CHAPTER II – A BREEZE OF WIND
There were signs of a change in the weather when Vane walked down to the wharf with his passengers, for a cold wind which had sprung up struck an eerie sighing from the sombre firs and sent the white mists streaming along the hillside. There was a watery moon in the sky, and on reaching the end of the wharf Vane fancied that the singer hesitated; but the elder woman laid her hand upon the girl’s arm reassuringly and she got into the canoe. In a few minutes Vane ran the craft alongside the sloop and saw the amazement in Carroll’s face by the glow from the cabin skylight. He, however, fancied that his comrade would rise to the occasion and he handed his guests up.
“My partner, Carroll. Mrs. Marvin and her daughter; Miss Kitty Blake. You have seen them already,” he said. “They’re coming down with us to catch the steamer.”
Carroll bowed, and Vane, who thrust back the cabin slide, motioned the others below. The place was brightly lighted by a nickelled lamp, though it was scarcely four feet high and the centreboard trunk occupied the middle of it. A wide, cushioned locker ran along each side a foot above the floor, and a swing table, fixed above the trunk, filled up most of the space between. There was no cloth upon the table, but it was invitingly laid out with canned fruit, coffee, hot flapjacks, and a big lake trout.
“You must help yourselves while we get sail upon the boat,” said Vane. “The saloon’s at your disposal, my partner and I have the fo’c’sle. You will notice there are blankets yonder, and as we’ll have smooth water most of the way you should get some sleep.”
He withdrew, closing the slide, and went forward with Carroll to shorten in the cable; but when they stopped beside the bitts his companion broke into a soft laugh.
“Is there anything to amuse you?” Vane asked curtly.
“Well,” said Carroll with an air of reflection, “it strikes me you’re making a rather unconventional use of your new prosperity, and it might be prudent to consider how your friends in Vancouver may regard the adventure.”
Vane sat down upon the bitts and took out his pipe. “One trouble in talking to you is that I never know whether you’re in earnest or not. You trot out your cold-blooded worldly wisdom, and then you grin at it.”
“I think that’s the only philosophic attitude,” replied Carroll. “It’s possible to grow furiously indignant with the restraints stereotyped people lay on one; but on the whole it’s wiser to bow to them and chuckle. After all, they’ve some foundation.”
Vane looked up at him sharply.
“You’ve been right in the advice you have given me more than once: you seem to know how prosperous and what you call stereotyped folks look at things. But you’ve never explained where you got the knowledge.”
“That,” said Carroll, “is quite another matter.”
“Anyway,” continued Vane, “there’s one remark of yours I’d like to answer. You would, no doubt, consider I made a legitimate use of my money when I entertained that crowd of city people – some of whom would have plundered me if they could have managed it – in Vancouver. I didn’t grudge it, but I was a little astonished when I saw the wine and cigar bill. It struck me that the best of them scarcely noticed what they got – I think they’d been up against it at one time, as we have; and it would have done the rest of the guzzlers good if they’d had to work all day with the shovel on pork and flapjacks. But we’ll let that go. What have you and I done that we should swill in champagne, while a girl with a face like that one below and a child who dances like a fairy haven’t enough to eat? You know what I paid for the last cigars. What confounded hogs we are!”
Carroll laughed outright. There was not an ounce of superfluous flesh upon his comrade, who was hardened and toughened by determined labour, and the term hog appeared singularly inappropriate.
“Well,” said Carroll, “you’ll no doubt get used to the new conditions by and by, and in regard to your latest exploit there’s a motto on your insignia of the Garter which might meet the case. But hadn’t we better heave her over her anchor?”
They seized the chain and as it ran below a sharp, musical rattle rang out, for the hollow hull flung back the metallic clinking like a sounding board. When the cable was short-up, they grasped the halyards and the big gaff mainsail rose flapping up the mast. They set it and turned to the headsails, for though, strictly speaking, a sloop only carries one, the term is loosely applied in places, and as Vane had changed her rig there were two of them.
“It’s a fair wind, and I expect we’ll find more weight in it lower down,” said Carroll. “We’ll let the staysail lie and run her with the jib.”
They set the jib and broke out the anchor. Vane took the helm, and the sloop, slanting over until her deck on one side dipped close to the frothing brine, drove away into, the darkness. The lights of the settlement faded among the trees, and when Carroll coming aft flung a strip of canvas over the skylight, his comrade could see the black hills and climbing firs on both sides slip by. Sliding vapours streaked them, a crisp splashing sound made by the curling ripples followed the vessel; the canoe surged along noisily astern, and the frothing and gurgling grew louder at the bows. They were running down one of the deep, forest-shrouded inlets which, resembling the Norwegian fiords, pierce the Pacific littoral of Canada.
“I wonder how the wind is outside,” Vane said.
Carroll looked round and saw the white mists stream athwart the pines on a promontory they were skirting. “That’s more than I can tell. In these troughs among the hills it either blows straight up or directly down, and I dare say we’ll find it different when we reach the sound. One thing’s certain – there’s some weight in it now.”
Vane nodded agreement, though an idea that troubled him crept into his mind. “I understand the steamboat skipper will run in to land some Siwash he’s bringing down. It will be awkward in the dark if the wind’s onshore.”
Carroll made no comment, and they drove on, until as they swept round the point the sloop, slanting sharply, dipped her lee rail in the froth.
“We’ll have to tie down a reef,” he said.
Vane told him to take the tiller and scrambling forward, rapped upon the cabin side, which he flung back. Mrs. Marvin lay upon the leeward locker with a blanket across her and the little girl at her feet; Miss Blake sat on the weather one with a book in her hand.
“We’re going to take some sail off the boat,” he said. “You needn’t be disturbed by the noise.”
“When do you expect to meet the steamer?” Miss Blake inquired.
“Not for two or three hours, anyway,” Vane answered, with a hint of uncertainty in his voice. Then, as he fancied the girl had noticed it, he closed the slide.
“Down helm!” he said to Carroll, and there was a banging and thrashing of canvas as the sloop came up into the wind. They held her there, with the jib aback, while they hauled the canoe on board, which was not an easy task, and then with difficulty hove down a reef in the mainsail. It was heavy work, because there was nobody at the helm, and the craft falling off once or twice as they leaned out upon the boom with toes on her depressed lee rail, threatened to hurl them into the frothing water. Neither of them were trained sailors, but on that coast with its inlets and sounds and rivers the wanderer learns to handle sail and paddle and canoe-pole.
They finished their task, and when Vane seized the helm Carroll sat down under the shelter of the coaming, out of the flying spray.
“We’ll probably have some trouble putting your friends on board the steamer, even if she runs in,” he remarked. “What are you going to do if there’s no sign of her?”
“It’s a question I’ve been shirking for the last half-hour,” Vane confessed.
“I‘d like to point out that it would be very slow work beating back up this inlet, and if we did so there isn’t a stage across the island for several days. No doubt you remember