The Secret of the Reef

“Now,” he began, “I’ll confess to some surprise, and though, from what I’ve seen and heard of you, I can find no fault of a personal nature, there are some drawbacks.”

“Nobody realizes that better than myself,” Jimmy answered ruefully. “In fact, I can honestly say that they seemed serious enough to prevent my hopes from ever being realized until half an hour ago. The only excuse I can make is that I love your daughter.”

“It’s a good one, but, unfortunately, it doesn’t quite cover all the ground. May I ask about your plans for the future?”

“I’m afraid they’re not very ambitious, but they may lead to something. My partners and I intend to start a small towing and transport business with the salvage money.”

Osborne asked for an outline of the scheme, and listened with interest while Jimmy supplied it. The venture had obviously been well thought out, and he believed it would succeed. Farquhar and his friends had carried out their salvage operations in spite of Clay’s opposition, which spoke well for their resourcefulness and determination. Knowing something of his late partner’s methods, he could imagine the difficulties they had had to meet.

“I think you have chosen a suitable time, because it looks as if we were about to see a big extension of the coasting trade,” he said. “There is, however, the disadvantage that you’ll have to start in a small way. Now it’s possible that I might find you some more capital.”

“No, thanks!” said Jimmy firmly. “We have made up our minds not to borrow.”

Osborne gave him a dry smile.

“I suppose that means that you don’t see your way to taking any help from me?”

Jimmy felt embarrassed. As a matter of fact, he still suspected Osborne of complicity in some scheme to make an unlawful profit out of the wreck; and in that sense his offer might be regarded as a bribe.

“We feel that it would be better if we stood, so to speak, on our own feet,” he said.

“Perhaps you’re right. However, I don’t think you need object if I’m able to put any business in your way; but this is not what I meant to talk about. I cannot consent to an engagement just now, but after you have been twelve months in business you may come to me again, and we’ll see what progress you are making.”

“And in the meanwhile?” Jimmy asked anxiously.

“You are both free; I make no other stipulation. If Miss Dexter approves, my house is open to you.”

A few minutes afterward Jimmy found Ruth in the hall.

“Well?” she asked. “Was he very formidable?”

“I believe I got off better than I deserved.” Jimmy told her what Osborne had insisted on.

“So you are free for another year! I wonder whether you’re fickle.”

“I’m bound hand and foot forever! What’s more, I’ll hug my chains. But your father hinted that if I wished to see you, I’d have to win your aunt’s approval.”

“That won’t be hard,” Ruth laughed. “If you have no confidence in your own merits, you can leave it to me. Now, perhaps, you had better come and see her.”

Miss Dexter spent some time talking to Jimmy, and he found her blunt questions embarrassing; but she afterward remarked to her niece: “I like your sailor. He looks honest, and that is the great thing. Still, for some reasons, I’m sorry you didn’t take Aynsley, whom I’m fond of. It’s curious how little that young man resembles his father.”

“Clay had his good points,” Ruth said warmly. “He was very generous, and, although I don’t quite understand the matter, I think he really lost his life because he wanted to clear himself of all suspicion for his son’s sake.”

“It’s possible; there was something very curious about the wreck. He was a brigand, my dear; perhaps a rather gallant and magnanimous one, but a brigand, for all that.”

Osborne had come in quietly while she was talking.

“I owe Clay a good deal, and feel that he deserved more sympathy than he got,” he said. “He had his detractors, but the people who found most fault with him were not above suspicion themselves.”

“You are all brigands at heart,” Miss Dexter declared.

“I’m afraid there’s some truth in that,” Osborne admitted with a smile.

Jimmy left the house the next morning, and soon after he opened his modest office in Vancouver Aynsley called on him.

“I’ve come to congratulate you, first of all,” he said. “No doubt, you know you are an exceptionally lucky man.”

“I’m convinced of it,” Jimmy answered. “But in a sense, you’re premature; I’m only on probation yet.”

He was conscious of some embarrassment, because he had learned from Clay about Aynsley’s affection for Ruth.

“Well, there’s another matter. We raft a good deal of lumber down to the sea for shipment, and now and then buy logs of special quality on the coast. I don’t see why you shouldn’t do our towing for us. I suppose you’re open for business?”

“We surely are.” Jimmy gave him a steady look. “You’re very generous in offering me a lift up.”

There was silence for a few moments, and then Aynsley smiled.

“I’ll admit that if I’d ever had a chance before you entered the field, I might have felt very bitter, but I know I hadn’t one from the first. As Ruth has taken you, I’m trying sincerely to wish you both happiness; and, if you don’t mind my putting it so, I’ve a feeling that she might have chosen worse.”

“Thank you!”

“Well, we’ll let that go. I suspect my father had some reason for being grateful to you; he gave me the impression that you had taken a load off his mind. I’m in your debt on that score, but quite apart from this, it might be advantageous to both of us if you did our towing. Suppose we see what we can make of it as a business proposition?”

They had arrived at a satisfactory arrangement when Aynsley left the office, and during the next few weeks more work was offered the new firm than they could comfortably attend to. In a few months they decided to buy a large and powerful tug, which was somewhat out of repair, and after refitting her they found that they were able to keep her busy. Then they were fortunate in towing one or two exceptionally large booms of logs safely down the coast in bad weather, and it soon became known that they could be relied on. When the work was difficult Jimmy took charge of it in person with Moran’s help, while Bethune attended to the office and secured the good opinion of their customers.

It was, however, not until early in the next year that they really made their mark. A big American collier had stranded and been damaged when approaching the Wellington mines, and Jimmy assisted the salvors in getting her off. Then the owners, deciding that it would be cheaper to send her home for repairs, asked for tenders for towing her to Portland. Getting a hint from the captain, Jimmy hurried back and held a consultation with his partners.

“We must get this contract, even if we make nothing out of it,” Bethune declared. “It’s our first big job and will give us a chance of showing what we can do. I suppose you feel confident about taking her down the coast?”

“It won’t be easy. She has lost her propeller and carried her stern-frame away. The jury rudder they have rigged won’t steer her well, and I don’t think the plates they’ve bolted on to her torn bilge will keep out much water if she gets straining hard. However, I’ll try it if you can find me another tug. She’s too big for one boat to hold.”

“There’s the old Guillemot. We ought to get her cheap on a short charter.”

Jimmy told him to see what he could do, and the next day Bethune sent off a formal offer. On receiving it, the managing owner of the collier crossed the boundary to consult with the captain.

“I’d like to give the San Francisco people the contract,” he said. “They’re accustomed to this kind of thing, and their boats are the best on the Pacific. They ask a big sum, but I feel we can rely on them.”

“You can rely on Farquhar. The salvage gang wouldn’t have got her off if it hadn’t been for him.”

“I understand his firm’s a small one. His bid’s low, but he says he can tow her down.”

“Then you had better let him,” advised the captain. “What that man undertakes he’ll do. I’ve seen him at work.”

He said more to the same purpose, with the result that Bethune secured the contract, and Jimmy left Vancouver with two tugs immediately afterward. They passed Victoria with the broken-down vessel in fine weather, but that night it began to blow, and the gale that followed lasted a fortnight. What was worse, it blew for the most part straight in from the Pacific, piling a furious surf on shore. Three days after Jimmy left the Strait, the chartered tug put back with engines disabled, badly battered by the gale. Her skipper stated that he had left Jimmy with a broken hawser, hanging on to the collier, which was dragging him to leeward, nearer the dangerous coast. After that an incoming steamer reported having passed a disabled vessel with a tug standing by in the middle of a furious gale, but although in a dangerous position, she showed no signals and the weather prevented a close approach. Then there was no news for some time.

When offers to reinsure the collier were asked for, Bethune was summoned to Osborne’s house. He found it difficult to express a hopeful view, and Ruth’s anxious look haunted him long after he left. Then, as public interest was excited in the fate of the missing vessel, paragraphs about her began to appear in the newspapers. It was suggested that she and the tug had foundered in deep water, since no wreckage had been found along the coast.

At last, when hope had almost gone, she reeled in across the smoking Columbia bar one wild morning with her tug ahead, and Jimmy found himself famous when he brought her safe into harbor. Escaping from the reporters, he went off in search of coal, and put to sea as soon as he could; but the grateful captain talked, and the papers made a sensational story of the tow. It appeared that Jimmy had smashed two boats in replacing broken hawsers in a dangerous sea, and had held on to the disabled vessel while she drove up to the edge of the breakers that hammered a rocky coast. Then a sudden shift of wind saved them, but the next night the collier broke adrift, and he spent two days stubbornly searching for her in the haze and spray. She was in serious peril when he found her, but again he towed her clear, and afterward fought a long, stern fight that seemed bound to be a losing one against the fury of the sea.