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“Double wages and loyalty to the captain.”
“Captain Foraker?”
“Yes, sir. There, sir, that tie is beautiful. Now the waistcoat and coat. If you will permit me, sir, you look, as I might say, ’andsome, begging your pardon.”
Code flushed and looked into the glass that hung against the wall of his cabin. He barely recognized the clean-shaven, clear-eyed, broad shouldered youth he saw there as the rough, salty skipper of the schoonerCharming Lass. He wondered with a chuckle what Pete Ellinwood would say if he could see him.
“And now, sir, if you’re ready, just come with me, sir. Dinner is at seven, and it is now a quarter to the hour.”
Stunned by the wonders already experienced, and vaguely hoping that the dream would last forever, Code followed the bewhiskered valet down a narrow passage carpeted with a stuff so thick that it permitted no sound.
Martin passed several doors––the passage was lighted by small electrics––and finally paused before one on the right-hand side. Here he knocked, and apparently receiving an answer, peered into the room for a moment. Withdrawing his head, he swung the door open and turned to Schofield.
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“Go right in, sir,” he said, and Code, eager for new wonders, stepped past him.
The room was a small sitting-room, lighted softly by inverted bowl-shaped globes of glass so colored as to bring out the full value of the pink velours and satin brocades with which the room was hung and the furniture covered.
For a moment he stared without seeing anything, and then a slight rustling in a far corner diverted his attention. He looked sharply and saw a woman rise from a lounge and come toward him with outstretched hands.
She was Elsa Mallaby!
212CHAPTER XXIVTHE SIREN
He saw the glad smile on her lips, the light in her great, lustrous, dark eyes, and the beauty of her faultless body, and yet they all faded to nothing beside the astounding and inexplicable fact that she was in the mystery schooner.
“You here!” he gasped, taking her hands in his big rough ones and gripping them tight. The impulse to draw her to him in an embrace was almost irresistible, for not only was she lovely in the extreme, but she was from Freekirk Head and home, and his soul had been starved with loneliness and the ceaseless repetition of his own thoughts.
“Yes,” she replied in her gentle voice, “I am here. You are surprised?”
“That hardly expresses it,” he returned. “So many things have happened to-day that I expect anything now.”
“Come, let us go in,” she said, and led him through a doorway that connected with an adjoining room. In the center of it was a small table laid with linen and furnished with glittering silver and glass. “Are you hungry?” she asked.
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“You know fishermen well enough not to ask that,” he laughed, and they sat down. Elsa did not make any tax upon his conversational powers. It was Code himself who first put a pertinent question.
“I take for granted your being here and your living like this,” he said; “but I am bursting with curiosity. How do you happen to be in this schooner?”
“It is my schooner; why shouldn’t I be in it?” she smiled.
“Yours?” He was mystified. “But why should you have a vessel like this? You never used one before that I know of.”
“True, Code; but I have always loved the sea, and––it amuses me. You remember that sometimes I have been away from Freekirk Head for a month at a time. I have been cruising in this schooner. Once I went nearly as far as Iceland; but that took longer. A woman in my position must do something. Ican’tsit up in that great big house alone all the time.”
The intensity with which she said this put a decidedly new face on the matter. It was just like her to be lonely without Jim, he thought. Naturally a woman with all her money must do something.
“But, Elsa,” he protested, “your having the schooner for your own use is all right enough; but214why has it always turned up to help me when I needed help most? Really, if I had all the money in the world I could never repay the obligations that you have put me under this summer.”
“I don’t want you to repay me,” she said quietly. “Just the fact that I have helped you and that you appreciate it is enough to make me happy.”
He looked steadily into her brown eyes for a few moments. Then her gaze dropped and a dull flush mounted from her neck until it suffused her face.
He had never seen her look so beautiful. The wealth of her black hair was coiled about the top of her head like a crown, and held in its depths a silver butterfly.
Her gown was Quaker gray in color, and of some soft clinging material that enhanced the lines of her figure. It was an evening gown, and cut just low enough to be at the same time modest and beautiful. Code, without knowing why, admired her taste and told himself that she erred in no particular. Her mode of life was, at the same time, elegant and feminine––exactly suited her.
“You are easily made happy,” he remarked, referring to her last sentence.
“No, I’m not,” she contradicted him seriously. “I am the hardest woman in the world to make happy.”
“And helping me does it?”
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“Yes.”
“You are a good woman,” he said gratefully, “and always seem to be doing for others. No one will ever forget how you offered to stand by the women of Grande Mignon while the men went fishing.”
Again Elsa blushed, but this time the color came from a different source. Little did he know that her philanthropy was all a part of the same plan––to win his favor.
“And the things I know you must have done for my mother,” he went on. “Those are the things that I appreciate more than any. It is not every woman who would even think of them, let alone do them.”
Why would he force her into this attitude of perpetual lying? she thought. It was becoming worse and worse. Why was he so straightforward and so blind? Could he not see that she loved him? Was he one of those cold and passionless men upon whom no woman ever exerts an intense influence?
Though she did not know it, she expressed the whole fault in her system. A man reared in a more complex community than a fishing village would have divined her scheme, and the result would have been a prolonged but most delightful duel of wits and hearts.
But Code, by the very directness of his honesty,216and simplicity of his nature, cut through the gauzy wrappings of this delectable package and went straight to its heart. And there he found nothing, because what little of the deeply genuine there lay in this woman’s restless nature was disguised and shifted at the will of her caprice.
When Code had experienced the pleasure of lighting a genuine clear Havana cigar after many months of abstinence, she leaned across the table to him, her hands clasped before her.
“Code, what does loneliness represent to you?” she asked.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he temporized, taken aback. “I don’t go in for loneliness much; but when I do, why all I want is––well, let me see, a good game of quoits with the boys in front of the church, or a talk with my mother about how rich we are going to be some day when I get that partnership in the fishstand. I’m too busy to be lonely.”
“And I’m too lonely to be busy!” He looked at her unbelievingly.
“You!” he cried. “Why, you have everything in the world; you can go anywhere, do anything, have the people about you that you want. You, lonely? I don’t understand you.”
“Well, I’ll put it another way. Did you ever want something so hard that it hurt, and couldn’t get it?”
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“Yes, I wanted my father back after he died,” said Code simply.
“And I wanted Jim after he died,” added Elsa. “Those things are bad enough; but one gets used to them. What I mean especially is something we see about us all the time and have no chance of getting. Did you ever want something like that, so that it nearly killed you, and couldn’t get it?”
Code was silent. The one rankling hurt of his whole life, after seemingly being healed, broke out afresh––the engagement of Nat Burns and Nellie Tanner.
He suddenly realized that, since seeing Elsa, he had not as much as remembered Nellie’s existence, when usually her mental presence was not far from him. Elsa, with all her luxury and alluring feminine charms, seemed to cast a spell that bound him helpless like the music in the fairy stories. He liked the spell, and, after all she had done, he confessed to an extraordinary feeling for the enchantress.
Now had come the memory of Nellie––dear, frank-eyed, open-hearted Nellie Tanner––and the thought that her fresh wholesomeness was pledged to make glad the life of Nat Burns seared his heart. A cloud settled down on his brow. But in a moment he recalled himself. His hostess had asked him a question; he must answer it.
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“Yes, I have wanted something––and couldn’t get it.”
“Yes,” said Elsa slowly, “a thing is bad enough; but it seems to me that the most hopeless thing in the world is to want a person in that way.” Her voice was dreamy and retrospective. Its peculiar, vibrant timbre thrilled him with the thought that perhaps there was some hidden tragedy in her life that he had never suspected. Any unpleasant sense that she was curious was overcome by the manner in which she spoke.
“Yes, it is,” he answered solemnly.
She looked up in astonishment at the sincerity of his tone, her heart tingling with a new emotion of delicious uncertainty. What if, after all, he had wanted some one in the way she wanted him? What if the some one were herself and he had been afraid to aspire to a woman of her wealth and position? She asked this without any feeling of conceit, for one who loves always dreams he sees signs of favor in the one beloved.
“Then you have wanted some one?” All her manner, her voice, her eyes expressed sympathy. She was the soul of tact and no mean actress at the same time.
Code, still in the depth of reminiscence and averted happiness, scarcely heard her, but he answered
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“Yes, I have.” Then, coming to full realization of the confession, he colored and laughed uneasily. “But let’s not talk of such personal things any more,” he added. “You must think me very foolish to be mooning about like this.”
“Can I help you?” she asked, half suffocated by the question. “Perhaps there might be something I could do that would bring the one you want to you.”
It was the crucial point in the conversation. She held her breath as she awaited his answer. She knew he was no adept at the half-meanings and near-confessions of flirtation, and that she could depend upon his words and actions to be genuine.
He looked at her calmly without the additional beat of a pulse. His color had died down and left him pale. He was considering.
“You have done much for me,” he said at last, “and I shall never forget it, but in this matter evenyoucould not help me. Only the Almighty could do it by direct intervention, and I don’t believe He works that way in this century,” Code smiled faintly.
As for Elsa, she felt the grip as of an icy hand upon her heart. It was some one else that he meant. Was it possible that all her carefully planned campaign had come to this miserable failure? Had she come this far only to lose all?
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The expression of her features did not change, and she sought desperately to control her emotion, but she could not prevent two great tears from welling up in her eyes and slowly rolling down her cheeks.
Code sat startled and nonplused. Only once before in his life had he seen a woman cry, and that was when Nellie broke down in his mother’s house after the fire. But the cause for that was evident, and the very fact of her tears had been a relief to him. Now, apparently without rime or reason, Elsa Mallaby was weeping.
The sight went to his heart as might the scream of a child in pain. He wondered with a panicky feeling whether he had hurt her in any way.
“I say, Elsa,” he cried, “what’s the matter? Don’t do that. If I’ve done anything––” He was on his feet and around the little table in an instant. He took her left hand in his left and put his right on her shoulder, speaking to her in broken, incoherent sentences.
But his words, gentle and almost endearing, emphasized the feeling of miserable self-pity that had taken hold of her and she suddenly sobbed aloud.
“Elsa, dear,” he cried, beside himself with uncertainty, “what is it? Tell me. You’ve done so much for me, please let me do something for you if I can.”
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“You can’t, Code,” she said, “unless it’s in your heart,” and then she bowed her beautiful head forward upon her bare arms and wept. After awhile the storm passed and she leaned back.
He kissed her suddenly. Then he abruptly turned to the door and went out.
Schofield had suddenly come to his senses and disengaged himself from Elsa’s embrace.
222CHAPTER XXVTHE GUILT FIXED
It was the following afternoon before Code Schofield ventured on deck.
When he did so it was to find that all naval uniforms had been laid aside, the imitation brass guns forward had been removed, and the schooner so altered that she would scarcely have been recognized as theAlbatross.
The wireless had been erected again, and now the apparatus was spitting forth an almost constant series of messages. The crew, spotless in dungarees and without a vestige of a weapon, maneuvered the schooner as Code had never in his life seen a vessel handled. At a word from the officer of the watch they jumped as one man. Every order was executed on the run, and all sails were swayed as flat and taut as boards.
Code found Elsa ensconced with a book under the awning amidships. Big, comfortable wicker chairs were about and the deck so lately cleared for action had an almost homelike look.
“Did you sleep well?” asked the girl with an entire lack of self-consciousness, as though the episode223of the night before had never occurred. Code was very thankful for her tact and much relieved. It was evident that their relations for the remainder of the four days’ journey north were to be impersonal unless he chose to make them otherwise. This he had no intention of doing––after his morning’s battle with himself.
“Like a top, when I got started,” he replied. “And you?”
“Splendidly, thanks. And you should have seen the breakfast I ate. I am a shameful gourmand when I am at sea.”
He took a chair and filled his pipe.
“By the way, how long have you been out on this cruise? You weren’t aboard, were you, the time the mystery schooner led the revenue steamer such a chase?”
“No,” she replied, “but I wish I had been. I nearly died when I heard about that; it was so funny. I have only been aboard about four days. I’ll tell you the history of it.
“I was having a very delightful dinner up at Mallaby House with Mrs. Tanner, Nellie’s mother, you know”––she looked unconcernedly out to sea––“when I got a message, part wireless and part telegram, saying that Nat Burns had nabbed you in St. Pierre and was racing with you to St. Andrew’s.
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“Well, I’ve sworn all along that you shouldn’t come to any harm through him, so I just left Freekirk Head the next morning on the steamer, took a train to Halifax, and had the schooner pick me up there. Off Halifax they told me that theNettie B.was six hours ahead of us and going hard, so we had to wing it out for all there was in this one. I had provided all the naval fixings before, realizing that we would probably have to use them some time, and that’s all there is to it.”
“Well, Elsa, I’ll say this––that I don’t believe that there was ever a schooner built that could outgame and outsail this one. She’s a wonder!”
For a while they talked of trite and inconsequential things. It was very necessary that they become firmly grounded on their new footing of genuine friendship before departing into personalities; and so, for two days, they avoided any but the most casual topics.
As the weather was exceptionally warm, with a spicy salt breeze that seemed to bear the very germ of life in its midst, they had breakfast and luncheon on deck, dining below in the rosy little dining-room.
Thirty-six hours before they expected to catch the fishing fleet (it had been maneuvered so that Code should be restored to theCharming Lassafter dark), Elsa opened the subject of Code’s trouble with Nat Burns. It was morning, and his recent225days of ease and mental refreshment had made him see things clearly that had before been obscured by the great strain under which he labored.
Code told her the whole thing from beginning to end, leaving out only that part of Nat’s cumulative scheme that had to do with Nellie Tanner. He showed Elsa how his enemy had left no stone unturned to bring him back home a pauper, a criminal, and one who could never again lift his head among his own people even though he escaped years in prison.
It was a brief and simple story, but he could see Elsa’s face change as emotions swept over it. Her remarks were few, but he suddenly became aware that she was harboring a great and lasting hatred against Nat. He did not flatter himself that it was on his own account, nor did he ask the reason for it, but the knowledge that such a hatred existed came to him as a decided surprise.
When he had finished his narrative she sat for some little time silent.
“And you think, then,” she asked at last, “that his motive for all this is revenge, because his father happened to meet death on the oldMay?”
“So far it has seemed to me that that can be the only possible reason. What else––but now wait a moment while I think.”
He went below into his room, secured the old226log of theM.C. Burnsand the artificial horizon. Together they read the entries that Michael Burns had made.
“Now, Elsa,” said Code by way of explanation, “it was a dead-sure thing that Nat could never have beaten me in his schooner, and for two reasons: First, theMaywas a naturally faster boat than the oldM.C., although Nat would never admit it. That is what really started our racing. Secondly, I am only telling the truth when I say that I can outsail Nat Burns in any wind from a zephyr to a typhoon.
“He is the kind of chap, in regard to sailing, who doesn’t seem to have the ‘feel’ of the thing. There is a certain instinct of forces and balance that is either natural or acquired. Nat’s is acquired. Why, I can remember just as well when I was eight years old my father used to let me take a short trick at the wheel in good weather, and I took to it naturally. Once on the Banks in a gale, when I was only eighteen, the men below said that my trick at the wheel was the only one when they got any sleep.
“Now, those two things being the case, Elsa, how did Nat Burns expect to win the second race from theMay?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t seem possible that hecouldwin.”
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“Of course it doesn’t, and yet his father writes here that Nat ‘swears he can’t lose.’ Well, now, you know, a man that swears he can’t lose is pretty positive.”
“Did he try to bet with you for the second race?” asked Elsa.
“Did he? I had five hundred dollars at the bank and he tried to bet me that. I never bet, because I’ve never had enough money to throw it around. A good deal changed hands on the first race, but none of it was mine. I raced for sport and not for money, and I told Nat so when he tried to bet with me. If I had raced for money I couldn’t have withdrawn that day and gone to St. John for cargo the way I did.”
“Then it seems to me that he must haveknownhe couldn’t lose or he would not have tried to bet.”
“Exactly.”
“But howcouldhe know it?”
“That is what I would like to find out.”
Code absently thrust his hand into his coat pocket and encountered the mirror he had found aboard theNettie B.He drew it out and polished its bright surface with his handkerchief.
Elsa was immediately interested and Code told her of its unexpected discovery.
“And he had it!” she cried, laughing. “Of all things!”
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“Yes, and he always wanted it. I remember when father first gave it to me and I was working out little problems in astronomy, Nat used to take the thing and handle it and admire it. You see the back and edges are silver-plated and it is really quite valuable. He tried to get his father interested, but, so far as I know, never succeeded.
“It was a strange thing, but that simple mirror appealed to Nat tremendously, and you know how that would act on a man of his nature. He is and always has been utterly selfish, and if there was any object he wanted and could not have it increased his desire.”
“But how did he get it, I wonder?” asked the girl, taking the object and heliographing the bright sun’s rays from the polished surface. “When did you have it last?”
Code knitted his brows and thought back carefully. He had an instinctive feeling that perhaps in this mirror lay the key to the whole situation, just as often in life the most unexpected and trivial things or events are pregnant with great moment.
“I had it,” he said slowly, thinking hard; “let me see: the last time I remember it was the day after my first race with Nat. In the desk that stood in the cabin of the oldMayI kept the log, my sextant, and a lot of other things of that kind. In a229lower drawer was this mirror, and the reason I saw it was this:
“When I had made fast to my moorings in the harbor I immediately went below to make the entry in the log about the race––naturally I couldn’t leave that undone. I remember I looked in the top drawer for the book, but didn’t find it. So then I looked in the other drawers and, in doing so, opened the one containing the mirror.
“I distinctly remember seeing it, for the lamp was lighted and the glass flashed a blinding glare into my eyes. You see we raced in about the worst winter weather there was and the lamp had to be lighted very early.
“The log-book wasn’t there, and I found it somewhere or other later, but that hasn’t anything to do with the case. I never saw the mirror after that––in fact, never looked for it. I took for granted it had gone down with theMay, along with all my other things, except the log-book, which I saved and use now aboard theLass.”
“And you didn’t take it out or give it to anybody?”
“No. I am positive of that. I didn’t touch it after seeing it that once.”
“Then it is very plain, Code, that if Nat Burns came into possession of it he must have taken it himself.230He was very angry with you for winning, wasn’t he?”
“Terribly. For once I thought he might be dangerous and kept out of his way until the thing had worn off a little.”
“Just like him,” said Elsa in that tone of bitter hatred that Code had heard her use before when speaking of Burns. “He must have gone aboard theMayand taken it, because you prized it so much. A fine revenge!”
“Yes, but we don’t do those things in Freekirk Head, Elsa. You know that. We don’t steal from one another’s trawl-lines, and we don’t prowl about other men’s schooners. I can’t understand his doing a thing like that.”
“Perhaps not, but if not, explain how he got it.”
“You’re right,” Code admitted after a moment’s thought; “that’s the only way.”
They were silent for a while, pondering over this new development and trying to discover where it might lead. Under sharp commands the crew brought the schooner about on the starboard tack, for the wind was on the bow, and set a staysail between the fore and main masts. The splendid ship seemed to skim over the surface of the sea, touching only the tops of the waves.
“No, it’s no good!” broke out Code suddenly.231“Much as I hate Nat Burns, I don’t believe he would come aboard my schooner just for the purpose of stealing a silver-plated mirror. That isn’t like him. He’s too clever to do anything like that. And, besides, what kind of a revenge would that be for having lost the race?”
“Well, what can you suggest? How else did he get it?” Elsa was frankly sceptical and clung to her own theory.
“He might have come aboard for something else, mightn’t he, and picked up the mirror just incidentally?”
“He might have, yes, but what else would bring him there?”
Code sat rigid for a few minutes. He had such a thought that he scarcely dared consider it himself.
“It’s all clear to me now,” he said in a low, hoarse voice. “Nat came aboard to damage the schooner so that he would be sure to win the second race.”
“Code!” The cry was one of involuntary horror as Elsa remembered the tragedy of theMay. Hate Nate though she might, this was an awful charge to lay at his door.
“Then he killed his own father, if what you say is true!” she added breathlessly. “Oh, the poor wretch! The poor wretch!”
“Yes, that solves it,” went on Code, who had hardly heard her. “That solves the entries that232Michael Burns made in his ship’s log before he went to St. John on his last business trip. Nat swore he could not lose, and the old man, who was honest enough himself, must have wondered what his son was up to.
“This mirror proves that Nat must have been aboard the schooner secretly; what he told his father and his eagerness to bet with me on a proposition that seemed foolhardy on the face of it clinch the thing in my mind. The misguided fool! That, Elsa, is an example of how low a man will go who has been spoiled and brought up without the slightest idea of self-control.”
“Why, you’re preaching to me, Code,” laughed the girl, and he joined her. But she sobered in a moment.
“This is all very fine theory,” she said, “and I half believe it myself, but it’s worthless; you haven’t a grain of proof. Tell me, have you ever thought over the details of the sinking of theMay?”
“Only once,” groaned Schofield, “and I––I hate to do it, Elsa. I’d rather not. Every time I think of that awful day I sweat with sheer horror. Every incident of it is engraved on my brain.”
“But listen, Code, you must think about it for once, and think about it with all your mind. Tell me everything that happened. It is vital to our case; it may save the whole thing from being worthless.233Even if we get nothing you must make the effort.”
Code knew that what Elsa said was true. With an effort he focused his mind back on that awful day and began.
“There was a good sea that day,” he said, “and more than half a gale out of the northeast. If it had been any other day I shouldn’t have taken the oldMayout at all, because she was loaded very deep. But the whole trip was a hurry call and they wanted me to get back to Mignon with the salt as soon as I could.
“Old Burns saw me on the wharf and asked if he could go along as passenger. I said he could, and we started early in the morning. Now that day wasn’t anything unusual, Elsa. I’ve been in a lot worse gales in theMay, but not with her so deep; but I didn’t think anything would happen.
“Everything went all right for three hours, with the wind getting fresher all the time, and the vessel under four lowers, which was a pretty big strain on any schooner. As I say, she should have stood it, but all of a sudden, on a big lurch, the fore topm’st that hadn’t a rag on her broke off short and banged down, hanging by the guys. With one swipe it smashed the foregaff to splinters, and half the canvas hung down flapping like a great wing.
“I couldn’t understand it. I knew the topm’st234was in a weakened condition, but not as rotten as punk, and I supposed my foregaff was as solid a piece of timber as ever went into a vessel.
“But listen!” as Elsa started to speak. “That isn’t all. The flapping canvas, with part of the gaff, pounded around like the devil let loose for the ten seconds before we couldn’t loosen the halyards and lower away the wreckage, but in that time it had parted the mainstay in two like a woman snipping a thread.
“Mind that, Elsa, a steel mainstay an inch thick. I never heard of one parting in my life before. Things were happening so fast that I couldn’t keep track of them, and now, just at the crucial minute, the oldMayjibed, fell off from the wind, and went into the trough of the sea. A great wave came then, ripped her rudder off (I found this as soon as I tried to use the wheel) and swept the decks, taking one man.
“Meanwhile the mainmast, with one stay gone, was whipping from side to side like a great, loose stick. I put the wheel in the becket and in one jump released the mains’l throat-halyards, while another fellow released the peak. The sail came down on the run in the lazy jacks and the men jumped on it and began to crowd it into some kind of a furl.
“I jumped back to the wheel and tried to bring her up into the wind, but I might as well have tried235to steer an ocean liner with a sculling sweep. Not only was her rudder gone, but the tiller ropes were parted on each side. It was damaged beyond repair!
“Once I read in school the funny poem of an American named Holmes. It was called the ‘One Hoss Shay,’ and it told about an old chaise that, after a hundred years of service, suddenly went to pieces all at the same time and the same place. Even, in that time of danger, the memory of the ‘One Hoss Shay’ came to me, and I thought that theMay Schofieldwas doing exactly the same thing, although only half as old.”
“And then what happened?” asked Elsa, who had sat breathless through Code’s narrative.
“There’s not much more to tell,” he said, with an involuntary shudder. “It was too much for the old girl with that load in her. She began to wallow and drive toward the Wolves that I had caught a glimpse of through the scud. She hadn’t got halfway there when the mainmast came down (bringing nearly everything with it) and hung over the starboard quarter, dragging the vessel down like a stoat hanging to a duck’s leg.
“After that it was easy to see she was doomed. We chopped away at the tangle of wreckage whenever we got a chance, but that wasn’t often, because, in her present position, the waves raked her236every second and we had to hang on for dear life.
“And then she began to go to pieces––which was the beginning of the end. All hands knew it was to be every man for himself. We had no life preservers, and our one big dory had been smashed when the wreckage came down.”
Code’s face was working with suppressed emotion, and Elsa reached out her hand and touched his.
“Don’t tell me any more,” she said; “I know the rest. Let’s talk about the present.”
“Thanks, Elsa,” he said, gratefully.
“How long have you thought that the schooner was a second ‘one hoss shay’?”
“Until this talk with you. I would never have thought anything else. It’s the logical thing to think, isn’t it? All my neighbors at Freekirk Head, except those who believe the evil they hear, have told me half a dozen times that that is what must have happened to theMay. She had lived her life and that last great strain, combined with the race the week before, was too much for her. I simply could not explain those things happening.”
“Yes, but you can now, can’t you?” she asked coolly.
Reluctantly he faced the issue, but he faced it squarely.
“Yes, I can. Nat expected me to sail theMay237in a race, so he weakened my topm’st and mainstay. Of course, when there is sport in it you set every kite you’ve got in your lockers and, you know, Elsa, I never took my mains’l in yet while there was one standing in the fleet, even ordinary fishing days.”
“I know it; you’ve scared me half to death a dozen times with your sail-carrying.”
“And mind, Elsa, I’d been warned by all the wiseacres in Freekirk Head that my sticks would carry away sometime in a gale o’ wind. Nat banked on that, too, and it shows how clever he was, forever since theMaysank I’ve had men tell me I shouldn’t have carried four lowers that day.
“He planned to weaken me where I needed sail most and he succeeded. Why, Elsa, that topm’st must have been sawed a quarter of the way through and that mainstay as much again. I don’t really believe he did anything to the foregaff; it appeared to be the natural result of the topm’st’s falling, but the damage he did resulted in the wreck of the schooner––”
“And the death of his own father. Yes, Code, we’ve got him where he is probably the wretchedest man in the world. Fury and hurt pride made him injure theMayso he would be sure to win the second time, and instead of that fate intervened, sent you on the cargo voyage, and killed his father.238Now it is perfectly plain to me why he is charging you with all these crimes.”
“Why?”
“Nat is a weak nature, because uncontrolled, and when weak natures do wrong they suffer agonies of fear that they will be found out. Nat committed this double crime in a momentary passion. Then as the weeks passed by and the village talked of nothing else, he finally began to fear that he would be found out.
“There was no one whocouldhave found him out, but there was that haunting terror of the weak nature.
“Somebody spoke a word, perhaps in jest, that you must have wanted a new schooner since theMay’spolicy was to run out so soon, and he seized the thought in a frenzy of joy and began to spread rumors. This grip on you gave him courage. He remembered that his revenge against you was still unsatisfied and it became clear to him that perhaps, after all, he could get one much more complete.
“Code, the picture of that man’s mind is a terrible one to me. He may have hated you before, but just think how he must have hated you after knowing how he had wronged and was going to ruin you. It is only the one of two people whodoesthe injury whose hatred grows. An injured person who is sensible in regard to such matters, as you have been239with Nat all your life, throws them off and thinks nothing more about them.
“So Nat’s hatred of you and the fear of discovery, preying on his mind, finally urged him into the course he has taken.”
“And he went into it with open eyes,” rejoined Code, “for his plans were perfect. He pays his crew double wages and they ask no questions. Had it not been for you on two occasions I should have been in jail long before this.”
“Yes, but now that is past––”
“No,” interrupted Code, “it isn’t, Elsa. He has just as much power over me as he ever had. I am still a criminal at large to be arrested, and you can wager your last dollar that if he can bring it about I will be picked up by the first gunboat that finds me.”
“But after all this?”
“Yes, after all this. We have made a beautiful case against him and it fits, but, Elsa, there’s one thing we haven’t got, and that is a single word of proof! We haven’t enough to even bring a charge against him. Do you realize that?”
The girl sat back, unable to reply. Code had expressed the situation in a sentence. Despite all they had pieced together he, Code, was still the man against whom the burden of circumstantial evidence rested. Nat was, and always could go, scot free.
“Code, this is terrible!” she said. “But there240may be a way out yet. No man with the right on his side has ever failed to triumph, however black things looked.”
“But how?” he cried despairingly. “I have racked my brains for some means of closing the net about him, but there seems no way.”
“Now there is not,” she returned, “but, Code, you can rest assured that I will do everything I can.”
“God bless you,” he said, taking her hand; “you are the best friend a man ever had.”
241CHAPTER XXVIWETTING THEIR SALT
Pete Ellinwood, alone except for the cook, who sat peeling potatoes just outside the galley, paced the quarter-deck of theCharming Lass.
He seemed to be an older man than that night when, goaded beyond endurance by the taunts of the big Frenchman, he had fought a fight that would long be remembered in the streets of the roaring town of St. Pierre.
He felt that he had broken his promise to Ma Schofield that he would keep guard over her boy. Now, for all he knew, that boy was lying in jail at St. Andrew’s, or was perhaps defending his life in the murderer’s pen.
The night of the fight had been a wild one for Ellinwood.
At the cry of “Police!” the crowd had seemed to melt away from him like the bank fog at the sweep of a breeze. A dozen comrades had seized the prostrate Jean and hurried him away, and Pete, with242the instinct of self-preservation, had snatched up his clothes and dodged down a dark alley toward the dirty drinking-shops along the water-front.
There, as he dressed himself, he first asked the question, “Where is Code?”
Then, in a frenzy of remorse, he returned to the street and began a wild and fruitless search all night. Then he accidentally learned that theNettie B.had been in port two days and that her crew had been ashore on the night of the fracas.
Sorrowful, bedraggled, and bruised, he rowed out to theCharming Lassjust as the whole crew was setting out for shore to search for Code and himself.
During the night the barrels of fresh bait had been lightered to theLass, and there was nothing for it but to make sail and get back on the Banks as soon as possible, leaving Code to his fate but carrying on the work he had begun.
In accordance with Code’s instructions, Pete automatically became the skipper of the schooner, and he selected Jimmie Thomas as his mate. By nightfall they had picked up the fleet, and early the next morning the dories were out. Then for eight days it had been nothing but fish, fish, fish.
Never in all his experience had Pete seen such schools of cod. They were evidently herding together in thousands, and had found but scanty food243for such great hosts, for they bit almost on the bare hook.
Now, as he looked around the still sea, the white or yellow sails of the fishing fleet showed on all sides in a vast circle. Not five miles away was theRosan, and to the southward of her theHerring Bonewith mean old Jed Martin aboard. Bijonah Tanner had tried his best to shake Martin, but the hard-fisted old skipper, knowing and recognizing Tanner’s “nose” for fish, had clung like a leech and profited by the other’s sagacity.
Nor was this all the Grande Mignon fleet.
There were Gloucestermen among it, the champion fishers of the world, who spent their spare time in drifting past the English boats and hurling salty wit––at which pastime they often came off second best.
There were Frenchmen, too, from the Miquelon Islands, who worked in colored caps and wore sheath-knives in belts around their waists. Pete often looked over their dirty decks and wondered if his late enemy were among them. There were also vessels called “toothpicks” that did an exclusive trawling business, never using dories except to underrun the trawls or to set them out. These vessels were built on yacht lines and, because they filled their holds quickly, made quick runs to port with their catches, thus getting in several trips in a season.