Hawtrey's Deputy

They knew this, and it was to their credit that they obeyed when Dampier gave the word to put the helm up and trim the sheets over. Their leader, however, stood a little apart with a hard-set face, and he looked forward over the plunging bows, for he was troubled by a sense of responsibility such as he had not felt since he had, one night several years ago, asked for volunteers. He realised that an account of these men's lives might be demanded from him.

It was a fortnight later, and they had twice made a perilous landing without finding any sign of life on or behind the hammered beach, when they ran into the first of the ice. The grey day was almost over, and the long heave ran sluggishly after them faintly wrinkled here and there, when creeping through a belt of haze they came into sight of several blurrs of greyish white that swung with the dim, green swell. The Selache was slowly lurching over it with everything aloft to the topsails then. Dampier glanced at the ice disgustedly.

"Earlier than I expected," he said. "Anyway, it's a sure thing there's plenty more where that came from."

"Big patch away to starboard!" cried a man in the foremast shrouds.

Dampier turned to Wyllard. "What are you going to do?"

"What's most advisable?"

The skipper laughed grimly. "Well," he said, "that's quite simple. Get out of this, and head her south just as soon as we can, but I guess that's not quite what you mean."

"No," admitted Wyllard. "I meant for the next few hours or so. In a general way, we're still pushing on."

"Then I'm not worrying much about pushing her through. That ice is light and scattered, and as she's going it won't hurt her much if she plugs some in the dark. It's what we're going to do the next two weeks I'm not sure about. If there's ice we mayn't fetch the creek the chart shows where we'd figured on laying her up in. It's still most a hundred miles to the north of us. The other inlet I'd fixed on is way further south."

This brought them back to the difficulty they had grappled with at many a council. The men they were in search of might have gone either north or south; or they might, though this seemed less likely, have gone inland, if, indeed, any of them survived.

"If we only knew how they'd headed," said Wyllard quietly. "Still, right or not, I'm for pushing on."

Then Charly, who held the wheel, broke in.

"I guess it's north," he said. "They'd have no use for fetching up among the Russians, and there's nobody else until you get to Japan. No white men, any way. Besides, from the Behring Sea to the Kuriles is quite a long way."

"If you were dumped down ashore there, which way would you go?" Dampier asked.

"If I'd a wallet full of papers certifying me as a harmless traveller, it would be south just as hard as I could hit the trail. Guess I'd strike somebody out prospecting, or surveying, and they'd set me along to the Kuriles. Still, if I'd been sealing, I wouldn't head that way. No, sir. That's dead sure."

There was a reason for this certainty, right or wrong, in the minds of the sealermen. How many of the skins they brought home were obtained in open water where they could fish without molestation they alone knew; but they were regarded in certain quarters as poachers and outlaws, who deserved no mercy. They had their differences with the Americans who owned the Prbyloffs, but the latter, it was admitted, had bought the islands, and might reasonably be considered to have some claim upon the seals which frequented them. The free-lances bore their execrations and reprisals more or less resignedly, though that did not prevent them occasionally exchanging compliments with oar butts or sealing clubs, but the Muscovite was a grim, mysterious figure they feared and hated.

"Then you'd have tried up north?" Wyllard suggested.

"Sure," said the helmsman. "If I'd a boat and a rifle, and it was summer, I'd have pushed across for Alaska. You can eat birds and walrus, and a man might eat a fur-seal if he'd had nothing else for a week, though I've struck nothing that has more smell than the holluschack blubber. If it was winter, I'd have tried the ice. The Huskies make out on it for weeks together, and quite a few of the steam whaler men have trailed an odd hundred or two miles over it one time or another. They hadn't tents and dog-teams either."

Wyllard's face grew grave. He had naturally considered both courses, and had decided that they were out of the question. Seas do not freeze up solid, and that three men should transport a boat, supposing that they had one, over leagues of ice appeared impossible. An attempt to cross the narrow sea, which is either wrapped in mist or swept by sudden gales, in any open craft would clearly only result in disaster, but admitting that he felt that had he been in those men's place he would have headed north. There was one question which had all along remained unanswered, and that was how they had reached the coast from which they had sent their message.

"Anyway," he said, "we'll stand on, and run into the creek we've fixed on, if it's necessary."

In the meanwhile, dusk had closed down on them, and it had grown perceptibly colder. The haze crystallised on the rigging, the rail was white with rime, and the deck grew slippery, but they left everything on her to the topsails, and she crept on erratically through the darkness, avoiding the faint spectral glimmer of the scattered ice. The breeze abeam propelled her with gently leaning canvas at some four knots to the hour, and now and then Wyllard, who hung about the deck that night, fancied he could hear a thin, sharp crackle beneath the slowly lifting bows.

Next day the haze thickened, and there seemed to be more ice about, but the breeze was fresher, and there was, at least, no skin upon the ruffled sea. They took the topsails off her, and proceeded cautiously, with two men with logger's pikepoles forward, and another in the eyes of the foremast rigging. As it happened, they struck nothing, and when night came the Selache lay rolling in a heavy, portentous calm. Dampier and one or two of the others declared their certainty that there was ice near them, but, at least, they could not see it, though there was now no doubt about the crackling beneath the schooner's side. It was a somewhat anxious night for most of them, but a breeze that drove the haze aside got up with the sun, and Dampier expected to reach the creek before darkness fell.

He might have done it but for the glistening streak on the horizon, which presently crept in on them, and resolved itself into detached grey-white masses, with openings of various sizes in and out between them. The breeze was freshening, and the Selache going through it at some six knots, when Dampier came aft to Wyllard, who was standing rather grim in face at the wheel. There was a moderately wide opening in the floating barrier close ahead of him. The rest of the crew stood silent watching the skipper, for they were by this time more or less acquainted with Wyllard's temperament.

"You can't get through that," said Dampier, pointing to the ice.

Wyllard looked at him sourly, and the white men, at least, understood what he was feeling. So far, he had had everything against him – calm, and fog, and sudden gale – and now, when he was almost within sight of the end of the first stage of his journey, they had met the ice.

"You're sure of that?" he said.

Dampier smiled. "It would cost too much, or I'd let you try." He called to the man perched high in the foremast shrouds, and the answer came down:

"Packed right solid a couple of miles ahead."

Wyllard lifted one hand, and let it suddenly fall again.

"Lee, oh! We'll have her round," he said, and spun the wheel.

The rest of them breathed more easily as they jumped for the sheets, and with a great banging and thrashing of sailcloth she shot up to windward, and turned as on a pivot. Then, as she gathered way on the other tack, they glanced at their leader, for her bows were pointing to the south-east again. They felt that was not the way he was going.

In the meanwhile, Wyllard turned to. Dampier with a little wry smile.

"Baulked again!" he said. "It would have been a relief to have rammed her in. With this breeze we'd have picked that creek up in the next six hours."

"Sure!" said Dampier, who glanced at the swirling wake.

"Then, if we can't get through it we can work her round. Stand by to flatten all sheets in, boys."

They did it cheerfully, though they knew it meant a thrash to windward along the perilous edge of the ice, and, for the sea was getting up, she flung the spray all over her forward half as she smashed the growing combers with her bows. Soon the windlass was caked with glistening ice, and long spikes of it hung from her rail, while the slippery crystals gathered thick on deck. Then lumps and floes of ice detached themselves from the parent mass, and sailed out to meet her, crashing on one another, while it seemed to the men who watched him that Wyllard tried how closely he could shave them before he ran the schooner off with a vicious drag at the wheel. None of them, however, cared to say a word to him.

They brought her round when she had stretched out on the one tack a couple of miles, and standing in again close-hauled found the ice thicker than ever. Then she came round once more, and until the early dusk fell Wyllard stood at the jarring helm or high up in the forward shrouds. Then he called Dampier aside.

"We can't work along the edge in the dark?" he said.

"Well," said Dampier drily, "it wouldn't be wise. We could stand on as she's lying until half through the night, and then come round and pick up the ice again a little before sun-up."

Wyllard made a sign of acquiescence. "Then," he said, "don't call me until you're in sight of it. A day of this kind takes it out of one."

He moved aft heavily towards the deck-house, and Dampier watched him with a smile of comprehension, for he was a man who had also in his time made many fruitless efforts, and quietly faced defeat. After all, it is possible that when the final reckoning comes some failures will count.

For several hours the Selache stretched out close-hauled into what they supposed to be open water, and they certainly saw no ice. Then they hove her to, and when the wind fell light brought her round and crept back slowly upon the opposite tack. Wyllard had gone to sleep in the meanwhile, and daylight was just breaking when he next went out on deck. There was scarcely an air of wind, and the heavy calm seemed portentous and unnatural. The schooner lay lurching on a sluggish swell, with the frost wool thick on her rigging, and a belt of haze ahead of her. On the edge of it, the ice glimmered in the growing light, but in one or two places stretches of blue-grey water seemed to penetrate it, and Dampier, who strode aft when he saw Wyllard, said he fancied there must be an opening somewhere.

"By the thickness of it, that ice has formed some time, and as we've seen nothing but a skin it must have come from further north," he added. "It gathered up under a point or in a bay most likely, until a shift of wind broke it out, and the stream or breeze set it down this way. That seems to indicate that there can't be a great deal of it, but a few days' calm and frost would freeze it solid."

"Well?" said Wyllard impatiently.

"It lies between us and the inlet, and it's quite clear that we can't stay where we are. Once we got nipped, there'd probably be an end of her. We have got to get into that inlet at once or make for the other further south."

Wyllard smiled. "It all leads back to the same point. We must get through the ice. The one question is – how's it to be done?"

"With a working breeze I'd stand into the biggest opening, but as there's none we'll wait until it clears a little, and then send a boat in. The sun may bring the wind."

They made breakfast in the meanwhile, but the wind did not come, and it was some hours later when a pale coppery disc became visible and the haze grew thinner. Then they swung a boat out hastily, for it would not be very long before the light died away again, and two white men and an Indian dropped into her. They pulled across half a mile of sluggishly heaving water, crept up an opening, and presently vanished among the ice. Soon afterwards the low sun went out, and wisps of ragged cloud crept up from the westwards, while smears of vapour blurred the horizon, and the swell grew steeper. There was no wind at all, but blocks and canvas banged and thrashed furiously at every roll, until they lowered the mainsail and lashed its heavy boom to the big iron crutch astern. The boat remained invisible, but its crew had been given instructions to push on as far as possible if they found clear water, and Dampier, who did not seem uneasy about her, paced up and down the deck while the afternoon wore away.