Part 24 (1/2)

Hawtrey presently drove away, and soon after he left the homestead Agatha approached Mrs. Hastings.

”There's something I must ask you,” she said. ”Has Gregory consented to take charge of Wyllard's farm?”

”He has,” answered Mrs. Hastings in her dryest tone.

There was a flash in Agatha's eyes.

”Oh,” she said, ”it's almost unendurable.”

Agatha saw Wyllard only once again, and that was when he called early one morning. He got down from the wagon where Dampier sat, and shook hands with her and Allen and Mrs. Hastings. Few words were spoken, and she could not remember what she said, but when he swung himself up again and the wagon jolted away into the white prairie she went back to the house with a feeling of loss and depression.

CHAPTER XV

THE BEACH

For a fortnight after they reached Vancouver Wyllard and Dampier were very busy. They had various difficulties to contend with, for while they would have preferred to slip away to sea as quietly as possible a British vessel's movements are fenced about with many formalities, and they did not wish to s.h.i.+p a white man who could be dispensed with.

Wyllard knew there were sailors and sealers in Vancouver and down Puget Sound who would have gone with him, but there was a certain probability of their discussing their exploits afterwards in the saloons ash.o.r.e, which was about the last thing that he desired. It was essential that he should avoid notoriety as much as possible.

He had further trouble about obtaining provisions and general necessaries, for considerably more attention than the free-lance sealers cared about was being bestowed upon the North, and he did not desire to arouse the curiosity of the dealers as to why he was filling his lazaret up with Arctic stores. He obviated that difficulty by dividing his orders among all of them, and buying as little as possible. Dampier proved an adept at the difficult business, and eventually the schooner _Selache_, painted a pale green, crept out from the Narrows, at dusk one evening, under all plain sail, with her big main-boom making at least a fathom beyond her taffrail. On board were Wyllard, Dampier, and two other white men. A week later the _Selache_ sailed into a deep, rock-walled inlet on the western coast of Vancouver Island. At the settlement the storekeeper made no difficulty about selling Wyllard all his flour and canned goods at higher figures than there was any probability of obtaining from the local ranchers.

The _Selache_ slid down the inlet again, and lay for several days in a forest-shrouded arm near the mouth of it. When she once more dropped her anchor off a Siwash rancherie far up on the wild west coast, she was painted a dingy gray, and her sawn-off boom just topped her stern. One does not want a great main-boom in the northern seas, and a big mainsail needs men to handle it. Wyllard, however, s.h.i.+pped several sea-bred Indians who had made perilous voyages on the trail of the seal and halibut in open canoes. All of them had also sailed in sealing schooners. Their comrades sold him furs, and filled part of the hold with redwood billets and bark for the stove, for he had not considered it advisable to load too much Wellington coal.

Wyllard pushed out into the waste Pacific, and once when a beautiful big white mail boat reeled by him, driving with streaming bows into an easterly gale, he sent back a message to his friends upon the prairie.

It duly reached them, for three weeks afterward Allen Hastings, opening _The Colonist_, which he had ordered from Victoria as soon as Wyllard sailed, read to his wife and Agatha a paragraph in the s.h.i.+pping news:

”_Empress of India_, from Yokohama, reports having pa.s.sed small gray British schooner, flying----” There followed several code letters, the lat.i.tude and longitude, and a line apparently by the water-front reporter: ”No schooner belonging to this city allotted the signal in question.”

Hastings smiled as he laid down the paper. ”No,” he observed, ”that signal is Wyllard's private code. Agatha, won't you reach me down my map of the Pacific? It's just behind you.”

As he looked around he noticed the significant expression on his wife's face, for the girl already had turned towards the shelf where he kept the lately purchased map.

The easterly gale that started did not last, for the wind came out of the west and north, and sank to foggy calms when it did not blow wickedly hard. This meant that the _Selache's_ course was all to windward, and though they drove her unmercifully under reefed book-foresail, main trysail, and a streaming jib or two, with the brine going over her, she had made little headway when each arduous day was done. They were drenched to the skin continuously, and lashed by stinging spray. Cooking except of the crudest kind was out of the question, and sleep would have been impossible to any but worn-out sailors. The little crew was often aroused in the blackness of the night to haul down a burst jib, to get in another reef, or to crawl out on a plunging bowsprit washed by icy seas as the schooner lay with her lee rail under. Glad as they were of the respite it was even more trying to lie rolling wildly on the big smooth waves that hove out of the windless calm, while everything in the vessel banged to and fro. When the breeze came screaming through the fog or rain they sprang to make sail again.

Fate seemed to oppose them, as it was certain that, if their purpose was suspected, the hand of every white man whom they might come across would be against them. But they held on over leagues of empty ocean.

The season wore away, and at last the wind freshened easterly, and they ran for a week under boom-foresail and a jib, with the big gray combers curling as they foamed by high above her rail. Then the wind fell, and Dampier, who got an observation, armed his deep-sea lead, and, finding sh.e.l.ls and shoal water, went aft to talk to Wyllard with the strip of Dunton's chart.

Wyllard, who was clad in oilskins, stood by the wheel. His face was tanned and roughened by cold and stinging brine. There was an open sore upon one of his elbows, and both his wrists were raw. Forward, a white man and two Siwash were standing about the windla.s.s, and when the bows went up a dreary stretch of slate-gray sea opened beyond them, beneath the dripping jibs. The _Selache_ was carrying sail, and lurching over the steep swell at some four knots an hour.

Dampier stopped near the wheel, and glanced at Wyllard's oilskins.

”You'll have to take them off. It's stuffed boots and those Indian seal-gut things or furs from now on,” he said. ”That leather cuff's chewing up your hand.”

”We'll cut that out,” replied Wyllard; ”it's not to the point. Can't you get on?”

Dampier grinned. ”We're on soundings, and they and Dunton's longitude 'most agree. With this wind we should pick the beach up in the next two days. Next question is, where were those men?”

”Where are they?” corrected Wyllard.