The Secret of the Reef

“You really think we’ll raise the island to-day?” he asked.

“Yes. But it isn’t easy to shoot the sun when you can hardly see it and have a remarkably unsteady horizon. Then, though she has laid her course for the last two days, I haven’t much confidence in the log we’re towing.”

He indicated the wet line that ran over the stern and stretched back to where a gleam of brass was visible in the hollow of a sea.

“What could you expect?” Bethune asked. “We got the thing for half its proper price, and, to do it justice, it goes pretty well after a bath in oil, and when it stops it does so altogether. You know how to deal with a distance recorder that sticks and stays so, but one that sticks and goes on again plays the devil.”

“Talking’s easier than pumping,” Jimmy said suggestively.

“It is, but I feel like working off a few more remarks. They occurred to me while I sat behind the coaming, numbed right through, last night. I suppose you have noticed how the poor but enterprising man is generally handicapped. He gets no encouragement in taking the hard and virtuous path. It needs some nerve to make a start, and afterward, instead of things getting easier, you fall in with all kinds of obstacles you couldn’t reasonably expect. Even the elements conspire against you; it’s always windward work.”

“I suppose this means you’re sorry you came?”

“Not exactly; but I’ve begun to wonder what’s the good of it all. I haven’t slept in dry clothes for a fortnight. It’s a week since any of us had a decent meal; and my slicker has rubbed a nasty sore on my wrist. All the time I could have had three square meals a day, and spent my leisure reading a dirty newspaper and watching them sweep up the dead flies in the hotel lounge. What I want to know is – whether any ambition’s worth the price you have to pay for gratifying it?”

“I should say that depends on your temperament.”

“Bethune does some fool-talking now and then,” Moran commented from his post at the helm. “When you go to sea for your living, you must expect to get up against all a man can stand for; and if you don’t put up a good fight, she’ll beat you. That’s one reason you’d better get your pumping done before she ships a comber.”

With a gesture of acquiescence Bethune resumed his task, and presently went below while Jimmy took the helm. The breeze freshened during the morning, and the sea got heavier, but it dropped in the afternoon, when they ran into a fog belt, which Jimmy thought indicated land. As the days were getting shorter, they set the topsail, and looked out eagerly until a faint gray blur appeared amid the haze, perhaps a mile away. Closing with it, they made out the beach, which Jimmy searched with the glasses after consulting his notebook.

“Luff!” he called to Bethune. “Now steady at that; I’ve got my first two marks.” Then he motioned to Moran. “Clear your anchor!”

A few minutes afterward he completed his four-point bearing, and the Cetacea stopped, head to wind, with a rattle of running chain. The sea was comparatively smooth in the lee of the land, and ran in a long swell that broke into a curl of foam here and there. Bethune took up the glasses and turned them on the beach.

“It is some time since high-water, and we ought to see her soon,” he said. “I’m trying to find the big boulder on the point.” He paused and put down the glasses. “Do you see anything?”

“No,” said Moran gruffly; “she should be showing.”

“That’s true,” Bethune agreed. “The tallest timber used to be above water when the top of the boulder was just awash, and now its bottom’s a foot from the tide.”

Jimmy said nothing, but seizing the dory savagely, he threw her over the rail and jumped into her with a coil of rope. Moran followed and lowered a bight of the rope while Jimmy rowed. Some minutes passed, but they felt nothing, and Bethune watched them from the sloop with an intent face. It looked as if the wreck had broken up and disappeared. Then as the dory turned, taking a different track, the rope tightened and Moran looked up.

“Got her now! She’s moved, and there may not be much of her holding together.”

Jimmy stopped rowing, and there was silence for a moment or two. It would take time to unpack and fit the diving pumps, and sunset was near, but neither of them felt equal to bearing the strain of suspense until daybreak.

“It may blow in the morning,” Jimmy said.

“That’s so,” agreed Moran, pulling off his pilot coat. “I’m going down.”

There was a raw wind, the tide ran strong, and the water was chilled by the Polar ice; but Moran hurriedly stripped off his damp clothes and stood a moment, a finely poised figure that gleamed sharply white against gray rocks and slaty water. Then he plunged, and the others waited, watching the ripple of the tide when the sea closed over him. Some moments passed before his head broke the surface farther off than they expected. Jimmy pulled toward him, and after a scramble, which nearly upset the craft, he got on board and struggled into his clothes. Then he spoke.

“She’s there, but so far as I can see, she’s canted well over with her bilge deep in the sand.”

Jimmy and Bethune were filled with keen relief. They might have increased trouble in reaching the strong-room, but it was something to know that the wreck had not gone to pieces in their absence.

Jimmy picked up the end of the rope and tied on a buoy. Then he pulled back to the sloop, where Bethune cooked a somewhat extravagant supper.

CHAPTER XVII – THE STRONG-ROOM

When Jimmy went on deck the next morning, fog hung heavily about the land and the slate-green sea ran with a sluggish heave out of belts of vapor. The air felt unusually sharp and the furled mainsail glistened with rime. This was disturbing, because they must finish their work, or abandon it, before winter set in; but Jimmy reflected that it was some weeks too soon for a severe cold snap. While he watched the smoke from the stove funnel rise straight up in a faint blue line, he heard a splash of oars and Bethune appeared in the dory.

“I took the water breaker off before you were up,” he said as he came alongside. “There was ice on the pool. It struck me as a warning that we had better lose no time.”

“That’s obvious,” returned Jimmy. “Hand me up the breaker. We’ll get the pumps rigged first thing.”

Breakfast was hurried. The weather was favorable for work, and they could not expect it to continue so. In an hour the sloop had been warped close to the wreck and Jimmy put on the diving dress. He was surprised to feel the half-instinctive repugnance from going down which he thought he had got rid of; but this could not be allowed to influence him, and he resolutely descended the ladder. In a few minutes he reached the wreck, and found one bilge deeply embedded; but the opposite side was lifted up, and a broad strip of planking had been torn away. Jimmy could see some distance into the interior, and his lamp showed that the stream had washed out part of the sand which had barred their way to the bulkhead cutting off the strong-room. This had been strained by the working of the wreck, and it seemed possible to wrench the beams loose.

He attacked the nearest with his shovel, using force when he found a purchase, but the timber proved to be firmly mortised in. He lost count of time as he struggled to prize it out, and did not stop until he grew distressed from the pressure. His heart was beating hard and his breath difficult to get, but the beam still defied him. Making his way out of the hold, he stumbled forward toward the ladder; and when his comrades removed his helmet on board the sloop, he sat still for a few moments to recover. It was inexpressibly refreshing to breathe the keen, natural air. At last he explained what he had found below, and added:

“My suggestion is that we bore out an opening for the saw; then we could cut the stanchion through and prize the cross-timbers off.”

“The trouble is that we haven’t a big auger,” Bethune objected. “You often run up against a difficulty of the kind when you’re using tools: the thing you want the most is the one you haven’t got.”

“Mortise-chisel might do,” said Moran. “How thick’s the timber?”

“Three or four inches. By its toughness I imagine it’s oak or hackmatack.”

“Then, there’s a big job ahead,” grumbled Bethune; “and my experience is that as soon as you drive a chisel into old work you come upon a spike. Unfortunately, we haven’t a grindstone.”

“Quit your pessimism and find the chisel!” snapped Moran. “I’m going down.”

They watched the bubbles that marked his progress rise to the surface in a wavy line and then stop and break in a fixed patch. Rather sooner than they expected the bubbles moved back; and Moran looked crestfallen when they took off his diving dress.

“Did you cut out much stuff?” Bethune asked.

“No,” said Moran, holding up the chisel; “this is what I did. Came across a blamed big spike at the second cut.”

Bethune giggled. Even Jimmy grinned. There was a deep notch in the edge of the tool.

“Your philosophy isn’t much good,” Moran said grumpily. “It helps you to prophesy troubles, but not to avoid them. We’ll have to spend some time in rubbing that nick out.”

“I’ll try the engineer’s cold-chisel,” Bethune replied. “With good luck, I might cut the spike.”

He took the tool and an ordinary carpenter’s chisel down with him; and the edge of the chisel was broken when he returned.

“I’ve cut the spike, and dug out about an inch of the wood,” he reported. “Why are you frowning, Jimmy?”

“It looks as if we may spend a week over that timber. These confounded preliminaries sicken me!”

“They’re common.” Bethune launched off into his philosophy. “If you undertake anything that’s not quite usual, half your labor consists in clearing the ground; when you get at the job itself, it often doesn’t amount to much.”

“Chuck it!” Moran interrupted. “Jimmy, it’s your turn.”

Jimmy stayed below as long as he could stand it, hacking savagely with broken chisels at the hard wood, and scraping out the fragments with bruised fingers; then he came up and Moran took his place. It was trying work, and grew no easier when, by persistent effort, they made an opening for the saw. The tool had to be driven horizontally at an awkward height from the sand, and the position tired their wrists and arms. Still, the weather was propitious, which was seldom the case, and they toiled on, until exhaustion stopped them when it was getting dark. Then Moran sent Bethune ashore to look for stones with a cutting grit, and they sat in the cabin patiently rubbing down the nicked tools, while the deck above them grew white with frost.

It cost them two days to break the beam, and on the evening they succeeded there was a sharp drop in the temperature.