then, as she gathered way on the other tack, they glanced at their leader, for her bows were pointing to the south-east again. They felt that was not the way he was going.
In the meanwhile, Wyllard turned to. Dampier with a little wry smile.
"Baulked again!" he said. "It would have been a relief to have rammed her in. With this breeze we'd have picked that creek up in the next six hours."
"Sure!" said Dampier, who glanced at the swirling wake.
"Then, if we can't get through it we can work her round. Stand by to flatten all sheets in, boys."
They did it cheerfully, though they knew it meant a thrash to windward along the perilous edge of the ice, and, for the sea was getting up, she flung the spray all over her forward half as she smashed the growing combers with her bows. Soon the windlass was caked with glistening ice, and long spikes of it hung from her rail, while the slippery crystals gathered thick on deck. Then lumps and floes of ice detached themselves from the parent mass, and sailed out to meet her, crashing on one another, while it seemed to the men who watched him that Wyllard tried how closely he could shave them before he ran the schooner off with a vicious drag at the wheel. None of them, however, cared to say a word to him.
They brought her round when she had stretched out on the one tack a couple of miles, and standing in again close-hauled found the ice thicker than ever. Then she came round once more, and until the early dusk fell Wyllard stood at the jarring helm or high up in the forward shrouds. Then he called Dampier aside.
"We can't work along the edge in the dark?" he said.
"Well," said Dampier drily, "it wouldn't be wise. We could stand on as she's lying until half through the night, and then come round and pick up the ice again a little before sun-up."
Wyllard made a sign of acquiescence. "Then," he said, "don't call me until you're in sight of it. A day of this kind takes it out of one."
He moved aft heavily towards the deck-house, and Dampier watched him with a smile of comprehension, for he was a man who had also in his time made many fruitless efforts, and quietly faced defeat. After all, it is possible that when the final reckoning comes some failures will count.
For several hours the Selache stretched out close-hauled into what they supposed to be open water, and they certainly saw no ice. Then they hove her to, and when the wind fell light brought her round and crept back slowly upon the opposite tack. Wyllard had gone to sleep in the meanwhile, and daylight was just breaking when he next went out on deck. There was scarcely an air of wind, and the heavy calm seemed portentous and unnatural. The schooner lay lurching on a sluggish swell, with the frost wool thick on her rigging, and a belt of haze ahead of her. On the edge of it, the ice glimmered in the growing light, but in one or two places stretches of blue-grey water seemed to penetrate it, and Dampier, who strode aft when he saw Wyllard, said he fancied there must be an opening somewhere.
"By the thickness of it, that ice has formed some time, and as we've seen nothing but a skin it must have come from further north," he added. "It gathered up under a point or in a bay most likely, until a shift of wind broke it out, and the stream or breeze set it down this way. That seems to indicate that there can't be a great deal of it, but a few days' calm and frost would freeze it solid."
"Well?" said Wyllard impatiently.
"It lies between us and the inlet, and it's quite clear that we can't stay where we are. Once we got nipped, there'd probably be an end of her. We have got to get into that inlet at once or make for the other further south."
Wyllard smiled. "It all leads back to the same point. We must get through the ice. The one question is—how's it to be done?"
"With a working breeze I'd stand into the biggest opening, but as there's none we'll wait until it clears a little, and then send a boat in. The sun may bring the wind."
They made breakfast in the meanwhile, but the wind did not come, and it was some hours later when a pale coppery disc became visible and the haze grew thinner. Then they swung a boat out hastily, for it would not be very long before the light died away again, and two white men and an Indian dropped into her. They pulled across half a mile of sluggishly heaving water, crept up an opening, and presently vanished among the ice. Soon afterwards the low sun went out, and wisps of ragged cloud crept up from the westwards, while smears of vapour blurred the horizon, and the swell grew steeper. There was no wind at all, but blocks and canvas banged and thrashed furiously at every roll, until they lowered the mainsail and lashed its heavy boom to the big iron crutch astern. The boat remained invisible, but its crew had been given instructions to push on as far as possible if they found clear water, and Dampier, who did not seem uneasy about her, paced up and down the deck while the afternoon wore away.