The Harbor of Doubt

She knew she had solved the problem the instant the answer came. Elsa had been to Boston to school, and the fact was very evident. She sat and stared at the black letters, flexing the packet filled with bills.

“Why should Elsa Mallaby be sending money to Code Schofield?”

Everybody in Freekirk Head knew that Code Schofield went up to Elsa Mallaby’s to dinner occasionally. So did other people in the village, but not so often as he. There had been a little gossip concerning the two of them, but, while Code was an excellent enough fellow, it was hardly probable that a rich widow like Elsa would throw herself away on a poor fisherman. They forgot that she had done so the first time she married, and that she had the sea in her blood.

These shreds of gossip returned to Nellie now with accrued interest, and she began to believe in the theory of fire being behind smoke.

She also remembered the night of the mass-meeting in Odd Fellows Hall when Code had made his suggestion of going to the Banks. There had flashed between Elsa’s velvet-dark eyes and Code’s blue ones a message of intimacy of which the town knew nothing. Every one saw the look, and nearly every one talked about it, but they did not know that only a couple of nights before Elsa had been the one to put Code on guard against his enemies, and that he was more than grateful.

“I’d just like to know what’s in that letter so as to tease him the next time we meet,” she said gaily to herself. She was now out of all mood for writing her letter home, and, stuffing the contents of the drawer back into place, she returned the latter to the table and went on deck.

The sea was running higher. The new topmast was up, and within half an hour the Rosan heeled to the wind and plowed her way northward after the remainder of the fleet.

CHAPTER XV

THE CATCH OF THE ROSAN

At the forecastle head of the Rosan stood a youth tolling the ship’s bell. The windlass grunted and whined as the schooner came up on her hawser with a thump, and overhead a useless jib slatted and rattled.

The youth could scarcely see aft of the foremast because of the thickness of the weather, but he could hear what was going on. There was a thump, a slimy slapping of wet fish, and a voice counting monotonously as its owner forked his forenoon’s catch into the pen amidships.

“Forty-nine,” said the voice. “All right, boys, swing her in.” And a moment later the dory, hauled high, dropped down into her nest. Immediately there was a slight bump against the side of the schooner, and the slapping and counting would begin again.

“Eighty-seven, and high line at that!” said the next man. “I’ll bet that’s the only halibut on the Banks, and he’s two hundred if he’s an ounce.”

The great, flat fish was raised to the deck by means of the topping haul that swung in the dories.

Bijonah Tanner, who stood by the pen watching the silver stream as it flowed over the side into the pen, mussed his beard and shook his head. The fish were fair, but not what should be expected at this time of year. He would sail along to another favorable anchorage. This was his first day on the Banks and two days after Nellie’s discovery of Elsa’s packet.

It was only noon, but Bijonah was speculating, and when he saw the fog bank coming he refused to run any risk with his men, and recalled them to the schooner by firing his shotgun until they all replied to the signal by raising one oar upright.

It must not be thought that it was the fog that induced Bijonah to do this. Dorymen almost always fish when a fog comes down, and trust to their good fortune in finding the schooner. Bijonah wanted to look over the morning’s catch and get in tune with the millions under his keel.

By the time the last dory was in, the pile of fish in the pen looked like a heap of molten silver.

The men stretched themselves after their cramped quarters, and greeted the cook’s announcement with delight.

“You fellers fix tables fer dressin’ down while the fust half mugs up,” said Tanner. “Everybody lively now. I cal’late to move just a little bit. The bottom here don’t suit me yet.”

He went down from the poop and walked the deck, listening between clangings of the bell for any sound of an approaching vessel. The crew worked swiftly at dressing and salting the catch.

“Haul up anchor,” he ordered when the work was done.

The watch laid hold the windlass poles and hauled the vessel forward directly above her hook. Then there was a concerted heave and the ground tackle broke loose and came up with a rush.

Under headsails and riding sail the Rosan swung into the light air that stirred the fog and began to crawl forward while the men were still cat-heading the anchor. The youth who had been ringing the bell now substituted the patent fog-horn, as marine law requires when vessels are under way.

With his eyes on the compass, Turner guided the ship himself. They seemed to move through an endless gray world.

For an hour they sailed, the only sounds being the flap of the canvas, the creaking of the tiller ropes, and the drip of the fog. Tanner was about to give the word to let go the anchor when, without warning, they suddenly burst clear of the fog and came out into the vast gray welter of the open sea.

Tanner suddenly straightened up, and slipping the wheel swiftly into the becket, he ran to the taffrail and looked over the side.

“Good God!” he cried. “What’s this?”

Not fifty feet away lay a blue dory, heavy and loggy with water, and in the bottom the unconscious figure of a man.

A second look at the face of the man and Tanner cried:

“Wheelan and Markle, overside with the starboard dory. Here’s Code Schofield adrift! Lively now!”

There was a rush aft, but Tanner met the crew and drove them to the nested boats amidships.

“Over, I say!” he roared.

The men obeyed him, and Wheelan and Markle were soon pulling madly to the blue dory astern.

When they reached it one man clambered to the bow and cut the drag rope that Code, in his extremity, had thrown over nearly two days before. Then, fastening the short painter to a thwart in their own craft, they hauled the blue dory and its contents alongside the Rosan.

Code Schofield lay with his eyes closed, pale as wax, and seemingly dead. In his right hand he still gripped convulsively the bailing-can he had used until consciousness left him.

Man, boat, and all, the dory was hauled up and let gently down on the deck. Then the eager hands lifted Schofield from the water and laid him on the oiled boards.

“Take him into my cabin,” ordered Tanner. “Johnson, bring hot water and rags. Cookee, make some strong soup. If there’s any life in him we’ll bring it back. On the jump, there!”

“Wal,” said one man, when Code had been carried below, “I thought my halibut was high line to-day, but the skipper beat me out in the end.”

CHAPTER XVI

A STAGGERING BLOW

“Here is something my father just asked me to give you.”

Nellie held out to Code the packet that she had discovered in the skipper’s drawer several days before. Code, seated on the roof of the cabin in the only loose chair aboard the Rosan, and wrapped in blankets, took the sealed bundle curiously.

He looked at the round, feminine handwriting across the envelope, and failed to evince any flash of guilt or intelligence.

It was three days after Code’s rescue by the Rosan and the first that he had felt any of his old strength coming back to him.

For the first twenty-four hours after being revived he did nothing but sleep, and awoke to find Nellie Tanner beside his bunk nursing him. Since then it had been merely a matter of patience until his exhausted body had recuperated from the shock.

For once Nellie had command of the Rosan, and everything stood aside for her patient. The delicacies that issued from the galley after she had occupied it an hour, and that went directly to Code, almost had the result of inciting a mutiny among all hands; terms of settlement being the retirement of the old cook and installation of this new find.

Code ripped open the packet. He stared in amazement at the yellow bills. Then he discovered the letter and began to read it. Despite the healthy red of his weather-beaten face, a tide of color surged up over it.

Nellie turned her head away and looked over the oily gray sea to where the men of the Rosan were toiling in their dories. In the distance there was a sail here and there, for the Rosan was slowly overhauling the fleet from Freekirk Head.

Code stole a swift glance at her, and forgot to read his letter as he studied the fresh roundness and beauty of her face. He vaguely felt that there was a reserved manner between them.

“The letter is from Mrs. Mallaby,” he said.

“Yes? That is interesting.”

The girl’s cool, level eyes met his, and he blushed again.

“She has a good heart,” he stumbled on, “and always thinks of others.”

“Yes, she has,” agreed the girl without enthusiasm, and Code dropped the subject.

“How did your father happen to have this for me?” he asked, after a pause.

“Well, you know, you surprised everybody by leaving the Head before the rest of the fleet. Elsa had it in mind to give you this packet, she says, before you left. But when you went so suddenly she asked father to give it to you. She said she expected the Rosan would catch the Lass on the Banks. At least, this is the yarn dad told me.”

“She seems to know considerable about the Banks and the ways of fishermen,” he said, with an unconscious ring of enthusiasm in his tone.

“Yes; you’d think she pulled her own dory instead of being the richest woman in New Brunswick.”

Code looked at his old sweetheart in amazement. He had never seen her so disagreeable. His eye fell upon her left hand.

For a moment his mind did not register an impression. Then all of a sudden it flashed upon him that her ring was gone.

“Oh, that explains everything!” he said to himself. “She has either lost it or quarreled with Nat, and it’s no wonder she is unhappy.”

Nellie was saying to herself: “The letter must have been very personal or he would have told me about it. He never acted like this before. There is something between them.”

Suddenly astern of them sounded the flap of sails, rattle of blocks, and shouted orders. They turned in time to see a schooner come up into the wind all standing.

She was clothed in canvas from head to foot, with a balloon-jib and staysail added, and made her position less than a hundred yards away.

Schofield gazed at the schooner curiously. Then he leaned forward, his eyes alight. There were certain points about her that were familiar. With a fisherman’s skill he had catalogued her every point. He looked at the trail-board along her bows, and where the name should have been there was a blank, painted-out space.

It was the mystery schooner!

Once more all the fears that had assailed Code’s mind at her first appearance returned. He was certain that there was mischief in this. But he sat quiet as the vessel drifted down upon the anchored Rosan.

As he looked her over his eyes were drawn aloft to a series of wires strung between her topmasts. Other wires ran down the foremast to a little cubby just aft of it.

“By the great squid, they’ve got wireless!” he said. “This beats me!”

At fifty yards the familiar man with the enormous megaphone made his appearance.

“Ahoy there!” he roared. “Any one aboard the Rosan seen or heard anything of Captain Code Schofield, of the Grande Mignon schooner Charming Lass?”

Code rose out of his chair, took off his hat ironically, and swung it before him as he made a low bow.

“At your service!” he shouted. “I was picked up three days ago, adrift in my dory. What do you want with me?”

This sudden avowal created a half panic aboard the mysterious schooner, and the man astern exchanged his megaphone for field-glasses. After a long scrutiny he went back to the megaphone.

“Congratulations, captain!” came the bellow. “When are you going to rejoin the Lass?”

“As soon the Rosan catches her,” replied Code, and then, exasperated by the unexpected maneuvers of this remarkable vessel, he cried: “Who are you and what do you want that you chase me all over the sea?”

Instantly the man put down the megaphone and gave orders to the crew, and in five minutes she was on her way north into the very heart of the fleet.

“I don’t know who she is or why she is or who is aboard her,” he told Nellie, after recounting to her the previous visitation of the schooner. “She reminds me of a nervous old hen keeping track of a stray chick. Pretty soon I won’t be able to curse the weather without being afraid my guardian will hear me. I say guardian, and yet I don’t know whether she is friendly or merely fixing up some calamity to break all at once. You know I have enemies. She may be working for them.”

The girl could offer no solution, nor could Bijonah Tanner, who had witnessed the incident from the forecastle head where he was smoking and anticipating the wishes of the cod beneath him. He had walked aft, and the three discussed the mystery.

“Ever see her before, captain?” asked Code.

If there was any man who knew schooners that had fished the Banks or the Bay of Fundy, it was Bijonah Tanner.

“Don’t cal’late I ever did. I’ve never saw jest that set to a foregaff nor jest that cut of a jumbo-jib afore.”

Tanner watched the schooner as she scudded away.

“Mighty big hurry, I allow,” he remarked. “But, Jiminy, doesn’t she sail! There ain’t hardly an air o’ wind stirrin’ and yet look at her go! She’s a mighty-able vessel.”

It was about four o’clock the next afternoon that the Rosan crept up in the middle of the fishing fleet. She had made a long berth overnight, dressed an excellent morning’s catch, and knocked off half a day because Bijonah did not feel it right to keep Code longer away from his vessel.

And Tanner managed the thing with a good eye to the dramatic. When he reached the rear guard of the fleet he began to work his vessel gracefully in and out among the sloops and schooners.

Code, seated in his chair on the cabin roof, did not realize what was going on until the triumphal procession was well under way.

Through the fleet they went–a fleet that was wearing crape for him–and from every vessel received a volley of cheers.

The Charming Lass greeted him with open arms. Pete Ellinwood swung him up from the transferring dory with a great bellow of delight, and he was passed along the line until, battered, joyous, and radiant, he arrived exhausted by the wheel, where he sat down.

When they all had drunk to the reunion from a rare old bottle, heavily cobwebbed, Code told his story. Then, while the men dressed down, he walked about, looking things over and counting the crew on his fingers.

“Pete!” he called suddenly, and the mate left the fish-pen.

“Where’s Arry Duncan?”

“Wal, skipper, I didn’t want to tell you fer fear you had enough on yer mind already, but Arry never come back the same day you was lost.”

“My God! Another one! I wondered how many would get caught that day!”

“An’ that ain’t all. He had your motor-dory with him–the one you caught us with out of Castalia.”

“How did he have that? I gave orders the motor-dories weren’t to be used.”

“Wal, cookee an’ the boy–they was the only ones aboard–tell it this way: Arry he struck a heavy school fust time he lets his dory rodin’ go, an’ most of his fish topped forty pound. In an hour his dory was full, and it was a three-mile pull back.

“When he got in he argued them others into givin’ him the motor-dory, ’cause it holds so much more. They helped him swing it over, an’ that’s the last they see of him.”

“But, if he had an engine, you’d think he could’ve made it back here or run foul of somebody or somethin’.”

“Yas, you would think so; but he didn’t, the more peace to him,” was Ellinwood’s reply.

“The poor feller!” said Code. “I’m sorry for his wife. Anything else happen while I was gone, Pete?”

“Now, let me think!” The mate scratched his head. “Oh, yes! Curse me, I nearly forgot it! You know that quair schooner that chased us down one day an’ asked the fool questions about you?”

“Yes. I saw that same schooner again yesterday. She asked more fool questions.”

“You did!” cried Ellinwood in amazement. “I didn’t see her, but I heard her, an’ I got a message from her for you. It was night when they come up on us an’ hailed.

“They said they had news of you, an’ would we send a dory over. Would we? They was about six over in as many minutes. But they wouldn’t let us aboard. No, sir; kept us off with poles an’ asked for me.

“When I got in clost they told me the Rosan had found you, and handed me an envelope with a message inside of it. Just as I was goin’ away there came the most awful clickin’ an’ flashin’ amidships I ever saw–”

“Wireless,” said Code.

“Wal, I’ve heard of it, but I never see it before; an’ I come away as quick as I could.”

“And the message?” asked Code curiously.

Pete laboriously unpinned a waistcoat-pocket and produced an envelope which he handed to Code. It was sealed, and the skipper tore away the end. The mystery and interest of the thing played upon his mind until he was in a tremble of nervous excitement.

At last he would know what the schooner was and why.

Eagerly he opened the message. It was typewritten on absolutely plain paper and unsigned, further baffling his curiosity. After a moment he read:

“Captain Schofield:

“Yesterday at St. Andrew’s suit was filed against you for murder in the first degree upon the person of Michael Burns, late of Freekirk Head, Grande Mignon Island. Plaintiff, Nathaniel Burns, son of the deceased. There is an order out for your arrest. This is a friendly warning and no more. You are now fore-armed!”

CHAPTER XVII

TRAWLERS

Schofield stood as one stupefied, staring blankly at the fateful words.

Murder in the first degree!

Had it not been for his thorough knowledge of Nat Burns’s character he would have laughed at the absurdity of the thing and thrown the message over the side.

But now he remained like one fast in the clutch of some horrible nightmare, unable to reason, unable to think coherently, unable to do anything but attempt to sound the depths of a hatred such as this.

“For Heaven’s sake, what is it, skipper?” asked Ellinwood.

Code passed the message to his mate without a word. His men might as well know the worst at once. Ellinwood read slowly.

“Rot!” he snarled in his great rumbling voice. “Murder? How does he get murder out of it?”

“If I sank the old May Schofield for her insurance money, which is what every one believes, then I deliberately caused the death of the men with me, didn’t I? Pete, this is a pretty-serious thing. I didn’t care when they set the insurance company on me, but this is different. If it goes beyond this stage I will carry the disgrace of jail and a trial all my life. That devil has nearly finished me!”

Code’s voice broke, and the tears of helpless rage smarted in his eyes.

“Steady on, now!” counseled Pete, looking with pity at the young skipper he worshiped. “He’s done fer you true this time, but the end of things is a tarnal long ways off yet, an’ don’t you go losin’ yer spunk!”

“But what have I ever done to him that he should start this against me?” cried Schofield.

Pete could not answer.

“What do they do when a man is accused of murder?” asked Code.

“Why, arrest him, I guess.”

Pete scratched his chin reminiscently. “There was that Bulwer case.” He recounted it in detail. “Yes,” he went on, “they can’t do nothin’ until the man accused is arrested.

“After that he gets a preliminary hearin’, and, if things seem plain enough, then the grand jury indicts him. After that he’s tried by a reg’lar jury. So the fust thing they’ve got to do is arrest you.”

“Darn it, they sha’n’t–I’ll sail to Africa first!” snarled Code, his eyes blazing. He strode up and down the deck.

“You say the word, skipper,” rumbled Pete loyally, “an’ we crack on every stitch fer the north pole!”

Code smiled.

“Curse me if I don’t like to see a man smile when he’s in trouble,” announced Pete roundly. “Skipper, you’ll do. You’re young, an’ these things come hard, but I cal’late we’ll drop all this talk about sailin’ away to furrin parts.

“Now, there’s jest two courses left fer you to sail. Either we go on fishin’ an’ dodge the gunboat that brings the officer after you, or we go on fishin’ an’ let him get you when he comes. I’ll stand by you either way. You’ve got yer mother to support, God bless her! An’ you’ve got a right to fill yer hold with fish so’s she can live when they’re sold. That’s one way of lookin’ at it; the other’s plain sailin’!”

“No, Pete; this is too serious. I guess the mother’ll have to suffer this time, too. If they send a man after me I’ll be here and I’ll go back and take my medicine. I’ll make you skipper, and you can select your mate. You’ll get a skipper’s share, and you can pay mother the regular amount for hiring the Lass–”

“She’ll get skipper’s share if I have to lick every hand aboard!” growled Ellinwood. “An’ you can rest easy on that.”

“That’s fine,” said Code gently; “and I don’t know what I’d do without you, Pete.”

“You ain’t supposed to do without me. What in thunder do you suppose I shipped with you fer if it wasn’t to look after you, hey?”

The men had finished dressing down and were cleaning up the decks. Several of them, noticing that something momentous was being discussed, were edging nearer. Pete observed this.

“Skipper,” he said, “we’ve got four or five shots of trawl-line to pick. Suppose you and I go out an’ do the job? Then we can talk in peace. Feel able?”

“Never better in my life. Get my dory over.”

“That blue one? Never again! That’s bad luck fer you. Take mine.”

“All right. Anything you say.”

Several hands made the dory ready. Into it they put three or four tubs or half casks in which was coiled hundreds of fathoms of stout line furnished with a strong hook every two or three feet. Each hook was baited with a fat salt clam, for the early catch of squid had been exhausted by the dory fishing. There was also a fresh tub of bait, buoys, and a lantern.

A youth aboard clambered up to the cross-trees, gave them the direction of the trawl buoy-light, and they started. It was a clear, starlit night with only a gentle sea running and no wind to speak of. There was not a hint of fog.

The Charming Lass lay now in the Atlantic approximately along the forty-sixth parallel, near its intersection with the fifty-fifth of meridian; or eighty to a hundred miles southwest of Cape Race, Newfoundland, and almost an equal distance southeast of the Miquelon Islands, France’s sole remaining territorial possession in the New World.

Code and Ellinwood easily found their trawl buoy by the glimmer of the light across the water. They immediately began to plant the trawl-lines in the tubs aboard the dory. The big buoy for the end of the line they first anchored to the bottom with dory roding.

Then, as Ellinwood rowed slowly, Code paid the baited trawl-line out of the tubs. As there are hooks every few feet, so are there big wooden buoys, so that the whole length of the line–sometimes twenty-five hundred feet–is floated near the surface.

When the last had been paid out, a second anchor and large buoy was fixed, and their trawl was “set.” Next they turned their attention to picking the trawl already in the water.

As the line came over the starboard gunnel Code picked the fish off the hooks, passing the hooks to Pete, who baited them and threw them over the port gunnel. Thus they would work their way along the whole of the line.

Many of the hooks that came to Code’s hands still had the bait with which they were set.

“Must be in the bait,” he told Ellinwood. “The fish wouldn’t touch it. This is no catch for five shots of trawl.”

But Pete could not cast any light on the subject.

It was certainly true that the catch from the trawl-line was small enough to be remarkable, but the men were helpless to explain the reason.