The Secret of the Reef

“We won’t gain anything by arguing who might suffer most,” he said as coolly as he could.

“No; I guess that’s useless,” Clay agreed. “Well, I must get on those fellows’ trail and see what I can do.”

They strolled along the beach for a while, and then went back to the others.

While Clay traced her movements as far as they could be learned, the Cetacea was slowly working north. She met with light, baffling winds, and calms, and then was driven into a lonely inlet by a fresh gale. Here she was detained for some time, and adverse winds still dogged her course when she put to sea again, though they were no longer gentle, but brought with them a piercing rawness from the Polar ice. Her crew grew anxious and moody as they stubbornly thrashed her to windward under shortened sail, for every day at sea increased the strain on their finances and the open-water season was short.

In the sharp cold of a blustering morning Jimmy got up from the locker upon which he had spent a few hours in heavy sleep. His limbs felt stiff, his clothes were damp, and at his first move he bumped his head against a deck-beam. Sitting down with muttered grumbling, he pulled on his soaked knee-boots and looked moodily about. Daylight was creeping through the cracked skylight, and showed that the underside of the deck was dripping. Big drops chased one another along the slanted beams and fell with a splash into the lee bilge. Water oozed in through the seams on her hove-up weather side and washed about the lower part of the inclined floor, several inches deep. The wild plunging and the muffled roar outside the planking showed that she was sailing hard and the wind was fresh.

Jimmy grumbled at his comrades for not having pumped her out, and then shivered as he jammed himself against the centerboard trunk and tried to light the rusty stove. It was wet and would not draw and the smoke puffed out. He was choking and nearly blinded when he put the kettle on and went up on deck, somewhat short in temper. Moran was sitting stolidly at the helm, muffled in a wet slicker, with the spray blowing about him; Bethune crouched in the shelter of the coaming, while white-topped seas with gray sides tumbled about the boat. An angry red flush was spreading, rather high up, in the eastern sky.

“You made a lot of smoke,” Bethune remarked.

“I did,” said Jimmy. “If you’ll get forward and swing the funnel-cowl, which you might have done earlier, you’ll let some of it out. I’m glad it’s your turn to cook, but you had better spend ten minutes at the pump before you go.”

Bethune, rising, stretched himself with an apologetic laugh.

“Oh, well,” he said; “I was so cold I felt I didn’t want to do anything.”

“It’s not an uncommon sensation,” Jimmy replied. “The best way to get rid of it is to work. If you’ll shift that cowl, I’ll prime the pump.”

Bethune shuffled forward, and, coming back, pumped for a few strokes. Then he stopped and leaned on the handle.

“You really think we’ll raise the island to-day?” he asked.

“Yes. But it isn’t easy to shoot the sun when you can hardly see it and have a remarkably unsteady horizon. Then, though she has laid her course for the last two days, I haven’t much confidence in the log we’re towing.”

He indicated the wet line that ran over the stern and stretched back to where a gleam of brass was visible in the hollow of a sea.

“What could you expect?” Bethune asked. “We got the thing for half its proper price, and, to do it justice, it goes pretty well after a bath in oil, and when it stops it does so altogether. You know how to deal with a distance recorder that sticks and stays so, but one that sticks and goes on again plays the devil.”

“Talking’s easier than pumping,” Jimmy said suggestively.

“It is, but I feel like working off a few more remarks. They occurred to me while I sat behind the coaming, numbed right through, last night. I suppose you have noticed how the poor but enterprising man is generally handicapped. He gets no encouragement in taking the hard and virtuous path. It needs some nerve to make a start, and afterward, instead of things getting easier, you fall in with all kinds of obstacles you couldn’t reasonably expect. Even the elements conspire against you; it’s always windward work.”

“I suppose this means you’re sorry you came?”

“Not exactly; but I’ve begun to wonder what’s the good of it all. I haven’t slept in dry clothes for a fortnight. It’s a week since any of us had a decent meal; and my slicker has rubbed a nasty sore on my wrist. All the time I could have had three square meals a day, and spent my leisure reading a dirty newspaper and watching them sweep up the dead flies in the hotel lounge. What I want to know is – whether any ambition’s worth the price you have to pay for gratifying it?”

“I should say that depends on your temperament.”

“Bethune does some fool-talking now and then,” Moran commented from his post at the helm. “When you go to sea for your living, you must expect to get up against all a man can stand for; and if you don’t put up a good fight, she’ll beat you. That’s one reason you’d better get your pumping done before she ships a comber.”

With a gesture of acquiescence Bethune resumed his task, and presently went below while Jimmy took the helm. The breeze freshened during the morning, and the sea got heavier, but it dropped in the afternoon, when they ran into a fog belt, which Jimmy thought indicated land. As the days were getting shorter, they set the topsail, and looked out eagerly until a faint gray blur appeared amid the haze, perhaps a mile away. Closing with it, they made out the beach, which Jimmy searched with the glasses after consulting his notebook.

“Luff!” he called to Bethune. “Now steady at that; I’ve got my first two marks.” Then he motioned to Moran. “Clear your anchor!”

A few minutes afterward he completed his four-point bearing, and the Cetacea stopped, head to wind, with a rattle of running chain. The sea was comparatively smooth in the lee of the land, and ran in a long swell that broke into a curl of foam here and there. Bethune took up the glasses and turned them on the beach.

“It is some time since high-water, and we ought to see her soon,” he said. “I’m trying to find the big boulder on the point.” He paused and put down the glasses. “Do you see anything?”

“No,” said Moran gruffly; “she should be showing.”

“That’s true,” Bethune agreed. “The tallest timber used to be above water when the top of the boulder was just awash, and now its bottom’s a foot from the tide.”

Jimmy said nothing, but seizing the dory savagely, he threw her over the rail and jumped into her with a coil of rope. Moran followed and lowered a bight of the rope while Jimmy rowed. Some minutes passed, but they felt nothing, and Bethune watched them from the sloop with an intent face. It looked as if the wreck had broken up and disappeared. Then as the dory turned, taking a different track, the rope tightened and Moran looked up.

“Got her now! She’s moved, and there may not be much of her holding together.”

Jimmy stopped rowing, and there was silence for a moment or two. It would take time to unpack and fit the diving pumps, and sunset was near, but neither of them felt equal to bearing the strain of suspense until daybreak.

“It may blow in the morning,” Jimmy said.

“That’s so,” agreed Moran, pulling off his pilot coat. “I’m going down.”

There was a raw wind, the tide ran strong, and the water was chilled by the Polar ice; but Moran hurriedly stripped off his damp clothes and stood a moment, a finely poised figure that gleamed sharply white against gray rocks and slaty water. Then he plunged, and the others waited, watching the ripple of the tide when the sea closed over him. Some moments passed before his head broke the surface farther off than they expected. Jimmy pulled toward him, and after a scramble, which nearly upset the craft, he got on board and struggled into his clothes. Then he spoke.

“She’s there, but so far as I can see, she’s canted well over with her bilge deep in the sand.”

Jimmy and Bethune were filled with keen relief. They might have increased trouble in reaching the strong-room, but it was something to know that the wreck had not gone to pieces in their absence.

Jimmy picked up the end of the rope and tied on a buoy. Then he pulled back to the sloop, where Bethune cooked a somewhat extravagant supper.

CHAPTER XVII – THE STRONG-ROOM

When Jimmy went on deck the next morning, fog hung heavily about the land and the slate-green sea ran with a sluggish heave out of belts of vapor. The air felt unusually sharp and the furled mainsail glistened with rime. This was disturbing, because they must finish their work, or abandon it, before winter set in; but Jimmy reflected that it was some weeks too soon for a severe cold snap. While he watched the smoke from the stove funnel rise straight up in a faint blue line, he heard a splash of oars and Bethune appeared in the dory.

“I took the water breaker off before you were up,” he said as he came alongside. “There was ice on the pool. It struck me as a warning that we had better lose no time.”

“That’s obvious,” returned Jimmy. “Hand me up the breaker. We’ll get the pumps rigged first thing.”

Breakfast was hurried. The weather was favorable for work, and they could not expect it to continue so. In an hour the sloop had been warped close to the wreck and Jimmy put on the diving dress. He was surprised to feel the half-instinctive repugnance from going down which he thought he had got rid of; but this could not be allowed to influence him, and he resolutely descended the ladder. In a few minutes he reached the wreck, and found one bilge deeply embedded; but the opposite side was lifted up, and a broad strip of planking had been torn away. Jimmy could see some distance into the interior, and his lamp showed that the stream had washed out part of the sand which had barred their way to the bulkhead cutting off the strong-room. This had been strained by the working of the wreck, and it seemed possible to wrench the beams loose.

He attacked the nearest with his shovel, using force when he found a purchase, but the timber proved to be firmly mortised in. He lost count of time as he struggled to prize it out, and did not stop until he grew distressed from the pressure. His heart was beating hard and his breath difficult to get, but the beam still defied him. Making his way out of the hold, he stumbled forward toward the ladder; and when his comrades removed his helmet on board the sloop, he sat still for a few moments to recover. It was inexpressibly refreshing to breathe the keen, natural air. At last he explained what he had found below, and added:

“My suggestion is that we bore out an opening for the saw; then we could cut the stanchion through and prize the cross-timbers off.”

“The trouble is that we haven’t a big auger,” Bethune objected. “You often run up against a difficulty of the kind when you’re using tools: the thing you want the most is the one you haven’t got.”

“Mortise-chisel might do,” said Moran. “How thick’s the timber?”

“Three or four inches. By its toughness I imagine it’s oak or hackmatack.”

“Then, there’s a big job ahead,” grumbled Bethune; “and my experience is that as soon as you drive a chisel into old work you come upon a spike. Unfortunately, we haven’t a grindstone.”

“Quit your pessimism and find the chisel!” snapped Moran. “I’m going down.”

They watched the bubbles that marked his progress rise to the surface in a wavy line and then stop and break in a fixed patch. Rather sooner than they expected the bubbles moved back; and Moran looked crestfallen when they took off his diving dress.

“Did you cut out much stuff?” Bethune asked.

“No,” said Moran, holding up the chisel; “this is what I did. Came across a blamed big spike at the second cut.”

Bethune giggled. Even Jimmy grinned. There was a deep notch in the edge of the tool.

“Your philosophy isn’t much good,” Moran said grumpily. “It helps you to prophesy troubles, but not to avoid them. We’ll have to spend some time in rubbing that nick out.”

“I’ll try the engineer’s cold-chisel,” Bethune replied. “With good luck, I might cut the spike.”

He took the tool and an ordinary carpenter’s chisel down with him; and the edge of the chisel was broken when he returned.

“I’ve cut the spike, and dug out about an inch of the wood,” he reported. “Why are you frowning, Jimmy?”

“It looks as if we may spend a week over that timber. These confounded preliminaries sicken me!”

“They’re common.” Bethune launched off into his philosophy. “If you undertake anything that’s not quite usual, half your labor consists in clearing the ground; when you get at the job itself, it often doesn’t amount to much.”

“Chuck it!” Moran interrupted. “Jimmy, it’s your turn.”

Jimmy stayed below as long as he could stand it, hacking savagely with broken chisels at the hard wood, and scraping out the fragments with bruised fingers; then he came up and Moran took his place. It was trying work, and grew no easier when, by persistent effort, they made an opening for the saw. The tool had to be driven horizontally at an awkward height from the sand, and the position tired their wrists and arms. Still, the weather was propitious, which was seldom the case, and they toiled on, until exhaustion stopped them when it was getting dark. Then Moran sent Bethune ashore to look for stones with a cutting grit, and they sat in the cabin patiently rubbing down the nicked tools, while the deck above them grew white with frost.

It cost them two days to break the beam, and on the evening they succeeded there was a sharp drop in the temperature.

Jimmy was cooking supper when Moran called him up on deck and pointed seaward.

“See that?” he said. “Seems to me we’ve got notice to quit.”

Searching the western horizon, where the sea cut in an indigo streak against a dull red glow, Jimmy made out a faintly glimmering patch of white. Taking up the glasses, he saw that it was low and ragged, and fringed on its windward edge by leaping surf. This showed it was of some depth in the water, and he recognized it as a floe of thick northern ice.

“Yes,” he answered gravely; “we’ll have to hurry now.”

They spent the next week attacking the bulkhead. Jimmy thought it would have resisted them only that it had obviously been built in haste and here and there the strengthening irons had wrenched away through the working of the hull. They lost no time, but the work was heavy, and tried them hard.

It was late in the afternoon, and blowing fresh enough to make diving risky, when Jimmy prepared to go down for what he hoped would be the last attempt; but stopping a few moments he looked anxiously about. Gray fog streamed up from seaward in ragged wisps, and the long swell had broken into short, white-topped combers, over which the sloop plunged with spray-swept bows, straining hard at her cables as the flood tide ran past.

“We might hold on for another hour,” Bethune said hopefully; but breaking off he pointed out to sea. “That settles it,” he added. “If it’s any way possible, we must cut the bulkhead to-night.”

A tall, glimmering shape crept out of the fog about a mile away. It was irregular in outline, and looked like a detached crag, except that it shone with a strange ghostly brightness against the leaden haze. It came on, sliding smoothly forward with the tide, another mass which was smaller and lower rocking in its wake; and then a third crept into sight behind. The men gazed at them with anxious faces; then Jimmy held out his hand for the helmet.

“They’ll ground before they reach us, but the sooner I get to work the better,” he said.

A bent iron plate hung from a tottering beam when he crawled up to the after end of the hold, and he savagely tried to wrench it out with a bar. The effort taxed his strength, but when he felt that he could keep it up no longer the timber yielded, and he fell forward into the gap. It cost him some trouble to recover his balance, and while he crouched on hands and knees, the disturbed water pulsed heavily into the dark hole. Lifting his lamp, he saw that the floor was deep in sand; and out of the sand two wooden boxes projected. He found that he could not drag them clear, and it seemed impossible to remove them without some tackle, but in groping about he came upon a bag. It was made of common canvas, and had been heavily sealed, though part of the wax had broken away, but on lifting it Jimmy found the material strong enough to hold its contents.

He sat still for a moment or two, his heart beating with exultant excitement. The sand was much deeper at the other side of the small, slanted room. He could not tell what lay beneath it; but he could see two boxes, and he held a heavy bag. Gold was worth about twenty dollars an ounce, and value to a large amount would go into a small compass. It looked as if wealth were within his grasp.

The effects of the continued pressure made themselves felt, and Jimmy hastily picked his way out of the hold. He had some trouble in getting up the ladder, which swung to and fro, and when he reached the deck he saw Moran busy forward, shortening cable. Bethune released him from his canvas dress, and lifted the bag.

“You got in?” he cried.

“Yes; here’s a bag of gold. I saw two boxes, and expect there are others in the sand.”

Bethune clenched his hand tight.

“And we can’t hold on! It’s devilish luck, I say! She has dragged the kedge up to the stream anchor, and is putting her bows in. Still, I’m going to make a try.”

Glancing at the sea, Jimmy shook his head. The combers were getting bigger with the rising tide and the sloop plunged into them viciously, flooding her forward deck, and jarring her cable.

“No,” he said. “I had trouble in reaching the ladder, and she might drag to leeward before you could get back. The thing’s too risky.”

Moran, coming aft, felt the bag, and looked at the diving dress with longing, but he supported Jimmy’s decision.

“I surely don’t want to light out, but we’ll have to get sail on her.”

Crouching in the spray that swept the bows, they laboriously hauled in the chain with numbed and battered hands, and, leaving Bethune to hoist the reefed mainsail, coiled the hard, soaked kedge warp in the cockpit. Then they set the small storm-jib, and theCetacea drove away before the sea for the sheltered bight.

“We’d have known how we stood in another hour,” Bethune grumbled, shifting his grasp on the wheel to ease his sore wrist.

They were too tensely strung up to talk much after supper, for the weight of the bag was sufficient to indicate the value of its contents, and they thought it better not to break the seals. Jimmy grew drowsy, and he had lain down on a locker when Moran opened the scuttle-hatch.

“Now that it’s too late to dive, the wind’s dropping and coming off the land,” he said.

Jimmy went to sleep, and it was daybreak when he was wakened by an unusual sound. It reminded him of breaking glass, though now and then for a few moments it was more like the tearing of paper. He jumped up and listened with growing curiosity. The noise was loudest at the bows, but it seemed to rise from all along the boat’s waterline. Moran was sleeping soundly, but when Jimmy shook him he suddenly became wide awake.

“What is it?” Jimmy asked quickly.

“Ice; splitting on her stem.”

“Then it’s too thin to worry about.”

“That’s the worst kind,” Moran replied, slipping into his pilot coat. “Get your slicker on; I’m going out.”

There was not much to be seen when they reached the deck. Clammy fog enveloped the boat, but Jimmy could see that the surface of the water was covered by a glassy film. He knew that heavy ice is generally opaque and white, but this was transparent, with rimy streaks on it that ran to and fro in irregular patterns. As the tide drove it up the channel, it splintered at the bows, throwing up sharp spears that rasped along the waterline. Still, it did not seem capable of doing much damage, and Jimmy was surprised at Moran’s anxious look.

“Shove the boom across on the other quarter!” Moran said sharply.

Jimmy moved the heavy spar, the boat lifted one side an inch or two, and Moran, lying on the deck, leaned down toward the water. Jimmy, dropping down beside him, saw a rough, white line traced along the planking where the water had lapped the hull. It looked as if it had been made by a blunt saw.

“She won’t stand much of this,” Jimmy said gravely, running the end of his finger along the shallow groove made by the sharp teeth of the splitting ice.

“That’s so. I’ve seen boats cut down in a tide. The trouble is, the stream sets strong through the gut, except at the bottom of the ebb.”

Jimmy nodded. This was his first experience of thin sheet-ice, but he could understand the dangerous power it had when driven by a stream fast enough to break it on the planking, so that its edge was continually furnished with keen cutting points. He could imagine its scoring a boulder that stood in its way; while, instead of changing with flood and ebb, the tide flowed through the channel in the sands in the same direction, as tidal currents sometimes do round an island.

Bethune came up and looked over the side. A glance was enough to show him their danger.

“What’s to be done?” he asked.

“I don’t quite know,” said Moran, with a puzzled air. “The ice gathers along the beach, and the patches freeze together as the tide sweeps them out. She’d lie safe where the stream is pretty dead, but there’s no place except this bight where we’d get shelter from wind and sea.”

“It’s plain that we can’t stay here, and we’d better get off as soon as possible,” said Jimmy. “We can hang on to the wreck unless it blows, but I want the breakers filled before we start.”

“It will take us some time,” Bethune objected. “I feel I’d rather get up those boxes from the hold.”

“So do I,” Jimmy rejoined. “But I’m taking no chances when there’s a risk of our being blown off the land.”

“The skipper’s right,” declared Moran. “We’ll go off with the dory, while he drops her down with the tide.”

They helped to shorten cable, and, after breaking out the anchor, pulled the dory toward the beach through the thin ice, while the sloop drifted slowly out to sea. Jimmy was relieved to hear the unpleasant crackle stop, and he leisurely set about making sail, for the wind was light. He must have canvas enough to stand off and on until the others rejoined him.

He found the waiting dreary when he reached open water, for he was filled with keen impatience to get to work. The gold lay in sight in the hold of the wreck, and an hour or two’s labor was all that was required to transfer it to the sloop. And it was obvious that this must be done at once, because the drift ice was gathering in the offing, and an on-shore breeze might suddenly spring up. They had nowhere to run for shelter, now that the only safe haven was closed to them. Still, Jimmy felt that he had done wisely in exercising self-control enough to send for the water.

It was almost calm and very cold. Sky and water were a uniform dingy gray, and the mist, which had grown thinner round the land, still obscured the seaward horizon. Once Jimmy thought he made out an ominous pale gleam in a belt of haze, but when it trailed away before a puff of fitful breeze, he saw nothing. For two hours he sailed to and fro in half-mile tacks, finding just wind enough to stem the tide; and then, when his patience was almost exhausted, he felt a thrill of relief as he heard the measured splash of oars. A few minutes later the dory came alongside, and Bethune handed up the casks.

“We had to break the ice with a big stone, and I hardly thought we’d get through,” he said. “It froze up again while we carried the first load down.”

“It doesn’t matter so much now,” Jimmy replied. “If all goes well, we should be away at sea by daybreak to-morrow.”

While they stowed the breakers the wind dropped, and Jimmy, watching the sails shake slackly, made a gesture of fierce impatience.

“The luck is dead against us! It looks as if we should never get at that gold! There’s a two-knot stream on her bow, and she’ll drift to leeward fast.”

“Then we’ll tow her!” Moran said stubbornly. “Get into the dory; you haven’t carried those breakers, and I’m not used up yet.”