The Harbor of Doubt Part 21

"No. Everybody's complainin' this mornin'.

"Not only can't catch fish, but ye can't hardly string the stuff on the hooks. An' that ain't all. It has a funny smell that I never found in any other clam bait I ever used."

"Why, what's the matter with your hands, Pete?" cried Code, pointing.

Ellinwood had removed his nippers, and the skin of his fingers and palms was a queer white and beginning to shred off as if immersed long in hot water.

"By the Great Seine!" rumbled the mate, looking at his hands in consternation.

Code made a trumpet of his hands. "Here, cookee, roll up a tub of that bait lively. I want to look at it. And fetch the hammer!"

A suspicion based upon a long-forgotten fact had suddenly leaped into his mind.

When the cook hove the tub of bait on deck Code knocked off the top boards with the hammer and dipped up a handful of the clams. Instead of the firm, fat sh.e.l.lfish that should have been in the clean brine, he found them loose and rotten. This time he himself detected a faint acrid odor quite different from the usual clean, salty smell. Again he dipped to make sure the whole tub was ruined. Then he looked at Ellinwood in despair.

"It's acid, Pete," he said. "My father told me about this sort of thing being done sometimes in a close race among bankers for the last load of fish. If they're all like this we're done for until we can get more."

Ellinwood looked at him in amazement, his jaw sagging.

"Well, who in thunder would do this?"

Code laughed bitterly.

"There's only one man I can think of, and that is the fellow who got my motor-dory under false pretenses. You remember how he made the cook and the boy help him get it over the side? Well, her gasoline-tank was full and her batteries new. She was ready to go two hundred miles on a minute's notice."

"But why should he do that--"

"Oh, think, Pete, _think!_ Don't you remember? He's one of the men I went up to Castalia to get, the time that lawyer came to Freekirk Head. And he's the only man in the whole crew I don't know well. I see it all now. He sent me a note the night before asking to ship on the _La.s.s_, and I went to get him before any of the other skippers got wind of it. You don't suppose he did this thing on his own account, do you?"

"Easy, skipper, easy! What's he got against you?"

"_He's_ got nothing against me!" cried Code pa.s.sionately. "But he is working for the man who has. Do you think that stupid ox would have sense enough to work a scheme like this? Never! Nat Burns is behind this, and I'll bet my schooner on it!"

Schofield dumped the bait-tub over the deck and rolled it around, examining it. Suddenly he stopped and peered closely.

"Look here!" he cried. "Here's proof!"

With a splitting knife that he s.n.a.t.c.hed out of a cleat he pried loose a tiny plug in one of the bottom boards that had been replaced so carefully that it almost defied detection.

"The whole thing is simple enough. He turned the tub upside down, cut out this plug, and inserted the acid. Then he refitted the plug and set it right side up again. It's as plain as the nose on your face."

"By thunder, I believe you're right, skipper!" said Ellinwood solemnly. "The dirty dog! Cookee, run that tub up to the truck again.

We'll have to call the men in on this."

"Oh, he was foxy, that one!" said Code bitterly. "Going out in the fog that way so all hands would think he was lost! I never remembered until this minute that the motor-dory could be run. I guess she went, all right, and that scoundrel is ash.o.r.e by this time."

"Had a bad name in Castalia, didn't he?"

"Oh, a little more or less that I heard of, but what's that in a fisherman? When the men come in have them go through all the bait."

Pete fired the old rifle, and the crew at work began to pull in through the choppy sea.

"h.e.l.lo!" cried the mate, looking behind him. "There's something going to be doin' here in a minute. It's the cutter from Halifax, all right."

Code, his former danger forgotten for the time, glanced up. The smudge of smoke had quickly resolved itself into a stubby, gray steam-vessel with a few bright bra.s.s guns forward and a black cloud belching from her funnel. She was still some five miles away, but apparently coming at top speed.

Three miles before her, with all sails set, including staysail and balloon-job, raced a fishing schooner. There was a fresh ten-knot wind blowing a little south of west--a wind that favored the schooner, and she was putting her best foot forward, taking the green water over her bows in a smother of foam.

"Heavens! look at her go!"

The exclamation was one of pure delight in the speed.

"Maybe she's an American that's been caught inside the three-mile limit, and is pullin' away from the gunboat," remarked Pete.

That she was pulling away there was little doubt. In the fifteen minutes that elapsed after her discovery she had widened the gap between herself and her pursuer. She was now within a mile of the _La.s.s_.

"Why doesn't she shoot?"

As Code spoke a puff of white smoke thrust out from the blunt bows of the cutter, and the ball ricochetted from wave-top to wave-top to fall half a mile astern of the schooner.

"Out of range now, an' if the wind holds she'll be out of sight by nightfall," said Pete, who was moved to great excitement and enthusiasm by the contest. "Wonder who she is?"

He plunged down the companionway to the cabin and emerged a moment later with Code's powerful gla.s.ses.

But Code did not need any gla.s.ses to tell him who she was. His eye had picked out her points before this, and the only thing that interested him was the fact that her wireless was down.

It was the mysterious schooner.

He had never seen her equal for traveling, and he knew that she must be making a good fourteen knots, for the cutter was capable of twelve.

She had reached her closest point of contact with Code's vessel and had begun to bear away when Pete leveled his gla.s.ses. It was on Schofield's tongue to reveal the ident.i.ty of the pursued when Ellinwood yelled:

"Good Heavens! Skipper! She has _Charming La.s.s_ printed in new gold letters under her counter!"

"What?"

"As I live, Code. _Charming La.s.s_, as plain as day! What's happening here to-day? What is this?" Code s.n.a.t.c.hed the gla.s.ses from Pete's hand and then leveled them, trembling, at the flying schooner.

For a time the foam and whirl of her wake obscured matters, but all at once, as she plunged down into a great hollow between waves, her stern came clear and pointed to heaven. There, in bright letters that glinted in the sun and were easily visible at a much greater distance, was printed the name:

CHARMING La.s.s OF FREEKIRK HEAD

"No wonder she's goin'!" yelled Pete, almost beside himself with excitement. "No wonder she's goin'! But let her go! More power to her!

Yah!"

Code stood with the gla.s.ses to his eyes and watched the mysterious schooner and the pursuing vessel disappear.