This self-imposed task had delayed Bates an extra hour, during which he had held the cutter, which was under steam and ready to make the run across the Straits to the American port of entry. But his commanding officer accepted the information without comment. However, when the revenue boat had steamed out of the Arm, headed for her home port, he remained on the bridge, searching with his binoculars, first the Vancouver coast astern, and then, slowly, the great reach of running sea, that stretched away to the distant and tawny pall which hung over the American side and showed the vast sweep of the forest fires.
There was a strong wind, drawing in from the Pacific, and the little steamer labored in an ugly trough. When she staggered, quartering, up a mother wave, she plunged down, and half seas over, in the next crest. She made her harbor, decks streaming, port light stove in, at midnight, and, after a brief stop and slight repairs, she was under way again, moving southward into the smoke. Finally, at the end of several hours, she was brought to, and, under slow bells, began to patrol a certain course.
The smoke gathered density. It was permeated with a lurid glare, and, driven by cross winds, it moved around a center, enfolding the cutter with the effect of a vast, brassy, electrical cloud. It was also a place of conflicting seas. The long, white, wicked fingers of a tide-rip reached out ceaselessly, and withdrew to the center of the whirlpool. The moon hung like a crimson lantern directly above and cast a red trail through the vortex. Then suddenly, while the little steamer skirted, listing to the maelstrom, a great gust tore the smoke asunder and Foulweather Bluff loomed through the rift. At the same moment a small yacht, under full sail bore down upon the headland.
The next instant she veered and coming around in the narrow space between the cutter and the cliff, raced out, all but grazing the side of the steamer, and heeled to the whirlpool. Her great mainsail dipped lower and lower; the white fingers of the tide-rip clutched at it, caught it, held it, dragged it slowly in. The decks were awash. Then the grip of the maelstrom relaxed; the little craft righted, shivering; her canvas filled with a big gust from the Straits and she swung away into the night.
It all happened very swiftly, and the smoke closed in, curtaining Foulweather, with a greater density. Bates, who was on the bridge, had seen that the yacht carried no headlight, and he had recognized clearly, one of the two men who sailed her. The face of the first was hidden, for he leaned, straining every muscle, on the stumbling helm; but the second stood on the slanting deck, bracing his back on the canting cabin, alert, watchful, like a man on guard. His glance was raised to the steamer's bridge, and fixing his eyes on the inspector, his right hand crept to his hip pocket. There was no doubt; he was Stratton. And even while the little vessel hovered on the edge of the maelstrom, the officer gave the command to back, turn, go ahead. The cutter was in hot pursuit. Directly the gun on her port bow boomed through the thick atmosphere. No response. Again the report rang peremptory, threatening. And still no answer.
At daybreak the steamer doubled back on her course and headed for the lower end of Whidby Island, which divides the Sound into two long broad channels. She patrolled this point for a long interval, and finally the lookout saw the bowsprit and rigging of a small yacht detach from the gray pall that shrouded the west passage. But instantly she swung away from the cutter and vanished like a phantom in the smoke. Once more the gun thundered a halt; and once more the silence was broken only by the noise of the ship's machinery, and the breaking of the sea on the cutwater. The revenue vessel steamed on under slow bells toward Seattle.
CHAPTER XXII
FOR LITTLE SILAS
The lamps across the harbor began to show red spots through the smoke; the nearer lights on the landings of the mills, and at the ends of the wharves, shone with pale rings around their disks. With twilight a fog was creeping in. The burning slab-pile sent up its great tongues of flame against the blackness of the bluff, and became a beacon for such craft as groped along the Head, feeling a way to the city. It illuminated the usual groups of workmen, and singled out the old watchman's square figure. He was seated on a block, shaping a miniature boat for little Silas, and the child, standing by his knee, with his hands clasped loosely behind him, awaited the results with grave interest.
The boy's mother had just left him, with permission to stay until the toy was finished. She felt the increasing dampness in the air, but she stopped at her gate, shrinking from the silence of the house, and looked back to the group at the fire. Presently she turned and walked slowly in the direction of the old hotel. The swell broke with a long tramp and swash at the foot of the bluff, for it was flood-tide. In dark places, where the water ruffled about the piers, there were flashes of phosphorous light. Louise watched it, leaning from the railing. It was a light she loved. She liked, too, those night voices of the sea. They intruded on her loneliness with a mild insistence; in sympathy, yet expostulation.