It was summer in the north, and now that the bitter wind which had blown thick rain before it had dropped, the clammy fog shut the Shasta in like a wall. She crept through it with engines pounding steadily, swinging to the slow heave of the swell, while Jimmy stood, chilled to the backbone, on his bridge, as he had done for most of the last forty-eight hours. A chart in a glass case was clamped to the rail in front of him, and Lindstrom, the mate, stooped over it with the moisture trickling from his oilskins.
"This thing is not much good," he said. "The stream moves a different way with the change of wind. Also there is discrepancy in the depth of water."
"There is. If I knew how much to mark off for leeway in that last breeze I'd feel a good deal easier," said Jimmy, who turned to fling a disgusted glance at the chart, upon which little arrows, that indicated the general drifts of the currents, had apparently been scattered promiscuously. Then he raised his voice. "Forward there! See you have a good arming on your lead, and stand by to let go when I take the way off her!"
He pressed down his telegraph and a curious silence followed the clang of the gong when the engines stopped. The Shasta lurched on more slowly into the fog, and when Jimmy swung up his hand a man on the half-seen forecastle loosed the deep-sea lead, while another, perched in the mainmast shrouds, stood intent with a coil of slack line in his hand. There was a splash, the line ran out, and when a sing-song cry came up Jimmy made a little impatient gesture as he turned to the chart.
"A fathom less than we ought to have," he said, and raised his voice. "What bottom have you got?"
A couple of men were busy hauling in the ponderous lead, and one of them who lifted it turned to the bridge. "Mud, sir," he said. "Soft at that."
Jimmy looked at Lindstrom. "That, at least, is what this thing says. I suppose one ought to bring her up, and wait for a sight, but we can't stay here a week on the odd chance of a blink of clear weather. Anyway, there's plenty water under us, and we'll try the lead again presently."
The mate made a sign of concurrence as Jimmy pressed down his telegraph. "I was at Kenai four year ago. For two weeks we see nothing. How we get there I cannot tell you, but I think it is by good fortune. Also the skipper come there often for the Commercial Company. You do a thing several times, then you shut your eye, and perhaps you do it again."
He went down the ladder, and Jimmy was left alone except for the silent, shapeless figure in trickling oilskins at the steering wheel. How he had groped his way to St. Michael's near the tremendous desolation of willow swamps about the Yukon mouth he did not exactly know, but he had accomplished it in spite of screaming gale and blinding fog, and the treasure-seekers he had taken up had duly presented him with a written testimonial, which was all they had to give. A few days of clear weather had permitted him to steam across to one of the Commercial Company's factories, but since he left it he had held southward at a venture through thick rain and fog without a single glimpse of any celestial body. That would not have mattered so much had the sea been still as a lake is, for then he could have steered by dead reckoning; but that sea is swept by currents which run for the most part in guessed-at and variable directions, and it was impossible to calculate how far they might have deflected his course for him. In fact, for all he knew, they might have deflected it several times and set it right again. He had cable enough to anchor, but, as he had said, he could not stay there for a week or two on the odd chance of getting an hour's clear weather.
So, since the chart suggested that he was clear of the shore, he went on leisurely, leaning on his bridge-rails chilled in every limb, with the damp trickling off him, while the Shasta bored her way through the woolly vapor, until a little while after the lead had given him a reassuring depth of water she stopped suddenly. Jimmy was flung against the wheel with a violence that drove all the breath out of him, but the next moment he had jumped for his telegraph while everything in the vessel banged and rattled, and the gong clanged out his orders, "Stop her!" and "Hard astern!"