"It's a kind of pity we lost that breeze," he said. "The people up yonder want those sawmill fixings, and with the wind from the east we'd 'most have fetched the Inlet to-night. There was talk of somebody putting a steamboat on, but the mill's a small one, and they figured they'd give me a show as long as I could keep them going. I've got to do it. There's a living in the contract."
Then his face hardened suddenly, and he sighed. "That is, there would have been if Merril hadn't got his grip on me. That man wants everything."
He appeared about to say something further, but just then Prescott flung the scuttle slide back, and a smell of coffee and frizzling pork flowed out of it.
"If you want your breakfast, Tom, I guess you'd better get it," he said, and lumbered round the deckhouse toward the wheel.
Wheelock went below, and Jimmy, who seemed to forget that he had meant to light his pipe, glanced thoughtfully at Prescott.
"Who is this Merril, Bob?" he asked.
Prescott made a vague gesture. "I guess he's everything. He has a finger in most of what goes on in this Province, and feels round with it for the money. Calls himself general broker and ship-store dealer; but he has money in everything, from bush ranches to steamboats."
"You mean he holds stock in them?"
"No," said Prescott, "I guess I don't. I'm not smart at business, and Tom isn't either, or he'd never have let Merril get his claws on him; but it's quite plain to me that stocks don't count along with mortgages and bonds. When you buy stock you take your chances, and quite often that's 'bout all; but when you hold a bond at a big interest you usually get the ship or mill. Anyway, that's how Merril fixes it."
Jimmy lighted his pipe, but he looked more thoughtful than ever, as, in fact, he was. Hitherto, he had taken life lightly, for, after all, wet and cold, screaming gale and stinging spray, are things one gets used to and faces unconcernedly; but Jimmy could recognize a responsibility, and he realized that there was now to be a change. Tom Wheelock was growing prematurely old and shaky, and it was, it seemed, his son's part to free him from the load of debt that was crushing him, if this by any means could be done; if not, at least to share it with him. He feared it would be the latter. Hitherto he had waged only the clean, primitive strife with the restless sea; but he did not shrink from the prospect of the meaner and more arduous conflict with the wiles of man and the forces of capital, or consider that in renouncing his career he was doing a commendable thing. He was by no means brilliant intellectually, though he had a certain shrewdness and a ready wit; and it only occurred to him that the course he had decided on was the obvious one. He did not even think it worth while to mention that he had done so, which indeed would have been unnecessary, since Prescott seemed to take it for granted.
"I believe you had the wind from the east for several days," he said. "Why didn't you run across before?"
"Well," replied Prescott reflectively, "we might have done so, but Tom didn't seem greatly stuck on trying it. Took time over his loading when he got your wire. Perhaps he didn't want to leave you hanging round Vancouver until we got back again."
Jimmy said nothing – he had partly expected this; and while he smoked his second pipe, the vapors were rolled apart, and the breeze came down on them. Unfortunately it came from the northwest, which, as the sawmill they were bound for stood at the head of a deep inlet on the west coast of Vancouver Island, was ahead of them; so for a while they let her stretch out into the Pacific, close-hauled upon the starboard tack.
The Tyee was comparatively fast, and, under all the sail they could pile on to her, excepting the main gaff-topsail, she drove along with a wide curl of foam under her lee bow and the froth lapping high and white on her side. Then by degrees the long roll of the Pacific heaved itself up into steep, blue-sided seas with tops of incandescent whiteness, and as she lurched over them the spray whirled in filmy clouds from her plunging bows. Still the breeze freshened, and by noon they hove her to with jibs aback while they hauled two reefs down in her mainsail, and it became necessary for somebody to crawl out to the end of its tilting boom, which stretched a good fathom beyond her stern. Prescott was a little too old for that work; Tom Wheelock held the wheel; and the Siwash deck-hand was busy forward. Jimmy laughed as he swung himself up to the footrope.
"It's several years since I've done anything of this kind, but I dare say I can tie those after-points in," he said.
He clawed his way out, and, as he hung with waist across the spar and both hands busy while the Tyee, flinging the spray all over her, plunged upon the long, foam-tipped roll, a big Empress liner came up from the eastward, white and majestic. She drove close by the schooner with a slow and stately dip and swing, and Jimmy Wheelock, clinging to the Tyee's reef-points, smiled somewhat curiously as he glanced up at her. Her tall side rose above him like a wall, and he saw the cluster of saloon passengers beneath the tier of deckhouses move toward the rail to gaze down upon the little dingy vessel, and the two trim officers high above them in the sunshine on the slanting bridge. That was his world – one in which steam did the hard work, and man merely pressed the telegraph handle or laid a finger on a spoke of the little steering wheel; but it was a world on which he had turned his back, and there was nothing to be gained by repining.
He broke two of his nails before he finished his task and dropped from the footrope to the Tyee's deck, and the liner had sunk to a gleaming white blur and a smoke-trail on the rim of the sea before they had reefed the foresail and once more got way on her. Then Prescott grinned at Jimmy as he glanced toward the fading smear of vapor.
"A head-wind's quite a little matter to that boat," he said. "I guess you'd feel more at home on board of her?"
Jimmy laughed good-humoredly. "Perhaps I would, but after all I don't know that it counts for very much."
They came round some hours later, and, heading her in for the land on the other tack, found how little they had made to windward, whereupon there followed a consultation. Prescott was for running back and coming to an anchor in smooth water to wait for a shift of wind, but Wheelock would go on. He blinked at the white sea to windward with watery eyes, while the Tyee, putting her bows in, flung the spray all over her; but there was a certain grimness in Tom Wheelock's eyes, for, if he was not smart at business, he was at least a resolute seaman.
"Those sawmill people want their fixings, and if we're to hold on to their contract I guess they've got to have them," he said. "She should thrash down to the Inlet by to-morrow night. I figure she'd go along a little easier without her staysail."
They hauled it down; but the Tyee, being loaded deep with heavy machinery, was not appreciably drier afterward, and by the time the angry, saffron sunset faded off the foam-crested sea, she put her bows in somewhat frequently. Then there was a thud as she charged a big comber, and the frothy cataract that seethed in over her weather rail swirled aft a foot deep, while the spray blew all over her. Jimmy, buttoned to the throat in oilskins, stood at her wheel dripping, through four hours of darkness; and then, crawling down into the little cabin, which was intolerably foul, flung himself into his bunk and incontinently fell asleep, with the thud and swish of falling water going on above him. When he awakened, his first proceeding was to grope for the button that would summon a steward boy to bring him his morning coffee, but as he could not find it he looked around and saw his wet oilskins, which had shaken off the hook, sliding amidst the water up and down the Tyee's cabin floor. Then he remembered suddenly, and, dropping from his bunk, put on the oilskins and went up on deck.
A sheet of spray temporarily blinded him as he crawled out of the scuttle, and then there was little to be seen but a haze of it flying athwart a gray sea lined by frothy ridges and smears of low-driving cloud. The Tyee's slanted mastheads seemed to rake through the latter, and she was wet everywhere; but she was still hammering to windward with bows that swung up streaming over the long seas. On the one hand, a dingy smear, that might have been a point with pines on it, lifted itself out of the grayness, and Tom Wheelock pointed to it as he swayed with his wheel. His wet face was almost gray, and Jimmy could see the suggestive bagginess under his eyes.
"I guess we should fetch the Inlet by dark if it doesn't harden any more; but we'll have