The answer was to the effect she had antic.i.p.ated.

"That's impossible, for several reasons."

"The other is to call at Nanaimo and wait until, we'll say, next Thursday. If there's need for you to come back I think it will arise by then; but it might be better if you called at Comox too--after you leave the latter you'll be unreachable. If it seems necessary, I'll send you a warning; if you hear nothing, you can go on."

Vane reflected hastily. Jessy, as she had told him, had opportunities for picking up valuable information about the business done in that city, and he had confidence in her.

"Thank you," he said. "It will be the second service you have done me, and I appreciate it. Anyway, I promised Nairn I'd call at Nanaimo, in case there should be a wire from him."

"It's a bargain; and now we'll talk of something else."

Jessy drew him into an exchange of badinage. Noticing, however, that Evelyn once or twice glanced at her with some astonishment, she presently got rid of him. She could understand Evelyn's att.i.tude and she did not wish her friendliness with the offender to appear unnatural after what she had said about him.

At length the guests began to leave, and most of them had gone when Vane rose to take his departure. His host and hostess went with him to the door, but, though he once or twice glanced round eagerly, there was no sign of Evelyn. He lingered a few moments on the threshold after Mrs.

Nairn had given him a kindly send-off; but n.o.body appeared in the lighted hall, and after another word with Nairn he went moodily down the steps to join Jessy and Carroll, who were waiting for him below. As the group walked down the garden path, Mrs. Nairn looked at her husband.

"I do not know what has come over Evelyn this night," she remarked.

Nairn followed Jessy's retreating figure with distrustful eyes.

"Weel," he drawled, "I'm thinking yon besom may have had a hand in the thing."

A few minutes later Jessy, standing where the light of a big lamp streamed down upon her through the boughs of a leafless maple, bade Vane farewell at her brother's gate.

"If my good wishes can bring you success, it will most certainly be yours," she said, and there was something in her voice which faintly stirred the man, who was feeling very sore.

"Thank you."

She did not immediately withdraw the hand she had given him. He was grateful to her and thought she looked unusually pretty with the sympathy shining in her eyes.

"You will not forget to wait at Nanaimo and Comox?" she reminded him.

"No. If you recall me, I'll come back at once; if not, I'll go on with a lighter heart, knowing that I can safely stay away."

Jessy said nothing further, and he moved on. She felt that she had scored and she knew when to stop. The man had given her his full confidence.

Soon afterward Vane entered his hotel, where he turned impatiently upon Carroll.

"You can go into the rotunda or the smoking-room and talk to any loafer who thinks it worth while to listen to your cryptic remarks," he said.

"As we sail as soon as it's daylight to-morrow, I'm going to sleep."

CHAPTER XXV

THE INTERCEPTED LETTER

The wind was fresh from the northwest when Vane drove the sloop out through the Narrows in the early dawn and saw a dim stretch of white-flecked sea in front of him. Land-locked as they are by Vancouver Island, the long roll of the Pacific cannot enter those waters, but they are now and then lashed into short, tumbling seas, sufficient to make pa.s.sage difficult for a craft no larger than the sloop. Carroll frowned when a comber smote the weather bow and a shower of stinging spray lashed his face.

"Right ahead again," he remarked. "But as I suppose you're going on, we'd better stretch straight across on the starboard tack. We'll get smoother water along the island sh.o.r.e."

They let her go and Vane sat at the helm hour after hour, drenched with spray, hammering her mercilessly into the frothy seas. They could have done with a second reef down, for the deck was swept and sluicing, and most of the time the lee rail was buried deep in rushing foam; but Vane showed no intention of shortening sail. Nor did Carroll, who saw that his comrade was disturbed in temper, suggest it; resolute action had, he knew, a soothing effect on Vane. As a matter of fact, Vane needed soothing. Of late, he had felt that he was making steady progress in Evelyn's favor, and now she had most inexplainably turned against him.

There was no doubt that, as Jessy had described it, he was in disgrace; but rack his brain as he would, he could not discover the reason. That he was conscious of no offense only made the position more galling.

In the meanwhile, the boat engrossed more and more of his attention, and though he was by no means careful of her, he spared no effort to get her to windward. It was a relief to drive her hard at some white-topped sea and watch her bows disappear in it with a thud, while it somehow eased his mind to see the smashed-up brine fly half the height of her drenched mainsail. There was also satisfaction in feeling the strain on the tiller when, swayed down by a fiercer gust, she plunged through the combers with the froth swirling, perilously close to the coaming, along her half-submerged deck. In all their moods, men of his kind find pleasure in such things; the turmoil, the rush, the need for quick, resolute action stirs the blood in them.

The day was cold; the man, who was compelled to sit almost still in a nipping wind, was soon wet through; but this in some curious way further tended to restore his accustomed optimism and good-humor. He had partly recovered both when, as the sloop drove through the whiter turmoil whipped up by a vicious squall, there was a crash forward.

"Down helm!" shouted Carroll. "The bobstay's gone!"

He scrambled toward the bowsprit, which having lost its princ.i.p.al support swayed upward, in peril of being torn away by the sagging jib. Vane first rounded up the boat into the wind and then followed him; and for several minutes they had a savage struggle with the madly-flapping sail before they flung it, bundled up, into the well. Then they ran in the bowsprit, and Vane felt glad that, although the craft had been rigged in the usual western fashion as a sloop, he had changed that by giving her a couple of headsails in place of one.

"She'll trim with the staysail if we haul down another reef," he suggested.

It cost them some labor, but they were warmer afterward, and when they drove on again Vane glanced at the bowsprit.

"We'll try to get a bit of galvanized steel in Nanaimo," he said. "I can't risk another smash."

Carroll laughed.

"You'd better be prepared for one, if you mean to drive her as you have been doing." He flung back the saloon scuttle. "You'd have swamped her in another hour or two--the cabin floorings are all awash."

"Then hadn't you better pump her out?" retorted Vane. "After that, you can light the stove. It's beginning to dawn on me that it's a long while since I had anything worth speaking of to eat. The kind of lunch you brought along in the basket isn't sustaining."

They made a bountiful if somewhat primitive meal, in turn, sitting in the dripping saloon which was partly filled with smoke, and Carroll sighed for the comforts he had abandoned. He did not, however, mention his regrets, because he did not expect his comrade's sympathy. Vane seldom noticed what he was eating when he was on board his boat.

The craft, being under reduced sail, drove along more easily during the rest of the afternoon, and they ran into a little colliery town late on the following day. There Vane replaced the broken bobstay with a solid piece of steel, and then sat down to write a letter while Carroll stretched his cramped limbs ash.o.r.e.

The letter was addressed to Evelyn, and he found it difficult to express himself as he desired. The spoken word, as he had discovered, is now and then awkward to use, but the written one is more evasive and complex still, and he shook his head ruefully over the production when he laid down his pen. This was, perhaps, unnecessary, for having grown calm he had framed a terse and forcible appeal to the girl's sense of justice, which would in all probability have had its effect on her had she received it. Though he hardly realized it, the few simple words were convincing.

Having had no news from Nairn or Jessy, they sailed again in a day or two, bound for Comox farther along the coast, where there was a possibility of communications overtaking them; but in the meanwhile matters which concerned them were moving forward in Vancouver.

It was rather early one afternoon when Jessy called on one of her friends and found her alone. Mrs. Bendle was a young and impulsive woman from one of the eastern cities and she had not made many friends in Vancouver yet, though her husband, whom she had lately married, was a man of some importance there.

"I'm glad to see you," she said, greeting Jessy eagerly. "It's a week since anybody has been in to talk to me, and Tom's away again. It's a trying thing to be the wife of a western business man--you so seldom see him."

Jessy made herself comfortable in an easy-chair before she referred to one of her companion's remarks.

"Where has Mr. Bendle gone now?" she asked.

"Into the bush to look at a mine. He left this morning and it will be a week before he's back. Then he's going across the Selkirks with that Clavering man about some irrigation scheme."

This suggested one or two questions which Jessy desired to ask, but she did not frame them immediately. Mrs. Bendle was incautious and discursive, but there was nothing to be gained by being precipitate.

"It must be dull for you," she sympathized.