The Harbor of Doubt

“But that wasn’t the wust of it. I knew we had to get out the same evenin’ if we was to git out at all, so what did I do but get Bill Rockwell here to hitch up his big double buckboard an’ go out after the five men that weren’t on the job.

“He had to drive clear to Great Harbor for one, but he got back with all hands about seven o’clock. Everybody in town was at supper, an’ didn’t see us when we clumb aboard the Lass. When it was pitch-black we cast off the lines, an’ she drifted out on the ebb tide, which just there runs easy a knot an’ a half. Then we got up our headsails so as to get steerage-way on her, and bless my soul if the blocks made a creak! Might have been pullin’ silk thread through a fur mitten, for all the noise.

“I was afraid fer a minute that the flash of Swallowtail Light would catch her topm’sts, but it didn’t, and after an hour we were outside and layin’ in sixteen fathom off Big Duck. The tide there runs three knot, and, with our headsails an’ the light air o’ wind, we just managed to hold her even.

“Of course, you fellers know the rest. As soon as Jimmie landed his passenger on Long Island he came out an’ straight south to where we was. I had told Jimmie to tell Code in the afternoon where to meet us; and so, when it was black enough, the skipper got into his motor-dory and came out, too.

“When they climbed aboard we got up sail and laid a southwest course to round Nova Scoshy; an’ here we are, nearin’ Cape Race already, and dummed proud of ourselves, if I do say it.”

“Proud of you, Pete, you old fox,” said Schofield, getting up from the table with a sigh of immense relief. “Come on; let the second half in.”

“All right, skipper,” said Pete, rising to his great height and wiping his mouth with the back of his huge hand. “But wait! I almost fergot this!”

He unpinned the pocket of his waistcoat and drew forth the flimsy sheet of paper that he had picked up when Templeton had mistakenly tried to serve him.

Briefly he told the skipper its history and handed it to him. Schofield’s eyes opened wide as he saw that the paper was that of the Dominion Cable office in Freekirk Head, and he read:

“To A. TEMPLETON,

“Marine Insurance Company,

“St. John’s, N.B.

“Come at once with summons for Cody Albert Schofield and attachment for schooner Charming Lass, as per former arrangements.

“BURNETT.”

For a moment the signature puzzled him, and Ellinwood, grinning, stood watching his puzzled efforts to solve it.

“Skipper, if it was a mule it would kick you in the face,” he remarked. “If you can’t see Nat Burns in that, I can. And now you’ve got an idea just who’s at the bottom of this thing.”

Code Schofield went aft to his cabin companionway, and prepared to go below and open his log. Kent took the wheel, and Ellinwood lurched about with a critical eye upon the lashings, sheets, and general appearance of the deck.

Schofield, remembering the schooner that had attracted his eye before, looked astern for her. She had gained rapidly upon them in the half-hour he had been below. Now he could see her graceful black hull, the shadows in the great sails, and the tiny men here and there upon her deck.

“What a sailer!” he cried in involuntary admiration. “She must be an American!”

It was clear that the other schooner, even in that moderate breeze, must be making the better side of twelve knots. Schofield gave her a final admiring glance and went below.

CHAPTER X

A MYSTERY

“AUGUST 29:

“Clear. Wind W.S.W., canting to W. Moderate breeze. Knots logged to twelve, noon, 153. Position, 20 miles south, a little east of Cape Sable. End of this day.”

Code closed the dirty and thumb-worn, paper-covered ledger that was the log of the Charming Lass and had been the log of the old May Schofield for ten years before she went down. It was the one thing he had saved. He had been on deck, taken his sextant observation, and just completed working out his position.

As he closed the old log his eye was caught by a crudely penned name near the bottom of the paper cover. The signature was Nellie Tanner’s, and he remembered how, a dozen years ago, while they were playing together in the cabin of the old May, she had pretended she was captain and owned the whole boat, so that Code would have to obey her orders.

As he looked he caught the almost obliterated marks of a pencil beneath Nellie’s name, and, looking closer, discovered “Nat Burns” in boyish letters.

For a moment he scowled blackly at the audacious words, and then, laughing at his foolishness, threw the book from him. Then slowly the scowl returned, and he asked himself seriously why Nat hated him so.

That there had always been an instinctive dislike between them as boys, everybody in Freekirk Head knew, and several vicious fights to a finish had emphasized it.

But since coming to manhood’s estate Code had left behind him much of the rancor and intolerance of his early youth, and had considered Nat Burns merely as a disagreeable person to be left heartily alone.

But Burns had evidently not arrived at this mature point of self-education. In fact, Burns was a good example of a youth brought up without those powers of self-control that are absolutely necessary to any one who expects to take a reasonable position in society even as simple as that of Freekirk Head.

Code remembered that Nat and his father had always been inseparable companions, and that it was due to this father more than any one else that the boy had been spoiled and indulged in every way.

Michael Burns had risen to a position of considerable power in the humble life of the island. From a successful trawler he had become a successful fish-packer and shipper. Then he had felt a desire to spread his affluent wings, gone in for politics, and been appointed the squire or justice of the peace.

In this position he was commissioned by the Marine Insurance Company of St. John’s as its agent and inspector on Grande Mignon Island. In his less successful days he had been a boat-builder in Gloucester and Bath, and knew much of ship construction.

For more than half a year now Code had been unable to think of Michael Burns or the old May Schofield without a shudder of horror. But now that Nat was suddenly hot on the trail of revenge, he knew he must look at matters squarely and prepare to meet any trap which might be laid for him.

It seemed evident that the first aim in Nat’s mind was the hounding of the man who had been the cause of his father’s death; for that death had occurred at a most opportune time for the Schofields.

The heavy insurance on the fifty-year-old May was about to run out, and it was almost a certainty that Burns would not recommend its renewal except at a vastly increased premium.

As a matter of fact, on a hurried trip that Code had taken, he had picked up Burns himself at St. John’s, the inspector coming for the purpose of examining the schooner while under sail in a fairly heavy seaway.

All the island knew this, and all the island knew that Code was the only one to return alive. The inference was not hard to deduce, especially as the gale encountered had been one such as the May had lived out a dozen times.

Had not all these things been enough to fire the impulsive, passionate Burns with a sullen hatred, the next events would have been. For Code received his insurance without a dispute and, not long afterward, while in Boston for the purpose, had picked up the almost new Charming Lass from a Gloucester skipper who had run into debt.

Code now saw to what Nat’s uncontrolled brooding had brought him, and he realized that the battle would be one of wits.

He got up to go on deck. He had only turned to the companionway when the great voice of Pete Ellinwood rumbled down to him.

“Come on deck, skipper, an’ look over this schooner astern of us. There’s somethin’ queer about her. I don’t like her actions.”

Code took the steps at a jump, and a moment later stood beside Ellinwood. The Lass was snoring along under full sail.

The stranger, which at eight o’clock had been five miles astern, was now, at noon, less than a mile away.

Code instinctively shot a quick glance at the compass. The schooner was running dead east.

“What’s this, Ellinwood?” demanded the skipper sharply. “You’re away off your course.”

“Yes, sir, and on purpose,” replied the mate. “I’ve been watchin’ that packet for a couple of hours back and it seemed to me she was a little bit too close on our track for comfort. ‘What if she’s from St. John’s?’ I sez to myself. ‘Then there’ll be the devil to pay for the skipper.’

“So, after you’d got your observation and went below I just put the wheel down a trifle. I hadn’t been gone away from her five minutes when she followed. It’s very plain, Code, that she’s tryin’ to catch us.”

A sudden feeling of alarm took possession of Schofield. That she was a wonderful speed craft she had already proven by overhauling the Lass so easily. The thought immediately came to him that Nat Burns, on discovering his absence, had sent the lawyer with the summons to St. John’s, hired a fast schooner, and set out in pursuit.

“Maybe it was only an accident,” he said. “She may be on the course to Sable Island. Give her another trial. Come about and head for Halifax.”

“Stand by to come about,” bawled Ellinwood.

Two young fellows raced up the rigging, others stood by to prevent jibing, and the mate put the wheel hard alee. The schooner’s head swung sharply, there was a thunder and rattle of canvas, a patter of reef points, and the great booms swung over. The wind caught the sails, the Charming Lass heeled and bore away on the new course.

The men in the stern watched the movements of the stranger anxiously.

Ten minutes had hardly elapsed when she also came about and headed directly into the wake of the Lass. Schofield and Ellinwood looked at each other blankly.

“Are you goin’ to run fer it, skipper?” asked the mate. “I’ll have the balloon jib and stays’l set in five minutes, if you say so.”

Code thought for a minute.

“It’s no use,” he said. “They’d catch us, anyway. Let ’em come up and we’ll find out what they want. Take in your tops’ls. There’s no use wasting time on the wrong course.”

Under reduced sail the Lass slowed, and the pursuing vessel overhauled them rapidly. With a great smother of foam at her bows she ducked into the choppy sea and came like a race horse. In half an hour she was almost abreast on the port quarter. A man with a megaphone appeared on her poop deck and leveled the instrument at the little group by the wheel.

“Heave to!” he bawled. “We want to talk with ye.”

“Heave to!” ordered Code, and the Charming Lass came up into the wind just as the stranger accomplished the same maneuver. They were now less than fifty yards away and the man again leveled his megaphone.

“Is that the Charming Lass out of Freekirk Head?” he shouted.

“Yes.”

“Captain Code Schofield in command?”

“Yes.”

“Bound to the Banks on a fishin’ cruise?”

“Yes.”

“All right; that’s all I wanted to know,” said the man, and set down the megaphone. He gave some rapid orders to the crew, and his vessel swung around so as to catch the wind again.

Code and Ellinwood looked at one another blankly.

“Hey there!” shouted Schofield at the top of his voice. “Who are you and what do you want?” The skipper of the other schooner paid no attention whatever, and Schofield repeated his question, this time angrily.

He might as well have shouted at the wind. The stranger’s head fell off, her canvas caught the breeze, and she forged ahead. A minute later and she was out of earshot.

“Look for her name on the stern,” commanded Code. He plunged below into the cabin and raced up again with his glasses. The mysterious schooner was now nearly a quarter of a mile away, but within easy range of vision.

Code fixed his gaze on her stern, where her name should be, and saw with astonishment that it had carefully been painted out. Then he swung his glasses to cover the dories nested amidships, and found that on them, too, new paint had obscured the name. He lowered the glasses helplessly.

“Do you recognize her, Pete?” he asked. “I know most of the schooners out of Freekirk Head and St. John’s, but I never saw her before.”

“Me neither,” admitted the mate, with conviction. “I wonder what all this means?”

Code could not answer.

CHAPTER XI

IN THE FOG BANK

“SQUID ho! Squid ho! Tumble up, all hands!”

Rod Kent, the old salt who had for the past hour been experimenting over the side, leaned down the main cabin hatch and woke the port watch. Behind him on the deck a queer marine creature squirmed in a pool of water and sought vainly to disentangle itself from the apparatus that had caught it.

The shout brought all hands on deck, stupid with sleep, but eager to join in the sport.

The squid is a very small edition of the giant devilfish or octopus. It has ten tentacles, a tapered body about ten inches long, and is armed with the usual defensive ink-sac, by means of which it squirts a cloud of black fluid at a pursuing enemy, escaping in the general murk.

“How’d ye ketch him?” cried all hands, for the advent of squid was the most welcome news the men on the Charming Lass had had since leaving home four days before. It meant that this favorite and succulent bait of the roaming cod had arrived on the Banks, and that the catches would be good.

“Jigged him,” replied Kent laconically. He disengaged the struggling squid from the apparatus and examined the latter carefully. It was made of a single cork, through the lower edge of which pins had been thrust and bent back like the flukes of an anchor. To it was fastened a small shred of red flannel, the whole being attached to a line with a sinker.

In five minutes Code had unearthed from an old shoe-box in his cabin enough jigs to supply all hands, and presently both rails were lined with men hauling up the bait as fast as it was lured to close proximity by the color of the red flannel. Once the creatures had wrapped themselves around the cork a sharp jerk impaled them on the pins, and up they came.

But not without resistance. Just as they left the water they discharged their ink-sacs at their captors, and the men on the decks of the Lass were kept busy weaving their heads from side to side, to avoid the assault.

It was near evening of the second day after the mysterious schooner had hailed them and sailed away. Since that time they had forged steadily northeast, along the coast of Nova Scotia. At last they had left Cape Breton at the tip of Cape Breton Island behind them and approached the southern shores of Newfoundland and that wonderful stretch of shoals called the Grand Banks.

Southeast for three hundred miles from Newfoundland extends this under-sea flooring of rocky shelves, that run from ninety to five fathoms, being most shallow at Virgin Rocks.

In reality this is a great submarine mountain chain that is believed at one time to have belonged to the continent of North America. The outside edge of it is in the welter of the shoreless Atlantic, and from this edge there is a sheer drop into almost unsounded depths. These depths have got the name of the Whale Hole, and many a fishing skipper has dropped his anchor into this abyss and earned the laughter of his crew when he could find no ground.

Along the top and sides of this mountain range grow vegetable substances and small animalcules that provide excellent feeding for the vast hosts of cod that yearly swim across it. For four hundred years the cod have visited these feeding grounds and been the prey of man, yet their numbers show no falling off.

To them is due the wealth of Newfoundland, the Miquelon Islands, Nova Scotia, Labrador, and Prince Edward Island.

The first manifestation of the annual visit is the arrival of enormous schools of caplin, a little silvery fish some seven inches long that invades the bays and the open sea. Close upon them follow the cod, feeding as they come. The caplin last six weeks and disappear, to be superseded in August by the squid, of which the cod are very fond.

Up until fifty years ago mackerel were caught on the Banks, and large quantities of halibut, but the mackerel disappeared suddenly, never to return, and the halibut became constantly more rare, until at last only the cod remained.

Aboard the Charming Lass the squid “jigging” went on for a couple of hours. Then suddenly the school passed and the sport ended abruptly.

But the deck of the schooner was a mass of the bait, and the tubs of salt clams brought from Freekirk Head could be saved until later.

Rockwell, who had been looking out forward, suddenly called Code’s attention to a flock of sea-pigeons floating on the water a mile ahead. As the skipper looked he saw the fowl busily diving and “upending,” and he knew they had struck the edge of the Banks; for water-fowl will always dive in shoal water, and a skipper sailing to the Banks from a distance always looks for this sign.

An hour later, when the cook had sent out his call for the first half, Code made Ellinwood stay on deck and bring the schooner to an anchorage after sounding.

The sounding lead is a long slug, something like a window-weight, at the bottom of which is a saucer-shaped hollow. The leadsman, a young fellow from Freekirk Head, took his place on the schooner’s rail outside the forerigging. The lead was attached to a line and, as the schooner forged slowly ahead, close-hauled, the youth swung the lead in ever-widening semicircles.

“Let your pigeon fly!” cried Pete, and the lead swung far ahead and fell with a sullen plop into the dark blue water. The line ran out until it suddenly slackened just under the leadsman. He fingered a mark.

“Forty fathoms!” he called.

Five minutes later another sounding was taken and proved that the water was gradually shoaling. At thirty fathoms Pete ordered the anchor let go and a last sounding taken.

Before the lead flew he rubbed a little tallow into the saucer, and this, when it came up, was full of sand, mud, and shells, telling the sort of bottom under the schooner.

Pete called Code, and together they read it like a book–favorable fishing ground, though not the best.

While the second half ate, the first half took in all canvas and reefed it with the exception of the mainsail. This was unbent entirely and stowed away. In its place was bent on a riding sail, for until their salt was all wet there would be very little occasion for any sort of sailing, their only progress being as they ambled leisurely from berth to berth.

“Dories overside!” sung out Code. “Starboard first.”

A rope made fast to a mainstay and furnished with a hook at its end was slipped into a loop of rope at one end of the dory. A similar device caught a similar loop at the other end.

One strong pull and the dory rose out of the nest of four others that lay just aft of the mainmast. A hand swung her outboard and she was lowered away until she danced on the water.

Jimmie Thomas leaped into her, received a tub of briny squid, a dinner-horn, and a beaker of water, besides his rectangular reels with their heavy cord, leads, and two hooks.

“Overside port dory!” came the command, and Kent was sent on his way. Thus one after another the men departed until on board the Lass there remained only the cook and a boy helper. Code, as well as Ellinwood, had gone out, for they wished to test the fishing.

These dories were entirely different propositions from the heavy motor-boats that the men used almost entirely near the island. They were light, compact, and properly big enough for only one man, although they easily accommodated two.

The motor dories of Thomas and Code were on board, nested forward, but they were of little use here, where only short distances are covered, and those by rowing.

The nine dories drew away from the schooner, each in a different direction, until they were a mile or more apart.

Code threw over his little three-fluked anchor. Then he baited his two hooks with bits of tentacle and threw them overboard. With the big rectangular reel in his left hand, he unwound as the leads drew down until they fetched bottom and the line sagged. Unreeling a couple more fathoms of line, he cast the reel aside.

Then he hauled his leads up until he judged them to be some six feet off the bottom and waited.

Almost instantly there was a sharp jerk, and Code, with the skill of the trained fisherman, instantly responded to it with a savage pull on the line and a rapid hand-over-hand as he looped it into the dory. The fish had struck on. The tough cord sung against the gunnel, and at times it was all the skipper could do to bring up his prize, for the great cod darted here and there, dove, rushed, and struggled to avert the end.

Thirty fathoms is a hundred and eighty feet, and, with a huge and desperate fish disputing every inch of the way, it becomes a seemingly endless labor. But at last Code, straining his eyes over the side, caught a glimpse of quick circles of white in the green and reached for the maul that was stuck under a thwart.

Two more heaves and the cod, open-mouthed, thrashed on the surface. A smart rap on the head with the maul and he came into the dory quietly. There were little pink crabs sticking to him and he did not seem as fat as he should, although he topped the fifty-pound mark.

“Lousy!” said Code. “Lousy and hungry! It’s good fishing.”

With a short, stout stick at hand he wrenched the hook out of the cod’s mouth, baited up, and cast again. The descending bait was rushed and seized. This time both hooks bore victims.

When there were no speckled cod on the hooks there were silvery hake, velvety black pollock, beautiful scarlet sea-perch that look like little old men, and an occasional ugly dogfish with his Chinese jade eyes.

When the dogfish came the men pulled up their anchors and rowed a mile or so away, for where the dogfish pursues all others fly. He has the shape and traits of his merciless giant brother, the tiger-shark, with the added menace of a horn full of poison in the middle of his back instead of a dorsal fin; an evil, curved horn, the thrust of which can be nearly fatal to a man.

The bottom of the dory became covered with a flooring of liquid silver bodies that twined together and rolled with the roll of the dory.

At five o’clock Code wound his line on the reel (he usually used two at a time, but one had been plenty with such fishing), and started to pull for the distant Charming Lass. He was now fully five miles from her, and his nearest neighbor was Bill Kent, three miles away. All hands were drawing in toward her, for they knew they must take a quick mug-up and then dress down until the last cod lay in his shroud of salt.

The schooner lay to the northeast of Schofield, and as he bent to his work he did not see a strange, level mass of gray that advanced slowly toward him. From a distance to the lay observer this mass would have looked like an ordinary cloud-bank, but the experienced eyes of a fisherman would have discerned its ghastly gray hue and its flat contour.

All the afternoon there had been a freshening breeze, and now Schofield found himself rowing against a head sea that occasionally slapped over the high bow of the dory and ran aft over the half ton of fish that lay under his feet.

He had not pulled for fifteen minutes when the whole world about him was suddenly obscured by the thick, woolly fog that swirled past on the wind. It was as though an impenetrable wall had been suddenly built up on all sides, a wall that offered no resistance to his progress and yet no egress.

He immediately stopped rowing and rested his oars, listening. No sound came to him except the slap of the increasing waves and the occasional flap of a wet fish in its last struggles.

He carried no pocket compass, and the light gave no hint of the direction of the sun. In the five minutes that he sat there the head of his dory swung around and, even had he known the exact compass direction of the Charming Lass before the fog, he would have been unable to find it.

The situation did not alarm him in the least, for he had experienced it often before. Reaching into the bow, he drew out the dinner-horn that was part of the equipment of the dory and sent an ear-splitting blast out into the fog.