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Also, there were the steam trawlers, the most progressive of the fleet, owned and operated by huge fish firms in Boston or Portland. These were not dependent on the vagaries of the wind and steamed wherever their skippers divined that fish might be.
Last of all were the seiners after herring and mackerel, schooners mostly, and out of Gloucester or Nova Scotia ports, who secured their catch by encircling schools of fish that played atop of the water with nets a quarter of a mile long, and pursued them in by drawstrings much as a man closes a tobacco-pouch.
This was the cosmopolitan city that lived on the unmarked lanes of the ocean and preyed upon the never-failing supplies of fish that moved beneath.
Among the Grande Mignon boats there was intense rivalry. In the holds the layers of salted fish rose steadily under the phenomenal fishing. The salt-barrels were emptied and crowded out by the cod, hake, and pollock. It was these boats that Ellinwood watched with the eye of a hawk, for back in Freekirk Head he knew that Bill Boughton stood ready to pay a bonus for the first cargo to reach port. Now was the time when the advance orders from the West Indies were coming up, and, because of the failure of the season on the island itself, these orders stood unfilled.
One or two of the smallest sloops had already wet245their salt and weighed anchor for home, taking letters and messages; but these, Pete knew, could only supply an infinitesimal portion of the demand. What Boughton looked for was a healthy load of fifteen hundred to two thousand quintals all ready for drying.
Night and day the work went on. With the first signs of daylight the dories were swung outboard and the men took their positions. A catch of two hundred good-sized cod was now considered the usual thing for a handliner, and night after night the piles of silver fish in the pens amidships seemed to grow in size.
Now they dressed down under lantern light, sometimes aided by the moon, and the men stood to the tables until they fell asleep on their feet and split their fingers instead of the fish. Then, after buckets of hot coffee, they would fall to again and never stop until the last wet body had been laid atop of its thousands of brothers.
The men were constantly on the trawls. Sometimes they did nothing all day but pick the fish and rebait, finding, after a trip to the schooner to unload, that a thousand others had struck on the long lines of sagging hooks while they were gone.
It was fast and feverish work, and it seemed as though it would never end.
The situation had resolved itself into a race between246the schooners, and Ellinwood was of no mind to come off second best. Like a jockey before a race, he watched his rivals.
He knew that foxy Bijonah Tanner, who sometimes looked like an old hump-backed cod himself, was his most dangerous rival. Tanner said nothing, but his boats were out early and in late, and the lanterns on his deck over the dressing pens could sometimes be seen as late as ten o’clock at night.
Visits among the fleet had now ceased, both because there was no time for it, and because a man from another schooner was looked upon as a spy.
At the start of the season it had been expected that Nat Burns in theNettie B.would prove a strong contender for premier honors, but, because of his ceaseless efforts to drive home his revenge, Nat had done very little fishing and therefore could not possibly be in the market.
Other Freekirk Head men shrugged their shoulders at this. Nat had the money, and could act that way if it pleased him, they said. But, nevertheless, he lost favor with a great many of his former friends, for the reason that the whole fishing expedition had been a concerted movement to save the people and credit of the island, and not an exploitation of individual desires.
Burns had, with his customary indifference to others, made it just exactly such an exploitation, and the247sentiment that had been strong for him at the outset of the cruise was now turning decidedly the other way; although he little guessed this or would have been influenced had he done so.
In reality, then, the race for fish was keenest between theCharming Lass, theRosan, and theHerring Bone, with three other schooners very close on their heels.
At the end of the nine days there was little space beneath the deck planks of theCharming Lass, but every night Pete would come up, slapping his hands free of salt, and say, “Wal, boys, I guess we can crowd another day’s work into her,” and the exhausted men would gather themselves for another great effort as they rolled forward into their bunks.
Every twenty-four hours they did crowd another day’s work into her, so that she carried nearly a hundred and fifty tons and the dripping brine had to be pumped out of the hold.
It was the night of the day that opened this chapter.
The lanterns by which the men had dressed down had been lifted from their supports, the cod livers dumped into the gurry-butt, and the tables removed from the rails. The two men on the first watch were sharpening the splitting knives on a tiny grindstone and walking forward occasionally to see that the anchor and trawl buoy lights were burning.
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The still air resounded with the snores of the exhausted men forward in the forecastle.
Silently out of the darkness a dory came toward the schooner, pulled by the brawny arms of two men. In the stern of the oncoming boat sat a solitary figure, who strained his eyes toward his destination.
The dory was within fifty yards of theLassbefore the men on deck became aware of its approach. Then, fearing some evil work in connection with the last desperate days of fishing, they rushed to the bulwarks and challenged the newcomers. They did not see, a mile away, a schooner without lights gently rising and falling on the oily sea.
“Who is that?” demanded one man, but he received no answer except “A friend,” and the boat continued its stealthy approach. It drew alongside the ladder in the waist, and the man in the stern-sheets rose. Kent of theLass’screw leaned over the side and threw the light of his lantern upon the man.
“By God,” he cried like one who has seen a ghost, “it’s the skipper.”
249CHAPTER XXVIITHE REWARD OF EVIL
TheNettie B.was surging north, nearing Cape Breton. Nat Burns sat moodily on the top of the house and watched the schooner take ’em green over her bows.
Within the last day a fog with a wind behind it had drifted across the lead-colored ocean; and now, although the fog was gone, the wind was still howling and bringing with it a rising sea.
The equinoxes were not far off, and all skippers had a weather eye out, and paid especial attention to the stoutness of lashings and patched canvas.
Never had Burns been in a blacker mood, and never had he better cause.
He was three days from St. Andrew’s, and there he had become acquainted with several facts.
The first was that no Canadian gunboat by the name ofAlbatrosshad called at said port and left any prisoner by the name of Code Schofield––in fact, such gunboat had not called at all.
Investigation at the admiralty office proved to Nat that the realAlbatrosshad reported from St.250John’s, Newfoundland, on the very day he supposed he had met her. As the waters near St. Andrew’s and St. John’s are several hundreds of miles apart, Nat was not long in forming the opinion that he had been duped.
Fuming with rage, he began to investigate. Gradually he learned the story (from sailors in wine-shops and general hearsay) of the mysterious schooner that had twice saved Code Schofield from actual capture, and had aided him on one or two other occasions.
One man said he had heard of a retired naval officer named Foraker, who was supposed to be in command. As a matter of fact, there was a Captain Foraker aboard the schooner who navigated her and instilled the “run and jump” discipline that had so excited Code’s admiration. Outside of this vague fact, Nat’s knowledge was scant.
He was ignorant of who owned the swift vessel. He would never have connected Elsa Mallaby with her in ten years of hard thinking. All he did know was that some unknown agency was suddenly at work in behalf of the man he hated.
He notified the admiralty that a strange schooner had impersonated the gunboat of H. I. M. George V, and gave a very accurate description of her.
As this was a new offense for the vessel that had already interfered with justice twice, the skippers of251all the revenue cutters along the coast bent their energies to capturing or sinking this semipiratical craft, upon the receipt of radiograms to that effect.
Not only had Nat set the machinery of the law in motion against the mystery schooner, but he had provided against any future dabbling with his constabulary powers by the simple expedient of having with him an officer of the law who was empowered to bring the accused murderer of Michael Burns before the bar of justice without transfer.
When the supposed gunboat had removed the prisoner from his deck and borne away (for a while) on the course to St. Andrew’s, Nat, relieved of responsibility, ran over to Grande Mignon and into the harbor of Freekirk Head.
His purpose in this was twofold, and treacherous in both cases. First he lost no time in spreading the details of how Code Schofield had been captured in a drunken brawl at St. Pierre and was fighting the jailers in St. Andrew’s. Secondly, he had a long private interview with Bill Boughton, in which he tried to get the storekeeper to sign a contract for his (Burns’s) fish at a certain price.
While the former was meanness of a hideous kind, this latter move was one of treachery against the men of Freekirk Head. The worst part of it was that Nat had about a hundred quintals of splendid-looking cod (every pound he had caught) in his252hold, and these he handed over to Boughton as a sample of what was to come from him very shortly.
Boughton was hard up for fish, for none had come from the Banks, and bought them at a big price. But as to the signing of the contract, he demurred. When Nat could not explain why he had caught so few fish in such a long time, the storekeeper became wary and refused to commit himself. Finally he agreed to the price if Nat would deliver a thousand quintals before any of the rest of the fleet arrived home.
Consequently it was up mainsail and sway ’em flat and a fast run north for theNettie B.
During his day’s stay in Freekirk Head he had received a great bag of mail for the men of the fleet from their women-folk at home, and this he had in his cabin, now all distributed and tied into bundles, one for each schooner, so that they could be easily sorted and thrown aboard as he met them.
Burns caught the fleet of a Thursday morning, just as they had dropped anchors after making a night berth, and the dories were out sampling the ground and the fish. It was just three days after Code had arrived aboard theCharming Lassagain.
As Nat worked his way in and out among the vessels, throwing their mail aboard attached to pieces of coal, he kept an eye out for theRosan. One very important piece of business that had brought him253North was a reconciliation with Nellie Tanner, and he meant, while his men were out in the dories, to accomplish this first.
At last he sighted her near the very front line of the fleet. TheCharming Lasshe could not see, for Code had taken a different direction from theRosan, and was one of the score of sails scattered around the horizon. But Nat was in no great hurry to get him on the minute; if the mystery schooner were attended to, then it would be merely a matter of time until the capture of Code.
He ranged up astern of theRosanwith a cheery yell and let go his anchor, ordering the dories over the side in the same breath. But his aspirations received a chilling setback from none other than Bijonah Tanner himself. The old man had been sleepless for a week, trying to nose out theLassfor the top haul of the fleet, and here was a young scapegrace who came and cast anchor within a hundred yards of his chosen ground.
Nat laughed carelessly at the storm of abuse that rattled over the stern of theRosanand rowed over to her in his dory with the package of mail.
“Forget it, papa,” he said, easily insolent, as he climbed over the rail in the teeth of a broadside. “We’re not goin’ to foul your rodin’ or steal your fish. I’ve just come to make a call and tell you the news from home.”
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He handed Bijonah a couple of letters and a package containing those of the men. Two others he kept in his hand.
For a few moments he chatted with the old man, telling him what had happened in Freekirk Head. Then he asked for Nellie, whom he had not seen. As he asked she came up out of the cabin, having just finished breakfast.
She was dressed in white this morning; a white canvas blouse with a broad blue collar and V-neck held to modest stricture by a flowing blue tie, a white duck skirt and whitened shoes––a costume that set off her pink cheeks and bright eyes.
Since the violent emotions of the fire at the Head, her courtship, and her self-analyzation since her split with Nat, she had seemed to become more of a woman.
Nat had not the slightest doubt but that Nellie by this time would have recovered from her angry pet of their last interview. He was very certain that their ruction had only been temporary.
Nellie was unfeignedly glad to see him.
He stretched out his arms to her impulsively, but she refused him, and he laughed the rebuff off good-naturedly.
“Oh, did you bring any letters for me?” she cried eagerly.
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He held out the two he had kept in his hand.
“Oh, goodness, Nat––only from mama and Lutie Bissell. You excited me so!”
He spread a tarpaulin amid the clutter amidships and they sat down.
She excused herself and began to read her letters, first opening the one from the girl friend, which, as such letters usually do, contained nothing of importance. Then she opened the one from her mother. It was long, and she settled back to the pleasure of deciphering it.
Nat smoked and whistled and looked out to sea, waiting for her to finish. Therefore he did not observe the changes that passed across her face. Near the middle of the letter the color rose to her forehead in a hot wave, but at the end it had receded, leaving her pale. Methodically she folded the letter and returned it to its envelope.
“Well, dearest,” he said cheerfully, “all through? Now I want to talk to you––” He reached for her hand, but she withdrew it beyond his reach and looked at him with the steady brown eyes whose level gaze he hated.
“Come on, now, Nellie,” he said impatiently, stung by her relentlessness, “you ain’t goin’ to be mad forever about that other time, are you? I was out of temper an’ said things––”
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“Mother was up to Mallaby House for dinner a little while ago,” interrupted Nellie, as though she had not heard him.
“Yes? That’s good. Fine place, ain’t it? As I was sayin’, I forgot myself––”
“They talked about us, too; mother says that’s nearly all they talked about.”
“Must’ve been short of conversation. An’ I want to say, Nellie, that I’ll try never to speak like that to you again. I––”
“Mother says she learned things about you that she never had imagined before,” persisted Nellie, with quiet insistence. But again Nat did not seem to have heard her. With an awkward motion he drew from his pocket the little glazed paper box that contained the engagement-ring.
“Please,” he said, “I want you to take this again.” He was in earnest.
“It’s strange Elsa Mallaby should be able to tell mother things about you.”
Nat lost his patience. He had tried his best to make peace, and the girl was only baiting him for her own amusement.
“What the deuce is all this about that Mallaby woman?” he asked. “I should think you’d listen to me, Nellie.”
“If you will listen to me first, then I’ll listen to you as long as you like.”
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“I agree,” he said, thrusting the ring-box back into his pocket, “only make it short, will you, little girl?”
“Yes, I will,” she promised, without smiling. “I merely said that mother and Mrs. Mallaby had discussed you and me, and our marriage, and that Mrs. Mallaby had said some things about you.”
“Well, lots of people do that,” he smiled.
“Yes––but they haven’t said just this thing, Nat.”
“What was that?”
“I’m going to let you think. Just suppose that Mrs. Mallaby hated you very much and wanted to do you harm. What would she tell my mother?”
The girl, pale and on the verge of an hysterical outburst, watched his face out of her mask of self-control.
The blood beneath his tan receded and was replaced by a sickly greenish hue. That flash had brought its memory––a memory that had lain buried beneath the events of his later life. Did she know? How could she know?
To the girl watching him there was confirmation enough. She was suddenly filled with inexpressible distaste for this man who had in days past smothered her with caresses and dinned into her ears speeches concerning a passion that he called love.
“I see it is all true,” she said quietly. “This258is all I have to say. Now I will listen to what you were going to tell me a few minutes ago––that is, if you still wish to say it.”
Nat read his doom in those few calm words. The things that had been in his mind to say rose and choked his throat; the thought of the ring in his pocket seemed like profanation. He gulped twice and tried to speak, but the words clotted on his tongue.
Still she sat quietly looking at him, politely ready to listen.
With a horrible croaking sound he got to his feet, looked irresolutely at her for a moment, and then went to the side where his dory lay. She next saw him rowing dazedly to theNettle B., and then she turned her face from the sight of him.
And suddenly into her mind, long prepared, came the thought of Code Schofield. Amid the chaos of her shattered ideals his face and figure rose more desirable than all the earth.
“Oh, Heaven, give him to me––some time!” she breathed in a voice of humble prayer.
Nat Burns went back to his schooner, squarely defeated for the first time in his life. Humbled, and cringing like a whipped dog, he made his dory fast to theNettie’srail and slunk aft to the solitude of his cabin. He was glad that even the cook was looking the other way.
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“She has flouted me, and the whole of Grande Mignon will know it,” he said to himself. “Then they will want to know why, but that is easy enough to lie about. Hang that Mallaby woman! Who would ever think she’d squeal? Yes, and Schofield, the smug crook! They’re the two that are doin’ the damage to me.”
Nat’s lifelong knowledge of Code’s and Nellie’s affection returned to him now with a more poignant pang of memory than he had ever experienced. With the hopeless egotism of a totally selfish nature, he laid his calamity in love to activity on Code’s part. He was pretty well aware of Elsa’s extravagant favoritism of Code, and he immediately figured that Code had enlisted Elsa on his side to the ruin of Nat.
“So I’ve got to beat ’em all now, have I?” he asked grimly, his jaw setting with an ugly click. “Schofield and Mallaby, and––yes––while I’m about it, Tanner, too. The old man never liked me, the girl hates me, and I wouldn’t mind giving ’em a dig along with the rest. Just to show ’em that I’m not so easy an’ peaceful as I look! But how?”
For a considerable space of time he sat there, his head low on his breast, and his eyes half closed as his brain went over scheme after scheme. The detective that Nat had brought from St. Andrew’s stuck his head down the cabin and remarked:
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“Look here, captain, I want to arrest my man and get back. Why don’t you hunt up that ship and let me finish?”
“I’ve got something a lot better on hand, Durkee,” remarked Nat with a grin, rising from his chair, a plan having leaped full blown into his mind. “Just stick along with me and you’ll get your man, all right.”
He went outside and called the men in with a revolver-shot and a trawl tub run to the masthead. It was about noon when they came in, and, after eating, three o’clock passed before they had finished dressing down.
“Any of you boys run across a dory from theNight Hawk?” asked Nat as the men came inboard with their shower of fish.
“Yes,” said a youth, “I f’und one of ’em an’ he told me theHawk’sluck was Jonahed this trip.”
“Where’s the packet lyin’?”
“About twelve mile sou’east near the edge of the Bank.”
Nat went to the wheel himself.
“Up jib an’ fores’l,” he sung out, “and sway ’em flat! Mains’l and tops’ls after that! Raymond, overhaul the balloon, stays’l, and trys’l! Mebbe we’ll drive her a little afore we’re through.”
Burns found theNight Hawkin a patch of sea by herself, more or less deserted by the other schooners261because of the Jonah report that had gone abroad concerning her. Her dories were just coming in from the day’s work partially loaded with fish.
“Hello!” bawled Nat. “Is Billy Stetson aboard?” Billy was the skipper.
“Yas; d’ye want to see him?”
“Yes, send him along over. It’s mighty important, but I ain’t goin’ aboard no Jonah boat. Tell him he’ll be glad he came.”
Presently Stetson came and the two retired into the cabin of theNettie B.
262CHAPTER XXVIIITHE RACE
It was dawn of a heavy, dark day. There was a mighty sea rolling and a forty-mile wind off the Cape shore that promised a three-day ruction. TheCharming Lassat her anchor reared and plunged like a nervous horse.
Weighty with fish, she struggled heroically up the great walls of water, only to plump her sharp bows into the hollow with a force that half buried her. Between times she wriggled and capered like a dancing elephant and jerked at her cable until it seemed as though she would take her windlass out.
In the midst of all this Code Schofield struggled aft and began hauling forth the mains’l that at the first edge of the Bank had been relegated in favor of the triangular riding sail.
Pete Ellinwood saw him, and in a great voice bawled down the hatchway to the fo’c’s’le.
“Salt’s wet, boys; the skipper’s haulin’ out the mains’l!” At which there broke forth the most extravagant sounds of jubilation and all hands tumbled up to help bend it on.
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The crew of theLassdid not know it, but Bijonah Tanner and theRosanhad actually been gone twelve hours, having stolen away from the fleet before dressing down the night before when darkness had fallen. And so successfully had Jed Martin stolen Bijonah’s thunder that he had left but three hours later––when the fish had been dressed.
Schofield was honest with himself, and he waited until morning to see if the great stacks of fish would not settle enough to allow of another day’s work to be crowded in. But when he saw that space above the fish was very small he waited no longer.
Four men heaved on the windlass brakes, and the others got sail on her as fast as they could haul halyards. She started under jib, jumbo, fore and mains’l, with the wind a little on her port quarter and every fiber of her yearning to go.
When the sails were apparently flat as boards Schofield made Ellinwood rig pulleys leading to the middle of the halyards so that the men could sway on them. She was fit as a racing yacht; her load was perfectly distributed and she trimmed to a hairbreadth.
An hour later they snored down upon theNight Hawk, the last vessel at the edge of the fleet.
“Better hurry!” megaphoned Stetson, tickled with himself. “Burns cleared six hours ago for264Freekirk Head with a thousand quintal. He’s got Boughton sewed up to buy ’em, too.”
“Bring her to!” snarled Code, and theLass, groaning and complaining at the brutality, whirled up into the wind enough to take her sticks out. “Burns’s going home, you say? And with fish? Where’d he get ’em?”
“From me. I sold him my whole load at a better price than I would have got if I had waited to fill theHawk’sbelly and then gone home. Gave me cash and threw in a lot of bait, so I’ll stay right out here and get another load. Petty good for a Jonah––what? Ha, ha!” The man roared exasperatingly.
“Damnation!” rapped out Schofield. “Lively now! Tops’ls on her, and two of you stay aloft to shift tacks if we should need to come about.”
“Hey, you!” bawled Stetson as theLassbegan to heel to the great sweep of the wind. “There’s two ahead of him, Bijonah Tanner an’ Jed Martin! Better hurry if you’re going to catch the market!”
“Hurry, is it?” growled Code to himself. “I’ll hurry so some people won’t know who it is.”
It was the first time that Code had had occasion to drive theLass, for the Mignon fishermen heretofore had confined their labor to the shoals near home or, at farthest, on the Nova Scotia coast. The present occasion was different.
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Between where he lay and the friendly sight of Swallowtail Light was more than eight hundred and fifty miles of wallowing, tumbling ocean. Treacherous shoals underran it, biting rocks pierced up in saw-toothed reefs, the bitterest gales of all the seas swept in leaden wastes.
It was a cutthroat business, this mighty pull for the market; but upon it not only depended the practical consideration of the highest market prices, but the honor and glory of owning the fastest schooner out of Freekirk Head. The task of theCharming Lasswas delightful in its simplicity, but fearful in its arduousness.
Jimmie Thomas came aft and stood by the wheel on the port side. It took two men to handle her now, for the vast, dead weight in her hold flung her forward and sidewise, despite the muscular clutch on the wheel, and when she rolled down she came up sluggishly.
“Isn’t she a dog, though, Code?” exclaimed Jimmie in admiration. “Look at that now! Rose to it like a duck. See her now jest a-playin’ with them waves! Jest a-playin’! Oh, she’s a dog, skipper––a dog, I tell ye! Drive her! She loves it!”
“I’ll drive her, Jimmie; don’t you worry. Before I get through some fellers I know’ll wish they’d never heard of driving.” He motioned Pete Ellinwood aft with a free hand.
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“Tell the boys,” said Code, “that what sleepin’ they do between here and home will be on their feet, for I want all hands ready to jump to orders. They can mug-up day and night, but let nobody get his boots off.”
“Ay, ay, sir!” replied Pete involuntarily. This bright-eyed, firm-mouthed skipper was a different being from the cheerful, careless boy he had been familiar with for years. There was the ring of confidence and command in his voice that inspired respect. “Look out there! Jump for it!”
The head of theLasswent down with a sickening swoop and the sound of thunder. A great, gray-and-white wall boiled and raced over her bows. Ellinwood leaped for the weather-rigging and the other two clutched the wheel as they stood waist-deep in the surge that roared over the taffrail and to leeward.
“Pass the life-lines, Pete,” ordered Code, and all hands passed stout ropes from rigging to house to rail, forward and astern, so that there might be something to leap for when theLasswas boarded by a Niagara.
Ellinwood got out two stout lines and made one fast around Code’s waist, leading it to the starboard bitt. The other fastened Jimmie to the port bitt, so that if they were washed overboard they might be hauled back to safety and life again.
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“Looks like she was blowin’ up a little!” remarked Pete later in the day as theLassrolled down to her sheerpoles in a sudden rain squall. “Better take in them tops’ls, hadn’t ye, skipper?”
“Take in nothing!” snapped Code across the cabin table. “Any canvas that comes off this vessel between here and Freekirk Head blows off, unless we have passed all those schooners ahead of us. Haven’t raised any of ’em, have you?”
“Not yet, skipper; but we ought to by night,” said Ellinwood as though he felt he was personally to blame. “But let me tell you somethin’, skipper. It’s all right to carry sail, but if you get your sticks ripped out you won’t be able to get anywhere at all.”
“If my sticks go, let ’em go, I’ll take my medicine; but I’ll tell you this much, Pete, that nobody is going to beat me home while I’ve got a stick to carry canvas, unless they have a better packet than theCharming Lass––which I know well they haven’t.”
“That’s the spirit, skipper!” yelled Ellinwood, secretly pleased.
There is no telling exactly what speed certain fishing schooners have made on their great drives from the Banks. Some men go so far as to claim that the old China tea clippers have lost their laurels both for daily runs and for passages up to four thousand miles.
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One ambitious man hazards his opinion (and he is one who ought to know) that a fishing schooner has done her eighteen knots or upward for numerous individual hours, for fishermen, even on record passages, fail to haul the log sometimes for half a day at a time.
Schofield, however, took occasion to have the log hauled for one especially squally mile, and the figures showed that theLasshad covered fifteen knots in the hour––seventeen and a half land miles.
She was booming along now, seeming to leap from one great crest to the next like a giant projectile driven by some irresistible force. She was canted at such an angle that her lee rail was invisible under the boiling white, and her deck planks seemed a part of the sea.
The course was almost exactly southwest, and that first day theLassroared down the Atlantic, passing the wide mouth of Cabot Strait that leads between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. They passed one of the Quebec and Montreal liners, and took pleasure shooting the schooner under her flaring bows.
The next morning at seven, twenty-four hours out, found them three hundred and fifty miles on their course, but what was better than all, showed three sails ahead. Then did the crew of theCharming Lassrejoice, climbing into the spray-lashed rigging,269and yelling wildly against the tumult of the waters.
Nor did the wind subside. It had gone to forty-five miles an hour over night, and in landlocked harbors the skippers of big steel passenger vessels shook their heads and refused to venture out into the gale.
As well as could be judged, theNettie B.,Rosan, andHerring Bonewere nearly on even terms twenty miles ahead, all with every stitch set and flying like leaves before a wind.
“Bend on balloon jib!” snapped Schofield when he had considered the task before him. Pete ran joyfully to execute the order, but some of the men hesitated.
“Up with her!” roared Pete, and up she went, a great concave hollow of white like the half of a pear. TheLass’shead went down, and now, instead of attempting to go over the waves, she went through them without argument.
Tons of divided water crashed down upon her decks and roared off over the rails, the men at the wheel were never less than knee-deep. The sheets strained, the timbers creaked, and the sails roared, and back of all were the wind and the North Atlantic in hot pursuit.
By noon it could be seen that the three vessels ahead were commencing to come back, but with terrible slowness. Code, lashed in the weather-rigging,270studied them for more than an hour through his glasses. Then he leaped to the deck.
“Hell’s bells! No wonder we can’t catch ’em! Burns has got stays’l set, and I think Tanner has, too. Couldn’t see Martin. Set stays’l, all hands!”
Under the driving of Ellinwood the staysail was set, and from then on theCharming Lasssailed on her side.
At every roll her sheerpoles were buried, and it seemed an open question whether she would ever come up or not. It was at this time that Tip O’Neill, a daring young buck of Freekirk Head, performed the highly dangerous feat of walking from her main to her forerigging along the weather run, which fact shows there was foothold on her uppermost side for a man crazy enough to desire it.
That Ellinwood and the daring Jimmie Thomas were thoroughly in accord with Schofield’s preposterous sail-carrying was a foregone conclusion. But others of the crew were not of the same mind. An hour more here or there seemed a small matter to them as compared to the chance of drowning and leaving a family unprotected and unprovided for.
Schofield sensed this feeling immediately it had manifested itself, and he called his lieutenants to him. He wished to provide against interference.
“House the halyards aloft!” he commanded, and at this even those two daring souls stood aghast,271for it meant that whatever the emergency no sail could be taken off theCharming Lass. With the end of the halyards aloft no man could reach them in time to avert a catastrophe.
“You’re sure drivin’ her, skipper!” roared Pete in amazed admiration. “Up them halyards go. Oh, Lord, but she’s a dog, an’ she’ll stand it.”
So up the halyards went, and with them went a warning that whoever jumped to loosen them would get a gaff-hook in his breeches and be hauled down ignominiously.
This time when the log was hauled for the hour from three to four in the afternoon it showed a total of seventeen knots, or a fraction under twenty miles for the hour. And best of all, the three flying schooners had come back five miles. By ten o’clock that night Code judged they had come back five more, and knew that the next day would bring the test.
They were not in over-deep water here, for the coast of Nova Scotia is extended for miles out under the sea in excellent fishing shoals and banks.
At Artimon Bank they switched their course to westward so as to pass inside of Sable Island and round Cape Sable in the shoalest water possible. Down across Western they roared, and almost to Le Have before midnight came.
Now it is one thing to sail like the Flying Dutchman272with the sun up and one’s eyes to use, but it is another to career through the night without taking in a stitch of canvas, trusting to luck and the Providence that watches over fishermen that the compass is good and that no blundering coasters will get in the way.
When dawn broke wild and dirty, theCharming Lasswas reeling through the water less than a quarter of a mile astern of theRosanand theHerring Bone. Through the murk Code could see theNettie B.three miles ahead.
An hour and she had drawn abreast of her two rivals; another hour and she had left them astern. Day had fully broken now, and Code, grinning over his shoulder at the defeated schooners, gave a cry of surprise. For no longer were there two only. Another, plunging through the mist, had come into view; far back she was, but carrying a spread of canvas that gave indications enough of her speed.
But Code spent little time looking back. He gripped the wheel, set his teeth, and urged theLassforward after theNettiewith every faculty of his power. After that terrible night the crew had lost their fear and worked with enthusiasm.
Some hands were always at the pumps, when they could be worked, for besides the brine from the fish gathering below, Code feared the vessel had spewed some oakum and was taking a little water forward.273Now, too, the horrible stench of riled bilge-water floated over all––compared to which an aged egg is a bouquet of roses.
At eight o’clock that morning they rounded Cape Sable at the tip of Nova Scotia, and laid a course a trifle west of north for the final beat home. There was a hundred miles to go, and Burns still held his three-mile lead.
By herself and loaded only with ballast, theNettiewas a better sailor in a beating game, for she was older and heavier than theCharming Lass. But now she had but a thousand quintal of fish compared to the sixteen hundred of her rival. This difference gave theLassmuch needed stability without which she could never have hoped to win from the Burns schooner.
The two were, therefore, about equally matched, and it was evident that the contest would resolve itself into one of sail-carrying, seamanship, and nerve.
“That other feller’s comin’ up fast!” said Pete Ellinwood, and Code looked back to see the strange schooner looming larger and larger in his wake. He knew that no vessel in the Grande Mignon fleet could ever have caught theLassthe way he had been driving her, and yet she was not near enough for him to get a good view of her.
“If she’s a fisherman,” said Code, “I’ll pull theLassout of water before she beats us in.”
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It was killing work, the last beat home.
“Hard a-lee!” would come the command, and some men would go down into the smother of the lee rail and haul in or slack away sheets, while others at the mastheads would shift top- and staysail tacks.
Her head would swing, there would be a minute of thrashing and roaring of gear, and the gale would leap into her sails and bend her down on her side again. Then away she would go.
The station of those on deck was a good two-handed grip on the ringbolts under the weather-rail, where, so great was the slope of the deck, they clung desperately for fear of sliding down and into the swirling torrent.
Hour after hour theNettieand theLassfought it out, and hour after hour the gale increased. Hurricane warnings had been issued all along the coast, and not a vessel ventured out, but these stanch fishing vessels cared not a whit.
It was evident, however, that something must give. Human ingenuity had not constructed a vessel that could stand such driving. Even Pete Ellinwood began to lose his heartiness as theLasswent down and stayed down longer with each vicious squall.
“Shut up, Pete!” said Code, when the mate started to speak. “No sail comes off but what blows off, and while there’s all sail on theNettieI275carry all sail if I heave her down for it. Watch him, he’ll break. Burns is yellow.”
The words were a prophecy. He had hardly uttered them when down came the great balloon jib of theNettie B.At once theLassbegan to gain in great leaps and bounds. They were fifty miles from home and two miles only separated them.
But fortune had not finished with Code. Half an hour later there came a great sound of tearing like the volley of small arms, and theLass’sballoon jib ripped loose and soared to heaven like some gigantic wounded bird.
“Let it go, curse it,” growled Code. “Anyway, I didn’t take it down.”
The loss of her big jib was the only thing that saved theLassfrom being hove down completely, for two hours later the gale had reached its height, and she was laboring like a drunken man under her staysail, topsail, and four lowers.
Twenty miles from home and the two schooners were abreast, tacking together on the long leeward reaches and the short windward ones, as they made across the Bay of Fundy.
“Look at her comin’ like a racehorse!” cried Ellinwood again, and this time Code recognized the vessel that was pursuing them. It was the mystery schooner, and in all his life at sea Code had never seen a ship fly as that one was flying then.
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“Wonder what she’s up to now?” he asked vaguely. But he gave no further thought to the matter, for theNettie B.claimed all his attention. Suddenly from between the masts of the Burns schooner a great flutter of white appeared as though some one had hung a huge sheet from her stay.
“Ha, I told you he was yellow!” shouted Code in glee. “Somebody’s cut away one edge of the stays’l. Now we’ve got ’em!”
And they had; for within a quarter of an hour they left theNettie B.astern, finally defeated, Nat Burns’s last act of treachery gone for nothing.
But the mystery schooner would not be denied. Though theLassmade her seventeen knots, the wonderful Mallaby schooner did her twenty, with everything spread in that gale; and when the white lighthouse of Swallowtail Point was in plain sight through the murk, she swept by like a magnificent racer and beat theCharming Lassto moorings by twenty minutes.
Half an hour behind Schofield came the Burns boat, but in that time Code Schofield had already hurried ashore in his dory and clinched his sale price with Bill Boughton, who also assured him of the bonus offered for the first vessel in.
Like Code, the first thing Nat did, when his schooner had come up into the wind with jib and foresail on the run, was to take a dory ashore. In277it, besides himself, was a man. These two encountered Code just as he came out of Boughton’s store.
The second, who was tall and broad-shouldered, threw back his coat and displayed a government shield. Then he laid his hand on Code’s arm.
“Captain Schofield,” he said, “you are under arrest!”