In the evening of the day on which they saw the last of Vancouver Island, Jimmy sat in the Cetacea’s cockpit with a chart of the North Pacific spread out before him on the cabin hatch. It showed the tortuous straits, thickly sprinkled with islands of all sizes, through which they had somehow threaded their way during the last week, in spite of baffling head winds and racing tides, and though Jimmy was a navigator he felt some surprise at their having accomplished the feat without touching bottom. Now he had their course to the north plotted out along the deeply fretted coast of British Columbia, and rolling up the chart he rose to look about.
It was nine o’clock, but the light was clear, and a long, slate-green swell slightly crisped with ripples rolled up out of the south; to the northwest a broad stripe of angry saffron, against which the sea-tops cut, glowed along the horizon; but the east was dim, and steeped in a hard, cold blue. Shadowy mountains were faintly visible high up against the sky; and, below, a few rocky islets rose, blurred by blue haze, out of the heaving sea.
The sloop rolled lazily, her boom groaning and the tall, white mainsail alternately swelling out and emptying with a harsh slapping of canvas and a clatter of shaken blocks. Above it the topsail raked in a wide arc across the sky. Silky lines of water ran back from the stern, there was a soft gurgle at the bows; Jimmy computed that she was slipping along at about three miles an hour.
“What do you think of the weather?” Bethune asked, as he lounged at the steering wheel.
“It doesn’t look promising,” Jimmy answered. “If time wasn’t an object, I’d like the topsail down. We’ll have wind before morning.”
“That’s my opinion; but time is an object. When the cost of every day out is an item to be considered, we must drive her. Have you reckoned up what we’re paying every week to the ship-chandler fellow who found us the cables and diving gear?”
“I haven’t; his terms were daunting enough as a whole without analyzing them. Have you?”
Bethune chuckled.
“I have the cost of everything down in my notebook; although I will confess that I was mildly surprised at myself for taking the trouble. If I’d occasionally made a few simple calculations at home and acted on them, the chances are that I shouldn’t be here now.” Bethune made a gesture of disgust. “Halibut boiled and halibut fried begins to pall on one; but this is far better than our quarters in Vancouver, and they were a big improvement on those I had in Victoria. I daresay it was natural I should stick to the few monthly dollars as long as possible, but it will be some time before I forget that hotel. I never quite got used to the two wet public towels beside the row of sloppy wash-basins, and the gramophone going full blast in the dirty dining-room; and the long evening to be dawdled through in the lounge was worst of all. You have, perhaps, seen the hard-faced toughs lolling back with their feet on the radiator pipes before the windows, the heaps of dead flies that are seldom swept up, the dreary, comfortless squalor. Imagine three or four hours of it every night, with only a last-week’s Colonist to while away the time!”
“I should imagine things would be better in a railroad or logging camp.”