The Harbor of Doubt Part 35

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 _La.s.s_ 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 s.p.a.ce above the fish was very small he waited no longer.

Four men heaved on the windla.s.s 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 _La.s.s_, 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.

"d.a.m.nation!" rapped out Schofield. "Lively now! Tops'ls on her, and two of you stay aloft to s.h.i.+ft tacks if we should need to come about."

"Hey, you!" bawled Stetson as the _La.s.s_ 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 _La.s.s_, 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 La.s.s_ 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 n.o.body 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 _La.s.s_ 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.

"Pa.s.s the life-lines, Pete," ordered Code, and all hands pa.s.sed stout ropes from rigging to house to rail, forward and astern, so that there might be something to leap for when the _La.s.s_ 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 _La.s.s_ 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 pa.s.sed 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 n.o.body is going to beat me home while I've got a stick to carry canvas, unless they have a better packet than the _Charming La.s.s_--which I know well they haven't."

"That's the spirit, skipper!" yelled Ellinwood, secretly pleased.

There is no telling exactly what speed certain fis.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sages up to four thousand miles.

One ambitious man hazards his opinion (and he is one who ought to know) that a fis.h.i.+ng schooner has done her eighteen knots or upward for numerous individual hours, for fishermen, even on record pa.s.sages, 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 _La.s.s_ 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 _La.s.s_ roared down the Atlantic, pa.s.sing the wide mouth of Cabot Strait that leads between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia into the Gulf of St.

Lawrence. They pa.s.sed 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 La.s.s_ 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 pa.s.senger 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 st.i.tch 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 _La.s.s'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 gla.s.ses. Then he leaped to the deck.

"h.e.l.l'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 La.s.s_ 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 La.s.s_. With the end of the halyards aloft no man could reach them in time to avert a catastrophe.