“That he’ll try to clean out the wreck before we get there. It was the only reason he let us go. I dare say you noticed how careful he was not to show any anxiety to buy us off. It’s curious, but I really think he spoke the truth when he said all the gold was not insured.”
“If it had been a straight deal, with nothing behind it, I think I’d have taken the five thousand dollars,” Jimmy said. “He won’t have much trouble in getting ahead of us when the ice breaks up. It will cost something to fit out the sloop, and our pockets are empty.”
“Oh, there’s time yet,” Bethune replied with a cheerful laugh. “Something may turn up.”
Fortune favored them during the next week, for Bethune secured a post as hotel clerk, and Moran went inland to assist in repairing a railroad track which a snowslide had wrecked. Soon afterward Jimmy shipped as deck-hand on a Sound steamboat and was lucky in attracting the attention of one of the directors who was on board by the cool promptness with which he prevented an accident when a passenger gangway broke. The director had a talk with him, and, learning that he was a steamship officer, placed him in charge of a gasolene launch which picked up passengers at unimportant landings and took them off to the boats. The work was easy, and paid fairly well; and Jimmy had held his post for a month with some satisfaction when he went off to meet a north-bound steamer at dusk one evening.
He had no passengers and it was blowing fresh with showers of sleet. Savage gusts whipped the leaden water into frothing white, and as he drew out from the shore the ripples which chased the launch grew larger. When he passed a headland they changed into short, breaking seas, and the craft plunged wildly as she crossed a strong run of tide. Here and there an island loomed up dimly, but the shore had faded into the haze. When Jimmy first joined her, the boat had carried another hand, but the man had gone and had not been replaced because trade was slack in winter. Jimmy thought that he might have trouble in getting his passengers on board; but they were not likely to be numerous, and the steamer would run into shelter behind an island.
He was late, for his engine was not working well, but there was no sign of the steamer when he stopped, and the boat lay rolling with the spray blowing across her rail. It rattled on Jimmy’s slickers and stung his face, but the cold was mild by comparison with what he had endured in the North, and he sat in the shelter of the coaming, glancing up the Sound every now and then. Presently a sleet-storm broke upon him, and when it blew away a blinking white light and a colored one broke out of the driving cloud. Jimmy lighted a blue flare and, starting the engine, headed for the end of the island. When he stopped, the steamer was close ahead, a lofty, gray mass, banded with rows of lights. She rolled as she crossed the tide-stream, and he could see the foam about her big side-wheels and the smoke that swept from her inclined stacks. It did not look as if she were stopping, and he was about to get out of her way when a deep blast of her whistle broke through the turmoil of the sea. In another minute he was abreast of the gangway and caught the rope thrown down, though he kept the launch off at a few yards’ distance.
The ladder was lowered, and hung banging awkwardly against the vessel’s side; and while Jimmy waited with his hand on the tiller a deck-hand ran down to the lowest step and flung a valise into the boat, and then turned to assist a woman who followed him. Jimmy could not see her well, but he noticed that she was active and not timid, which was reassuring, and he cautiously sheered the launch closer in.
“Give me your hand and jump!” he cried.
She did as he directed, and when she was safe on board he stood looking up at the gangway.
“That’s all!” somebody shouted; and when he let the rope go, the side-wheels churned and the steamer forged ahead while the launch slid clear of her with propeller rattling.