Part 8

The sea was still only faintly rippled about them, and the smoke from the galley eddied in the hollow of the foresail, but the other vessels had grown plainer and were slanting over, while Niven, who resumed his deck scrubbing, fancied that Jordan strode up and down impatiently. Then Brulee, the French-Canadian cook, put his head out of the galley. "The breakfast is quite ready, _camarades_," he said.

The lads took their places with the rest, and when they sat down Niven glanced at the big lean-faced Stickine.

"What are we running away from those fellows for?" he said.

"Hear him!" said Donegal. "'Tis marvellous, his observation."

"Give the lad a show now and then," said the Canadian. "Well, now, when you see Ned Jordan run away you can figure there's dollars somewhere at the bottom of it, because if he didn't want to it would take quite a fleet of gunboats to put a move on him."

Brulee laughed. "You others are all lak that," he said. "_V'la la belle chose--courant en courant--la chasse de dollar_. It is so with you also in my country, the Quebec."

"Well, now," said a little man who hailed from Montreal, "there was a time when some of you made tolerably good running down there under Montcalm too. I've seen the place where that chase came off, and it's right behind the ramparts at Quebec."

"They run!" said Niven, who had read of the famous scene on the heights of Abraham, but Donegal stretched out a big hand, and he wriggled backwards with his plate.

"What come well from General Wolfe is a thrifle too big for the size av ye," he said. "They were good men, both Montcalm and him, and 'tis but the makings of one I'm after licking out of ye. Stickine, ye may purceed."

"Well," said the Canadian, "where the fur seals go to when they haul off from the Behring Sea nobody quite knows, but they're coming north, thousands of them, now, and some men can figure better than others where they'll first show up again."

"Is the skipper fortunate at finding them?" asked Appleby.

"Well, I wouldn't put it like that, just because it's tolerably plain figuring that it wants a good big head to make a lucky man," said Stickine. "It's the one who can do the most thinking comes out on top, and the things Jordan knows are the ones that work out the reckoning."

"You've hit it plump," said another man. "Ned Jordan's chased the seals that long he can tell you just what they're thinking."

Stickine nodded. "And think they can; they, and the sea otter, and the salmon they live upon. Well, now, when Ned Jordan has worried it all out for days, he has no use for a crowd of men who're too lazy to do their own thinking, hanging right on to him. No, sir. When the _Champlain_ drops right down on top of the seal herd she'll be there alone."

They went up as soon as breakfast was over, and Niven saw that one of the schooners had drawn close up on the _Champlain's_ quarter. The breeze had freshened, and both vessels were hurling the froth about their bows, and slanting over until the foam was near the rail. Foot by foot the stranger drew up, and Niven saw the reason as he noticed the length of her slanted masts. She sank to her bowsprit at every dip, and the spray whirled half the height of her tall foresail, when she swung her streaming bows up again. A man stood aft with both hands gripping her wheel, and another with a broad grin on his face leaned on her rail. His voice reached them faintly.

"We've been feeling lonely for the sight of you these two weeks," he said. "Now it 'pears to me that as the _Belle_ has got the speed, we're going to have your company."

Jordan smiled grimly as he glanced to weather. "Well, I don't know. There's more wind coming along," he said.

Appleby was sensible of a little thrill of pleasurable excitement, for it was evident that if Jordan desired to fall in with the seal herds alone he must sail for it, and glancing aft at the skipper's lean figure and quiet bronzed face he felt that he was not the man to be lightly beaten.

At noon there was no great distance between the vessels, though the _Belle_ with her tall masts had crept forward a little upon the _Champlain's_ weather-quarter, and the third one lay a quarter of a mile astern. The spray was whirling in sheets, and now and then a frothing green deluge came in, for all three were listed well down to their rails. The sea was also flecked and seamed with white, and it was evident to the lads that no skipper would have driven his vessel so hard had he not men enough to swiftly shorten sail. Then just as Brulee put his head out of the galley, the _Champlain_ heeled further by a screaming blast, buried her lee bow, and when she hove her head clear again all that side of her ran water.

Jordan glanced up at his main topmast, and there was a little twinkle in his eyes as he said, "I figure nobody would blame us for not hanging on to our sail. Boys, we'll have the topsail down."

The big sail swung down below the mainsail gaff, but when Appleby would have laid his hand upon the tack to haul it lower still Stickine laughed as he stopped him. "There's two ways of winning a race," he said. "Let her lie. 'Pears to me Ned Jordan will want her up again."

Appleby did not quite understand, but he saw Jordan's pose stiffen and his face grow intent as the _Belle_, still carrying everything, forged ahead. Then her topsail also fluttered, and he swung up his hand.

"Sheets in, and stand by your peak halliard to let go with a run," he said.

Then there was a scurry along the deck, blocks groaned and rattled, and the long booms were dragged in as the skipper put down his helm. The schooner came round, and because no vessel will carry the sail on a wind that she will going free, her lee-rail was in the sea and the deck sloped like a roof. Foam and green water seethed over her weather bow, and Appleby thrilled all through as he hung on by a pin with one hand on the peak halliard ready to let the mainsail gaff swing down to ease the pressure. He understood the manoeuvre now, for the _Champlain_ was shooting up across the other schooner's stern for the berth that would give her a free hand upon her weather. It was almost too late when the skipper of the _Belle_ realized this, but he put his helm down pluckily, and then the weight of his tall masts came into play. The _Belle_ seemed buried in a white confusion when she came up, too, and a huddle of dripping figures appeared to wash aft together when she dipped her nose in a sea. Then there was a crash as she swung her jibs out of the foam again, and her foresail blew over to leeward banging, while the _Champlain_ swept up dripping on her weather. A man sprang up in the shrouds shouting ironically, but Jordan shook his head and called him down.

"We've no use for that kind of thing here," he said.

Appleby was dripping with the spray, but his blood tingled, and his face was flushed, while Stickine, who stood close by, nodded to him approvingly.

"Neat, oh, yes. Quite neat!" he said. "Her foresail gaff's gone, and we're well up on her weather where we can do what we like with her. Still, I figure we're not going to hold on to our own sticks very long."

"Square away!" Jordan's voice rang out, and the long mainboom swung out again, while there was by contrast a curious ease of motion when the _Champlain_, rising more upright, turned her stern to the sea. It no longer thrashed in over her weather bow, but ran forward white-topped on either side of her, but the breeze was even stronger, and Appleby wondered, when the voice rose again.

"Run the gaff topsail back to the masthead, boys!"

It took several of them to do it, and more were needed before they hauled the sheet home. Then the _Belle_ dropped away behind, though the other vessel stayed where she was, half-a-mile under their lee quarter, a pyramid of swaying sail.

Jordan laughed softly as he glanced towards her over his shoulder. "Old man Carter's most as stubborn as a mule," he said. "Well, we'll have more wind by and by, and I'm figuring we'll see things then. I don't know any reason you shouldn't get your dinner in the meanwhile, boys."

They trooped below, and there was no great change when they came up, except that the _Belle_ was farther astern and the sea seemed to be getting steeper. They swept on before it all afternoon, and the men were a little more silent when, with a great rolling in of smoky vapours, nightfall came. It was now blowing tolerably hard, but while the seas frothed white as they surged past high above the rail, the _Champlain_ still drove on under all her lower sails. She was swept by bitter spray, and the man who held her straight was panting at the wheel, but the vapours rolled down thicker and the _Belle_ and the _Argo_ were indistinguishable. Niven was lying in his bunk when Stickine came down, and his face was a trifle grave, while, as he flung off his dripping oilskins, there was a great thud and gurgle forward, and something seethed across the hatch.

"Put her nose in that time," he said. "Well, we've got to shake them off, but we're taking steep chances already, and we can't press her as we're doing very long."

"Could you make the others out?" asked a man, and Stickine laughed silently.

"No," he said. "Still, we will do if the moon comes through. I know old man Carter, and he'd run her under before he'd let us beat him. It wouldn't take them long to get the spare gaff on the _Belle_."

He flung himself into his bunk as he was, and Appleby, who had heard him, asked no questions. He began to realize that these big, good-humoured sealers could on occasion be very grim, though this was not a cause of much astonishment to him, for he had seen already that it is not, as a rule, the domineering and ostentatious who take the foremost place when the real stress comes. He slept, but it was lightly, for the roar of the sea about the bows and groaning of the hard-pressed hull roused him now and then. At times he seemed to feel the great beams and knees straining above him and the tremulous quiver of the vessel's skin, while when for the fourth time he wakened suddenly a shower of brine came down with a hoarse voice through the scuttle. The light of the swinging lamp showed that Niven was sitting up wide awake, and in a few more minutes they crawled out on deck with several of the men.

A shower of stinging spray beat into their eyes, and when he could see again, Niven had a disconcerting glimpse of a big frothing comber apparently curling above the schooner's stern. The decks ran water, but when he glanced aloft every sail but the topsail was drawing still, and he clutched the rail when as they swung upwards a blink of moonlight pierced the flying vapours. To leeward of them lay a schooner, her hull just showing faintly black through the white smother that seethed about her, until she hove a breadth of it up streaming in a leeward roll. It appeared insignificant in comparison with the mass of dusky sail that swayed low again towards the rushing froth as she lurched back to weather, and then Appleby glanced aft with a little thrill to the grim set face of the man who stood panting at the _Champlain's_ wheel.

The hiss of the seas that followed, the roar at the bows, the wild humming of the blast and the whirling spray stirred his blood. They were all of them tokens of what man could dare, and the strain, that human nerve could bear, for he knew that already hemp and wire and timber were being taxed to the uttermost, and that if the helmsman gave her a spoke too much or too little the next sea would curl on board or the great black mainsail jibe over and strew the _Champlain's_ decks with ruin. Niven stood beside him, and Appleby saw that although his face was almost colourless in the moonlight, his eyes were shining.

"Oh, it's great!" he said. "Worth all we stood on board the _Aldebaran_ to have a hand in this."

"And how many hands were ye born with when I see two av them holding ye where ye are?" said Donegal, who apparently heard him. "Is ut dollars or diversion a man goes to sea after?"

Niven laughed. "Dollars. Oh, get out! You know you feel it yourself," he said. "You've got everything just throbbing inside you as I have now."

Donegal grinned broadly. "And what if you're right?" he said. "'Tis born in the blood av the likes av me, but if I was the son av a ducal earl it's sorrow on the day would find me on the sea."

He got no further, but grabbed the lad's shoulder and held him fast as the _Champlain_ swerved a little and a sea came in. It swirled about them icy cold as she rolled down to lee, and the scuppers were spouting when with a wild lurch she swung back to weather. Then Donegal thrust the pair of them aft together.

"Get a good hold an' keep it, until we have some need av ye," he said.

Then the blink of moonlight went out and the _Champlain_ was alone, while the two lads shivered and dodged the spray as she swept onwards through the night, until a faint light crept out of the east across the whitened sea. The wet canvas showed black against it, there was a doleful wail of wind, and then when man's strength sinks to its lowest something happened. The _Champlain_ put her bows in, and Jordan sprang suddenly up on the deckhouse gazing astern. What he said was scarcely audible, but the sealers apparently understood it, for the deck was filled with scrambling men. Down came the mainsail's peak, forward a slashing sail slid down, and the outer jib thrashed furiously above the bowsprit. Niven was clawing his way towards it when Stickine grasped his shoulder and flung him back.

"I guess this is going to be work for a man," he said.

Niven, who watched him crawl out along the bowsprit, held his breath when spar and man dipped into the sea, and then floundered aft to where the others were rolling up the foot of the half-lowered mainsail. It slatted and banged above them, and now and then the long boom beneath the foot of it that ran a fathom or more beyond the stern, swung in, for the schooner was coming up to the wind, but the rush and stress of the race had stirred his blood, and when it became evident that somebody was wanted there, he swung himself up on the foot-rope beneath its outer end as he otherwise might not have done. In another moment Appleby was up beside him, and Jordan standing at the wheel glanced dubiously at them. Then he nodded.

"You've got to begin sometime," he said.

It was not easy to keep a grip of the foot-rope, and more difficult still to roll up the sail and tie the reef points round it because both hands were needed and to hold on they must lie across the boom. Still, they accomplished it, and Appleby felt content when Jordan made a little gesture as they sprang down. He was not a man who said more than was necessary, but it was evident that he was pleased with them. Then they hauled at the halliards with the rest, and in a few more minutes they were once more on their way under easy sail.

"She's snug for a while, but we'll have the trysail handy," said Jordan quietly. "Old man Carter was a little slow. They're catching the heft of it on board the _Argo_."

Appleby glanced down to leeward and saw the _Argo_. She was hove down with one side lifted high above the sea, and loose canvas thrashing all over her.

"I'll figure he'll just save his masts," said Stickine. "Wouldn't snug her down till we did. Well, I figure Carter couldn't help being born a mule."

Then the _Argo_ grew dim behind them, and they swept on into an empty sea, for the race was over, and there was no sign of the _Belle_.

*CHAPTER X*

*HOVE TO*

At noon next day, Jordan once more brought the _Champlain's_ head to wind, and they put the third reef in her mainsail, while when she swept on again the sea grew steeper behind her, until the combers that raced after her apparently hung frothing above her helmsman's head. She would fling her stern up to meet them and while the man panted over his jerking wheel her bowsprit went down and down. Then she would leisurely lift her nose and surge forward lapped in seething foam, only to sink with a smooth, swift lurch again.

It was dryest aft, though there was water splashing everywhere, and the two lads hung about the mainmast where the little deckhouse partly sheltered them, watching the helmsman's grim face as he swung with his wheel. They knew, by this time, that, while it is a somewhat difficult affair to keep a hard-pressed vessel straight before the sea, unpleasant things are apt to happen to a fore-and-aft one if it is not done.

Still, the man knew his work, and did it, and at last, towards nightfall, when the sea was all spray and foam, Jordan, who came up, stood staring astern. After a minute or two he shook his head.

"We had better round her up while we can," he said. "Get the main-gaff down, and you'll be handy with the trysail."

They were very handy, and there was a good many of them, but Appleby held his breath when the foresail was lowered, and the mainsail peak swung down. Jordan was still looking astern, and he nodded after an especially big sea went smoking past them.

"We'll try it now," he said.

The man beside him swayed with the wheel, the _Champlain_ swung round to windward, and there was a roar when a roller burst into spray upon that side of her. Then she swung further yet, and as the big mainboom came down the little three-cornered trysail went thrashing up the mast. Everybody was doing something amidst a great banging of canvas, and in another few moments there was a wonderful quietness. Appleby gasped, and Stickine who went by dripping grinned at him, while Jordan nodded to the men.

"She'll lie easy now," he said.

In place of running before it the _Champlain_ lay almost head to wind, rising and falling with now and then a little lurch to leeward and a curious buoyancy. The strip of sail above her bowsprit and the trysail aft just sufficed to hold her stationary, and it was with little more than a spray wisp at her bows she bobbed in a curious cork-like fashion to the sea. Except for one or two of them the men crawled away below, and the lads, who were wet through, were glad to climb down into the stuffy warmth beneath the hatch.

It was dark down there now save for the flickering radiance of the lamp which shone upon the wet brown faces and the smears of smoke. The dusky hold reeked with the smell of steaming clothes, but the lads had grown used to odours which would have sickened them before they went to sea. Niven shook off the oilskins Jordan had given him, and as usual commenced his questions.

"The sea looked nasty before we brought her up," he said. "How was it we scarcely shipped any of it?"

"It was," said Stickine dryly. "Still, Ned Jordan knows his business, sonny."

Niven did not care for the epithet, or the grin which usually accompanied it, but he had discovered that one has to put up with a good deal that one does not like at sea.

"Of course!" he said. "But why couldn't we have gone on running?"

Montreal, the man who sat nearest the stove, laughed softly as he raised his head. "Listen to it. That's why!" he said.

There was a moment's silence, and while the _Champlain_ rolled to leeward, and the floorings slanted under them until no man could have kept his footing, all could hear the scream of the rigging ring through the roar of the wind. It was a significant answer, but it left a little that was not quite plain yet, and Stickine nodded when Appleby glanced at him.

"It works out like this. A time comes when she'll run no longer--and then it's too late to heave her to," he said.

"Yes," said Appleby reflectively. "Of course if the sea was too bad to run before it would be too big to bring her up in, because while she was swinging round she'd catch it on her beam. Still, if you had run too long what could you do?"

"Just nothing," said Stickine gravely. "Wait until she ran under and took you down."

He stopped, and there was a thud that sent a little shiver through two of the listeners as the _Champlain_ plunged into a sea, for they had been taught sufficient to see the picture the brief words called up. In the silence that followed Brulee leaned forward with a curious intentness in his eyes.

"_Comme ca!_" he said, swinging down a brown hand with suggestive suddenness. "I have seen it. We come down from Labrador in the _Acadie_ brig, and it is blow the grand ouragan."

He drew in his breath, and gazed into the dimness as though he saw none of those about him, and then with a little shake of his shoulders stretched out a finger and pointed to Niven. "I was as young as him, and it was in the clear of the moon when the _Acadie_ was hove to, one brought me to the rail to see the _Madeleine_. She was topsail schooner which load with us, and we had all the friend on board her. Whether she will not heave to, or the captain he is dare too much, I do not know, but she comes up from the spray and pass close, so close. I see the topsails black in the moon, and the jib she lift high. Then she is over run the sea, and I shut tight my eye. It is in a moment I look again--and there is no more _Madeleine_."

Again there was silence, and Donegal nodded sympathetically when the French-Canadian turned away his head. "_Ave!_" he said. "For their good rest."

It was a minute or two before Niven, who had shivered a little at the tale, spoke again. "He told us the captain dared too much," he said.

"Sure!" said Donegal. "Is that perplexing ye, an' am I to stuff ye with wisdom so ye can spill it out av ye? Still, that wan's easy. 'Tis the daring ye want at sea, but ye must dare just so far, an' when it's necessary, for the man who does not know when the conthract is too big for him is going to have it shown him what he is. Ye can follow me?"

Niven was not quite sure that he did, but Stickine smiled grimly as he nodded. "It's quite plain figuring. He's a blame fool," he said.

Appleby stared at the speaker with a faint perplexity, for while there were occasions when Donegal the sealer and his comrades talked arrant rubbish they now and then brought truths the lad had scarcely realized home to him in a fashion that carried conviction as well as astonishment with it. He wondered whether the sea had taught them, or there was something that opened the eyes of the thoughtful in the simple life they led. It was one which at least demanded qualities that were an ornament to any man, and more often than not the primitive virtues which humanity cannot rise beyond showed through what some would have deemed his comrades' coarseness. Once or twice as he listened it was dimly borne in upon the lad that while manhood was a greater thing than culture or refinement all that was most worthy in it was founded on a few eternal verities.

Niven, however, could not be serious long, and presently he laughed at Donegal as he turned over to dry his other side before the little stove. He felt luxuriously contented to lie there in the stuffy warmth, and listen to the growling of the seas.

"There was something Stickine was to tell us--about a fifty-year-old schooner, and a crew of starving men," he said.

Donegal nodded. "That ate the rats? Get up on the hind legs av ye, now, an' talk, Stickine."

There was a little murmur from the rest, and the big, lean-faced Canadian looked uneasy. "Pshaw! You've heard that tale before," he said.

"Some av us," said Donegal. "An thim would hear it again. The others has not, and they're waiting on ye anxiously!"