CHAPTER XV

THE FIRST MISADVENTURE.

The breeze freshened fiercely with the red and fiery dawn, and Vane, who had gone below, was advised of it by being flung off the locker on which he sat with coffee and biscuits before him, in the saloon. The jug, overturning, spilled its contents upon his person, the biscuits were scattered, but he picked himself up in haste and scrambled out into the well. He found the sloop slanted over with a good deal of her lee deck submerged in rushing foam, and Carroll bracing himself against the strain upon the tiller.

"I'll let her come up when you're ready," Carroll remarked. "We had better get some sail off her, if we mean to hold on to the mast."

He put down his helm, and the sloop, forging round to windward, rose upright, with her heavy mainboom banging to and fro. After that, they were desperately busy for the next few minutes, and Vane wished they had engaged a hand in Vancouver, instead of waiting to hire a Siwash somewhere up the coast. There was a headsail to haul to windward, which was difficult, and the mainsheet to get in; and then the two men, standing on the slippery inclined deck, struggled hard to haul the canvas down to the boom. The jerking spar smote them in the ribs; once or twice the reefing tackle beneath it was torn from their hands; but they mastered the sail, tying two reefs in it, to reduce its size, and the craft afterwards drove away with her lee rail just awash.

"You had better go down and get some biscuits," Vane said to his comrade. "You mayn't have an opportunity later."

"It looks like that," Carroll agreed. "The wind's backing northwards, and that means more of it before long. You can call if you want me."

He disappeared below, and Vane sat at the helm with a frown on his face. He knew that the breeze would increase and draw ahead, which was unfortunate, because they would have to beat, fighting for every fathom they slowly made. There was no help for it, and he buttoned his jacket against the spray, while by the time Carroll came up the sloop was plunging sharply; pitching showers of stinging brine all over her when the bows went down. They drove her at it stubbornly most of the day, making but little to windward, while the seas got bigger and whiter, until they had some trouble to keep the light boat they carried upon the deluged deck. At last, when she came bodily aft amidst a frothing cascade which poured into the well, Vane brought the sloop round, and they stretched away to the eastwards, until they could let go the anchor in smooth water beneath a wall of rock. They were very wet, and stiff with cold, for winter was drawing near.

"We'll get supper," said Vane. "If the breeze drops at dusk, we'll go on again."

Having eaten little since dawn, they enjoyed the meal, and Carroll would have been content to remain at anchor afterwards. The tiny saloon was comfortably warm, and it would be pleasanter to lounge away the evening on a locker with his pipe, instead of sitting amidst the bitter spray at the helm. But Vane was proof against his companion's hints.

"With a head wind, we'll be some time working up to the rancherie, and then we have thirty miles of coast to search for the inlet Hartley reached," he said. "After that, there's the valley to locate; he was uncertain how far it lay from the beach."

"It couldn't be very far. You wouldn't expect a man who was sick to make any great pace."

"I can imagine a man who knew he must reach the coast before he started making a pretty vigorous effort. Do you remember the time we crossed the divide in the snow?"

"I could remember it, if I wanted," said Carroll with a shiver. "It's about the last thing I'm anxious to do."

"The trouble is that there are many valleys in this strip of country, and we may have to try a number before we strike the right one," Vane went on. "I can't spend very much time over this search. As soon as the man we put in charge of the mine has tried his present system long enough to give us something to figure on, I want to see what can be done to increase our output. We haven't marketed very much refined metal yet."

"There's no doubt it would be advisable," Carroll, who looked after their finances, answered. "As I've pointed out, you have spent a good deal of the cash you got when you turned the Clermont over to the company. In fact, that's one reason why I didn't try to head you off this timber-hunting scheme. You can't spend many dollars over it, and if the spruce comes up to expectations, you ought to get them back. It would be a fortunate change, after your extravagance in England."

"That is a subject I don't want to talk about. We'll go up and see what the weather's like."

Carroll shivered when they stood in the well. A nipping wind came down across the darkening firs ashore, but there was no doubt that it had fallen somewhat, and he resigned himself when Vane began to pull the tiers off the mainsail.

In a few minutes they were under way, the sloop heading out towards open water with two reefs down in her mainsail; a great and ghostly shape of slanted canvas that swept across the dim, furrowed plain of sea. By midnight the breeze was as strong as ever, but they had clear moonlight and they held on; the craft plunging with flooded decks through the white combers, while Carroll sat at the helm, battered by spray and stung with cold.

When Vane came up an hour or two later, the sea was breaking viciously. They held on and, soon after day broke with its first red flush ominously high in the eastern sky, stretched in towards the land, with a somewhat sheltered bay opening up beyond a foam-fringed point ahead of them. Carroll glanced dubiously at the white turmoil, in the midst of which black fangs of rock appeared, before he turned to his companion.

"Will she weather the point on this tack?" he asked.

"She'll have to," said Vane, who was steering.

They stood on, though it occurred to Carroll that they were not opening up the bay very rapidly. The light was growing, and he could now discern the orderly phalanxes of white-topped combers that crumpled into chaotic spouting on the point's outer end. The sloop would not last long if she touched bottom there; but once more, after a glance at his companion's face, he kept silent. After all, Vane was leader, and when he looked as he did then he usually resented advice. The mouth of the bay grew wider, until Carroll could see most of the forest-girt shore on one side of it; but the surf upon the point was also growing unpleasantly near. Wisps of spray whirled away from it and vanished among the scrubby firs clinging to the fissured crags behind. The sloop, however, was going to windward, for Vane was handling her with skill, and she had almost cleared the point when there was a bang, and the sloop stopped suddenly. The comber to windward that should have lifted her up broke all over her; flinging the boat on deck upon the saloon skylight, and pouring inches deep over the coaming into the well. Vane was hurled from the tiller and cut his forehead, for his wet face was smeared with blood, but he had seized a big oar to shove her off when she swung upright, moved, and struck again. The following sea hove her up; there was another less violent crash, and while Vane dropped the oar and grasped the helm she suddenly shot ahead.

"She'll go clear," he shouted, "Jump below and see if she's damaged."

Carroll got no farther than the scuttle, for the saloon floorings on the depressed side were already awash and he could hear an ominous splashing and gurgling.

"It's pouring into her," he reported.

Vane nodded. "You'll have to pump."

"We passed an opening some miles to lee. Wouldn't it be better if you ran back there?" Carroll suggested.

"No," said Vane; "I won't run a yard. There's another inlet not far ahead, and we'll stand on until we reach it. I'd put her on the beach here, only that she'd go to pieces with the first shift of wind to the westward."

Carroll agreed with this opinion; but there is a great difference between running to leeward with the sea behind the vessel, and thrashing to windward when it is ahead, and he hesitated.

"Get the pump started. We're going on," Vane said shortly.

The pump was, fortunately, a powerful one, and they had nearly two miles of smoother water before they stretched out of the bay upon the other track; but when they did so Carroll, who glanced down again through the scuttle, could not flatter himself that he had reduced the water.

After half an hour of it, he was breathless and exhausted, and Vane took his place. The sea was higher, the sloop wetter than she had been, and there was no doubt that the water was rising fast inside her. Carroll wondered how far ahead the inlet his companion had mentioned lay, and the next two hours were anxious ones to both of them. Turn about, they pumped with savage determination and went back, gasping, to the helm, to thrash the boat on. They drove her remorselessly; and she went through the combers, swept and streaming, while the spray scourged the helmsman's face as he gazed to weather. Their arms and shoulders ached from working in a cramped position, but since there was no help for it, they toiled doggedly, until at last the crest of a crag they were heading for sloped away in front of them.

A few minutes later, they drove past the end of it into a broad lane of water with long ranks of firs dropping steeply to its edge. The wind was suddenly cut off; the combers fell away, and the sloop crept slowly up the inlet, which wound, green and placid, among the hills. Vane strode to the scuttle and looked down at the flood which splashed languidly to and fro below.

"It's fortunate that we're in. Another half-hour would have seen the end of her," he said. "Let her come up a little. There's a smooth beach to yonder cove."

She slid in quietly, scarcely rippling the smooth surface of the tiny basin, about which there rose great black firs, and Carroll laid her on the beach.

"Now," said Vane, "drop the boom on the shore side, to keep her from canting over; and then we'll get breakfast. We'll see where she's damaged when the tide ebbs."

Since most of their stores had lain in the flooded lockers, from which there had been no time to extricate them, the meal was not an appetising one. They were, however, glad of it, and, rowing ashore afterwards, they lay on the shingle in the sunshine while the sloop was festooned with their drying clothes.

"If she has only split a plank or two we can patch her up," Vane remarked, "There are all the tools we'll want in the locker."

"Where will you get new planks from?" Carroll inquired. "I don't think we have any spikes that would go through the frames."

"That," said Vane, "is the trouble. I expect I'll have to make a trip across to Comox for them in a sea canoe. We're sure to come across a few Siwash somewhere in the neighbourhood. I can't say that this expedition is beginning fortunately."

"There's no doubt on that point," Carroll agreed.

"Well," said Vane, "she has to be patched up, and until I find that spruce I'm going on."

Carroll made no comment. It was not worthwhile to object when Vane was obviously determined.