up against the sky; and, below, a few rocky islets rose, blurred by blue haze, out of the heaving sea.
The sloop rolled lazily, her boom groaning and the tall, white mainsail alternately swelling out and emptying with a harsh slapping of canvas and a clatter of shaken blocks. Above it the topsail raked in a wide arc across the sky. Silky lines of water ran back from the stern, there was a soft gurgle at the bows; Jimmy computed that she was slipping along at about three miles an hour.
“What do you think of the weather?” Bethune asked, as he lounged at the steering wheel.
“It doesn’t look promising,” Jimmy answered. “If time wasn’t an object, I’d like the topsail down. We’ll have wind before morning.”
“That’s my opinion; but time is an object. When the cost of every day out is an item to be considered, we must drive her. Have you reckoned up what we’re paying every week to the ship-chandler fellow who found us the cables and diving gear?”
“I haven’t; his terms were daunting enough as a whole without analyzing them. Have you?”
Bethune chuckled.
“I have the cost of everything down in my notebook; although I will confess that I was mildly surprised at myself for taking the trouble. If I’d occasionally made a few simple calculations at home and acted on them, the chances are that I shouldn’t be here now.” Bethune made a gesture of disgust. “Halibut boiled and halibut fried begins to pall on one; but this is far better than our quarters in Vancouver, and they were a big improvement on those I had in Victoria. I daresay it was natural I should stick to the few monthly dollars as long as possible, but it will be some time before I forget that hotel. I never quite got used to the two wet public towels beside the row of sloppy wash-basins, and the gramophone going full blast in the dirty dining-room; and the long evening to be dawdled through in the lounge was worst of all. You have, perhaps, seen the hard-faced toughs lolling back with their feet on the radiator pipes before the windows, the heaps of dead flies that are seldom swept up, the dreary, comfortless squalor. Imagine three or four hours of it every night, with only a last-week’s Colonist to while away the time!”
“I should imagine things would be better in a railroad or logging camp.”
“Very much so, though they’re not hotbeds of luxury. The trouble was that I couldn’t come down to Victoria and hold my job. Once or twice when the pay days approximated, I ran it pretty fine; and I’ve a vivid memory of walking seventy miles in two days over a newly made wagon trail. The softer parts had been graded with ragged stones from the hillside, the drier bits were rutted soil – it needed a surgical operation to get my stockings off.”
“It might have paid you better to forfeit your allowance,” Jimmy suggested.
“That’s true,” said Bethune. “I can see it now, but I had a daunting experience of clearing land and laying railroad track. Dragging forty-foot rails about through melting snow, with the fumes of giant-powder hanging among the rocks and nauseating you, is exhausting work, and handspiking giant logs up skids in rain that never stops is worse. The logs have a way of slipping back and smashing the tenderfoot’s ribs. I suppose this made me a coward; and, in a sense, the allowance was less of a favor than a right. The money that provided it has been a long time in the family; I am the oldest son; and while I can’t claim to have been a model, I had no serious vices and had committed no crime. If my relatives chose to banish me, there seemed no reason why they shouldn’t pay for the privilege.”
Jimmy agreed that something might be said for his comrade’s point of view.
“Now I stand on my own feet,” Bethune went on, with a carefree laugh; “and while it’s hard to predict the end of this adventure, the present state of things is good enough for me. Is anything better than being afloat in a staunch craft that’s entirely at your command?”
Jimmy acquiesced heartily as he glanced about. Sitting to windward, he could see the gently rounded deck run forward to the curve of the lifted bows, and, above them, the tall, hollowed triangle of the jib. The arched cabin-top led forward in flowing lines, and though there were patches on plank and canvas, all his eye rested on was of harmonious outline. TheCetacea was small and low in the water, but she was fast and safe, and Jimmy had already come to feel a certain love for her. Their success depended upon her seaworthiness, and he thought she would not fail them.
“I like the boat; but I’ve been mending gear all day, and it’s my turn below,” he said.
The narrow cabin that ran from the cockpit bulkhead to the stem was cumbered with dismantled diving pumps and gear, but there was a locker on each side on which one could sleep. It was, moreover, permeated with the smell of stale tobacco smoke, tarred hemp, and fish, but Jimmy had put up with worse odors in the Mercantile Marine. Lying down, fully dressed, on a locker, he saw Moran’s shadowy form, wrapped in old oilskins, on the opposite locker, rise above his level and sink as the Cetacea rocked them with a rhythmic swing. The water lapped noisily against the planks, and now and then there was a groaning of timber and a sharp clatter of blocks; but Jimmy soon grew drowsy and noticed nothing.
He was awakened rudely by a heavy blow, and found he had fallen off the locker and struck one of the pump castings. Half dazed and badly shaken, as he was, it was a few moments before he got upon his knees – one could not stand upright under the low cabin-top. It was very dark, Jimmy could not see the hatch, and the Cetacea appeared to have fallen over on her beam-ends. A confused uproar was going on above: the thud of heavy water striking the deck, a furious thrashing of loose canvas, and the savage scream of wind. Bethune’s voice came faintly through the din, and he seemed to be calling for help.
Realizing that it was time for action, Jimmy pulled himself together and with difficulty made his way to the cockpit, where he found it hard to see anything for the first minute. The spray that drove across the boat beat into his face and blinded him; but he made out that she was pressed down with most of her lee deck in the water, while white cascades that swept its uplifted windward side poured into the cockpit. The tall mainsail slanted up into thick darkness, but it was no longer thrashing, and Jimmy was given an impression of furious speed by the way the half visible seas raced past.
“Shake her! Let her come up!” he shouted to the dark figure bent over the wheel.
He understood Bethune to say that this would involve the loss of the mast unless the others were ready to shorten canvas quickly.
Jimmy scrambled forward through the water and loosed the peak-halyard. The head of the sail swung down and blew out to leeward, banging threateningly, and he saw that the half-lowered topsail hung beneath it. This promised to complicate matters; but Moran was already endeavoring to change the jib for a smaller one, and Jimmy sprang to his assistance. Though the sail was not linked to a masthead stay, it would not run in; and when Bethune luffed the boat into the wind, the loose canvas swept across the bows, swelling like a balloon and emptying with a shock that threatened to snap the straining mast. It was obvious to the men who knelt in the water dragging frantically at a rope that something drastic must be done; but both were drenched and half blinded and had been suddenly roused from sleep. The boat was large enough to make her gear heavy to handle, and yet not so large as to obviate the need for urgent haste when struck with all her canvas set by a savage squall. Though they recognized this, Jimmy and his comrade paused a few moments to gather breath. The jib, however, must be hauled down; and with a hoarse shout to Moran, Jimmy lowered himself from the bowsprit until he felt the wire bobstay under his feet.
The Cetacea plunged into the seas, burying him to the waist, but he made his way out-board with the canvas buffeting his head until he seized an iron ring. It cost him a determined effort to wrench it loose so it could run in, and when, at last, the sail swept behind him he felt the blood warm on his lacerated
