A Man to His Mate Part 13

He turned abruptly to a simmering pot and rattled the lid. The hunter, Deming, stuck his head in at the door.

"Smells good," he said. "Evening, Mr. Rainey."

He seemed disposed to linger, and Rainey, not to excite suspicion toward himself or Tamada, went back on deck. What did Tamada mean by "except under certain circ.u.mstances"? he asked himself. For one thing he felt sure that Tamada had some basis for his expression that he expected to get his money. _He knew something_. Was it merely the Oriental method of _jiu-jitsu_, practised mentally as well as physically, the belief in a seemingly pa.s.sive resistance against circ.u.mstances, waiting for some move that, by its own aggressiveness, would give him an opening for a trick that would secure him the advantage? What could one j.a.panese hope to do against the crowd?

A thought suddenly flashed over Rainey. Was Tamada in league with Carlsen? Had he mistaken his man? Did Carlsen plan to have Tamada undertake a wholesale poisoning to secure the gold himself, providing the drugs? Was it a friendly hint from the j.a.panese?

Still mulling over it he went down to supper. The girl was not present.

Carlsen appeared in an unusual mood.

"I was a bit hasty, Rainey," he said, with all appearance of sincerity.

"I've been worried a bit over the skipper. He's in a bad way.

"Forget what happened, if you can. I apologize. Though I still think your interference in my private affairs unwarranted. I'll call it square, if you will."

He nodded across the table at Rainey, saving the latter a reply which he was rather at a loss how to word. Amenities from Carlsen were likely a Greek gift. And Carlsen rattled on during the meal in high good spirits, rallying Rainey about his poker game with the hunters, joking Lund about his shooting, talking of the landfall they expected the next day.

To Rainey's surprise Lund picked up the talk. There was a subtle, sardonic flavor to it on both sides and, once in a while, as Tamada, like an animated sphinx, went about his duties, Rainey saw the eyes of Carlsen turned questioningly upon the giant as if a bit puzzled concerning the exact spirit of his sallies.

Rainey admired while he marveled at the sheer skill of Lund in this sort of a fencing bout. He never went far enough to arouse Carlsen's suspicions, yet he showed a keen sense of humorous appreciation of Carlsen's half-satirical sallies that, in the light of Sandy's revelation, showed the doctor considered himself the master of the situation, the winner of a game whose pieces were already on the board, though the players had not yet taken their places. Yet Rainey fancied that Carlsen qualified his dismissal of Lund as a "blind fool" before they rose from the table, without disturbing his own equanimity as the craftier of the two.

Later, when his watch was ended and he was closeted with Lund in the latter's cabin, the giant promptly quashed all discussion of Tamada's att.i.tude.

"I'll put no trust in any slant-eyed, yellow-skinned rice-eater," he announced emphatically. "They're against us, race an' religion. They want California, or rather, the Pacific coast, an' they think they're goin' to git it. They're no more akin to us than a snake is a cousin to an eel. They're not of our breed, an' you can't mix the two. I'll have no deal with Tamada, beyond gettin' dope out of him. If he helped us it 'ud be only to further his own ends. Not that he can do much--unless--"

He lowered his voice to a husky whisper.

"There's one thing may slip in our gold-gettin', matey," he said--"the j.a.panese. I doubt if this island is set down on American or British charts. But I'll bet it is on the j.a.panese. I don't know as any nation has openly claimed it, but it's a sure thing the j.a.ps know of its existence. They don't know of the gold, or it wouldn't be there.

Rightly, the island may belong to Russia, but, since the war, Russia's in a bad way, an' ennything loose from the mainland'll be gobbled by j.a.pan.

"What the j.a.ps grab they don't let go of. On general principles they patrol the west side of Bering Strait. If one of their patrols sees us we'll be inside the sealin' limit, an' they'll have right of search.

They'd take it, ennyway, if they sighted us. They go by _power_ of search, not right. They won't find enny pelts on us, we've got hunters aboard, we're pelagic sealers, they won't be able to hang up enny clubbin' of herds on us.

"But, if they should suspicion us of gittin' gold off enny island they c'ud trump up to call theirs, if they found gold on us at all, it 'ud be all off with us an' the _Karluk_. We'd be dumped inside of some j.a.p prison an' the schooner confiscated.

"An', if things go right with us, an' we ever sight the smoke of a j.a.p gunboat comin' our way, the first thing I'll be apt to do will be to scrag Tamada or he'll blow the whole proposition, whether we've got the gold aboard or not. Even if he didn't want to tell becoz of his own share, they'd git it out of him what we was after."

Did this, wondered Rainey, explain Tamada's "certain circ.u.mstances"? Was he calculating on the arrival of a j.a.panese patrol? Had he already tipped off to his consul in San Francisco the purpose of the expedition, sure of a reward equal to what his share would have been? If so, Rainey had made a muddle of his attempt to sound Tamada. He felt guilty, glad that Lund could not see his face, and he dropped the subject abruptly.

Lund seemed to know that something was amiss.

"Nervous, Rainey?" he asked. "That's becoz you've not bin livin' a man's life. All yore experience has bin second-hand, an' you've never gone into a rough-an'-tumble, I take it. You'll make out all right if it comes to that at all. Yo're well put up, an' you've got solid of late.

Now yo're goin' to git a taste of life in the raw. Not story-book stuff.

It's strong meat sometimes, an' liable to turn some people's stomachs.

I've got an appet.i.te for it, an' so'll you have, after a bit.

"Ever play much at cards?" he went on. "Play for yore last red when you don't know where to turn for another, an' have all the crowd thinkin'

yo're goin' broke as they watch the play? An' then you slap down a card they've all overlooked an' larf in the other chap's face?

"That's what I'm goin' to do with Carlsen. I've got that kind of a card, matey, an' I ain't goin' to spoil my fun by tellin' even you what it is, though yo're my partner in this gamble. It's a trump, an' Carlsen's overlooked it. He figgers he's stacked the deck an' fixed it so's he deals himself all the winnin' cards. But there's one he don't know is there becoz he's more of a blind fool than I am, is Doctor Carlsen."

Lund chuckled hugely as he mixed himself some whisky and water. Rainey refused a drink. Lund was right, he was nervous, bothering over what the outcome might be, and how he might handle himself. He was not at all sure of his own grit.

Lund had hit the nail on the head. All his experience had lain in listening to the stories of others and writing them down. He did not know whether he would act in a manner that would satisfy himself. There was a nasty doubt as to his own prowess and his own courage that kept cropping up. And that state of mind is not a pleasant one.

"All be over this time ter-morrer," put in Lund, "so far as our bisness with Carlsen is concerned. You git all the sleep you can ter-night, Rainey. An' don't you worry none about that gal. She's a d.a.m.n' sight more capable of lookin' after herself than you imagine. You ain't counted her in as bein' more than a clingin' vine proposition. Not that she could buck it on her own, but she's no fool, an' I bet she's game.

"Soft on her?" he challenged unexpectedly.

"I haven't thought of her in that way," Rainey answered, a bit shortly.

"Ah!" the giant e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed softly. "You haven't? Wal, mebbe it's jest as well."

Rainey took that last remark up on deck and pondered over it in the middle watch, but he could make nothing out of it. Yet he was sure that Lund had meant something by it.

In the middle of the night the cold seemed to concentrate. Rainey had found mittens in the schooner's slop-chest, and he was glad of them at the wheel. The sailors, with but little to do, huddled forward. One man acted as lookout for ice. The smell of this was now unmistakable even to Rainey's inexperience. On certain slants of wind a sharper edge would come that bit through ordinary clothes. It was, he thought, as if some one had suddenly opened in the dark the doors of an enormous refrigerator. He knew what that felt like, and this was much the same.

The weather was still clearing. In the sky of indigo the stars were glittering points, not of gold, but steel, hard and cold. Ahead, the northern lights were projected above the horizon in a low arch of quivering rose. And, out of the north, before the wind, the sea advanced in the long, smooth folds of a weighty swell over which the _Karluk_ wore her way into the breeze, clawing steadily on to the Aleutians and a pa.s.sage through to Bering Strait.

At two bells the hunters began to come on deck for a breath or so of fresh air after the closeness of their quarters, as they invariably did following a poker session. They did not come aft or give any greeting to Rainey, but walked briskly about in couples, discussing something that Rainey did not doubt was the next day's meeting. Doubtless, in the confidence of their numbers, they considered it a mere formality. Lund would take what they offered--or nothing. And Carlsen had guaranteed the skipper's signature to an agreement.

They got their lungs recharged with good air, and then the cold drove them below, and Rainey, with the length of the schooner between him and the watch, was practically alone. He went over and over the situation as a squirrel might race around the bars of his revolving cylinder, and came to only one conclusion, the inevitable one, to let the matter develop itself. Lund's winning card he had bothered about until his brain was tired. The only thing he got out of all his fussing was the one new thought that seemed to fly out at a tangent and mock him.

If Carlsen was deposed, and the skipper continued ill--to face the worst but still plausible--if Carlsen, being deposed, refused to act, and the skipper was too sick to leave his room--who was going to navigate the schooner? Not a blind man. And Rainey couldn't learn navigation in a day. There was more to it in these perilous seas than mere reckoning.

Ice was ahead.

What could Lund make of that? Supposing that card of his did win, how could they handle the schooner? He, in his capacity of eyes for Lund, would be about as competent as a poodle trying to lead a blind pedler out of a maze.

The lookout broke in on his mulling over with a sudden shout.

"_Ice! Ice!_ Close on the starboard bow!"

Rainey put the helm over, throwing the _Karluk_ on the opposite tack.

The berg slipped by them, not as he had imagined it, a thing of sparkling minarets and pinnacles, but a hill of snow that materialized in the soft darkness and floated off again to dissolution like the ghost of an island, leaving behind the bitter chill of death, rising and falling until, in a moment, it was gone, with its threat of s.h.i.+pwreck had the night been less clear.

Five times before eight bells the cry came from forward, and the heaps of s.h.i.+ning whiteness would take form, gather a certain sharpness of outline, and go past the beam with the seas surging about them and breaking with a hollow boom upon their cavernous sides. And this was in the open sea. Lund had suggested that the strait would be full of ice.

Rainey felt his sailing experience, that he came to be rather proud of, pitifully limited and inadequate in the face of coming conditions.

When he turned in at last, despite his determination to follow Lund's admonition concerning sleep, it would not come to him. Hansen had taken over the deck stolidly enough, with no show of misgivings as to his ability to handle things, but his words had not been cheering to Rainey.

"Plenty ice from now on, Mr. Rainey. Now we bane goin' to have one hard yob on our hands, by yiminy, you an' me!"

CHAPTER IX