Near him, a man with a rugged21, weatherbeaten face was engaged in fitting a plank22 into the bilge of a hauled-up sloop23. She was a small but shapely vessel24 of about forty feet in length, and had been built after a design adopted by a famous yacht club on the Atlantic coast. Jimmy could see that she was fast; but she had been put to base uses, and had suffered from neglect. As a matter of fact, he never learned her history, and had always some doubt as to whether the man from whom he and his companion bought her had an indisputable right to sell her.
Moran had been a Nova Scotian lobster25 catcher before he came to British Columbia to engage in the new halibut fishery, which had proved disappointing. Bethune, who lay upon the shingle26 in garments much the worse for wear, was a “remittance man,” with a cheerful expression and a stock of unvarying good humor. It was some time since he had engaged in any exacting27 occupation, and now, after using the saw all day, he was resting from his unaccustomed exertions29 and bantering30 Moran.
Jimmy had met them both in a second-rate Vancouver boarding-house, to which he had resorted after failing to find a ship, and working on the wharf31. He might have sailed before the mast, but he knew that when he next applied32 for a berth33 on board a liner he must account for his voyagings, and the fact that he had served as able seaman would not recommend him. When there was no cargo34 to be handled, he worked in the great Hastings mill; but he promptly35 discovered that he would never grow rich by this means; and the unrelaxing physical effort, demanded by foremen who knew how to drive hard, began to pall36 on him. He could have stood it had he come fresh from the sailing ships, but he frankly37 admitted that it was trying to a mailboat officer. He had, however, some small savings38, and when Bethune proposed a venture, in which Moran joined, Jimmy agreed.
“Hank,” Bethune drawled, after watching Moran for several minutes, “you Maritime39 Provinces people are a hard and obstinate40 lot, but you won’t get the plank in that way if you stick at it until to-morrow.”
Moran looked up with the sweat dripping from his brow.
“I surely hate to be beat,” he admitted. “I can spring her plumb41 up lengthways, but her edges won’t bend into the frames.”
“Exactly. This isn’t a cod-fishing dory or a lobster punt. Take your plane and hollow the plank up the middle.”
After doing as he was instructed, Moran had not much trouble in fitting it into place.
“Why didn’t you tell me that before?” he asked.
“I’ve known you some time,” Bethune answered with a grin. “There are people to whom you can’t show the easiest way until they’ve tried the hardest one and found it won’t do. It’s not their fault; I hold you can’t make a man responsible for his temperament42—and it’s a point on which I speak feelingly, because my temperament has been my bane.”
“How d’you know these things, anyway? I mean about bending planks43. You never allowed you’d been a boatbuilder.”
“Do you expect a man to exhibit all his talents? Here’s another tip. Don’t nail that plank home now. Leave it shored up until morning, and you’ll get it dead close then with a wedge or two. And now, if Jimmy hasn’t burned the grub, I think we’ll have supper.”
The meal might have been better, but Moran admitted that he had often eaten worse, and afterward44 they lay about on the shingle and lighted their pipes. Bethune, as usual, was the first to speak.
“The lumber45, and the canvas Jimmy gets to work upon to-morrow, have emptied the treasury,” he remarked. “If we incur46 any further liabilities, there’s a strong probability of their not being met; but that gives the job an interest. Prudence47 is a cold-blooded quality, which no man of spirit has much use for. To help yourself may be good, but doing so consistently often makes it harder to help the other fellow.”
“When you have finished moralizing we’ll get to business,” Jimmy rejoined. “Though I’m a partner in the scheme, I know very little yet about the wreck48 you’re taking us up to look for. Try to be practical.”
“Moran is practical enough for all three of us. I’ll let him tell the tale; but I’ll premise49 by saying that when he found the halibut fishing much less remunerative50 than it was cracked up to be, he sailed up the northwest coast with another fellow to trade with the Indians for furs. It was then he found the vessel.”
“The reef,” said Moran, “lies open to the south-west, and I got seven fathoms51 close alongside it at low water. A mile off, and near a low island, a bank runs out into the stream, and the after-half of the wreck lies on the edge of it, worked well down in the sand. At low ebb52 you can see the end of one or two timbers sticking up out of the broken water.”
“Is it always broken water?” Jimmy interrupted.
“Pretty near, I guess. Though there’s a rise and fall on the island beach, the stream ran steady to the northeast at about two miles an hour, the whole week we lay sheltering in the bight, and the swell53 it brings in makes a curling sea on the edge of the shoals.”
“Doesn’t seem a nice place for a diving job. How did you get down to her?”
“Stripped and swam down. One day when it fell a flat calm for a few hours and Jake was busy patching the sail, I pulled the dory across. I wanted to find out what those timbers belonged to, and I knew I had to do it then, because the ice was coming in, and we must clear with the first fair wind. Well, I got a turn of the dory’s painter round a timber, and went down twice, seeing bottom at about three fathoms with the water pretty clear. The sand was well up her bilge, but she was holding together, and when I swam round to the open end of her there didn’t seem much in the way except the orlop beams. I could have walked right aft under decks if I’d had a diving dress; but I’d been in the water long enough, and a sea fog was creeping up.”
Moran apparently54 thought little of his exploit; but Jimmy could appreciate the hardihood he had shown. The wreck lay far up on the northern coast, where the sea was chilled by currents from the Pole, and Moran had gone down to her when the ice was working in. Jimmy could imagine the tiny dory lurching over the broken swell, and the half-frozen man painfully crawling on board her with many precautions to avoid a capsize, while the fog that might prevent his return to his vessel crept across the water. It was an adventure that required unusual strength and courage.
“Why didn’t you take your partner out with you?” he asked.
“I’d seen Jake play some low-down tricks when we traded for the few furs we got, and I suspicioned he wasn’t acting28 square with me. Anyhow, he allowed he didn’t take much count of abandoned wrecks55, and when he saw I’d brought nothing back, he never asked me about her.”
“But if she was lost on the reef, how did she reach the bank a mile away?”
“I can’t tell you that, but I guess she shook her engines out after she broke her back, and then slipped off into deeper water. The stream and surge of sea may have worked her along the bottom.”
“It came out that she had only a little rock ballast in her,” Bethune explained. “There may not have been enough to pin her down; but the important point is that the strong-room was aft, and Hank says that part is sound.”
Jimmy nodded.
“Suppose you tell me all you know about the matter,” he said.
It was characteristic of both of them that when they first discussed the venture the one had been content with sketchily56 outlining his plans, and the other had not demanded many details. The project appealed to their imagination, and once they had decided57 upon it the necessary preparations had occupied all their attention.
Leaning back against a boulder58, Bethune refilled and lighted his pipe. His clothes were far from new, and were freely stained with tar, but he spoke59 clean English, and his face suggested intelligence and refinement60.
“Very well,” he said. “When Hank mentioned his discovery I thought I saw an opportunity of the kind I’d been waiting for; and I took some trouble to find out what I could about the vessel. She was an old wooden propeller61 that came round Cape62 Horn a good many years ago. When she couldn’t compete with modern steamboats, they strengthened her for a whaler, and she knocked about the Polar Sea; but she burned too much coal for that business, and wouldn’t work well under sail. It looked as if there wasn’t a trade in which she could make a living; but the Klondyke rush began, and somebody bought her cheap, and ran her up to Juneau, in Alaska, and afterward to Nome. There were better boats, but they were packed full, fore13 and aft, and the crowd going north was not fastidious: all it wanted was to get on the goldfields as soon as possible. Well, she made a number of trips all right, though I believe her owners had trouble when the pressure eased and the United States passenger-carrying regulations began to be properly applied. It was probably because no other boat was available that a small mining syndicate, which seems to have done pretty well, shipped a quantity of gold down from the north in her. Besides this, she brought out a number of miners, who had been more or less successful. Something went wrong with the engines when she had been a day or two at sea; but they got sail on her, and she drove south before a fresh gale63 until she struck the reef on a hazy64 night. It broke her back, and the after hold was flooded a few minutes after she struck. The strong-room was under water, there was no time to cut down to it; but they got the boats away, and after the crew and passengers were picked up, a San Francisco salvage65 company thought it worth while to attempt the recovery of the gold. It was late in the season when their tug66 reached the spot, and the ice drove her off the reef; the sea was generally heavy, and after a week or two they threw up the contract. The underwriters paid all losses, and that was the end of the matter. It is only the drifting of the stern half into shoal water that gives us our chance. Now I think you know as much as I do.”
Jimmy sat thoughtfully silent for a few minutes, realizing that it was a reckless venture he had undertaken. The wreck lay in unfrequented waters which were swept by angry currents that brought in the ice, vexed67 by sudden gales68, and often wrapped in fog. The appliances the party had been able to procure69 were of the cheapest description, and there was a risk in making the long voyage in so small a vessel as the sloop. Still, Jimmy’s fortunes needed a desperate remedy, and he was not much daunted70 by the difficulties he must face.
“Well,” he said, “I suppose we have some chance; but I don’t quite see what made you so keen on taking up the thing.”
“It’s explainable,” Bethune drawled, picking up a pebble71 and lazily flipping72 it out over the water. “Victoria’s a handsome city, and the views from it are good. For all that, when you can find no occupation, and have spent some years lounging about the waterfront and the bars of cheap hotels, the place, to put it mildly, loses its charm.”
“You could leave it. As a matter of fact, I met you at Vancouver.”
“Oh, yes. I could leave it for a maximum period of thirty days, because, with the exception of Sundays and one or two holidays, I was required to present myself at a lawyer’s office on the first of every month. Then I was paid enough to keep me, with rigid73 economy, for the next four weeks; but on the first occasion I failed to come up to time the allowance was to stop for good. It’s a system that has some advantages for the people who provide the funds in the old country, since it assures the payee’s stopping where he is—but it has its drawbacks for the latter. How can a man get a job and hold it anywhere outside the town if he must return at a fixed74 hour every month? When I was in Vancouver it cost me a large share of the allowance to collect it.”
“And now, by going north, you throw it up?”
“Exactly,” said Bethune. “It should have been done before, but, as I had never been taught to work or go without my dinner, the course I am at last taking needed some moral courage. It’s sink or swim now.”
Jimmy made a sign of agreement. All the money he possessed75 had been sunk in the undertaking76; and now, in order to get it back, he must succeed where a well-equipped salvage expedition had failed. Though the wreck had since changed her position, the prospects77 were not very encouraging.
“Well,” he said, “we must do the best we can; but I wish our funds had run to a better supply of stores.”
“Hank can fish,” grinned Bethune. “In fact, he’ll have to whenever there’s anything to catch. Fortunately, fish is wholesome78 and sustaining. However, as this job must be finished to-morrow, we had better get to sleep early.”
Jimmy sat smoking for a few minutes after the others went on board the sloop. It was getting dark, but a band of pure green light still glimmered79 along the crest3 of the black ridge to the west. The air was cold and very still, and gray wood smoke hung in gauzy wreaths above the roofs of the town. The tall pines were growing blurred80, but their keen, sweet fragrance81 hung about the beach, and the smooth swell lapped with a drowsy82 murmur83 upon the shingle.
Jimmy loved the sea; and now he was to go afloat again, in his own vessel, bound by no restrictions84 except the necessity for making the voyage pay. This would not be easy; but there was a romance about the undertaking that gave it a zest85.
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1
ridge
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| n.山脊；鼻梁；分水岭 | |
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crested
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| adj.有顶饰的，有纹章的，有冠毛的v.到达山顶（或浪峰）( crest的过去式和过去分词 )；到达洪峰，达到顶点 | |
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crest
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| n.顶点；饰章；羽冠；vt.达到顶点；vi.形成浪尖 | |
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ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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overalls
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| n.（复）工装裤；长罩衣 | |
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seaman
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| n.海员，水手，水兵 | |
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jersey
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| n.运动衫 | |
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stony
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| adj.石头的，多石头的，冷酷的，无情的 | |
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glimmering
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| n.微光，隐约的一瞥adj.薄弱地发光的v.发闪光，发微光( glimmer的现在分词 ) | |
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luster
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| n.光辉；光泽，光亮；荣誉 | |
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sylvan
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| adj.森林的 | |
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rusty
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| adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的 | |
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fore
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| adv.在前面；adj.先前的；在前部的；n.前部 | |
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scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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15
mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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tar
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| n.柏油，焦油；vt.涂或浇柏油/焦油于 | |
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cedar
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| n.雪松，香柏(木) | |
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sniffed
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| v.以鼻吸气，嗅，闻( sniff的过去式和过去分词 )；抽鼻子（尤指哭泣、患感冒等时出声地用鼻子吸气）；抱怨，不以为然地说 | |
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19
renounced
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| v.声明放弃( renounce的过去式和过去分词 )；宣布放弃；宣布与…决裂；宣布摒弃 | |
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embarked
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| 乘船( embark的过去式和过去分词 )； 装载； 从事 | |
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rugged
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| adj.高低不平的，粗糙的，粗壮的，强健的 | |
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plank
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| n.板条，木板，政策要点，政纲条目 | |
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sloop
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| n.单桅帆船 | |
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vessel
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| n.船舶；容器，器皿；管，导管，血管 | |
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lobster
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| n.龙虾，龙虾肉 | |
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26
shingle
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| n.木瓦板；小招牌(尤指医生或律师挂的营业招牌)；v.用木瓦板盖（屋顶）；把（女子头发）剪短 | |
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exacting
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| adj.苛求的，要求严格的 | |
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acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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exertions
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| n.努力( exertion的名词复数 )；费力；（能力、权力等的）运用；行使 | |
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bantering
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| adj.嘲弄的v.开玩笑，说笑，逗乐( banter的现在分词 )；（善意地）取笑，逗弄 | |
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wharf
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| n.码头，停泊处 | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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berth
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| n.卧铺，停泊地，锚位；v.使停泊 | |
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cargo
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| n.(一只船或一架飞机运载的)货物 | |
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promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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pall
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| v.覆盖，使平淡无味；n.柩衣，棺罩；棺材；帷幕 | |
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frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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savings
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| n.存款，储蓄 | |
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39
maritime
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| adj.海的，海事的，航海的，近海的，沿海的 | |
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obstinate
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| adj.顽固的，倔强的，不易屈服的，较难治愈的 | |
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plumb
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| adv.精确地，完全地；v.了解意义，测水深 | |
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42
temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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43
planks
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| （厚）木板( plank的名词复数 )； 政纲条目，政策要点 | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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lumber
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| n.木材，木料；v.以破旧东西堆满；伐木；笨重移动 | |
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incur
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| vt.招致，蒙受，遭遇 | |
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prudence
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| n.谨慎，精明，节俭 | |
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48
wreck
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| n.失事，遇难；沉船；vt.(船等)失事，遇难 | |
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49
premise
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| n.前提；v.提论，预述 | |
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50
remunerative
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| adj.有报酬的 | |
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51
fathoms
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| 英寻( fathom的名词复数 ) | |
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52
ebb
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| vi.衰退，减退；n.处于低潮，处于衰退状态 | |
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53
swell
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| vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强 | |
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54
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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55
wrecks
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| n.沉船( wreck的名词复数 )；（事故中）遭严重毁坏的汽车（或飞机等）；（身体或精神上）受到严重损伤的人；状况非常糟糕的车辆（或建筑物等）v.毁坏[毁灭]某物( wreck的第三人称单数 )；使（船舶）失事，使遇难，使下沉 | |
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56
sketchily
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| adv.写生风格地，大略地 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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58
boulder
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| n.巨砾；卵石，圆石 | |
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59
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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60
refinement
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| n.文雅；高尚；精美；精制；精炼 | |
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61
propeller
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| n.螺旋桨，推进器 | |
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62
cape
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| n.海角，岬；披肩，短披风 | |
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63
gale
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| n.大风，强风，一阵闹声（尤指笑声等） | |
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64
hazy
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| adj.有薄雾的，朦胧的；不肯定的，模糊的 | |
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salvage
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| v.救助，营救，援救；n.救助，营救 | |
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66
tug
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| v.用力拖(或拉)；苦干；n.拖；苦干；拖船 | |
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vexed
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| adj.争论不休的；（指问题等）棘手的；争论不休的问题；烦恼的v.使烦恼( vex的过去式和过去分词 )；使苦恼；使生气；详细讨论 | |
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68
gales
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| 龙猫 | |
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69
procure
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| vt.获得，取得，促成；vi.拉皮条 | |
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70
daunted
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| 使（某人）气馁，威吓( daunt的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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71
pebble
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| n.卵石，小圆石 | |
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72
flipping
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| 讨厌之极的 | |
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73
rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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74
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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75
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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undertaking
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| n.保证，许诺，事业 | |
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prospects
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| n.希望，前途(恒为复数) | |
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78
wholesome
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| adj.适合；卫生的；有益健康的；显示身心健康的 | |
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79
glimmered
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| v.发闪光，发微光( glimmer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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blurred
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| v.（使）变模糊( blur的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）难以区分；模模糊糊；迷离 | |
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81
fragrance
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| n.芬芳，香味，香气 | |
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82
drowsy
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| adj.昏昏欲睡的，令人发困的 | |
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83
murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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84
restrictions
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| 约束( restriction的名词复数 )； 管制； 制约因素； 带限制性的条件（或规则） | |
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zest
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| n.乐趣；滋味，风味；兴趣 | |
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