CHAPTER XVIIICHASED BY A REVENUE-CUTTER
As Phil picked himself up from the cabin floor, his whole frame ablaze with anger, he muttered through his clinched teeth, “If that brute thinks I am going to stay down here like a rat in a hole, he is mightily mistaken, that’s all.”
Then, with a boldness born of his bitter feelings, he made his way through the narrow passage into the galley, out through it to the deck, and walking deliberately aft, assumed his former position. Now, however, he keenly watched Captain Duff’s every movement, feeling certain that the latter was too great a coward to strike him while he was on guard.
The captain glared savagely at the only member of his crew who dared to openly defy him, but seemed uncertain how to act. Perhaps it was fortunate for both of them that in this emergency their attention was directed from each other by a third shot from the cutter. This time the range was so perfect that the hurtling missile passed through the schooner’s main-topsail, in which it tore a jagged hole.
Although this being made a target for cannon-balls was a thrillingly novel sensation to our young hunter, his state of mind was such that it caused him neither fear nor anxiety. After standing still a minute or so longer, he walked slowly forward to find Serge, and ask him how he was enjoying the experience.
Ere the cutter could fire another shot darkness hadso set in that neither vessel was visible from the other, and only a red glow at the top of her funnel marked the pursuer’s position.
Little by little Captain Duff altered his course by hugging the wind a trifle more closely, until at length even the glow above the cutter’s funnel was no longer to be seen, nor the beat of her screw heard. Then the red-faced master of theSeamew, realizing that he had escaped the clutches of the law, gave a hoarse chuckle of satisfaction.
Phil found Serge quite as indifferent to the result of the chase as himself, though somewhat more nervous concerning the shots, and much relieved when he found there were to be no more. When, an hour later, supper was served aboard the schooner, the lads ate theirs together on deck. Then when Serge was relieved from watch, Phil crept into the narrow forecastle bunk with him, and they shared it together for the rest of the night.
While our lad was not willing to trust himself within reach of Captain Duff’s arm during the hours of darkness, he was so ready to defy him by daylight that in the morning he returned to the cabin for breakfast, during which meal both he and his table companions, including the captain, preserved an unbroken silence.
The schooner, having been kept under full sail all night, was felt by all hands to have placed many miles of safety between herself and her pursuer by sunrise, or at least by the time the sun was supposed to have risen beyond the dense fog-bank in which theSeamewwas again enveloped. So confident was Captain Duff that he was beyond his enemy’s reach that, his cupidity being aroused by the sight of a sleeping seal, he determined to have one more day of slaughter before leaving those waters. He therefore ordered out the boats, and charged the hunters to do their best,as this would be their last chance of that season to make any money by seal-killing.
To the amazement and consternation of the entire crew, the youngest of the hunters, boldly facing the bully, of whom they stood so greatly in awe, refused point-blank to fire a shot at a seal.
“I said last evening, when I discovered the crime of which I had been guilty, that I would never shoot another seal, and I never will,” said Phil, with all the decision of which his voice was capable.
“Mr. Coombs,” said the captain, in the blandest of tones, stepping to the rail and addressing the mate, who had already entered his boat, “will you oblige me by passing up that water-breaker? Thank you. And that bag of biscuit, if you please? Now, ye mutinous young swab!” he roared, turning to Phil with an abrupt change of voice and manner, “get into that boat, quick! afore I throw ye in!”
“Certainly, sir, I will get into the boat, for I do not intend to be mutinous, but I have promised myself not to shoot any more seals, and I cannot break a promise.”
“Humph!” growled Captain Duff, “we’ll see what your promises amount to. There is neither food nor water in your boat, and I’ll see that neither you nor those with you get a mouthful of either till ye bring back a load of seals or their skins. You may choose to make your companions suffer for your fool notions, but I rather guess they’ll find a way to make you change your mind. Shove off!”
When the schooner was lost to sight in the fog, Serge rested on his oars, and turning to his friend, asked, “Do you mean to stick it out, Phil?”
“I certainly do not intend to shoot a seal this day,” was the quiet reply.
“Well, then, though I can’t exactly understand your feelings in this matter, I’ll see you through with it,and stand by you to the end, and here’s my hand on it.”
“Thank you, old fellow!” and with the warm handclasp that passed between the two lads the young hunter felt that his cause was won.
“Is it a clear case of conscience with ye, lad?” inquired the mate.
“Yes, sir, it is.”
“Then ye can count me on your side too; for, as old Kite Roberson uster say, ‘any man as’ll go back on his conscience ain’t no right to call hisself a man,’ and them’s likewise my sentiments.”
In the meantime seals were gambolling about the boat on all sides, and gazing fearlessly at them from the wave crests raised by a rapidly freshening breeze, while the distant sounds of rapid firing told of the work being performed by the other hunters. The occupants of the mate’s boat talked in low tones of their situation and its possible results, while their craft drifted with the wind for nearly an hour.
Suddenly Jalap Coombs lifted his hand for silence, and listened intently for a moment. Then he said, “There’s a screw-steamer bearing down on us, and she’s not far away.”
The commanding officer of the United States revenue-cutterPhocawas a far shrewder man than Captain Duff had given him credit for being. Although he had been disappointed at not overhauling theSeamewbefore darkness hid her from view, he by no means gave up all hope of capturing the saucy schooner, cleverly as she had escaped him for the time being. Watching her through a powerful glass, long after she was lost to the unaided vision, he noted that she was gradually hauling on the wind, and shaped his own course accordingly. Shortly before daylight he stopped his engines, and set a dozen pair of the keenest earsamong his crew to listening for any sounds that might come over the fog-obscured waters. He, too, heard the splashing of frolicking seals, and wisely concluded that a skipper who was so anxious to secure a few skins as to be willing to run the risk of hunting them in Bering Sea would, in his present state of fancied security, try for a few more before leaving it for good. Not long after this the correctness of his judgment was proved by the sound of shots borne faintly down the wind through the heavy air. Quickly was thePhocagot under way, and stealthily, like the white ghost of a ship, she sped through the mist in the direction of the shots.
“We’ll pick up the hunting-boats and their crews first,” said the commander to his first-lieutenant. “Then Mr. Skipper will find himself too short-handed to make sail in a hurry, and I rather guess that, like Davy Crockett’s coon, he will conclude to come down.”
The plan worked so well that in less than an hour from that time Captain Duff, Ike Croly, Oro Dunn, and the rest of theSeamew’scompany found themselves prisoners on board the revenue-cutterPhoca, while their own craft was in charge of a prize-crew of bluejackets detailed for that duty.
In the excitement attending this capture, and the hurried transfer of crews, the fact that a boat containing the schooner’s mate and two others was missing was entirely overlooked until the vessels were again under way. Then, though guns were fired, and several hours were spent in search for the lost boat, no trace of it was found. In the meantime the wind freshened so rapidly into a gale that finally, fearful for the safety of the craft in his charge, with the rugged rocks of the Aleutian Islands under their lee, the commander gave the reluctant order to run for a pass, and the open waters of the Pacific.
Thus it happened that the boat in whose occupants we are most interested was left tossing alone on the storm-lashed waters of that desolate sea. Although its crew were thus placed in a most unpleasant and even dangerous position, it was one for which they had only themselves to blame. So close had thePhocapassed to them that they might easily have hailed her and been picked up, had they chosen to do so. Instead of this they kept perfectly quiet, or only conversed in low tones, and congratulated each other that, owing to Phil’s firmness, no shots by which their presence would have been betrayed had been fired from their boat that morning. Their reason for this action was that they were unanimous in desiring to escape capture—Jalap Coombs, because he had no liking for an imprisonment, or at least a long residence on shore in enforced idleness; Phil, because his heart was set on reaching Sitka as soon as possible, and he fancied the captured schooner would be taken to Seattle or San Francisco; and Serge on the general theory that it is a bad thing to be captured under any circumstances.
Besides, when by the sounds that came over the sea the mate felt assured that theSeamewhad been taken, he proposed a plan which seemed so feasible that both lads readily agreed to it.