“Sit right down and have some supper. You’ll want it if you have ridden in from the railroad,” he said. “We’ll talk afterwards.”
The stranger nodded. “I’m from Vancouver,” he announced, “had quite a lot of trouble tracing you.”
He sat down, and Wyllard, who sent a man out to take the newcomer’s horse, went back to his seat, but he was very quiet during the remainder of the meal. When supper was finished he asked Mrs. Hastings to excuse him, and leading the stranger into a smaller room, pulled out two chairs and laid a cigar on the table.
“Now you can get ahead,” he said laconically.
The seaman fumbled in his pocket, and taking out a slip of wood handed it to his companion.
“That’s what I came to bring you,” he remarked.
Wyllard’s eyes grew grave as he gazed at the thing. It was a slip of willow which grows close up to the limits of eternal ice, and it bore a rude representation of the British ensign union down, which signifies “In distress.” Besides this there were one or two indecipherable words scratched on it, and three common names rather more clearly cut. Wyllard recognized every one of them.
“How did you get it?” he asked, in tense suspense.
The seaman once more felt in his pocket and took out a piece of paper cut from a chart. He flattened the paper out on the table, and it showed, as Wyllard had expected, a strip of the Kamtchatkan coast.
“I guess I needn’t tell you where that is,” the seaman said, as he pointed to the parallel of latitude that ran across it. “Dunton gave it to me. He was up there late last season well over on the western side. A northeasterly gale fell on them, and took most of the foremast out of their ship. I understand they tried to lash on a boom or something as a jury mast, but it hadn’t height enough to set much forward canvas, and that being the case she wouldn’t bear more than a three-reefed mainsail. Anyway, they couldn’t do anything with her on the wind, and as it kept heading them from the east she sidled away down south through the Kuriles into the Yellow Sea. They got ice-bound somewhere, which explains why Dunton fetched Vancouver only a week ago.”