He laid his top coat back on the counter and turned out the light, and while he led the way down to the float, he blamed himself and excused and blamed himself anew, for depending on that little steamer.
Sheltered though it was by the wharves and the headland, the small landing rose and dipped; breaking crests swept sheer over it. Mason set his lantern on a pile and the manager helped him turn and empty the beached canoe. Roughly hewn from a cedar log, with bow and stern cut square and hollowed slightly like a scow, it had a clumsy appearance even as dugouts go, and in mild weather two men together could hardly have risked passage in her. Launched, she swashed in the tide like a thing water-logged.
No one knew how the craft first drifted to Freeport, though Hop Sing had appropriated her, to use on still evenings during the salmon run, when he visited his friends employed at the cannery a mile up the coast. The paddle was not in its usual hiding-place, a niche under the flooring of the nearest dock, and Forrest hurried up to the cook-house.
"Give me the paddle to the dugout, Sing," he said, stopping on the threshold; "I'm going over to Seattle."
The Chinaman whirled on his cork soles and looked at him. Then he swung his towel over his shoulder and his face expanded in a smile. "What for you jokee me, Boss? Hully sit down. I bling supper belly click. Steak muchee cold."
"Never mind supper, Sing; or just give me some coffee right here, while you find that paddle."
He poured the steaming coffee, black and bitter from long waiting, and gave the cup to Forrest. "What for you takee dugout? He no good. Too muchee blow, blow." His voice shrilled incredulously, but something in the manager's face made him turn abruptly and trip across the kitchen to his own private closet, where, after a brief search under his bunk, he brought forth the missing paddle.
He had a catlike aversion to moisture and cold, but Forrest had eased him through many a buffeting from the mill crew, and presently he lighted his lantern and followed him down to the float. He found Mason steadying the lurching dugout while the young man took his place forward of the stern. And he waited silently, but with growing concern, until the old sailor cast off the painter and gave the great even push which propelled the craft out between docks, then he, too, held his light aloft, vying with the watchman to illuminate the way. The wind filled his wide, white sleeves, baring his arms above the jade bracelets; it played havoc with his unwound cue and set all his loose garments fluttering; but he stood there long, shivering, with teeth chattering, holding the lantern yet higher and straining his eyes to follow that small, receding shape.
As he swung clear of the wharves Forrest felt the strong ebb, and low as the dugout was, she careened to the wind when she drifted out of the protection of the headland. A wave broke, drenching him through. Far to the northward he saw the revolving light on West Point; then a smaller flame appeared on the opposite shore, and he knew by the position of these lamps when he had reached the open, where the gale had its fullest sweep of the Sound. Another crest broke over him; another; still he made headway and held his course quartering to the trough. The deep whistle of an ocean collier came to him, and off the point he saw her lamps; a tug passed close at hand. He heard plainly the noise of her screw, but she went by without heeding his hail, and he caught the counter motion of her wake. Presently he noticed water about his knees, and groping, found the can; and while he bailed he tried with one hand to keep the dugout under control, but she swung broadside, taking a sea. He dropped the can and grasped the paddle with a great dip that brought her slowly around. His muscles ached; his fingers cramped; how that year of confinement at the mills had unfitted him.
When the beacons disappeared he knew that he had made a little more than half the distance. But the dugout never headed for the city lamps; she drove before the wind, and the most he could do was to swing her out of the trough, and ease her northeast by north, hoping to strike the point which marked the harbor entrance above the town.