Harold Bindloss

“ The breeze freshened steadily, until she put her forecastle under and hove her stern out at every plunge, while her propeller shook her in every plate as it whirred in empty air. A man could scarcely venture forward along her brine-swept deck, and at times when Jimmy had to cling to the bridge-rails for his life she rolled until all her rail was in the sea. He was battered and blinded by flying spray, and when the black night came he could not see an arm's-length in front of him; but the telegraph still stood at full-speed, and the Shasta resolutely butted the big foaming seas. ”

“ Her grasp was firm and steady on the straining helm, her gaze quick to notice each gray comber that broke as it came down on them; but, when he looked at her, Jimmy saw in her eyes something deeper than the thrill of the encounter with the winds of heaven and the restless sea. He could find no fitting name for it. It eluded definition, but it had its effect; and he felt that a man might go far and do more than thrash a yacht to windward with such a companion, though he also realized that this was, after all, no concern of his. ”

“ The still water lay shining under the evening light, with a broad smear of smoke trailing athwart it from the steamer which had just vanished behind the dark pines that overhang The Narrows. It drifted across the tall spars of the Agapomene, and through it a big passenger boat's tier of deck-houses showed dimly white. Further up the Inlet another dingy cloud drifted out from behind the piles of stacked lumber about the Hastings mill, while the clatter of an Empress liner's winches came up through the clear evening air with the tolling of locomotive bells and the grind of freight-car wheels. ”

“ It was suggestively slanted, and a dusky strip that looked very small appeared beneath it when it swung high on the crest of a sea.
"Siwashes," said Jimmy; "one of their sea canoes. They have to keep her running. She wouldn't lie-to."
The craft drew abreast of them, traveling wonderfully fast, and Anthea long remembered how she drove by the Sorata, hove half her length out of water, riding on the ridge of a big gray sea. She was entirely open, a long, narrow, bird-headed thing, and the foam she flung off forward seemed to lap over her after-half. ”

“ They paddled him off in state in a big Siwash canoe, and their shouts rang far across the silent pines when the little rusty Shasta crawled away into the evening mist; while long after it had hid her from their sight, Jimmy, standing on his bridge, heard the faint wail of the pipes. There was, as usual, a North Briton among them, and the wild music of another land of rock and pine and inlet six thousand miles away crept up the screw-torn wake in elfin fashion. Jimmy, at least, knew the burden of it: "Will ye no' come back again?" ”

“ She was making eight knots, he fancied, with mastheads swaying athwart the stars, and a long smoke-trail that was a little more solid than the dusky blue transparency streaking the sea astern of her. Jimmy pulled out his pipe when a faint cold breeze fanned his cheek, and lighted it contentedly, for a steamboat travels fastest in smooth water when what moving air there is blows against her, and there was every sign of fine weather. ”

“ Austerly, however, was not altogether a recluse, and it came about one evening that Jimmy, who had arrived there with a few other guests, sat beside Anthea Merril in the garden of his house. The sunlight still shone upon the struggling grass, to which neither money nor labor could impart much resemblance to an English lawn, but great pines and cedars walled it in, and one caught entrancing vistas of shining water and coldly gleaming snow through the openings between their mighty trunks. ”

“ There's no use worrying Fleming. He can't do any more."
Lindstrom, who glanced at the streak of flame in the dingy cloud that blew down from the slanted funnel, made a sign of concurrence, and Jimmy gripped the bridge rails hard as he gazed ahead. He could see the white smear of tideway that streamed around the head, and the gray wall of rock seemed forging back toward him through the midst of it. The sea hurled itself against its feet and crumbled into a white spouting and streaky wisps of foam that the stream swept away. ”

“ 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 cañons, but there was very little sign of it at sea when one bitter morning a cluster 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. ”

“ For five minutes they worked in silence, and then a shout went up as the winch-drum that had spun beneath the wire took hold and reeled off a foot or two of it. The Shasta swung herself upright as a big gray heave capped with livid white rolled in, and a curious quiver ran through her before she came down on one side again. The roar of the jet of steam that rushed aloft from beside her funnel grew almost deafening, but Jimmy's voice broke faintly through the din.
"Lindstrom," he said, "tell Mr. Fleming he can turn the steam he daren't bottle down on to his engines." ”

“ Then, though it seemed to come about naturally without anybody's contrivance, Austerly and his daughter joined Jordan, and for a few minutes Anthea and Jimmy were left alone. The girl leaned on the rail looking across the shining water toward the great white hull of the Empress boat lying, immaculate and beautiful in outline, beneath the climbing town. Then she turned, and Jimmy felt that he knew what she was thinking as her eyes wandered over the little rusty Shasta. Though he had not spoken, she smiled in a manner which seemed to imply comprehension when he looked at her. ”

“ She seemed, as she swung with the plunging fabric when the counter rose streaming high above the froth that swept astern, wholly in harmony with the motive of the scene; and at this Jimmy wondered a little now and then, though he discovered afterward that Anthea Merril almost invariably fitted herself to her surroundings. There are men and women with that capacity, which is, perhaps, born of comprehension and sympathy. ”

“ Anthea Merril and Jimmy followed an Indian path that wound through the primeval bush. On the one hand a great, smooth-scarped wall of rock ran up far above the trees that clung about its feet into the wondrous green transparency, but the light was dying out down in the hollow where towering fir and cedar clustered. ”

“ Jimmy said nothing, though naturally he was aware that when the ocean streams run against the breeze they are very apt to pile up whatever sea there is into curling, hollow-crested combers. A craft of the Tyee's size will often snugly ride out a hard gale—that is, if she is hove-to under a strip or two of canvas; but to drive her to windward when she must meet the onslaught of the seas, and go through them, is an altogether different matter, and it seemed to him that she was already doing as much as any one reasonably could expect from her. ”

“ If the girl at the helm let the tiller swing a hand's-breadth too much when the Sorata, piling the froth about her, rushed up a dim slope of water, either mainsail or spinnaker would swing over, and the men on the booms would have no opportunity for attempting to obviate the unpleasantness that would certainly succeed it. In all probability they would be flung off headlong into the sea. Still, the sail did not come over, for the Sorata drove along straight before the wind, and once more Jimmy paid silent homage to the girl at the tiller. ”

“ Merril's boat was almost alongside, when the quartermaster broke out the stars and stripes at the Shasta's masthead. A roar of voices greeted the snapping flag, and the heads grew thick as cedar twigs in the shadowy bush along the stranger's rail; while the men who stood higher aft upon her ample quarter-deck flung their hats and arms aloft. Jimmy could see them plainly, and their faces and garments proclaimed that most of them were from the cities. There were others whose skin was darkened and who wore older clothes ”

“ She was very human, and it was in one sense an eloquent compliment. Then Jimmy went forward to haul the staysail down, though he found he had to do it with one hand, and he was kept busy until he went down with Valentine into the little forecastle, when the Sorata lay snug in a strip of still green water close beneath the dusky pines. Louis had just gone ashore with the dory to gather bark for fuel, and, for the scuttle was open, they could hear the splash of his oars through the deep stillness that was emphasized by the murmur of falling water. ”

“ Jimmy almost expected Anthea Merril to say that she could not, for, unless the helmsman is skilful, when a cutter-rigged craft is brought round, stern to a fresh breeze, her great mainsail with the ponderous boom along the foot of it is apt to swing over with disastrous violence. There was, however, no hesitation in the girl's face, and Valentine made a little gesture that implied rather more than resignation. ”

“ There was not a sound when the splash of Valentine's paddle died away, and Jimmy dipped his oars leisurely, now and then venturing a glance at his companion. It seemed to him that the big white hat she wore became her wonderfully well, and it is possible that she guessed as much and did not resent it, for Jimmy was, after all, a personable man.
"Your skipper is very good to Nellie Austerly," she said. "I am rather pleased with him because of it. There are, naturally, not many things in which she can take any great interest." ”

“ Jordan smiled dryly. "Now you understand the thing. Seems to me neither of us has any great reason to like that man."
Nothing more was said on that point, and by and by they left the scented shadow of the pines, and clattered across a wooden bridge which spanned the turbid, green Fraser, into a stretch of sunlit meadows and oatfields formed by the silt the great river had brought down. In due time they reached a wooden ranch flanked by shadowy bush, and Jordan, pulling the team up before it, glanced down the long white road that leads to New Westminster, a few miles away. ”

“ The green lattices outside the open windows were partly drawn to, but the shadowy room was very hot, and the little air that entered brought the smell of the pines with it. It was not the aromatic scent they have at evening, but the almost overpowering smell filled with the clogging sweetness of honey the afternoon sun calls forth from them. The ranch was also very still, and for no evident reason Anthea felt the drowsy quietness weigh upon her. ”

“ Jimmy, on the whole, felt relieved when the others sauntered in their direction, and was less grieved than he might have been under different circumstances when Austerly drew Miss Merril away. He had felt once or twice before, during discussions with his sister, that keen intelligence is not invariably a commendable thing in a woman. After that, Jordan had a good many instructions to give him, and by the time they had been imparted the rest were clustering around the gangway; while five minutes later Jimmy leaned on the rail watching the boats slide away toward the dusky city. ”

“ The window was open wide, and a clean smell of freshly cut cedar drifted in with the aromatic fragrance of the pines. From where he sat Wheelock could see them rolling up the steep hillside with the white mists streaming athwart them, and the narrow lane of clear, green water winding past their feet. There was deep stillness among them, for the mill was silent at last, and it was only now and then that a voice rose faintly from the little wooden settlement which straggled up the riverside. ”

“ Enterprise, and even labor, is worth a good deal there; and Jimmy felt that if his heart were stout enough such a land might have more to offer him than a mate's berth on a heavily mortgaged schooner. Jordan evidently believed that one might achieve affluence by making the requisite effort, and Jimmy considered himself equally as capable as the sawmiller. Still, as he sat there in the dewy stillness breathing the clean scent of the pines, he realized that there was also something to be said for his companion's attitude. ”

“ Merril can't do it with his schooners or the big steamer. I guess a rancher would sooner face a high freight than feed the stuff to hogs, or haul it thirty miles over a bush-trail to the Dunsmore road. Then I'm going to have a good-humored skipper who'll bring the men off and make friends with them, but one with grit enough to shove the boat round on time when she has a perishable freight in a gale of wind. She's to be just the right size, and, to save us coal, a modern tri-compound."
"The three things seem essential. The last two certainly are," said Forster, with a suggestive smile. ”

“ Valentine, who looked very different from any of the yachtsmen Jimmy had seen on the English coast or elsewhere, sat down, and the latter was a trifle astonished when he said, "That wasn't why Thoreau went to Walden. He was an abolitionist, and made Walden a station for running niggers into Canada. Anyway, why does a man want to go into business and slave to pile up money, when he can have the greatest thing in nature for nothing at all?" ”

“ Jordan turned to her with the twinkle still in his eyes. "Well," he said, "if I let any weakness of that kind master me in the present case, I should be very much like the black-tail deer that turned around on the man with the rifle. Still, one can't invariably be wise."
His manner was whimsical, but it seemed to Eleanor there was something behind it, for when he broke off a faint glint which she understood crept into his eyes.
"Sometimes accidents happen to the man with the rifle," she said. "In the meanwhile, I rather fancy Jimmy is making signs to you." ”

“ Valentine made a little abrupt gesture. "It's evident they once had a yacht of their own. Any one could see how fond of it she is; and I'm taking her father's money—he hasn't too much of it—like a—moneylender that she may have a last taste of the one thing she can take pleasure in. Lord, when one has so much for nothing, what selfish hogs we are!"
"It can't be helped, anyway. You couldn't offer a favor to a man like Austerly." ”

“ AN EYE FOR AN EYE
The Shasta lay safely tied up to a buoy in Vancouver Inlet, and a quartermaster stood at her gangway with instructions to see that no stranger got on board, when Jimmy sat talking to his sister and Jordan in the room beneath her bridge. It was an hour since she had steamed in, and except for an occasional clinking in her engine-room, where Fleming was still busy, there was silence on board her, though the scream of saws and the rattle of freight-car wheels came off faintly across the still water. ”