Thrice Armed

He strove to divert his thoughts, and listened to the flow of language that rose through the open skylights from the Shasta's engine-room. Taken together with the pungent smell of burning grease and a certain harsh thumping, it suggested that things were not going well down there. Then, looking forward, he watched the black figure of the look-out on the forecastle cut sharp and clean against the pale gleaming of the western sky as the bows swung over the long heave with a rhythmic regularity, for the Shasta was drawing out into open water now. She was making eight knots, he fancied, with mastheads swaying athwart the stars, and a long smoke-trail that was a little more solid than the dusky blue transparency streaking the sea astern of her. Jimmy pulled out his pipe when a faint cold breeze fanned his cheek, and lighted it contentedly, for a steamboat travels fastest in smooth water when what moving air there is blows against her, and there was every sign of fine weather.

It lasted several days, and the Shasta stopped only twice at sea: once to cool a crank-pin, and again for a longer while because there was something wrong with her condenser. In due time she crept into a deep, mountain-walled inlet where the little white Sorata lay, and Jimmy gazed in astonishment when he saw the piled-up produce on the strip of shingle beach between still, green water and climbing forest. He was even more astonished when certain bronzed men in battered wide hats and soil-stained jean came off, and conveyed him almost by force to the rude banquet laid out in a little frame hotel. Hitherto they had hauled the few goods they put on the market rather more than eight leagues along an infamous trail which for a part of that distance led over a mountain range.

Jimmy feasted that day, for the banquet was repeated with very little variation three times over, and his last speech was very much to the purpose as well as characteristic of him.

"Boys," he said, "we've steam up, and in view of the freight we're charging you Wellington coal is dear. Besides, even to oblige you, I really couldn't eat anything more."

They paddled him off in state in a big Siwash canoe, and their shouts rang far across the silent pines when the little rusty Shasta crawled away into the evening mist; while long after it had hid her from their sight, Jimmy, standing on his bridge, heard the faint wail of the pipes. There was, as usual, a North Briton among them, and the wild music of another land of rock and pine and inlet six thousand miles away crept up the screw-torn wake in elfin fashion. Jimmy, at least, knew the burden of it: "Will ye no' come back again?"

His blood tingled a little as he listened. They had held out their hands to him, and made him one of them, and it was, he vaguely felt, a thing to be proud of, for there was a certain greatness in these simple, all-enduring men. They grappled with giant forests and rent stubborn rocks, clearing the way for thousands yet to come, with limbs that ached from the axe stroke and hands that bled upon the drill. They feared nothing, and looked for nothing except the prosperity which they would hardly share, but which would surely come; and all down the long Slope their kind are perfecting a manhood that is probably worth more than all the gold, silver, iron and wheat raised beneath the Beaver or the Stars.

It was the same at the next inlet, for that trip was very much of the nature of a triumphal procession, only that as yet the battle was not won; and when at last the Shasta turned her bows southward, she was full to the hatches and deep in the water. As it happened, she met a strong southwester, which piled the long Pacific heave upon the reefs to port in big foam-crested walls, and after the first twelve hours of it there was scarcely a dry inch on board her. She went into it with dipping forecastle that swung up again veiled in cataracts of white and green until her forefoot was clear, and, with complaining engines, made scarcely four knots an hour. There were inlets that offered her shelter, but hour by hour Jimmy, clinging, battered by flying spray, to his reeling bridge, drove her ahead. The time for making speeches, at which he did not shine, had gone, and it was now his business to keep the promise he had made the ranchers, that he would not lose an hour in conveying their produce to the market. That, at least, was a thing he could do, and, though his drenched limbs grew stiff and his eyesight dim, he did it with the dogged thoroughness of his kind, standing high in the stinging drift as he drove her, swept and streaming, at the tumbling seas. He, too, was one of the enduring toilers, and, like the invincible men with the axes who had recognized the stamp he bore, he found a certain grim pleasure in the conflict.

It was toward dusk on the second evening when they steamed into sight of a little schooner, which showed as a gray smear of slanted canvas scarcely distinguishable from the crag a couple of miles to lee of her. Jimmy wondered what she was doing there in that weather with only one jib and a reefed boom foresail set, until his glasses showed him that her mainmast was broken off. That made the thing clearer, and in case more should be wanted, a flag fluttered aloft and blew out half-way up her foremast upside down. It was an appeal that is very seldom made in vain at sea, and meant in that particular case that she would be ashore in an hour or two unless somebody towed her off.

Jimmy closed his glasses with a snap, and hailing a very wet seaman sent him for the engineer. The latter climbed to the bridge, and nodded when he glanced at the vessel.

"Well," he said, "you'll have to take them off. She's not going to claw off shore without her mainsail. There would be a little money in the thing if we could tow her, but we can't. I'm taking steep chances of bringing the engines down about my head by shoving her into it as I'm doing."

As though to give point to the speech, the Shasta flung her stern high just then, and shook in every plate as with a frantic clanging the engines ran away. Then she put her bows in, and dim crag and wallowing schooner were blotted out by a cloud of spray.

"We have got to try," said Jimmy quietly. "There's a point that would give us shelter twenty miles away."

"Twenty miles!" and the engineer, from whose blackened singlet the water streamed, laughed scornfully. "It's 'bout as likely we'd tow her to Honolulu. Still, I guess you're skipper."

Jimmy nodded. He had not troubled to impress the fact upon his crew, but he invariably acted on it. "You had better raise a little more steam," he said; "it is very likely that we'll want it."

Then, as the dripping engineer vanished from the bridge, he seized the whistle lanyard, and signed to the man behind him who gripped the wheel. A deep blast rent the turmoil of the sea, and the Shasta, swinging around a trifle, rolled away to the rescue. It was some twenty minutes later when she stopped, and lay plunging head to sea with the little wallowing schooner close to lee of her. The light was going, but Jimmy could see a shapeless figure that clung to her rail gesticulating with flung-up arm. The wreck of a boat, apparently smashed by the falling mast, lay across her hatch, and there was another half-seen man at her wheel. Jimmy stood still for a few moments with his hand on the telegraph, and he was glad to remember that there were several former sealing-schooner hands among his crew, for what they do not know about boat-work is worth no man's learning.

He let the Shasta swing a little to give them a lee on one side of her, and while the sea smote and spouted in green cataracts across her weather-rail they swung a boat over, and two men, one of whom was a Siwash, dropped into her. That was enough to steer her while she blew to windward, and Jimmy dared risk no more. They got her away, apparently undamaged, and he sent the Shasta slowly ahead when she plunged over a seatop veiled in a cloud of spray. It would be beyond the power of flesh and blood to pull that boat back, and the Shasta swung in a wide half-circle to leeward of the schooner. Her crew had evidently tried to heave her to, but without her after-canvas she had fallen off again, and was forging ahead with the Shasta's boat smothered in foam beneath her rail. She was going to leeward bodily, and Jimmy fancied she was about a mile nearer the crag than when he had first seen her. It was evident to everybody that he had no time to lose.

He shouted with arm flung up, and, though it was doubtful whether anybody heard him, the schooner's boom foresail came thrashing down, and two men who leapt upon her rail fell into the boat. Then he thrust down his telegraph, and, as the Shasta forged by, the boat drove down on her. She struck the steamer's hove-up side with a crash that stove several strakes of planking in, and men jumped for the flung-down lines as she filled. They scrambled up them, four in all, and, for one of them had hooked on the davit falls, the Shasta's winch banged and rattled as they hove the boat in with the water streaming out through her shattered side at every roll. The men had, however, brought a rope with them, and the winch next hove the schooner's stoutest hawser off. It was made fast, and rose splashing from the sea when Jimmy touched his telegraph again, while, when at last the schooner fell into line astern, a very wet man clambered to the bridge.

"Are you fit to pull her out?" he asked.

"I don't know," said Jimmy; "I'm going to try. How did you get so far inshore, and have you left anybody to steer her?"

The man made a vague gesture. "Mainmast went beneath the hounds. She's been driving to leeward since, and she'd have been ashore in another hour if we hadn't fallen in with you. The old man's at her wheel. Built her himself 'most fifteen years ago, and nothing would shift him out of her."

Jimmy glanced astern, and for a few moments saw a gray face of rock loom out of the haze with the sea spouting dimly white at its feet. Then a thicker fold of vapor rolled about it, and the daylight faded suddenly. He could scarcely see the schooner lurching along behind them with jib still set, though the sail thrashed now and then. Indeed, his eyes were growing very heavy, and he realized that after forty-eight hours' continuous watching he could not keep himself awake much longer. A simple calculation showed him that it would be daylight again before he could put his helm up and run for shelter, when it would be imperatively necessary for him to be on his bridge; and calling his Scandinavian mate, he left the Shasta in his charge.

"Keep her going as she's heading now," he said. "You'll see I've headed her up a few points to allow for the leeward drag of the tow. You can call me in a couple of hours, or earlier if there's any change in the weather."

He clawed his way down from the bridge to the little room beneath it, and shed only his streaming oilskins before he flung himself into his bunk. He was asleep in two or three minutes, and slept soundly while the water oozed from his wet garments, until he was roused by a shouting. Then his door was flung open, and a man thrust his head in.

"Mr. Lindstrom figures you'd better get up," he said. "The tow has parted her hawser, and gone adrift."

Jimmy was out of his bunk in a moment, and in a few more had scrambled to his bridge. Lindstrom, the Scandinavian, shouted something he did not hear, but that did not very much matter, for the one question was, where was the schooner, and Jimmy was tolerably certain that nobody knew. His light had been burning, and for the first few moments he could see nothing but blackness, out of which there drove continuous showers of stinging spray. Then he made out the filmy cloud it sprang from at the Shasta's bows, and swept his gaze aloft toward the pale silver streak above her mastheads, which showed where the half-moon might come through. As he did so, the Scandinavian gripped his shoulder, and he saw a red twinkle widen into a wind-blown flame low down upon the sea. Now he could, at least, locate the tow.

"Did you get a sight of the beach? How far were we off?" he shouted.

"A low point," said Lindstrom, "which I do not know. One mile, I guess it, and we head her out more off shore."

Jimmy was a trifle startled. Though the water is deep along that coast, a mile leaves very small margin for contingencies, and he fancied that the tow, blowing to leeward, would cover it in half an hour. In that case there was not the slightest doubt as to what would then happen to her. She might, perhaps, last five minutes as a vessel, for the reefs are hard and there is a tremendous striking force in the long Pacific seas. Another point was equally clear. He had some twenty minutes in which to overhaul the schooner and take her skipper off, and no boat to do the latter with. If he failed to accomplish it in the time, it was very probable that the Shasta would go ashore, and he did not think that any one would escape by swimming. Still, he meant to do what he could, and once more he set the whistle shrieking as he shouted to the helmsman.

The Shasta came round, and drove away into the darkness, for the light had died out again and there was nothing visible ahead but the dim white tops of frothing seas. Five minutes passed, and Jimmy felt the tension, for they were steaming toward destruction, and it was quite possible that they might run past the schooner or straight over her. Then a shaft of moonlight struck the climbing pines high up in front of him, and it seemed to him that he was already almost under them. He set his lips, and clenched the hand he would not raise in warning to the helmsman while the pale watery moonlight crept lower and lower. It rested for a moment on a fringe of creaming foam where the rock met the water, and then a hoarse shout went up, for as it swept toward him they saw the schooner.

She was not far ahead of them, with jib thrashed to ribands and the sea streaming from her swung-up side. Jimmy thrust down his telegraph and shouted to Lindstrom, who dropped from the bridge as they drove past her stern. Then, as he raised his hand, the man behind him gasped as he struggled with his wheel, and the Shasta, stopping, lay rolling wildly beneath the schooner's lee, while a shadowy figure gesticulated to those on board her from her spray-swept rail. Jimmy glanced shoreward over his shoulder toward the tumbling surf, and decided that he had at most five minutes to take that man off. After that it would probably be too late for all of them.

Mercifully the moonlight still streamed down, and he waited with lips set and hands clenched on the telegraph while the schooner, being lighter, drove down upon the Shasta. One blow might make an end of both of them, but something must be hazarded, and he spared a glance for the wet men who crouched upon the Shasta's rail with lines in their hands. He had smashed one boat not long ago, and the second and smaller one had been damaged a week earlier, bringing a Siwash to take them up a certain inlet off an unsheltered beach.

The schooner was very near them, and, if he stayed where he was, would come down on top of the steamer in another minute or so. Then Lindstrom sprang out of the galley with a blue light in his hand, and its radiance blazed wind-flung and intense on the narrowing gap of foam between the two wildly rolling hulls. There was a hoarse shouting, and, though he might not have heard the words, it was evident that the man on board the schooner realized what he was expected to do. Jimmy set his lips tighter as he pressed down the telegraph to slow ahead.

The Shasta's propeller thudded, and as the schooner reeled toward her she commenced to move, and a black figure plunged with flung-up hands from the latter's shrouds. It struck the seething water, and vanished for a moment or two, while men held their breath and strained their eyes. Then there was a hoarse clamor, and lines went whirling down from the Shasta's rail. In the midst of it black darkness succeeded, as Lindstrom's light went out. Jimmy gasped, wondering when the schooner would strike them, while he clenched his hand on the telegraph. There was faint moonlight still, but it did not seem to touch the schooner, for his eyes were dazzled by the blaze of the blue light.

A moment later another shout rang out. "He has hold! Get down! Can't you stop her, sir?"

Jimmy, knowing what the hazard was, pressed his telegraph, and held his breath until a harsh voice rose again.

"I have a grip of him," it said. "Heave! We've got him, sir. Go ahead; she's coming down on the top of us!"

Jimmy moved his hand, and the gong clanged out "Full-speed" this time, while, glancing to windward, he saw the black shape of the schooner hove-up apparently above him. Still, quivering all through, the Shasta forged ahead, and he leaned on the rails, for now that the tension had slackened he felt curiously limp.

"The man's all right?" he asked.

Lindstrom, who climbed half-way up the ladder, said that he did not seem to have suffered very much, and Jimmy, looking around, saw nothing of the schooner, for there was sudden darkness as the moon went out.

CHAPTER XV

ELEANOR'S BITTERNESS

It was in a state of quiet contentment that Jimmy stood on his bridge, as the Shasta steamed past the Stanley pines into sight of the clustering roofs of Vancouver. His first voyage had been an unqualified success in every respect, and it was clear that the Shasta had done considerably more than cover her working expenses. This was in several ways a great relief to him, since it promised to obviate any difficulty in providing for his father's comfort, and also opened up the prospect of a career for himself. Jordan had assured him before he sailed that they would have no great trouble in raising funds to purchase another boat if the results of the venture warranted it. He had also said that since one thing led to another, there was no reason why the Shasta Company should not run several steamers by and by, in which case Jimmy would naturally become commodore-captain or general superintendent of the fleet.

As it happened, Jordan was the first person Jimmy's eyes rested on when he rang off his engines as the Shasta slid in to the wharf, and he climbed on board while they made her fast. It, however, seemed to Jimmy that his movements were less brisk than usual, and he was also dressed in black, which was a color he had once or twice expressed himself in his comrade's hearing as having no use for. He came up the bridge-ladder quietly, in place of scrambling up it in hot haste, which would have been much more characteristic, and Jimmy noticed that there was a difference in his manner when he shook hands with him. The latter's satisfaction commenced to melt away, and a vague disquietude grew upon him in place of it.

"Everything straight here?" he asked, veiling his anxiety.

"Oh, yes," said Jordan; "that is, in most respects. We have an outward freight – Comox mines – for you. You'll take her up the Straits that way when you go back again. You seem to have her full."

"I had to leave a good many odds and ends behind, and the ranchers expect to have more produce for us in a month or two. One or two of them were talking about baling presses and a small thrashing mill. I've an inquiry for the plant, which you can attend to. Another fellow was contemplating putting on some Tenas Siwash to see whether there was anything to be made out of hand-split shingles, and several more were going to plant every cleared acre with potatoes for Victoria. I'm to take up two of your mechanical stump-grubbers as soon as you can get them. If we can keep them pleased, we'll get all their trade."

Jordan nodded, without, however, any sign of the eagerness Jimmy had expected. "Well," he said, "that's quite satisfactory so far as it goes. Still, there are troubles that even the prospect of piling up money can't lift one over."

"Of course!" said Jimmy, who looked at him with sudden sympathy. "Still, I fancied you told me you had no near relatives. What are you wearing those clothes for?"

His comrade laid a hand on his shoulder. "It's a thing I shouldn't have done on my own account. I did it – steady, Jimmy, you have to face it – to please your sister."

"Ah!" said Jimmy, with a sharp indrawing of his breath, and leaned on the bridge-rails for a moment or two. His lips quivered, and Jordan saw him clench his hard brown hands. Busy wharf and climbing city faded from before his eyes, and he was sensible only of a curious numbing stupor that for the time being banished grief. Then he felt his comrade's grasp grow tighter.