“I suppose this means you’re sorry you came?”
“Not exactly; but I’ve begun to wonder what’s the good of it all. I haven’t slept in dry clothes for a fortnight. It’s a week since any of us had a decent meal; and my slicker has rubbed a nasty sore on my wrist. All the time I could have had three square meals a day, and spent my leisure reading a dirty newspaper and watching them sweep up the dead flies in the hotel lounge. What I want to know is—whether any ambition’s worth the price you have to pay for gratifying it?”
“I should say that depends on your temperament.”
“Bethune does some fool-talking now and then,” Moran commented from his post at the helm. “When you go to sea for your living, you must expect to get up against all a man can stand for; and if you don’t put up a good fight, she’ll beat you. That’s one reason you’d better get your pumping done before she ships a comber.”
With a gesture of acquiescence Bethune resumed his task, and presently went below while Jimmy took the helm. The breeze freshened during the morning, and the sea got heavier, but it dropped in the afternoon, when they ran into a fog belt, which Jimmy thought indicated land. As the days were getting shorter, they set the topsail, and looked out eagerly until a faint gray blur appeared amid the haze, perhaps a mile away. Closing with it, they made out the beach, which Jimmy searched with the glasses after consulting his notebook.
“Luff!” he called to Bethune. “Now steady at that; I’ve got my first two marks.” Then he motioned to Moran. “Clear your anchor!”
A few minutes afterward he completed his four-point bearing, and the Cetacea stopped, head to wind, with a rattle of running chain. The sea was comparatively smooth in the lee of the land, and ran in a long swell that broke into a curl of foam here and there. Bethune took up the glasses and turned them on the beach.
“It is some time since high-water, and we ought to see her soon,” he said. “I’m trying to find the big boulder on the point.” He paused and put down the glasses. “Do you see anything?”
“No,” said Moran gruffly; “she should be showing.”
“That’s true,” Bethune agreed. “The tallest timber used to be above water when the top of the boulder was just awash, and now its bottom’s a foot from the tide.”