The Harbor of Doubt

At last he sighted her near the very front line of the fleet. The Charming Lass he could not see, for Code had taken a different direction from the Rosan, 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 the Rosan with 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 the Lass for 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 the Rosan and 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.”

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.

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–”

“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.”

“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. “This is 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 the Nettle 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 the Nettie’s rail and slunk aft to the solitude of his cabin. He was glad that even the cook was looking the other way.

“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:

“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 the Night 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 the Hawk’s luck 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 the Night Hawk in a patch of sea by herself, more or less deserted by the other schooners because 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 the Nettie B.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE 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. The Charming Lass at 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.

The crew of the Lass did not know it, but Bijonah Tanner and the Rosan had 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 the Night Hawk, the last vessel at the edge of the fleet.

“Better hurry!” megaphoned Stetson, tickled with himself. “Burns cleared six hours ago for Freekirk Head with a thousand quintal. He’s got Boughton sewed up to buy ’em, too.”

“Bring her to!” snarled Code, and the Lass, 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 the Hawk’s belly 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 the Lass began 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 the Lass, 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.

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 the Charming Lass was 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.

“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 the Lass went 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 the Lass was 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.

“Looks like she was blowin’ up a little!” remarked Pete later in the day as the Lass rolled 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 the Charming 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.

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 the Lass had 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 the Lass roared 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 the Charming Lass rejoice, climbing into the spray-lashed rigging, and 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, the Nettie B., Rosan, and Herring Bone were 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. The Lass’s head 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, studied 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 the Charming Lass sailed 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, for it meant that whatever the emergency no sail could be taken off the Charming 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 Dutchman with 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, the Charming Lass was reeling through the water less than a quarter of a mile astern of the Rosan and the Herring Bone. Through the murk Code could see the Nettie 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 the Lass forward after the Nettie with 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. Now, 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.