Part 10

The Indian said something the lads did not understand in the Chinook idiom, and they clipped the oars again. For an hour they pulled shorewards, and now and then the sound of a rifle reached them faintly, but the boats were seldom visible, for a filmy greyness was crawling across the sea. Once Appleby had a momentary glimpse of the schooner, a blur of slanted canvas against a patch of hazy sky, but she faded next moment and was not seen again.

Then the Indian spoke softly, and when they stopped pulling at a sign from Stickine, Appleby, twisting himself round, saw something that was a little darker than the water swing with a grey slope of sea. The Indian was now lying huddled in the bows, and the rifle-barrel poked forward over them, while the copper cheek was down on the stock of it. It, however, seemed almost impossible that, as the boat swung up and down, any man could hit the dim moving thing which showed above the water with a single bullet, but while Appleby waited breathless the muzzle jerked upwards, and there was a thin flash. Then stinging smoke curled about him, and the jar of the report was flung back by the heaving slopes of sea. The Indian grunted as the cartridge rattled at his feet, and Stickine grabbed his oar.

"I'm not sure he got him, and a wounded seal generally goes right down," he said. "Still, he might give us another show, and we'll pull ahead somewhat, my lads."

They rowed for what seemed to the lads, who could see nothing but water, a considerable time, twisting now and then to left and right, until the rifle flashed again, and Stickine roared at them. Then for three or four minutes they pulled breathlessly, until there was another shout, and they flung the oars in and grabbed at something that slid past them. It took the whole of them to roll it in, and then there was a little laugh from Donegal, while Stickine stood looking down on the victim disgustedly. It was nearly twice the size of the other, but its fur was loose and thin, and there were big patches where it had been apparently torn away and had not grown again.

"It would take any man all his time to find a dollar's worth of sound hide on him," said Donegal, with a chuckle. "'Tis spectacles ye and Donovitch are wanting, Stickine."

"Well," said Stickine dryly, "a dollar's a kind of handy thing, but we needn't have pulled so far to leeward after a blame old bull."

None of them had apparently had much thought of the weather during the past half-hour, but now when they sat breathless resting on the dripping oars a cold wind chilled their flushed faces, and they saw that there was sliding vapour everywhere.

"She was lying 'bout south and dodging with staysail to windward when we had the last sight av her," said Donegal. "Is it any way likely Ned Jordan would get way on her?"

Stickine shook his head. "If it was clear he might have done, but once the haze shut down he'd stop right where he was so the boys would know where to look for him. We'll try south, anyway."

They bent their backs, for Stickine took his place again, but as they swung up with a sea Appleby wondered how any one could tell where the south might be.

There was no sign of either boat or schooner, only a heaving stretch of water across which the fleecy vapours rolled more thickly. They had pulled for about twenty minutes when it seemed to the lads that the splashes at the bows grew louder and the work harder, while there was no doubt at all that the wind was colder. Then little puffs of spray commenced to fly over their shoulders, and at times there was a white splash on the top of a sea. Appleby could hear Niven panting, and began to envy Donegal, who swung back and forwards with tireless regularity. His own oar was getting unpleasantly heavy.

"Stiffen up," said Stickine. "We've got to get there quick. Wind's coming along right now."

He had scarcely spoken when the splash from Niven's oar blew over Appleby's shoulder and wetted his face, while the slope of the next sea was lined with ripples curiously. Then one frothed angrily on its top, and when the boat plunged over the next one a cloud of spray whirled up. She seemed to stop a trifle, while as the oars went down again Appleby gasped, for Donegal and Stickine were swinging a trifle faster, and he found it almost impossible to keep stroke. He had also a shrewd suspicion that they could, if it was necessary, row as they were doing all through the night, while it was evident that another half-hour would exhaust the last of his strength. Still, he set his lips and tugged at his oar, while as the lurches grew sharper it became more difficult to keep the blade out of the water.

At last when the bows were flung high he missed his stroke and fell backwards upon Niven, while as he scrambled to his feet again Stickine stopped rowing, and twisting round, looked at them over his shoulder. It is more than possible he saw distress in the young faces, for that was a bigger and heavier boat than those generally used for sealing, and Appleby noticed that he shook his head as he glanced at Donegal.

"The schooner's 'bout a mile to windward still," he said. "You've got to wake right up and pull."

His voice was sterner than usual, and the lads, who recognized the difference, shook themselves together and fell to again. They were very tired, but they had discovered on board the _Aldebaran_ that there are times when the overtaxed body must be kept to its task by sheer force of mind, and that worn out, ill or well, men must work at sea. Still, Stickine's stroke was a trifle slower when they went on again, and gasping and panting, while their arms grew powerless and their temples throbbed, they kept time to it. The spray was flying freely, and there was nothing to be seen but dim slopes of water tipped with froth, for the right was smothered in the fog and the dusk which replaces night at that season closing in. Niven was groaning audibly now and then, and Appleby pulled in torment with a horrible pain in his side, when at last the crash of a gun came out of the dimness.

"Over our starboard bow!" said Donegal; and as he swung into faster stroke, the task became grimmer yet.

Now, Niven had been one of the best hares the Sandycombe Harriers had ever known, and Appleby had brought the school boat home first in the local regatta, but they had never taxed their uttermost endurance of mind and body as they did in the wild ten minutes that followed. It was one thing to race for honour or a silver cup, and a very different one to row for their lives, as they felt unpleasantly certain they were doing now. All round them seatops came frothing whitely out of the darkness, but the sound they made was lost in the scream of wind.

At last, however, and with relief unspeakable, Appleby saw the schooner's canvas grow out of the mist. They were close upon her before they could see her hull, and then it was only the dripping bows swung high with a jib hauled to windward above them. She crawled out of the vapour, rolling to leeward, with the streaky backwash streaming down her sides, and while Niven wondered whether it would by any means be possible to get on board her, the boat slid in under her bulwarks as they came swinging down, and Stickine clutched the rope that was flung him.

Niven did not know whether he crawled up or Stickine pulled him, but in another moment he was on board the _Champlain_ with Appleby beside him and a row of men floundering aft along the deck. Then the boat swung in between the masts, and when she dropped upon the hatch he saw that Jordan was talking to Stickine a yard or two away.

"One good one," said the latter. "And a bull. We'll do if we get two dollars for him. Two of the boats away yet?"

"Charley's," said Jordan with a little laugh. "No need to worry over him. He'd fetch her through a gale of wind when he got hungry, but I'm kind of anxious about Montreal and the other one. You and the lads had to row?"

"They're played out, but they pulled quite handy," said Stickine.

Jordan swung round and glanced at Appleby, who leaned against the mast with flushed face and heaving chest, while Niven sat close by on the hatch still gasping heavily.

"I don't know that we've any use for you just now," he said. "You can get your tea from Brulee and crawl down below."

The lads did not want telling twice, and when they sat down with a steaming can of tea before them in the stuffy, curiously-smelling hold Appleby's face relaxed and Niven laughed.

"I'd never have believed I could be glad to get back to a place like this once, but I am," he said. "In fact, I scarcely fancy I was ever so glad to see anything in my life as I was when we got the first glimpse of the _Champlain_."

Appleby nodded with his mouth full. "I wasn't sorry myself," he said. "Now, it seems to me it isn't the ship but the men you sail with that makes all the difference when you go to sea."

He turned and saw Donegal grinning at him. "An' that's thrue," said he. "Ye will not as a rule make men glad to work for ye by kicking them."

*CHAPTER XII*

*PICKING UP THE BOATS*

Warm and snug as it was in the _Champlain's_ hold neither of the lads cared to stay below. They could tell it was blowing hard by the humming of the rigging and the way the deck sloped under them, and their thoughts were with the two boats still out in the fog. The cold struck through them when they crawled out on deck, and little showers of brine blew in from the rail shining in the light that blinked forward through the filmy whiteness. Somebody beneath it was ringing a bell, and its dismal jangle seemed to intensify the doleful wail of wind. Now and then they caught a pale glimmer as a white-topped sea went by, and then for a space there was only a blank wall of sliding fog, until finding the desolation of it all creep in upon them they went aft along the sloppy deck.

A silent man stood almost motionless at the wheel, for the _Champlain_ was lying to under her trysail and jib, making no way through the water, but bobbing with her bow to the sea. Jordan paced up and down behind the house, stopping now and then to gaze into the fog, and the rest were clustered under the lee of it. A lantern flickered above them, and they had evidently been busy over something, for two of them were wiping their knives and there was a horrible sickly smell. Then a man went by carrying a bundle of furs which reeked with the same odour, and Stickine, who saw them, called to the lads.

"Get the bucket and swab up," he said.

It was not easy to fill the bucket, and when at last Niven stood swaying with most of the contents splashing about him he sniffed disgustedly as he glanced at the deck, which was slippery with grease and blood.

"Essence of roses is nothing to this. What is it?" he said.

"Holluschackie blubber," said a grinning man. "You'd have smelt stronger than a scent store if we'd waited until you came up to heave the corpuses over. Hadn't you better start in before you sit down in it?"

Niven swilled on water, Appleby plied the swab, but though they got the deck clean the smell would not wash out, and when they crawled under the shelter of the deckhouse among the rest, Appleby gasped as he flung away his swab. "Does it always smell like that?" he said.

Jordan looked down from the house. "It generally does, but dollars don't lie around in the Vancouver streets," he said. "Dry that swab right out now and hang it up."

"Yes, sir," said Appleby, but his face was a trifle pale in the light from the lantern when he came back. "It about turned me sick--and it's going to take some time to get used to this," he said.

"Well," said a man, glancing at Niven, "it's the more smell the bigger profits when you go sealing. It's different from the things you were taught to do in the old country?"

Niven laughed a little, for the man's tone was ironical, and he had discovered that the less he talked about what he had been used to in England the better it was for him. "We don't have any seals to catch over there," he said. "Still, however do they clean up those things and make them into ladies' jackets? They have to get the smell off them."

"It's done back there in your country, in London," said another man. "Most beasts have two coats on them, anyway, and somebody once told me they pulled the outside half off with little pincers. Then I guess they shave them down and dye them. They're smart people there in London, and they don't let up when the holluschackie can't be had. No, sir. They'll make you a seal-skin jacket out of most anything. It's all in the dressing."

"But do the Americans send their seals to London?" asked Niven.

"Yes," said Stickine. "That's just what they do. Bring them back again dressed, paying a heavy duty, too, and one way or other those seals fetch the States a tolerable big revenue. That's why it galls them to see any other folk catching them."

Just then Jordan sprang up on the house with a flare in his hand, and the lurid wind-blown blaze that streamed above them showed the same look in the faces of the men. It suggested confidence in their skipper and their comrades out at sea, and yet grimly-suppressed expectancy. Then the darkness was intensified as the light went out.

"It's 'bout time you fired the gun again," he said.

A man floundered forward, and presently a long red flash blazed out over the rail, but the thud of the report was probably plainer a mile to leeward than it was on the deck of the _Champlain_. Then for five minutes nobody spoke and the bell tinkled dolefully, but no answer came out of the sliding fog.

"Thicker than ever!" said Jordan. "Try her again."

Three times at five minutes' intervals the red flash blazed out, and then while they listened a man sprang into the shrouds. "Here's one of them!" he said.

There followed a few moments of tense expectancy until a roar of voices went up as a faint cry came out of the fog. Then there was another silence, even worse to bear, until the man in the shrouds swung up an arm.

"Stand by," he shouted. "Here they come!"

Appleby running forward saw a dim black shape hove up on a sea that swept past the bows, and for a moment the light from the forestay shone down upon the boat. She was lapped about in foam, and while the men, with wet, grim faces, bent their backs as the oars swung through it, a dark ridge with froth about its top rolled up out of the night behind her. Then all was dark again, for she swept in beneath the bulwarks and the schooner rolled viciously. Out of the darkness came a thud and a shouting, black figures fell in over the rail, and while blocks rattled the boat swung dripping high above the bulwarks, until they dropped her neatly inside the other ones. Appleby surmised that the operation would have been almost impossible on board the _Aldebaran_, and he had heard that it not infrequently takes an hour to get a boat out on board a steamer. Then the men came aft with the water running from them, and Jordan, who once more paced up and down, stopped a moment.

"Where's Montreal?" he asked.

The foremost sealer turned and pointed to the sliding whiteness over the rail. "I don't know," he said. "One couldn't make out much of anything in that."

Jordan nodded. "What have you got?"

"Three holluschackie," said the sealer. "I guess we'll get the boat cleaned up and the hides off them."

Jordan said nothing but paced up and down again, and while a few dark objects moved about the boat the men floundered back into the partial shelter of the house. They did not express their fears in speech, but all of them knew the chances were against Montreal and his crew finding the schooner. If he failed the prospect of his boat living through the gale that was evidently rising appeared very small. To leeward lay St. Paul and St. George, but the sea foams and seethes about them, and any sealer who might make a landing in the dark, which very few men could do, would in all probability find himself a prisoner. Still the men of the _Champlain_ faced such risks almost daily in the misty seas, and when the boat was stripped they and the Indians quietly set about flaying the seals. The fog whirled past them, their knives twinkled in the flickering lantern light, and now and then a brighter beam fell on their impassive brown faces and blubber-smeared hands. Then it would swing away as the schooner rolled, and the lads who stood about with swab and bucket could only see them dimly until it blinked into brilliancy again. The rigging screamed, the bell jangled on, and now and then through the confused sounds rose the thud of the gun.

How long they worked Appleby did not know, but he forgot the smell of the blubber and the horrible sliminess of the swab as he pictured the worn-out men grimly swinging the oars in the fog. Each time the schooner swung her bows aloft the black shape of a man crouching forward in the spray became visible, and now and then Jordan tramped along the deck to speak to him. The lads could guess what his question was, but there was no answer to either bell or gun, until at last the skipper stood still suddenly, and every man who saw him turned and stared across the rail. For a minute nobody moved or spoke, and there was nothing to hear but the wail of the wind in the rigging.

Then Jordan swung himself into the shrouds, and the men went forward with a rush. Clinging to the rail Appleby looked down, and as the flicker of the light fell upon the sea something went by, and he had a glimpse of part of a dripping boat with two men whose faces showed white and set straining at the oars. One of the others had apparently fallen forward, and a fourth was standing erect astern. The attitude of all of them expressed exhaustion. Then as the boat swung round a trifle a sea that rolled up caught her on the bow and the men at the oars made a last effort as she swept astern. Next moment she had passed out of the light, and there was only foam beneath him.

"We've lost them. They'll never pull her up," he gasped.

Jordan sprang down from the shrouds, and his voice rang out, "Down trysail. Sheet your staysail to weather and run it up."

He said nothing to Stickine, who now held the wheel, but Appleby saw him bending over it, and there was a banging and thrashing of canvas as the staysail went up and the trysail came down. Then the schooner slowly swung round, until a shout rose again, "Let draw, and sing out forward if we're running over them!"

The _Champlain_ had her stern to the wind now, and was running before it after the boat which had blown away to lee, while the men stood silent here and there along her rail, until one of them forward shouted, and as Stickine swung with the wheel something half-seen went by. It was lost in a moment as the schooner drove ahead, and Appleby recognized the horror he felt in Niven's voice.

"He can't be going to leave them!" he said.

Donegal, who was standing close by, dropped a heavy hand on his shoulder and held it in a painful grip. "Is it a head or a shroud deadeye ye have that ye do not know Ned Jordan yet?" he said. "Away with ye to the trysail halliards. They'll be wanted presently."

For about a minute the _Champlain_ lurched on before the seas, and then from where Jordan stood in the shrouds a great blue blaze flared out and Stickine pulled round the wheel. Men whose faces showed intent in the streaming radiance floundered towards the mast, and as the _Champlain_ came round the trysail went up. In another moment or two Appleby and Niven were hauling at its sheet among the rest, and presently the schooner lay rolling almost head to the sea. Then there was a brief space of breathless waiting while every man stared over the rail, and Appleby knew that the schooner would lie there scarcely moving through the water until the boat came up with her. He could feel his heart beating as he strained his ears and eyes.

"Here they come!" shouted somebody, and while the blue radiance streamed out across the waters the boat swung into sight.

It was evident that the worn-out men knew they could take no chance of driving down to lee this time, and the lads held their breath as they saw the boat whirl towards them on the top of a sea. One could almost have fancied she would be flung on board over the rail.

"Down helm!" said Jordan. "Luff, if you can. Handy with the tackles there. Make sure of them."

The schooner swung round a trifle, the boat slewed, there was a crash, and she was lost in the shadow below the rail, while black darkness followed as the light went out. Hoarse shouts came out of it, men scurried here and there, and fell from the rail, then there was a rattle of blocks, and Appleby found himself floundering along the deck with panting men behind him and a rope in his hand. The boat they hove up was dropped into her nest, a seal or two flung out, and Jordan, who came forward with a lantern, shook his head as he glanced at her.

"Coming alongside that way is kind of expensive, but I guess you hadn't much choice just then," he said.

"No," said a man who stood, gasping still, with half-closed eyes in the lantern light. "We just had to fetch you the best way we could, and we'd have missed you sure while we tried to round her up to lee. She was 'bout half-swamped and all of us used up considerable."

In another few minutes the lads and most of the others went back into the hold and sat watching the last comers, who wasted no time in talking as they attacked the meal Brulee set before them. One of them, however, sat somewhat limply, and his face, which was tinged with grey, seemed drawn together. He ate nothing and only drank a little tea. Then as the others stretched out their long limbs towards the stove Donegal looked at Montreal.

"And what was it kept ye so long?" he said.

Montreal laughed softly, though the stamp of exhaustion was on his face. "Just the wind!" he said. "We was well away to leeward, and when we'd pulled 'bout a mile Tom there got a kind of kink inside him and had to let up. Then Siwash Bob sprung his oar, and we lost all we'd made the last hour while Tom got his wind again and I was fixing it. After that the boat began to take it in heavy and we had to stop to bale. There wasn't much left in us, and Tom was groaning awful when we heard the gun."

Niven stared at the speaker with a little wonder, and Appleby smiled, for the story was a singularly unimpressive narration of what they knew had been a grim struggle for life. Then Niven saw that Donegal was watching him, and became sensible of a faint embarrassment, for the sealer had an unpleasant habit of guessing what he was thinking.

"You and me could have told it better, Mainsail Haul," said he.

Niven flushed a trifle. He knew he could have made the story a good deal more effective, for there had been times when he had held the dormitory silent and expectant as he narrated some small feat of his at Sandycombe, but he had an unpleasant suspicion that this gift was apt to win its possessor derision rather than respect at sea, where the men who did things that would have formed a theme for an epic poem seemed reluctant to talk about them. Montreal, the sealer who under Providence owed his life to his splendid strength and valour, said nothing about the effort and almost superhuman strain, but only mentioned that they had sprung an oar and his comrade suffered from what he termed a kink inside him.

"Well," said Niven awkwardly, "it's a good while now since I told you anything at all."

"Sure," said Donegal, grinning. "'Tis since I've had the teaching av ye. But ye do not seem quite easy, Tom. Sit up while me and Mainsail Haul pull the clothes off ye."

The man grumbled and protested that there was nothing wrong with him, but Donegal worked on unheeding and shoved him by main force into his bunk.