Burned Bridges

"It was a wild night outside and no mistake," the man replied. "We took

cover about midnight--got tired of plowing into it, and wasn't too keen

for wallowing through them rips off the Cape. Say, are you back long

from over there?"

"Not long," Thompson replied. "I left England two weeks ago."

"How's it going?"

"We're over the hump," Thompson told him. "They're outgunned now. The

Americans are there in force. And we have them beaten in the air at

last. You know what that means if you've been across."

"Don't I know it," the man responded feelingly. "By the Lord, it's me

that does know it. I was there when the shoe was on the other foot. I

was a gunner in the Sixty-eighth Battery, and you can believe me there

was times when it made us sick to see German planes overhead. Well, I

hope they give Fritz hell. He gave it to us."

"They will," Thompson answered simply, and on that word their talk of

the war ended. They spoke of Vancouver, and of the coast generally.

"By the way, do you happen to know whereabouts in Toba Inlet a man named

Carr is located?" Thompson bethought him of his quest. "Sam Carr. He is

operating some sort of settlement for returned men, I've been told."

"Sam Carr? Sure. The Squalla here belongs to him--or to the

Company--and Carr is just about the Company himself."

A voice from the interior abaft the wheelhouse bellowed "Grub-pi-l-e."

"That's breakfast," the man said. "I see you ain't lighted your fire

yet. Come and have a bite with us. Here, make this line fast and lay

alongside."

The wind had died with the dawn, and the sea was abating. The Squalla

went her way within the hour, and so did Thompson. There was still a

small air out of the southeast, sufficient to give him steerageway in

the swell that ran for hours after the storm. Between sail and power he

made the Redonda Islands and passed between them far up the narrow gut

of Waddington Channel, lying in a nook near the northern end of that

deep pass when night came on. And by late afternoon the following day he

had traversed the mountain-walled length of Toba Inlet and moored his

yawl beside a great boom of new-cut logs at the mouth of Toba River.

Thanks to meeting the Squalla he knew his ground. Also he knew

something of Sam Carr's undertaking. The main camp was four miles up the

stream. The deep fin-keel of the yawl barred him from crossing the

shoals at the river mouth except on a twelve-foot tide. So he lay at the

boom, planning to go up the river next morning in the canoe he towed

astern in lieu of a dinghy.