It began in the space of a watch. The glass tumbled, the wind hauled around to foul, and it began to blow viciously. For days they rode hove to.
That was but the beginning. For weeks, they obtained only an occasional favorable slant of wind, and these, as often as not, in the shape of short, sharp gales. They made the most of them; the blind man on the poop coached cannily, and Ruth and the boatswain carried on to the limit.
Martin, once again, as in the days leaving San Francisco, saw the smother of canvas fill the decks with water. But such sailing was rare, and of short duration. Always, succeeding, came the heavy slap in the face from the fierce wind god of the North.
Martin labored mightily, in company with his fellows, it being a constant round of "reef, shake out, and come about." The days were sharp, and the nights bitter cold—though, as they won northward, and the season advanced, the days grew steadily longer.
Went glimmering, as the weeks passed, the high hopes of a record passage. Disappeared, also, the assurance of recovering the treasure. The shadow of Wild Bob Carew fell between them and their destination.
When one day the capricious wind drove them fairly past Copper Island, and they plunged into the foggy, ill-charted reaches of the Bering, their jubilation was tempered with a note of pessimism. They debated, in the Cohasset's cabin, whether the adventurer of the Dawn had been beforehand; and Captain Dabney discussed his plans for proceeding on to the Kamchatka coast for trading in case they discovered Fire Mountain to be despoiled.
The situation, it seemed to Martin, resolved itself to this: If Carew knew the latitude and longitude of the smoking mountain—and being familiar with the Bering Sea, all hands admitted that he might well know it—the ambergris was most certainly lost to them, unless, as was most unlikely, the Dawn had had even worse luck with the weather than the Cohasset. But if Carew did not know Fire Mountain's location, they had a chance, though Carew was probably cruising adjacent waters, on the lookout for them—and if they encountered him, they might prepare to resist a piracy.
Martin, in truth, had a secret hope that they might encounter Carew's schooner. He had a healthy lust for trouble and a scorn bred of ignorance for the Japanese crew of the Dawn. He harbored a grudge against the Dawn's redoubtable skipper. Ruth was the kernel of that grudge.
And, oddly enough, he had a queer companion also wishing they might be compelled to battle the Japanese. It was none other than Charley Bo Yip, the cook.
Yip hated the Japanese with a furious hatred, if the garbled words that dropped from his smiling lips were to be believed. He hated them individually and nationally. And he sharpened, ostentatiously, a meat-cleaver, and proclaimed his intention of procuring a Jap's head as a trophy, should they have trouble.