After half an hour of it, he was breathless and exhausted, and Vane took his place. The sea was higher, the sloop wetter than she had been, and there was no doubt that the water was rising fast inside her. Carroll wondered how far ahead the inlet his companion had mentioned lay, and the next two hours were anxious ones to both of them. Turn about, they pumped with savage determination and went back, gasping, to the helm, to thrash the boat on. They drove her remorselessly; and she went through the combers, swept and streaming, while the spray scourged the helmsman’s face as he gazed to weather. Their arms and shoulders ached from working in a cramped position, but since there was no help for it, they toiled doggedly, until at last the crest of a crag they were heading for sloped away in front of them.
A few minutes later, they drove past the end of it into a broad lane of water with long ranks of firs dropping steeply to its edge. The wind was suddenly cut off; the combers fell away, and the sloop crept slowly up the inlet, which wound, green and placid, among the hills. Vane strode to the scuttle and looked down at the flood which splashed languidly to and fro below.
“It’s fortunate that we’re in. Another half-hour would have seen the end of her,” he said. “Let her come up a little. There’s a smooth beach to yonder cove.”
She slid in quietly, scarcely rippling the smooth surface of the tiny basin, about which there rose great black firs, and Carroll laid her on the beach.
“Now,” said Vane, “drop the boom on the shore side, to keep her from canting over; and then we’ll get breakfast. We’ll see where she’s damaged when the tide ebbs.”
Since most of their stores had lain in the flooded lockers, from which there had been no time to extricate them, the meal was not an appetising one. They were, however, glad of it, and, rowing ashore afterwards, they lay on the shingle in the sunshine while the sloop was festooned with their drying clothes.
“If she has only split a plank or two we can patch her up,” Vane remarked, “There are all the tools we’ll want in the locker.”
“Where will you get new planks from?” Carroll inquired. “I don’t think we have any spikes that would go through the frames.”
“That,” said Vane, “is the trouble. I expect I’ll have to make a trip across to Comox for them in a sea canoe. We’re sure to come across a few Siwash somewhere in the neighbourhood. I can’t say that this expedition is beginning fortunately.”
“There’s no doubt on that point,” Carroll agreed.