CHAPTER XIV
A TEST OF ENDURANCE
The boys were sitting on the beach next morning after breakfast when Mr.Oliver looked across at Harry, who had not yet said anything about theiradventures.
"What were you two doing last night?" he asked casually.
Harry started. "Then you heard us?"
"I did," said his father. "You were out of the door before I quiterealized what was going on, and it didn't seem altogether wise tocommence talking when you came back, but that's not the point. Youhaven't answered my question."
"We went in swimming," Harry informed him with a grin.
"Considering that most people would prefer to swim in daylight, I wonderif you had any particular reason for choosing the middle of the night?"mused Mr. Oliver thoughtfully.
"Why, yes," was Harry's answer. "I've a notion it was rather a good one.I wanted the Siwash to see us in the water, because it would explain thething. There were at least two of them about the beach, though only oneleft the rancherie after we came into it."
"Then the fellow must have gone out a good deal more quietly than youdid, because I didn't hear him. I suppose you felt you had to get afterhim and see what he was doing?"
Mr. Barclay smiled and waved his hand.
"Sure," he broke in. "The temptation would be irresistible. What elsewould you expect from two enterprising youngsters like these, who haveno doubt been studying detective literature and the exploits of otheryoung men in the brave old jayhawking days?"
A flush crept into Harry's face, but he answered quietly:
"Well, it's perhaps as well we went, because I can tell you what theSiwash were watching for. We saw the schooner."
Mr. Barclay gave a sudden start and cast a significant glance at Mr.Oliver.
"The dramatic climax! There's no doubt you have sprung it upon ussmartly, but now you have worked it off you can go ahead with the tale."
Harry told him what they had seen and when he had finished Mr. Barclayseemed to be considering the matter ponderously. Then he turned to Mr.Oliver.
"It seems to me there's nothing more to keep us here."
"No," said the rancher. "On the other hand, it might, perhaps, be betterif we waited until those canoes arrive--if it's only for the look of thething."
His companion made a sign of agreement and neither one said anythingfurther on the subject. The boys lounged about the beach and gathereddelicious berries in the woods most of the day, and on the following daytwo more canoes ran in. Their crews had, however, traded off theirpeltries somewhere else, and shortly after their arrival Mr. Oliver andhis party left the inlet in the canoe which he had sent the Indians backto bring. The weather had changed in the night, and when they paddleddown the strip of sheltered water their ears were filled with the clamorof the surf, and the hillsides were lost in thin drizzle and slidingmist. A filmy spray cloud hung about the entrance, and beyond it big,gray combers tipped with froth came rolling up in long succession. Thesight of them affected Frank disagreeably, and he was not astonishedwhen Mr. Oliver, who spoke to one of the Indians, suggested that he andHarry had better help with the spare paddles until they were far enoughoff shore to get the masts up.
Frank found it hard enough work, for the sea was almost ahead and thecanoe lurched viciously, pitching her bows out. The crag beyond theinlet, however, still slightly sheltered them, and straining at thepaddle with the rain in their faces they made shift to drive her overthe big, gray-sided ridges, though every now and then the frothing topof one came splashing in. At length one of the Siwash lifted the shortmast forward into its place, and thrusting in the sprit, shook loose thesail. His companion, who knelt aft gripping a long-bladed paddle, seizedthe sheet, and the craft, gathering speed, headed out toward the pointto lee of them. When she had cleared it the Siwash raised a second mastfarther aft, and setting the sail upon it, slacked both sheets, afterwhich the canoe drove away at what seemed to Frank an astonishing pace.As a matter of fact, she was traveling very fast, for a narrow,shallow-bodied craft of that kind is very speedy so long as the wind ismore or less behind her.
Sitting with his back against her hove-up weather side he noticed ratheruneasily that the opposite one was almost level with the brine. Then heglanced astern at the combers that followed them, and was by no meanscomforted by the sight. They were unlike the short, tumbling waves hehad seen already in land-locked water, for they were larger and longer,and swept up with a kind of stately swing until they broke into seethingfoam. Their rise and fall seemed measured, and they rolled on in theirceaseless march in well-ordered ranks. It struck him that the canoe wascarrying a dangerous press of sail, but nobody else appeared disturbed,and he admitted that the Indians probably knew how much it was safe tospread.
"Isn't she making a great pace?" he asked of Mr. Oliver, who sat nearesthim.
"Yes," was the answer, "I've made two or three trips in these canoes,but I never saw one driven quite so hard. These fellows are probablyafraid the breeze will freshen up, and want to get as far as possiblebefore it does."
They ran on for a couple of hours, seeing nothing but the ranks oftumbling combers, except at intervals when the haze thinned a little andthey made out a shadowy mass which might have been high and rocky landover the port side. In the meanwhile the seas were steadily gettingbigger, and a good deal of water came in at irregular intervals. By andby, the boys were kept busy bailing it out, and the Indian who was notsteering held the sheet of the larger sail.
At length, when the tops of two or three seas splashed in over thefoam-washed stern in quick succession, the helmsman raised his hand andthere was a wild thrashing as his companion loosened the after-sheet.Rolling the sail together he flung the mast down, and the canoe ran onwith only the forward one set, which seemed to Frank quite sufficient.The sea was on her quarter, and each comber that came up boiled abouther in a great surge of foam, and heaved her up before it left her tosink dizzily into the hollow. Each time she did so Frank was consciousof a curious and unpleasant feeling in his interior.
He had, however, no difficulty in eating his share of the crackers andcanned provisions Mr. Oliver presently handed around, and after that hewas kept too busy bailing to notice anything until late in the afternoonwhen he heard the two Indians muttering to one another. The result ofthe discussion was that one of them pulled the sprit out, and foldingdown the peak left only a small three-cornered strip of sail. Frankunderstood the cause for this when he glanced at the seas, which lookedalarmingly big. It was disconcerting to realize that they could take nomore sail off the canoe unless they lowered the mast altogether, andwhere the beach was he could not tell. He had seen no sign of it for thelast two hours, and it was now raining viciously hard.
Nobody seemed inclined to talk, and there was only the roar and splashof the combers behind them as they drove wildly on, until when dusk wasclose at hand the dim shadow of a hill rose up suddenly on one side ofthem. Then the Indian hauled the sheet, and presently when the waterbecame smoother, called to his companion, who thrust the sprit up again.After that the canoe put her lee side in every now and then, but verysoon a foam-fringed point stretched out ahead. They swept around it, andafter skirting a half-seen, rocky beach ran with spritsail thrashinginto a little basin down to which there crept rows of mist-wrappedtrees.
Frank was thankful to get out when the helmsman ran her ashore, and thework of assisting the Indians to chop branches and make a fire put alittle warmth into him. They made supper when darkness closed down, andafterward the Indians erected a rude branch-and-bark shelter, while thewhite men and the boys huddled together in the tent. It was better thansitting in the foam-swept canoe, but Frank longed for the sloop'slow-roofed cabin.
He went to sleep, however, wet as he was, and after an early breakfastnext morning they started again, with both spritsails up in torrentialrain. The water was comparatively smooth, though the doleful moaning ofthe firs fell from the half-seen hills, and Mr. Oliver announced thatthe entrance to the canal they had come
down was not far away. Frank hadlearned that on the Pacific Slope canal generally means a natural armof the sea.
They reached its entrance presently, sailing close-hauled, and onstretching across it the canoe plunged viciously on a short,white-topped sea. The wind was blowing straight down the deep rift inthe hills, and Frank remembered with regret that Alberni stood a longway up at the head of the inlet. They came back on the other tack,making almost nothing, and the Siwash pulled the masts down before oneof them spoke to Mr. Oliver.
"I suppose they can't get the canoe to windward?" suggested Mr. Barclay.
"He says we'll have to paddle," Mr. Oliver answered. "There seem to befour paddles in her and that will leave two of us to relieve the rest inturn."
Harry and Frank took the first spell with the Indians, and they had hadenough of it before an hour had passed. The wind was dead ahead of them,and though they crept in close with the beach they were met by little,spiteful seas. It was necessary to fight for every fathom, thrashing herslowly ahead by sheer force of muscle. Frank's hands were soon sore andone knee raw from pressing it against the craft's bottom. He got hot andbreathless, the rain was in his face, and his side began to ache, and itwas a vast relief to him when Mr. Oliver finally took his place.
The mists were thinning when he sat down limply in the bottom of thecraft, and great rocky hills and dusky firs crawled slowly by, exceptwhen now and then a fiercer gust swept down, whitening all the inlet,and they barely held their own by desperate paddling. Then as it droppeda little they forged ahead again. It was dreary as well as very arduouswork, but there was no avoiding it, for their provisions were almostgone and there was no trail of any kind through the bush. Frank feltthat even paddling into a strong head wind was better than smashingthrough continuous thorny brakes and floundering over great fallen logs.
One hand commenced to bleed when he next took his turn, but that was, ashe realized, not a matter of much importance. They had to reach Albernisometime next day, and his chief concern was how it could be done. Thenthe pain in his side set in again and became rapidly worse, and he sethis lips tight as he swung gasping with each stroke of the splashingblade. They won a foot or so each time the paddles came down, and it wassomewhat consoling to recognize it. He felt that if he had been calledupon to do this kind of thing after sleeping wet through upon the groundwhen he first came out he would have immediately collapsed, but he wassteadily acquiring the power to disregard bodily fatigue.
There was no change as the day slipped by. It rained pitilessly, and thewind continually headed them as they labored on wearily with set, wetfaces and straining muscles. The stroke must not slacken, for the momentit grew feebler the canoe would drive astern. They kept it up untilnightfall, and then beaching the canoe lay down once more in the tent,which strained in the wind. They were aching all over when they rosenext morning, and the work was still the same, but they reached Alberni,worn out, early in the evening. It was a very small place then, thoughit afterward sprang up into a mining town. Two or three ranch housesstood in their clearings beside a crystal river, and a few morebuildings clustered at the head of the inlet half hidden in the bush.There was a store and a frame hotel among them, and Mr. Oliver, who tookup quarters in the latter, told the boys that the stage would start onthe following morning. The Indians were given shelter in one of theoutbuildings, and the hotelkeeper insisted on locking up the dog, whogrowled at everybody about the place.
"I'm not scared of dogs," he explained, "but that one of yours won't letme get about my own house. Besides, I guess he'd eat some of thoseChinamen before morning if you leave him loose."
They were standing near a window, and Mr. Oliver glanced at one or twoblue-clad figures lounging under the dripping trees.
"You seem to have a number of them about," he remarked. "I saw anotherlot as I came in. What are they doing here?"
"Stopping for the night," was the answer. "They're camping in a barn ofmine and going on to the gold creek at sun-up, though they may startearlier if the rain stops. Quite a few of them have come in over thetrail lately."
"Then there must be a regular colony in the bush," broke in Mr. Barclay,who had strolled up.
"No," replied the hotelkeeper, "that's the curious thing. They keep oncoming in by threes and fours, but Blake from the ranch higher up theriver was through that way not long ago, and he said he didn't see manyof them yonder. About two dozen, he figured, but more than that havecome through here to my certain knowledge."
"It looks as if the gold-washing didn't pay and the rest had gone onsomewhere," Mr. Barclay suggested carelessly.
The hotelkeeper looked bewildered. "Well," he said, "this is the onlytrail to the settlements, and they certainly haven't come back this way.It's mighty rough traveling through the bush, as you ought to know."
Mr. Barclay smiled ruefully as he glanced down at his torn clothing andbadly damaged boots. "That's a sure thing. Besides, they'd have theirtruck to pack along, which would make it more difficult. Those fellowsgenerally bring a lot of odds and ends with them."
"Oh, yes," assented the hotelkeeper. "Most of them have their slungbaskets on poles. Anyway, I've no fault to find with them. They make notrouble."
He walked off, and when Mr. Barclay and Mr. Oliver went out, Harry gavea triumphant glance at Frank.
"Now," he said, "you see what our friend has found out without givinghimself away. The question is, where do those Chinamen who don't staywith the gold-washing get to?"
Frank laughed. "I expect Barclay could give you an answer. There'sanother thing he could probably guess at, and that's what they've got insome of those slung baskets."
Then they moved back toward the lighted stove, for the rain droveagainst the frame walls and it was damp and chilly in the big bareroom.