The Secret of the Reef
Harold Bindloss
Paperback
(RareBooksClub.com, Sept. 13, 2013)
Excerpt: ...muffled in a wet slicker, with the spray blowing about him; Bethune crouched in the shelter of the coaming, while white-topped seas with gray sides tumbled about the boat. An angry red flush was spreading, rather high up, in the eastern sky. "You made a lot of smoke," Bethune remarked. "I did," said Jimmy. "If you'll get forward and swing the funnel-cowl, which you might have done earlier, you'll let some of it out. I'm glad it's your turn to cook, but you had better spend ten minutes at the pump before you go." Bethune, rising, stretched himself with an apologetic laugh. "Oh, well," he said; "I was so cold I felt I didn't want to do anything." "It's not an uncommon sensation," Jimmy replied. "The best way to get rid of it is to work. If you'll shift that cowl, I'll prime the pump." Bethune shuffled forward, and, coming back, pumped for a few strokes. Then he stopped and leaned on the handle. "You really think we'll raise the island to-day?" he asked. "Yes. But it isn't easy to shoot the sun when you can hardly see it and have a remarkably unsteady horizon. Then, though she has laid her course for the last two days, I haven't much confidence in the log we're towing." He indicated the wet line that ran over the stern and stretched back to where a gleam of brass was visible in the hollow of a sea. "What could you expect?" Bethune asked. "We got the thing for half its proper price, and, to do it justice, it goes pretty well after a bath in oil, and when it stops it does so altogether. You know how to deal with a distance recorder that sticks and stays so, but one that sticks and goes on again plays the devil." "Talking's easier than pumping," Jimmy said suggestively. "It is, but I feel like working off a few more remarks. They occurred to me while I sat behind the coaming, numbed right through, last night. I suppose you have noticed how the poor but enterprising man is generally...