Part 38 (1/2)

CHAPTER XXVIII

DISABLED ENGINES

Spring had come, and all down the wild West Coast the tall pines had shaken off their load of snow and the rivers were thundering in their misty canons, but there was very little sign of it at sea when one bitter morning a cl.u.s.ter of deeply bronzed men hung about the _Adelaide_'s engine-room skylights. They were lean and somewhat grim of face, as well as ragged and suggestively spare of frame, for they had borne all that man may bear and live through during the winter they had spent in the ice-bound wilderness. Now they were going back to civilization with many ounces of gold, and papers relating to auriferous claims, to invoke the aid of capital before they once more turned their faces toward the frozen north.

It was noticeable that although they were of widely different birth and upbringing there was the same stamp which revealed itself in a certain quietness of manner and steadiness of gaze upon them all, for these were the pick of the mining community, men who had grappled with the wilderness in its most savage moods long before they blazed a new trail south from the wilds of the Yukon. They had proved their manhood by coming back at all, for that winter the unfit had died. Still, though they had endured things beyond the comprehension of the average city man, they were glad of the shelter of the tall skylights, because the _Adelaide_'s flush deck was swept by a stinging wind and little showers of bitter spray blew all over it. She was rolling viciously across a waste of gray-blue sea which was flecked by livid froth, and her mastheads swung in a wide sweep athwart a sky of curious dingy blue.

There was no warmth anywhere in the picture, and apparently very little light; but for all that, every sea stood out from its fellows, and those back in the clear distance were etched upon the indented horizon with harsh distinctness. One of the men shook his head as he gazed at them.

”They look like the pines on the ridge did the day the blizzard struck us down on the a.s.siniboia Creek,” he said. ”It was a full-powered one.

The boys who'd camped ahead of us were frozen stiff by morning. The two we sc.r.a.ped the snow off were sitting there like statues, and we didn't worry 'bout the others. There was ten feet over them, anyway. I've no use for this kind of weather.”

One of his companions swept his glance astern toward the smear of smoke on the serrated skyline, which was blotted out next moment when the _Adelaide_ swung her stern aloft.

”If you're right in your figuring, I'm glad I came along in this boat,”

he said. ”Anyway, she's bigger, though I 'most took my berth in the _Shasta_. Seems to me we're quite a long while getting away from her.”

The others agreed with him, for they had seen that smear of smoke on the skyline since early morning. Then they turned to watch the engineer, who came out of a door close by, and glanced up to weather, blinking in the bitter wind. He was a big loosely-built man in dungarees, with the pallid face of one accustomed to the half-light and heat of the engine-room, but in his case it was also unhealthily puffy. Then he slouched right aft, and stood still again looking down at the dial of the taffrail log which records the distance run, while he fumbled in a curious aimless fas.h.i.+on with the blackened rag in his hand.

”That,” said one of the miners, ”is a man I'm no way stuck on. Now, you'll most times find hard grit in an engineer, but this one kind of strikes me as feeling that there was something after him he was scared of.”

”Well,” said one of the others reflectively, ”it's not an uncommon thing. There was a man down on the flat where we struck it who had a kind of notion that there were three big timber wolves on his trail.

Kept his rifle clean with the magazine ram full for them, but one night they got him. A sure thing. Tom was there.”

The man at whom he glanced nodded. ”Now and then I wish I hadn't been,”

he said. ”Lister was sitting very sick beside his fire that night. Said he heard those wolves pattering in the bush--there were thick pines all round us--'most made me think I did.”

”Well?” said one of his companions.

The miner made a little expressive grimace. ”Longest night I ever put in. Sat there and kept them off him. Anyway, I tried, but he was dead at sun-up.”

None of the others showed any astonishment, and the man who had asked the question glanced back toward the engineer.

”Guess the man who runs this steamboat should be getting rich by the way they strike you for a drink,” he said. ”I'm bringing down 'most two hundred ounces, but I wouldn't like to fill that engineer up at the tariff.”

”Never saw him making a traverse, anyway. He walks quite straight,” said a comrade.

”Well,” said the other, ”I've seen his eyes.”

Just then the man they were discussing turned toward the bridge, from which the skipper was beckoning him. A minute or two later they went into the room beneath it, and the engineer sat down looking at the man in front of him with narrow, half-open eyes. The latter was young and spruce in trim uniform, a man of no great education, who had a favorable opinion of himself.

”Can't you shove her along a little faster, Robertson?” he said. ”We'll be thirty knots behind our usual run at noon.”

”No,” said the engineer, in a curious listless drawl. ”I've been letting the revolutions down. That high-pressure piston's getting on my nerves again.”

”Shouldn't have thought you had any worth speaking of,” said the skipper, with a quick sign of impatience. ”You give one the impression that they've gone to pieces long ago. Take a drink, and tone them up.”

He flung a bottle on the table, and watched his companion's long greasy fingers fumble at it with a look of disgust. Robertson half-filled his gla.s.s with the yellow spirit, and drained it with slow enjoyment. Then he breathed hard, and, leaning his elbows on the table, looked at the skipper heavily.