Thrice Armed

He shouted with arm flung up, and, though it was doubtful whether anybody heard him, the schooner's boom foresail came thrashing down, and two men who leapt upon her rail fell into the boat. Then he thrust down his telegraph, and, as the Shasta forged by, the boat drove down on her. She struck the steamer's hove-up side with a crash that stove several strakes of planking in, and men jumped for the flung-down lines as she filled. They scrambled up them, four in all, and, for one of them had hooked on the davit falls, the Shasta's winch banged and rattled as they hove the boat in with the water streaming out through her shattered side at every roll. The men had, however, brought a rope with them, and the winch next hove the schooner's stoutest hawser off. It was made fast, and rose splashing from the sea when Jimmy touched his telegraph again, while, when at last the schooner fell into line astern, a very wet man clambered to the bridge.

"Are you fit to pull her out?" he asked.

"I don't know," said Jimmy; "I'm going to try. How did you get so far inshore, and have you left anybody to steer her?"

The man made a vague gesture. "Mainmast went beneath the hounds. She's been driving to leeward since, and she'd have been ashore in another hour if we hadn't fallen in with you. The old man's at her wheel. Built her himself 'most fifteen years ago, and nothing would shift him out of her."

Jimmy glanced astern, and for a few moments saw a gray face of rock loom out of the haze with the sea spouting dimly white at its feet. Then a thicker fold of vapor rolled about it, and the daylight faded suddenly. He could scarcely see the schooner lurching along behind them with jib still set, though the sail thrashed now and then. Indeed, his eyes were growing very heavy, and he realized that after forty-eight hours' continuous watching he could not keep himself awake much longer. A simple calculation showed him that it would be daylight again before he could put his helm up and run for shelter, when it would be imperatively necessary for him to be on his bridge; and calling his Scandinavian mate, he left the Shasta in his charge.

"Keep her going as she's heading now," he said. "You'll see I've headed her up a few points to allow for the leeward drag of the tow. You can call me in a couple of hours, or earlier if there's any change in the weather."

He clawed his way down from the bridge to the little room beneath it, and shed only his streaming oilskins before he flung himself into his bunk. He was asleep in two or three minutes, and slept soundly while the water oozed from his wet garments, until he was roused by a shouting. Then his door was flung open, and a man thrust his head in.

"Mr. Lindstrom figures you'd better get up," he said. "The tow has parted her hawser, and gone adrift."

Jimmy was out of his bunk in a moment, and in a few more had scrambled to his bridge. Lindstrom, the Scandinavian, shouted something he did not hear, but that did not very much matter, for the one question was, where was the schooner, and Jimmy was tolerably certain that nobody knew. His light had been burning, and for the first few moments he could see nothing but blackness, out of which there drove continuous showers of stinging spray. Then he made out the filmy cloud it sprang from at the Shasta's bows, and swept his gaze aloft toward the pale silver streak above her mastheads, which showed where the half-moon might come through. As he did so, the Scandinavian gripped his shoulder, and he saw a red twinkle widen into a wind-blown flame low down upon the sea. Now he could, at least, locate the tow.

"Did you get a sight of the beach? How far were we off?" he shouted.

"A low point," said Lindstrom, "which I do not know. One mile, I guess it, and we head her out more off shore."

Jimmy was a trifle startled. Though the water is deep along that coast, a mile leaves very small margin for contingencies, and he fancied that the tow, blowing to leeward, would cover it in half an hour. In that case there was not the slightest doubt as to what would then happen to her. She might, perhaps, last five minutes as a vessel, for the reefs are hard and there is a tremendous striking force in the long Pacific seas. Another point was equally clear. He had some twenty minutes in which to overhaul the schooner and take her skipper off, and no boat to do the latter with. If he failed to accomplish it in the time, it was very probable that the Shasta would go ashore, and he did not think that any one would escape by swimming. Still, he meant to do what he could, and once more he set the whistle shrieking as he shouted to the helmsman.

The Shasta came round, and drove away into the darkness, for the light had died out again and there was nothing visible ahead but the dim white tops of frothing seas. Five minutes passed, and Jimmy felt the tension, for they were steaming toward destruction, and it was quite possible that they might run past the schooner or straight over her. Then a shaft of moonlight struck the climbing pines high up in front of him, and it seemed to him that he was already almost under them. He set his lips, and clenched the hand he would not raise in warning to the helmsman while the pale watery moonlight crept lower and lower. It rested for a moment on a fringe of creaming foam where the rock met the water, and then a hoarse shout went up, for as it swept toward him they saw the schooner.

She was not far ahead of them, with jib thrashed to ribands and the sea streaming from her swung-up side. Jimmy thrust down his telegraph and shouted to Lindstrom, who dropped from the bridge as they drove past her stern. Then, as he raised his hand, the man behind him gasped as he struggled with his wheel, and the Shasta, stopping, lay rolling wildly beneath the schooner's lee, while a shadowy figure gesticulated to those on board her from her spray-swept rail. Jimmy glanced shoreward over his shoulder toward the tumbling surf, and decided that he had at most five minutes to take that man off. After that it would probably be too late for all of them.

Mercifully the moonlight still streamed down, and he waited with lips set and hands clenched on the telegraph while the schooner, being lighter, drove down upon the Shasta. One blow might make an end of both of them, but something must be hazarded, and he spared a glance for the wet men who crouched upon the Shasta's rail with lines in their hands. He had smashed one boat not long ago, and the second and smaller one had been damaged a week earlier, bringing a Siwash to take them up a certain inlet off an unsheltered beach.

The schooner was very near them, and, if he stayed where he was, would come down on top of the steamer in another minute or so. Then Lindstrom sprang out of the galley with a blue light in his hand, and its radiance blazed wind-flung and intense on the narrowing gap of foam between the two wildly rolling hulls. There was a hoarse shouting, and, though he might not have heard the words, it was evident that the man on board the schooner realized what he was expected to do. Jimmy set his lips tighter as he pressed down the telegraph to slow ahead.

The Shasta's propeller thudded, and as the schooner reeled toward her she commenced to move, and a black figure plunged with flung-up hands from the latter's shrouds. It struck the seething water, and vanished for a moment or two, while men held their breath and strained their eyes. Then there was a hoarse clamor, and lines went whirling down from the Shasta's rail. In the midst of it black darkness succeeded, as Lindstrom's light went out. Jimmy gasped, wondering when the schooner would strike them, while he clenched his hand on the telegraph. There was faint moonlight still, but it did not seem to touch the schooner, for his eyes were dazzled by the blaze of the blue light.

A moment later another shout rang out. "He has hold! Get down! Can't you stop her, sir?"

Jimmy, knowing what the hazard was, pressed his telegraph, and held his breath until a harsh voice rose again.

"I have a grip of him," it said. "Heave! We've got him, sir. Go ahead; she's coming down on the top of us!"

Jimmy moved his hand, and the gong clanged out "Full-speed" this time, while, glancing to windward, he saw the black shape of the schooner hove-up apparently above him. Still, quivering all through, the Shasta forged ahead, and he leaned on the rails, for now that the tension had slackened he felt curiously limp.

"The man's all right?" he asked.

Lindstrom, who climbed half-way up the ladder, said that he did not seem to have suffered very much, and Jimmy, looking around, saw nothing of the schooner, for there was sudden darkness as the moon went out.

CHAPTER XV

ELEANOR'S BITTERNESS

It was in a state of quiet contentment that Jimmy stood on his bridge, as the Shasta steamed past the Stanley pines into sight of the clustering roofs of Vancouver. His first voyage had been an unqualified success in every respect, and it was clear that the Shasta had done considerably more than cover her working expenses. This was in several ways a great relief to him, since it promised to obviate any difficulty in providing for his father's comfort, and also opened up the prospect of a career for himself. Jordan had assured him before he sailed that they would have no great trouble in raising funds to purchase another boat if the results of the venture warranted it. He had also said that since one thing led to another, there was no reason why the Shasta Company should not run several steamers by and by, in which case Jimmy would naturally become commodore-captain or general superintendent of the fleet.

As it happened, Jordan was the first person Jimmy's eyes rested on when he rang off his engines as the Shasta slid in to the wharf, and he climbed on board while they made her fast. It, however, seemed to Jimmy that his movements were less brisk than usual, and he was also dressed in black, which was a color he had once or twice expressed himself in his comrade's hearing as having no use for. He came up the bridge-ladder quietly, in place of scrambling up it in hot haste, which would have been much more characteristic, and Jimmy noticed that there was a difference in his manner when he shook hands with him. The latter's satisfaction commenced to melt away, and a vague disquietude grew upon him in place of it.

"Everything straight here?" he asked, veiling his anxiety.

"Oh, yes," said Jordan; "that is, in most respects. We have an outward freight – Comox mines – for you. You'll take her up the Straits that way when you go back again. You seem to have her full."

"I had to leave a good many odds and ends behind, and the ranchers expect to have more produce for us in a month or two. One or two of them were talking about baling presses and a small thrashing mill. I've an inquiry for the plant, which you can attend to. Another fellow was contemplating putting on some Tenas Siwash to see whether there was anything to be made out of hand-split shingles, and several more were going to plant every cleared acre with potatoes for Victoria. I'm to take up two of your mechanical stump-grubbers as soon as you can get them. If we can keep them pleased, we'll get all their trade."

Jordan nodded, without, however, any sign of the eagerness Jimmy had expected. "Well," he said, "that's quite satisfactory so far as it goes. Still, there are troubles that even the prospect of piling up money can't lift one over."

"Of course!" said Jimmy, who looked at him with sudden sympathy. "Still, I fancied you told me you had no near relatives. What are you wearing those clothes for?"

His comrade laid a hand on his shoulder. "It's a thing I shouldn't have done on my own account. I did it – steady, Jimmy, you have to face it – to please your sister."

"Ah!" said Jimmy, with a sharp indrawing of his breath, and leaned on the bridge-rails for a moment or two. His lips quivered, and Jordan saw him clench his hard brown hands. Busy wharf and climbing city faded from before his eyes, and he was sensible only of a curious numbing stupor that for the time being banished grief. Then he felt his comrade's grasp grow tighter.

"Brace up!" said Jordan. "It's a thing we have, all of us, to stand up under."

Jimmy straightened himself slowly, while the color paled in his face.

"When did it happen – and how?" he asked.

"Last night. The doctor had been round once or twice since you went away, and I understood from what Prescott said that he was getting along satisfactorily – that is, physically."

Jimmy said nothing, but looked at him with hard, questioning eyes.

"Well, it appears he was worrying himself considerably. Told Prescott it was a pity he couldn't die right away. Nobody had any use for him, and he didn't want to be a burden. Seems he went over it quite often. The doctor had cut him off from the whisky."

He stopped, with evident embarrassment and pain in his face; but Jimmy's eyes never wavered, though a creeping horror came upon him. In spite of the difficulty he had in thinking, he felt that he had not yet heard all.

"Go on," he said in a low, harsh voice.

"I don't think I could have told you, only it would have fallen on Eleanor if I hadn't, and she has as much as she can bear. You'll keep that in mind, won't you, Jimmy? He got some whisky – we don't know how – one of the wharf-hands who used to look in bought it for him, most probably. Prescott had to go out now and then, you see."

He stopped for a moment, and made a little gesture of sympathy before he went on again. "Somehow he fell over the table, and the kerosene lamp went over with it too. When one of the neighbors who heard him call went in nobody could have done anything for him."

The last trace of color ebbed from Jimmy's face, and he stood very still, with set lips and tightly clenched hands. Then he turned aside with a groan of horror.

"Lord!" he said hoarsely. "That, at least, might have been spared him."

In another moment he swung around on his comrade almost savagely, with a bitter laugh. "And you want to marry my sister Eleanor?"

"Yes," said Jordan; "just as soon as it can decently be done. Jimmy, you daren't blame him."

"Blame him!" and Jimmy's voice was strained. "If I had had his load to carry and felt it as he did, I should probably have gone under long ago."

He leaned heavily on the rail for a minute or two, and then, apparently rousing himself with an effort, turned toward his comrade. "As you say, I must stand up to it. How is Eleanor bearing it?"

"Quietly – too quietly. I'm 'most afraid of her. She's here – I went over to Forster's for her. Insists on staying in the house. I'll send somebody around with your papers, and then go along with you."

Five minutes later they went ashore together, and it was falling dusk when they reached a little four-roomed frame-house which stood near a row of others of very much the same kind amidst the tall fir-stumps which straggled up a rise on the outskirts of the town. It was such a one as the few wharf and sawmill hands who were married usually lived in – comfortless, primitive, and rickety. Jimmy remembered how he had determined when he sailed south with the Shasta full to the hatches that his father should not stay another month in it.

He was almost startled when his sister led them into the little general room, for it was evident that there had been a great change in her. That, at least, was how he regarded it then, but afterward he understood that it was only something which had been in her nature all the time making itself apparent. He did not remember whether she kissed him, but she sat down and looked at him with the light of the lamp upon her, while Jimmy, who could find nothing at all to say, gazed at her.

Eleanor had already provided herself with somber garments, and they emphasized the severity of contour of her supple figure. They also forced up the pallor of her face, which was relieved only by a faint blotch of color in either cheek, and, in spite of this, in a curious fashion made her beautiful. Jimmy had hitherto admitted that his sister was pretty, but, as he recognized, that word was not the right one now. She was imperious, dominant, a force embodied in a woman's shape, and her brother was vaguely conscious that he shrank a little from her. Eleanor did not seem to want his sympathy. The coldness of her face repelled him, the fastidious neatness of her gold-bronze hair appeared unnatural, and her pale-blue eyes had a hard glitter like that of a diamond in them. It was evident that in place of being crushed, she was filled with an intense suppressed virility. Indeed, there was something in her appearance and manner that was suggestive of a beautifully tempered spring, one that would fly back the moment the strain slackened, and, perhaps, cut deep into the hand that compressed it. It was the girl who spoke first, and her voice had a certain incisive quality in its evenness.

"Charley has told you," she said; "I can see that by your face. He insisted on doing so to save me. Well, I am grateful, Charley – that is, as grateful as I am capable of being – but I will not keep you."

Jordan looked disconcerted. "Can't you let me stay? There are one or two ways in which I could be of service."

Eleanor made a little imperious sign, and, though Jimmy once more found it difficult to realize that this woman, whose coldness suggested a white-heat of passion, was his sister, he was not altogether astonished when Jordan slowly rose.

"Then I'm going no farther than the first fir-stump that's low enough to make a seat," he said. "If I'm wanted, Jimmy has only to come out and call."

He went out, and Eleanor turned to her brother. "I am afraid Charley is going to be sorry I promised to marry him," she said. "Still, I think I am fond of him, or I might have been, if this horrible thing hadn't come between us. It is horrible, Jimmy – one of the things after which one can never be quite the same. I have a good deal to say to you – but you must see him."

Jimmy made a sign of concurrence, and his sister rose. "First of all, there is something else. It is a hard thing, but it must be done."

She turned to a cupboard, and, taking out a bottle of corn whisky, laid it before him with a composure that jarred on the man. Her portentous quietness troubled him far more than a flood of tears or a wild outbreak would have done. Then she laid her finger on the outside of the bottle, as though to indicate how much had been taken out of it.

"I think that accounts for everything," she said. "Still, he was driven to it. I want you to remember that as long as you and the man who is responsible live. Prescott knows, and Charley – I had to tell him. But nobody else must ever dream of it."

"Of course you had to tell Charley," said Jimmy hoarsely. "Still, the inquest?"

A scornful glitter crept into Eleanor's eyes. "That you will leave to me. I have been drilling Prescott as to what he is to say, and if they question Charley, who got here before the doctor when Prescott sent for him, he will stand by me."

Jimmy looked somewhat startled; but when he strove to frame his thoughts the girl silenced him. "If it were necessary to corrupt everybody who had ever been acquainted with him, and I could do it – at any cost – it would be done. Now" – and she quietly took up the lamp – "you will come with me."

Jimmy shivered a little as he went with her into the adjoining room, and set his lips tight when with a steady hand she drew the coverlet down. Then, while his eyes grew a trifle hazy, he drew in a little breath of relief, for Tom Wheelock lay white and serene at last, with closed eyes and no sign of pain in his quiet face, from which all the weariness had vanished. Only a clean linen bandage, which ran from one temple to behind the other ear, was laid upon it. There was nothing that one could shrink from, and Jimmy made a gesture of protest when Eleanor laid her hand on the bandage.

She met his eyes with something that suggested contempt in hers, and quietly drew back the bandage, and then the soft white sheet from the shoulder of the rigid figure. Jimmy sickened suddenly, and seized her arm in a constraining grasp.

"Put it back!" he said. "That is enough – enough, I tell you!"

Then, while the girl obeyed him, he turned from her with a groan, gasped once or twice, and sat down limply. He could not look around again until her task was concluded, and he would not look at her. It seemed an almost interminable time before she spoke.

"Still," she said, "you must look at him again; I should like you to remember him as he is now. Perhaps you can, Jimmy, but that relief is not for me."

Jimmy rose, and in another few moments turned his head away. He stood still, with a whirl of confused emotions that left him half-dazed rioting within him, while he glanced vacantly round the room. It was scantily furnished, and generally comfortless and mean. Long smears of resinous matter exuded from the rough frame boarding of its walls, and there were shrinkage rents in part of it that let the cool night air in. In one place he could see where a drip from the shingle roof had spread into a wide damp patch on the uncovered floor, and it seemed an almost insufferable thing that his father should have spent his last days in such surroundings. Then he glanced at Eleanor, standing a rigid, somber figure with the lamp in her hand, and it seemed that she guessed what he was thinking.

"It does not matter now – but he was once considered a prosperous man," she said. "The contrast was one of the things he never complained of; but I think he felt it."

Jimmy turned and went out with her, and, sitting down in the adjoining room, she looked at him with the quietness he was commencing to shrink from. She seemed to understand that, too.

"You think I am unnatural," she said. "Perhaps you are right – but even if you are, what does it matter? Still, I believe I was fonder of him than you ever were. If I hadn't been, could I have done all this for you and him?"

She stopped for a moment, and the hard gleam flashed back into her pale-blue eyes. "He was horribly burned, Jimmy, and until the last few minutes crazed with drink and pain. Still, he was driven to his death and degradation."

Jimmy only gazed at her with a tightening of his lips, and the girl went on in the clear, incisive tones that so jarred on him. "I think it was more than murder. Can you remember him as anything but abstemious, and only unwise in his easy kindliness, until the man who crushed him held him in his clutches? Weak! There are people who would tell you that, and perhaps he was. It was the load he had to bear made him so. Try to remember him, Jimmy, as he used to be – brave and gentle, devoted to your mother and mine; the man who, they said, never ran for shelter in the fiercest breeze of wind. Try – I want you to."

Jimmy turned to her abruptly, moistening his dry lips with his tongue. "Eleanor, have done; I can't stand any more."

"You must;" and the girl laughed harshly. "I hold that he was murdered. Is there any real distinction between the man who holds you up with a pistol and kills you for your money, suddenly and, in one way, mercifully, and the one who with cold cunning slowly sucks your blood until he has drained the last drop out of you? Still, that is not all. If he had only died as most men die. You must remember the upset lamp and the whisky, Jimmy."

"Stop!" said Jimmy hoarsely, clenching a brown hand while the perspiration started from him. "I can't stand it! It is horrible, Eleanor! You are a woman – you have promised to marry my comrade."

The girl rose, and, crossing to where he sat, laid a hand on his shoulder as she looked down at him. "I feel all that you feel, with a greater intensity; but I can bear it, and you must bear it too. Charley will not complain, and I would be his slave or mistress as long as he would stand by me until I carry out my purpose. He is only my lover, but you are Tom Wheelock's son. What are you going to do?"

"What can I do?" and Jimmy made a little hopeless gesture. "Perhaps it would be only justice, but I can't waylay Merril with a pistol. The man has no human nature in him. I couldn't even provoke him to strike me."

"No," said Eleanor, with a bitter laugh; "that would be foolishly theatrical, and in one way too easy. It would not satisfy me. You will wait, ever so long if it's necessary, and command the Shasta while you take his trade away. Then we will find other means – business means; it can, I think, be done. He must be slowly drained and ruined, and flung aside, a broken man, as your father was. Then it would not matter whether he dies or not."