“In one way, it looks like that, but, after all, a jibe’s quite a common thing with a fore-and-after. If you run her off to lee when she’s going before it, her mainboom’s bound to come over. Of course, nobody would run her off in a wicked breeze unless he had to, but you’d no choice with the ice in front of you.”
Wyllard lay very still for a minute. It was clear to him that his project must be abandoned for that season, which meant that at least six months must elapse before he could even approach the Kamtchatkan coast again.
“Well,” he inquired at length, “what do you mean to do?”
“If the breeze holds we could pick up one of the Aleutians in a few days, but I’m keeping south of the islands. There’ll probably be ugly ice along the beaches, and I’ve no fancy for being cast ashore by a strong tide when the fog lies on the land. With westerly winds I’d sooner hold on for Alaska. We could lie snug in an inlet there, and, it’s quite likely, get a cedar that would make a spar. I can’t head right away for Vancouver with no mainsail.”
This was clear to Wyllard, who made a weak gesture. “If the wind comes easterly?”
Dampier pursed up his lips. “Then, unless I could fetch one of the Kuriles, we’d sure be jammed. She won’t beat to windward, and there’d be all Kamtchatka to lee of us. The ice is packing up along the north of it now, and the Russians have two or three settlements to the south. We don’t want to run in and tell them what we’re after.”
A faint smile touched Wyllard’s lips. “No,” he said, “not after that little affair on the beach. Since it’s very probable that the vessel they send up to the seal islands would deliver store along the coast, the folks in authority would have a record of it. They would call the thing piracy—and, in a sense, they’d be justified.”
He was silent for a few moments, and then looked up again wearily.
“I wonder,” he remarked, “how that boat’s crew ever got across to Kamtchatka. It was north of the islands where the man brought Dunton the message.”
Dampier understood that Wyllard desired to change the subject, for this was a question they had often discussed already.