Burned Bridges

Within a gunshot of the heart of Vancouver lies a snug tidal basin where

yachts swing to their moorings, where a mosquito fleet of motor craft

lies along narrow slips, with the green woods of Stanley Park for a

background. Thompson knew Coal Harbor well. He knew the slips and the

boats and many of the men who owned them. He had gone on many a week-end

cruise out of that basin with young fellows who looked their last on the

sea when they crossed the English Channel. So he had picked up a working

fund of nautical practice, a first-hand knowledge of the sea and the

manner of handling small sail.

From the Granada he went straight to Coal Harbor. While the afternoon

was yet young he had chartered a yawl, a true one-man craft, carrying

plenty of canvas for her inches, but not too much. She had a small, snug

cabin, was well-found as to gear, and was equipped with a sturdy

single-cylinder gas engine to kick her along through calm and tideway.

Before six he had her ready for sea, his dunnage bag aboard, grub in the

lockers, gas in the tanks, clearance from the customhouse. He slept

aboard in a bunk softer than many a sleeping place that had fallen to

his lot in France. And at sunrise the outgoing tide bore him swiftly

through the Narrows and spewed him out on the broad bosom of the Gulf of

Georgia, all ruffled by a stiff breeze that heeled the little yawl and

sent her scudding like a gray gull when Thompson laid her west, a half

north, to clear Roger Curtis Point.

He blew through Welcome Pass at noon on the forefront of a rising gale,

with the sun peeping furtively through cracks in a gathering cloudbank.

As the wind freshened, the manes of the white horses curled higher and

whiter. Thompson tied in his last reef in the lee of a point midway of

the Pass. Once clear of it the marching surges lifted the yawl and bore

her racing forward, and when the crest passed she would drop into a

green hollow like a bird to its nest, to lift and race and sink deep in

the trough again.

But she made merry weather of it. And Thompson rode the tiller, an eye

to his sheets, glorying in his mastery of the sea. It was good to be

there with a clean wind whistling through taut stays, no sound but the

ripple of water streaming under his lee, and the swoosh of breaking seas

that had no power to harm him. Peace rode with him. His body rested, and

the tension left his nerves which for months had been strung like the

gut on a violin.

Between Welcome Pass and Cape Coburn the southeaster loosed its full

fury on him. The seas rose steeper at the turn of the tide, broke with a

wicked curl. He put the Cape on his lee after a wild fifteen minutes

among dangerous tiderips, and then prudence drove him to shelter.