The Secret of the Reef

Harold Bindloss

The Secret of the Reef

CHAPTER I – DISMISSED

The big liner’s smoke streamed straight astern, staining the soft blue of the sky, as, throbbing gently to her engines’ stroke, she clove her way through the smooth heave of the North Pacific. Foam blazed with phosphorescent flame beneath her lofty bows and, streaking with green and gold scintillations the long line of hull that gleamed ivory-white in the light of a half moon, boiled up again in fiery splendor in the wake of the twin screws. Mastheads and tall yellow funnels raked across the sky with a measured swing, the long deck slanted gently, its spotless whiteness darkened by the dew, and the draught the boat made struck faint harmonies like the tinkle of elfin harps from wire shroud and guy. Now they rose clearly; now they were lost in the roar of the parted swell.

A glow of electric light streamed out from the saloon-companion and the smoking-room; the skylights of the saloon were open, and when the notes of a piano drifted aft with a girl’s voice, Jimmy Farquhar, second mate, standing dressed in trim white uniform beneath a swung-up boat, smiled at the refrain of the old love song. He was in an unusually impressionable mood; and he felt that there was some danger of his losing his head as his eyes rested admiringly on his companion, for there was a seductive glamour in the blue and silver splendor of the night.

Ruth Osborne leaned on the steamer’s rail, looking forward, with the moonlight on her face. She was young and delicately pretty, with a slender figure, and the warm coloring that often indicates an enthusiastic temperament. In the daylight her hair had ruddy gleams in its warm brown, and her eyes a curious golden scintillation; but now it arched in a dusky mass above the pallid oval of her face, and her look was thoughtful.

She had fallen into the habit of meeting Jimmy when he was not on watch; and the mate felt flattered by her frank preference for his society, for he suspected that several of the passengers envied him, and that Miss Osborne was a lady of importance at home. It was understood that she was the only daughter of the American merchant who had taken the two best deck rooms, which perhaps accounted for the somewhat imperious way she had. Miss Osborne did what she liked, and made it seem right; and it was obvious that she liked to talk to Jimmy.

“It has been a delightful trip,” she said.

“Yes,” agreed Jimmy; “the finest I recollect. I wanted you to have a smooth-water voyage, and I am glad you enjoyed it.”

“That was nice of you,” she smiled. “I could hardly help enjoying it. She’s a comfortable boat, and everybody has been pleasant. I suppose we’ll see Vancouver Island late to-morrow?”

“It will be dark when we pick up the lights, but we’ll be in Victoria early the next morning. I think you leave us there?”

The girl was silent for a few moments, and in her expression there was a hint of regret that stirred Jimmy’s blood. They had seen a good deal of each other during the voyage; and it was painful to the man to realize that in all probability their acquaintance must soon come to an end; but he ventured to think that his companion shared his feelings to some extent.

“In a way, I’m sorry we’re so nearly home,” Ruth said frankly; and added, smiling, “I’m beginning to find out that I love the sea.”

Jimmy noted the explanation. He was a handsome young Englishman of unassuming disposition, and by no means a fortune-hunter, but he had been bantered by the other mates, and he knew that it was not an altogether unusual thing for a wealthy young lady to fall in love with a steamboat officer during a long, fine-weather run. Miss Osborne, however, had shown only a friendly liking for him; and, as he would see no more of her after the next day, he must not make a fool of himself at the last moment.

“The sea’s not always like this,” he replied. “It can be very cruel; and all ships aren’t mailboats.”

“I suppose not. You mean that life is harder in the others?”

Jimmy laughed. He had been a Conway boy, but soon after he finished his schooling on the famous old vessel the death of a guardian deprived him of the help and influence he had been brought up to expect. As a result of this, he had been apprenticed to a firm of parsimonious owners, and began his career in a badly found and undermanned iron sailing ship. On board her he had borne hunger and wet and cold, and was often worked to the point of exhaustion. Pride kept him from deserting, and he had come out of the four years’ struggle very hard and lean, to begin almost as stern a fight in steam cargo-tramps. Then, by a stroke of unexpected luck, he met an invalid merchant on one of the vessels, and the man recommended him to the directors of a mail company. After this, things became easier for Jimmy. He made progress, and, after what he had borne, he found his present circumstances almost luxuriously easy.

“Steam is improving matters,” he said; “but there are still trades in which mates and seamen are called upon to stand all that flesh and blood can endure.”

“And you have known something of this?”

“All I want to know.”

“Do tell me about it,” Ruth urged. “I am curious.”

Jimmy laughed.

“Well, on my first trip round Cape Horn we left the Mersey undermanned and lost three of our crew before we were abreast of the Falkland Isles; two of them were hurled from the royal yard through the breaking of rotten gear. That made a big difference, and we had vile weather: gales dead ahead, snow, and bitter cold. The galley fire was washed out half the time, the deckhouse we lived in was flooded continually; for weeks we hadn’t a rag of dry clothes, and very seldom a plateful of warm food. It was a merciful relief when the gale freshened, and she lay hove to, with the icy seas bursting over her weather bow while we slept like logs in our soaking bunks; but that wasn’t often. With each shift or fall of wind we crawled out on the yards, wet and frozen to the bone, to shake the hard canvas loose, and, as it generally happened, were sent aloft in an hour to furl it tight again. Each time it was a short-handed fight for life to master the thrashing sail. Our hands cracked open, and the cuts would not heal; stores were spoiled by the water that washed over everything, and some days we starved on a wet biscuit or two; but the demand for brutal effort never slackened. We were worn very thin when we squared away for the north with the first fair wind.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Ruth. “It must have been a grim experience. Didn’t it daunt you, and make you hate the sea?”

“I hated the ship, her skipper, and her owners, and most of all the smart managing clerk who had worked out to the last penny how cheaply she could be run; but that was a different thing. The sea has a spell that grips you, and never lets go again.”

“Yes,” said Ruth; “I have felt that, though I have seen it only in fine weather and from a liner’s saloon deck.” She mused for a few moments before she went on. “It will be a long time before I forget this voyage, steaming home over the sunlit water, with the wind behind us and the smoke going straight up, the decks warm, everything bright and glittering, and the glimmer of the moon and the sea-fire about the hull at night.”

There was an opening here for an assurance that the voyage would live even longer in his memory; but Jimmy let it pass. He feared that he might say too much if he gave the rein to sentiment.

“Were you not charmed with Japan?” he asked.

Ruth acquiesced in the change of topic, and her eyes sparkled enthusiastically.

“Oh, yes! It was the time of the cherry-blossom, and the country seemed a fairyland, quainter, stranger, and prettier than anything I had ever dreamed of!”

“Still, you must have seen many interesting places.”

“No,” she said with a trace of graveness. “I don’t even know very much about my own country.”

“All the Americans I have met seemed fond of traveling.”

“The richer ones are,” she answered frankly. “But until quite lately I think we were poor. It was during the Klondyke rush that my father first became prosperous, and for a number of years I never saw him. When my mother died I was sent to a small, old-fashioned, New England town, where some elderly relatives took care of me. They were good people, but very narrow, and all I heard and saw was commonplace and provincial. Then I went to a very strict and exclusive school and stayed there much longer than other girls.” Ruth paused and smiled. “When at last I joined my father I felt as if I had suddenly awakened in a different world. I had the same feeling when I saw Japan.”

“After all, you will be glad to get home.”

“Yes,” she said slowly; “but there’s a regret. We have been very happy since we left; my father has been light-hearted, and I have had him to myself. At home he often has an anxious look, and is always occupied. I have some friends and many acquaintances, but now and then I feel lonely.”

Jimmy pondered, watching her with appreciative eyes. She was frank, but not with foolish simplicity; quite unspoiled by good fortune; and had nothing of the coquette about her. Indeed, he wondered whether she realized her attractiveness, or if the indifference she had shown to admiration were due to pride. He did not know much about young women, but he thought that she was proud and of strong character.

“You must come to see us if you are ever near Tacoma,” Ruth said cordially.

Jimmy thanked her, and soon afterward left her, to keep his watch on the bridge. As they were still out of sight of land he had no companion except the quartermaster at the wheel in the glass-fronted pilot-house. There was no sail or smoke trail in all the wide expanse his high view point commanded. Rolling lazily to port and starboard, the big boat cleft a lonely sea that was steeped in dusky blue save where a broad belt of moonlight touched it with glittering silver. The voices and laughter gradually died away from the decks below, the glow of light was lessening, and the throb of the screws and the roar of flung-off water grew louder. A faint breeze had sprung up, and the smoke stretched out, undeviating, in a broad black smear over the starboard quarter; Jimmy noticed this while he paced to and fro, turning now and then to sweep a different arc of horizon. The last time he did so he stopped abruptly, for the smoke had moved forward. For a moment he fancied that the wind had changed, but a glance at the white-streaked wake showed him that the vessel was swinging round. Then he sprang to the pilot-house, and, looking in through the open door, saw the quartermaster leaning slackly on the small brass wheel. His face showed livid in the moonlight, and his forehead was damp with sweat.

“What’s this, Evans?” Jimmy cried.

Pulling himself together with an effort, the man glanced at the compass in alarm.

“Sorry, sir,” he said thickly, spinning the wheel. “She’s fallen off a bit. Something came over me; but I’m all right now.”

“It may come over you once too often. This isn’t the first time,” Jimmy reminded him.

A shadow obscured the moonlight; and, turning abruptly, Jimmy saw the captain in the doorway. The skipper looked at the compass and studied the quartermaster’s face; then he beckoned Jimmy outside. He had come up in soft slippers which made no noise, and Jimmy was keenly concerned to know how long he had been there. Jimmy had never got on well with his captain.

“Evans had his helm hard over; was she much off her course?” the captain asked with an ominous calm.

“About thirty degrees, sir.”

“How long is it since you checked his steering?”

Jimmy told him.

“You consider that often enough?”

“I had my eye on the smoke, sir.”

“The smoke? I suppose you know a light breeze is often variable?”

“Yes, sir,” said Jimmy. “She couldn’t swing off much without my noticing it.”

“One wouldn’t imagine so after what I discovered. But I gathered that Evans had been seized in this way during your watch before.”

“Yes, sir,” Jimmy repeated doggedly.

“Didn’t it strike you that your duty was to report the matter? You knew that Evans has a weakness of the heart that may seize him unexpectedly at any time. If it did so when we were entering a crowded harbor or crossing another vessel’s course, the consequences might prove disastrous. In not reporting it you took upon yourself a responsibility I can’t allow my officers. Have you anything to say?” Jimmy knew he could make no answer that would excuse him. When, as is now usual, a fast vessel’s course is laid off in degrees, accurate steering is important, and he had been actuated by somewhat injudicious pity. Evans was a steady man, with a family in England to provide for, and he had once by prompt action prevented the second mate’s being injured by a heavy cargo-sling.

“Perhaps the best way of meeting the situation,” the captain said curtly, “would be for you to voluntarily leave the ship at Vancouver. You can let me know what you decide when you come off watch.”

Jimmy moodily returned to his duty. He thought his fault was small, but there was no appeal. He would have no further opportunity for serving his present employers; and mailboat berths are not readily picked up. He kept his watch, and afterward went to sleep with a heavy heart.

The next evening he was idling disconsolately on the saloon deck when he saw Miss Osborne coming toward him. He was standing in the shadow of a boat and stayed there, feeling in no mood to force a cheerfulness he was far from feeling. Besides, he had now and then, when the girl was gracious to him, found it needful to practise some restraint, and now he felt unequal to the strain.

“I have been looking for you,” she said. “As I suppose everybody will be busy to-morrow morning, I may not see you then. But you seem downcast!”

Jimmy shrank from telling her that he had been dismissed; and, after all, that was a comparatively small part of his trouble. The girl’s tone was gentle, and there was in her eyes a sympathy that set his heart beating. He wished he were a rich man, or, indeed, almost anything except a steamboat officer who would soon be turned out of his ship.

“Well,” he said, “for one thing, the end of a voyage is often a melancholy time. After spending some weeks with pleasant people, it’s not nice to know they must all scatter and that you have to part from friends you have made and like.”

A faint tinge of color crept into Ruth’s face; but she smiled.

“It doesn’t follow that they’re forgotten,” she replied; “and there’s always a possibility of their meeting again. We may see you at Tacoma; it isn’t very far from Vancouver.”

Jimmy was not a presumptuous man, but he saw that she had given him a lead and he bitterly regretted that he could not follow it. Though of hopeful temperament, stern experience had taught him sense, and he recognized that circumstances did not permit of his dallying with romance. There was nothing to be gained and something to be lost by cultivating the girl’s acquaintance.

“I may have to sail on a different run before long,” he said.

She gave him a glance of swift but careful scrutiny. The moonlight was clear, and he looked well in his white uniform, which showed his solid but finely molded figure and emphasized the clean brownness of his skin. He had light hair and steady, dark blue eyes, which had just then a hint of trouble.

“Well,” she responded, “you know best; but, whether you come or not, my father and I are in your debt. You have done much to make this a very pleasant voyage.” She gave him her hand, which he held a moment. “And, now, since you wish it, good-by!”

When she turned away, Jimmy leaned on the rail, watching her move quietly up the long deck. He was troubled with confused and futile regrets. Still, he had acted sensibly: it was unwise for a dismissed steamboat officer to harbor the alluring fancies he had sternly driven from his mind.

CHAPTER II – A NEW VENTURE

The sun had dipped behind a high black ridge crested with ragged pines, when Jimmy, dressed in brown overalls and a seaman’s jersey, sat cooking supper on a stony beach of Vancouver Island. In front of him the landlocked sea ran back, glimmering with a steely luster, into the east; behind, where the inlet reached the hillfoot, stood the City of the Springs, which then consisted of a shut-down sawmill, a row of dilapidated wooden houses, and two second-rate hotels. Shadowed by climbing pinewoods, sheltered by the rocks, the site was perhaps as beautiful as any in the romantic province of British Columbia, though man’s crude handiwork defaced its sylvan charm with rusty iron chimney-stacks, rows of blackened fir-stumps, and unsightly sawdust heaps. For all that, giant, primeval forest rolled close up to it, and in front lay the untainted sea. The air had in it a curious exhilarating quality; the balsamic scent of the firs mingled with the sharp odors of drying weed, tar, and cedar shavings that lay about the camp; and Jimmy, stooping over his frying-pan, sniffed the air with satisfaction. These were odors that belonged to the sea and the wilds; and he had lately renounced the comforts of civilization and embarked upon an adventure that appealed to him.

Near him, a man with a rugged, weatherbeaten face was engaged in fitting a plank into the bilge of a hauled-up sloop. She was a small but shapely vessel of about forty feet in length, and had been built after a design adopted by a famous yacht club on the Atlantic coast. Jimmy could see that she was fast; but she had been put to base uses, and had suffered from neglect. As a matter of fact, he never learned her history, and had always some doubt as to whether the man from whom he and his companion bought her had an indisputable right to sell her.

Moran had been a Nova Scotian lobster catcher before he came to British Columbia to engage in the new halibut fishery, which had proved disappointing. Bethune, who lay upon the shingle in garments much the worse for wear, was a “remittance man,” with a cheerful expression and a stock of unvarying good humor. It was some time since he had engaged in any exacting occupation, and now, after using the saw all day, he was resting from his unaccustomed exertions and bantering Moran.

Jimmy had met them both in a second-rate Vancouver boarding-house, to which he had resorted after failing to find a ship, and working on the wharf. He might have sailed before the mast, but he knew that when he next applied for a berth on board a liner he must account for his voyagings, and the fact that he had served as able seaman would not recommend him. When there was no cargo to be handled, he worked in the great Hastings mill; but he promptly discovered that he would never grow rich by this means; and the unrelaxing physical effort, demanded by foremen who knew how to drive hard, began to pall on him. He could have stood it had he come fresh from the sailing ships, but he frankly admitted that it was trying to a mailboat officer. He had, however, some small savings, and when Bethune proposed a venture, in which Moran joined, Jimmy agreed.

“Hank,” Bethune drawled, after watching Moran for several minutes, “you Maritime Provinces people are a hard and obstinate lot, but you won’t get the plank in that way if you stick at it until to-morrow.”

Moran looked up with the sweat dripping from his brow.

“I surely hate to be beat,” he admitted. “I can spring her plumb up lengthways, but her edges won’t bend into the frames.”

“Exactly. This isn’t a cod-fishing dory or a lobster punt. Take your plane and hollow the plank up the middle.”

After doing as he was instructed, Moran had not much trouble in fitting it into place.

“Why didn’t you tell me that before?” he asked.

“I’ve known you some time,” Bethune answered with a grin. “There are people to whom you can’t show the easiest way until they’ve tried the hardest one and found it won’t do. It’s not their fault; I hold you can’t make a man responsible for his temperament – and it’s a point on which I speak feelingly, because my temperament has been my bane.”

“How d’you know these things, anyway? I mean about bending planks. You never allowed you’d been a boatbuilder.”

“Do you expect a man to exhibit all his talents? Here’s another tip. Don’t nail that plank home now. Leave it shored up until morning, and you’ll get it dead close then with a wedge or two. And now, if Jimmy hasn’t burned the grub, I think we’ll have supper.”

The meal might have been better, but Moran admitted that he had often eaten worse, and afterward they lay about on the shingle and lighted their pipes. Bethune, as usual, was the first to speak.

“The lumber, and the canvas Jimmy gets to work upon to-morrow, have emptied the treasury,” he remarked. “If we incur any further liabilities, there’s a strong probability of their not being met; but that gives the job an interest. Prudence is a cold-blooded quality, which no man of spirit has much use for. To help yourself may be good, but doing so consistently often makes it harder to help the other fellow.”

“When you have finished moralizing we’ll get to business,” Jimmy rejoined. “Though I’m a partner in the scheme, I know very little yet about the wreck you’re taking us up to look for. Try to be practical.”

“Moran is practical enough for all three of us. I’ll let him tell the tale; but I’ll premise by saying that when he found the halibut fishing much less remunerative than it was cracked up to be, he sailed up the northwest coast with another fellow to trade with the Indians for furs. It was then he found the vessel.”

“The reef,” said Moran, “lies open to the south-west, and I got seven fathoms close alongside it at low water. A mile off, and near a low island, a bank runs out into the stream, and the after-half of the wreck lies on the edge of it, worked well down in the sand. At low ebb you can see the end of one or two timbers sticking up out of the broken water.”

“Is it always broken water?” Jimmy interrupted.

“Pretty near, I guess. Though there’s a rise and fall on the island beach, the stream ran steady to the northeast at about two miles an hour, the whole week we lay sheltering in the bight, and the swell it brings in makes a curling sea on the edge of the shoals.”

“Doesn’t seem a nice place for a diving job. How did you get down to her?”

“Stripped and swam down. One day when it fell a flat calm for a few hours and Jake was busy patching the sail, I pulled the dory across. I wanted to find out what those timbers belonged to, and I knew I had to do it then, because the ice was coming in, and we must clear with the first fair wind. Well, I got a turn of the dory’s painter round a timber, and went down twice, seeing bottom at about three fathoms with the water pretty clear. The sand was well up her bilge, but she was holding together, and when I swam round to the open end of her there didn’t seem much in the way except the orlop beams. I could have walked right aft under decks if I’d had a diving dress; but I’d been in the water long enough, and a sea fog was creeping up.”

Moran apparently thought little of his exploit; but Jimmy could appreciate the hardihood he had shown. The wreck lay far up on the northern coast, where the sea was chilled by currents from the Pole, and Moran had gone down to her when the ice was working in. Jimmy could imagine the tiny dory lurching over the broken swell, and the half-frozen man painfully crawling on board her with many precautions to avoid a capsize, while the fog that might prevent his return to his vessel crept across the water. It was an adventure that required unusual strength and courage.

“Why didn’t you take your partner out with you?” he asked.

“I’d seen Jake play some low-down tricks when we traded for the few furs we got, and I suspicioned he wasn’t acting square with me. Anyhow, he allowed he didn’t take much count of abandoned wrecks, and when he saw I’d brought nothing back, he never asked me about her.”

“But if she was lost on the reef, how did she reach the bank a mile away?”

“I can’t tell you that, but I guess she shook her engines out after she broke her back, and then slipped off into deeper water. The stream and surge of sea may have worked her along the bottom.”

“It came out that she had only a little rock ballast in her,” Bethune explained. “There may not have been enough to pin her down; but the important point is that the strong-room was aft, and Hank says that part is sound.”